Kemp Powers

If you’ve been to Largo in the past few years, chances are you’ve seen and heard Tom Brosseau. The 33-year-old singer/songwriter is a fixture among the cabal of regulars (Sara Watkins, John C. Reilly and of course, Jon Brion among them) gracing the venue’s stage. In fact, the cover of his latest album, Posthumous Success, is a kind of shout-out to his Largo family, featuring a photo of Brosseau chatting at a party alongside...

Tyler He may not be quite the household name of such iconic magazine personalities as Tina Brown, Graydon Carter and Anna Wintour, but Tyler Brûlé is without a doubt flying in the same airspace. The jet-setting editor and entrepreneur started his career as a reporter for the BBC before launching the popular design and travel magazine, Wallpaper, in 1996. Brûlé sold the mag to Time Inc. in 2002, but in 2007 launched Monocle, an...

Photo by John Perrin Flynn Living in a city that's so dominated by the silver screen, it's easy to forget that Los Angeles is also home to some truly cutting-edge, if overlooked, theater performances. Tonight and tomorrow are your last chances to catch the final bow of a particularly entertaining effort. Local playwright John Pollono's Razorback is running at the relatively new Rogue Machine Theater on Pico just west of La Brea, across the...

The 8th Annual US Sumo Open came to the Los Angeles Sports Arena on Saturday. As expected, this yearly demonstration of the popular Japanese sport drew a colorful array of competitors. While the women's division was cut short by a combination of last minute dropouts and injuries, the heavyweights more than made up for the loss with a ton of great matches. World champ Byambajav "Byamba" Ulambayar walked away with the gold medal for the...

Photo by Chuck Green 1. This is the perfect primer. The Grand Sumo Tournament was held in Los Angeles back in June. It was a great showcase of traditional sumo, complete with ceremonial performances and an air of formality. The open is more what you'd see if sumo were an Olympic sport. If you've never seen sumo wrestling before, the diversity of wrestlers, many of whom are part-timers (this year includes a rock drummer...

Sometimes the news really does paint our wonderful town as something of a racial powder keg, which makes it all the more gratifying when you stumble across a truly diverse neighborhood. Hugging the western border of Koreatown, just south of tony Hancock Park and just north of West Adams, sits a neighborhood where true diversity is a reality. Just how diverse is Country Club Park? Ask yourself this; where else in town can you...

I already find myself having to close my blinds before daring to pick up my plastic Guitar Hero 3 controller. Well, the folks at City of Industry-based Jada Toys, Inc., thought pressing buttons on a fake guitar in a musical version of "Simon" wasn't embarrassing enough, so lo and behold we have the Guitar Hero Air Rocker! For only $29.99, you can now strap on the specially-designed air guitar belt and strum away on your...

It was almost a year ago that LAist was blown away by the US Sumo Open at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. The day of amateur sumo wrestling action, yakisoba noodles and free sake made us understand why the sport is followed so religiously in Japan. With the lousy weather keeping us homebound this weekend, it seemed like a good time to start researching the 2008 event, as we're anxious to see the return...

1. That I have two healthy, happy, sometimes crazy kids. 2. That, against all odds, I've found in Los Angeles a city I'm as comfortable in as my hometown (that would be Brooklyn, NYC). 3. That I have a better adult life than I could ever have imagined back during my stickball-playing childhood in Flatbush. 4. That being a square actually became the cool thing to be. 5. That I have a family and...

It has been a long time coming, but after a temporary hiatus, we're happy to announce that today our ongoing Neighborhood Project makes its return to LAist. We're hoping to bring our readers a new neighborhood entry on a (fairly) regular basis. First up in this second round of Los Angeles neighborhood tours is Franklin Village, an entry completely written and photographed by a couple of regular LAist readers (and a few of their...