My Hero, Ed Asner

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April 2, 2011 · Posted in Commentary · Comments Off on My Hero, Ed Asner 

By LIONEL ROLFE

Twenty five years ago, my mentor and hero was a city editor of television fame. The actor’s name was Ed Asner and he played a city editor named Lou Grant, which was also the name of the television series. Asner played the role so well I came to believe he made manifest the two real editors I had worked for who taught me every thing I knew about the journalism racket.

One was a wild Irishman, Dana McGaugh, at the Livermore Independent, a small town paper in Northern California. The other was Scott Newhall, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, then the major newspaper in Northern California. Read more

Edendale: Chapter 6

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April 2, 2011 · Posted in Edendale by Phyl M. Noir · Comments Off on Edendale: Chapter 6 

Sixth Chapter of “Edendale,” Frog Town by Phyl M. Noir

 

Architectural rendering of proposed Hyperion Bridge. Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library. The Electric railway runs alongside it.

By Phyl M. Noir

Bruno Shultz followed Celia at a distance and when she turned to look at him he looked at the ground. She walked by the Frog Town houses, which were surrounded by dirt yards planted with corn and tomatoes except for the house with the carved wood Virgin bulto, and that house had a lawn.

Celia’s father Juan Lowry had returned from the war in Europe with money he won playing poker and bought Won’s on the corner of Riverside Drive and Knox before CalTrans built the Golden State in 1956, which eradicated, obliterated, razed, moved, ripped asunder, and demolished the mostly Latino Eastside near the River. The stretch of little commercial buildings except for Won’s sunk into desuetude. In 1964, CalTrans brought California Route 2 over Riverside Drive, which almost completely isolated Frogtown and surrounded it with incessant noise. Read more

Honey Drives Up Baxter in Echo Park

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April 1, 2011 · Posted in Notes from Above Ground · Comments Off on Honey Drives Up Baxter in Echo Park 


By Honey van Blossom

(Honey is a Belgian Marxist former strip-tease artiste.)

When I was very small, my grandfather drove the Stalwart Studebaker downtown. My grandparents did not call each other by their names. Each called the other My Better Half.

My grandmother pulled up my dress and had me stand on the car’s running board – which was covered in rubber matting — and held my hands and I peed in the street whenever the need arose. Read more