Los Angeles magazine - March 2021

FA S H I O N F O R WA R D !

MEET THE ART WORLD’S NEW GUARD

BY MICHAEL SLENSKE

HERE’S THE BEEF

FANCY STEAK HOUSE DINNERS—DELIVERED

BY H E AT H E R P L AT T

TRUE BLUE

THE TAO OF TOMMY LASORDA

BY J E S S E KAT Z

Is Gavin Newsom

Blowing It? WITH THE RECALL G A I N I N G ST E A M , C A L I F O R N I A’ S G OV E R N O R IS FIGHTING FOR HIS POLITICAL LIFE. CAN HIS C A R E E R S U RV I V E T H E PA N D E M I C ?

BY PETER KIEFER

$5.95 MARCH 2021 L A M AG .CO M

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MARCH 2021

T H E N E W S C H O OL

L.A.’s artful insurgents are ready for their close-up.

Features 56

Gavin Newsom’s Last Shot?

Dining out during lockdowns.

Fumbling the vaccine rollout. With a recall effort gaining steam, California’s once-golden governor is fighting for his political life

BY PETER KIEFER

64

A Spring Awakening in Art and Fashion After a turbulent year, a brash brigade of iconoclastic Angelenos is (stylishly) taking the art world by storm

74

Blue Blood Even if you didn’t care about the Dodgers, you knew the late Tommy Lasorda’s name.

It’s now permanently tattooed on L.A.’s heart B Y J E S S E K AT Z

BY MICHAEL SLENSKE

4 L A M AG . C O M

P H O T O G R A P H E D BY M AG NU S U N NA R

Buzz

MARCH 2021

LIFE AFTER KOBE

» As Angelenos and fans around the world continue to mourn, the story of Kobe Bryant’s life and death off the court is still being written.

BY KATE PICKERT PAGE 13

THE BRIEF

» Even stormier skies for Michael Avenatti; Can Trump get an agent? Plus, PR/ER: Expert advice for Armie Hammer PAGE 16

LOVE AND ROCKETS

B OR N I N L . A .

See’s Candies, which started as a sweet storefront on Western Avenue, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

» Elon Musk’s sister, Tosca Musk, is on a mission to radically reinvent the Hollywood romance.

BY MAUREEN HARRINGTON PAGE 18

Column LIVING OUT LOUD

» Decades before the Kardashians, Pat Loud painfully pulled herself from the wreckage of America’s first reality TV show—PBS’s controversial An American Family—and emerged as a mentor and den mother to the city’s most famous misfits.

BY DAVID A. KEEPS PAGE 52

Ask Chris

The Inside Guide » Comic Jermaine Fowler comes to America, and actress

Anjelica Huston throws pots. PLUS: soups to warm your soul, perfectly cooked steaks that really deliver, the latest in fitness tech, and adventures in virtual nightlife PAG E 2 1 P H O T O G R A P H E D BY C O R I NA M A R I E H OW E L L

6 L A M AG . C O M

» What happened to the movie star mural adjacent to the Hollywood Hustler store? How do I properly dispose of my American flag in L.A.? Our resident historian answers all your burning questions.

BY CHRIS NICHOLS PAGE 88

ON THE COVER Photograph/Photo Illustration

by Corina Marie Howell Produced by Walrus Stylist Linda Immediato Set designer Ava Jones Hair and makeup Romie Macedo Model Charles Farrell Clothing Louis Vuitton suit, shirt, and tie at louisvuitton.com

PROMOTION

Maer Roshan

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Merle Ginsberg, Jason McGahan

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Mary Franz, Otavio Rabelo CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Alexandria Abramian, Christopher Beam, Alex Bhattacharji, Alex Ben Block, Steven Blum, Samuel Braslow, Susan Campos, Rene Chun, Heidi Siegmund Cuda, Matt Dickinson, Ben Ehrenreich, Steve Erickson, Sarah Horne Grose, Annabelle Gurwitch, Kennedy Hill, Robert Ito, Eliyahu Kamisher, Peter Kiefer, Heather Platt, Jon Regardie, Jordan Riefe, Allen Salkin, Paul Schrodt, Alex Scordelis, Michael Slenske, Bryan Smith, Joel Stein, Benjamin Svetkey, Jean Trinh, Andy Wang, Sam Wasson, Rex Weiner, Jeff Weiss, Laurie Winer, Emily Young CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Shayan Asgharnia, Elisabeth Caren, Andrea D’Agosto, Dominic Bugatto, Ben Duggan, Christina Gandolfo, Jill Greenberg, Corina Marie, Max-o-matic, Slava Mogutin, Kyle David Moreno, Elliott Morgan, Chris Morris, Catherine Opie, Jason Raish, Edel Rodriguez, Matt Sayles, Jason Schneider, Ryan Schude, Ian Spanier, Brian Taylor, Isak Tiner, John Tsiavis, Christian Witkin EDITORIAL INTERNS Alexandra Brown Chang, Grace Jaeger, Mason DePaco

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L A M AG . C O M 9

Editor’s Note

BY MAER ROSHAN

NO, THAT’S NOT the real Gavin Newsom blowing a bubble on this month’s cover. We did invite the governor to pose for this issue, but it turns out he’s not in a particularly photogenic mood. Which is understandable, given the cascading catastrophes, natural and otherwise, piling up on his desk. So we found a look-alike, slipped him a pack of gum, and set our photographer loose in a photo studio in Culver City.

Astute readers may recognize our inspiration—the famous poster for the classic 1972 movie The Candidate. That Oscar-winning film, penned by Eugene McCarthy’s old speechwriter, was about a handsome young politician named Bill McKay (played

by Robert Redford) who’s recruited to run for Senate against an unbeatable Republican. (This was 50 years ago, when the GOP still won elections in California.) Since there’s no way he can win, McKay is assured that he can run a completely honest campaign, spreading his progressive gospel without compromise.

10 L A M AG . C O M

“Isn’t it a little bit odd that of all 50 governors, Newsom ends up being the only one in imminent danger of losing his job?”

It’s not hard to see the similarities between McKay and Newsom: both come from well-connected California families; both are idealistic progressives; both, frankly, are very hot. But as Peter Kiefer reports in his cover story, Newsom is a far more complicated character than he’s often portrayed—and he’s facing the most daunting set of challenges any California governor has ever confronted.

When he sailed into office in 2018, the governor was hailed as a future White House contender. Two years later, as the state struggles to contain a deadly pandemic and its calamitous economic fallout, he’s barely holding on to his job; in the past several months, his opponents have collected hundreds of thousands of signatures in an effort to throw him out of office. Granted, the recall push may have started with a bunch of wing nuts—Proud Boys, Three Percenters, anti-vaxxers—but it’s lately been catching on with regular folk, like small business owners crushed by the shutdowns, parents of kids who’ve forgotten what a classroom looks like, and countless others with genuine grievances.

The on-again-off-again social distancing regulations, the sputtering vaccine rollout, boneheaded PR blunders (like Newsom’s career-defining decision to attend a party at French Laundry a week after announcing yet another lockdown)—there’s a lot to be upset about.

The Trump administration deserves much of the blame for our current dysfunction. But it’s also true that Newsom is a victim of his own expectations. Because he projected an image of a talented, ultracompetent technocrat, people counted on him to have a better handle on the pandemic and the state’s myriad other problems. Whether his failure to get a grip on all those issues merits his removal from office is, of course, a matter for the voters to decide. But isn’t it a little bit odd that of all 50 governors, Newsom ends up being the only one in imminent danger of losing his job?

At the end of The Candidate, Redford’s character defies the odds and wins the election.

In one of the seminal scenes of ’70s cinema, a stunned McKay finds himself being dragged into a throng of adoring followers and looks back at his campaign manager with panic in his eyes. “What do we do now?” he says.

No doubt Newsom is asking himself that same question.

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @MAERROSHAN

Maer Roshan, Editor-in-Chief P H O T O G R A P H E D BY C O R I NA M A R I E H OW E L L

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SA LVATO R E L A P O R TA / KO N T R O L A B / L I G H T R O C K E T V I A G E T T Y I M AG E S

A spate of lawsuits following Bryant’s devastating death have done little to diminish the athlete’s enduring legend.

Life After Kobe

AS ANGELENOS AND FANS AROUND THE WORLD CONTINUE TO MOURN, THE STORY OF KOBE BRYANT’S LIFE AND DEATH OFF THE COURT IS STILL BEING WRITTEN B Y K AT E P I C K E R T

P H O T O G R A P H Y BY SA LVAT O R E L A P O RTA

L A M AG . C O M 13

POSTSCRIPT

O

N E Y E A R A F T E R his

death, Kobe Bryant is still in Los Angeles.

He’s on the corner of East 4th and Seaton downtown. At Crenshaw and MLK. On the back wall of Tweedy Medical Group in South Gate.

Along Ocean Front Walk in Venice.

According to a website tracking murals of the Laker great, most of which were painted after he and his daughter Gianna (“Gigi”) died in a January 2020 helicopter crash, there are 437 public artworks dedicated to Bryant.

The Lakers’ 2020 NBA Championship rings include tributes to the Black Mamba. A gold version of the snake encircles each player’s number. Hidden compartments inside the hulking gold, amethyst, and diamond rings contain images of the team’s retired jerseys—Bryant’s are the only ones in black. Bryant will never be forgotten, especially in Los Angeles, but the story of his death and life off the court is still being written.

As Bryant’s fans continue to mourn, his oldest daughter, Natalia, is preparing for college. Five months after her father died, his youngest daughter, a snow-tubing trip. Here they are celCapri, turned one. His other surviving ebrating Bianka’s birthday with an daughter, Bianka, is now four. Meanover-the-top Cinderella-themed parwhile, as she single-parents her way ty. Here is the family of four, down through the grief, Bryant’s wife, Vanfrom six, dressed in black and draped essa, is embroiled in at least three maacross a white sofa at Christmastime. jor lawsuits, two related to the crash And always, amid the posts of family that killed her husband, daughter, and celebrations, phoand seven others, and tos of Kobe and Gigi. one involving an ugly fiThe crash of the luxnancial dispute with her When he died ury helicopter carrying mother. at 41, Bryant Bryant and Gigi, which For the most part, slammed into a CalaVanessa has not spowas well into basas hillside at nearken to the press about his second ly 200 miles an hour, her loss or legal battles. act, eager for was still under invesInstead, she releases tigation at press time, the occasional statechallenges with a final National ment, defers to her army beyond pro Transportation Safety of lawyers, and leaves sports.

Board report scheduled those curious about the to be released FebruBryant family’s well-beary 9. Preliminary finding to search for clues ings ruled out mechanical failure and on her Instagram account. As with found that pilot Ara Zobayan was somany feeds on the platform, most imber at the time of the crash. Bryant ages belie the truth—in this case, of took many trips on the chopper, trava close-knit clan devastated by trageling between his home in Orange edy. Here is the family cracking up on

14 L A M AG . C O M

County and games at Staples Center.

So associated was Bryant with the aircraft, that the night of his final home game as a Laker, fans sitting courtside received a Kobe action figure that transformed into a remote-controlled helicopter.

The Sikorsky S-76B that Bryant chartered was built in 1991 and lacked what’s known as a terrain awareness warning system. The technology alerts the pilot when the helicopter flies too close to the ground. Shortly before the crash, Zobayan, possibly disoriented in a cloud bank, radioed air traffic controllers that the helicopter was ascending, when, in fact, it was speeding into a hillside.

In February 2020, Vanessa filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Zobayan’s estate and Island Express, which operated the helicopter. The suit claims that Zobayan, who had flown Bryant for years, had been previously cited for flying in unsafe conditions, and that Island Express lacked a proper policy for canceling

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R E NA I SS A NC E M A N Clockwise from opposite: Before his death in the helicopter crash that also killed daughter Gianna, Bryant, seen at an American Film Institute event in 2016, was transitioning to a career in media; Vanessa Bryant, daughters Natalia and Gianna, and her mother, Sofia Laine, at a Lakers game; Capri Bryant, nine months after her father’s death; Vanessa, Bryant, and infant Natalia; Bryant arrives in Manilla, 2009; Michael Jordan at a Bryant memorial.

flights due to weather. Family members of the seven others killed in the crash have sued on similar grounds.

In response, Island Express filed a complaint alleging that two air traffic controllers were liable.

“The hours after the crash were filled with confusion,” Vanessa’s lawyers wrote in a suit she has filed against the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department. As photographers and onlookers rushed to the crash site, Vanessa met with Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva. Authorities closed roads and imposed a no-fly zone at her request.

But some deputies couldn’t resist snapping cell-phone pictures of the wreckage and, reportedly, the remains of victims. According to TMZ, a sheriff ’s trainee at a bar, wanting to impress a woman, flashed photos of the crash site he had on his cell phone. A

disgusted bartender reported the unseemly behavior to authorities.

The sheriff ’s department announced it had identified eight deputies who had taken photographs and launched an internal investigation.

But in her lawsuit alleging invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress, Vanessa said a cover-up was underway. Indeed, a few months earlier, the union representing sheriff ’s deputies filed a court order to prevent the internal investigation from becoming public. As the one-year anniversary of the crash approached, Governor Gavin Newsom’s “Kobe Bryant Law,” which prohibits first responders from taking personal photos at crime scenes, went into effect.

As those legal battles played out in court, Vanessa suddenly found herself engaged in a skirmish much closer to home. Last December, her 68-year-old

mother, Sofia Laine, sued her for financial support. In court documents filed in California, Laine said that she had worked as an unpaid “longtime personal assistant and nanny” for the family, adding that before his death Kobe had promised to take care of her “for the rest of her life.” Instead, Laine charged, after her son-in-law’s death, that “Vanessa took each and every step she could to void and cancel all of Kobe Bryant’s promises.”

The suit compelled Vanessa to issue a rare public response. In a statement, she accused her estranged mother of extortion and said she had supported her for more than 20 years. “She now wants to backcharge me $96 per hour for supposedly working 12 hours a day for 18 years for watching her grandchildren,” she stated. “My husband never promised my mother anything. He would be so disappointed in her behavior and lack of empathy.”

Amid the legal tussling, Bryant’s legend continues to soar. By the time he died at 41, the ballplayer was well into his second act. He left the court eager for challenges beyond professional sports. He invested in an energy drink company and cofounded a venture capital firm, but his passion was a media production company called Granity, which he launched in 2016. The studio produced a documentary about Bryant’s career and an Oscar-winning short film based on a letter Bryant wrote about basketball.

But in addition to these vanity projects, Granity also created children’s content. The Punies is a podcast about a group of adventurous neighborhood kids. There is also a series of young adult fantasy novels, the last of which debuted in December.

In a television interview two months before his death, Bryant was asked how he wanted to be remembered 50 years into the future. “As a person that was able to create stories that inspired children and families to bond,” he replied. His then three-yearold daughter, Bianka, he pointed out, had never seen him play basketball.

“In her mind, Dad is just a person that puts out stories,” he said. “If I’m doing everything right, that’s what will happen.”

L A M AG . C O M 15

N E WS & N OT E S F R O M A L L OV E R

The Brief Stormy Daniels and Avenatti attend the 2019 Adult Video News Awards.

MICHAEL AVENATTI GETS READY FOR A REALLY STORMY 2021 WHILE THE DISGRACED ATTORNEY FILES CONTINUANCES FOR HIS THREE FELONY CONVICTIONS, HIS FORMER BUSINESS PARTNERS AND WIVES MAY FACE LEGAL WOES, TOO

BY MEGHANN CUNIFF

up facing significant financial consequences.

There are approximately 20 federal bankruptcy actions against Avenatti associates for between $48,000 and $2.2 million.

The legal maneuvering is part of a broad attempt by a court-appointed trustee, Orange County lawyer Richard Marshack, to recover allegedly misspent money that might otherwise go toward paying off The once-ubiquitous Avenatti’s law debts. lawyer is quietly hiding out firm’s Some of the at a pal’s Venice home. actions target people and businesses for coronavirus concerns. whose only transgression But while he has secured may have been accepting about a dozen continuances money from Avenatti when for his three criminal cases, they weren’t sure of its Avenatti’s former business origins. A lawyer for partners, attorneys, and three of the accused, Christopher L. Blank wives are in legal hot water of Newport Beach, said themselves. Each could end AFTER A

spectacular 15-minutes-of-fame crash-and-burn that included serious talk of a U.S. presidential bid, high-flying Los Angeles lawyer and three-time convicted felon Michael Avenatti enjoyed a quiet 2020 confined to a friend’s Venice home after a judge ruled that he could be temporarily freed from jail

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violating the terms of his release by using a computer belonging to Manheimer to access the internet.

“He’s been very uncharacteristically quiet during the time he’s been in home confinement, and I’m sure that’s been painful for him,” says Los Angeles attorney and legal commentator Ken White, who has sparred with Avenatti on Twitter.

Avenatti’s attorney, H. Dean Steward, said that he and Avenatti “have decided to remain low-profile,” and that his client has “been flawless at home.” He adds, “We’re seriously considering a bail-reconsideration motion to allow him to move about and at least come down and visit his lawyer.”

CAN DONALD TRUMP GET AN AGENT? T H E S C R E E N AC T O R S

Guild may have forced Donald Trump’s resignation, but that doesn’t mean 45 is out of options to milk his overly dramatis persona. Ex-presidents pull in wads of cash for book advances and speaking fees, and the twice-impeached insurrectionist could still launch his own network, digital newsletter, or podcast.

But he’d need the services of a Hollywood YO U ’ R E FIRED!

Trump mugging for the camera in front of his Turnberry Resort.

STO R M Y DA N I E L S , M I C H A E L AV E N AT T I : E T H A N M I L L E R /G E T T Y I M AG E S ; T R U M P : K E N N Y S M I T H / PA I M AG E S V I A G E T T Y I M AG E S ; B U S E N E SS P E O P L E : G E T T Y I M AG E S / I STO C K P H OTO

DAT E N I G H T

his clients are “innocent business people . . . who should not be expected to police how [Avenatti’s firm, Eagan Avenatti] ran their business.”

The proceedings add more unflattering details to the downfall of a debt-strapped Southern California attorney who rose to national prominence suing President Trump on behalf of porn star Stormy Daniels. Cable news stars frequently gave him significant airtime without mentioning his financial troubles. Then came Avenatti’s highprofile arrest in March 2019 outside the Manhattan offices of Nike’s lawyers on charges that he was extorting the running shoe giant. He also faces an avalanche of criminal charges that accuse him of stealing millions from clients, including Daniels.

Avenatti has denied all the accusations and says he’s a victim of political persecution.

Now, from his friend Jay Manheimer’s home in Venice, Avenatti is distracted by his divorce from his second ex-wife, Lisa Storie Avenatti. In October, a judge granted his request for weekly visitations with his 6-year-old son.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors are seeking to jail him for

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superagent to do so. At the moment, it’s unclear if any big agency would sign him.

CAA insists it will have nothing to do with ex-Trump officials, but that doesn’t mean other agencies won’t sign them on the down low. Trump was repped by golf buddy Ari Emanuel, cochief exec of WME, for his Apprentice deals. WME also stepped in and purchased the Miss Universe contest when Trump had to dump it.

“There’s a lot of money in politicians now,” a UTA agent tells Los Angeles.

“In the Trump age, politics morphed into the new reality TV show. Political stars get big social media numbers; actors aren’t the cash cows they once were. We go out and recruit political stars, present and future, though it’s a lot easier to rep Democrats than Republicans.”

There’s some precedent for secretive post-POTUS

ambassador Susan Rice, as well as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

UTA reps Trump cybersecurity expert Chris Krebs and Trump turncoat Anthony Scaramucci, as well as former Ohio Governor John Kasich and Stacey Abrams. When

she’s not working to flip Georgia, Abrams is a prolific romance writer; her ninth book is out in May. New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang is also said to be sniffing around for a book contract.

TV-ready Trumpers like Kellyanne Conway and Nikki Haley will likely wind up with lucrative deals. Santa Monica’s Stephen Miller will not.

What Dems are agencies courting? “Everybody wants AOC!” says a WME source. “Women on college campuses are obsessed with her.” Pete Buttigieg was on CAA’s radar for two years before

SPEAK TO THEIR AGENTS

Anthony Scaramucci Agency UTA

Susan Rice Agency CAA

signings. When Barack Obama exited office in 2016, CAA superagent Bryan Lourd is said to

have advised him, paving the way for both he and Michelle Obama to land lucrative Netflix and book deals. CAA now reps hot, young politicos like Beto O’Rourke, former U.N.

Beto O’Rourke Agency CAA

Stacey Abrams Agency UTA

Barack Obama Agency CAA

he signed on. Dr. Fauci, when he’s less busy, has tons of opportunities, as do Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Georgia’s against-the-odds Democratic senators. And if he gets recalled, Gavin Newsom will be the new Katie Hill.”

P

R E

R

82 million

HOW ARMIE HAMMER CAN SURVIVE HIS CANNIBAL CRISIS

L

et’s say you’re a celebrity in deep media doo-doo. Hollywood crisis PR managers are standing by to smooth over college admissions scandals, doughnut-licking scandals, even the most tawdry sex scandals. Still, how to massage the bizarre allegations against Armie Hammer from ex-paramours? The actor’s career has been in free fall after the New York Post published a series of text messages in which Ham-

HAMMER TIME

An actor’s unspinnable gaffe?

mer mused about drinking his ex-girlfriend’s blood and eating one of her ribs. Hammer called the accusations “spurious” and “bullshit.” That didn’t stop WME from dropping him in February or, according to Variety, getting him exiled from two highprofile projects, The Offer and Shotgun Wedding. Hammer’s attorney insists the allegations were created “with the goal of tarnishing” his client’s reputation. Can he bounce back? We asked some of the town’s top spin doctors to weigh in. > Howard Bragman, La Brea Media: “Armie could do what celebrities usually do when they get into trouble—go into rehab; but in his case, the ultimate L.A rehab: you go in a carnivore and come out a vegan. More seriously, he could point out that all these stories were pushed by the New York Post, which isn’t exactly a trusted news source. I think the only time he addressed it, he said it must be a joke—

which was the right way to go.

Armie needs to go far away from press for a while.

And I wouldn’t serve ribs at his next junket.” > Ross Johnson, Johnson Public Relations: “I think its really important for him to directly address this issue. Maybe he should come out and declare, “I’m not a cannibal.” As a performer, he’s a distressed property right now; his agent needs to drop his per-movie quote for a while. I’m sure a lot of producers are calling about that right now! I don’t think Armie’s getting canceled—his brand is probably salvageable— but the low-ballers are coming out. I’d say to him, ‘You gotta calm your act down. Shut down all your social media accounts! Don’t do any press for 30 days. And you might want to rethink serious sex scenes right now.’” > Prominent L.A. crisis manager who asked not to be ID’d: “The first thing with Armie is, if any of these allegations are true, he needs to get help, pronto.

I would say to him, ‘Unless you’re committed to getting psychological help, I can’t help you.’ Sex addiction is one thing, it’s another to abuse partners.

If he says, ‘All of these stories are bullshit’ and turns out to be lying, all his credibility will be gone. He will get caught—no one can outsmart Google. If he agreed to get help, I’d put a statement out: ‘Armie recognizes he was out of control.

He’s sorry he caused pain.’ I’d also call a criminal lawyer to find out if he might need one.

Now, if he gets help, after a few months I’d give the recovery story to a very legitimate outlet like the New York Times. The public is very forgiving of an illness—not so much a transgression. He has to recognize the bad example he’s set as a public figure.” — M .G .

—MERLE GINSBERG L A M A G . C O M 1)

Buzz

THE INDUSTRY

Love and Rockets HER BROTHER HAS ALREADY TRANSFORMED AUTOS AND SPACE TRAVEL. NOW FILMMAKER TOSCA MUSK IS ON A MISSION TO RADICALLY REINVENT THE HOLLYWOOD ROMANCE

W

H E N T O S C A M U S K was a girl in South

Africa, she and her mother, Maye, would snuggle on the couch on Sunday afternoons and watch romantic movies. Filled as they were with beautiful people in exotic locales, the films were a salve for Maye, who had fled an abusive marriage, taking her three small children—Tosca and her older brothers, Kimbal and future phenom Elon—first to Durban, a South African seaside town, and eventually to Canada.

For Tosca, those afternoons seeded her ambition and developed her taste in movies.

Even as a child, it bothered her that most romances were filmed from the male point of view. She thought she could do better.

Three years ago, with two partners since departed, Musk founded Passionflix, a streaming service and production company that films and distributes movies based on best-selling romance novels. Musk’s business model taps the most lucrative genre in book publishing—romance’s 29 million readers have shown a strong affinity for filmed versions of their favorite bodice rippers and turned Fifty Shades of Grey into a blockbuster movie franchise that has grossed $1.3 billion worldwide.

Like its source material, Passionflix content is unashamedly erotic. It rates its movies on a “barometer of naughtiness” and offers short films dubbed “quickies.” “The women in my movies enjoy sex,” Musk says, sitting in her PA S S I O N P L AY E R

Tosca Musk’s Passionflix produces low-cost film versions of best-selling romance novels like Sylvain Reynard’s Gabriel’s Inferno series.

18 L A M AG . C O M

bare-bones office in Playa Vista.

The 46-year-old single mother of twins taught herself to shoot with a video camera while still in high school. “I knew since I was young that I wanted to make movies,” Musk says. “I worked at a movie studio in Toronto during the summers when I was in college studying film.”

Musk moved to L.A. in 1999 and eventually picked up work directing modest productions, including Holiday Engagement, a hit for the Hallmark Channel. Tired of making movies that didn’t interest her, she started pitching the concept that would become Passionflix to venture capitalists; when one VC told her a romance-only streamer wouldn’t fly, Musk targeted individual investors—Christina Aguilara bit, as did Norman and Lyn Lear—until she had raised $500,000.

Most Passionflix movies cost under a million dollars, are shot in 15 days, and don’t cast big-name actors. That was partly the attraction for Drew Wilson, CFO of First Look, a collection of streaming channels based in New York, which bought a majority stake in Passionflix. “You don’t need millions of subscribers if you’re doing things on a budget,” Wilson says. He adds that niche customers are especially loyal. “Very few join for a month and quit to try something else. This audience is passionate,” he says.

Musk retains control of the company, which operates on a lean budget with only four full-time employees and a culture of creative cost control— in Passionflix’s Gabriel’s Inferno, the Tesla driven by the hero is Musk’s own. Asked if Elon is an investor, Tosca smiles and says diplomatically, “If I say yes, then people assume he funded me totally. If I say no, they think he doesn’t think this is a good idea.

Both of my brothers and my mother support me.”

In any event, the frothy Passionflix canon would seem especially timely amid a relentless pandemic and its associated distress. “We all need an escape,” says Musk. “Sometimes our own lives are dark, and to see love succeed on-screen gives us respite and hope.”

TOS C A M U S K : L E O N B E N N E T T/G E T T Y I M AG E S ; P O ST E R : CO U RT E SY PASS I O N F L I X

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03.21 THE

Inside Guide

P O D CASTS

Nerd Play

WHETHER SHE’S CHATTING UP RESEARCHERS WHO’VE DEVOTED THEMSELVES TO CONDORS OR CLOUDS, OLOGIES HOST ALIE WARD IS MAKING WEIRD SCIENCE WONDERFULLY ENTERTAINING

BY ROB E RT I T O

Plus > Meet Jermaine Fowler: the hilarious breakout star of Coming 2 America PAGE 24

> The city’s hottest soups for those vaguely chilly days PAGE 34

> Anjelica Houston takes the wheel—in the pottery studio PAGE 40

P H O T O G R A P H E D BY M AT H I E U YO U NG

L A M AG . C O M 2 1

P

PODCASTS

E OPL E W HO S T U DY mollusks are malacolo-

gists. If you spend your life studying moss (and, yes, there are people who do), you’re a bryologist.

Gelotologists study laughter, while condorologists study, you guessed it, condors. But what do you call someone who makes a study of people who study?

We call her Alie Ward, the preternaturally inquisitive, never boring host of Ologies. On every episode of her weekly podcast, the 44-year-old Eagle Rock resident interviews an expert laboring in a scientific field you have probably never heard of. The result: strangely transfixing shows about the ins and outs of, say, timepieces or sewer rats, alongside deep dives into the lives and geeky loves of some of the world’s most dedicated—albeit hyperfocused—scientists. “One of my favorite parts of doing the show is finding the experts,” says Ward. “Every time I connect with one, it feels like a crush texted me back. It’s like, ‘Oh, my God, I got an email back from the rat guy.’ ” Ward’s obsession with all things scientific began when she got a toy microscope for Christmas at the age of nine.

“I’m the youngest of three girls, and I think my parents really rolled the dice hoping for a boy,” she says. She went on to study biology and film at San Francisco State. “I was really torn between wanting to be a scientist and wanting to do something creative,” she says.

After graduation, she moved to L.A., where she’s pursued various passions, working as an actress (Nash Bridges), illustrator (L. A. Weekly), food show host (Tripping Out with Alie & Georgia on the Cooking Channel), and science journalist on shows like the CW’s Did I Mention Invention? and CBS’s The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation with Mo Rocca. For the last show, she recently received her second Daytime Emmy, but it’s Ologies that’s gained her the most fervent of fans.

QUICK ST U DY

Alie Ward’s Ologies is one of Apple’s top science podcasts.

22 L A M AG . C O M

Ward first came up with the idea for the podcast in 2002, when she was searching the internet to see if there was a science of curiosity—“curiology,” maybe? As it turns out, curiology is actually the study of writing with pictures, but the quest led her to an online list of “ologies” posted on a Geocities website. “I was like, ‘Nephology is the study of clouds,’ ” she says. “ ‘Who gets to study clouds?!’ I thought it was fascinating. Because for every one of these ologies, there is at least one person who has dedicated their life to this. Who are they?

Why do they love it? What do they know that we don’t?”

The podcast launched in 2017 and has since become wildly popular among scientists, doctoral candidates, and amateur science geeks, with more than 110,000 followers on Instagram. “The community of ‘ologites,’ as they call themselves, are so fucking cool,” Ward says. “And they’re the kind of smart that’s not like an elitist intellectual but just really curious about the world.” The show recently crossed the 50-million-downloads threshold, and is usually among the top three science podcasts on Apple.

“Every time I connect with an expert, it feels like a crush texted me back. It’s like, ‘Oh, my God, I got an email back from the rat guy.’”

“Why would someone want to listen to an hour and 15 minutes about snails?” she asks. “But, then, before you know it, they’re thinking, ‘Wow, it’s so weird that every snail I see in California is here because of the Gold Rush.’

Or, ‘Gosh, it’s so weird to think that all these slugs are hermaphroditic and that snails shoot love darts at each other.’ ” Although Ward makes the gig look easy, it’s anything but.

It’s a rare interviewer who can pull compelling stories out of scientists without the whole thing lapsing into jargon, let alone make a 90-minute exploration of “urban rodentology” sing. “One of the things that opens people up is asking them when they first got interested in something, and taking them in that wayback machine and connecting them to their passion,” she says.

Many guests are locals, like the Natural History Museum’s Jann Vendetti, the ologist devoted to snails and slugs, and Mindy Romero, a political sociologist at USC. Guests are also often women and scientists of color. “We have a lot of images of white guys in lab coats, and that’s not who scientists are,” she says. “It’s not who scientists can be. I think that’s part of my mission, too: to quietly disrupt the imagery of a scientist.”

After four years and more than 130 shows, Ward is nowhere near running out of ologies or ologists. She’s still hoping to do episodes on bats, pinnipeds (aka seals), skunks—and the singular scientists who study them.

“I love giving people a window into appreciating life on planet Earth,” she says, “in a way that just makes everyday life more interesting.”

R O BY N VO N SWA N K

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M OV I E S

A Fresh Prince

FOR RISING FUNNY MAN JERMAINE FOWLER, PLAYING THE SON OF EDDIE MURPHY'S AFRICAN MONARCH IN COMING 2 AMERICA WAS A DREAM COME TRUE

BY ALEX SCORDELIS

T

THE TO-DO LIST

“He asked me what I thought the best comedy special ever is,” Fowler says. “I thought that it was a trick question, because it’s Richard Pryor: Live in Concert. But I’m in Eddie’s house, so I had to tell him my second favorite, which is Eddie Murphy: Delirious. He goes, ‘Really? ’Cause I think it’s Richard Pryor: Live in Concert.’ I’m like, ‘Fuck!’

I told Arsenio that story and he said, ‘Hey, look, Eddie’s always going to admire the truth.’ ” Unlike Murphy, who left standup comedy behind to pursue acting, Fowler says stand-up will always be a part of his artistic expression. “I performed a couple of weeks ago at a parking garage in Van Nuys,” he says of the COVIDsafe show. “It was pretty awkward.

But I was just happy to be outside,

N E X T I N L I N E T O T H E T H RON E

Amazon's Coming 2 America with Eddie Murphy (left) and Fowler (top and right) is out March 5.

performing again. This is not a hobby for me."

In addition to more stand-up, Fowler has a dream project in mind for the future.

“I hope one day that there’ll be a proper Richard Pryor biopic,” he says of the comedy legend who, yes, made the greatest stand-up special ever. “That’s a role you’ve got to get right, and I’d love to play him.”

Fowler pauses, and then adds, “And, of course, Eddie should play his dad.”

Your March cultural agenda

WAT C H

LISTEN

SEE

COOK

READ

› A cast and crew lousy with talent—Cynthia Erivo, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright SuzanLori Parks, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard—tell the Queen of Soul's story with Genius: Aretha. The eight-part limited series debuts on National Geographic March 21.

› Love her, hate her, or love to hate her—you can’t ignore a Lana Del Rey (left) record. Her longdelayed seventh album, Chemtrails over the Country Club, drops March 19. Trigger warning: it includes a Joni Mitchell cover.

› David Hockney had a more productive quarantine than you did. The longtime L.A. resident spent the months painting at his second home, a seventeenth-century French cottage. The fruits of his labor can be seen in David Hockney: My Normandy at L.A. Louver from March 19 to May 1.

› Catch the Geffen Playhouse's Bollywood Kitchen before it closes March 6. The Zoom show features filmmaker/cookbook author Sri Rao reminiscing about Bollywood while preparing an Indian meal. Ticketholders can opt to have ingredients sent to them so they can cook along at home.

› The Committed, is the sequel to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prizewinning 2015 novel, The Sympathizer. Out March 2, it follows a nameless French-Vietnamese immigrant and government mole living in a Paris populated by left-wing intellectuals and junkies.

24 L A M AG . C O M

—J O R DA N R I E F E

J E R M A I N E FOW L E R : M Y L E S LO F T I N ; S I D E B A R : G E T T Y I M AG E S

H I N K O F Y O U R favorite movie from childhood. Now imagine you’re on-screen next to those iconic characters. That’s what happened to Jermaine Fowler, who stars alongside Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall in Coming 2 America, the sequel to the 1988 comedy classic.

“Coming to America was a movie I watched every day when I was a kid,” says 32-year-old Fowler, a Maryland native who now lives in Sherman Oaks.

“I would quote it in school, in church.”

The sequel, which hits Amazon Prime Video on March 5, tells the story of Prince Akeem (Murphy) returning to America to find a son he didn’t know he had, a street-smart New Yorker named Lavelle (Fowler). Arsenio Hall reprises his role as Semmi, Akeem’s sidekick.

“Being on that movie set was extremely surreal,” Fowler says. “Eddie and Arsenio have such a great rapport and history. Sometimes I’d forget I had a line because I was watching and admiring Eddie in his zone. It felt like I was dreaming.”

Like Murphy, Fowler got his start doing stand-up comedy and has been performing onstage for 15 years. When the young actor met the legend, the two immediately started talking about their comedy idols.

The Inside Guide

BOOKS

T H E W R I T E R’S L I F E

Gurwitch’s fifth book, You’re Leaving When?

Adventures in Downward Mobility, is out March 2 from Counterpoint Press.

Picture Imperfect NH: You write about your relationship with your kid, Ezra. Do you run what you’re writing by them first?

AG: Yes. When I decided to write about adapting to my child’s evolving gender identity and finding their backpack stuffed with plastic baggies of weed—the internationally recognized symbol of “I’m selling drugs”— I had to ask their permission.

NH: I was at a dinner one night and there was that moment when the check came that crystalized the idea for the film. Everyone had different levels of financial security, and we could all feel it: “Who’s going to pick up the check?”

I find money very interesting in that it reveals many dichotomies in people.

AG: In this book, I write about buying a discounted ticket on Kayak that turned out to be an unfilled seat on a private jet.

I’m ethically opposed to flying private, and yet flying swaddled in luxury was so intoxicating For more of that I was ready to sell an this Q&A, go to lamag.com/ organ on the black market culturefiles in order to avoid ever again flying out of LAX, which is the Penn Station of airports. That does not fit with the story I tell myself about who I am and what I stand for.

NH: I hurt someone once with something I wrote, and I was surprised. It didn’t occur to me that it would have that effect. I can’t imagine my life without my girlfriends. I laughed out loud reading about the friends buying a row of tiny houses together.

NH: But I bet there was no line for the ladies room at the private hub?

AG: Yes, and there were fresh flowers on the vanity. So if I’m ever found in a bathtub full of ice, missing a kidney, please tell my family that the tipping point was the fresh flowers in the bathrooms.

FOR WRITER ANNABELLE GURWITCH AND FILMMAKER NICOLE HOLOFCENER, BEING WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE ISN’T ALL CASHMERE AND KITCHEN RENOVATIONS. THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT MAKES THEIR WORK SO INTERESTING

I

N A N NA BEL L E GU RW I TCH’S

life, t here a re no Hot t ie McHandsomes or tropical island getaways. Instead, in her new collection of essays, You’re Leaving When? Adventures in Downward Mobility, Gurwitch, 59, writes with hilarious poignancy about tackling midlife malaise on a budget. Director Nicole Holofcener, 60, has also made a career of chronicling the complexities of women’s lives in films like Enough Said and Friends with Money. Here, the two longtime Angelenos talk.

Nicole Holofcener: I love how open you are on topics like vaginal atrophy.

But I wondered, “Is Annabelle worried about ever dating again?”

Anabelle Gurwitch: I think many men imagine themselves licensed

26 L A M AG . C O M

EMTs in vaginal resuscitation, so they’ll be undeterred. But we shall see.

JAS O N R OT H E N B E R G

AG: It’s never going to happen, right?

What location would be convenient so we’d all be located near our children?

And what about our friends who don’t have children? Why shouldn’t someone’s fondness for a particular Shake Shack have the same weight as someone else’s proximity to their kids? And will we find it in ourselves to accommodate someone’s annoying habits? And by “someone,” I mean me. There’s also the uncomfortable question of will our finances separate us? You addressed this in Friends with Money. Was that film based on an incident in your life?

The Inside Guide

HAPPENINGS

Get a Virtual Life

FEELING MORE CLAUSTROPHOBIC THAN COZY IN YOUR BUBBLE? CHECK OUT THESE EXCITING IMMERSIVE SOIREES, AND JOIN THE PARTY FROM YOUR COUCH B Y D A K O TA K I M

Eschaton This virtual club invites you to spend Saturday night hopping from Zoom room to Zoom room and take in everything from a regal drag queen blaring “I Will Survive” to a neonclad DJ playing house beats to a voluptuous burlesque beauty contorting her body about. Come in your wildest getup, drink in hand, ready to dance. > HOW IT WORKS Buy your tickets ($13-$23 at chorusproductions.com) in advance, and you’ll receive a Zoom link that’ll let you into the club, which is live for 60 minutes. During the event, code words will pop up on the page, allowing you to hop from room to room. > WHO YOU MIGHT ENCOUNTER

Hamilton creator LinManuel Miranda; nightlife notables stuck at home.

> REAL-WORLD EQUIVALENT

Exploring all the dark little corners of Koreatown’s Break Room 86 and dancing with a different stranger in each nook. > UPCOMING DATES March 6, 13, 20, 27.

The Place You Once Forgot Created by L.A.’s Ladybug & Leviathan, this playful bit of immersive theater was a hit in real life at the 28 L A M AG . C O M

2019 Edinburgh Fringe. It’s now a virtual experience that involves both an oldfashioned phone call and a Zoom session that lead participants through a series of whimsical stories and activities meant to conjure a sense of childlike wonder. To say more would be spoiling the fun. > HOW IT WORKS At press time, Ladybug & Leviathan hadn’t released dates for upcoming events, but ticketing information should be posted soon on the company’s Instagram (@ladybugandleviathan). When it’s showtime, have a phone and a computer at the ready. Things kick off with a chatty call from a character. > WHO YOU MIGHT ENCOUNTER

Your childhood imaginary friend. > REAL-WORLD EQUIVALENT

Watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with your shrink on molly. > UPCOMING DATES TBD.

Dr. Crumb’s School for Disobedient Pets Two former Pixar employees have created a 50-minute virtual-reality game that sends players on a mission to infiltrate the lab of a mad scientist who’s been holding pets captive.

Participants work together to solve a series of puzzles. > HOW IT WORKS Dr. Crumb’s

is designed for two to four players and requires everyone have a VR headset.

Teams purchase tickets ($99 per group at adventurelab.fun) for a specific time, and everyone receives an email with an app to download. At the appointed hour, participants put on their headsets and select avatars. A live improv actor guides everyone through the adventure. > WHO YOU MIGHT ENCOUNTER

Your most tech savvy friends; your nephew, whom you’re always trying to convince you’re cool.

> REAL-WORLD EQUIVALENT

An escape room, with a comedian as your cluemaster. > UPCOMING DATES It’s ongoing. Book at will.

At Home with Rhinestone Gorilla Rhinestone Gorilla is an irreverent performance group founded by Jenny Weinbloom, the former executive producer of Santa Fe’s famed Meow Wolf art collective.

The company’s video series featuring puppets, Claymation, and original songs—a sort of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, if Pee-wee were a gang of art-school students gone awry. Episode-premiere parties feature a live-chat beforehand and games after. > HOW IT WORKS Buy tickets ($5 at rhinestonegorilla .com), and you’ll get an email with instructions to join the party. > WHO YOU MIGHT ENCOUNTER

That girl who sat in the

I L LU S T R AT I O N BY D O M I N I C BU GAT T O

N OW P L AY I N G

Shamrock ‘n’ Roll If humans are to evolve as a species, one of the things we must do is get past the impulse to play Ed Sheeran’s “Galway Girl” on St. Patrick’s Day. When March 17 comes around this year, avoid the clichés with this selection of alternative tracks from the Emerald Isle.

Róisín Murphy—“Murphy’s Law” Dua Lipa was the undisputed disco queen of 2020, but Murphy was a close second with her Róisín Machine album, which features this slick standout.

Fontaines D.C.—“A Hero’s Death” Here’s a taut, moody, critically acclaimed post-punk track from Dublin’s finest young rock group.

Pillow Queens—“Handsome Wife” The sound of R.E.M. and early Radiohead have been channeled into a chest-burstingly cathartic queer anthem. Who doesn’t want that?

Inhaler—“When It Breaks” Well, of course, the band that has Bono’s son as the lead singer sounds a little bit like U2. But Elijah Hewson and his pals are quickly developing their own propulsive spin on stadium-ready rock.

JC Stewart—“Break My Heart” This Northern Irish singer-songwriter’s Insta bio describes him as “Professional Sad Boy.” He’s no wallflower, though; when he hits you with the feels, he hits hard.

back of your college feminist and queer theory class. > REAL-WORLD EQUIVALENT

Sesame Street, but with burlesque stars. > UPCOMING DATES March 4, April 1 and 29.

P L AY L I ST: G E T T Y I M AG E S ; P I L LOW Q U E E N S : FAO L Á N C A R E Y

Ghost Ship

Gather six to ten friends (remotely) and choose from five murder-mystery stories, among them a mafia plot and a Bacheloresque reality show where the stud gets offed. Using Gather—a video-calling platform that’s similar to Zoom but allows for more side conversations and easy interraction—guests assemble in a virtual “room” to play whodunit. > HOW IT WORKS Book your

mystery ($30 a person at ghostshipmurdermysteries. com), and await an email containing a character list and notification of who the murderer is. When it’s time to party, guests log in and are greeted by a Ghost Ship rep, who provides clues and instructions throughout the event. The plot plays out over two hours, with costumed guests lying and cheating to advance their character’s arc and solve the crime. > REAL-WORLD EQUIVALENT

High school drama club. > WHO YOU MIGHT ENCOUNTER

Overly dramatic, overdressed versions of your nearest and dearest. > UPCOMING DATES It’s ongoing.

Come whenever the spirit moves you.

Niall Horan—“No Judgement” Harry Styles is winning the post-One Direction solo-career race by a distance, but don’t sleep on Niall Horan. This is just one of many great low-key pop bops in his arsenal.

My Bloody Valentine—“Sometimes” We know them as unarguable indie-rock pioneers but, at least once a year, we should also tip our hats to the Irish roots of the band’s frontman, Kevin Shields, and drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig.

The Cranberries—“Dreams” If only for its referencing of Ireland’s political strife, “Zombie” is usually the one Cranberries jam that gets a spin on St. Patrick’s Day. But “Dreams” is way more fun, and it’s featured several times on the fabulous Derry Girls sitcom (now streaming on Netflix).

Lankum—“The Wild Rover” If you really feel like going back to the old country, then why not do it with Lankum’s beautifully melancholic take on what is usually performed as a rowdy drinking song.

L A M AG . C O M 29

The Inside Guide

MIXED MEDIA

Third Acts DENZEL WASHINGTON’S THE LITTLE THINGS, WONG KAR-WAI’S LONG-AWAITED WORLD, AND MICHAEL APTED’S BID FOR IMMORTALITY B Y S T E V E E R I C K S O N

look like his; at the end of In the Mood, one of its lost lovers whispers a secret into a hole in a temple wall. Wong’s work is distilled in that moment—a cinema of secrets never quite heard but viewed in every frame of every film. At his most ambitious, Wong’s worldview is at once deeply personal and historic in scope, played out in his hometown of Hong Kong—a city as ghost ship looking for its port.

Movie lovers have been anticipating World of Wong Kar-wai, Criterion’s new box set (March 23; $160), for so long that they’ve gotten downright cranky. But now it’s finally out and worth the wait, lavish and sumptuous in the way of Wong’s movies, including 2046’s Blu-ray remaster and a particularly special bonus: The Hand, an hour-long picture with Gong Li as a courtesan in decline, as heartbreaking and gorgeous as Gong herself. With commentary by Sofia Coppola, Rian Johnson, and author Jonathan Lethem—and stellar notes by critic John Powers—the home-media release of the year is here, and it’s barely spring.

O O O O

F OR A F I L M M A K E R who wasn’t ON E OF T H E three great-

est English-speaking actors of the last quarter century (along with Meryl Streep and Daniel Day-Lewis), Denzel Washington has been a movie star matched by few contemporaries, and certainly the most significant African American star since Sidney Poitier. Washington is one of the rare actors—Black or white—who can carry a picture, and the result is a canny mix of work both commercially embraced and critically acclaimed: The Hurricane, Philadelphia, Crimson Tide, American Gangster, Inside Man, Flight, Devil in a Blue Dress, Glory, Training Day, and particularly Malcolm X, one of the towering performances in all American cinema.

With 70 on the not-so-distant horizon, Washington settles into his craft and, to his credit, disdains roles that would pretend he’s 20 years younger.

The Little Things, which premiered simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max as part of Warner Bros.’s contro30 L A M AG . C O M

versial new release strategy, begins as a routine thriller that turns into a psychological character study marked by moral ambivalence. It offers the satisfaction of watching an actor who never makes a false move intermingling with two leading lights of the next generation, Rami Malek and Jared Leto, the latter becoming so adept at playing creeps that he’d better watch out, or typecasting beckons.

Washington continues to bring it all: smarts and intensity, charisma and complexity, discipline and surprise.

His final act to come may be the most fascinating yet.

O O O O

A T H I S PI N N AC L E , Wong Kar-wai was the most exciting filmmaker in the world and the great romantic of cinema. That peak came with 2000’s In the Mood for Love and its sequel, 2046, in which Wong’s prevailing theme—love thwarted and unrequited—was expressed most obsessively.

Nobody has ever made movies that

a household name, the nerve struck by the passing of 79-year-old British director Michael Apted is remarkable.

Coming out of TV and documentary, Apted wasn’t a stylist like Wong; he made his straightforward perspective a virtue in the tradition of John Huston, his best movies, from Gorillas in the Mist to Gorky Park and, particularly, Coal Miner’s Daughter, handsomely composed while still having a youare-there quality. But Apted’s bid for immortality is Up, the series of nine films that followed roughly a dozen real people over the course of half a century, beginning when they were seven years old in the 1960s. Apted was a crucial assistant on the first film—he chose the children—and directed all the others. This was more than a gimmick, functioning as riveting commentary on social class and the extent to which our destinies are hardwired. Up routinely appears—along with Wong’s In the Mood—on lists of the greatest movies of all time, and would itself be the makings of a must-have Criterion box.

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W H E R E T O E AT N O W

New & Notable Shiku D OW N T OW N O This Grand Central Mar-

Raising the Steaks WITH ITS OWN FLEET OF DRIVERS, SPECIALLY DESIGNED PACKAGING, AND WAGYU RIB EYES , A LUXE NEW DELIVERY CONCEPT IS TAKING TAKEOUT UP A NOTCH B Y H E AT H E R P L AT T

E

V E N B E F O R E T H E pandemic, at the right temperature.

Paul Abramowitz was often disMeals are delivered in a large canvas bag satisfied with delivery meals. filled with black boxes of beautifully plated “Everything came in cardboard food. A jumbo-shrimp cocktail garnished boxes or in plastic clamshells. It with delicate flower petals ($29) arrives was always cold,” says the 65-year-old entreprechilled and undisturbed in a chic ceramic neur. So he teamed up with esteemed chef Robbowl. Sauces ($5) and sides ($19 to $39), like ert Allen Sulatycky to launch the Finishing creamy, scalloped russet potatoes with basil, Gourmet, a new delivery concept that aims to are presented warm in elegant glass jars. bring the steakhouse experience home.

USDA Prime and American Wagyu steaks “To develop a recipe that your team prepares ($69 to $139) must be seared for a minute on the line and a server serves to a table 25 feet on each side, yielding a perfectly cooked rib away is very different from developing a receye or filet. Meals even include a heavy steak ipe that is going to be served 25 knife to keep, and, if you order minutes or 25 miles away,” says creme brûlé, a torch to caraSulatycky, 57, who coached Team melize it before digging in.

USA in the Bocuse d’Or culinary Though the pandemic was competition. a cat alyst for launch ing , The company deploys a fleet Abramowitz and Sulatycky are of eight vans with friendly drivconfident that at-home dining ers to ferry meals anywhere isn’t going anywhere anytime within 15 miles of the 90038 zip soon. “This is here forever. We code, the Hollywood area where needed to create a new category the kitchen is based. (Diners can in food delivery,” says Abramoalso opt to pick up meals, but witz. “We’ve raised the bar.” 911 B OX OF T R I C K S delivery is preferred.) CustomN. Sycamore Ave., Hollywood, Steaks and sauces are thoughtdesigned packaging keeps food thefinishinggourmet.com. fully presented for delivery.

3 2 L A M AG . C O M

Oste B E V E R LY G R OV E O After a lengthy delay,

this pizza spot has at last opened in the former Little Next Door space. The focus is on the Romanstyle flatbreads known as pinsa. They’re made with a blend of wheat, rice, and soy flours, rendering them lighter—and, supposedly, healthier—than other types of pizza. The restaurant will eventually offer a more extensive menu with pasta and various proteins for dine-in. 8142 W. 3rd St., ostelosangeles.com.

Fellow Traveler W E S T H O L LY WO O D O Rick Arline, the former

wine director at the late, great Auburn, has opened his own spot that’s inspired by the lively wine bars of Paris, such as Septime and La Buvette. Grab charcuterie plates and truffled porcini dip to go or via DoorDash, and enjoy an exciting array of natural wines.

Arline is also looking to bring more attention to Black winemakers with the bottles he sells.

631 N. La Cienega Blvd.

—HAILEY EBER

J O H N T R OX E L L

FIRE IT UP

The Finishing Gourmet’s steaks come cooked, but require a quick sear before serving.

ket newcomer is from the same team behind Baroo, the beloved, fermentation-focused restaurant.

The menu is full of crowdpleasing Korean comfort foods, including kalbi, fried chicken, and a rotating selection of banchan. There’s also an array of pantry items on offer, from roasted bamboo salt to perilla oil. 317 S. Broadway, shikulosangeles.com.

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R E S TA U R A N T S

Souper Bowl Champs WHEN IT COMES TO COMFORTING, HEALING NOURISHMENT, A GOOD SOUP IS AS CLOSE TO A SURE BET AS IT GETS. FROM A GREAT GUMBO TO A FABULOUS FRENCH ONION, HERE ARE THE BIGGEST WINNERS AROUND TOWN B Y A N D Y WA N G

D O B I N C H OW D E R T H E B R O T H E R S S US H I > Mark Okuda’s brilliant riff on dobin mushi (a dashi-driven seafood soup usually made with mushrooms) and New England clam chowder is a oneof-a-kind L.A. spectacle. This creamy and luxurious soup includes clams, fish, and shrimp, and there’s the option of upgrading to king crab. $16, 21418 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills, thebrotherssushi.com.

34 L A M AG . C O M

F R E NC H O N I O N S O U P PETIT TROIS > Ludo Lefebvre’s expertly calibrated combination of big flavors and contrasting textures—gooey Emmental and Gruyère cheese atop crunchy toasted bread and veal stock with caramelized onions—is classic bistro bliss. $17, 718 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood, and 13705 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, petittrois.com.

P O R K - B E L LY G A L B I TA NG S P O O N BY H > A symphony of broths—beef bone, pork bone, and vegetable—are combined in Yoonjin Hwang’s rich and revelatory short-rib soup, which is poured over beautifully unctuous pork belly. This modern Korean masterpiece, available as a regular special, comes with both rice and noodles— because why not lap up as much comfort as possible all at once? $22, 7158 Beverly Blvd., Fairfax, spoonbyh.com.

CHILI H E R I TAG E B A R B E C U E > Whether you consider chili a soup, stew, or its own entity, it’s worth the trek to San Juan Capistrano for a smoky bowl made with brisket burnt ends, rib tips, and sausages. The chili mixes well with the restaurant’s Velveeta-free queso, which you can also just slurp up with a spoon at this point in humanity. $12, 31721 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano, heritagecraftbbq.com.

B I R R I A C O NS O M M É L.A. BIRRIA > This slow-cooked beef consommé, powered by five different chiles, plus garlic, onion, cinnamon, oregano, bay leaves, and more, is the definition of soul-warming whether you sip it, gulp it, or dip crunchy tacos in it. There’s also birria ramen with the consommé as a base, if you’re feeling mischievous. $1.50-$13, 2190 W. Washington Blvd., Ste. E, Harvard Heights, losangelesbirria.com.

GUMBO A DA M’S G E T D OW N G U M B O > This unique gumbo, which involves cooking roux until it’s deeply dark, is simultaneously smokier and less greasy than what you expect from a Cajun dish. It’s loaded with chicken and andouille sausage, and there’s a pleasant hit of palate-jolting bitterness. Available at several farmers’ markets. $13, getdowngumbo.com.

TA I Y U Z U SHIO RAMEN IKI RAMEN > This sea bream ramen is the standout dish at a freestyle noodle shop that also excels at pork, beef, and vegan ramen. Yuzu adds refreshing brightness and a citrusy tang to a clean but umami-rich broth, which is made with fish bones. $15, 740 S. Western Ave., Ste. 116. Koreatown, ikiramen.com.

LAKSA CASSIA > Bryant Ng deftly balances spiciness, sweetness, creaminess, and funk in his hearty Singaporean-style coconut-and-seafood soup with thick rice noodles. This is a soup that truly eats like a meal. $24, 1314 7th St., Santa Monica, cassiala.com.

M AT Z O B A L L S O U P B R E N T ’S D E L I > A big fluffy matzo ball is served atop chicken noodle soup for a genuinely restorative double dose of nourishment, respite, and nostalgic pleasure. $9.25, 19565 Parthenia St., Northridge; and 2799 Townsgate Road, Westlake Village, brentsdeli.com.

RHODE ISLAND C L E A R C H OW D E R C O N N I E & T E D ’S > Chopped clams, potatoes, and salt pork take center stage in this creamfree, tomato-free chowder. You can get it by itself or, if you also crave more common chowders, as part of a trio with New England and Manhattan varieties. $7-$11, 8171 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, connieandteds.com.

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L A M AG . C O M 35

The Inside Guide

DESSERTS

California Sweet

A CENTURY AFTER IT LAUNCHED FROM A WESTERN AVENUE STOREFRONT, SEE’S CANDIES REMAINS TRUE TO ITS ORIGINAL RECIPES— WITH A FEW TASTY TWEAKS

BY HAILEY EBER

I F I T ’ S D E L I C I O US , why change it? This year marks See’s Candies 100th anniversary,

and the recipes for many of its most popular treats, such as the milk-chocolate-covered Butterscotch Square, have changed little since a widow named Mary See first whipped them up in the Pasadena home she shared with her son, Charles, and his family. “Most of our candy does date back to Mary’s recipes,” says See’s CEO and president, Pat Egan. The company opened its first location on Western Avenue in 1921, and this year the confectioner is celebrating with a centennial assortment box ($15.50) packed by hand—as all See’s candies still are—with its most iconic goodies, including the unique rectangular Lollypops and the top seller, the Scotchmallow. But the company, which now makes it candies in factories in both L.A. and San Francisco, is also changing with the times. Customers are increasingly demanding dark chocolate, and See’s recently offered up a richer version of the Butterscotch Square for a limited time. “I heard it over and over: ‘Just put dark chocolate on the Butterscotch Square, and we’d love it,’ ” Egan says. “I would expect that, in the long term, we will have it on our shelves and as a regular piece.” Various locations, sees.com.

36 L A M AG . C O M

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M A R K E T WAT C H

I C A N’ T B E L I E V E I T ’S NO T B E E F

Swap Meat

AFTER SCORING A $250,000 DEAL ON SHARK TANK, JENNY GOLDFARB AND HER PLANT-BASED SANDWICH MEATS WERE POISED TO BE THE NEXT BIG THING ON RESTAURANT MENUS. THEN COVID HIT. B Y S T A C Y S U AYA

IN FEBRUARY 2020, 39-year-old entrepreneur Jenny Goldfarb was rocketing toward vegan stardom: Unreal Deli, the brand of sliceable “corned beef” she invented in her tiny home kitchen in Woodland Hills, had been on Shark Tank a few months prior, and “shark” and Dallas Maver-

A G O OD ’ W I C H

Right: Goldfarb with her vegan “meat.”

Above: Her great-grandfather Morris Gross (center) at his New York deli.

38 L A M AG . C O M

icks owner Mark Cuban had invested a quarter of a million dollars in the company. Goldfarb was doing a brisk business, selling the product to a number of restaurants—including Mendocino Farms, Veggie Grill, and Factor’s Famous Deli—for meatless Reuben sandwiches. Plus, she’d just landed a huge deal with Quiznos to supply the fast-food chain with 27,000 pounds of product. “All my dreams were coming true,” says Goldfarb, who previously worked in tech and then was a stay-at-home mom.

But, when COVID hit, everything fell apart. Quiznos canceled its order, and Goldfarb’s father contracted the virus.

He spent 28 days on a ventilator in a Florida hospital, and doctors told Goldfarb and her mother to prepare for hospice. “It was beyond devastating,” she recalls. She and her father were close; he served as her business mentor—his grandfather had

owned a deli in New York—and encouraged her to merge her passion for veganism with the family biz.

Never one to give up, Goldfarb called Cuban for advice last April. He urged her to dramatically change her business model and pivot from selling to restaurants to supplying supermarkets for retail sales. “Hearing it from him gave me the chutzpah to reach out to grocery stores,’ ” she says.

Unreal is now stocked in 152 Southern California Ralphs and selling quite well. This past January, Goldfarb launched a sliceable “turkey loaf” made from wheat, white beans, whole celery, onions, and nutritional yeast. “It tastes like succulent, mouthwatering turkey, sliced right off the bird,” she enthuses, “minus the bird.”

The shift to retail isn’t the only successful turnaround in Goldfarb’s life. After receiving plasma therapy, her father survived and recently started walking without assistance.

Meanwhile, she’s back in business with Quiznos, which is offering a limited-time-only meatless menu, featuring a new vegan egg salad sandwich she created. She’s also working on an ersatz roast beef.

Goldfarb says, “I want to show the world that all the finest deli products can be made of plants.”

CO U RT E SY O F U N R E A L D E L I

A reuben made with Unreal Deli’s “corned beef.”

PROMOTION

PRESENTED BY

1

2

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Whiskey Kits

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HOME FRONT W H E E L OF F ORT U N E

Hollywood Bowls FOR HER NEXT ROLE, ACADEMY AWARD WINNER AND PART-TIME POTTER ANJELICA HUSTON ISN’T AFRAID TO GET HER HANDS DIRTY

BY MERLE GINSBERG

I

N H E R decades-long career, Anjelica Huston has taken on many roles—film actress, fashion model, and author of a hit book.

Now the Academy Award winner has added a few unlikely credits to her resume, including farmer, sculptor, and potter.

For much of her life, Huston shied away from pursuing pottery because sculpture was the province of her late-husband, artist Robert Graham, known for his monumental bronze nudes. “I never dared do anything like this when Bob was alive,” she says. “This was his sacred ground.

He had no idea I had this interest— and maybe I didn’t until recently.”

40 L A M AG . C O M

Graham died in 2008, but it wasn’t until 2016 that Huston decided to try her hand at throwing pots and sculpting figurines. “I’ve always had a fascination with clay,” she says, “but it takes at least three years to be good on the wheel. So I started making bowls and these little clay ladies inspired by a yoga class. There’s something really nice about how women stretch before yoga—it’s very ballet. So I started doing their portraits.

Then suddenly I had

this accumulation. So I thought, ‘Give them as presents.’”

Huston’s collection of simple, oneof-a-kind bowls and figures eventually became so large that two years ago she decided to sell her wares at a small party at the Pamela Barish boutique in Venice. “That was the first night I sold anything, and I sold out!” says Huston. “I always get a little exhilarated when I sell something. It’s not like feedback for a role that’s part of a large group project; this is something I create myself, alone. I’m not sure it’s ‘art’; I’d say it’s craft bordering on art.”

Huston’s pieces fly off the shelves as fast as she can make them. They’re coated in glazes that she mixes herself—shades of pistachio, cream, and pale salmon—and they’re intentionally imperfect.

One of her collectors is filmmaker Wes Anderson, who’s directed her in The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and the upcoming The French Dispatch. “Wes bought one of my girls and two bowls!

He’s a babe. I’m only the narrator in The French Dispatch, but, trust me, it’s great, intricate, pure Wes. “But now, with the pandemic, pottery and figures is what I’m doing.

Am I like Demi Moore in Ghost? Well, kinda. More like Grandma Moses— older, but no less enthusiastic.”

Huston is happy to let her pieces go. “They were all stacked up in my cabinet, and the girls needed an airing. Some friends are buying, and some people I don’t know, which is even nicer. As I’ve always said, we just have to go on with the business of living. Be with people we love. This is it, after all— this is what we have now.”

Huston’s latest collection—part of an online art show called 20 Women 20 Bowls—is available at pamelabarish.com.

P OT T E RY: PA M E L A B A R I S H ; A N J E L I C A H U STO N : M A I TA L SA B B A N

Huston took up pottery after the death of her husband, sculptor Robert Graham.

Her ceramic collections now sell out as soon as they appear. But she’s not exactly Demi Moore in Ghost, Huston jokes. “More like Grandma Moses—older, but no less enthusiastic.” Below: Huston at the Maital Ceramic Studio; some of her clay figurines are inspired by women warming up for yoga class.

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GADGETS

Spying on Yourself THE NEWEST WAVE OF FITNESS GADGETS GOES BEYOND COUNTING STEPS TO TRACK EVERYTHING FROM FAT TO FEAR TO FERTILITY B Y A N D R E W D U B B I N S

O N D E R I N G H O W your stomach

is handling that In-N-Out Double Double you wolfed down for lunch? Wonder no more—there’s now a device that keeps track of your digestive system’s food absorption capabilities. Also, gizmos that monitor your sleep patterns, your heart rate, your blood-oxygen levels, even your posture. In fact, there are so many personal surveillance gadgets on the market these days, it’s downright stressful deciding which to plug into your body. Fortunately, there’s a device that measures anxiety, too.

I N F EC T I O N S

This futuristic ring—designed by a Finnish start-up—made headlines after researchers at UC San Francisco and UC San Diego suggested that the Oura might be useful in flagging infectious illnesses, like Covid-19, by monitoring body temperature and heart rate with tiny sensors. But that’s just scratching the surface of what this high-tech bling can do: it also tracks calorie burn, sleep patterns, activity rates, and respiratory rhythms. $299 at oura.com.

42 L A M AG . C O M

T H E WO R KS D I G E ST I O N

After you’ve finished feasting, simply breathe into Food Marble’s portable Aire device and an app will tell you how much damage you’re doing to your colon, or at least track how well you’re absorbing what you eat.

Another diet-related device, the Tellspec, lets you scan your food with a spectrometer, sends that data to its “analysis engine” in the cloud, then beams back a report to your iPhone. The whole process takes about ten seconds, just enough time to shove another Twinkie into your mouth. $159 at foodmarble.com. $1,999 at tellspec.com.

Apple stuffs so many high-tech features into its latest Series 6 smartwatch, you can practically launch a SpaceX rocket with it. Along with a pulse oximeter, there’s an altimeter—so hikers and skiers can track their elevation—and an ECG for do-it-yourself electrocardiograms. This watch is quite literally a life saver. Starting at $399 at apple.com.

F I T N E SS

Devices that merely count steps?

So 2000 and late. The new Venu SQ smartwatch does everything but wash your gym clothes. Heart rate, respiration, hydration, blood-oxygen levels—it tracks them all. Plus, it pings motivational messages: “Put that cookie down!” $200 at garmin.com.

ST R E SS P O ST U R E

Why bother balancing a book on your head when you can strap an Upright Go device onto your upper back? It delivers a vibrating zap whenever its biosensors detect slouching, sort of like those electronic dog collars that keep Spot from straying. $80 at uprightpose.com.

Pandemic got you down?

Worried about your job?

Find out just how triggered you really are with the Pip, a small egg-shaped device that, when you hold it between your thumb and index finger, reads your sweat and other vitals to determine your stress level in any given situation. Companion apps teach you how to soothe all that tension. $150 at thepip.com.

HEART

Just 30 seconds with the KardiaMobile 6L will tell you everything you need to know about your favorite organ (well, maybe second favorite). Just lightly place your fingertips on the pocket-sized device and it will display your heart rhythm, allowing you to detect atrial fibrillation and other conditions. $89 at Alivecor.com.

SLEEP

Exactly why this sleep monitoring bracelet is waterproof is anyone’s guess—in case you drift off in the bathtub? But Whoop not only tracks your bedtime habits, it recommends ideal times to call it a night, recommends the exact number of hours of shut-eye you’ll need, and keeps tabs on your heart and respiratory rates. $30 at whoop.com.

FERTILITY

Another bracelet, but this one is designed to help with other bedtime activities. Ava’s fertility sensor collects data—skin temperature, pulse, heart rhythm, blood circulation, breathing rates—to help you identify the optimum time to try for a baby. $279 at avawomen.com.

MOOD

Amazon is already collecting data on your shopping habits, taste in books and movies, and grocery choices. Now it wants to know how you feel. The Halo bracelet listens in on your conversations to measure your voice’s timber for signs of irritability, fear, or joy. Pair it with your cell-phone camera and as a bonus it will create a 3D scan of your body fat. Yes, that’s right, soon-to-be-ex-CEO Jeff Bezos now wants your underwear pics, too. $99 at amazon.com.

PHO TO GRAPH BY KYLE MORE NO

The Inside Guide

M A N C AV E

Eat, Sway, Love

Cold Comfort In 2020, we all felt a little “frozen in carbonite”—trapped in our homes, inert, separated from friends and family.

But as this Han Solo mini-fridge reminds us, carbonite is only temporary. Loved ones (like Luke, Leia, and Chewy) will be waiting for us on the other side with a warm hug and a cold brewsky. $130 at desertcart.us.

Think of it as a hanging La-Z-Boy. Relax, eat a sandwich, read a book, or play Among Us on your iPad as you gently swing in your man hammock. $60 at Patio Umbrella Store, 323 S. Rosemead Blvd., Pasadena, or patioumbrellastore.com.

Bull’s Eye No man cave is complete without a dart board—especially since your significant other would never let you put it in the living room. Somebody’s gonna lose an eye with that thing! $329 at wineenthusiast .com

Secret Passages Visitors may be surprised to see a bookshelf in your man cave—until you hinge it open to reveal a secret room or closet.

Fill the space with items forbidden by your spouse (or to protect your most prized possessions from your children), such as rare action figures, those exorbitant new golf clubs, or autographed sports memorabilia. We won’t tell if you don’t. $1,582 at wayfair.com.

Where The Boys Are

THE MAN CAVE IS BACK! OR MAYBE IT NEVER WENT AWAY. BUT MORE AND MORE MEN ARE RETREATING TO THEIR BASEMENTS. HERE’S HOW TO DO IT IN STYLE

BY ANDREW DUBBINS

M

Get Lit A X I M M AG A Z I N E . M YS PAC E . Jeans without

back pockets. They’re all remnants of a bygone era—you know, the 2000s. But there is one survivor of that ancient time: the man cave. According to the Wall Street Journal, 54 percent of American males still have an area in their homes devoted to themselves. A whopping 32 percent admitted that they’d rather spend an evening in one than on a date with their significant other. In that spirit, we scoured the planet for the latest and greatest in today’s man cave decor. All that’s missing is a wall hanging that says, “Beer: it’s what’s for dinner!”

4 4 L A M AG . C O M

Bros often get accused of not caring about the planet.

Prove the bro-haters wrong and demonstrate your commitment to recycling by tricking out your man cave with ceiling lights made from repurposed stainlesssteel beer kegs. Zal Creations lights, $350 at etsy.com.

Man Art

Scent of a Man

Pamela Anderson pinups are verboten in these woke times. But that doesn’t mean you can’t decorate your cave with cheesy posters like this fetching piece featuring a space bro chilling with a cold one on the moon. $35 at wayfair.com.

A man cave should never smell like a locker room—not even the ones at Equinox. The Teakwood & Tobacco soy-based candle by P. F. Candle company releases a BObattling scent of tobacco, leather, and teakwood. And the amber apothecary bottle looks way more upscale than a bunch of car fresheners hanging in a corner. $20 at pfcandleco.com.

Jaws Taxidermy is so passé. Swap those antlers for a set of skeletonized mandibles.

A great white shark jaw is not only a conversation starter, it’s also a wink to the ’70s blockbuster film that has kept many from swimming in open waters for decades.

They’ll add a nice aquatic touch to a surfside Venice Beach bungalow, a condo in Marina del Rey, or provide a welcome surprise in any Eastside abode. $400 at lovingcoastalliving.com.

Because It’s Here Experience the physical and mental high of climbing without the terror of falling to your death. Not only can this treadwall improve your coordination, balance, and core strength, there’s also a certain poetry to the machine’s continuously revolving face—re-creating a mountain that, like life, can never be summited. Man bun sold separately. $6,400 at brewerfitness.com.

Kickin’ It When played at the highest level, foosball is almost exactly like soccer. There’s passing, long balls, offensive attacks, and defensive strategy. The only negligible difference is that foosball, unlike soccer, can be played in your boxers and flip-flops with a Miller Lite in hand. This Red Barrel Studios coffee table subtly challenges visitors to a game of footy. Game on. $744 at wayfair.com.

L A M AG . C O M 45

The Inside Guide

H OW I G OT T H I S LO O K

The Dandy Man HIS TUNIC MAY SCREAM 2021, BUT THIS WEST ADAMS-BASED DESIGNER’S BESPOKE STYLE IS A GIFT FROM HIS GRANDFATHER B Y L I N D A I M M E D I AT O

John McDavid Lehman, fashion designer, 45 Third-generation Angeleno; former proprietor of McMarden’s Men’s Boutique; creator of local labels R.B. of McD, McMarden, and Davey Style Philosophy: » “Style is a confidence game—the ultimate candy-coated grift. On my best day, I’m a Fitzgerald daydream, a modern-day Gatsby presenting only what I want you to see. There’s also a great deal of heritage involved. The importance of tailoring and fabrication were passed down to me by my family.”

F R A M E S : I’ve worn glasses since I was 13, and I’ve always preferred a weighty frame. Tom Ford makes the perfect pair.

I can wear it all day without fatigue.

L A P E L P I N S : This handmade bouton-

niere was a gift from a dear friend.

For me, crafting a look is all about the details—knowing when to push and when to show restraint. The red popper is a bright little push.

OH, DAV E Y !

L.A.’s most buttonedup boulevardier deconstructs his signature look.

46 L A M AG . C O M

“I don’t believe fashion should be full-blown costumes, but it should, at times, be mysterious.”

SW E ATS H I R T: My handmade

streetwear line is named Davey, which is my family’s nickname for me. This sweatshirt, part of last year’s collection, is embroidered with the words, “Oh, Davey.” It was meant to be an expression, like a sigh: “Oh, Davey!” But It recently slid into heavy rotation.

T U N I C : My Korla tunic is named after the late musician Korla Pandit. He was born John Roland Redd, a fair-skinned Black dude from Missouri. But in the early ’40s, he moved to L.A. and adopted a whole new persona as a French-Indian organist from New Delhi.

My father, who’s a classically trained pianist, introduced me to Pandit. I love his story of transformation, and I often reference him in my work.

PA N T S : I designed this pant years ago

and I wear a version of it almost every day. I’m not a huge fan of belts— I hate belt loops, actually. None of my trousers have them. The glen-plaid fabric is a shout-out to my grandfather, who wore a beautifully cut glen-plaid suit whenever the sun was out, usually paired with a red sock and the heaviest of wingtips. I have most of his suits in my closet.

S O C K S : I call these tie-dye numbers

my COVID socks. I purchased a handful of off-white socks from Uniqlo a few weeks ago and got busy tying and dying. I love the process but have yet to perfect it, obviously.

S H O E S : The G. H. Bass penny loafer is not my favorite shoe, but it’s the easiest.

I’ve worn a version of this loafer since seventh grade, when I was a kid in private school. I wore them when I played basketball during lunch breaks in ’88, and now I wear them when I walk the dogs.

P H O T O G R A P H BY J O S E F JA S S O

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Icons

D AV I D A . K E E P S

Living Out Loud

DECADES BEFORE THE KARDASHIANS, PAT LOUD PAINFULLY PULLED HERSELF FROM THE WRECKAGE OF AMERICA’S FIRST REALITY TV SHOW—PBS’S CONTROVERSIAL AN AMERICAN FAMILY—AND EMERGED AS A MENTOR AND DEN MOTHER TO THE CITY’S MOST FAMOUS MISFITS

P

at Loud, the author, literary agent, television legend, pioneering LGBTQ ally, and consummate hostess—who, like a modern-day Gertrude Stein, entertained the underground and creative set in New York City and Los Angeles—left the party that she made out of life on January 10, 2021, at 94. “She passed away peacefully in her sleep of natural causes, snuggled up safe in her comfy home, attended by loving children Michele, Delilah, Kevin, and Grant,” the family announced.

Reports of her death, as Mark Twain would have said, have been greatly exaggerated: Tributes linked her appearance as the forthright, forward-thinking matriarch in the 1973 PBS documentary series An American Family to the drama-queen housewives and brainless monetizers of today’s manufactured reality TV. For those who knew Pat‚ this is a somewhat facile reduction of a multifaceted woman who offered access to her family’s life with the utmost sincerity, thinking it would be a learning experience.

5 2 L A M AG . C O M

Boy, was it ever. In the wake of An American Family—an ever-relevant cautionary tale about the distorted looking glass of the camera—Pat was viciously pilloried for unconditionally loving her unabashedly gay son, Lance, and for announcing on-camera her intention to divorce her husband, Bill. Yet as devastating as the backlash was, it by no means diminished her; Pat’s resilient life thereafter was a bold and storied adventure in which she emerged vindicated and revered.

“Pat confronted head-on the elitists and wannabe intellectuals who would try to define or manhandle

her ‘position in life,’ observes actress Diane Lane, who earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for her portrayal of Pat in the 2011 HBO film Cinema Verite, a behind-the-scenes account of the show. “She stepped into the very public challenge of selfdefinition and showed the world how to graciously stop apologizing for an authentic self and identity.” Lane adds, “The proverbial salt of the earth, Pat was insightful, kind, funny, and sexy all while being ‘Mom.’ ” Pat’s fierce maternal instincts also embraced an extended multigenerational family of artists, iconoclasts,

T H E M AT R I A RC H

Pat Loud (front center) and her family—(clockwise from left) Delilah, Grant, Bill, Kevin, Lance, Michele— hang tough at her Manhattan flat in the late 1970s.

Steeped in drama, the PBS series upended their lives, causing Lance to quip, “Television ate my family.”

degrees in world history and English literature. Two years later, she married Bill Loud in Mexico City. By 1962, they had five kids and were living in Santa Barbara in a style that allowed for culture-seeking family vacations in Europe.

In 1971, Pat met the documentary filmmaker Craig Gilbert, who namechecked anthropologist Margaret Mead to pitch a series for PBS about contemporary family life across the U.S. The Louds of Santa Barbara were to represent Southern California, but upon meeting them, Gilbert decided they would be the only subjects of An American Family. Unbeknownst to the Louds, it was a Faustian bargain that ended, in true Hollywood fashion, with a knife in their backs.

G E T T Y I M AG E S

O O O O

and outcasts. Among her celebrated chums: Andy Warhol; superstar drag queens Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis, and Candy Darling; Lily Tomlin and her partner, writer Jane Wagner; TV’s Catwoman, Julie Newmar; actors Debi Mazar and Taylor Negron; singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright; and photographer Christopher Makos.

“People felt free enough to let their hair down around her and just talk because she was so wise,” says Makos, a longtime family friend who collaborated with Pat on the 2012 book Lance Out Loud, about her eldest son. “And if you were real, she

would take you in, because she knew that she could learn from you, too.

She was the first cool mom most of us had ever known.”

Born in Eugene, Oregon, on October 4, 1926, Patricia Claire Russell was the daughter of Myrle, a nurse and homemaker, and Tom, an engineer who moved the family to Brazil and Panama for work. A brilliant student with a sly sense of humor, she wrote in her high school yearbook that her ambition was “to be the female Frank Sinatra” and her aptitude was “talking teachers into ‘A’s.” She graduated from Stanford University in 1948 with

F O R S E V E N M O N T H S , a film crew captured 300 hours of fly-on-thewall footage of the Louds. Twelve episodes of An American Family ran on PBS in early 1973, drawing 10 million viewers. I was one of them, riveted

by Pat, a witty brunette beauty with a majestic profile and arched eyebrows who favored white jeans, white-filtered cigarettes, and huge designer sunglasses.

“She was a combination of Jackie Onassis and Maria Callas with a little Liz Taylor,” Wainwright recalls. “She had innate glamour mixed with an earthy warmth.”

Most significantly, Pat clearly accepted and adored her son Lance, who, in one episode that blew my closeted 17-year-old mind, introduced her to his New York City drag queen friends at the infamous Chelsea Hotel.

“Pop culture has always given us idealized versions of love, family, and mothers,” says Timothy Young, who, in 2014, acquired the Loud family archives for the Beinecke Library at Yale where he is curator of modern L A M AG . C O M 53

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books and manuscripts. “And then her third act in West Hollywood, when along came Pat Loud, a real mother she moved into a duplex on Fountain who was living her life in front of the Avenue with Lance, who was diagcamera. She was also facilitating evnosed with HIV in 1987. That’s where I erybody’s life, and she did it dancing first experienced her immense charm backwards in high heels.” and hospitality, after commissioning In 1973, however, Pat was not celLance to write essays for Details magaebrated; she and her family were vizine in the early 1990s. ciously trolled. She fought back, pullHer gatherings, a cross section of ing back the curtain on the artifice performers and industry and media of the series and telling talk show folk, were legendary. “She knew how host Dick Cavett, “We’ve lost dignity. to mix a party as well as she knew We’ve been humiliated. Our honor is how to mix a cocktail,” recalls event at question.” and film producer Bryan Rabin, who “For the rest of her life,” says credits her with creating the theme Young, “she made sure people saw the for a legendary Oscars 75th anniverrest of the picture.” sary industry dinner. “She’d say ‘Oh, By 1974, Pat had settled in Manhatdear, come for cocktail hour,’ which tan with her daughters, Delilah and was two hours of vodka stingers and Michele, and released a frank and martinis that could make a sailor moving memoir, Pat Loud: A Wompass out. And then she would presan’s Story, the same year. “Pat was an ent a full-blown meal straight out of incredibly brave figure,” Bob Pulcini 1960s Julia Child.” and Shari Springer, the directors of Rabin marveled at her hard-won Cinema Verite, remark, wisdom. “She was ev“a twentieth-century eryone’s greatest cheerwoman full of complexleader, no matter how “She was a ities, finding her own harebrained the scheme combination voice, going through a was. And she’d say, divorce, and starting a ‘When people are mean of Jackie second act at 47.” to you, they see the light Onassis and Pat worked as a litin you that they know Maria Callas erary agent, publishing they don’t possess, so with a little The Russian Tea Room that should give you Liz Taylor.”

Cookbook and developconfidence.’ ” ing a book with clothFor Wainwright, Pat RUFUS WAINWRIGHT ing designer Rudi Gernbecame a “shamanistic reich. She amassed a figure in my world, who large circle of friends in always left me feeling fashion and fine arts (along with an supported.” He sang “Somewhere Over elegant gent who, she later discovered, the Rainbow” for Pat for the service provided drugs to the jet set) who atat the Chateau Marmont memorializtended her Upper East Side soirees. ing Lance, who passed away at age 50 That crowd mixed it up with downin 2001. “Afterward, at her house, she town denizens of Warhol’s Factory took my badly sunburned mother into and the burgeoning punk/New Wave the bathroom and gave her a makescene, a younger generation she had over,” he says, “an amazingly gracious met through Lance, who had formed thing to do for someone else in the a band, the Mumps, with childhood middle of such an emotional day.” friend Kristian Hoffman.

Abiding by their son’s dying wish, “Pat would hang out at CBGB, and Pat and her ex, Bill, reunited as houseeveryone wanted to meet her,” musimates in a cottage near Paramount cian and photographer Paul Zone reStudios until his death, at 97, in 2018. members. “Nobody thought she was a There, they hosted family get-togethsuburban mom—unless you mean in ers with their L.A.-based children— a Tim Burton movie. She was so well Delilah, a PR executive at King World, educated, never phony, and if someone CBS, and Sony; Grant, an Emmyfailed to be suitably interesting to her, winning producer on Jeopardy!; Mishe would say, ‘That guy is like shirt chele, a fashion designer at Vince; cardboard, darling.’” and Kevin, a tech entrepreneur who After a three-year intermission in lives in Arizona. They also continued London and Bath, England, Pat began to entertain casually, though always

NATALE E T H A I

C U I S I N E

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SCENE QUEEN

W E ST H O L LYWO O D : PAU L ZO N E ; CO N STA N C E A N D PAT: G E T T Y I M AG E S / PAT R I C K M C M U L L A N

Top: Loud and drag legend Constance at Chateau Marmont in 2005; outside the West Hollywood apartment she shared with her son Lance (left, with Paul Zone), who died of AIDS in 2001.

using fine china, crystal, and silver. (“That’s what it’s for!” Pat would proclaim.) To a soundtrack of Harry Nilsson, Kurt Weill, Louis Armstrong, and the Mumps, mixed with lively banter and the clink of ice in cocktails, they held court in a tiny backyard garden decorated with vines, classical busts, a midcentury-modern freestanding fireplace, and wandering cats.

“Pat commanded a room. We revolved around her like she was the sun, and once you proved you were a raconteur, you could move into her circle,” says her neighbor and selfdescribed bestie, Sharon McConoche, a PR and media consultant nearly 50 years Pat’s junior. “She believed in love, family, hope, good taste, and good manners. She did the New York Times crossword every day, quoted Teddy Roosevelt, Joseph Conrad, Gore Vidal, and Martin Luther King and could recite Tennyson’s “Ulysses” by heart,” McConoche marvels. “She’d say, ‘You have to keep sharp, girl.’ We’d work out at Curves, watch the History Channel and TCM, and see movies at the

Arclight, followed by sand dabs and martinis at Musso & Frank. And I’d always have a front-row seat for her at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.”

In turn, the always-quotable Pat taught McConoche how to resolve a communication breakdown (“You write back one sentence: ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ ”) and how to get over a disappointment (“Let it lay where Jesus flung it. Then pick yourself up, brush yourself off, put on some frosted pink lipstick, do your hair, and go for cocktails, leaving your troubles at the door.”)

Tomlin admits with a laugh that she was “terribly intimidated by such a handsome woman with a great mane of hair.” She adds: “But she just treated everyone like they were regular. I felt very at home going to her house and hanging out with her, getting sloshed and sitting close to her so I didn’t teeter. I always wanted her to like me best.”

That feeling is mutual. I’ll always remember Pat as a regal soul— adorned in white blouses and beaded necklaces and anointed with Jungle Gardenia—whose loving gaze made you feel like you were the most important person in the room.

She loved long goodbyes, but she never said them. Enfolding you in her arms in a warm, marshmallowsweet embrace, she would softly say, “I can’t wait to see you again.”

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L A M AG . C O M 55

Gavin Newsom’s

Last Shot?

Dining out during lockdowns.

Fumbling the vaccine rollout. Ùåðä Ý îáßÝèè áĞëîð ãÝåêåêã ïðáÝé California’s once-golden governor åï ğãäðåêã âëî äåï ìëèåðåßÝè èåâá

¶¶¶

BY PETER KIEFER

56 L A M AG . C O M

BRIEF SHINING MOMENT, the night of November 6,

2018, Gavin Newsom seemed invincible. More than 1,000 supporters had crammed into Exchange L.A., a nightclub located in the former Los Angeles stock-market building downtown, to cheer as he won the California gubernatorial race, a cresting moment in the midterm blue wave that swept scores of Democrats into office across the country. When the then51-year-old newly elected governor of the largest state in the union took to the stage, the roar could be heard outside on Spring Street. “It’s time to roll the credits on the politics of chaos,” he told his ecstatic followers. “The sun is rising in the west, and the arc of history is bending in our direction!”

It seemed for sure that the Resistance had found a leader worthy of the cause. Tall, handsome, Kennedy-level charismatic, Newsom was clearly a politician who could stand up to Donald Trump and who might even someday occupy the Oval Office himself. And on that chilly November evening, he had every reason to be confident about the future. Not only had he defeated Republican tax attorney John Cox in an historic rout, he was inheriting a state with a $20 billion budget surplus, a largely friendly (that is, Democratic) state legislature, an unemployment rate of just 4.8 percent, and an agenda that was among the most progressive and ambitious in the country. Climate recovery. Justice reform. Healthcare for all Californians. All seemed not just possible but tantalizingly within reach. What could possibly go wrong?

Jump cut to two years later. Exchange L.A. is shuttered— homeless encampments have sprouted on the sidewalk out front—along with tens of thousands of other businesses across California. Millions of acres across the state have been torched in wildfires. Unemployment recently soared as high as 16.4 percent (though it’s now back down to a still-lofty 9 percent). California accounts for nearly a quarter of the country’s homeless population. Racial tensions spilled onto the streets last summer, sparking weeks of protests and opportunistic looting. Then there is the coronavirus crisis, which has so far killed close to 44,000 Californians, and a botched vaccine rollout that, by some estimates, has nearly half of the state’s distributed doses still sitting in freezers. Add to all that the worst political-optics blunder since Michael Du-

58 L A M AG . C O M

IT’S PROBABLY THE last thing Newsom would want to

admit, but he and Trump have something in common—and it’s not just that his ex-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, is currently dating Donald Trump Jr. Newsom and Trump are both ultra polarizing political figures. According to recent polling, eight out of ten Republicans disapprove of Newsom’s performance

OPENER: RAY CHAVEZ/GETTY IMAGES; 1: AP PHOTO/JEFF CHIU; 2: AP PHOTO/ERIC RISBERG; 3: PATRICK T. FALLON/GETTY IMAGES; 4: MICHAEL BEZJIAN/GETTY IMAGES; 5: FREDERIC J. BROWN/GETTY IMAGES

For one

kakis sat in a tank—when Newsom was photographed at a lobbyist’s birthday party at Napa Valley’s posh French Laundry restaurant just days after he had issued a stay-at-home order—and we’re talking about a first-term disaster of biblical proportions. As his approval rating plummeted to a dismal 46 percent, things seemed so bad even Gray Davis felt sorry for the guy.

“Nobody has been dealt a tougher hand than Gavin Newsom,” Davis, the only California governor ever to be recalled by voters, said in a recent interview. “Look, I had the energy crisis and a recession. He has a pandemic we haven’t seen for 100 years. He has the fallout from that pandemic, racial injustice, wildfires, and I think I’m leaving something out.

But nobody—no living governor—has had to experience as many crises as him.”

And it looks like one more is on the way: Organizers of a push to make Newsom the second California governor to be recalled have already collected somewhere between 450,000 to 1.3 million of the required 1.5 million signatures needed to trigger a special election, which could be held as early as this fall. The recall movement is filled with QAnon conspiracists, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, anti-vaxxers, and other oncefringy MAGA-friendly groups, all itching for the chance to own one last lib as the Trump administration fades into history. But it’s also gaining steam with regular folk, too—like parents who’ve reached their wit’s end with school closures and small-business owners crushed by the lockdowns who’ve been collecting recall signatures at their shops and restaurants and posting homemade political ads for their cause on social media. If their grassroots revolution succeeds—they have until the state-mandated deadline of March 17 to collect the rest of the signatures—we may soon witness the sort of national political spectacle California excels at. The last time the state held a special election, when Davis was ousted in 2003, more than 100 candidates threw their hats into the ring, including former child actor Gary Coleman, commentator Arianna Huffington, porn star Mary Carey, and, oh, yeah, a body-builder-turned-actor named Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It couldn’t be more ironic. Of all the nation’s governors, Newsom should have been the one best-equipped to handle such a tsunami of crises. He’s a big-government proponent from a wealthy indigo-blue state, a technocrat who could bore even Al Gore with his wonky mastery of facts and policy papers. Who better to juggle the bureaucratic and logistical challenges of simultaneous health, economic, and ecological emergencies? Indeed, the pandemic could have been the opportunity of his career: If he’d handled COVID-19 and the other calamities just a bit more adroitly, it could have guaranteed Newsom’s political future and possibly catapulted him to even higher office. Instead, it may prove to be his undoing.

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THE CANDIDATE 1 Newsom celebrating his win as mayor of San Francisco in 2003. 2 Newsom with exwife, Kimberly Guilfoyle. 3 Riding the blue wave during the California primaries, Newsom with (from far left) California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, then-Senator Kamala Harris, and Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Newsom.

4 At Sundance with his children for the 2015 premiere of The Mask You Live In. 5 Greeting supporters at an election night watch party during his 2018 gubernatorial race.

¶ 5 4

as governor, “which is the mirror image of Trump,” notes Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Institute of California.

“Voters who dislike Trump like the fact that Newsom has stood up to him. For Republicans who support Trump, that’s what bothers them about Newsom.” “Bothers” is putting it mildly. Next to fellow San CRISIS MANAGER? Franciscan Nancy Pelosi, Newsom is the libThis page: The Dodger Stadium eral whom conservatives most love to loathe.

COVID test site in November.

Opposite: Newsom and Trump Unlike Trump, Newsom doesn’t come surveying wildfire damage from wealth. He and his sister grew up in a in Paradise, CA, last year; the modest Marin County apartment and were governor getting a COVID test at the $120 million site in Valencia raised by a single mom, Tessa, who juggled he helped to fund; Newsom’s three jobs to make ends meet. He suffered notorious French Laundry dinner from severe dyslexia (to this day, he prefers with friends after he mandated the closure of indoor and outdoor audiobooks and receives many of his briefrestaurant service. ings verbally), but found solace in sports, par¶ ticularly baseball and basketball, at which he excelled. During games at Redwood High School in the 1980s, cheerleaders invented a special callout just for the immaculately gelled young player: “Dippity-do, dippity-do, Gavin, Gavin, we love you!” He won a partial baseball scholarship to Santa Clara University and was a pitcher for the school’s team until he threw his arm out in his sophomore year.

It’s a compelling working-class backstory and one Newsom aides did their best to pitch to the press and the public early in Gordon Getty, son of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. When Newsom’s his career. But it never quite caught on. From the start, Newparents divorced in 1972, Getty unofficially adopted five-yearsom’s leading-man looks, his later successes in the hospitality old Gavin. In 1992, when Newsom launched his first busiindustry, and subsequent deep ties to San Francisco’s business ness venture, PlumpJack Winery, Getty was his investor. The and social establishment have cut both ways. They’ve given boutique label specializing in premium cabernet sauvignons him star quality and name recognition but also left him open ended up being a huge success, and Newsom soon branched to criticism that he is an out-of-touch, Tesla-driving one-perout into cafes, hotels, clothing lines, and other enterprises, center with a mansion in Fair Oaks. amassing a small fortune of his own. By 2002, at just 32, he “The counternarrative was hard to push,” admits Garry was reportedly worth over $6.9 million.

South, a consultant who has worked with both Newsom and The first spark of political ambition goes back to those early Davis. “That was the damaging thing about the French LaunPlumpJack days. After the San Francisco Health Department dry thing: it crystallized this notion of Newsom as breathordered Newsom to install a $27,000 sink in his wine store, ing rarefied air in Pacific Heights—as San Francisco royalty.” he battled city hall and not only won but was appointed a city In truth, Newsom’s family, while hardly wealthy, was at supervisor. He later volunteered for Willie Brown’s 1995 camleast adjacent to California royalty. His father, William Alfred paign for mayor of San Francisco, offering up his restaurant Newsom, was an appeals court judge and a good friend of for a series of fundraisers. After Brown won, he gave Newsom

Every California governor since 1960 has faced a recall effort. But of the 54 attempts, only one—against Gray Davis in 2003—succeeded. And that’s only one of two in U.S. history. That’s because recalls are easy to start but extremely difficult and costly to finish. This time, organizers have until March 17 to submit the requisite 1.5 million signatures. Assuming they do, here’s how the coming months could play out:

›› California county officials verify the recount’s signatures no later than April 29. ›› Upon verification, those who signed have 30 days to remove their names. Officials 6 0 L A M AG . C O M

are granted ten days to reverify. ›› The state’s Department of Finance then determines the cost of the recall election and presents that figure to a legislative committee, which has 30 days to review. ›› The lieutenant governor then sets an election date between 60 and 80 days in the

future—in Newsom’s case, probably sometime in the fall. ›› Newsom will likely want to delay the date of the election as long as possible to allow for more COVID vaccinations in the hope that conditions improve among the electorate. ›› A recall ballot will ask two questions: Should Newsom be removed? If a

simple majority says yes, voters will be asked to select a replacement. (Newsom cannot be one of the names considered.) ›› California’s cartoonishly low standards to get on the recall ballot—raise $2,000 or gather 7,000 signatures— encourages attention-seekers to tempt fate. Bet on that happening.—P.K.

CARS: ROBYN BECK/GETTY IMAGES

HOW A RECALL WORKS

FIRES: SAUL LOEB/GETTY IMAGES; TESTING: AP PHOTO/MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ; TWITTER.COM/BILLFOXLA

mayor had carried on an affair with Tourk’s wife while she worked in his office.

Those early missteps dogged him for years, but failed to slow down Newsom’s climb, or his ambition. After marrying actress Jennifer Siebel in 2008, with whom he now has four children—Montana, 11, Hunter, 9, Brooklyn, 7, and Dutch, 4— Newsom made his first run for governor in 2009. Although endorsed by Bill Clinton, Newsom was stopped in his tracks during the primaries by California icon Jerry Brown, who easily coasted back to the Governor’s Mansion. Undeterred, Newsom was elected lieutenant governor in 2011, holding office for eight years and pushing to ban capital punishment in California (he lost) and to legalize marijuana (he won). With Brown termed out, Newsom announced his candidacy for the 2018 election more than three years before the primary. With no serious Democratic opposition, he beat Cox in a landslide.

Newsom’s platform during the 2018 campaign was solidly progressive. He pledged to build 3.5 million new homes, extend gun control measures, establish universal preschool, and end the use of private prisons. Within weeks of taking office, he initiated a moratorium on the death penalty. But it didn’t take long a seat on the city’s Parking and Traffic Commission, then profor the carping to begin—from the left as well as the right. moted him to the Board of Supervisors, where he quickly made “You have to put all the political capital that you’ve earned a name for himself by banning tobacco ads in public spaces. in an election to fight for big changes that are going to help When Newsom ran for mayor of San Francisco in 2003, everyday people—and he hasn’t done that,” argues L.A.-based Schwarzenegger had just won the special election replacing entrepreneur and investor Joe Sandberg. The cofounder of Davis, giving state Republicans their first taste of real power the socially conscious financial firm Aspiration sounds like in ages. But Newsom’s biggest opponent in the mayoral race he’s considering a run for statewide office, even if he won’t wasn’t from the GOP—it was the Green Party’s Matt Gonzalez, admit it. “We ought to have a governor who’s going to put a liberal firebrand who had it all on the line for univerbacked Ralph Nader in the sal health care, who is going 2008 presidential election. to make sure that everyone In December, the governor Things got ugly, and accusawho works here earns a livîáìèÝßáà äåï ßäåáâ ëâ ïðÝĞ

tions were flung, among them ing wage of $23 an hour, and that Newsom had once donatwho’s a consistent champion with a Sacramento insider. As ed $500 to a Republican. But of climate action, and not one Newsom struggles through Newsom prevailed in a tight who advocates for it on Twitrun-off and served for seven ter and then, when we’re not the pandemic, he’s been more years, doing a lot of good— looking, approves 128 frackisolated than usual. “On an his decision to issue marriage ing permits. We need a modlicenses in San Francisco to ern FDR, but a California verisland,” is how one friend same-sex couples was a wasion. That’s the kind of crisis describes his current mood. tershed civil rights moment— we’re facing in the state.” but also making foreheadOf course, the biggest crislapping mistakes. On the sis California is facing right more innocent end was a 2004 photo shoot for Harper’s Banow isn’t one of Newsom’s making. Nobody could have anzaar in which he and Guilfoyle, his wife of three years (at the ticipated the pandemic and the economic and social fallout time, she was working in the San Francisco DA’s office alongthat would rain down on the state. Few could have predictside Kamala Harris), posed in the Getty mansion under the ed the federal government’s abysmal early response. To help cringey headline “The New Kennedys.” More damaging, after him cope with the growing crisis, the governor leans on a Newsom’s divorce from Guilfoyle in 2006, were the rumors of small entourage of friends, including political consultant Naboozing and womanizing. One of his good friends, campaign than Ballard, sports agent Doug Hendrickson, tech exec Pemanager Alex Tourk, resigned in 2007 after learning that the ter Stern, and Newsom’s brother-in-law, Geoff Callan. HowL A M AG . C O M 61

ever, a source says, in recent months Newsom has been more isolated than usual. In December, his longtime chief of staff, Ann O’Leary, stepped down and was replaced by Jim DeBoo, a Sacramento insider. “On an island,” is how the source describes the governor’s current mood. Others around him insist that his aloof, sometimes imperious manner masks a deeply empathetic, curious, and funny man who still remains the best chance for California to find its way to a better future.

“I’ve never seen somebody connect with issues and people, and think in perpetuity about what was said, and come back to it over and over again,” says political consultant Marc Adelman, who has known Newsom for more than a decade.

“More leaders should be like him.”

those issues before patience with him runs out. “He has an opportunity now with the vaccine rollout to show the government acting really well,” says political scientist Raphael Sonenshein, who adds that Newsom’s messaging during the pandemic hasn’t served him well. “He has a tendency to give more information than the voters need, but not the information voters want,” he says. “But if things start to turn around, time will be on his side. People can see the end in sight, and he has the Biden administration to help.”

No one interviewed at the Kedren clinic is ready to lay all the blame at Newsom’s feet—most of them note how large and diverse California is, and almost all mention the disastrous Trump administration response. “It’s definitely challenging to hear the CDC say one thing and the state say another thing,” THE QUEUE OUTSIDE the Kedren Community Health says Dr. Jerry Abraham, an epidemiologist who is helping overCenter typically starts at around 6 a.m. and, by early aftersee the vaccination program at Kedren. “I will say this: when noon, snakes around several blocks with hundreds of people the governor’s office got wind of what we’re doing here, they hoping to luck into an available vaccine shot. Until a recent did everything they could to get us support. That’s critical.”

Los Angeles Times article blew the lid on vaccine “standby How widely those feelings are shared across the state is unlines,” the existence of these fast-track inoculation sites was clear, but it’s not looking so great for Newsom. Two recent polls, a closely guarded secret shared among well-connected and, both taken in late January, show his approval ratings sliding usually, well-to-do friends. The profiles of those in line on a precipitously from their 64 percent high back in May 2020. A recent Thursday suggests as much; it’s a largely white, seemPublic Policy Institute of California survey found that 52 peringly affluent crowd, which doesn’t quite square with the surcent of likely voters now approve of his handling of the job. But rounding lower-income Latino neighborhood just south of a UC Berkeley Institute poll put Newsom’s support at just 46 downtown. One woman is wearing a SpaceX hoodie. Another percent. More worrisome for the governor, that same Berkeley is whisked away in a BMW X7. There are rumors that Ashton poll found that 36 percent of registered voters said they would Kutcher and Mila Kunis were spotted waiting their turn. “It’s vote to kick Newsom out of office if a recall vote actually came such a weird way to do this,” sighs Reed Smith, who works at to pass. Of course, those numbers could shift by the fall, when a cosmetics company and drove to Kedren from Culver City to a recall election might take place—especially if most voters are get the vaccine. A tattooed young woman who rode in from Silvaccinated by then. At press time, though, just 31 percent of votver Lake and suffers from cystic fibrosis summed up the scene ers think Newsom has done a good job of battling the pandemic. more bluntly before she and her boyfriend got their shots: “ObBut the vaccine rollout is not the only motivator of the recall viously, this is a total shitshow.” effort. Even if Newsom could As of early February, Calimagically inoculate the entire fornia was ranked 40th among state overnight, there’d still be Over the past few months, the 50 states in vaccination plenty of angry voters out for a Napa man was arrested rates per 100,000 residents, blood, some of them literally. behind Georgia, Minnesota, Over the last several months, for plotting to plant pipe and Mississipi, with just 1.6 hundreds of violent threats ÞëéÞï Ýð ÐáóïëéĊï ëġßá percent of the population fulhave been lobbed against ly inoculated. The excuses for the governor, many of them and hundreds of violent the failure run the gamut from phoned into Newsom’s Plumpthreats have been lobbed a general shortage of vaccines Jack businesses, according to to a buggy online reservation the Sacramento Bee, including against the governor. Some system. A lack of coordinasexual threats against his wife. åêßèñàáà ïáôñÝè ðäîáÝðï tion between the state and the “The tone and the verbiage of counties has also been widesome of these death threats are against his wife. ly cited. Newsom didn’t help shocking,” a PlumpJack spokesmatters with his announceman said. In one alarming inciment in January that anyone over the age of 65 was eligible to dent, a Napa County man was arrested by the FBI in January for be vaccinated; his edict made an already chaotic situation even plotting to plant five pipe bombs at Newsom’s office. The susmore so, as some counties didn’t have enough vaccines to meet pect, Ian Benjamin Rogers, had a sticker on his car tying him to the demand and were told to set their own eligibility requirethe Three Percenters. A “white privilege card” was also found ments. “Right now,” notes Baldassare, stating the obvious, “for among his belongings. those who are unhappy with the governor, the top two issues Obviously, not all recall advocates are violent racists or are COVID and the economy.”

QAnon nutjobs. “I don’t understand how someone in a poMuch of Newsom’s fate will depend on whether he can fix sition like his couldn’t have seen this coming,” says Angela 62 L A M AG . C O M

STA N TO N S H A R P E /G E T T Y I M AG E S

Valley executives are starting to write five- and sixfigure checks, and real estate developer Geoffrey Palmer is reported to have made a six-figure contribution. But unlike Davis’s recall, there’s been no Darrell Issa pumping $1.7 million into the fight.

“That big-time donor hasn’t come forward yet,” says Orrin Heatlie, a retired sheriff in Yolo County who heads one of the three recall committees.

Heatlie’s efforts started in August 2019, long before anyone had heard of COVID. Every week, he drives more than 1,000 miles to DAMNED IF YOU DO, pick up new signatures and drop them off.

DAMNED IF “We’ve been crowdsourcing our funding, YOU DON’ T and it’s been sustainable. But definitely not Small businesses damaged by pandemic the amount we need to secure professional lockdowns have been a signature gatherers. It’s hard to get people to potent source of antiwrite a $500,000 check.”

Newsom fervor. Recent data suggests that half Back in 2003, Davis was late to recognize of the state’s small busithe threat of the recall effort. He’d also just nesses are in danger of barely survived a bruising reelection that shutting down. he’d won by a razor-thin margin. Newsom, ¶ on the other hand, trounced Cox by a 62-38 percent margin. He’s also a far more skilled politician than Davis ever was—knuckleheaded trips to French Laundry notwithstanding— governing an even more left-leaning state than it was two decades ago. (Joe Biden took California with 64 percent of the vote last November, compared with 54 percent for John Kerry in 2004.) Still, he is hardly invulnerable. Virtually every expert and political insider interviewed for this story esMarsden, owner of Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill in Shertimates the chances of a recall at something like 50-50 (alman Oaks, who became a rallying symbol of the movement though—chin, up, Gavin—London bookmakers are putting after her YouTube video detailing the suffering of small busithe odds at only one in five). And while none of Newsom’s ness owners under lockdowns went viral this fall. Like hunpresumptive opponents—like Cox, who is running again dedreds of other small business owners, Marsden has converted spite his drubbing in 2018, as well as former San Diego mayor the parking lot of her restaurant into a recall-signature-gathKevin Faulconer and venture capitalist billionaire Chamath ering center. In December, she joined a growing list of busiPalihapitiya—pose serious threats, there are nightmare scenesses that have filed lawsuits against Newsom over his narios that have Newsom’s inner circle worried. “There’s no COVID-related restrictions. Her complaint—filed on her beRepublican on the scene right now,” says one Newsom advishalf by Mark Geragos, the Hollywood lawyer who defended er. “But that doesn’t mean a movie star or a candidate with Michael Jackson and Winona Ryder—accuses Newsom and extraordinary star power couldn’t rise out of nowhere. That’s now-former State Attorney General Xavier Becerra of deprivwhat I’m nervous about.” ing her and other entrepreneurs of their fundamental right Governor Dwayne Johnson? It could happen. to make a living. Thanks to regular appearances on Fox News For the time being, though, Newsom has other problems to and other conservative outlets, a GoFundMe campaign startworry about. Recent data shows that almost half of all small ed for Marsden has raised over $220,000, and she’s being businesses in the state are in danger of shutting down, with courted by Republicans seeking her endorsement. “Us peasminority-owned establishments especially vulnerable. Worse, ants down here can only take so much, and that’s how everyeconomists are warning that the bulk of lost restaurant, hospione feels—that we’ve been discarded and completely abantality, and leisure jobs may not be coming back anytime soon— doned, and that it’s all some sort of joke to them,” she says. or anytime at all. The homelessness crisis grows worse evHow likely is a recall? While even Newsom’s allies admit ery day. COVID is still killing hundreds of Californians every momentum is growing, the movement to replace him faces week. Vaccines are languishing in cold storage. The climate big hurdles. For one thing, it’s still a disorganized grassroots keeps warming. effort made up of three separate committees collecting signaIronically, all that bad news may end up being the thing that tures with little coordination. And recalls are expensive—so saves Newsom’s political hide. After all, who in their right mind far, the money flowing in has been more trickle than flood. would want to be governor of California right now? Despite ReCode recently reported that several deep-pocketed Silicon the occasional perks, it’s arguably the worst job in the world.

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AFTER A TURBULENT YEAR, A BRASH BRIGADE OF ICONOCLASTIC ANGELENOS IS TAKING THE ART WORLD BY STORM

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ARTWORK BY T H E O D O R E B OY E R

» Two years ago, after a series of odd jobs, Melahn Frierson heard about an opening at Jeffrey Deitch’s Hollywood gallery. Following a marathon meeting where Frierson and Deitch bonded over their mutual admiration for outsider New York artists, Frierson was awareded the gig.

She took over the gallery’s Instagram account and helped produce a few exhibitions, and now she’s cocurating her first major show, Shattered Glass, featuring the work of 40 emerging artists of color. “We’re tired of going into places and not seeing ourselves reflected on the walls,” says Frierson. The striking gallery director has become a muse for young Angeleno artists like Katherina Olschbaur, Theodore Boyer, and Alison Blickle, who’s currently painting Frierson as Medusa. As Donatella Versace once observed, “The Medusa is…about going all the way.”

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» In 2017, after spending a few not-so-happy years studying neuroscience in Santa Barbara, Santa Monica-born artist Jess Valice returned home. “The only thing that felt good in school was painting between exams,” says Valice, 24, who has since worked as a waitress and prophouse fabricator while developing her own brand of figuration, full of hyperbolic subjects in all manner of caricature: think prairie girls driving station wagons across the desert and sheriffs riding inflatable horses in kiddie pools. “A lot of it is about redoing childhood—you want to be the outlaw but you can’t run away on a horse, so you do it on a floaty raft,” says Valice, who just had simultaneous solo debuts at ATM Gallery in New York and Bill Brady Gallery in Miami. “I like walking in the shoes of others,” she says. “Their psychology, but with my eyes.”

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» Morgan Elder and Allison Littrell first met in high school in Santa Monica, but lost touch when Elder went off to study at the Art Institute of Chicago and Littrell decamped to Bard. Soon after reuniting in L.A., they teamed up to start their own art space. “Initially, the idea was to start a gallery,” says Littrell, “but we ended up turning it into this multifaceted environment.” Murmurs, which opened in 2019 in a warehouse just south of the Fashion District, houses a popular cafe and a shop packed with a panoply of artist-made goods. Before the pandemic, the gallery in back was the scene of elaborate multimedia exhibitions, dinners, and plays. Up next: Sula Bermudez-Silverman’s solo show on the history of zombies. “We don’t mind mixing it up!” laughs Littrell.

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» Dinners at the art and design-packed Hollywood Hills home of gallery director Graham Steele and his Brazilian-design-dealer husband Ulysses De Santi used to draw a guest list as eclectic and glittering as the decor, from MOCA chief Klaus Bisenbach to Courtney Love. “We love mixing artists, collectors, people from Hollywood, with doctors, lawyers, and architects,”

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says Steele, who recently departed a high-profile post at Hauser and Wirth to strike out on his own. “We like to open up the way we live our lives.” Vows De Santi: “As soon as COVID is past us, we’ll continue throwing those salons to bring people back together.” Until then, Steele is working to bring underrepresented Brazilian artists to the U.S. market while De Santi is

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planning a series of pop-ups around the globe to showcase the best of mid-century Brazilian design. The first will take place at the Aspen offshoot of Mexico City’s Galeria Mascota, with other offshoots coming up in Seoul and Los Angeles. “If nothing else, last year taught us we don’t want a permanent space because of the overhead,” says De Santi. “Ulysses thrives off finding specific work

for a specific city, with a specific energy, and his attitude also inspired me,” says Steele. “I didn’t leave the best gallery in the world to open a space that has to be one thing or another. We’re in a period of incredible flexibility, and it’s exciting because we don’t feel we need to commit ourselves to one particular idea right now. We can do what feels right at the moment.”

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» Baltimore native Jennifer Rochlin was a painter until she got a teaching gig at a Catholic girls school in La Cañada, where she launched a ceramics program in the early aughts. “I had never touched clay before,” says Rochlin, who began painting tiles in 2008. “But from then on, I just couldn’t stop. I love the feel of clay. And the alchemical process—the initial immediacy—is kind of addictive.” In the years since, her pots— filled with narrative paintings, sgraffito scratches, even bite marks—have teased out facets of her psyche, earning her solo shows at the Pit in Glendale, Maki Gallery in Tokyo, and Greenwich House Pottery in New York. In April, she’ll have her third major show at the Pit, in dialogue with works by the late ceramic icon Viola Frey. “There’s no baggage with clay,” she says. “I can go full tilt with it and just play.”

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ARTWORK BY LAUREN HALSEY

» South Central-born artist Lauren Halsey had just come off a meteoric three-year run—one in which her sculptural environments depicting Black life earned her the $100,000 Mohn Award at the Hammer Museum’s 2018 Made In L.A. biennial—when she signed a lease on a building next door to her Inglewood art studio. The plan was to use the space as a community center. But in the wake of the pandemic, Halsey switched gears and turned the space into a distribution outpost that delivered more than 19,000 boxes of produce to feed more than 100,000 residents of South Central. Helping head up the effort was Halsey’s girlfriend, Monique McWilliams, who left her popular vintage-clothing business, relaunching this year as Tru2Form, to serve as her aide de camp. “We’re exhausted,” says Halsey. “But this work re-energizes me.”

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» In 2014, when he was the archivist at the Gagosian gallery, Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, 41, discovered the Insta account @permaidmermaid, which featured L.A.-born artist Nicolette Mishkan, 34, staging impromptu performances as a black-latex-clad mermaid. “Permaid was the synthesis of everything aesthetically and curatorially I was interested in,” says Ritchie Handler, now the global director of Nicodim Gallery. “Most people come at curating from an anthropological point of view, but I like creating a narrative.” In 2016, Ritchie Handler, also a fixture of the downtown scene for his drag alter ego, Olivia Neutron Bomb, began collaborating with Mishkan (whose mermaid paintings earned a recent solo show at Shoot the Lobster) and the rest is history. “We’re both creating personas that fill a void,” says Mishkan.

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ARTWORK BY T I F FA N I E D E L U N E

» In his twenties, Terrell Tilford began buying artworks by seminal Black artists. “At one point, I probably had installment plans going on with five different galleries,” says Tilford, who worked as an actor before he became a gallerist, establishing the Artist Showcase Series in New York with four other budding dealers. “I laugh now because the acronym was ASS,” he says. In the early aughts, Tilford and his wife, actress Victoria Platt, moved to L.A. and spent a year hosting shows out of their Mid-City home. “We moved all of our furniture out on the weekends,” says Tilford. Then, in 2015, Tilford relaunched his art group as Band of Vices. Since, they’ve become kingmakers for emerging talent like Grace Lynne Haynes and Penda Diakité. But Tilford steers clear of the frenzy around BIPOC artists. “I tell my staff, “Let’s just do the work,” he says.

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D O O L B , DGERS O D E H T ABOUT E R AME, A N C S T ’ ’ A N D R DID Y LASO F YO U ED I M N M E O V T E AT TO O T EW Y N L K T U EN YO ERMAN RT P W O N .’ S H E A A .

L N O BY

JESSE

JOHN G. MABANGLO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

K AT Z

O O O PLAY BALL

Lasorda’s career with the Dodgers, including stints as a pitcher, scout, manager, senior advisor, and global ambassador, spanned an incredible 71 years.

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T

O M M Y L A S O R D A spent his life

prophesying his death. His most famous sayings, the wisecracks that he repeated until they became Dodgers lore, were all about mortality: the flesh and the divine.

If you were to slit his wrists, Lasorda said a million times, he would bleed Dodger blue. Examine his heart, which doctors did after he suffered coronaries in 1996 and 2012, and you’ll find “Dodgers” tattooed on it. He put his faith, of course, in the Big Dodger in the Sky. And he cautioned everyone—me included, the one time I interviewed him—that if you don’t love the Dodgers, there’s a good chance you won’t get to heaven.

The line that’s been trotted out lately, since Lasorda went into cardiac arrest one final time on January 7 at the age of 93, is the one about his tombstone— how he wanted it to say, “Dodger Stadium was his address, but every ballpark was his home.” As a tribute to his loyalty and enthusiasm, the Dodgers actually presented Lasorda with just such a grave marker. The team festooned it with a bleeding heart, its secretions painted blue.

“I’m the only guy in America with his own tombstone!” Lasorda shouted with delight.

What’s extraordinary, and perhaps forgotten, is that Lasorda did not receive the tombstone as an old man. It was not a retirement gift or a birthday gag. He had not yet been enshrined in baseball’s Hall of Fame.

He had not yet even taken the helm as the Dodgers’ manager. It was the late 1960s—Lasorda still in his early forties, managing the club’s minor league team in Ogden, Utah—when the life-and-death adages he’d begun adopting earned him a marble slab.

There was some religiosity to it.

The son of blue-collar Italian immigrants, Lasorda was a devout Catholic. But he was also a showman, a pep talker, a quote machine, and a gloriously profane raconteur. If loving the Dodgers meant trafficking in the sepulchral, it was not because Lasorda was so solemn—it was because the here and now mattered so damn much. He wasn’t about to squander his time on earth, and he didn’t want you to either.

late our emotions. Chick was one. Vin, bless him, remains another. Magic probably fits into that pantheon. Kobe, a more complicated figure, abruptly claimed a spot.

Tommy—who started out as Thomas and entered baseball as Tom—has united us for most, if not all, our lives. More motivator than tactician, he led the Dodgers to the World Series four times during his 20 years as manager, winning it all in 1981 and 1988. If you count the decades before and after, as a pitcher, scout, coach, senior adviser, and global ambassador— a career that spanned the move west from Brooklyn—Lasorda spent an incredible 71 years championing the Dodgers, which made him close to a permanent fixture on the L.A. landscape.

Even if you cared little for baseball, you knew his name and understood the contagiousness of his devotion. That he was imperfect—loud, brash, melodramatic, even cartoonish—only made him more lovable.

In a sport so steeped in tradition that it requires managers to dress in the same uniforms as their players, Lasorda couldn’t help but let it all hang out; lumpiness became his brand. When the pot-bellied Phillie Phanatic mascot mocked him between innings during a 1988 game in Philadelphia—clutching a Dodgers effigy as the P.A. system played Weird Al Yankovic’s “I’m Fat”—a steamed Lasorda charged the furry green creature, dropping it to the Astroturf. “That’s the quickest Tommy’s moved all year,” the TV announcer deadpanned.

Embracing the moment, Lasorda soon became a SlimFast pitchman— a decision he attributed to his third plate of linguine and clams during spring training in 1990. Egged on

by Dodgers stars Orel Hershiser and Kirk Gibson, who wagered $20,000 that he couldn’t shed 20 pounds by the All-Star break, Lasorda chugged enough diet shakes to shrink himself from 218 to a svelte 182. Before gaining it all back, he used his winnings, plus his endorsement fees and powers of persuasion, to help fund a new convent for the Sisters of Mercy in Nashville.

It’s hard to think of a skipper in any sport more recognizable or ubiquitous than Lasorda. He hawked Rolaids, Econo Lodge, Honda lawn mowers, Yoplait, Glad, Skechers, and, in the saddest of his endorsements, the law firm of personalinjury attorney Larry H. Parker. Because he spoke exuberant (if inexact) Spanish, he even did a Budweiser commercial en español—playing off the literal translation of his last name: “the deaf one.”

“Por favor, no grite,” says Lasorda— “Don’t shout”—“Aquí estan dos Budweisers frías.”

He appeared on Everybody Loves Raymond, Fantasy Island, Police Squad!, and CHiPs; lunched at the White House; raised money for sick kids and (TEXT CONTINUED ON PAGE 86)

Lasorda was a quote machine, a gloriously profane raconteur.

I N T H E VA S T, fractured sprawl of Los Angeles rendered

even more disjointed by the pandemic, there are few things we all agree on, even fewer that make each of us—Northridger and Long Beacher, Santa Monican and Pomonan—all feel like Angelenos. Sport come closest to giving us a common vocabulary. It supplies the small circle of first-name-basis figures who transcend our geography, bridge our cultures, and trans7 6 L A M AG . C O M

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: DIAMOND IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES; ASSOCIATED PRESS; BOTTOM RIGHT: SPORTING NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES; SAXON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

O O O BASEBALLER

Lasorda reveled in his celebrity, particularly his ability to attract into his orbit much bigger stars far removed from baseball. As his own fame grew, he lunched at the White House and appeared in cameos on Everybody Loves Raymond, Fantasy Island, Police Squad!, and CHiPs. Clockwise from above: Lasorda hobnobs with Ryan O’Neal and then-wife Farrah Fawcett in 1984; hot-tubbing with Dodgers All-Star left-hander Jerry Reuss in the 1980s; autographing a fan’s baseball in the club locker room prior to taking the field in the Dodgers’ 1979 National League opener against the San Diego Padres.

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Throughout his career, Lasorda cultivated a ubiquitous—and often shameless—presence on and off the field. This page, clockwise from top: Lasorda exhorts the team during spring training; upbraiding umpire Lee Weyer during a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates; with First Lady Nancy Reagan, President Ronald Reagan, and Dodgers executive vice president Fred Claire; pitching for Ultra SlimFast. Opposite page, clockwise from top left: Lasorda signs a ball for an overwhelmed young fan during spring training; with legendary Dodgers announcer Vin Scully; with Kobe Bryant at Dodger Stadium; Lasorda, who was signed by the Philadelphia Phillies at the start of his career, receives a hometown welcome at a 2013 game between the Washington Redskins and Philadelphia Eagles.

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THIS PAGE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: SPORTING NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES; GEORGE GOJKOVICH/GETTY IMAGES; AP PHOTO/REED SAXON; SLIMFAST AD: PINTEREST.COM; OPPOSITE PAGE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: AP PHOTO/RICHARD DREW; KEITH BIRMINGHAM/MEDIANEWS GROUP/PASADENA STAR-NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES; PHOTO BY LISA BLUMENFELD/GETTY IMAGES; PATRICK SMITH/GETTY IMAGES

O O O PITCHMAN

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Assorted sushi boxes from Sunset Sushi P. 83

EATING IN A GUIDE TO GREAT TAKEOUT AND DELIVERY ACROSS THE CITY E D I T E D

BY

H A I L E Y

E B E R

WEST Birdie G’s

SANTA MONICA » American $$

James Beard Award-nominated chef Jeremy Fox has retooled his sunny restaurant, named after his young daughter, for the moment. There are à la carte options and three-course meals to go that showcase Fox’s way with both vegetables and elegant-buthearty fare, like a koji-marinated flatiron steak. Finish things off with the beautiful, jiggly rose-petal pie.

2421 Michigan Ave. (310-310-3616, birdiegsla.com, or @birdiegsla). Takeout, curbside pickup, and delivery via Tock, ChowNow, Uber Eats, Doordash, Caviar, Grubhub, and Postmates. 4-8:30 p.m. daily. Beer, wine, and cocktails to go.

Broad Street Oyster Co. MALIBU » Seafood $$ Hit the road. Christopher Tompkins, aka “the Oyster Man,” has transformed his clam shack overlooking Malibu Lagoon State Beach into a drive-through concept. You can grab the lobster roll that first brought Tompkins acclaim, fresh oysters, or uni spaghetti. There’s plenty for the seafood averse as well, including a burger sprinkled with shio kombu (dried kelp) and brussels sprouts in a bacon vinaigrette. 23359 Pacific Coast Hwy. (424-644-0131, broadstreet oyster.com, or @broadstreetoysterco).

Takeout phone orders. 4-8 p.m. Sun.-Thu., 4-9 p.m.

Fri.-Sat.

Cassia

T H E B R E A K D OW N At press time, the stay-at-home order had just been lifted but many were still limiting excursions. As such, this month’s listings are devoted to some of our favorite options for delivery and takeout meals.

EAST

Includes Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Century City, Culver City, Malibu, Mar Vista, Marina del Rey, Palms, Santa Monica, Venice, West L.A., Westwood

Includes Atwater Village, Eagle Rock, East L.A., Echo Park, Glendale, Los Feliz, Pasadena, San Gabriel Valley, Silver Lake

DOWNTOWN Includes Arts District, Bunker Hill, Chinatown, Historic Core, Little Tokyo, South Park

T H E VALLEY Includes Agoura Hills, Burbank, Calabasas, Encino, North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Toluca Lake, Van Nuys

CENTRAL

SOUT H

Includes Beverly Grove, East Hollywood, Fairfax District, Hancock Park, Hollywood, Koreatown, West Hollywood

Includes Bell, Compton, Gardena, Hermosa Beach, Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Torrance, Watts

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$ INEXPENSIVE

(Meals under $10) (Mostly under $20) $ $ $ E X P E N S I V E (Mostly under $30) $ $ $ $ V E R Y E X P E N S I V E ($30 and above) $ $ M O D E R AT E

Price classifications are approximate and based on the cost of a typical main course that serves one. For restaurants primarily offering multicourse family meals, the cost per person of such a meal is used.

» Southeast Asian $$

At this grand Southeast Asian brasserie, Mozza vet Bryant Ng mines his Chinese Singaporean heritage, honors wife Kim’s Vietnamese background, and knows the secrets to making sublimely delicious food that travels well. 1314 7th St. (310-393-6699, cassiala.com, or @dinecassia). Takeout, curbside pickup, and delivery via Doordash, Caviar, ChowNow, Grubhub, Postmates, and Uber Eats. 4-9 p.m. daily. Beer, wine, and cocktails to go.

Colapasta W EST

TIP > For the most current info on what our beloved restaurants are offering—from curbside takeout to meal kits—check their Instagram accounts along with their websites, both of which we’ve listed.

Many spots update their social media more frequently than their home pages.

SANTA MONICA

2021

SANTA MONICA

» Italian $$

Fresh, affordable pastas topped with farmers’ market fare shine at this sunny spot. The poppy-seed-sprinkled beet ravioli is delicate and delicious, while the gramigna with pesto and ricotta is hearty and satisfying. 1241 5th St. (310-310-8336, colapasta.restaurant, or @colapasta .restaurant). Takeout and delivery via Grubhub. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. and 5-9 p.m. Mon.-Sat. Beer and wine to go.

Felix

VENICE » Italian $$

Evan Funke is a pasta purist who can slip Italian lessons into any meal, even if he’s not the one doing all the cooking. His takeaway options include fresh pastas by the pound and sauces like a ragù Bolognese by the pint. Not looking to DIY? There are hot pizzas, antipasti, desserts, and Felix’s famous focaccia, all ready to go (and eat). 1023 Abbot Kinney Blvd. (424-3878622, felixla.com, or @felixlosangeles). Takeout and delivery via ChowNow. 4-9:30 p.m. daily. Beer and wine to go.

Mírame

BEVERLY HILLS » Mexican $$$

Joshua Gil is cooking exciting, contemporary Mexican fare with market-driven ingredients. Dishes are imaginative but not overly contrived—salmon-skin chicharrón with fermented garlic aioli; a divine slow-cooked Heritage Farms pork shoulder served with a black-lime gastrique, celtuce, and hearty, richly flavorful frijoles charros cooked with a pig’s head. The latter is available as part of Mírame’s to-go family meal, which includes house-made tortillas; a memorable riff on Caesar salad with pork chicharrón, roasted vegetables and goat cheese; chocolate flan; and an adorable little bottle of margaritas. At just $95 for two people, it’s an amazingly affordable way to sample Gil’s cooking. 419 N. Canon

F R I E D C H I C K E N SA N DW I C H ST U D I O S

MAR

Dr. (310-230-5035, mirame.la, or @mirame.la). Takeout and delivery via Toast. 9 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Tues.-Sun. Cocktails to go.

n/naka PALMS » Japanese $$$$ Niki Nakayama’s acclaimed kaiseki restaurant has long been one of the city’s harder-to-score reservations, so naturally its to-go meals aren’t easy to get ahold of either. But if you do nab some takeout, you’re in for a treat. The $65 California Ekiben bento box is packed with delights highlighting the state’s bounty, like Monterey Bay abalone and Santa Barbara uni.

Proceeds benefit the California Community Foundation’s Wildfire Relief Fund. 3455 S. Overland Ave. (310-836-6252, n-naka.com, or @nnakarestaurant).

Takeout via Tock. 4-9:30 p.m. Wed.-Sat. Wine, sake, and cocktails to go.

Ospi

VENICE » Italian $$$

Jackson Kalb’s sprawling new Italian joint brings bustle to a corner on an otherwise quiet stretch. Pastas, including a spicy rigatoni alla vodka and raschiatelli with a pork rib ragù, are sublime, and most travel remarkably well. Roman-style pizzas boast a uniquely crispy, cracker-thin crust; to get the full crunch, have a slice as you drive your takeout home.

2025 Pacific Ave. (424-443-5007, ospivenice.com, or @ospiveni). Takeout via Toast. 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. and 4-9 p.m. daily.

Pasjoli

SANTA MONICA » French $$$$

Dave Beran’s à la carte spot bucks the trends in favor of old-fashioned thrills—even when it comes to takeout. Ready-to-heat bistro suppers feature classic dishes like beef cheek bourguignon and a savory leek tart with blue crab, along with vegetable sides, housemade milk rolls, and, of course, dessert. You can also order à la carte dishes like duck confit with cherry bread pudding and mushroom risotto.

2732 Main St. (424-330-0020 or pasjoli.com).

5-8 p.m. Wed.-Sun. Wine to go.

Pizzana BRENTWOOD

» Italian $$

It’s not easy to make over the local pie joint, but 32-year-old chef Daniele Uditi has reimagined an urban standby with equal parts purism and playfulness, becoming a neighborhood favorite in the process. Most impressive is the open-mindedness that has him deftly transforming the Roman pasta dish cacio e pepe into a pizza or putting a hearty short rib ragù on the Pignatiello pie. And in a real twist, appetizers and seasonal salads are not afterthoughts but highlights. The pizzeria is also making its famous, limited-edition sub sandwiches more readily available (check Instagram) and has been offering free meals for doctors and nurses. 11712 San Vicente Blvd. (310-481-7108, pizzana.com, or @pizzana). Pickup and delivery via ChowNow. 11:30 a.m.9 p.m. daily. Also at 460 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood (310-657-4662).

sausage-rapini orecchiette. Those with larger appetites can order the Jidori chicken with tomatoes, black olives, and onions or the New York steak with green beans, potatoes, and black truffles. No hugs from owner Maureen Vincenti right now, so air kisses will have to do. 11930 San Vicente Blvd.

(310-207-0127, vincentiristorante.com, or @vincentiristorante). Curbside pickup and delivery via Postmates, Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub.

5-8 p.m. Mon.-Sat. Beer, wine, and cocktails to go.

DOWNTOWN Angry Egret Dinette CHINATOWN » Sandwiches $$

The Westside spin-off of the Alhambra original serves a selection of dishes intended to be nostalgia-inducing for expats of Chengdu, the largest city in China’s Sichuan province. The cooking balances spiciness with subtlety, showcasing a cuisine that tantalizes the tongue while lips go numb.

The handmade wontons will make you understand why the dumplings are a crowd fave. 11057 Santa Monica Blvd. (310-444-7171, sichuanimpressions. com, or @sichuan_impression_). Pickup and delivery via Postmates. 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. daily. Also at 1900 W. Valley Blvd., Alhambra (626-283-4622).

Vincenti BRENTWOOD

» Italian $$-$$$

Italian food lovers, rejoice. Chef Nicola Mastronardi is still cooking from his regular menu, turning out impeccably tender roasted octopus and crisp fried calamari as well as comforting pastas such as

Sonoratown FASHION DISTRICT

» Mexican $

This downtown spot known for its tortillas is a top takeout value. Order à la carte or opt for affordable family-style options with burritos, chimichangas, and make-your-own taco kits with chorizo, carne asada, or mesquite-grilled chicken. Wash it all down with a sixpack of Tecate or seasonal aguas frescas. 208 E. 8th St. (213-628- 3710, sonoratown.com, or @sonoratownla).

Curbside pickup by calling the restaurant; takeout and delivery via Caviar. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. daily. Beer to go.

Superfine Pizza

» Pizza $

Wes Avila has left Guerrilla Tacos and is focusing on torta-esque sandwiches at this heartfelt new venture.

The headliner is the Whittier Blvd: beef belly braised in star anise-laced lard for eight hours, then stuffed on a roll with horseradish cream, avocado, queso fresco, serrano chile, and red pepper escabeche. It’s hearty and decadent—especially if you opt to add a duck egg, which you should— but also wonderfully nuanced. Sandwiches with fried ingredients, like the Baja shrimp po’boy and a veggie number, with Broccolini tempura, miraculously manage to remain crispy and travel well. 970 N. Broadway, Ste. 114 (aedinette.com or @angryegretdinette) Takeout via restaurant website, delivery via DoorDash. 9 a.m.3 p.m. Tues.-Sun.

FASHION DISTRICT

Badmaash

Angelini Osteria BEVERLY GROVE » Italian $$$

HISTORIC CORE

» Indian $$

This Indian gastropub concept comes from the father-and-sons team of Pawan, Nakul, and Arjun Mahendro, who are all well versed in the culinary techniques of East and West. The menu features contemporary mash-ups, like a version of poutine smothered in chicken tikka, tandoori chicken wings, and a spicy lamb burger. If tradition’s your thing, you’ll be comforted by spice-stewed chickpeas, potato and pea samosas, and what they call “good ol’ saag paneer.” Wash it all down with carefully curated, reasonably priced natural wines. 108 W. 2nd St. (213-221-7466, badmaashla.com, or @badmaashla).

Curbside pickup and delivery via Caviar and DoorDash. 5-9 p.m. daily. Beer and wine to go. Also at 418 N. Fairfax Ave., Fairfax District (213-281-5185).

12-9 p.m. daily.

Guerrilla Cafecito ARTS DISTRICT » Breakfast $-$$ This new breakfast offshoot around the corner from Guerilla Tacos makes a perfectly balanced brekkie burrito that rivals the city’s long-established best.

The caramelized-milk-and-lemon doughnuts are wonderfully not-too-sweet: a doughnut even a non-doughnut lover can love. No wonder they often sell out. 704 Mateo St. (213-375-3300 or guerrillacafecito.com).

8 a.m.-12 p.m. daily.

Lasa Sichuan Impression WEST L.A. » Chinese $$

apple bun to a beefy, memorable rendition of mapo tofu. 727 N. Broadway, Ste. 130 (626-688-9507, pearl riverdeli.com, or @prd_la). Takeout by calling the restaurant. 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Wed.-Sun.

CHINATOWN

» Filipino $-$$

Brothers Chase and Chad Valencia are offering a limited menu of some of their favorite dishes, including crispy chicken arroz caldo and Bicol Express—slowroasted pork shoulder with a spicy coconut cream sauce. Don’t forget to grab a bottle of biodynamic wine to go with your meal. 727 N. Broadway, Ste. 120 (213-443-6163, lasa-la.com, or @lasa_la). Takeout, curbside pickup, and delivery via Toast, Doordash, Caviar, and Postmates. 5-8 p.m. Wed.-Thurs; 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. and 5-8:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat.; 11:30 a.m.3:30 p.m. Sun. Beer and wine to go.

Pearl River Deli CHINATOWN » Chinese $ Chef Johnny Lee has gained a reputation as a poultry wizard, and his succulent Hainan chicken is a highly sought-after dish. Sadly, he’s serving it only as an occasional weekend special at his tiny Far East Plaza takeout spot. But don’t despair: the ever-changing menu is full of winners, from a pork chop sandwich on a pine-

Get a quick taste of Rossoblu chef Steve Samson’s Italian-food mastery at his casual pizzeria that serves both thin-crust slices and whole pies. The pepperoni always pleases, but the honey—with spicy salami, provolone, and Grana Padano—really thrills. 1101 S. San Pedro St., Ste. F (323-698-5677, superfinepizza .com, or @superfinepizza). Curbside pickup and delivery via the restaurant website, elsewhere via Postmates. 12-9 p.m. Wed.-Sun.

CENTRAL Gino Angelini grew up on his grandma’s lasagna in a town outside the Adriatic city of Rimini and came to Los Angeles to cook with Mauro Vincenti. His extensive to-go offerings are both comforting and refined, from the ever-popular Gino’s meatballs to tagliolini limone to sautéed Maine scallops with riso venere and aged balsamic vinegar. 7313 Beverly Blvd.

(323-297-0070, angelinirestaurantgroup.com, or @angeliniosteria). Takeout, curbside pickup, and delivery via Postmates, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Caviar, and DoorDash. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. daily. Wine to go.

Antico

LARCHMONT VILLAGE » Italian $-$$

Take comfort. Some of the city’s best ice cream is now available to pick up. Chef Chad Colby has converted his East Larchmont Italian restaurant into a takeout spot for focaccia pizzas and ice cream, fashioning a makeshift pizza oven with the plancha top that used to sit on the restaurant’s hearth. The ice cream has a wonderfully smooth texture, and the flavors are spot-on. The honeycomb has garnered a lot of praise since the restaurant opened in 2019— and rightly so—but Colby has been introducing flavors like peppermint bark and hazelnut cookie crunch. 4653 Beverly Blvd. (323-510-3093, antico-la.com, or @antico__la). Pickup and delivery via Caviar. 3-8 p.m. Mon.-Tues., 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m.

Wed.-Sun. Wine to go.

A.O.C.

BEVERLY GROVE » California $$$

Unforced and driven by culinary excellence, A.O.C. is a sure thing in uncertain times. Suzanne Goin’s cooking has become indispensable. Carefully constructed salads showcase vegetables at their best, and the roasted chicken with panzanella is both an homage to San Francisco’s Zuni Café and a classic in and of itself. Caroline Styne’s always intriguing wine list doesn’t shy away from the ecology of vineyards. 8700 W. 3rd St. (310-859-9859 or aocwinebar.com). Pickup and delivery via Toast.

3-8 p.m. daily. Wine to go.

Brandoni Pepperoni WEST HOLLYWOOD » Pizza $$ Six nights a week, Brandon Gray turns out some of L.A.’s most exciting pizzas in the back of the WeHo Gateway shopping center. Gray, a veteran of Navy kitchens and top local restaurants like Providence,

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Guelaguetza KOREATOWN » Mexican $-$$ An authentic Oaxacan restaurant located in a former Korean banquet hall has made for a happy jumble for decades. The tlayudas—giant, crispy tortillas— are irresistible when spread with asiento, a traditional condiment that could pass for whipped lardo.

Thick with pounded almonds, olives, and roasted chiles, the seven different types of moles are a tapestry of interwoven elements. And now, the delightfully authentic flavors can be had at home, thanks to the restaurant’s take-home meal kits.

3014 W. Olympic Blvd. (213-427-0608, ilovemole.com, or @laguelaguetza). Takeout, curbside pickup, and delivery via Postmates, DoorDash, Caviar, and Grubhub. 11:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m. Mon.-Thurs.; 8:30 a.m.9:30 p.m. Fri.-Sun. Beer, wine, and cocktails to go.

C H E F FAVO R I T E S M A R I O C H R I S T E R NA BROOKLYN AVE. PIZZA CO.

KOREAN BEEF BBQ SHORT RIBS THAI DELI They cook them on the grill, and it’s a kind of Korean-Thai combination. It’s phenomenal. Plus it comes with this great, super-creamy macaroni salad. This place is a strip mall gem. $8, 1835 East Cesar E. Chavez Ave., Boyle Heights, 323-223-0269.

CARNE EN SU JUGO STREET TACOS AND GRILL It’s meat cooked in its juices with beans to create a broth

with tons and tons of flavor. It’s Eastside comfort with Eastside hospitality. $10.99, 1843 1/2 E. 1st St., Boyle Heights, street tacosandgrill.com.

FRIED CHICKEN PIONEER CHICKEN It’s one of only a couple remaining locations, and it’s very nostalgic for me. It has just the right amount of spice and just the right amount of crunch. From $9.84, 904 S. Soto St., Boyle Heights, 323-262-4562.

Harold & Belle’s JEFFERSON PARK » Southern Creole $$ For Creole-style food—a mélange of French, African, and Native American flavors—Harold & Belle’s is as close to the Dirty Coast as you’ll come on the West Coast. And the transporting food is now also transportable. The crawfish étouffée in gravy will have you humming zydeco, while the bourbon bread pudding will leave you with a Sazerac-worthy buzz. 2920 W. Jefferson Blvd. (323-735-9023, haroldandbelles.com, or @haroldandbelles restaurant). Pickup and delivery via Grubhub and Uber Eats. 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Sun.-Thurs., 11:30 a.m.10 p.m. Fri.-Sat.

Jon & Vinny’s FAIRFAX DISTRICT

» Italian $$

Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s homage to the neighborhood pizza joint is an in-demand reservation that translates well to the comfort of your couch.

The Italian American canon is prepared with the signature gusto of their first venture, Animal, but there’s also a more rarely seen delicacy in everything from the chicken parm to meatballs. 412 N. Fairfax Ave. (323-334-3369, jonandvinnys.com, or @jonandvinnydelivery). Pickup and delivery via DoorDash. 8 a.m.-9:30 p.m. daily. Beer and wine to go. Also at 11938 San Vicente Blvd., Brentwood (310-442-2733).

République HANCOCK PARK » Cal-French $$$

Baguette your troubles. Margarita Manzke’s beautiful breads and pastries make for a delicious start to the day. Luxe multicourse takeout dinners, with dishes like uni and lobster pasta and organic rotisserie chicken with farmers’ market vegetables, make for sweet endings. 624 S. La Brea Ave. (310-362-6115 or republiquela .com). Takeout or delivery via Tock. 8 a.m.-2 p.m. daily and 5-6:30 p.m. Wed.-Sun. Wine and cocktails to go.

Ronan FAIRFAX DISTRICT » Cal-Italian $$

Daniel and Caitlin Cutler’s chic pizzeria retains its funloving spirit with takeout specials like Taco Tuesdays.

Pizzas and other regular offerings, like a cacio e pepe risotto or a French dip calzone inspired by Philippe’s, are always delightful. There are also delicious grocery items, like pie-making kits, loaves of sourdough bread, and cookie dough. 7315 Melrose Ave. (323-917-5100, ronanla.com, or @ronan_la). Curbside pickup and delivery via Caviar, Postmates, and DoorDash. 4-9 p.m. daily. Beer, wine, and cocktails to go.

Slab BEVERLY GROVE

» Barbecue $$

It began as Trudy’s Underground Barbecue, homegrown in the backyard of pitmaster Burt Bakman.

Hungry diners would line up in the driveway of Bakman’s then Studio City home, desperate for a taste of his famous smoked barbecue meats. In 2018, Bakman came up from the underground, opening a sleek storefront that’s now filling orders for down-home fare to be enjoyed at home, from perfectly marbled brisket and slathered baby back ribs to pulled-pork sandwiches and collard greens.

You can even get a six-pack of Bud Light. 8136 W. 3rd. St. (310-855-7184, slabbarbecue.com, or @ slab). Takeout and delivery via Postmates. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Mon.-Thurs., 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Fri., 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

Sat.-Sun. Beer and wine to go.

EAST All Day Baby SILVER LAKE » Eclectic $$ Jonathan Whitener’s Here’s Looking At You is sadly closed, but his thrilling cooking continues on a bustling Eastside corner. Whether you opt for smoked spare ribs, a hot catfish sandwich, or a breakfast sandwich on pastry chef Thessa Diadem’s sublime biscuits, it’s all great. 3200 W. Sunset Blvd. (323-741-0082, alldaybabyla.com, or

82 L A M AG . C O M

@alldaybabyla). Takeout and delivery via Toast.

9 a.m.-3 p.m. Wed.-Sun.

All Time LOS FELIZ » California $$ Tyler and Ashley Wells’s cozy bungalow café has long been a local gem, but it’s really something now.

In addition to faves like the superb breakfast sandwich and the salmon bowl, it is offering grocery survival kits packed with tasty necessities, pasta kits with house-made tomato sauce, bake-at-home lasagna and pot pies, and much more. The Wellses have also been offering a limited number of free boxes of market produce for those in need. 2040 Hillhurst Ave. (323-660-3868, alltimelosangeles .com, or @freakinalltime). Takeout and delivery via Toast. 9 a.m.-8 p.m. daily. Wine to go.

Bar Restaurant SILVER LAKE » French $$$ Chef Douglas Rankin, who worked under Ludo Lefebvre for years, struck out on his own with this charming, pale-pink “neo-bistro” in the old Malo space in Sunset Junction. For the takeout era, Rankin and company have reinvented themselves with a pop-up called En Feu! It focuses on playful, hearty fare, much of it cooked on a French rotisserie—think curly fries with dijon aioli, rôtisserie porchetta with yogurt sauce and flatbread, and, of course, rôtisserie chicken. Turns out food doesn’t have to remind you of home to be comforting. 4326 W. Sunset Blvd. (323-347-5557 or barrestaurant.la).

D Tue.-Sat. Full bar.

Eszett SILVER LAKE

» Eclectic $$

This stylish, cozy wine bar brings warm hospitality and tasty plates, large and small, to the strip-mall space formerly occupied by Trois Familia. Chef Spencer Bezaire’s menu showcases Japanese, French, and German influences, making for hearty yet refined togo meals. The big fries alone are worth an order. 3510 W. Sunset Blvd. (323-522-6323 or eszettla.com).

Takeout by calling the restaurant or delivery via Caviar, 12-8 p.m. Wed.-Sun. Wine to go.

Found Oyster EAST HOLLYWOOD

» Seafood $$$

This tiny oyster bar was a pre-pandemic favorite, and chef Ari Kolender’s seafood dishes still thrill when taken to go. The scallop tostada with yuzu kosho and basil is a must-order, and a bisque sauce takes the basic lobster roll to new heights. Interesting, affordable wines add to the fun. Looking to cook yourself? The restaurant also operates a seafood shop. 4880 Fountain Ave., (323-486-7920, foundoyster.com, or @foundoyster). Takeout via Toast. 3-8 p.m. Wed.-Sat., 12-5 p.m. Sun. Wine and beer to go.

Hippo HIGHLAND PARK

» Cal-Italian $$

Hidden in a wood-trussed dining room behind Triple Beam Pizza, this Cal-Ital restaurant from Mozza vet Matt Molina balances casual and refined. Many favorites from the eat-in menu are available for takeout and delivery, including a salad of snappy wax beans sluiced with vinaigrette and fettucine with heritage pork ragù. Keep an eye on Instagram for fun specials like pickle-brined buttermilk fried chicken and custom cocktails, where bartenders shake something up for you based on your favorite spirit, preference for shaken or stirred, and one word of inspiration. 5916 ½ N. Figueroa St. (323545-3536, hipporestaurant.com, or @hippohighland park). Pickup and delivery via Caviar and DoorDash.

11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. daily; 5-9 p.m. Mon.-Sat., and 4-8 p.m. Sun. Wine and cocktails to go.

Maury’s Bagels SILVER LAKE » Bagels $ East Coast transplant Jason Kaplan spent a decade in L.A. before deciding he had to take matters into his own hands if he wanted a great bagel in this town. He started out as a pop-up at farmers’ markets and coffee shops, but his appropriately modestly sized, delightfully chewy bagels now have a brick-

JA KO B L AY M A N

brings boundless imagination to his pies. They’re topped with premium ingredients—Jidori chicken, Sungold tomatoes, Spanish octopus—in exciting combinations. A curry-Dijonnaise dressing renders a side salad surprisingly memorable.

7100 Santa Monica Blvd., (323-306-4968 or brandoni-pepperoni.com). Pickup only. 4-8 p.m., Thurs.-Tues. Wine to go.

and-mortar location on a quiet, charming Eastside corner next door to Psychic Wines. Maury’s is currently not making sandwiches, but you can grab its excellent whole bagels, cream cheeses, and smoked fish to make your own at home. 2829 Bellevue Ave. (323- 380-9380, maurysbagels.com, or @maurys_ losangeles). Takeout and delivery via Caviar and ChowNow. 7 a.m.- 2 p.m. Tues-Fri., 7 a.m.-3 p.m.

Sat.-Sun.

Northern Thai Food Club EAST HOLLYWOOD » Thai $

ing that sushi master Kiminobu Saito uses at the high-end Sushi Note, and it manages to maintain a great temperature and texture, even when being delivered. Fish is not just fresh but flavorful, each type thoughtfully paired with ideal accompaniments, from a tangy yuzu-pepper sauce that makes salmon sing to brandy-soaked albacore with garlic-ginger ponzu and crispy onions. 4634 Hollywood Blvd. (323-741-0088, sogorollbar.com, or @sogorollbar). Takeout via Upserve, delivery via Caviar. 12-8:30 p.m. Mon.-Sat. Beer and sake to go.

Offering specialty dishes unique to Northern Thailand, this family-run favorite doesn’t skimp on flavor, spice, or authenticity. Tasty takeout meals include the khao soi gai (curry egg noodle with chicken), larb moo kua (minced pork), tum kha noon (jackfruit salad), pla salid tod (fried gourami fish). For those unfamiliar with the region’s distinct cuisine, the illustrious sticky rice is still a staple. Need more incentive? Everything on the menu is less than $10. 5301 W. Sunset Blvd.

(323-474-7212 or amphainorthernthaifood.com).

Takeout and delivery via the restaurant’s website.

10 a.m.-9:30 p.m. daily.

Spoon & Pork SILVER LAKE » Filipino $$

Porridge + Puffs

With omakase boxes priced from $30 to $85, this new sushi place in the old Ma’am Sir space strikes the sweet spot between affordable and indulgent, and is another exciting addition to the Eastside’s growing number of quality sushi options. It’s a sister spot to Highland Park’s Ichijiku, but with a more luxe vibe and a larger menu, tailor-made for takeout. 4330 W. Sunset Blvd. (323-741-8371, sunsetsushila.com, or @sunsetsushi). Takeout via Square. 5-9 p.m. Tues.-Sat. Beer and sake to go.

HISTORIC FILIPINOTOWN

» Pan-Asian $

Minh Phan’s beloved restaurant is still cooking up porridge and puffs, along with various collaborations with local businesses. Various provisions, like pickled rose geranium onions, are on sale to help jazz up your home cooking. 2801 Beverly Blvd. (213-908-5313, porridgeandpuffs.com, or @porridgeandpuffs).

Takeout via Square Up. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Fri.-Sun.

Sōgo Roll Bar LOS FELIZ » Sushi $$ Sogo is hardly the only concept in town devoted to rolls, but it has mastered the form. Rice is cooked with the same careful consideration and season-

The go-to for Filipino comfort food offers a variety of dishes, all featuring one shared ingredient: deliciousness. Spoon & Pork puts an innovative spin on some Filipino favorites—just try its adobo pork belly, pork belly banh mi, or lechon kawali. The dishes elegantly mix decadence with some authentic soul. 3131 W. Sunset Blvd. (323-922-6061, spoonandpork.com, or @spoonandporkla). Takeout via the restaurant website. 12-7 p.m. Tue.-Sun.

Sunset Sushi SILVER LAKE » Japanese $$$

Union PASADENA

» Italian $$$

The food shines at this cozy trattoria just off Pasadena’s main drag. Chef Chris Keyser, an acolyte of

Philadelphia pasta maestro Marc Vetri, joined in 2019, keeping classics, like a great cacio e pepe, on the menu while adding his own dishes, such as a thrilling crispy octopus appetizer. Most of the eatin menu is available to go, and family-style meals for four are also available. The pastas all impress, but don’t miss the wild mushrooms and polenta with a sublimely delicious sherry vinegar and truffle butter sauce. 37 E. Union St. (626-795-5841, unionpasadena.com, or @unionpasadena). Curbside pickup and delivery via Toast and Postmates.

5-9 p.m. daily. Wine to go.

z

THE VALLEY

Black Market Liquor Bar STUDIO CITY » New American $$ Most nights, it seemed half the Valley was here, huddled at the bar. Sure the world has changed, but you can take comfort in still being able to enjoy Top Chef graduate Antonia Lofaso’s crowd favorites—meatballs, crispy spring rolls, and sticky toffee pudding. The market is also selling fresh pasta and handmade sauces. Popular cocktails like the jalapeño-infused, vodka-based Red Hot & Bothered have been bottled for home use.

11915 Ventura Blvd. (818-446-2533,blackmarket liquorbar.com, or @blackmarketliquorbar).

Takeout and delivery via Caviar, Grubhub, Postmates, and Seamless. 3-9:30 p.m. daily.

Cocktails to go.

The Brothers Sushi WOODLAND HILLS » Sushi $$$ At least there’s still sushi, and at this hidden gem, which was reinvigorated when chef Mark Okuda took the helm in 2018, the fare is really great. Keep spirits up with the Handroll Party home kits, or

splurge on omakase to go. You can also order à la carte or get non-sushi items like soy-glazed grilled chicken. 21418 Ventura Blvd. (818-456-4509, thebrotherssushi.com, or @thebrotherssushila).

Curbside pickup and delivery by calling the restaurant. 12-2 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 5:30-8:30 p.m. Tue.-Sun. Beer, wine, and sake to go.

more casual options like fried chicken, pastas, and burgers are now on offer. Plus, the eatery is serving lunch in addition to dinner, and you can order raw cuts from its butcher shop (for pickup only). 903 Manhattan Ave. (310-878-9620, thearthurj.com, or @the_arthurj). Takeout and delivery via DoorDash and ChowNow. 2-8 p.m. daily. Beer and wine to go.

Hank’s

Gabi James

BURBANK

» Bagels $

REDONDO BEACH

The L.A. bagel revolution continues as this stylish new spot in the Valley serves up carefully constructed sandwiches. Tomato, aioli, and maple-glazed bacon elevate a simple bacon, egg, and cheese, while a classic cured salmon sandwich has thoughtful touches like salted cucumbers and pickled onions. The bagels shine with plain cream cheese, but it’s worth grabbing a tub of Hank’s “angry” spread—a spicy, slighly sweet concoction—to have in your fridge. 4315 Riverside Dr. (hanks bagels.com or @hanksbagels). Takeout and delivery via Toast. 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Tues.-Sun.

SOUTH The Arthur J MANHATTAN BEACH

» Spanish $$$

Mozza alum Chris Feldmeier has revamped his traditional tapas menu to offer a selection of family meals, along with discounted beer, wine, and cocktails— even gin-and-juice Jell-O shots. Meals are designed to fit a range of tastes and include a starter, main dish, and dessert. Feldmeier has given them cute names like the Netflix & Grill, which comprises an arugula salad appetizer, two skirt steaks, filet mignon, french fries, and two chocolate bread puddings to feed four to five people for $125. Extra desserts can be ordered à la carte. 1810 S. Catalina Ave. (310-5404884, gabijamesla.com, or @gabijamesla). Curbside pickup and delivery via DoorDash. 12-8 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Sat.-Sun. Beer, wine, and cocktails to go.

Hotville

BALDWIN HILLS CRENSHAW » Fried chicken $

» Steak House $$$

David LeFevre’s take on the American steak house is so midcentury plush, it’ll definitely be worth a visit to splurge after the quarantine ends to celebrate being able to leave your house again. For now, you will have to settle for sampling his culinary creations in the comfort of your own home. Whether that means ordering a top-grade Japanese Wagyu steak (4 ounces) for $60 or a petite New York steak for $38, wetaged and darkened on the grill, for takeout or delivery is up to you. The overhauled menu no longer includes seafood dishes (except a daily special), but

Kim Prince has fried chicken in her blood. She is the niece of André Prince Jeffries, owner of Nashville legend Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, where hot fried chicken is said to have originated. If you are craving what Prince calls her “fiery fowl, brined to burn,” you’re in luck. The restaurant is operating for takeout only. And the full menu is available, including sides ($5 and up) like spicy mac and cheese and kale coleslaw, and lemon pound cake and banana pudding for dessert. 4070 Marlton Ave. (323-792-4835, hotville chicken.com, or @hotville chicken). Takeout and delivery via Postmates.

11 a.m.-7 p.m. Tue.-Sun.

Little Coyote LONG BEACH » Pizza $ That most amazing slice of pizza you had that one, very drunken, late night in your early twenties in New York lives on . . . in Long Beach. The crust, made with dough cold-fermented for 48 to 72 hours, is carby perfection: tangy, crispy, thin but with a healthy puff. The concise menu doesn’t offer any revelations about what should be atop pizza, but rather perfects the usual suspects: pepperoni comes in generous quantities, tiny porky cups glistening with grease; a veggie supreme transcends the usual half-cooked-produce mediocrity of the form. This is pizza worth driving south for. 2118 E. 4th St..

(562-434-2009, littlecoyotelbc.com, or @little coyotelbc). Takeout and delivery via Toast and DoorDash. 12-8 p.m. Wed.-Sun.

Tamales Elena Y Antojitos BELL GARDENS » Afro-Mexican $ This small spot, with counter service, a drivethrough window, and a patio purports to be the only Afro-Mexican restaurant in the area. It focuses on a distinct cuisine from a part of Guerrero to which former slaves fled. Pozoles are rich and slightly thick, and the memorable pork tamales with red sauce are wrapped in fire-tinged banana leaves to impart a hint of smoke. 81801 Garfield Ave., (562-0674-3043, order tamaleselenayantoji tos.com, or @tamaleselenayantojitos). Takeout and delivery via restaurant website or phone. 9 a.m.6 p.m. Sun.-Tues, 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Thurs.-Sat.

» WE WELCOME YOUR COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS. PLEASE EMAIL US AT LETTERS@LAMAG.COM.

PROMOTION

L.A. Works’ MLK Day of Service January 18 On January 18, 2021, L.A. Works mobilized more than 1,500 volunteers to honor the legacy of Dr. King. Events included a Minecraft March on Washington and virtual workshops on the Lќ LJ[Z VM YHJL VU JYP[PJHS ZVJPHS PZZ\LZ =VS\U[LLYZ KLSP]LYLK 4,000 meals and purchased nearly 200 books for a juvenile detention center. laworks.com

84 L A M AG . C O M

Make March Matter for Children in L.A. Individuals and businesses across the region are rallying behind Make March Matter to support Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the top-ranked pediatric hospital in California. Children’s Hospital creates hope and builds healthier futures for kids, treating patients who face a broad range of health issues, from common illnesses to traumas to chronic diseases.

Discover all the ways to Make March Matter at MakeMarchMatter.org

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man with incomparable instincts for what made people tick, didn’t know the truth. But he was still an old-school Italian American from the industrial borough of Norristown, Pennsylvania, who settled in Fullerton and stayed married to the same woman for 70 years; given the chance to destigmatize a plague, he chose to protect the myth of Blue Heaven.

“Wow, wait—” said O’Brien.

“Now that’s pride,” insisted Lasorda.

“That’s pride, but—” said O’Brien.

Lasorda was determined to have the last word. Jabbing a finger at O’Brien and cocking his head, his saggy eyes now

Blue Blood wounded cops; presided over countless banquets and fantasy camps; came out of retirement to lead the underdog U.S. baseball team to a gold medal at the Sydney Olympics; and earned a new following on YouTube with old footage of his expletive-laden rants.

Delivered with the conviction of a Joe Pesci character, Lasorda’s greatest f-bomb hits included his 1982 takedown of Padres infielder Kurt Bevacqua, who had blamed that “fat little Italian” for ordering his teammate beaned the day before.

“Fucking Bevacqua,” countered Lasorda, relishing the opportunity to dish it out. “Couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a fucking boat.” In a clip that has amassed more than a million views, Lasorda added: “And I guaran-fucking-tee you this: when I . . . was going to pitch against a fucking team that had guys on it like Bevacqua, I sent a fucking limousine to get the cocksucker to make sure he was in the motherfucking lineup. Because I kick that cocksucker’s ass any fucking day of the week.”

It is a testament to Lasorda’s goodwill—and the theatricality of his shtick—that Bevacqua became an admirer. “Anytime you heard Tommy talk,” he said in a television interview the day after Lasorda’s death, “he was talking about what a great game baseball was.”

Only once did Lasorda’s bluster fall flat. When his 33-year-old son and namesake, a denizen of West Hollywood’s club scene, died of AIDS in 1991, Lasorda refused to acknowledge the cause. In an uncomfortable portrait in GQ about their complicated but undeniably loving relationship, Lasorda was quoted as saying: “My son wasn’t gay.

No way. No way. I read that in a paper. I also read in that paper that a lady gave birth to a fuckin’ monkey, too. That’s not the fuckin’ truth. That’s not the truth.”

It’s hard to believe that Lasorda, a 86 L A M AG . C O M

N O T C O N T E N T with a mere tombstone to commemorate his fealty to the Dodgers, Lasorda came up with a campy addendum. For a half a century or so, he’d been telling anyone who would listen that he wanted to continue working for the Dodgers even when he was dead and gone. The punch line: “When I die, I want my wife to put the Dodgers home schedule on my tombstone. And when the people are in the cemetery visiting their loved ones, they’ll say, ‘Let’s go to Lasorda’s grave to find out if the Dodgers are playing at home or on the road.’ ” Lasorda recounted that story some years ago on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, eliciting cheers from the audience and a pained, quizzical look from his host.

O O O REQUIEM FOR A PLAYER

Lasorda’s casket rests on the Dodger Stadium pitcher’s mound during a service before his burial.

sparkling, he asked: “Can you honestly tell these people tonight that you want to do this job when you’re dead and gone?”

It was not so much a question as a challenge, an admonition, a dare: to find purpose in life and to pursue it with every cell of your being. As Lasorda had reminded us, year in and year out, season after season, across coasts and generations, it’ll all be over sooner than we think.

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L A M AG . C O M 87

Q

E MAI L YOUR BURNI NG QUEST IONS ABOUT L.A. TO ASKCH RIS@LAMAG.COM

What happened to the huge movie-star mural that was near the Hustler store in Hollywood? to house more than 1,000 employees of BankAmericard, the first bank credit card in America (later reborn as Visa). Its huge, windowless rooms offered security for the giant mainframe computers used to process payments. The building’s new owners plan to punch windows through the travertine and finally bring light into the vast darkness.

STA R DUST

A:

Like nearby freeway overpasses and apartment buildings, Eloy Torrez’s mural Legends of Hollywood came crashing down the morning of January 17, 1994, during the Northridge earthquake. The Hollywood Arts Council hired conservators to move the pieces to the artist’s Echo Park home with the intention of selling shards of Marilyn Monroe and Fred Astaire to pay for a new mural. But Torrez says he “dropped the ball” after a few years and hired a team of, um, curators from outside the Home Depot to haul the five-foot-tall stacks to the dump. A decade later, though, he went on to paint a very similar mural that now adorns the auditorium at Hollywood High.

88 L A M AG . C O M

Drive-In Drag OUTDOORS WITH RUPAUL’S QUEENS

Eloy Torrez’s mural Legends of Hollywood was destroyed during the Northridge earthquake.

Q: I’ve been yearning for Pioneer Bakery’s sesameseed Italian bread.

Does anyone still make it?

A: The Garacochea family’s landmark bakery in Venice operated for nearly a century before it was torn down in 2007 to make way for con-

C H R I S ’S P I C K

dos. While the family sold off the Pioneer brand, the Garacocheas are still making bread. Extea, the family’s commercial bakery, supplies bread to a host of local eateries, from Tam O’ Shanter to Lawry’s.

On the retail side, the closest to that original sesame loaf might

be the classic Italian bread made by Frisco Baking Company, which can be preordered from Vince’s market in Atwater Village. However, Extea’s John Garacochea, the great-grandson of the bakery’s Basque founder, was so moved by your note that he offered to bake a loaf for you personally, with compliments from Ask Chris.

Q: Why doesn’t that massive Bank of America building in Pasadena have windows?

A: The imposing modernist monolith on Marengo Street was designed by architect Edward Durell Stone in 1974

Q: How can I dispose of my wornout American flag?

A: The U.S. code calls for damaged flags to be destroyed in a “dignified way.” Nonprofits collect old flags and ceremoniously burn them.

Drop your Old Glory off at the VFW Hall in Redondo Beach, and vets will deliver it, with salute, to the Covanta renewable energy plant in Long Beach. There it will be turned into electrons that power local businesses like nearby L.A. Custom Apparel, which makes a line of face masks adorned with broad stripes and bright stars.

S PAC E C OWG I R L

Aquaria, season 10 winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, will transform into her superhero persona, Interstellar, at the Rose Bowl.

MURAL: ELOY TORREZ; AQUARIA: MARCO OVANDO

O All dressed up (in

sequins and wigs) with nowhere to go?

Head to the Rose Bowl March 19 through 21 for Drive ’N Drag Saves 2021, an in-car outdoor concert with the stars of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Sassy Bianca del Rio and half a dozen queens suit up in spandex and capes to rescue us from the disasters of 2020 in the superhero-themed, socially distant theatrical experience.

Expect LED Jumbotron screens, lavish sets, and a full-size runway for sashaying. “It’s like going to a Lady Gaga concert,” says promoter Brandon Voss. “But it’s not actually singing.” Like any good concert, there’s a pit for superfans living in the same pod and enough room around cars for tailgating. Is there a chance we’ll see the Supermodel of the World? “You never know when Ru might show up,” says Voss.

VOLUME 66, NUMBER 3. LOS ANGELES (ISSN 1522-9149) is published monthly by Los Angeles Magazine, LLC. Principal office: 5900 Wilshire Blvd., 10th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90036. Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA, and additional mailing offices. The one-year domestic subscription price is $14.95. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to LOS ANGELES, 1965 E. Avis Dr., Madison Heights, MI 48071. Not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or other materials, which must be accompanied by return postage. SUBSCRIBERS: If the Postal Service alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year.

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Ask Chris

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