LOS ANGELES
DOWNTOWN
NEWS
13-21
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Cleantech bids, mural restoration, and other happenings Around Town.
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The readers have their say on El Pueblo and development reform.
W W W. D O W N T O W N N E W S . C O M
September 13, 2010
Volume 39, Number 37
INSIDE
Holiday Parties & Catering
Arts High School, Take Two photo by Gary Leonard
Much Has Changed, Including the Principal, at the $232 Million Downtown Campus
Next steps for the Regional Connector.
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PICK THE
PROS Show off your football-picking skills.
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After a first year that included both stumbles and progress, the keys to the $232 million arts high school have been handed to new Local District Supt. Dale Vigil (right) and principal Luis Lopez.
Famous Downtown film locations.
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by Ryan VaillancouRt staff wRiteR
F The skaters have their day.
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rom the outside, it seems the $232 million High School for the Visual and Performing Arts can’t quite find its footing. Its gestation was marred by political controversy and conflict. Designs were created then vastly reworked. The first two people offered the job of
principal turned it down. When the school finally opened last year, it was only after the Los Angeles Unified School District won a bitter, protracted battle for control of the campus over a group who felt it should be a charter school. When principal Suzanne Blake took over, she told Los Angeles Downtown News that she was shoving the school’s various controversies to the
side: “Leave me alone,” she said, voicing her message to district administrators and other stakeholders in the campus. “Stop fighting… Give me the autonomy to do this.” It turns out, the trouble hasn’t stopped. When students return to the sleek, steel-encased school on Sept. 13, they’ll be greeted by a new principal. Blake see High School, page 12
Keeping His Lens on the Dodgers Jon SooHoo Hits a Quarter Century of Photographing Los Angeles’ Baseball Team
A new look at ‘The Glass Menagerie.’
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27 CALENDAR LISTINGS 29 MAP 30 CLASSIFIEDS
by Jay beRman contRibuting wRiteR
J
on SooHoo points to a movie postersized photograph of Zack Wheat, who played for the Dodgers a century ago, that hangs in a hall near Dodger Stadium’s executive offices. “I didn’t take that picture,” SooHoo jokes of the black-and-white portrait of the Hall of Fame outfielder. No doubt. Wheat played his last game in 1927 and went off to the World Series in the Sky in 1972, when SooHoo was a Silver Lake grade schooler. But if the photo had featured Fernando Valenzuela, Kirk Gibson, Orel Hershiser, Mike Piazza or any other Dodger star of the past quarter century, chances are SooHoo would have been the
Celebrate LA Opera’s
THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO
one behind the camera. SooHoo, 48, was born in 1962, the year Dodger Stadium was completed. He became the team’s photographer in 1985 upon graduating from USC and has worked for the club ever since. He was honored in a pre-game ceremony early this month by the Dodgers. He even found himself on the other side of the camera lens when he threw out the first pitch. “I love these guys,” said SooHoo, sitting in his photo equipment-filled office a few hours before a recent home game. “It’s very much like a family.” Speaking of families, SooHoo’s has been active in Downtown Los Angeles since the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn. His grandfather, Peter SooHoo, was one of the founders see SooHoo, page 10
photo by Jon SooHoo/L.A. Dodgers
In 1988, Dodgers’ team photographer Jon Soohoo captured the hobbled Kirk Gibson as he hit the home run that won the first game of the World Series.
RIGOLETTO
25TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON!
Plácido Domingo as Pablo Neruda in IL POSTINO IL TURCO IN ITALIA
213.972.8001
LAOpera.com