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No Limit Records 1990-1996: The Independent Years
The first No Limit Records logo In the 1990s, when people still primarily consumed music by via aluminum compact discs, rap label No Limit Records rose to national attention in part by flooding shelf...
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California Fool’s Gold — Exploring Montecito Heights, the Wilderness of the City
SEASON 10, EPISODE 1: “MONTECITO HEIGHTS” Montecito Heights Yesterday, compelled by voters like you, I explored the Los Angeles neighborhood of Montecito Heights in Northeast Los Angeles (to vote for...
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David McComb and The Triffids
David McComb [Triffids 3-5-85]The late David Richard McComb, best known as lead singer and songwriter in The Triffids, was born 54 years ago today on 17 February 1962. His parents were plastic surgeon...
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Los Angeles Webography… Wayfarers All
Amongst the many resources available pertaining to Los Angeles are websites, blogs, podcasts, and other online-only resources. I read many of them regularly, some too much, and almost all of them...
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Women’s History Month: 25 Women in Los Angeles History
March is Women’s History Month, an observation which traces its beginnings to the first International Women’s Day, declared in 1911. As of 2014, Los Angeles County was home to an estimated 5,129,169...
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Nobody Drives in LA — Opening Day of the Gold Line Foothill Extension
A Gold Line train passing through Arcadia Back in February 2013, my brother and I walked along the route of Metro‘s then-planned Gold Line Foothill Extension. Even though Foothill Extension is 18...
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Los Angeles Train Map
Los Angeles was made possible by trains. Rate wars between Southern Pacific and Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railways created the first population boom. The expansive Pacific Electric Railway was...
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Greater Streets: Exploring the Walk of Fame — Heart of Hollywood
INTRODUCTION Hollywood and Vine — The heart of Downtown Hollywood Although it continues to attract millions of tourists every year, there are few places in Los Angeles which locals avoid as...
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California Fool’s Gold — A Ventura County Primer
This California Fool’s Gold is an introduction designed to provoke interest in the communities of Ventura County. And, armed with a little information, please vote for as many communities of Ventura...
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Los Angeles’s Asian Supermarkets
Supermarkets are wonderful places. My old landlord, a friendless and frankly unlikeable person, told me that Gelson’s was her favorite place to spend Thanksgiving (alone). Joe Strummer wrote of getting...
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No Enclave — Exploring Sri Lankan Los Angeles
INTRODUCTION As of 2010 there were 45,159 Sri Lankans living in the US. Substantial immigration began in the 1990s, when many fled the violence of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The majority of Sri...
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Los Angeles’s Asian Radio
Los Angeles is the world’s great Pan-Asian city, a melting pot within a melting pot. Arguments could be made for multicultural metropolises like Birmingham, Honolulu, London, New York, Toronto, and...
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No Enclave — Exploring Mongolian Los Angeles
As of 2010, there were 18,344 Americans who self-identified as Mongolian-American. The census of that year also showed that 4,993 Mongolians were living in California, making it home to more...
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Those Useless Trees — The Aoyama Tree
Although not native, many Moreton Bay Figs (Ficus macrophylla) dot the Southern California landscape. The oldest of these Australian immigrants might be those planted by agriculturalist Elijah Hook...
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No Enclave — Exploring Malaysian Los Angeles
MALAYSIAN LOS ANGELES According to the 2010 census, there were 26,179 Americans of Malaysian background. Malaysian-Americans consist of people of a variety of ethnic origin, including Malay, Malaysian...
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Pioneering Asian-American Architects in Los Angeles
There were Asian-American architects before them. Thomas S. Rockrise (né Iwahiko Tsumanuma) joined the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1921 (toward the end of his career). Yasuo Matsui...
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No Enclave — Exloring Uzbek Los Angeles
There is no category for Uzbek-Americans on the US Census but an estimated 20,000 Uzbeks are estimated to live here. The most visible communities live in the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens...
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High Rising — Los Angeles’s Asian-American Skyscrapers
The skyline of the modern city is largely defined by its skyscrapers; those towering, gleaming symbols of the architectural ambition, developer wealth, humanity’s hubris, and usually crowned with a...
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No Enclave — Exploring Singaporean Los Angeles
INTRODUCTION TO SINGAPORE The Republic of Singapore is an island city-state in Southeast Asia. Its entire area is just 719.1 km2, making it slightly smaller than Los Angeles’s San Gabriel Valley....
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Saturday Night Yellow Fever
Although the title of this piece might suggest a playlist for Asian fetishists, it’s actually more of a selection of songs which I think reveal something deeper or at least more interesting about...
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