Jan Lin, a sociology professor at Occidental College, has written a book about Northeast Los Angeles. Released in December and entitled Taking Back the Boulevard: Art, Activism, and Gentrification in Los Angeles, it is the story of Highland Park and Eagle Rock, a biography of a place – and like all good biographies, it tells […]
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The program for the Los Angeles Master Chorale on Sunday, Nov. 17 was a conversational double bilI, conducted by Grant Gershon. It opened with Bach’s luminous Magnificat, which Gershon led with an agile bearing, bright but relaxed. Then there was the contemporary selection – the West Coast premiere of Reena Esmail’s, This Love Between Us: […]
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Casa de Clarke, a new program in Highland Park to help homeless people move from the street into housing in six months’ time, was originally called “Casa de Caridad.” But last April, the first group of 10 people enrolled in the program noticed that CDC, the shorthand for Casa de Caridad, could also stand for […]
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In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Helen Leung was growing up in Elysian Valley, a.k.a. Frogtown, her parents gave her free rein over the neighborhood, allowing her and her sister to explore the gritty, industrial streets to their hearts’ content. “One of my most vivid memories is of the day we decided to […]
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Last month, on August 3, Angela M. Sanchez of Highland Park, 27, stood at a lectern center stage in the Moss Theater in Santa Monica, reading from Coyotes in Amarillo Heights, her fantastical, yet gritty young-adult novel about gentrification and a young Latina’s struggle to be true to herself amid conflicting expectations from her family and […]
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When Michael Martinez was studying Youth Ministry at Azusa Pacific University with plans to be a pastor, he had no idea he would eventually become the composting evangelist of Los Angeles County. But as the founder and Executive Director of L.A. Compost, a composting collective, that is precisely what he is today, spreading the word […]
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Of the 25,000 teachers employed by the Los Angeles Unified School District, 22 were honored in June as Teacher of the Year for exceptional commitment to their students, schools and communities. One of them is Ben Feinberg, who teaches math at Luther Burbank Middle School in Highland Park, where he also coaches the award-winning Science […]
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In 1980, when Max Arias was five years old, his family – father and stepmother, mother and two sisters — fled the civil war in El Salvador, where his father, an economist, was active in politics and labor organizing with the then-outlawed leftist FMLN party. For young Arias, it was the second time he had […]
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An international achievement is unfolding in connection with Bermudez Projects, an art space on Cypress Avenue in Cypress Park founded in 2017 by Julian Bermudez, a curator and longtime resident of the neighborhood. The mission of Bermudez Projects – which functions partly as a gallery, partly as a museum and partly as a community […]
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Since the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla. left 17 dead, several major retailers have imposed stricter rules on gun sales and dozens of companies have cut their ties with the member-benefits program of the National Rifle Association. One of the groups in the forefront of making that happen is Drain the NRA, […]
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Last January, some 75 Eagle Rock stakeholders met Deborah Murphy when she ran the kickoff meeting for Rock the Boulevard, a public-private initiative to upgrade the roadway and sidewalks of Eagle Rock Blvd. It’s safe to say they were duly impressed, as Ms. Murphy, an urban designer/planner, guided them with expertise and enthusiasm through the […]
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When the mic opens this month at La Palabra, the long running poetry reading series at Avenue 50 Studio in Highland Park, the new host will be Angelina Sáenz, an award-winning teacher at Aldama Elementary in Highland Park, a published poet and children’s author, an L.A. Eastsider who overcame obstacles to become a master of […]
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