Kristen Lepore thought she had picnic game until she went to the Hollywood Bowl ... Kevin Ferguson explores the world of actors who pretend to be patients to train doctors ... Brains On! explains why your house cat puts up with you.
How to picnic like a regular at the Hollywood Bowl
There’s nothing like a summer night at the Hollywood Bowl. It’s the seasonal home to the L.A. Phil, and big names this summer range from Heart to Erykah Badu.
And then there's the food. If you've been to the Bowl, you've seen it in action: These people have been picnicking for decades. It's a sport. There's even a
to it.
We stopped by a Jamie Cullum jazz concert to learn the tricks of the trade.
1. The early bird gets the worm
Or the best picnic spot. If you want to eat your food overlooking the Hollywood hills, you better get a move on it. Gates open at 6 p.m.
"When we open up our gates at the beginning of the day, we'll see people run up the hills to try to get some of the more primo areas," said Tom Waldron, the Hollywood Bowl's house manager.
Picnic areas inside the park are first come, first serve. (You can reserve group tables across the street.) Wear comfortable walking shoes. The Bowl is the largest outdoor amphitheater in the U.S., and the picnic grounds are just as impressive. Prepare yourself for one very serious incline.
Pro tip: Check out this map before you go. Picnic area No. 7, also known as the "tree house," has great views and is perfect for a date night.
2. It's chilled. Not cold.
Think about how your food will travel. Thermal bags. Insulated picnic baskets. Coffee coolers. Anything is game when you're picnicking at the Hollywood Bowl.
Tina Dahl has been picnicking at the Bowl for 20 years. She explains how she keeps her salade niçoise perfectly chilled.
"We want to keep it chilled, not cold.... We just took an ice pack — one of those flexible ones that you put on your muscles when you’re achy — set the container on top of it and wrapped it all up in a towel," she said.
3. Presentation is everything
I saw fabric table clothes tailored to fit the box seat table tops. There were lavish napkins, candles and plates. Longtime picnicker Antonio Anderson is so hardcore that he was featured in the Hollywood Bowl brochure. He’s got 25 years under his belt.
Here's his setup:
How have his picnics evolved? "From plastic to fine china and better sparkling wine," Anderson told me.
Off-Ramp host John Rabe has box seats at the Bowl. He prefers bamboo plates and silverware. They're cheap, lightweight and they look good. Pro tip: If you forget the plates or utensils, don't panic. Stop by one of the restaurants and ask; they'll likely give you some for free.
Hollywood Bowl regular Rafael Gonzalez had freshly picked flowers in a cute little vase on his table. He and his wife also theme their picnics.
"Especially if there’s Latin music, we’ll have Latin food. If there’s country music, we’ll do a little country-fried chicken," he said.
4. You need wheels
Orange County resident Taylor Debevec has a picnic basket for every occasion. She found this gem in an antique shop outside of Charleston, South Carolina.
But if you don't pack lightly, you'll need at least one cooler on wheels. Wheels make it way easier to swiftly walk the grounds (especially after a couple drinks).
This is Naome Leibov. She was wheeling around warm chicken, cold sushi and pillows to sit on. Her advice? Don't bring as much as she did. Pro tip: You can get a seat cushion from the Bowl for $1.
5. Don't forget the organic honey
Teamwork makes the picnic dream work. Case in point: I found a table with a designated bartender. Deirdre Delrey explains how to perfect the drinks:
"Start light. Think about the heat of the early evening. Something with citrus or cucumber — like a Pimm's cup or Moscow mule," she said. "A nice wine with the meal and then something flavorful at the end to wrap it all up."
Her friend and fellow picnicker is responsible for the cheese, crackers and organic honey. The latter is a must-have item, according to Delrey.
"She brings organic honey that she dribbles on the goat cheese, and with the fig-encrusted crackers, it’s magical; it’s beautiful. And then with nectarines and peaches," she said with a huge smile on her face.
Are you drooling yet? Pro tip: You can purchase the Fig & Olive Crisps from Trader Joe's.
Too hot to prepare a picnic? Order food at the show. Refer to the 2015 Hollywood Bowl dining guide from Patina Restaurant Group for options. One woman I spoke with raved about the Berkshire pork chop, which you can see half-eaten on the right in the photo below. 
6. And the boxed wine
You can never, ever bring too much wine to the Hollywood Bowl. Mainly because it's pretty expensive to buy a bottle at the venue. (The cheapest red was around $70 when I was there last month for the John Fogerty concert.)
That's why Briana Madden suggests boxed wine from Bevmo. A 3-liter Bota Box will cost you under $20. Or you can purchase 1.5 liters for $10, which is probably a more appropriate option for a school night.
7. Forget parking. Take the shuttle
Don't picnic and drive. Take a Hollywood Bowl bus or shuttle. From Chatsworth to Torrance, the Bowl makes it pretty easy to commute back and forth. Find everything you need to know here.
How hardcore is your picnic? What are your picnic must-haves? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using the hashtag #myLApicnic.
Let's picnic! And brag about it.
Good going, gadget geek: your drone nearly crashed a medivac helicopter
"Lives weigh in the balance. We’ve flown thousands of missions safely. This is the first case of encountering a drone.” — Vince Ellis, Los Angeles Times
There have been several notorious cases already of drones interfering with firefighting aircraft during Southern California wildfires. But on Wednesday, a medivac helicopter had what might have been the closest call yet between an aircraft and a drone.
Todd Valeri, president and CEO of American Ambulance, which partners with a company that runs four medical aircraft in Fresno and Visalia, says on Wednesday, a Skylife chopper was returning with a snakebite victim. "When they were about two miles north of the Fresno air terminal, at about a thousand feet, the pilot observed a drone flying directly toward the aircraft." He took evasive action, and missed the 4- to 6-foot drone by just 15 feet.
It was a very close call, he says. "Had the aircraft made contact with the drone, it could have been catastrophic." In other words, a drone operator could have caused the death of everyone on board.
I asked Valeri what he'd want to say to the drone owner. "I'd want to have some confidence," he said, "that this wasn't done with malicious intent, and that some time could be spent explaining the safety concerns."
Congressman Adam Schiff has been one of the most vocal politicians calling for action on drones, and he told me, "Firefighters need to be able to do what's necessary to put down fire and to be able to operate safely. If there's a technology they can use to bring down a drone, they should use it. If there isn't, I'm okay with them using whatever. I really could care less whether the drone stays intact or the owner ever gets it back."
For more of our interview, and to hear what Valeri and Congressman Adam Schiff want done about drones, listen to the audio of our interviews.
(This post has been updated to add nurse Vince Ellis' audio interview and his statement that the drone came within 15 feet (not 20) of the chopper, and that the drone may have been up to 6 feet wide, not 4-5 feet.)
Sole survivor of 1971 Sylmar tunnel collapse tells his story
Angelenos — natives or transplants — learn about the big disasters as a matter of course: the Northridge Earthquake, the 1993 Malibu wildfire, the bursting of the St. Francis Dam. But the lore usually doesn't include one of the nation's worst industrial accidents: the 1971 tunnel collapse that killed 17 men. And it should.
The story starts near the corner of Fenton and Maclay in Sylmar. Here, there's a giant pit with a tall concrete wall at one end. That's the start of a Metropolitan Water District tunnel that was to bring water from Lake Castaic, and it's the emergency operation staging ground for the photos in our slideshow.
On June 23, 1971, miners hit a pocket of methane five miles into the tunnel. A few were injured by a small explosion, but work wasn't stopped. Instead, according to Ralph Brissette, they decided to try to dilute the methane by pumping in regular air.
"And I guess it didn't work," Brissette says.
He should know. The methane exploded when work resumed the next day, killing all of his coworkers: 15 miners, one electrician and an inspector. Brissette says he was apparently shielded from the blast by the radiator of the train used to transport men and materials to the job site.
"I was working as a 'brakey,' a person who rides the locomotive back and forth in case there's a derailment," Brissette recalls. "It was really cool then, and [for heat] I was standing on the front of the locomotive near the radiator, and all of a sudden there was an explosion. It was a hell of a blast. I guess I lost consciousness." He was stuck in the tunnel for seven hours.
Lockheed, the tunnel contractor, was found guilty in criminal and civil court and forced to pay almost $10 million.
READ THE CASE: People v. Lockheed Shipbuilding & Constr. Co.
The disaster, the worst tunnel disaster ever in California, also brought about the stiffest safety regulations in the country.
But it wasn't until 2013 that the MWD erected a memorial to the 17 victims. Peter Rosenwald, a librarian, community activist and friend of Brissette, says, "I first heard of [the disaster] in 2011. I was talking to Ralph. and he told me about the incident. I said, 'Was there ever a memorial?' And he said, 'No'. And I said, 'Let's try to work on it.'"
(Ralph Brissette at the dedication of the memorial to his fallen co-workers. Image: Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.)
Brissette doesn't know what to make of the fact that he survived when his friends didn't — men like miner Danny Blaylock, with whom he'd go hunting for deer and rabbit. "Out here in the Valley. We were close. Very close ... family," he says.
Song of the Week: 'Valle Moreno' by Quitapenas
This week's Off-Ramp song of the week is "Valle Moreno" by the Los Angeles Afro-Latin band Quitapenas (literally "to remove worries" in Spanish).
On Quitapenas' bandcamp, they call the song "an homage to our hometown of the Inland Empire, California."
Here's the video to "Valle Moreno," which John Rabe called "convincingly retro:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV_TKQU5gxY
Want to see them live? Quitapenas plays the Museum of Latin American Art on Friday, August 21 and the Echoplex on Thursday August 27 with Fools Gold.
How do you teach medical students bedside manner? Hire an actor
In the world of academia, is there anything tougher than medical school? Years of math, science, anatomy, pharmacology and dissections committed to memory; tests, labs, residencies… but how do you teach what might be the most sensitive and human part of being a doctor: bedside manner?
And who do you hire to do it?
There’s a lesson plan for that, too. And when I started looking, I found out it started here in Los Angeles.
When Esther Mercado found out she had cancer, she was 66. She was an accountant and she acted in her spare time.
She'd had trouble sleeping and she didn't know why. She drove herself to the emergency room thinking she acid reflux, but they kept her.
"The doctor came in after performing some tests, and said to me, ‘we see something, and it could either be a cyst, a tumor or some kind of growth.'"
It was a surreal moment for anybody, and even stranger for Mercado. For 17 years, she'd been working as a standardized patient. About six times a year, Esther, the part-time actor, goes to USC’s Keck School of Medicine and pretends to be a cancer patient.
Like the nude model in art class, or the customer at the beauty school salon, Esther is a human learning tool. She stands in front of classes while medical students practice interviewing her. In exam rooms, she goes one-on-one in a mock patient visit, and then she'd grade the students: Was she asked about all the relevant parts of her medical history? Did they listen to her heart? Was the student compassionate?
The program she participates in at USC is one of the first in the country, founded in 1963. She’s one of a couple dozen other actors who are trained to play any number of symptoms: liver disease, terminal cancer, diabetes.
Sound familiar to you? Maybe you graduated medical school recently. Or, you've watched "Seinfeld":
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvCVg4MrhUE
Dozens of schools all over the country have standardized patient programs. The U.S. Medical Licensing Examination, a mandatory test for practicing medicine in the US, includes 12 visits with standardized patients. Los Angeles is ably equipped to staff programs like this, with over 70,000 actors — like Bob Rumnock.
Rumnock has been a standardized patient since 1999. It nets him about $15,000 a year. He says the money is good, sure, but it goes beyond that.
"It really isn’t just acting a case and improvising. It’s acting a case, improvising, remembering what went right, remember what went wrong," he says. "Remembering to phrase feedback in a way that will be positive."
Rumnock's patient characters run the gamut — at different times he’s been homeless, he’s been a businessman, he's been a cancer patient who’s run out of options.
For students, the visits are staged like real doctor visits: the student enters the room, talks briefly with the patients about their medical history and examines them. Is the patient's heart rate normal? Are they coughing?
The visits are short, and before they can be seen by another student, the standardized patients review the visit they just had. These notes will form the basis for the students' grades.
Emma Montelongo, a fourth year medical student and a veteran of standardized patient exams, says the exams can be a double edged sword — she's had real moments of connection with patients where she's found herself caught in the moment. Working with a standardized patient can become very, very real sometimes, and she finds value in that.
But how do you grade for something like compassion?
"It’s pretty subjective, how you’re being graded. And you can feel, as a student, like 'I asked all these questions, and I felt as though I was being sympathetic, or as though I was being really thorough,'" she says. "But, on the other hand, how patients assess you in the real world isn't necessarily a fair assessment, either."
In peer-reviewed journals, papers have found programs like these can be effective in certain areas. Esther Mercado, the actor with real-life cancer, insists it makes a difference. She's seen real doctors working the field who examined her as med students at USC.
"I feel I’m doing something for the community at large. These are future doctors," she says.
Esther's in remission now. When she found out she had cancer, she didn’t let it stop her from being a patient actor. It made her more present and available as a standardized patient, because sometimes she isn't acting.
Escape rooms deliver video game-level immersive fun, but with real people and situations
Ever had the urge to rob a bank? How about derail a nuclear war or break out of jail? If your answer is yes, don't worry, we won’t judge. And anyway, there are now a handful of companies in Los Angeles offering you the chance to fulfill those fantasies. They’re called escape rooms, and they're a ride you can take with anyone, from your grandmother to your boss.
The clock is literally ticking for the vacationing Fitzpatrick family. Stuck in a three-room bank office, mom Julie, 13-year-old Danny, and grandmother Nancy are desperately trying to crack one of the last puzzles that’ll lead them to the final prize. This game is called “Central Bank.” The object: Crack the safe and steal the pretend diamonds in less than 60 minutes.
“It’s fun to use your brain and get a reward by moving on,” says Danny. “Finding clues and stuff. It’s different from school, less boring.”
It’s also different from a video game. The bank room is a real room, the safe is a real safe (mostly) and the players are real people, physically interacting with each other.
“Everyone has a role to play, and you have to work together,” says Julie Fitzpatrick. “You can’t say I’m doing it all by myself, or it’ll never happen.”
Central Bank is one of two immersive games at Room Escape Los Angeles. In a two-story office building on Sunset Boulevard, players pay $33 each to try to crack the codes and solve the puzzles that get them to the next clue or open the next door. With dim lighting, piped-in police sirens and some heavy breathing, it gives you the feel of something more real than you might like to admit.
“The game itself causes an adrenaline rush, which people love,” says manager Jo Manojlovic, who watches over the players from behind a bank of security monitors. “When I did this for the first time, I was just addicted to the feeling, and I wanted to try all the games all over the world.”
Jo’s job is to make sure people don’t start tearing fixtures out of the walls looking for clues and to offer little nudges in the right direction when nerves overtake logic. Of course, for some players, no amount of hinting will help. “I will not lie,” she says with a laugh. “We do have some groups—" A discreet pause here. "I would recommend not coming high or under the influence of anything to Escape Room. It doesn’t work well, that’s for sure.”
Now even Hollywood has seen the potential of these games. In a handful of theater lobbies where they’re showing the latest "Mission: Impossible" movie, you can sign up for and play the "Mission: Impossible" escape room, where you have just 20 minutes to puzzle your way free.
Anecdotally, it seems to be a hit, says Megan Wahtera from Paramount’s interactive marketing department.
“I’d like to say an emphatic yes, but it’s always hard to formulate what works and what doesn’t," Wahtera says. "We definitely saw an uptick in ticket sales in those theaters. We’ve had some people say they drove over two hours just to make it to this one theater to experience it based on what they heard, so it’s been great overall.”
The escape room trend started with a computer game in Japan, became popular in Europe and has now spread to North America. There are at least 11 companies offering escape rooms in Southern California alone. At this location, they are averaging more than 20 groups a day, drawing locals and tourists, families and companies, all looking for the next thing in team-building. They're like trust falls, but with puzzles.
Now, if there’s a problem with these franchises from a business point of view, it may be this: Once you’ve done a room, you’re probably not going to come back and do it again. Which means the owners always have to create new attractions to keep the customers coming back. Look for Zombie Lab and Prison Break coming to this location soon.
By the way, the Fitzpatrick's did manage to crack the vault — with two minutes to spare.
“This one was very special because it was fun to see Danny so excited about doing something and wanting to do it again!” says proud grandmother Nancy. And when asked if this was the least lame thing he did with his mom and grandmother on his vacation, the teenager replied with an almost embarrassed “Yeah.”
Bakersfield Confidential: The city's unique natural history museum documents the San Joaquin Valley
It doesn’t look like any natural history museum you ever saw before. First, it doesn’t stand in the middle of a big park-like lawn. And it’s not a fantastic piece of Victorian architecture. Instead, it’s a pastel-painted former JC Penney store in the middle of a tired downtown block in good old Bakersfield, California.
The Buena Vista Museum of Natural History is the only museum anywhere that documents the geology, zoology and paleontology of California’s great San Joaquin Valley, which extends from the Tehachapis to Sacramento. At the Buena Vista, there's everything from dinosaurs, large and small, down to an amazing collection of dinosaur eggs and even dinosaur fetuses.
The Valley as it is now began to form about the time those dinosaurs became extinct, leaving behind the sprawling petroleum resources that gave Kern County some of the nation’s richest oil fields, and also leaving a rich fossil record.
Then came the flood, as museum board member Tim Elam explains. "Kern County," he says, "is where Northern California geology meets Southern California geology, so we've got a variety of rocks, and we are an area that was once covered by the Pacific Ocean, and that is why we tend to find marine fossils."
A primal sea lion skeleton does broad-pawed breaststrokes over the museum's display cases. The Buena Vista also has an astounding hoard of shark remains, ranging from huge, menacing maws to a flourish of shark teeth excavated at the nearby Sharktooth Hill. The museum staff takes members on regular tooth digs on the hill.
Two million years ago, the ocean was replaced by a freshwater lake, which had shrunk to three separate lakes by the time the first Native Americans showed up. The Yokuts were just one of the local tribes the lakes nourished. Once Anglo settlers began farming the Valley in the 19th century, the big lakes disappeared into their irrigation ditches.
Then all that oil was found at the dawn of the 20th century, and the story of modern Kern County began.
In its wall charts and specimen cases, the museum tells this story to around 14,000 people a year, many or most of them children. But I suspect that what excites the kids even more than the geology and the dino remnants is the thoroughly non-PC but incredible collection of taxidermied animals. These come from a benefactor who traveled and hunted in Africa, Asia and Australia.
There used to be other museums like this in Central California, but the Buena Vista is the last one left. It’s mostly volunteer run, and functions without government funding apart from some local grants. Elam says they’re nearly halfway into a $300,000 campaign to buy the old JC Penney building that houses them.
The Buena Vista Museum of Natural History is at 2018 Chester Avenue in Bakersfield. It's open Thursday through Saturday, 10 to 4, and Sunday noon to 4.
Make sure to check out the rest of Marc Haefele's writing on Bakersfield, which he says is worth more than a day trip.
When it comes to sports uniforms, Los Angeles has room for improvement
This week, ESPN released a definitive list of the best dressed cities, based on their sports teams' uniforms.
It scores the uniforms of every team in the every city with more than two teams, and averages them out. Rounding out the top three this year is Boston, then Pittsburgh, then Chicago… you have to scroll all the way down to 11 before you’ll find Los Angeles.
The list and research is the work of
, he runs ESPN’s Uni-Watch and has one of the most unique jobs in the world: sports uniform design critic. He blames the Clippers, and their often panned uniform redesign:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMxC-c6sV8M
Bakersfield Confidential: A few gems in a town with a bad rap
A 100-mile plus mile drive from Los Angeles will take you to Santa Barbara. It will also take you to Encinitas, or Big Bear Lake. Or it can take you to Bakersfield. And why should it do that, you ask? Even for 24 hours?
Because under the rugged surface, it contains enough attractions and surprises to easily fill 24 hours. Despite its having 364,000 people, Bako, as it is locally known, is one of the Golden State’s most avoided places. Its commonplace superlatives are dubious: the most obese, the most conservative, the least college-educated population. The air quality is below L.A.'s.
(Buck Owens in the early years. Image: BuckOwens.com)
On the other hand, it’s got its own worldwide country sound, courtesy of the likes of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, who left us his landmark Crystal Palace, the only combination museum, dance hall and restaurant I can think of anywhere. There is the county museum, which features acres of real life-displays of the area's agricultural and oil-drilling history. It has a sizable community college and a CSU campus, which provide some cultural underpinnings. It has several famous Basque restaurants — like the James Beard-awarded Noriega Hotel — that feed you fiercely.
But even if you skip these, you can get right to the heart of the city via bus from downtown L.A., which at this time of year passes through the Grapevine at its green spring finest. (Trust me, the trip is much more enjoyable when you aren’t driving.) And have an enjoyable, fulfilling day’s stay on foot.
You can also check into the nicest hotel in town a block or two away from the bus station. This is the Padre, an eight-story 1928 hostelry, recently restored in slightly odd deco-steampunk style within walking distance from some art galleries, antique shops, restaurants and two singular museums you've never heard of.
Plus a great music store, a formidable-looking steampunk department store and several tattoo parlors. What is called the downtown arts district seems to be growing, but it still has a ways to go. But there are a number of expansive restos around the Padre, along with a serious-looking club scene that seemed to switch on around our bedtime, so we didn’t sample it.
We picked Mama Roomba (1814 Eye Street) for late lunch purely because of its colorful exterior. Inside, it’s like an old Caribbean café with a South American menu. Peruvian ceviche and Chilean ground beef empanadas were perfect and our salad was the most beautiful thing we'd seen in the city. An impressive variety of wine was on hand. Service was indulgent, prompt and friendly. “Take your time,” our server told us. “We don’t close until 9:45 p.m.”
Uricchio’s Trattoria (1400 17th Street) is big and generally crowded, but, even minus a reservation, we didn't have to wait at 7 p.m. Thursday. No spa cuisine here. There were tables of as many as 20 people, chowing down on lasagna, spaghetti Alfredo, cannelloni, manicotti — recalling that local obesity statistic. Despite the crowd, our server was pleasant and fast. West L.A. prices, but the portions were larger.
The wine list, on the other hand, had some premium selections at bottom-level prices. I had the manicotti marinara, my wife the chicken piccata. The portions were so big we were sure that we’d take something home, but were so excellent that we finished every little bit. The house sourdough bread was good too. We skipped dessert and resolved to take it easy on breakfast.
The Padre Hotel has a handful of eating and drinking places, including a bar that was hosting “PaintNite,” a hard-drinking watercolor class that convened the evening of our arrival. Dozens of aspiring painters clutched wine glasses and brushes as they copied a Van Gogh starscape off a vast flat-screen monitor. Other Padre offerings include the relatively costly Belvedere Room restaurant, fancy enough for Beverly Hills.
But we breakfasted at the Brimstone Bar, whose only satanic detail was a red-felt pool table. I had a somewhat bland rendition of huevos rancheros with an excellent side order of roasted potatoes, my wife a big bowl of oatmeal with a few strawberries and, by request, a lot of walnuts and soy milk. With good coffee, the whole thing came to about $20 with tip. Then we were off in time for the opening of the Buena Vista Natural History Museum, then the Bakersfield Museum of Art, a last stroll in the park and then over the greening mountains towards home.
Check out the rest of Marc's "Bakersfield Confidential" and plan your own trip to Kern County.
Gay bars have been closing across SoCal, but not in downtown Los Angeles
“Throughout the ’80s and the ’90s, there were no smartphones. You went to a gay bar to meet guys. Now there’s a disconnect between the older guys and the younger guys, who have a completely different life experience. The younger ones don’t mind going to a straight bar to hang out. Personally, I’d rather die. It’s important to bring these guys into the world of ‘This is a gay bar. This is what it means to have a bar full of men.’ And that will hopefully get them to go out more and experience something they maybe haven’t before.” — Thor Stephens, Frontiers, Aug. 7, 2015
It's a reality gays and lesbians have had to embrace as the price of progress: the more society as a whole accepts them, the less reason there is for institutions like gay bars — relatively safe havens for LGBT people. And so many gay bars have closed across the region, including the historic the Friendship in Pacific Palisades, the Other Side in Silver Lake and the Black Cat Tavern at Sunset Junction.
But, lo! In downtown Los Angeles, which only a little while ago was down to one gay bar — the New Jalisco at Main and Third — two new venues have opened. There's Precinct at Fourth and South Broadway and Redline at South Los Angeles and Sixth, and one more is on the way: Bar Mattachine at Broadway and Seventh, named for the first gay rights group, the Mattachine Society.
Drew Mackie tells the story in the latest edition of Frontiers, and he joined me at Precinct on Tuesday evening with co-owner Thor Stephens and the co-owner of Bar Mattachine, Garret McKechnie.
"It's important to have a place that you feel at home and comfortable in," says Stephens. "You're in your world, and you're safe." And McKechnie adds, "And just because we have equal rights now, doesn't mean we have to be homogeneous."
For much more, click that little arrow and listen to my full interview.
Nudie's rides again: Rodeo tailor to reopen with a caffeinated twist
In the '50s and '60s, the status symbol of country and western music success wasn't an award, it was a Nudie Suit. These flamboyant, rhinestone-encrusted outfits were made by a Ukrainian immigrant named Nudie Cohn. Cohn died in 1984, but his granddaughter is planning to reopen the family business — with a twist — in Old Town Newhall this October.
Nudie Cohn was born in 1902 in Kiev, Ukraine (then Russia). According to his granddaughter, Jamie Lee Nudie, "He was called Nudie, because he emigrated here from Russia at the age of 11. When he got to Ellis Island, the immigration officer asked him his name — his name was Nuta Kotlyarenko. The immigration officer wrote down 'Nudie,' and it stuck." Jamie Nudie took her grandfather's American first name.
Cohn and his brother had fled anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia. Cohn struggled in New York until well into adulthood. He shined shoes as a child and as a young man made money as boxer. He developed a talent for tailoring, and after marrying his wife Barbara "Bobbie" Kruger in 1934, they set up a lingerie shop in Brooklyn called Nudie's For The Ladies.
Bobbie and Nudie Cohn resettled in Los Angeles in the mid-1940s and there, on the fringes of Hollywood, they found a rising star in need of a competitive edge. Lefty Frizzell was an Arkansas-based, traveling country singer who was popular in honky-tonks across the South. Cohn had been putting rhinestones on G-strings for burlesque queens, and he thought the gems might be able to make a singer stand out on stage as well. Jamie says Cohn made Frizzell an offer: He'd put rhinestones on one of Frizzell's suits if Frizzell had "the guts to wear it."
Lefty Frizzell "You're Humbuggin' Me"
More singing cowboys followed suit — Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tex Williams (a close friend of Cohn) and Hank Williams Sr. These performers brought Cohn's rhinestones and burgeoning embroidery talent to film, television and the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.
(Porter Wagoner in his wagon wheel suit. Courtesy Jamie Lee Nudie)
Cohn's clientele expanded in the '50s and '60s with Elvis Presley, Porter Wagoner, Buck Owens and many other top country and rock 'n' roll stars donning the signature chain-stitched designs Cohn cranked out of a new location on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood. Birds of every genus were drawn in incredible colors, and though western themes predominated, some suits depicted pharaohs and UFOs (in Keith Richards' case).
(Keith Richards' UFO suit. Courtesy Jamie Lee Nudie)
Arguably the most infamous Nudie Suit is the Flying Burrito Brothers' Gram Parsons' "marijuana jacket."
"The original is in the Country Music Hall of Fame," says Jamie Nudie — but the giant pills, poppy flowers, marijuana leaves and nude women make replicas of the suit a popular request for current Nudie's seamstress Mary Lynn Cabrall.
(Nudie Cohn, L, and Gram Parsons, R, wearing a suit decorated with poppy flowers, marijuana leaves and pills on the arms. Courtesy Jamie Lee Nudie)
Jamie Nudie remembers her grandfather's style and generosity. Cohn gave away silver dollars on Halloween, but he also "gave to boys' homes, built playgrounds, and was very active with the LAPD," remembers Nudie. "He came from poverty... He just wanted to see people sparkle."
Nudie Cohn never wanted his granddaughter to learn how to sew, but they were very close, says Jamie Nudie. She was "the kid serving up the coffee" in Nudie's Rodeo Tailors, which she remembers as a "gathering place" where anyone, star or not, could come in, relax, enjoy a little bit of soup and shoot the breeze.
This is what she misses. Fortunately, Cohn and his wife Bobbie did teach their granddaughter how to run a business, and this October, Jamie Lee Nudie is opening Nudie's Custom Java in Old Town Newhall as a historic place where people can see Nudie Suits, buy Nudie Suits — and enjoy a custom coffee.
(Nudie Suits at Valley Relics Museum. Credit: Dominic Reyes)
In the meantime, Nudie Suits, photos of Nudie and his famous friends, and two Nudie Mobiles are on display at Valley Relics Museum in Chatsworth.