LOS ANGELES
DOWNTOWN
NEWS A Sukkot dinner in Skid Row.
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A big barbeque, Pee-wee’s return, and other happenings Around Town.
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Block Party: The history and highlights of First Street in Little Tokyo.
W W W. D O W N T O W N N E W S . C O M
October 12, 2009
Volume 38, Number 41
INSIDE
Fashion Week Arrives
More Than Just a Game A Year in Skid Row’s Streetball Mecca Shows That Recovery Works In Many Ways. Just Ask OG Man by Ryan Vaillancourt staff writer
Urban Scrawl on the DWP payoff.
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Celebrating Dudamel’s Downtown debut.
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Play 4th and Long Football and win prizes.
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A new Downtown dog-walking master.
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First of a Three-Part Series he worn basketball darts from one player to the next, then lands in the hands of Sway, a feisty sharpshooter whose passion for the game is etched permanently on his face — a two-inch Nike hightop sneaker is tattooed on his left cheekbone. He’s scowling mad. After cruising to victory in the first two games of a five-game set for the championship in the league based in Gladys Park, Skid Row’s streetball mecca, Sway’s team, Da Villains, is in a deep hole in game three. Sway’s lost his touch. His shots are now clanging off the rim instead of slicing through the net. The other team in the 3-on-3 game, Liquid Halo, is led by Quik, a lanky 40-year-old gamer who makes up for his lack of youth with creativity and bullishness. He does whatever it takes to get close to the basket, spinning, leaping, hoisting the ball up with one hand. It’s not graceful, but more often than not, as the ball ping-pongs off the backboard, then dances up and down on the rim, he seems to will it to fall in. There’s no money at stake, just pride. But in this downtrodden neighborhood marred by homelessness, drugs and petty crime, this kind of simple pride is priceless. About 60 people fill the metal, high schoollike bleachers on the east side of the court. see Basketball, page 8
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photo by Gary Leonard
Every Saturday, the Skid Row 3-on-3 Streetball League takes over Gladys Park. On the surface, it’s a sporting competition. On a deeper level, it’s a vehicle to transform the vice-ridden community from the inside out.
A Healthy Place for Business Herbalife Finds That a New Headquarters at L.A. Live Works to Its Advantage by Richard Guzmán city editor
Reviewing ‘Parade’ at the Taper.
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18 CALENDAR LISTINGS 20 MAP 21 CLASSIFIEDS
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t’s not often that you see corporate employees strolling through office hallways in tank tops and shorts. Or the CEO of a company with more than $2 billion in annual sales worried about a big afternoon ping-pong match the day before he takes off on a business trip to China. But for Herbalife, it’s a typical day in Downtown Los Angeles. The nutritional supplements company has a distinct corporate culture that blends right in with its new home in the L.A. Live sports and entertainment complex. “We wanted something that would be in the epicenter of the social, entertainment and business culture in L.A., and this is it,” said Michael Johnson, the company’s CEO, referring to last year’s move of Herbalife’s corporate headquarters
from Century City to Downtown. As he spoke, he was getting ready for the company ping-pong tournament that would begin in a few hours. “When you’re sitting in a tower in Century City it’s very confined,” he said. “I like the fact that here we can open up to the outside, at night all the lights are going on. It’s a lot of fun.” Herbalife is a global, direct-sales company, though one that has generated controversy for its operating techniques. It offers nutritional products such as protein shakes and supplements through about 2 million individual distributors in approximately 70 countries. It will celebrate 30 years in business in 2010. In late 2008, the company began move-ins for a 60,000-square-foot space at L.A. Live, and it is now the second biggest tenant in the office component of the mega-project (only project developer the
Anschutz Entertainment Group occupies more office space). It has 130 employees on site and offices on half of the fourth and all of the fifth floors. Herbalife employs more than 1,000 people in Los Angeles, and has 37,500 independent distributors in the greater L.A. area. It brings thousands more distributors to the city every year for meetings and events that take place in their headquarters. Johnson described the L.A. Live campus as an “all-inclusive” venue for Herbalife. In addition to being a place for daily business, the extended complex allows them to provide dinners and special events for top distributors. “We’re using this as almost a theme park for our distributors,” Johnson said. “We tell a story about the opportunity of Herbalife and use this see Herbalife, page 12
Since 1972, an independent, locally owned and edited newspaper, go figure.