Gay 'cure' ministry Exodus International apologizes, shuts down operations; Japanese-Americans seek historic status for Tuna Canyon detention station; Neighborhoods: A feast of history and culture await you in LA's Koreatown; Looming loan rate increase has students worried; Border counties struggle to prosecute drug offenses due to budget cuts; In Phoenix, zombie subdivisions wake from slumber; Hulu series 'East Los High' depicts Latino teen life in Los Angeles, plus much more.
Gay 'cure' ministry Exodus International apologizes, shuts down operations
Last night, at its annual conference in Irvine, the Exodus International Ministry made a huge and unexpected announcement. After nearly 40 years, the Christian organization is shutting its doors.
Exodus advocated a so-called cure for homosexuality through therapy, an idea that was a beacon for believers but a lightning rod for critics.
But Exodus's president Alan Chambers says, "I believe it's time for the church to do better and let everyone in."
"It's been met with mixed reactions from all sides," he tells Take Two. "But there's a strange consensus that it's time for a new conversation. It's time for peace."
Jeff Chu profiled Exodus International in his book, "Does Jesus Really Love Me? A gay Christian's pilgrimage in search of God in America."
The ministry's closing came as a surprise to him, even though Chambers and the organization had been shifting in that direction.
"Their tagline used to be, 'Change is Possible,' referring to homosexuality," says Chu, "and they've really tried to step back from that."
However the closing hasn't appeased all of Exodus's critics.
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There have also been suicides. Alan's work destroyed people. Sorry is a nice, I guess, but it won't raise the dead.
— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage)
.@jeffchu @alanmchambers There have also been suicides. Alan's work destroyed people. Sorry is a nice, I guess, but it won't raise the dead.
— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) June 19, 2013
But Chu says this could be the first step in a path in reconciliation between the church and gays, though that doesn't mean gay conversions will stop.
"Symbolically the closure of Exodus is going to be an important milestone in many people's lives, but the fact is that many, many people are still doing this kind of work."
Looming loan rate increase has students worried
California congressional representatives are joining students in the nation's capital today to try to stop a student loan interest rate hike. If Congress doesn't act by July 1st, rates on federally-subsidized loans will double.
That could add thousands of dollars of more debt for the average student; nearly half of California college students borrow money to go to school. From the California Report, Charla Bear has the story.
Senate nears decision on US-Mexico border security
Senators are considering a compromise to one of the key sticking points in the immigration bill they have been debating all week: how to secure the southern border.
Some Republicans have taken a hard line, saying nothing else can happen until the leaks in the border are plugged. Some Democrats say that is just an attempt to squelch their plan for a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants.
The National Journal's Fawn Johnson joins the show to discuss today's debate and the outlook for the border security issue in the Senate over the next few weeks.
Border counties struggle to prosecute drug offenses due to budget cuts
Securing the border is not just a major issue in the immigration debate, it also plays a big part in federal efforts to stop the flow of illegal drugs. In the last year alone border patrol agents seized more than 300,000 pounds of drugs at border check points.
But not all the offenders are being prosecuted for their crimes. Due to budget cuts, it's become increasingly common for small-scale drug smugglers to be let go without facing charges.
Reporter Andrew Becker, who has written about this phenomenon for the Center for Investigative Reporting, joins the show to explain.
In Phoenix, zombie subdivisions wake from slumber
Developers in Phoenix are scrambling to keep up with another frenzied demand for housing. During the Great Recession, home builders in the suburbs abandoned neighborhoods that were only half built. The so-called zombie subdivisions left a ring of unfinished construction around the city.
But now, as Peter O'Dowd reports from the Fronteras Desk in Phoenix, the zombies are waking up.
When the region’s housing party ended, local government was left to clean up the mess. Since 2009, Phoenix got about $116 million in federal stimulus money to improve blighted property. Then, it teamed up with builders and got to work. That's why zombies like Gordon Estates in South Phoenix are coming back to life.
On a recent morning, a cement truck poured its payload into an unfinished driveway while work crews put the final touches on 14 new homes. The city is running out of foreclosed properties to resurrect, according to Neighborhood Services Director Chris Hallett. “The inventory out there is slowing,” he said. “That’s a sign of a good economy, and a sign that our work here is just about done.”
The housing recovery in Phoenix is in full swing and the supply of existing homes cannot keep up with buyer demand. In response, builders began snapping up empty lots late last year. The easiest targets were zombies already equipped with sewers and streetlights.
“The opportunity to acquire distressed lots or failed communities is long gone,” said Mandalay Home President Dave Everson. “They’re now in the hands of people who are either building them or are in the process of getting started to build them.”
Mandalay is the builder that helped finished off Gordon Estates.
Everson said he has bought up about half a dozen distressed subdivisions himself, and he has reason to be optimistic about their future. New-home sales in April were up 27 percent compared to the year before.
During the recession, builders re-calibrated. They drew smaller floor plans and cut back on fancy amenities. “But what we are finding is that as the market is healing we probably underestimate the consumers’ desire for a little bit larger home,” Everson said.
Actually, the homes are about 30 percent larger, “between the average size of a new home, and the average size of a resale,” said Mike Orr, a housing researcher at the W.P Carey School of Business at Arizona State. “I think that’s significant.”
The extra space may have something to do with parents who need bigger houses to accommodate their unemployed adult children, Orr said. But more likely, it’s just industry picking up where it left off.
“I think the city planners would like to have much denser city centers with tall buildings, but the builders know how to make money doing it the old way going out on the outer fringes,” he explained.
That's where many of the zombie neighborhoods are waking up. Back in 2011, Realtor Greg Swann took me to the Laveen Farms subdivision in West Phoenix, where fire hydrants emerged dolefully from the desert floor and sidewalks lead to nowhere.
The scene is not much better in 2013.
“When you recover from a heart attack it takes time,” said Swann, as he observed a crew of workers milling outside a dozen big, new homes. “This year is definitely better than two years ago, but there are limits to the enthusiasm you can express for this.”
Across the region, about 350 subdivisions are actively selling new homes. In a normal market, that number is around 600, according to Orr’s research.
Swann’s point is this: when things are really moving in this city, you’ll know it.
“If there’s a truss on a truck everyday when you’re driving on the freeway and you’re trying to angle around that truss because you can’t see, then they’re building houses,” Swann said. “If that’s not a problem, then nobody is building anything.”
Hulu series 'East Los High' depicts Latino teen life in Los Angeles
For years American television networks have been trying to crack the Latino market. So far, though, an authentic story about the Latino experience in the U.S. hasn't really taken off.
The video streaming service Hulu might have figured out the right formula with the first English-language show with an all-Latino cast. It's called "East Los High." The show's co-creator and producer Carlos Portugal joins the show to talk about the show.
Neighborhoods: A feast of history and culture await you in LA's Koreatown
This weekend if you’re looking for friends, fun, and lots and lots of beef, you could do worse than a trip to Koreatown.
Tens of thousands of Angelenos are expected to attend the fifth annual Korean BBQ Festival, which coincides with CicLaVia, on Sunday. Wilshire Boulevard will be car-free and packed with vendors offering everything from galbi to bulgogi and beyond. Don’t forget the soju cocktails!
So as part of our Neighborhoods series – and in preparation for Sunday’s festivities — Tess Vigeland stopped by Koreatown for a taste and narrated her trip.
Of course I wanted to start our tour of Koreatown with that famous BBQ, but instead, I met up with Katherine Youngmee Kim at the Korean National Association Memorial Hall. Kim is the author of a book about K-Town’s history called – appropriately enough – “Los Angeles’ Koreatown.”
The Hall is a squat brick building near Jefferson and Normandie in South L.A., not far from the USC campus. Inside, Kim points to a life-sized photo of An Chang-Ho, one of the early leaders of the Korean-American immigrant community.
Chang-Ho came to the United States in 1903, and lived in the Bunker Hill area in Los Angeles, where the first Koreans in Los Angeles congregated. Japan annexed Korea in 1910, which led Chang-Ho to create the Korean National Association to encourage Korean-Americans to raise funds for the Korean provisional government.
"Korean-Americans were really heavily involved in this independence movement, and An Chang-ho was their leader," said Kim. "Bunker Hill was the original Koreatown, and this was early: 1903, 1910 to 1920. At that time in 1920, there were only 89 Koreans in Los Angeles,” said Kim.
In addition to two rooms of historical photos and artifacts, the museum houses a beautiful original printing press from “The New Korea,” the first Korean-American newspaper in this country. Visitors can watch a video explaining the history of Koreans in Los Angeles.
Korean immigration stopped in the mid-1920s after implementation of the Oriental Exclusion Act. It was part of a law signed by President Coolidge that imposed quotas on all non-American nationalities, but completely barred immigrants from Asia.
Not until the 1950s did Los Angeles — and the U.S. — see a second wave of Korean immigrants, mostly of GI brides and affluent students seeking higher education after the war. The biggest influx of Koreans came after 1965.
“There was another immigration act that was passed that allowed for families that were in this country to bring over their families, and in Los Angeles that's really where you saw the proliferation boom. That’s considered the third wave," said Kim.
From The Past To The Present
For a closer look at that third wave, and those who came after it, we headed north across the 10 Freeway to today’s Koreatown. It’s an area generally bounded by Olympic Boulevard to the south, Vermont to the east, Beverly to the north and Crenshaw to the west.
The city estimates that nearly 125,000 people live in that area of just under three square miles. It’s among the highest population densities in the country, with Asians making up 32 percent of K-Town's population. Latinos comprise more than 50 percent.
"We're across from VIP Plaza, which you can see with the blue tiles on the roof," said Kim. "The real estate developer, Hi Duk Lee, he built all these buildings with the vision of creating a Koreatown here because he wanted it to be like Los Angeles's Chinatown."
We head over to Kim Bang Ah, a mill that has been around since 1967 and that originally started down in the old Koreatown on Jefferson. We walk into a small storefront filled with giant blue plastic barrels of freshly-ground grains and meet owner James Kim.
“My grandfather was 67 years old when he came to the United States, and started the business," said Mr. Kim. "He located several places, and settled here in 1970-somewhere I believe.”
Kim’s grandfather was among the thousands of Korean businessmen who began K-Town’s migration from south L.A. to its current home in mid-Wilshire in the 1970s. He now runs the business, which uses an old milling machine hand-carried from Korea, to grind grains for local shoppers.
“The old-style way of buying food in Korea brings back the old memory, so that way it has the feeling of being in Korea, I guess. Feel a little more like at home," said Mr. Kim. "We wash and ground our own materials.”
This old-school milling store, surrounded by modern strip malls and taco joints, is symbolic of today’s Koreatown, the traditional mixed with the new. It’s also one of the K-Town businesses that stayed through and after the 1992 riots that spread north from South Central destroyed much of the area and prompted thousands of residents to move away.
Kim says he’s not sure how long the store will survive, given that his customer base is mostly mothers and grandmothers. The younger generation is far less interested in ground grains than grilled meats.
Katherine Kim ends our tour of K-Town at Chapman Plaza on sixth Street – a Spanish revival-style strip mall with several Korean BBQ joints, a hair salon, and, of course, a karaoke bar. On any given night the wait at Kang Hodong Baekjeong — a new hotspot owned by a famous South Korean comedian and wrestler — can be an hour-plus.
“We're having Doenjang Jjigae, which is soy bean stew, and we're having marinated short rib. We'll be barbecuing here [at the table], and they'll be doing most of the work for us. This is Bori Cha. It's like Korean water, but it's barley tea.”
After packing our stomachs with Korean beef, kimchi, and barley tea, we wandered back out into the parking lot and I asked Kim where else she’d recommend for first-time visitors to Koreatown.
“Probably go to one of the malls. There's Koreatown Plaza, which is on Western. And then the Koreatown Galleria, which is on Olympic. They're sort of just multi-level malls with food courts and Korean shops. And they both have big Korean grocery stores, which are fun for people to wander through," said Kim. "Vermont and Olympic, there's a mini-mall there that has Park's BBQ, which I really like, and next door there's a goat stew for those who are feeling a little bit more adventurous."
What does Kim love most about Koreatown?
"I love the bathhouses. There are bathhouses scattered all across Koreatown. Some of them are open all night. I actually went yesterday with my family. There's saunas - dry saunas, wet saunas, clay saunas, salt saunas."
If you find yourself in Koreatown at night, make sure you stop by one of the many karaoke bars. Just make sure you get there early, they tend to fill up even during the week.
Political Roundup: Garcetti Administration, Public Records Act and more
Now for our weekly check in on southern California politics. We're joined by KPCC political reporters Alice Walton and Frank Stoltze.
Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti made his first major personnel announcement this week. He selected Ana Guerrero as his chief of staff. Who else can we expect in the Garcetti administration?
With Garcetti on the way in, that means it's really the end for Antonio Villaraigosa. What's he going to do after June 30?
There's news this week that California leaders are going to be getting raises. Are they really doing such a great job that they all deserve a bump?
There's also been a controversy brewing in the capital over the Public Records Act.
Silicon Valley's cozy relationship with the NSA
Silicon Valley has long had a cozy relationship with the National Security Agency. It's a relationship reporter Nick Wingfield has been writing about for the New York Times.
Wingfield reports that when the former chief security officer for Facebook, Max Kelly, left the company in 2010, he took up a job with the NSA. He says this information underscores the connections and similarities between tech companies and the government. They both routinely collect data on millions of Americans.
Wingfield joins the show with more.
Japanese-Americans seek historic status for Tuna Canyon detention station (photos)
Turn off the 210 Freeway in Tujunga and the Verdugo Hills Golf Course soon comes into view.
A cigarette dangles out of a golfer's mouth as he tees up on the driving range. At nearby picnic tables, friends rest after a game, drinks in hand. But the relaxed atmosphere belies the site's controversial past.
Before the land was cleared to build an 18-hole course, it was home to the Tuna Canyon Detention Station. During World War II, the U.S. government held more than 1,000 people of Japanese descent at Tuna Canyon before shipping them off for longer stays at detention centers further inland or out-of-state.
More than 70 years later, the detainees' descendants and community activists are asking the city to make Tuna Canyon a historic landmark so future generations will know what happened.
"It reminds us what our constitutional rights are and that it can be taken away so easily," said Haru Kuromiya, whose father was taken into custody at Tuna Canyon. "You think it's behind you but it scares me to think that wars happen and this could happen again with any group of color."
Los Angeles City Councilor Richard Alarcon, whose district covers the northeast section of the San Fernando Valley, proposed designating Tuna Canyon as a Historic-Cultural Monument last fall.
With the issue still unresolved, and his term expiring in a couple weeks, Alarcon said he will ask the council at its meeting Friday to make a decision. Activists say they plan to send a busload of people to City Hall to demonstrate the groundswell of support the measure has.
Still, the proposal has to overcome a major hurdle: There are no traces of the camp left. And that has some city officials saying Tuna Canyon doesn't warrant the historic classification.
Recreating a Lost History
Ken Bernstein, manager of the city's Office of Historic Resources, said he recognizes the significance of Tuna Canyon for Japanese-Americans. That's what makes Tuna Canyon "a particularly difficult case, one of the most difficult we've had in many years," Bernstein said.
His staff and the city's Cultural Historic Commission, have both recommended against giving Tuna Canyon historic status.
"What's unfortunate with this site is that this became the Verdugo Hills Golf Course in 1960 and the site was significantly regraded," Bernstein said.
"All of the buildings that were associated with the internment camp were removed," Bernstein said. "The site no longer had an ability to convey those very important historic associations."
But Tuna Canyon activists say that the site's historic value should not be tied to buildings but to what took place there. While detainees at Tuna Canyon included immigrants from Axis countries such as Italy and Germany, the vast majority were Japanese.
In a government film, the director of the War Relocation Authority, Milton Eisenhower, explained why more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent from the West Coast were rounded up: "When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, our West Coast became a potential combat zone."
"No one knew what would happen among this concentrated population if Japanese forces should try to invade our shores," Eisenhower said.
Among the first to be brought into custody were community leaders, such as Buddhist priests and Japanese-language school teachers. Haru Kuromiya wasn't sure why her father Chikayasu Inabe, a farmer, was taken to Tuna Canyon.
But Inabe was forced to abandon the family farm in Riverside, just weeks before the birth of his seventh child, a boy.
"They wouldn't even let him be with my mother when she had [the baby]," Kuromiya said. "So my dad wouldn't see my brother for another year."
Kuromiya was 15 at the time, and remembered visiting her father and uncle at Tuna Canyon and talking to them through a barbed wire fence.
At home, she and her siblings sold the farm's chickens and equipment, as the family readied to go to a different internment camp.
"I just accepted what we had to do," Kuromiya said.
US government film about Japanese-American internment
Protections from Future Development
Giving Tuna Canyon historic status means preservation officials would provide an extra layer of review if construction or other changes were ever proposed. Activists say the label also would give them leverage to apply for federal grants to help pay for displays and signage.
At the entrance of the golf course, local historian Lloyd Hitt of the Little Landers Historical Society stands under a grove of oak trees that he says once shaded camp detainees.
He pointed off to the distance, towards the mountains circling the property.
"There's houses up there now, but when you look at the ridgeline, it's identical."
Hitt preferred a golf course to the 200-plus home subdivision that landowner Snowball West Investments wants to start building on top of the links as early as next year, pending approval by the city.
"You can come out here and sit and just picture things and it's quiet and restful," Hitt said. "It's not like you're in somebody's backyard or between two houses or up an alley or something."
But the developers say they plan on honoring the legacy of Tuna Canyon internees, no matter what.
"We already were planning to have a plaque and other ways of commemorating the history of this location," said Michael Hoberman, the group's principal.
Other ways, said the company's lawyer Fred Gaines, may include a bench, and artwork.
A City Council committee has convened a working group representing both the developer and the activists that is supposed to meet over the coming weeks.
Activists say they will continue to push for the historic-cultural monument designation, believing it carries more heft than a developer's promise.
Now 86, Haru Kuromiya says she didn't think she'd be an activist, but she keeps speaking out about Tuna Canyon because, "I just feel I owe it to my dad," she said.
And in some way, she doing it for the girl she was, who didn't say anything on the bus to the internment camp, but is getting to do it now.
What does 1 billion-year-old water taste like?
Have you ever wondered what 1 billion-year-old water tastes like? Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar from the University of Toronto knows. She had the unusual opportunity of tasting some during a research project in a zinc and copper mine in Ontario, Canada.
How to properly taste water: Pro tips from a water sommelier
If water is more than a billion years old and trapped deep underground, it's bound to taste a lot different than a bottle of Evian. But what about other waters? Is there that much difference between FIJI and Aquafina?
Water sommelier Martin Riese, creator of Beverly Hills 9OH2O says you shouldn't settle for tap water, "Especially when you're enjoying a beautiful bottle of wine. You don't want to have this chlorine taste destroying the whole bottle of wine."
High-end water is popular in Riese's home country Germany, where restaurant work is serious business. In Los Angeles, a gig as a waiter or waitress is usually seen as a side career, but in Germany Riese says people go to school for years before beginning a career in serving.
"There's sommelier schools and even programs for water," said Riese. "Five years ago I started my water menu in Germany, and wrote a book about different mineral waters. Suddenly, the media attention came to me and said 'you're really a water sommelier.'"
Riese brought by some of his 90H2O water to demonstrate why the taste of water you're drinking is as important as even the finest wine.
Interview Highlights:
On why waters have different flavors:
"The fun thing is that water at its basis is always the same, because it's rain water. It really depends to what layers of minerals this rain water is dropping through. So that means that in the western part of Germany, we have volcanic reactions, so therefore our layers are way more pristine with minerals and mineral content than in the east part of Germany. So in the west part of Germany, waters are way more stronger in taste than the east part of Germany. Then you can taste the water, with a tap water, a 'Roi' water from Europe, and H2O, and they all taste completely different"
On how to taste and describe different waters:
"Like wine, you're doing it from light to heavy. Because white wines are light and red wines are heavy. The same with water. 'Light' is more like less minerals. So like, Fiji, they're light mineral waters. It can be bitter. It can be salty. It can be very smooth. It can be chlorine. This is not what you're looking for when you're tasting water. You don't want chlorine in your water taste, especially when you're enjoying a beautiful bottle of wine. You don't want to have this chlorine taste destroying the whole profile of the wine."
On which bottled waters are his favorite (besides 9OH2O):
"There are several, actually. I love Iskilde, it's a Danish water. It's 8,500 years old, so not 1.2 billion years old like you described. It has a very sweet and smooth taste as well, and the funny is that there's a lot of oxygen in it by itself already. So when you're shaking the bottle, it almost gets milky. I love Vichy Catalan, it's a Catalian water from the Northern part of Barcelona. It's a very high content of mineral water with a lot of acid and saltiness to it. It's my workout water, kind of. I love that when I'm going to the gym, that's like my Red Bull."
UK musician Keaton Henson on 'Birthdays' and finding fame online
Musician Keaton Henson is an interesting character. He's an illustrator-turned-musician from the UK and he owes his success to his popularity online. In 2010 he found a cult following with his digital only first album, "Dear..."
The fact that it was digital served him well, especially since he hates going outside, performing in front of people and doing interviews. But for a guy that's as personal as Henson is, his songs are very revealing.
Henson stopped by the Take Two studio to talk about his new album, "Birthdays," and what the song "You" means to him.
Dinner Party Download: Captain Crunch, squirrels and first female umpire
Every week we get your weekend conversation starters with Rico Gagliano and Brendan Newnam, the hosts of the Dinner Party Download podcast and radio show.
On tap this week:
"Captain Crunch is actually… only a commander. On his sleeve on the back, there's three gold stripes with a star on top of it. That is the symbol for commander, not the symbol for captain, which is actually four stripes. I don't know how this has been flying under the radar for so long. We know of politicians that lie about their military service, but I don't think we've ever encountered a cartoon character which has lied like this."
Canadians Illegally Sending Squirrels Into Quebec
"A resident of Ottawa told a newspaper that his neighbor has been secretly been trapping squirrels and driving them across a one-kilometer bridge over the Ottawa River to Quebec. Ontario law prohibits moving wildlife over one kilometer. Usually, squirrels apparently return to where they're from, but when there's water blocking them, they do not. And so they're kind of disrupting the squirrels' lives."
This Week In History: The First Female Umpire
"She goes to umpire school, they don't have any dorms for ladies, she spends the entire six-week course in a motel, then she signed a minor league and they revoked it six days later because the league found players' language "too salty" for a lady. She sued for discrimination and she won. She finally gets to play a game in 1972, she umps her first minor league game. And then she quit, because she said the other umpires wouldn't cooperate with her on the field."
Remembering 'Sopranos' star James Gandolfini
Today we remember actor James Gandolfini who died of an apparent heart attack while on vacation in Rome. "The Sopranos" star was 51 years old. Director Allen Coulter worked with Gandolfini as a producer and director on the HBO hit and he joins the show with a remembrance.