Keeping hope and the puppets alive: Bob Baker and his marionettes
The Bob Baker Marionette Theater is just west of downtown where I live. I had driven by the theater for years before I finally had the chance to go inside…
Radio amidst the riots: 20 years of ‘Which Way, LA?’
Twenty years ago this week, Warren Olney first sat down in the cramped studios of KCRW to host a town forum that would become Which Way, LA?. Riots and unrest…
May Day protests in downtown LA
Protesters in downtown Los Angeles converged on Pershing Square tonight as part of the May Day rallies that have been going on all day. Thousands of workers, students, immigration reform…
A new era for the Dodgers
A new chapter in Los Angeles Dodgers history begins today. Frank McCourt surrendered ownership of the team, and Guggenheim Baseball, led by Magic Johnson and incoming Dodgers President Stan Kasten,…
Surveillance, Big Brother and Rodney King
Last week we talked extensively about the LA Riots that followed the acquittal of four police officers who had beaten Rodney King. We revisited the infamous intersection of Florence and…
‘People’s Guide to Los Angeles’ goes beyond Rodeo Drive
Hollywood Boulevard. Venice Beach. Disney Hall. The La Brea Tar Pits. Universal Studios. Rodeo Drive. What do they all have in common? They’re, of course, all popular local tourist destinations…
LA Bloom: Gardens and mindfulness
Hirokazu Kosaka is a Buddhist priest and an artist, but when I visited him last week at the Japanese American Cultural Cultural and Community Center in Little Tokyo, he sounded…
Will you ride LA’s new Expo Line?
There was a grand opening over the weekend for the Expo Line, the new light rail line route connecting downtown L.A. with Culver City. There was music, dance performances, lots…
All Aboard the Expo Line
Westside commuters are getting their first chance to take rapid transit all the way downtown, but what about getting from home to the station and back and paying for parking?…
Father and son photographers remember the LA riots
“We followed the smoke.” That’s what famed L.A. photographer Gary Leonard told me when I asked him how he and his photographer son, David, covered the 1992 L.A. riots. I…
Politics Friday: 5 stories you may have missed this week
As you’ve likely noticed, we’ve been busy reflecting on the 20th anniversary of the LA Riots, but the presidential campaign has kicked into high gear. Here are some of the…
Listeners Remember: ‘It was a really scary and confusing time’
Listener Loanie Huynh Fulton remembers being eleven-years-old when the LA Riots broke out. She says, “It was a particularly tense time in terms of social interactions and in some sense…
Todd Boyd on the LA Riots, Hip Hop and Cinema
Warren talks with Professor Todd Boyd about LA culture around the time of the Rodney King riots.
The LAPD then and now
What was it like to be a Los Angeles cop back in 1992, right before the riots? What did the LAPD learn from those days of violence and fire? And…
KoreAm maps the riot damage to Korean-owned businesses
KoreAm has mapped the Korean-owned liquor stores in South Central L.A. that were targeted during the 1992 riots. While all kinds of other Korean-owned businesses around the city also suffered,…
A Southern California congressman barred from Afghanistan
A Southern California Congressman critical of U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan has now been barred from visiting that country. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) from Huntington Beach found out last week, when…
20 years of ‘Which Way, LA?’
On April 29, 1992, a Simi Valley jury acquitted four police officers charged with beating motorist Rodney King, and a tense city erupted. Some called it civil unrest, others a…
Excessive force at the border?
Over the years, I’ve reported many different stories on the U.S.-Mexico border. Not surprisingly they were often about drug trafficking and narco-violence, economics and trade, and illegal and legal immigration.…
Marking Holocaust Remembrance Day with a personal film
Gail Becker didn’t plan to make a film for public release about her 2007 family visit to Auschwitz. Her 83-year old father had been imprisoned there as a boy, and…
More damaging photos of US troops in Afghanistan
Today’s Los Angeles Times made news from LA to Washington to Kabul with pictures of American soldiers posing with the body parts of dead Afghans who apparently blew themselves up.…