Marking Ramadan, a time to fast, with a canned food drive. EatLA on pop-ups gone permanent. Dylan Brody learns something Down South. And: who's the guy in the chair?
A page out of history - Los Angeles Mayor George Cryer
Here's a man most Angelinos know nothing about.
After stumbling across his noble portrait while browsing the LA Public Library's delightful and encyclopedic online photo archive, I've cobbled together this pocket bio, gleaned from the LAPL, Wikipedia, and Los Angeles A-Z:
George Edward Cryer was the 32d mayor of LA, serving from 1921 to 1929, when the city added more than 40 square miles and rose in population from 570,000 to more than a million.
He was born in 1875 and moved here from Nebraska with his family in 1885. He went back East for law school (UM), graduated with honors, and began practicing law in Los Angeles in 1903. He served in the local US Attorney's office and county DA's office, and was the prosecutor in the corruption case brought against Los Angeles County Supervisor, Richard H. Norton.
During his mayoral administration, the city started building LA City Hall, the Central Library, the LA Memorial Coliseum, and the Mulholland Highway.
Los Angeles A-Z says Cryer, "lost control of crime and vice, and proved unable to deal with police corruption. Cryer's right-hand-man, Kent Parrot, was considered the defacto mayor of the city." He went through five police chiefs in his last years of office.
After leaving office in 1929 Cryer went into private practice, but between 1929 and 1931, became engaged in a widely publicized court battle with radio evangelist Rev. Robert P. Shuler.
Wikipedia says Shuler 'branded Cryer as a "grafter" and the "chief exploiter," called his administration "one of the must corrupt the city ever saw," linked him to vice king Charlie Crawford, and asserted that Cryer went into office as a poor man and came out as a millionaire.'
At trial, asked if he'd ever taken a bribe, Cryer responded: "No, sir; never at any time, directly or indirectly. I never profited by my office. In fact, I considered it a financial detriment. It was the darndest job I ever had. It took practically all of my time, Sundays and every other day, and most of the night. I had to take the telephone out of my house so I could get a little sleep. I used to come home at nights from a banquet or something and people would call me sometimes at 3 o'clock in the morning -- some of them apparently insane."
Cryer lost in court, but did manage to get Shuler's radio licensed revoked. (Shuler also attacked blacks, Catholics, and the YWCA.)
Cryer tripped over a garden hose in 1961, broke his hip, and died after surgery. He's buried at Forest Lawn Mausoleum.
A merry stroll through the 'new' Sherwood Forest 'hood in Northridge
The L.A. City Council voted unanimously last Friday to officially name a neighborhood in Northridge "Sherwood Forest." It's a little trapezoid just southeast of Cal State Northridge, bounded by Nordhoff on the north, Balboa on the east, the Southern Pacific railroad tracks on the south, and Lindley on the west.
John Rabe met up with Northridge-native Kevin Roderick, creator of LA Observed and author of "The San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb," at Louise and Nordhoff in the so-called Sherwood Forest to talk about the new designation ... and, on one of the hottest days of the year, to try frying an egg on the sidewalk.
On why the area was dubbed "Sherwood Forest:"
"A lot of subdivisions in the Valley had catchy names in the 1920s and '30s. They were just trying to bring some attention to them. This was a subdivision of large estates, ranchettes, an acre, a couple of acres of land with tall trees. The main street, Parthenia, was lined with cedar trees, and somebody just came up with the name and I guess it stuck. I grew up here and never heard the name, we never heard anything referred to as Sherwood Forest when I was living here, but later on the realtors adopted it as a name and now it's caught on."
On why the name works for this particular area:
"You go around some of these streets, Louise, Sunburst, Amestoy and Osborne. You'll see very green, lush yards with trees that have been here 40, 50 years. You go down Parthenia and you've got properties, a couple of acres, with really nice landscaping that's just lush. On a hot day like this it's a good place in the Valley to be."
On the famous names who have called Sherwood Forest home:
"We're looking into the backyard of what used to be the home of character actor Jim Davis, when I was growing up he used to be the local celebrity. A whole new generation of fans discovered him when he became Jock Ewing on the "Dallas" TV show … Richard Pryor was living on Parthenia here in 1980 when he accidentally lit his face on fire and went running down the street. A famous Hollywood animator, Abe Levitow. There have been athletes, TV actors… Walter Brennan was a 3-time Oscar winner, and he had a big chunk of land over on Parthenia. When we were growing up "The Real McCoys" was on TV at the time so he was famous for, again, a TV audience after his movie career started to slow down a little bit. That property has been subdivided into a couple of dozen homes by now."
On why names and places are so important in Los Angeles:
"I think that's the way to tell the story of Los Angeles … the names you see on the streets, especially in older parts of town, the streets are named for historical figures. And out here in the Valley, community names are important. [Residents] never say they live in Los Angeles, they might say they live in the Valley, or they might get really specific and say they live in Northridge, and the people in this neighborhood do refer to themselves as living in Sherwood Forest."
On what these names do for a community:
"Community pride is what it is and identity. Carve out your place in the larger city of Los Angeles, and you'll see it all over town, there's a lot of new blue signs popping up around town with community names that outsiders probably haven't ever heard before. I'm sure unless you've been looking for a house in this part of the Valley you've never heard of Sherwood Forest before."
The not-so-great sidewalk fried-egg experiment
As the picture in the slideshow above demonstrates, frying an egg on an 120-degree frying pan and sidewalk in Sherwood Forest didn't quite work out.
Roderick documented the whole thing on his site, you can see more pictures there.
Needless to say, the whole experiment was a failure. The egg barely changed color, both in the frying pan and directly on the sidewalk.
So what gives, is frying an egg in the sidewalk an urban legend? Have you ever successfully fried an egg on the sidewalk? Tell us your tips in the comments.
Why did alleged Sikh temple shooter Wade Michael Page live in Orange County?
As of this Sunday it'll be a week since six people were killed in a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Authorities say 44 year old Wade Michael Page opened fire on the unsuspecting group of paritioners before taking his own life after a short firefight with police. The FBI now says they've reason to believe Page's biography may have played a part in the shootings--it's a story that involves loud music, white supremacist rallies and the city of Orange, California.
Pete Simi is a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. For his doctorate, Simi studied white supremacists in Southern California and says he spent time with Wade Michael Page during his research. He talked with Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson.
When Page and Simi met, Page was sharing a house with friends in Orange California. Simi was studying in Nevada at the time, and his main contact in the Southern California skinhead community was a housemate of Page's--he crashed on their couch. Simi said the Colorado born army veteran wasn't working much at the time. "We ended up spending a lot of time together. You know, going out to lunches, going out to dinners."
Simi recalled a night when he and Page played pool at a bar with pair of strangers--one was African American. "It was a very cordial evening, everybody was polite, there was small talk." he said.
As a researcher, Simi didn't see any hints of the man authorities say Page would later become. "I just felt sick to my stomach when I realized it. I was shocked. People that are involved in these groups, that believe these types of things, violence is a big part of it," said Simi. "I didn't see him as any more threatening than anybody else involved in these groups. He didn't stand out as particularly threatening."
Page was also a musician. During his time in Southern California he played guitar in Youngland, an Orange County based white power band. As a genre, Simi said, white power rock is usually violent and loud: it's not uncommon to hear graphic and gruesome calls to action. "But Youngland's lyrics were quite different, much more innocuous," said Simi.
Page's time in Orange California is only the latest chapter in a long history in Southern California's history with white supremacists. Scattered around corners of Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, Page says some of the white power movement's most notable names got their start in Southern California--names like Tom Metzger, the former KKK leader and founder of the White Aryan Resistance.
Simi added that white supremacist bands frequently tour the United States, and sometimes beyond. "Actually Youngland--I guess it would've been around 2004, 2005--played a show in Germany that attracted close to 5,000 attendees," said Simi.
Though hate groups and movements like those that Wade MIchael Page was involved in are few and far between in the States, Simi says that's beside the point. "The Oklahoma city bombing is a good example of that," he said. "A few people ended up orchestrating an incident that at the time was the deadliest act of domestic terrorism, and to this day is the second."
Pete Simi is the author of American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement's Hidden Spaces of Hate.
A Ramadan tradition in Torrance
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan ends August 18. During the month, believers fast during daylight hours, but that doesn’t mean food gets ignored. Recently, Omar Shamout traveled to Torrance to spend the day with The Hossain family, who illustrate just how crucial a role food can play during Ramadan.
Keya Hossain, 11, is used to introducing herself to strangers. She and her younger sister Linna, who’s nine, are veteran salesmen. Only they aren’t selling anything.
Along with some close friends and their parents, the girls travel around their neighborhood with a wagon to collect a canned food that the family donates to a local food bank. While it’s common for mosques to do food drives during Ramadan, the Hossains take things a step further. Keya and her sister say they look forward to the fasting and charity work, even if it means setting aside sibling rivalries.
“I was helping my sister more and she was like, ‘you’re being nice today,’ and I said, ‘it’s Ramadan,’ that’s why I’m being nice,” Keya said.
Their mom Amy said that’s all part of the plan. “The reason we do the canned food drive during Ramadan is because the kids are fasting. And while they’re fasting they will understand more why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Amy said. “The interesting thing is that the nourishment you get from food and drink is an earthly nourishment. And ... what kind of nourishing you’re gaining during Ramadan is the spiritual nourishment.”
Linna said canned beans and vegetables are what neighbors offer up the most, in addition to a certain pink lunch meat – Spam.
“Do you like Spam?” a neighbor asked the younger Hossain sister, handing over the iconic blue can. “We don’t eat pork or ham,” Keya politely informed him.
Afterwards, Keya mentioned that one member of the family has tried Spam in the past. “My cat ate it, and she liked it—a lot,” she laughed.
About half an hour later, the wagon was really starting to fill up as Keya gripped the handle to pull it down the sidewalk after another successful visit. “It was heavier than when it started, so that’s a good sign,” Keya said.
But soon, the kids grew tired – and hungry – so the group headed for home.
After sorting through the day’s haul with her three-year-old nephew Leif, Amy took me into the bedroom to show off their grand total so far. “It’s … maybe 150 items? So, it’s not much, but hopefully—it’ll help.”
Raised in a Christian household, Amy didn’t convert to Islam until almost a decade after she married her husband, Iqbal, who came to U.S. 20 years ago from Bangladesh. Now married 15 years, they both said the choice to convert was all hers.
“It has to come from within. I didn’t ... want to push her to do something, Iqbal said. “Sometimes I like to say I didn’t come to this faith by being a conformist,” Amy added. “I came to this faith by thinking for myself — and that’s actually what the Quran asks us to do, what God asks us to do, is to think for our self—not just simply follow what other people are doing,” she continued.
With about two hours to go before sundown, the kids started looking for ways to pass the time before dinner. Soon, they were punching away on their iPhones playing a popular new game called Temple Run. “I don’t play video games that much, but sometimes at night time … like an hour before … you get really hungry, so I usually play video games or something,” Linna said.
At 7:30 p.m., the time for dinner, known as “Iftar,” has finally arrived. The Hossains headed to their mosque at the nearby South Bay Islamic Center, where Amy also works. The center, no more than a converted house, serves free dinners every night of Ramadan. They have to set up a tent next door to accommodate the 200-or-so guests.
“[It will] probably almost always be Pakistani food here. Sometimes they have Iranian food,” Amy said, looking at a light meal of pakora, fruit salad and dates. Later, she explained why the family likes to eat at the temple during Ramadan on occasion.
“When you’re at home and you’re having Suhur and Iftar, you know that there’s houses all around you ... doing the same thing, but to see it in front of you is something else —it’s nice.”
But before they dug in to the main course, it was time for some more of the spiritual nourishment Amy described earlier. Pre-dinner prayers inside the mosque last approximately half an hour, and there are more to come later.
It’s midnight by the time services are over. The Hossains went home to sleep, but they’ll be up before sunrise to begin another long day.
How to view the Perseid Meteor Shower this weekend
Break out the lawn chairs and your best sweater this weekend, because the annual Perseid meteor shower will be gracing the night sky.
This year's event will be more visible than last year because "the moon conditions are much better," says Griffith Observatory's Anthony Cook. He is the Astronomical Observer at the observatory and says, "This year the moon rises at 1:35 AM, but it's only about 30% illuminated. It's a crescent moon." Last year's shower peaked when the moon was full, so you couldn't see the showers very well.
While the shower gets started around 11pm, you don't have to stay up to catch the event. Have an early breakfast and watch the Perseids when they reach their peak at 4 or 5am. Spectators can expect to see about one or two meteors per minute.
But you really need a clear view of the Northeastern sky. "If you drive up the mountain north of LA," says Cook, "it will put the glare of the city to the south." One of the most popular destinations is the Angeles Crest Highway slightly north of the Mount Wilson Observatory. For those who don't mind to drive a little outside of Los Angeles County, Joshua Tree and the Los Padres National Forest will also provide amazing views.
The Perseid meteor shower is "kind of a summer time favorite because it happens during the vacation season," says Cook. So be prepared to find a spot in advance because it may get crowded.
Dylan Brody learns something during a trip down South
I don’t like visiting my in-laws in Georgia. When an Atheist Jew wanders amongst Fundamentalist Christians awkward hilarity and mutually derisive judgment ensue. But my wife asked me to accompany her to her parents’ fiftieth anniversary party, and I couldn’t refuse. I sailed blithely through it … Up to a point.
The scenes in my parents in-law’s mobile home, my sister in-law’s farm house, and the Cracker Barrel restaurant had the soft feel of well worn coveralls. We made easy conversation and took self-deprecating pot-shots at our own cultural idiosyncrasies.
Over a breakfast spread out of a Paula Deen fantasy sequence, my father-in-law made snarky comments about California being the land of fruits and nuts. I kept bringing up Jesus and deliberately getting things wrong. I asked what Jesus’ super powers were. He said, “He fed the masses on fishes and loaves.” I said, “Sandwich making isn’t a super power.” He said, “It wasn’t a super-power. It was a miracle.” I said, “Really? Sandwich-making.” He chuckled and then his wife decided it was okay if she laughed too. We pretended to find common ground in protective humor but the subtext was about remaining comfortably entrenched.
Then came the big anniversary party.
It had not occurred to me until guests started arriving for the party that the friends and family of people celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary tend to be really, really old.
Many old people can’t hear very well and my fancy New England education left me ill-equipped to understand and be understood in Chickamauga, GA, to begin with so I quickly resorted to nodding and smiling as ancient Southerners shouted words distorted beyond my comprehension by both elongation and, simultaneously, abbreviation.
Ordinarily, when I am forced to endure the slowly-turning thumb-screw of polite conversation, I dose myself liberally with decent Scotch, putting up a light barrier of warm amber liquid between me and those I encounter. But this party was held in the meeting room of the Southern Baptist church that my in-laws attend. No alcohol, no music, no dancing, no buffer.
An octogenarian aunt latched on to me for a conversation and worked hard to minimize her accent. She was small and thin but projected not the slightest hint of frailty. She gripped my arm, not for balance but to convey intimacy and keep me engaged. Her grip was birdlike only if one thinks of a hard-taloned eagle lifting heavy prey.
She told me first of how small my wife had been when last they’d met, how her husband had adored her. She told me her husband had died eleven years ago.
A 50th anniversary will get you thinking about things like that. Time. Love. Tenacity.
I said that I was sorry for her loss.
She said, “Oh, that’s all right. After sixty-some years, ah’d hayud enough o’ him.”
I was startled enough to be uncertain whether I should laugh, though I did hear the distant laughter of my own, ever-present unseen audience filtering through from another dimensional plane.
She went on in a careful whisper, “Ah don’ wanna talk dirty to you in a church but he got the penis cancer. You know what that is?”
I nodded.
“They wanted to cut the thing off but ah sayud, ‘no. If it’s gonna be lahk that, jus’ let ‘im go.”
I considered saying, “this is my new favorite story,” but the person I was talking to deserved better. I said, “Good for you. That must have been incredibly difficult.”
She said, “Not really. He had that tube thing in his mouth, so I didn’t have to listen to his opinions on the matter.” Then she grinned mischievously at me and I smiled back.
I like to believe it was an instinctive understanding of the rules of comedic delivery and not an awareness of our holy surroundings that made her work so hard to hold back her own laughter as she added, “His name was Peter.”
Suddenly my sharp, sober perspective shifted. This wasn’t about my awkwardness as a city boy in the south. It was about this funny, sad woman, this unexpected encounter. This wasn’t about easy comedy. It was about sweet, unconventional pathos. It was about long lingering romance and human beings and the universally common need to unburden oneself through confidential confession and protective humor.
I found, abruptly, that I didn’t resent my wife for needing me to go to Georgia with her, for taking me away from my comfort zone, my condo, my safe home office with the cluttered shelves and the snoring, gassy dogs, for taking me to a party in a church where no dancing was allowed, no drinking, nothing I really think of as partying at all, just oddly intimate conversations with ancient strangers.
It seemed small sacrifice to make in exchange for a connection that might take us well into the age of difficult decisions.
DeBord and Rabe revive the reviled wine spritzer
"Wine spritzer" — two words that strike fear, rage, anxiety, and contempt in the hearts of cocktail mavens and wine enthusiasts everywhere.
But why? Why is the spritzer so stigmatized?
It perhaps has something to do with the idea that it's neither wine nor cocktail.
Wine drinkers drink their wine full-strength, not diluted with fizz and ice. Cocktails lovers favor ... well, you know, REAL BOOZE, like vodka and whiskey.
But when the thermometer climbs way, way, way up, the wine spritzer is a blessing. It's a lightly alcoholic refresher, and in the classic white-wine formulation, with a few ounces of a relatively inexpensive, say, Sauvignon Blanc joining club soda or seltzer, ice, and a slice of lemon, a blessed refreshment on a 100+ degree LA afternoon.
It doesn't have to be white, either. DeBord mixes up red-wine spritzer, too, substituting a slice of lime for the lemon. One can also add splashes of other libations.
Rabe speaks of Coca-Cola + red wine (a "sacrilege" but perfect at outdoor summer weddings).
DeBord tells stories of vodka, Campari, Lillet ...
Look folks, the sidewalks are melting out there. It's called a Flex Alert for a reason: you need to be more flexible. We need to abandon old drinking biases and go with what works. We need to hydrate! And that's why we need to get over our spritzer fears!
You can do better than this:
Eat LA: Pop up restaurants, tasty goat meat and why lobster is still expensive
This week, we talk to two chefs and try to find out what makes some pop-ups pop, we’ll talk about why Los Angeles won’t benefit from the East Coast’s newest bumper crop of lobsters.
But first, Off-Ramp's John Rabe talks to Eat LA Contributor Linda Burum about one of the most underrated, edible animals on the farm: the noble goat.
For The Love of Goat
"A lot of people think of goat as something really wild and exotic, but for a lot of people, its comfort food, It's what they grew up with," said Burum. "You can get goat from India, Pakistan, Korea, Vietnam and many kinds of Birria and Mexican goat dishes."
Click here for our comprehensive list of where you can get goat dishes in SoCal
Pop-up Restaurants
They can appear in an instant—and sometimes vanish just as quickly. Here in L.A., we’re no stranger to the temporary chef driven concept: chef Ludo Lefebvre’s appearances at L.A. restaurants has gotten him national attention—not a day goes by on food blogs without news of the next pop-up restaurant.
And for some up-and-comers, like Ari Taymor, it’s the only way to go.
The Bay Area native has cooked in San Francisco, France and even here in L.A. at Suzanne Goin’s venerable Lucques on Melrose. When wanted to start own restaurant here, he spent months popping up all over L.A. Now he’s got a permanent space Downtown—it just opened this past June. Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson talked with Taymor to find out why he settled down.
"Pop-ups are difficult in nature...What a brick and mortar allows us to do is storage space, it allows us the room to do long-term projects," said Taymor.
While a permanent location allows for more flexibility, Taymor says starting out the pop-up route is a good way to get your name and food out there to the masses. Plus, its more cost-effective.
"Doing a pop-up for me is financially based. it's really difficult to get the money that it takes to start a restaurant, open a restaurant, to make sure you have the name recognition," said Taymor. "For us, it was a way for us to start small, see if we could do it on our own, stand on our own two feet, then if we were lucky branch out and take our own place."
The pop up world isn’t just a place for rookie chefs to cut their teeth. For some veterans like, Laurent Quenioux of Vertical Wine Bistro and the late, great Bisto LQ, above all, pop up restaurants mean creativity.
"It would be like a wife and a mistess. Vertical would be more like a wife, it's more serious," said Quenioux. "The pop-up is more fun, it's more adventurous and we tackle different products and ingredients that are really exciting."
L.A. Lobsters Still Pricey
The national media has been talking about the record-breaking haul of Maine lobsters this summer. It's resulted from a confluence of the unusually warm winter and more sustainable fishing practices in recent years.
So where in L.A. can you take advantage of this bumper crop? Nowhere, unfortunately.
It turns out we here in L.A, won't benefit from this situation. The bumper crop of lobsters have soft shells, because of the warm water, and they don't travel well. And actually they don't taste as good as the cold-water lobsters.
L.A.'s restaurants and seafood vendors are getting their lobsters off the colder waters of Canada this summer. And those prices? Let's just say they're not cheap