A billion-dollar facelift for the LA River, Clipper Darrell weighs in, LA's "Big Parade," and Llyn Foulkes stars in a new doc, celebrating Disney's Golden Books.
Supporters of High Line concept hold wake for a historic LA River bridge
A few months ago, I interviewed Tomas O'Grady about the effort to turn the old L.A. River bridge that links Figueroa Street and Riverside Drive into a park and bike path.
A new bridge is going up to replace it, and in fact is already being used by motorists. When the new bridge is done, the old bridge will be demolished.
The city of L.A. refused to save the old bridge, which has been deemed an historic monument, claiming it's too late and there isn't enough money, points O'Grady and others dispute. The city also refuses to mothball the old bridge until money could be found for the project.
(Tomas O'Grady standing on the new bridge in February; the old bridge was still being used at that point. Image: John Rabe)
On Sunday, Tom of Tom Explores LA organized a wake for the old bridge, and Off-Ramp sketch artist Mike Sheehan covered it for us.
RELATED: Mike Sheehan sketches DJ's and dinos at the Natural History Museum
Mike writes:
Tom brought flowers (it was a wake after all). Everyone showed up hung out, talked, and took their last looks at the bridge.
Whenever I go to things like this I find something else that jumps out at me. Tom told me he had to put it together quick. It felt spontaneous in a cool way. No vendors, just people hanging out. This is one of the few times I saw people actually hanging out and talking and not looking at their phones.
I realized how cool it would be if they just had little get-togethers like this just for fun.There are a lot of cool empty historical spaces that would be nice to make people aware of.
At around 5:30 Tom and a few others said a few words and that was it. Trisha Gossett of Enrich LA invited everyone to Tom O'Grady's home for as she put it "a light dinner and lotsa wine." They had a toast to the bridge effort and consider it a victory even though the city didn't go with their plan. It does raise awareness for saving future historical structures, which is always a win.
Off-Ramp fails in blatant attempt to cash in on #HiddenCash frenzy
Last weekend, LA was like a scene out of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," with crowds of people scrambling over each other to find the #HiddenCash in Burbank, Echo Park, San Marino, Pasadena, and Hermosa Beach.
(Pasadena HiddenCash winner Cassandra Mercury. Image: Nuran Alteir)
So you could understand if I wanted to get in on the action, and gin up some buzz about Off-Ramp. Not being a millionaire real estate developer like @HiddenCash, I scaled it down. I hid a couple $1 bills in LA and Tweeted clues to my followers, like this:
alternative Clue 2. It's only $1, Charles; no Two Buck Chuck. pic.twitter.com/8oxAdiT0ep
— Off-Ramp (@KPCCofframp)
One week later, @HiddenCash has moved on, but - as you can hear in the audio of my interview with George Cossette of Silverlake Wine -- my dollars are still there, and I have to wonder if maybe I should have upped the ante? I haven't even bothered to retrieve the money.
The pros and cons of a billion-dollar facelift for the LA River
The US Army Corps of Engineers has approved a $1-billion plan to beautify 11 miles of one of the ugliest rivers in the world. Or maybe, since it's LA, we should call it shabby chic.
I went to the soon-to-be-demolished Figueroa St bridge that crosses the river in Cypress Park to meet KPCC's environment reporter Molly Peterson to talk about the high points of the plan, and some of the potential problems it might cause - like pricing-out current residents of poorer neighborhoods like Frogtown.
Then, I talked with KPCC's Washington DC bureau chief, Kitty Felde, who was standing on the banks of the Anacostia, a river that's been rehabbed to great effect in the nation's capitol, for an idea of what might be in LA's future.
Super fan 'Clipper Darrell' on Donald Sterling, Steve Ballmer and the team's future
The L.A. Clippers took one more step closer to entering a new chapter this week when Donald Sterling and his lawyer announced they'd agree to sell to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. There's still a long road to go before the Clippers can officially change hands, but one person paying especially close attention to these events is Darrell Bailey — better known as Clipper Darrell, the team's biggest fan.
Off-Ramp Producer Kevin Ferguson talks with Clipper Darrell in front of Staples Center in Downtown LA.
Did you meet Donald Sterling before all this?
"I met him several times. In 2006, I went to the airport to tell the team we were going to do this in game seven of the playoffs, and Donald Sterling put me on the team flight with the team. And I spent the night with the team at the Ritz Carlton. And he took me to dinner earlier that night. It was me, Donald Sterling, Elgin Baylor, [Mike] Dunleavy... a bunch of his staff members."
What kind of guy was he?
"I mean, he was a great dude. We were talking, having a good conversation. I found that you share your dessert with rich people! But he was a cool dude, but that was in 2006. So, what is this, 2014? That was a long time ago. Maybe things have changed."
What was your reaction when you heard the tape that got leaked? To basically hear that he didn't want you at his games, to me that would be a pretty heavy blow.
"Oh, yeah. It was a blow, man. I had anxiety attacks, I was depressed. There are two things I can do in life and I can forget about all my problems. And one place is church, and a clippers game. That was it. When you take away somebody's sanctuary, it's like 'Man, that hurts. What did I do to you for you to do that?'"
Did you even want to go to the games when the news came out? There was talk about the team maybe boycotting some playoff games.
"I was following the players' lead. The players had my back in my time of need. Whatever they did, I was going to support what they did. If they boycotted, I was going to boycott. But if they were going to go out their on that court, I was going to go into the stands and do my thing like I usually do."
What was your reaction when you heard that Steve Ballmer was interested in the team?
"I didn't know who Steve Ballmer was, to be honest with you. So once he put his bid in, and I'd seen that he was going to take over the team, I did my research on him. And he seemed like an energetic, fun-loving guy. And that's the type of owner that I said, whoever took over... I wanted an owner like Mark Cuban. You know what I'm saying? An owner that was passionate about the team. That's what I see in Steve Ballmer, because he's going to be a fan of the team... And I could see him jumping up and down, baseline, and cheering them on and everything else. So that's going to be fun to see."
He's pretty famous for jumping up and down, too.
"Exactly! I was loving it, man. Everybody was tweeting at me, they're telling me 'Hey Darrell, you got competition now.' I said 'Man, that's a beautiful thing, now.'"
How to boost voter turnout: Cast a ballot to win $1M lottery?
KPCC's Frank Stoltze talks with political scientist Fernando Guerra about instituting a million-dollar lottery to boost voter turnout in California.
People have floated all kinds of ideas to increase voter turnout — voting on the weekend, mail-in ballots, making the ballots easier to read — but turnout keeps falling.
As KPCC's Sharon McNary reported after this week's primary election:
At just 13 percent, L.A. County had the lowest voter participation rate of any county in California on Tuesday. Fewer than one-in-eight registered voters cast a ballot, according to the County Registrar's tally. The state voter turnout average was about 5 percentage points higher.
13% (even 18%) is embarrassingly low for a — you know — democracy. It's probably worse than Egypt's recent presidential election.
RELATED: Check out all our election coverage
Fernando Guerra, of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University (and a member of KPCC's board) is fed up, and talking with KPCC's Frank Stoltze, he pushed a radical proposal to increase turnout: everybody who casts a ballot would be eligible to win a million dollars.
Guerra says one selling point of such a lottery is that the odds would be much better than the other state-sponsored lotteries. It's not clear, he says, if it violates federal law, but it might be possible if no federal candidates are on the ballot.
RELATED: Rabe's waste, fraud and corruption lottery
Frank asked the million-dollar question: "Wouldn't we get a lot of people who know nothing about politics or the candidates jumping in and voting and just checking the box so they could get a million bucks?"
"Absolutely," Guerra responded, as Frank's jaw dropped. "And that might produce better results. There is no data to show that uninformed voters make worse decisions than informed voters."
To prove his point, Guerra mentioned two names: "Leland Yee and Calderon, etc. Those were all elected by informed voters." (Despite being arrested for corruption, arms trafficking, and consorting with someone named "Shrimp Boy," state Senator Leland Yee still got 300,000 votes for Secretary of State Tuesday.)
Guerra says a crowd has "instinct," and the larger the crowd, the better.
Frank told Guerra this is blasphemy to a lot of people. "I know that," Guerra responded, "but they should get over it."
Animation expert reveals the rich history of Disney's Golden Books
Off-Ramp contributor CJ Greenspon explores the magic of Disney's Little Golden Books, small books with memorable stories and evocative art, purposely designed to be owned, used, and abused by kids. Off-Ramp animation expert Charles Solomon's newest book is The Art of the Disney Golden Books.
Last Sunday, fans lined up at Burbank's Center Stage Gallery for the signing of Charles Solomon's newest book, The Art of the Disney Golden Books. Solomon was signing the book along with Disney artists, including legend Burny Mattinson and newer artists Lorelay Bove, Brittney Lee, Grace Lee, and Jean-Paul Orpinas, who worked on "Frozen" and "Wreck-It Ralph," among others.
"If you're under 70-something in this country, you grew up with Little Golden Books," said Solomon.
The books probably owe their massive success and beloved reputation to several things. First is the quality.
"I was lucky enough to have parents that saw the beauty of the artwork, and the great stories of course ... I've got a pretty good collection at home, and I'm now doing that for my nieces as well," said Diane Morales, who brought some of her originals from childhood.
And many of the young adults at the Book Signing said they definitely will keep their Golden Books for their own kids. As Solomon said, "There's something wonderfully cozy about reading to children a book that you read as a child."
RELATED: LeVar Burton and his wildly successful Reading Rainbow Kickstarter campaign
Disney first started publishing Golden Books in 1944. They had experienced good revenue from the compiled pre-WW2 Mickey comic strips, and when their partner Whitman Publishing launched Little Golden Books, it was the perfect opportunity to start creating print adaptations of Disney's films. It's very likely that the post-war economy and Baby Boom fueled the success of the Disney Golden Books.
Another reason Golden Books are so beloved may be that, according to Solomon, they were child-sized, and child-priced. The original Little Golden Books cost about 25 cents a copy, and in Solomon's opinion they were not only great books but great playthings too.
"You can read it, you can throw it at your brother, you can build forts out of it, you can read it to your stuffed animals. It doesn't matter! They're not expensive, they're yours!" Solomon said.
RELATED: No money for successful parent-toddler PreK literacy program
Perhaps the series' greatest legacy is the influence the books have had on artists growing up. Solomon says they hold the blueprint for a balanced piece of art: "This is where we first started learning about composition, and color, and how do you stage a scene to make it clear."
The clarity, bold colors, and simple shapes have kept their place in Disney's arsenal of style.
Lorelay Bove, a development artist who worked on "Tangled" and "Wreck-It Ralph," said she was honored to take part in making some of the books. For Bove, the Disney Golden Books have never just been still-shots of the movies.
"I personally try to stylize them a little; more graphic, and a little more simple, but still keeping the same heart and personality," Bove said.
The Golden Books have influenced three generations of artists and have been a valuable companion to children all over the world. But perhaps the best thing about the Little Golden Books is that our parents read them to us.
Walkers rediscover Los Angeles on foot in The Big Parade
A group of Angelenos trekked from Grand Park in Downtown Los Angeles to Griffith Observatory last weekend, stopping for a celebration and some sleep in Silver Lake. Dubbed “The Big Parade,” this two-day, 35-mile urban hike includes 100 stairways and appearances from local writers, poets and musicians along the way.
“Thirty-five miles, 80 stairways sounds insane — no sane person should ever try that,” said the event’s organizer, Dan Koeppel, after finishing The Big Parade Route Sunday evening.
Koeppel began organizing this annual event six years ago, when some locals asked to be taken on one of the stairway-filled walks he had written about in a magazine article.
“That became a one-day walk, and my walks got bigger and bigger," Koeppel said. "So I realized we had to do a two-day walk that would be fun for a lot of people. And it just grew organically from there."
He estimated that around 500 people joined The Big Parade for some portion of the hike over the weekend and added that the largest group to form along the route was about 210 people. The majority of the participants don’t complete the entire hike. But Koeppel emphasized that finishing shouldn’t be the goal.
“The point of the walk is you come and go as you please. You can come for a mile, come for an hour, come for a day. The crowd get big, it gets small… That’s the whole point. When that happens, it means it’s working.”
Ten-year-old Toussaint Bolden walked both days of The Big Parade with his mother, Liz Dwyer, making him the youngest hiker to ever complete the route.
“There were a lot of stairs,” said Toussaint. “I can’t wait to get home to my couch.”
For more information about The Big Parade and the monthly walks led by organizer Dan Koeppel, visit the event website.
Echo Park's El Batey Market closes after 48 years
After 48 years in business, the El Batey No. 2 market on the corner of Echo Park and Delta Avenues has closed its doors for good.
It's not that 74-year-old Evelia Diaz wanted to retire from running the store — her daughter Nelly now owns and operates it. Instead the family-owned business was ordered to leave in April by a 30-day eviction notice after ownership of the building changed hands.
Evelia's son, Ramon Pack III, was able to negotiate a 30-day delay of eviction in the hopes of negotiating a lease. But, according to Ramon, the negotiations never happened and the family was notified that they must vacate the store in early June. They finished clearing out the market June 5.
While the neighborhood and businesses surrounding El Batey have changed, Evelia and her Echo Park spot have largely stayed the same. Evelia is well-liked by community members and was known to regularly cook for her customers. She even allowed the regulars to keep a tab if they didn't have enough money to pay.
Prior to their departure, community members banded together to buy as much of the store's inventory as possible.
KPCC's Michelle Lanz visited the store last weekend and spoke with the 74-year-old matriarch of the El Batey about saying goodbye to the family business.
Artist Llyn Foulkes, once neglected Young Turk, in new documentary, 'One Man Band'
6/5/2014 UPDATE: The Downtown Independent is screening Tamar Halpern's documentary "One Man Band" through June 12. And you can bring beer into the theater!
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In February, Off-Ramp interviewed Llyn Foulkes, a neglected Young Turk artist of the 1960s who didn’t find his place in the LA pantheon until well after her turned 70. The occasion for our interview was the Hammer Museum’s career retrospective of Foulkes. Now, there’s a new film documentary about him, screening June 20 and 22 at the LA Film Festival.
What happens after the happy ending? It’s a question that rarely occurs to us in America, least of all in media-centric L.A., where happy endings are manufactured by the yard.
Llyn Foulkes, the formerly obscure, currently renowned LA artist and musician whose bas-relief canvases can take well over a decade to complete. After forty odd years of toil, Foulkes’ happy ending came in 2009, when a group show at the Hammer Museum about unsung LA artists vaulted him to fame, age 74.
The revival has extended to Foulkes' musical side-project too, as sole proprietor of the Machine, a massive percussive art project that resembles a drum kit or a xylophone the way the Hollywood sign resembles a business card. Same components, utterly different effect.
(VIDEO: Llyn Foulkes Tunes Up His Machine for a Photographer, by RH Greene.)
And now comes a documentary about Foulkes’ painstaking artistic method, called Llyn Foulkes: One Man Band, directed by his friend Tamar Halpern and her friend Chris Quilty. Tamar’s long journey with her film mirrors Foulkes’ creative process in more ways than one.
The Llyn Foulkes of One Man Band is a Lear figure, raging against the dying of the light in a world that has deprived him of his legacy. Now, 78, he’s fascinating, difficult and eccentric—a cantankerous solo act and a changeling, so afraid to be pinned down that it’s a mystery even to Tamar Halpern why Foulkes let her make a film about him.
According to Halpern, Foulkes’ contrarian impulse was even activated by the film itself, when he changed a habit of decades after seeing it depicted onscreen. Instead of traveling to Tommy's for his burgers, he switched to In-n-Out.
One ghost that haunts One Man Band is the failure of Foulkes’ second marriage, as depicted in The Awakening, a major canvas that was exhibited twice in forms Foulkes destroyed and revised before completing it in 2012, after almost two decades of work. As a metaphor for unresolved love, The Awakening and its process are riveting. And like most metaphors, it didn’t solve a thing.
The art market loves Foulkes now, and his prices are way up. But music is Foulkes main pursuit these days. On canvas, he works in depth—forced perspectives are central to his aesthetic. And in old age, Foulkes is losing the very faculty he needs to create his art. He's suffering from macular degeneration.
So: What happens after the happy ending? The story goes on—twisting, changing. And the fortunate ones among us find someone to tell that story to, and sometimes even someone to tell it with and for.