LOS ANGELES
DOWNTOWN
NEWS Volume 41, Number 7
Healthcare
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A City Hall lawn makeover, Nuch runs, and other happenings Around Town.
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5
Getting the two sides of the heated argument over Downtown redistricting.
February 13, 2012
W W W. D O W N T O W N N E W S . C O M
The 14 Best Athletes in Downtown
INSIDE
Ranking Those Who Make Crowds Ooooh and Aaaah Urban Scrawl on Valentine’s Day.
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Another look at the end of the CRA.
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A famous mural is coming back.
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photos by Gary Leonard
(from left) Matt Kemp, Candace Parker, Kobe Bryant and Blake Griffin regularly thrill Downtown Los Angeles crowds. by Dave Denholm
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owntown Los Angeles is rich in many ways. While there is a lot of cash here, the area also has a wealth of restaurants, a plethora of bars and a boatload of things to do after dark. It wasn’t always this way, but it is now, and that’s a good thing. There’s another area where Downtown’s cup runneth over: exceedingly talented athletes. Given
A new theatrical family drama.
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that the Lakers, Clippers, Dodgers, Kings, Sparks and USC football team all play in the area, local workers and residents have an unparalleled opportunity to see the best. Sure, UCLA’s football team plays elsewhere, but that’s not a loss. Still, there’s a question: Who are the best of the best? With an intensive scientific process (read: I watched a lot of sports and looked up some stuff on the Internet) I’ve come up with a ranking of
The Collected Writings of Antonio Villaraigosa
A look at an early Downtown pioneer.
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Imagining the Mayor’s Post-Term Literary Pursuits
19 CALENDAR LISTINGS
by Jon Regardie executive editor
22 CLASSIFIEDS
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illaraigosa said he’s going to take a break when he leaves office in 2013, telling the class: “I want to take a time out. “I want to write,” he said. “I want to speak.” —Los Angeles Times, Jan. 30, 2012 Fiction: Excerpt from The Man With the ‘Born to
Raise Hell’ Tattoo, by Antonio Villaraigosa: After vanquishing his enemies he felt refreshed, energized. They should have known better than to THE REGARDIE REPORT
cross him, to tell him he can’t plant a million trees or move America forward fast. He looked down, their bodies on the ground limp and useless, like lutefisk that had fallen to the floor.
Downtown’s 14 best athletes, from all sports. Here they are, from bottom to top. Valuable Players 14) Anze Kopitar: Straight outta Jesenice, Slovenia, the center for the Kings has been a team leader since joining the franchise in 2006. He’s an excellent two-way player who was named the squad’s best defender in 2011, even while leading see Athletes, page 10
He took a deep breath, listened to the quiet, savored the faint odor of Listerine Breath Strips. It smelled like victory. Despite the ferocious battle not a drop of blood had splattered on his $3,000 suit. It seemed like 2005 all over again, fresh off The Inauguration, before All The Evil had begun. He placed his left hand on his right bicep where the “Born to Raise Hell” tattoo had once been. It’d been erased from his skin, but never from his mind. He felt nearly six-feet two-inches tall. But what was that sound? He recognized the click of high heels on Italian marble and the whirr of a television news camera. Instinctively he flashed the megawatt smile. She stepped from around the corner, the brunette news reporter whose hair spilled over the shoulders of her Jil Sander suit like oceans of possee Writing, page 9
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1/25/12 2:59 PM