Frank Wilkinson, longtime Los Angeles lefty activist, has died at 91. The NY Times has his obit (via LA Observed) but the LA Times — which we'd wager, with its historical conservatism, was never a friend to Frank — does not. Like other leftists with good intentions, Frank's actions sometimes had tragically unintended consequences. Looking at the ramshackle, underdeveloped — and idyllically remembered — Chavez Ravine, Frank, head of the city's housing authority, set......

In the May 1, 2005 edition of the Los Angeles Times, Lynell George's piece "Soundtrack for a Lost L.A." chronicles the evolution of Ry Cooder's latest album, "Chavez Ravine," and unearths a tangled episode in LA's history. Scheduled to debut June 7th, the album, named after a Mexican American neighborhood that was bulldozed in the early '50s to make way for a promised public housing project that eventually became the site of Dodger Stadium,......