Amateur unearths US President Franklin Marshall ... the Green Book guided black motorists ... Yanow and Beer ... Instagram contest ... the love of K-Pop.
Our first Instagram contest winner captures a lasting moment at the end of life
Kate Carter's grandma Jean slept in her hospital bed, a brief moment of rest amid a constant struggle to breathe.
A bout with pneumonia had sent the 91-year-old to the hospital where nurses attached a breathing tube and IVs to help her through what would be the final days of her life.
Kate Carter pulled out her iPhone and snapped a photo of their entwined hands, one of dozens of photos she took that day. That was two weeks ago. Her grandmother died last week.
Carter posted the photo to Instagram on her account @carterkate11 and later submitted it to KPCC's first-ever Instagram photo contest, a partnership with Instagram Lovers Anonymous. Her photo won.
The theme of the first contest was Express Yourself. We asked people to submit a creative self-portrait. More than 400 photos were submitted, and Carter's was one of the very few that didn't show the subject's face.
"A lot of people on Instagram encouraged me to enter the photo because it was so personal,"" Carter said.
Carter lives in a suburb of Philadelphia where she interns at Spillman Farmer Architects.
The photo of her grandmother's hand is a departure for Carter. She tends to fill her Instagram feed with photos of buildings and other architectural photography.
"With the photography, I'm a creative person, but I really like to be analytical and detail-oriented as well," Carter said. "Instagram has really been wonderful to be social and to talk to other people with the same interests as me."
The next contest will begin at the beginning of the month. To find out more and to play, just follow @KPCC on Instagram.
How almost 19 years on death row changed Damien Echols
After 18 years and 78 days sentenced to death in an Arkansas prison, Damien Echols was released when new evidence cleared his name. His life became the subject of numerous books and documentaries like HBO's "Paradise Lost" and the forthcoming film, "West of Memphis," but in "Life After Death," Echols himself explains coping with spending nearly half of his life on death row. KPCC's Patt Morrison talked with Echols about his own side of the story.
An extended version of this interview can be found at Patt Morrison's website.
Golden Road Brewing co-founder makes Forbes '30 Under 30' list
1/6/2014 UPDATE: Forbes magazine picked Golden Road Brewing co-owner Meg Gill for its Forbes 30 Under 30: Food & Drink.
Amid America’s craft beer explosion, FORBES reckons that Meg Gill, 28, is the youngest female brewery owner in the country. Her Los Angeles-based Golden Road Brewing is one of the fastest-growing; it produced 15,000 barrels last year and expects to double that output this year. Revenues exceeded $10 million in 2013, and Gill plans to expand her dozen-plus offerings outside her southern California base in 2014.
Here's Off-Ramp contributor Jerry Gorin's report on Golden Road Brewing, from 2012:
In less than three years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Tony Yanow has opened two successful bars and a brewery in Los Angeles, a town that's traditionally been a wasteland of beer culture. Like Red Hook in Seattle, Sweetwater in Atlanta, or New Belgium in Fort Collins, Yanow wants his beer to become LA's go-to local brand.
It all started in April 2010, when Yanow bought a little-known dive bar in Burbank named Tony’s Darts Away (no relation to Yanow). He revamped its kitchen and added 30 California micro-brews on tap. Suddenly, people were darting into Tony's Darts Away.
"We wanted it to be a community pub," says Yanow. "I was expecting crowds, but I had no idea the impact that Tony's would have on the community."
The bar created a huge buzz in Burbank, but it also drew in beer geeks from around the city thirsty for specialty ales and seasonal stouts. When Tony's first opened, it was still one of just a handful of LA bars with a decent selection of craft beers.
"I used to go to San Diego or San Francisco to drink," says Yanow. "If I'm going to take a cab to Santa Monica to go to Father's Office - that's a day trip - and I might as well go to San Francisco and go to Toronado. My wife and I would do that. And I wondered how it's possible that San Diego has seventy plus breweries, and the Bay Area too, but LA - which has twice the population of both of those put together times two - has no breweries. We had tiny breweries like Craftsman in Pasadena, but it's very small. And it just seemed like nobody had done it."
So Yanow stepped in. Within a year of opening Darts Away, he opened Mohawk Bend, a restaurant and bar in Echo Park focusing on California food and booze. And just a few month later, in September 2011, he and partner Meg Gill launched Golden Road Brewing so they could make their own beer. They brew a Hefeweizen, a brown ale, an Irish stout and more, but their signature beer is an IPA (Indian Pale Ale) called Point the Way. It's a low-gravity IPA, meaning it has relatively low alcohol, which Yanow says was a choice tailored toward the LA market.
"There's a trend right now in beer to brew the strongest or hoppy-est or fruitiest - everyone's going to extremes. I love those beers, but they aren't the beers you pick up a 6-pack of to go to your buddy's house and watch the game. And the truth is, at the end of the day, most people drink beer in that context - in a casual atmosphere, after work or something like that. We want to make beers that suit that vibe, that ethic, and the palettes of people in LA."
Yanow's interest in brewing an everyday 6-pack is a new concept in the craft beer industry, and maybe a little contrary to the idea behind craft beer, which until now has been to focus on quality and diversity of beer. Yanow says Golden Road has done those things, and that the brewery is now focusing most of its attention on distribution. It's rolling out its canned beer line in major grocery stores and boosting capacity from 8,000 to about 60,000 barrels a year.
"Meg and I kept asking ourselves," says Yanow, "how is it possible that we're in the #2 market in the country and there isn't a brewery brewing more than 2000 barrels within 100 miles (not including Budweiser and Miller). So a lot of people are asking us, 'Why are you guys starting so big?' Well we are starting pretty big for a craft brewery, but the reason is that we want to be LA's brand. LA doesn't have a brand. Any city in this country, you name a city, I'll name you the brand that's the local beer. We don't have it here yet. Hopefully we're making strides to be that brand."
Golden Road Brewing probably won’t displace Tecate and Bud Light in terms of pure sales in LA, but it has signed up more than three-hundred bars to pour Golden Road draught beers in LA County, and will sell canned beer exclusively in Southern California grocery stores.
To hear why Tony Yanow prefers canning beer over bottling, see our latest EatLA segment.
Do you think Golden Road can be LA's go-to beer? Have you tried any of their labels? Tell us what you think!