"Kogi" chef Roy Choi and Patt Morrison on the LAPL's menu exhibit -- I grew up on Bunker Hill -- a new strategy to restart Angel's Flight -- the coyote catcher -- the gang war rumors
Marlon and me: Patt Morrison remembers a decade-long conversation with Marlon Brando
Just like Elvis Presley, there’s an old Marlon Brando and a young Marlon Brando.
Old Marlon muttered.
"I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."
Young Marlon bellowed.
"Hey, Stellllllllaaaaaaa!"
But those are the onscreen Brandos. The offscreen Marlon was something else. The new documentary “Listen to Me Marlon” gets a lot closer to the real man, in his own voice, in the personal recordings he made over 40-plus years. For those of us who knew him -- as I did, for most of the last decade of his life – the film's another reminder of what a brilliant, quirky, infuriating, tender-hearted, complex, and comical man he was.
The voice on those tapes is the same voice that came over my phone, midday or midnight. “It’s Mar,” he would say, or sometimes he’d just begin talking, because of course you knew who it was.
The playwright Tennessee Williams liked to tell about the time young Marlon came to his house to audition for Stanley Kowalski in the Broadway production of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” When Marlon got there, the plumbing was backed up and the lights were out. So he fixed them. And then got the part.
Many years of renown later, when men showed up at Marlon’s house on Mulholland Drive to work on the pipes or fix the electrical system, Marlon was right there, asking them all about how it was done. When he decided to become an actor, I told him, the world lost a great plumber.
And boy, did he love his gizmos. Offer him a choice between a Rolex and a new magic trick -- he’d take the magic. Any kind of electronic device enthralled him, from ham radio to Tivo, reel to reel to CD. He even gave me my first cell phone. Once, he summoned me over urgently, and when I got there, he showed off his brand new miniature voice memo recorder, as tickled as if it were Christmas Day, and he was nine years old.
He’d watched me on television, it turned out, sizing me up long before he called me up. We bonded over dogs and books – anything but acting. He didn’t want to talk about acting. He didn't read "People" magazine; he read "Popular Mechanics." He wanted to talk about astronomy and archaeology, about Japanese culture and the Sand Creek Massacre.
Marlon may have had to scribble out his movie lines somewhere that he could see them as the camera rolled … but he knew by heart whole poems by Elinor Wylie and Matthew Arnold, long soliloquies from Shakespeare.
Sometimes, he’d let me have a go at reciting: maybe he’d forgotten, or maybe he was just checking to see whether I remembered as well as he did.
Perhaps even more than poetry, he loved music – Ellington’s “Satin Doll,” songs of Celia Cruz, and the folk tunes of the Auvergne. Harry Dean Stanton singing “Danny Boy” to him unfailingly brought him to tears.
But Marlon hated – hated – novelty songs. If I wanted him to hang up the phone so I could go to sleep, all I had to do was start singing something like “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?” and … click!
“Listen to Me Marlon” introduces the world to a man a few of us were fortunate enough to know. Ours was not always an easy friendship but it was, to the last, a true one.
Is there such a thing as a trust-funded surf gang? It's Palos Verdes' Bay Boys
Lunada Bay is a small, rocky, U-shaped beach on the northwest end of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The surf spot is legendary for the 20-foot waves that its winter swell brings in — waves that apparently belong to "locals only," according to a group of surfers called the Bay Boys.
Surfing "localism" is the practice of scaring newcomers away from a beach. Surfers may become locals by enduring hazing from current locals in a process that can take years.
Lunada's localism has been in the news on and off for decades, and cropped up again in the Guardian this May, via a hidden camera video of surfers boasting about fights and intimidation.
"It was mostly young to middle-aged white guys," says Rory Carroll, the Guardian's west coast correspondent in the United States. Carroll and fellow journalist Noah Smith climbed down Lunada's bluffs with surfboards and a camera in tow.
"The reason there's a lot of space is because we keep it like that. We f---ing hassle people... There's still fights down here. People will just f---ing duke it out, f---ing work your car," one surfer was caught on tape saying. The same voice goes on to say that he's been sued in the process of fighting outsiders off his beach, "You have to f---ing get a lawyer... that's gonna cost you ten grand. I don't wanna go through that s--- again."
(A map of Palos Verdes Estates. Lunada Bay is at the west-most point on the map. Credit: City of Palos Verdes Estates)
Repeated assault cases led Torrance-based attorney Michael Sisson to sue the City of Palos Verdes Estates (in addition to bringing lawsuits against nine Lunada surfers) for failing to "protect his clients' civil rights."
One of Sisson's clients was pushed off of an eight-foot cliff and shattered his knee on the rocks below at the hands of eight surfers known as the "Dirty Underwear Gang," at the Indicator, a surf spot one block from Lunada Bay. The city's response? A proclamation, denouncing localism.
"We were unsuccessful in getting an injunction," Sisson said regarding his lawsuit against the city. "They said that they couldn't identify the exact gang members. They didn't have a gang list, like LAPD would have with the Crips or the Blood[s]."
When Carroll and Smith returned to their car after gathering footage, the word "Kooks" (amateur surfers) was scrawled on the windshield in surf wax. They went to the Palos Verdes Police Department to report the vandalism.
"We know all of them... They're infamous around here. They're pretty much grown men in little men's mindset... It literally is like a game with kids on a schoolyard to them," said one officer who was recorded on the Guardian's hidden camera. Carroll says the police told them that if they were assaulted, they would respond to a distress call.
Sisson's solution? Have the police monitor surfing websites for big incoming swells, and then set up patrols around the small bay during the forecasted timeframes to catch Lunada when there are the most surfers there.
Every time the Bay Boys are in the news, says Sisson, they pull back on their aggression and lay low for a while. But even when we were there, there were still several men sitting atop the bluffs. Sisson returned their "stink eye."
Carroll admitted he would not try to surf there again until the city or the locals' attitudes change the way outsiders are treated at Lunada Bay.
A man who grew up on Bunker Hill says 'Get Angels Flight running again!'
"Angels Flight has been closed almost two years now, and it just breaks our heart every time we go by." — Richard Schave
The two cars of the Angels Flight funicular railway in downtown Los Angeles have been stuck for years, figuratively and in reality. What looks like a good old-fashioned bureaucratic impasse has kept the historic railway from being reopened to the public for two-plus years now, and boosters are trying a second-order solution.
In a Change.org petition, the Angels Flight Friends and Neighbors Society is asking Mayor Eric Garcetti to nudge Sacramento politicians into switching the agency that oversees Angels Flight from the PUC to CalOSHA.
"Angels Flight is one of the great historic attractions of our city, a palpable link between the lost Victorian neighborhood of Bunker Hill and the vibrant new Downtown below. It is heartbreaking to see the cars and track structure as they are today, dusty and tagged with graffiti. Please, will you step in personally to help cut the red tape in Sacramento and San Francisco so that a pathway to a solution can be identified?" — Angels Flight Friends and Neighbors Society petition
Last week, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) voted to look into getting Angels Flight going again.
(In an undated photo, Angels Flight in its original location, next to the Third Street tunnel at Hill Street. Credit: LAPL/Security Pacific National Bank Collection)
Angels Flight ran without a hitch from 1901 to 1969, when it was dismantled as part of the remaking of Bunker Hill, when the run-down neighborhood was razed in the name of progress.
(1969: Working at night, the archway for Angels Flight at Hill Street is being prepared for moving day when it will be put in storage for future use. LAPL/Herald-Examiner Collection)
In 1996, it was moved down the street and ran again until a fatal accident in 2001 — the first in its history. It reopened again in 2010, and ran until 2013, when a mechanical problem occurred that led an investigator to shut it down.
Gordon Pattison, 69, remembers riding Angels Flight every day as a child — he even had a favorite seat that he still considers "his seat," and he claims what he calls "effective ownership" of the railway. "Effective ownership," he says, "really gets down to who gets to decide the fate of a neighborhood. Is it the people that own the property, the politicians, the business owners? And what I say is that the people who live in the area who make use of the facilities every day, those people have part ownership in it, too, and should have a say in the fate of that neighborhood and the fate of things like Angels Flight."
(1969: "The Castle" and "The Saltbox," historic Bunker Hill homes owned by Pattison's family, sit on blocks awaiting their removal to Montecito Heights. They later burned in arson fires at the Heritage Square site. LAPL/Herald-Examiner Collection)
Listen to the audio above to hear Angels Flight booster Richard Schave (of Esotouric Tours, and a founder of the Downtown Art Walk) and Pattison talk about the need to get Angels Flight moving again — not only as a link in the city's mass transit system, but as a vital link in L.A.'s history — and to hear Pattison's memories of growing up on the Bunker Hill. It's a history fewer and fewer people are living witnesses to.
Restaurant menu exhibit 'To Live and Dine in LA' tells Los Angeles's real history
"To Live and Dine in L.A." is a Los Angeles Public Library exhibit and book from Angel City Press that tells the story of L.A. through selections from the library's huge collection of restaurant menus.
The book was written and edited by USC Annenberg Professor Josh Kun and includes a foreword by Roy Choi, the chef and restaurateur who, through the kogi taco, is essentially responsible for the food truck boom.
KPCC's Patt Morrison met Choi at the restaurant of the Line Hotel in Koreatown to talk about what menus tell us about the growth of L.A. into the most diverse and interesting metropolis on the face of the Earth. Click the audio button above to listen to the long version of their conversation, or read excerpts below.
The library has more than 9,000 menus in its collection. Themes emerge: highbrow, lowbrow, classes and fusions of food before we even used the word "fusion."
The book travels from the late 1800s all the way until the '80s. So you saw a city almost transform through these menus. You saw two war times. You saw a city that was basically dirt and dust into opulence. You saw Hollywood emerge. You saw racism, mainly during World War 2, saying ... "A portion of your meal will be donated back to keeping the Japs out of the city." And then also through indirect racism... The early Chinese menus using stereotypical figures and Charlie Chan-type figures, broadcast as "These are kind of subhuman people, we can kind of go look at them like at a zoo, and experience their life and be exotic for a day."
(KPCC's Patt Morrison at Roy Choi's Commissary. Credit: Robert Garrova)
How important are these pieces of paper?
It's really like a novella on one piece of paper, because if you really study everything from the way it's laid out to the choices in which the food is being cooked, to the pictures, the graphic design and the fonts, it really tells you a lot about what these people were trying to say. Some were creating distant lands, and in some you could feel the energy of them being in a new land, enjoying the freedom of Los Angeles. There was this really innocent, kind of naive freedom to say, "You know what, I could put teriyaki on this burger, and it's OK. There's nobody I need to ask."
But L.A. had a reputation as a food desert!
You saw how much food that L.A. kind of invented. The first hamburger, the French dip, Cobb salad, tiki drinks. In many cases L.A. gets the short end of the stick, where people think we didn't create anything or we didn't have any influence on art or culture.
What now-closed restaurants in this book would you like to be able to eat at?
I would have loved to eat at some of these restaurants where they had a certain sense of humor to make their menu look like what they're serving. I'm looking at the Buffalo Steak menu, the whole menu is shaped like a buffalo. Zamboanga, which is a menu that's cut out as the shape of a chimpanzee, smoking a corncob pipe... The salad menu of The Old Drug Company, which is cut out as a bowl of salad.
"To Live and Dine in L.A." is at the Central Library's Getty Gallery until Friday, Nov. 13, 2015. All menu images come from the L.A. Public Library.
That song you're wondering about ...
The song you're wondering about in this week's show — trust me, this is the one — is "Forgotten Dreams," written by a true Renaissance man, Leroy Anderson, who also wrote "The Typewriter," "Sleighride" and "Trumpeter's Holiday."
Here's a link to many of his tunes, and here is a lovely home performance of this 1954 Top ten hit by Brian Jones.
Song of the week: 'Stonefist' by HEALTH
Off-Ramp's song of the week is "Stonefist" by Los Angeles-based noise rockers HEALTH. "Stonefist" is off HEALTH's forthcoming album "Death Magic," which will be released August 7 via Loma Vista.
HEALTH will play at this year's FYF Fest in Exposition Park which happens August 22nd and 23rd.
Here's what Hua Hsu recently had to say about the band for The New Yorker:
"Their songs are aggressive and turbulent, as though all four were competing to conjure the most impressive racket."
Jeffrey Vallance channels famous dead artists for ‘The Medium is the Message’
Art prankster Jeffrey Vallance’s new show “The Medium is the Message” opens at downtown L.A.'s CB1 Gallery on July 25. A mix of large prints and small objects, Vallance says the inspiration for the show came from a séance he held in London a few years ago.
For the séance, Vallance hired five psychics to channel famous dead artists — Frida Kahlo, Leonardo DaVinci, Marcel Duchamp, Vincent Van Gogh, and Jackson Pollock. A Fortean at heart, Vallance doesn't necessarily believe in a contactable spirit realm, but just wanted to observe the phenomena — and make some art.
John Rabe interviewed Vallance at the gallery to talk about “The Medium is the Message” and why it’s good not to take contemporary art too seriously.
Tell us more about the prints inspired by the séance.
"This was kind of a funny program because it wasn’t very spooky, I didn’t want it to be that way. I set the thing up as kind of an academic panel. So I had the channeled artists sitting in chairs so you could ask them questions. I didn’t know what they were going to say, so I asked them questions like, 'Is there art in the afterlife?' The funny thing is, like, they were pretty right on. They were saying that, like, they can look into the minds of some of the artists and sometimes all they can see is dollar signs. Well, it kind of made sense.”
(A "Spirit Photo" of Jeffrey Vallance, by Jeffrey Vallance)
... and then, in the tradition of Victorian Spirit photography, you made these prints.
“Yeah, as I was listening to the spirits talk, I was trying to imagine what it would look like if you could see them in the spirit. Obviously we were just seeing the psychics that were channeling them. But I was trying to imagine what it would look like if you could get a photograph of them at that time. So I was looking at the spirit photos from the turn of the century. And if you look at those they look very fake. They have superimposed imagery and certain photo tricks that look to our eye very naive and I sort of like that. So I try to do things that look like the spirit photos, but they’re all digital.”
I checked with one of your friends from 30, 40 years ago — Michael Uhlenkott — and I said ‘Does Jeffrey actually believe in séances?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know.’
"I would say I’m a Fortean, which is one of the followers of Charles Fort. Basically, I observe; I don’t judge. So I don’t believe but also I don’t disbelieve as well. So I’m kind of neutral. I just want to bring these events about and see how they go and how I can learn from them. But I wouldn’t say I’m, like, a follower of spiritualism and that whole thing."
Did it change your mind about anything?
“I don’t think so. But it just made me realize that the world is a lot weirder than I would have thought."
There’s a table full of smaller items here, including a little plywood box, the Kahlo Spirit Crystal... What’s this?
“Frida, when she was channeled, she was talking a lot about the afterlife. And she sort of saw the afterlife as sort of being this huge kind of shattered crystal that went into all these rainbows and these colors. And then she said something like, ‘And that is art.’ So I thought, okay, that is art. So I will make that, I’ll make the Frida Kahlo Spirit Crystal.”
(Kahlo Spirit Crystal, by Jeffrey Vallance)
I want you to tell the outlet cover story, going back to your first show at LACMA.
"That was in 1977 and I was a student. I wanted to have an art show and I couldn’t wait, I couldn’t wait until I graduated. So I was looking around and I went to LACMA one day and I noticed that under the paintings along these walls they had the wall sockets. And I took note of that and I thought, oh, I can buy the same exact outlet covers... So I did that. I bought the same kind of outlet covers. And then I painted these dopey little scenes on it that made no sense really. And then I went back to LACMA and I was dressed in, like, a janitor’s outfit. I had, like, a name tag and a tool box. And walked in and unscrewed their wall sockets and put mine on with these little scenes on it. And no one said anything because it looked like I was doing my job, in a way. And then for years, every time LACMA would have a show, I would have a show at the same time. I would send out invitations, but in my show you would just look a little lower."
On Saturday, Aug. 8, at 8pm, Vallance will hold a séance at the gallery in which psychic Joseph Ross will channel dead art critics. According to gallerist Clyde Beswick, "a telepathic call will be sent out to art critics in the afterlife willing to speak out about Vallance’s artwork. And heaven only knows who might manifest!"
"Jeffrey Vallance: The Medium is the Message" and "Emily Davis Adams: Painting of Levitated Mass" are on view from July 25 through Sept. 5 at CB1 Gallery, 1923 S. Santa Fe Ave. 90021. Meet the artists at a reception Saturday, July 25, 3 - 6pm.
Go inside SoCal's Rainforest Flora: One of the world’s largest growers of air plants
Paul T. Isley knows a lot about tillandsias, or "air plants" as they’re sometimes called. He’s written two books about them and says he regularly helps researchers at the Huntington Botanical Gardens.
“What’s cool about tillandsias is that so many of them are true epiphytes, which means that they can grow with no soil,” Isley says. “They’ve mastered the trick of being able to get their water and nutrients through their leaves, which allows them to grow literally on anything.”
After visiting a friend's house and seeing some tillandsias on his patio, Isley fell in love with the flora.
“They looked like they were from outer space or from the bottom of the ocean,” Isley says. “But I saw those plants and I just couldn’t believe that those could be real, that life could do something like that.”
(Alien-like tillandsias cling to a rock face at Rainforest Flora in Torrance. Photo: Katherine Garrova)
Isley and a couple partners started Rainforest Flora in 1976. At his retail space in Torrance, Isley built an indoor garden with waterfalls, koi ponds and thousands of tillandsias that hang from the ceiling and cling to rock faces.
According to Isley, Rainforest Flora is now one of the world’s largest growers of tillandsias. When he first started out though, his weird-looking plants weren’t in high demand.
“In the beginning, there really wasn’t that much interest and there wasn’t anybody selling them. For two years I did arts and crafts fairs,” Isley says.
But Isley doesn’t sit at craft fairs much anymore. Home Depot is now his biggest customer.
“The plants are starting to hit the mainstream now,” he says. “More and more people are discovering how cool they are.”
And it’s not only big retailers that have caught on. Lovisa Staffland, a regular customer at Rainforest Flora, works for an outdoor living boutique in the Abbott Kinney neighborhood called Ilan Dei, where they sell tillandsia arrangements.
“We have noticed an increase in sales when it comes to air plants, definitely,” Staffland says. She says the increase in popularity of tillandsias might be because many people want plants in their house, but not everybody has the space. Isley agrees.
“As we go more and more towards urban environments and people live in smaller places, especially in Asia and in urban environments in our city — where you have apartments and stuff — they’re perfect because they don’t grow and take over, they’re so easy and you can put them on anything,” Isley says.
There’s a California-specific reason to collect tillandsias too.
“They’re drought tolerant,” Isley says. “They can go long periods without getting water because they have big hypodermal storage cells inside their leaves.” A dried-out tillandsia will even re-hydrate if left under water overnight.
In his 5,500-square-foot nursery, Isley explains that they keep up with demand by growing the vast majority of the tillandsias they sell in-house.
(Germinating tillandsia seeds at Rainforest Flora in Torrance; Photo: Katherine Garrova.)
Once the seeds germinate, the young tillandsias have to be separated by hand. “That’s kind of what I do at night when I’m sitting there watching Netflix,” Isley says jokingly.
Some of the tillandsias that start their lives inside Isley’s nursery will be around for decades to come. Much like the orchid, tillandsias offer thousands of distinct varieties and a very long lifespan.
“One of the really interesting things people can do with tillandsias is that they can keep them over the course of their lives,” Isley says. “People go through families, they go through wives and husbands and kids and jobs and all this stuff, but to have plants you can keep with you all those years is pretty special... They’re there with you over all the years.”