Dwight Yoakam performs at Hollywood Palladium, Patt pokes Pershing plan, our newest Instagram contest celebrates working men and women.
Dwight Yoakam performs at the Hollywood Palladium, makes his Off-Ramp debut
Country singer songwriter Dwight Yoakam is coming to Los Angeles. He's playing Friday, September 6 at the Hollywood Palladium. He got his start in Los Angeles — opening for punk acts like the Blasters and X. And his first big break didn't come in Nashville. It happened right here in Los Angeles, on a public radio station, no less.
"The first time I ever heard a song of mine played was on the radio was KXLU, University at Loyola Marymount public station, said Yoakam. "The company who put out my independent EP said 'You know, there's this show Straight Pop and we think they're gonna play your record.' It was sandwiched in between the Butthole surfers and the Dead Kennedys!"
To hear more, take a listen to the rest of the interview on the left.
Patt Morrison looks back at the history of Pershing Square
If I had a nickel for every time someone was planning yet another makeover of Pershing Square, I’d have … let’s say 55 cents. And now, a new plan is in the works, which means another nickel for me.
The five acres has been a public space for almost 150 years, and unlike just about every other foot of land in downtown Los Angeles, Pershing Square hasn’t changed ownership in all that time.
But just about everything else about it has.
It’s had at least a half-dozen names: Sixth Street Park, St. Vincent’s Park, Central Park. Mayor Richard Riordan presided over one re-re-re-make that included a seasonal ice rink, and hopefully called it Rockefeller Center West. Yeah, well …
It had fountains and fruit trees. The zanja madre, the mother ditch, the city’s water source, ran through it. It had brick walkways, once, and a pavilion for al fresco concerts.
Re-designers tried a tropical plant motif — banana trees and birds of paradise — but the cops sent out the vice squad, and complained that the foliage provided shelter for perverts.
They held blood drives and war-bond sales in Pershing Square. Pickpockets did a thriving business, and Jazz Age and Space Age office workers took the air there at lunchtime.
It had its own Hyde Park Corner, a soapbox space where quacks and zealots and malcontents ranted and droned about the merits of divine retribution and Soviet communism and wacky diets.
Pershing Square received that name nearly a hundred years ago, in a burst of enthusiasm for the World War I general called Black Jack Pershing. A few miles to the west stands MacArthur Park, named after another general, Douglas MacArthur. LA sure loved its generals – even when they weren’t Angelenos.
Pershing Square may be home to more metal than a scrap yard – a statue of Beethoven – go figure. A statue of a Spanish American soldier, and another of a World War I doughboy. A plaque to General Pershing, and a cannon from the U.S.S. Constitution, Old Ironsides.
Nothing, in fact, that says “Los Angeles.” Not even to honor the LA writers who described Pershing Square in print. Leo Politi, who wrote and illustrated an affectionate book about all the city’s parks, even Pershing Square … or Charles Bukowski, who wrote just as affectionately about the louche and the skanky there in 1939, the crazy lady and the guitar player and the winos ornamenting the park benches, including himself.
With so little open space in downtown, the homeless have claimed Pershing Square for generations. They defy every remaking. After a brief Potemkin-like cosmetic rally for the 1984 Olympics, the derelicts and drug dealers returned. The flowers disappeared, as did the money that merchants had pledged to put in bistros and entertainment and security. As one cop told the LA Times, It’ll be the same sewer it was in no time.
Not enough people linger in Pershing Square. It’s big and inhospitable and hot, with paved places elevated above street level.
You know one thing Pershing Square does well? Parking.
There will still be underground parking in this latest redesign. And it won’t just be taking cars into consideration. This new downtown, people live here now. They don’t just go home at 6 o’clock – they are home. They want to walk the dogs and take a little exercise, have a drink out of doors, hear some music.
This time, Pershing Square will be different. Really.
Muralist Kent Twitchell on LA's new mural-friendly ordinance
The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to tentatively rescind a decade long ban on murals. Under the new ordinance, muralists will again be able to paint in public the works they've wanted to do for years, pervaded the Department of Cultural Affairs gives them the go ahead.
One of the biggest of supporters of the ordinance was muralist Kent Twitchell, he painted the Freeway lady along the 101, the LA Marathon Mural, and giant Los Angeles Conservancy portraits next to the 110 freeway in Downtown LA. Twitchell also co founded the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles. He talked with Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson about the new law.
On how Los Angeles became the mural capital of the world:
"I think when the Los Angeles Fine Arts Squad first started, in 1969, 70, 71, in Venice, it was sort of an outshoot of the hippie days. They painted the most exquisite paintings that belonged in a museum, but they were right out in the streets. It just got the attention of so many people, all over the world, that it really inspired me. I started painting my pieces in 1971. A lot of the pieces in East LA and in South Central Los Angeles began in 71, 72.
"We had perfect sunshine, we could paint murals here year round. A lot of it was just, from my perspective, was just to beautify the world. We were kind of naive back then, thinking that the world was a beautiful place and people would appreciate what we're doing.
"I think the reason, perhaps one of the very major reasons, that restrictions happened was not to eliminate murals--the city council has always been very supportive of public art. It was to try to cut down on all these huge signs that began going up on the sides of buildings."
On what the new ordinance means for the Los Angeles art scene:
"I think it will explode now, again. And you can't just go do anything you want. You have to make sure it's OK with the neighborhood--I'm OK with that. I think probably the only negative part of it right now is that they passed B, instead of A."
The city council weighed two different ordinances Wednesday, one would permit murals on private residences (part A) and the other would prohibit it (part B)--the council passed the latter of the two.
"Willie Herrón, the great legendary muralist from the east side, tried to tell everybody who would listen to him that the same thing is gonna happen that happened before: an unwitting banning of a certain kind of art. The neighborhoods that don't want murals, because they have this idea of what a mural is--an homogenization of a beautiful painting covered with tagging. They don't want that in their neighborhood and so they simplistically say 'no murals in our neighborhood.'"
On what the new ordinance means for his own artwork:
"It will allow me freedom to begin to conceive of ideas, and things that I would like to do. I'd like to do some more pieces and around Hollywood. I'd like to paint Alan Ladd as Shane. Small, two story pieces around that I really won't have any worry. It's almost that when there's a restriction, your creative juices don't flow. And you're not even conceiving of ideas and things that you'd like to do."
Echo Park's neighborhood council rejects proposed gang injunction; will it sway the judge?
Last week on Off-Ramp, KPCC's Erika Aguilar joined me at Echo Park Lake to brief me on the fight over a plan to curb gang activity there by imposing a gang injunction. Many residents feel the injunction - which puts strict limits of alleged gang members' activities - is too broad, and targets Latinos unfairly in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.
This week, the Echo Park neighborhood voted solidly against the proposal, and Erika tells us what it means.
Stories of hard work from KPCC's first monthly Instagram project with NPR (PHOTOS)
KPCC has just started a new monthly project with NPR on Instagram. It’s called Public Square. Each month, we pick a theme. We ask people to tell a story on that theme by posting a picture.
This month’s Public Square theme is ‘hard work.’ We asked people to take a portrait of someone hard at work. Maybe the mechanic who fixes your car, the small-town barber, or the taxi driver who picks you up.
More than 200 pictures came in. And what we found was hard work can mean a lot of things. It can be rewarding and selfless. It can make for some funny stories, and sad ones, too.
RELATED: see more user-submitted pictures on KPCC's AudioVision
Beth Nakamura is a photojournalist at the Oregonian newspaper. In a series of photos, she Instagramed Katie LaRosa, who’s been a motel chambermaid for 34 years.
LaRosa told Nakamura about the first time she accidentally walked in on a couple.
“They thought they left the do not disturb sign on the door knob, when in fact it was the maid service," Nakamura said. "And she just looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Yeah, I think they were pretty mad at me.'"
Before becoming a photojournalist, Beth Nakamura herself was actually a chambermaid when she was just 13.
“It was X-rated, or slightly foul," Nakamura said. "It’s like you’re totally invisible, it’s just sort of them being completely and utterly themselves.”
Nakamura has gone from seeing these stories as a kid, to telling stories now.
“Being a chambermaid actually is great training for visual journalism," she said. "I mean, you walk into a room and there’s little bits of evidence of the lives led of the people who were staying there and you sort of infer a story from that.”
Danielle Abramson took a picture of her mother, Marybeth Abramson, who takes care of a 14-year-old girl named Maddy in Cincinnati:
“My mom always said that nursing is not a job, it’s a calling.”
Maddy has a terminal disease that’s left her basically like a six-month old.
“Maddy can’t speak, Maddy can just look at you," Danielle Abramson said. "My mom goes away on vacation with our family for a couple weeks every year, and whenever she returns, Maddy – you can tell she missed her.”
Maddy has a lot of seizures, and has to take a lot of medication each day.
“She actually has a twin sister who has a similar disorder, so there’s two in the family that will not live much longer," Abramson said. "Last year we didn’t think Maddy was going to make it much longer. But she’s still here with us. Everyday is a blessing.”
Danielle Abramson has a younger sister who has a developmental disability as well.
“Not only does my mom spend her day with Maddy, she comes home and my sister’s there, too," Abramson said. "I think she’s always been a nurse in her heart, but she went back to school to get formal training. She wanted to be a better mother to my sister.”
Thamer Bajjali and Chris Milstead have been best friends since third grade. Milstead delivers newspapers in Garden Grove where they grew up. He does it the middle of the night every Wednesday. Bajjali is a photographer and sometimes he tags along with Milstead to take pictures.
“More than anything it was revisiting where we grew up on a weekly basis," Bajjali said. "I think that part was more important for Chris because he moved out of Garden Grove halfway through seventh grade.”
For almost a decade, the job has been passed down from friend to friend.
“[Chris] was saying that this is a job that he wants to pass down to his future children," Bajjali said. "He’s always joked about keeping it as long as he could.”
Recently the newspaper Chris Milstead delivers was bought by a larger paper, and his contract changed. Milstead decided to stop delivering. So after eight years, he will work his last shift this month. Bajjali titled his pictures of Milstead, “‘The End of an Era."