Rosemead tiki icon Bahooka to close March 10 ... Oscar PR million$ ... David Dean Bottrell's new show ... Charlie LeDuff gives Detroit a loving autopsy ... Gary Leonard helps Angelenos find their wings ...
Charlie LeDuff's indictment of corruption and race politics: 'Detroit - An American Autopsy'
Reporter Charlie LeDuff lives by the reporter's creed: comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
LeDuff shared a Pulitzer at the New York Times for reporting people's stories across America, then settled in LA for a time, before returning to his ancestral home, Detroit.
He worked for the Detroit News for a few years, and now is muckraking local TV reporter.
He's just written a book about going back home; it's called Detroit: An American Autopsy.
To hear Charlie read about discovering a body encased in ice in an abandoned factory - listen to our interview. Here's a short excerpt from the prologue of Detroit: An American Autopsy:
Today, the boomtown is bust. It is an eerie and angry place of deserted factories and homes and forgotten people. Detroit, which once led the nation in home ownership, is now a foreclosure capital. Its downtown is a museum of ghost skyscrapers. Trees and switchgrass and wild animals have come back to reclaim their rightful places. Coyotes are here. The pigeons have left in droves. A city the size of San Francisco and Manhattan could neatly fit into Detroit’s vacant lots, I am told.
Once the nation’s richest big city, Detroit is now its poorest. It is the country’s illiteracy and dropout capital, where children must leave their books at school and bring toilet paper from home. It is the unemployment capital, where half the adult population does not work at a consistent job. There are firemen with no boots, cops with no cars, teachers with no pencils, city council members with telephones tapped by the FBI, and too many grandmothers with no tears left to give.
But Detroit can no longer be ignored, because what happened here is happening out there. Neighborhoods from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Miami are blighted with empty houses and people with idle hands. Americans are swimming in debt, and the prospects of servicing the debt grow slimmer by the day as good-paying jobs continue to evaporate or relocate to foreign lands. Economists talk about the inevitable turnaround. But standing here in Michigan, it seems to me that the fundamentals are no longer there to make the good life.
Go ahead and laugh at Detroit. Because you are laughing at yourself.
PHOTOS: Instagram contest winner banks life's memories in his feed
Xavier Jombart life has taken him from the wide open beaches of his hometown in northeastern France to the sun-drenched coast of Brazil. When he first installed Instagram, he viewed the mobile app as a place to showcase the places and memories of his life. He shied away from the spontaneity of mobile photography.
The result is a collection of images from the fjords of Norway to the castles of Italy from the revelry of Carnivale to the peaceful ridges of sand dunes in a Brazilian park. He posts to Instagram under the name @jombardoo.
Jombart is the winner of KPCC's most recent Instagram contest collaboration with Instagram Lover's Anonymous. The theme for that contest was "Shall We Dance?"
Jombart captured the winning image during a brief trip to Buenos Aires where he was drawn to the tango of two older street performers in the city's San Telmo district. To Jombart, the couple appeared to be deeply in love, though he's not sure if they were.
"I just fell in love with this dance, this tango dance," Jombart said. "I find it very beautiful and full of emotions. When I saw this couple dancing, I just felt it was so passionate."
Five years ago, Jombart moved to Brazil with his wife, whom he met more than a decade ago while studying in Sweden and later married in Italy. He has a degree in engineering but now works on the corporate side of a large French bank.
To participate in our Instagram contests, follow @IGLA and @KPCC on Instagram. Look for updates there on how to play.
David Dean Bottrell is Working - 'Boston Legal' star recounts his employment history
Don't take this the wrong way, but it's a laugh-riot involving miscarriage, institutionalization, and suicidal thoughts.
As David Dean Bottrell tells us in his lightly fictionalized one-man show, David Dean Bottrell is Working, his resume is varied. He acted in the same high school drama class that put on The Days of Wine and Roses; sold marijuana in high school, then took a dish washing job after he got shot at while weighing and bagging pot.
Bottrell wound up subletting in Harlem in the 1980s and working for a Realtor who was delighted to find someone who spoke English; he wrote a screenplay about his family that wound up being made into Kingdom Come, then was essentially a black writer for Hollywood for five years.
Then, after a disastrous marriage to a Washington lawyer/meth addict, just when he was considering buying a handgun to kill himself -- it says something about Bottrell's acting abilities that the line about buying a gun brings down the house -- the industry came to the rescue with a recurring role on Boston Legal and 17 awards for his short film Available Men.
David Dean Bottrell is Working is at the Acme Comedy Theatre, 135 North LaBrea Ave, 90036, the next three Wednesdays. You can buy mixed drinks at Amalfi, next door, and bring them into the theater!
Listen to our green room interview to hear what black screenwriting job he turned down.
PHOTOS: Bahooka, Rosemead's Tiki outpost for 46 years, closing
In his Ask Chris Blog for Los Angeles Magazine, Chris Nichols writes, "No! No! No! Bahooka, the most lavish, bizarre and wonderful restaurant ever built in Los Angeles ... a massive labyrinth of flotsam and jetsam, filled with hundreds of blue glowing fish tanks, tikis, street signs, plastic birds, and a jail cell ... will close its doors on March 10 after 46 years in business."
"They don't want tiki around here, they want Asian," says co-owner Suzanne Schneider. "The new owner just wants the building, the liquor license and the fish." A sick relative caused her to act quickly to dispose of the beloved restaurant.
Bahooka, on Rosemead Boulevard in Rosemead, just north of Mission Drive, is one of a dwindling number of true tiki restaurants, which are designed to transport you to the Pacifica that America came to know through Hawaii and that GIs knew during World War II. Grab a booth or a bar stool, and it feels like you're in Bikini Bottom with SpongeBob and Patrick.
Adriene Biondo is a preservationist and author and successfully fought the death of Johnie's Broiler in Downey, one of Off-Ramp's early crusades. I asked her to share her memories of Bahooka and an argument for saving it.
News that the Bahooka is closing hit hard. I had to fight back the tears because it feels so much like losing a friend. The Bahooka has been our family's go-to place since we were kids in the 1960s. The Bahooka is so cool and so trippy it naturally became our default destination, our local Polynesian hideaway where we'd go to forget about reality and enjoy a mega dose of escapism. Sometimes we'd pull into the parking lot in our 1952 Ford station wagon, with the radio blaring the Beach Boys on KHJ. Stepping inside I can still pretend I'm coming off of Malibu Beach smelling like Coppertone, wearing my blue Hang Ten shirt and jeans with sandy feet and flip flops.
At the Bahooka, it's not only okay to chill, be silly, eat Jell-O on fire and watch fishes, it's expected! And wandering around every corner we'd find unburied treasures ... glowing blowfish, diver's helmets, old gas pumps, World War II artillery and shipwreck debris. Even Johnny Depp has been here, back when he was filming the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In it, he shares a scene with Rufus the friendly carrot-eating Pacu fish and official mascot of the restaurant.
What's to become of us without the Bahooka? The Bahooka is everything from a cozy restaurant to a peek at a half-clad Hawaiian girl with coconut shells covering her tan boobs to a magnificent folk art assemblage. One eccentric man's crazy idea of paradise that grew and grew into a Tiki party wonderland that still touches all our hearts.
One-of-a-kind places like the Bahooka are on the verge of extinction. Many are gone, never to return. As demographics shift, the value of real estate escalates, and they face increasing competition, it becomes increasingly difficult for these operators to keep their doors open. We have to figure out a way to help them remain economically viable while preserving Southern California's unique culture and history. As each one closes its doors, a part of us dies.
Amen, Adrienne and Chris. Here's to your old friend, Bahooka.
Share your memories of Bahooka in the comments below or on KPCC's Facebook page.
PHOTOS: Gary Leonard and Colette Miller find the better angels in our nature
UPDATE (5/8/2014): Gary Leonard's Wings photos are all together and showing at an exhibit that opens tonite at 6. "Angels on Main Street" is at the Fine Arts Building, 811 West 7th Street, downtown LA.
It's a very simple idea. Colette Miller painted wings on the pull-down security shutters at the Regent Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. Stand in front of the wings and have your photo taken and voila, you're an angel in the city of Angels.
For freelance photographer Gary Leonard, who strives to capture a broad range of LA life, it was the perfect setup. He simply emailed a bunch of his contacts and asked them to meet him last weekend in front of the wings. It turns his paradigm on its head: instead of having to travel all over LA to capture LA's diverse people and events, different people from all walks of life in LA came to him. He photographed street people, activists, Mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti, an aging public radio host, an unborn child, and many more.
And I can tell you from experience, something interesting happens when you pose in front of those wings: you stand a little taller, you feel like - maybe - you're flying a little, you turn into a slightly better person.
RIP Jerry Buss: A model manager for the LA Lakers — and a Monopoly champion
KPCC news editor Nick Roman joins Off-Ramp host John Rabe to talk about the life, Lakers, and legacy of Jerry Buss.
True, Nick says, when Buss bought the Lakers they had Kareem and - almost immediately - Magic. But then he turned them, and basketball, into something even greater. And in a town scarred by owners Al Davis and Frank McCourt, Buss was justifiably beloved.
In The Hollywood Reporter, Alex Ben Block tells an anecdote about how smart Buss was.
One way Buss showed his mental prowess was demonstrated in Monopoly games he used to play with Hefner. They did not use a board in front of them but rather kept everything in their heads -- all the positions and moves. Sometimes they played over the phone. For each game, someone else (out of their sight) kept the board.
But Roman says Buss was smart in another way that all managers should learn from: he hired good people ... and then he got out of the way.
Mysticism, esoterica and an Egyptian Book of the Dead at LA's 'Little Library of Alexandria'
At the Philosophical Research Society on Los Feliz Blvd., there's a plaque that reads, "Dedicated to the truth seekers of all time."
That dedication might seem out of place in Los Angeles, a city that made its name with movie sets, facades and props. But as Hollywood was being built, so was a self-proclaimed grand wisdom library near Griffith Park.
The Society's research library houses more than 30,000 esoteric artifacts -- from the writings of Francis Bacon to books on the occult -- all for the purpose of helping 'truth seekers' on their journey.
Obadiah Harris, the Society's current president, knew from a young age that he would be a teacher. It all started one day in high school when his English Literature teacher gave an assignment on Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson came to Harris in a dream and after explaining his dream to his teacher, she convinced Harris that it was a sign that he should go on to study the metaphysical and become a teacher.
Dr. Harris went on to learn from as many different teachers as he could, from a Yogi to a Jewish Mystic Sage, eventually earning his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Michigan. But, in Harris' mind, no one could take the place of the Society's original founder -- and teacher -- Manly Palmer Hall.
Hall's life story is ripe for a movie script. He came to Los Angeles in 1919 looking for his mother, who had abandoned him when he was very young. Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, Hall, still a teenager, immersed himself in the occult subculture that was becoming increasingly popular in the 1920s. He wrote extensively and gave lectures in Los Angeles -- all with a focus on the arcane.
After receiving a hefty donation from a wealthy Ventura oil family -- they were enchanted by his public speaking -- Hall traveled everywhere from Egypt to China collecting books -- like a massive 1846 print of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Hall brought all of his treasures back to Los Angeles, eventually storing them in his library -- built for him in the 1930s by Mayan Revival architect Robert Stacy-Judd.
Now a historical landmark, Hall's library still stands as a storehouse of esoterica. As soon as you pass through the library doors carved with images of both Confucius and Plato, you get a sense of Hall's obsession with the mysterious. You'll find Augustus La Plongeon's daguerreotypes of Mayan ruins, Rosicrucian journals with bright red covers, and even artwork by Hall himself -- a bust of ancient wisdom scholar Helena Blavatsky.
Called the Indiana Jones of Books, Hall got the attention of at least one other famous collector of the time. Dr. Harris says that, according to more than one account from a rare book-buyer, "When William Randolph Hearst and Mr. Hall were at the same auction, he would see Manly Hall make a bid on something. They said, Mr. Hearst would not bid against him."
And while the area has definitely changed since the 30s, Dr. Harris sees a future for the library beyond himself, Hall -- and even Los Angeles. Harris has developed the Society's mission to encompass the University of Philosophical Research, which offers calsses s in everything from Buddhism to Transformational Psychology.
"I knew that I could take this legendary place, and reach out with this material to aspiring students all over the world. And that's what we're doing now," Harris says.