The Casita on Calle Colima: Reflections on a shape-shifting Mexico City
“Hermosa casita en la Colonia Roma,” read the listing that popped up on Airbnb when I was searching for a rental in Mexico City in the spring of 2022. The main image showed an elegant, periwinkle-blue row house with white trim, beside an identical house painted deep indigo and another, bubblegum pink. Potted plants and... More
The Art of Reparation: Lauren Bon Imagines the L.A. River After Us
Inside the small, ground-floor gallery, the air is moist and fragrant with dirt and hanging bundles of sagebrush, amaranth, yerba mansa and ephedra. One wall is lined with topographic maps; against another, teardrop-shaped beakers steadily drip water solutions into contaminated soil, filtering out lead, arsenic and other toxins through ceramic pipes. Around a corner, a... More
Heads Up: A Q&A with the Mexican American Milliner Gladys Tamez
When Lady Gaga appeared on the cover of her 2016 album, Joanne, unadorned except for a gently tapered pink felt hat, the Mexican American designer Gladys Tamez officially stepped center stage. She launched her line, Gladys Tamez Millinery, in Los Angeles in 2014 and would become one of the first Latina hat designers in the... More
The Floating Sound Collective Tunes In, Outside
It feels a little bit like joining a secret society — that is, if secret societies were open to everyone. “Text a cloud emoji to this number,” instructs the Instagram bio of Floating, an L.A. collective presenting sound experiences in natural settings. Soon your phone is pinging a few times a week with invitations to events... More
Flowers for Didion: A California Transplant Says Goodbye to Her Idol on a Visit to New York
The messages started coming in at noon, Eastern time. “Joan Didion died.” “Joan.” Heartbreak emojis. Instagram posts featuring the glamorous black-and-white portraits I can see with my eyes closed. A link to her obituary. California daughter Joan Didion, whose writings about her home state excavated and formed some of its most indelible myths, had died at her... More
Star 80: Nick Taggart’s LA Stories Encapsulates an Era and a City’s Electric Energy
When the British-born artist Nick Taggart came to Los Angeles in 1977, he planned to stay for three months. Four-plus decades later, he is still here, living on the same Glassell Park street he was told about at a Stranglers show in London. Then twenty-two, Taggart, who studied illustration at Cambridge School of Art, found... More
Joan Didion Explores the ‘Shimmer’ in a New Collection
“You know, sometimes I think I can’t think at all unless I’m behind my typewriter,” Joan Didion told an editor for Ms. magazine during an interview at the author’s Malibu home. It was January 1977, and Didion’s third novel, “A Book of Common Prayer,” would be published in March. The editor, Susan Braudy, had asked... More
Corita Kent: Pop Artist, Public Servant, Rebel Nun
“To be fully alive is to work for the common good.” —Corita Kent The artist best known as Sister Corita was born Frances Elizabeth Kent in 1918. She grew up in Hollywood but she was no beach bunny or glamour girl; at 18, right after graduating from high school (and to the surprise of her... More
The New Face of the Hotel Figueroa
Elegant and airy, lit by natural skylights and chandeliers, warmed by wood paneling, plush seating and a central fireplace, and decorated with contemporary art, books and rare objets: This quietly luxe first impression of the renovated Hotel Figueroa was not what the real estate developer Bradley Hall had in mind when the property came on... More
Global Citizen Phillip Lim
Twenty years ago, Phillip Lim was a talented up-and-comer, designing clothes for the label Development out a downtown L.A. studio where the door was secured with a padlock and the streets were virtually uninhabited. With no restaurants nearby, Lim used to drive over to Zip Sushi, an Izakaya spot five minutes away in the Arts... More
Gangsta Gardener Ron Finley
In South Los Angeles, the term “gangsta” isn’t typically associated with flowers, fruit trees, or fertile bins of compost, but one day it will be, if Ron Finley has his way. For the self-named “Gangsta Gardener,” planting an edible garden is an act of resistance and empowerment, not to mention a smart financial move. “Growing... More
Maripol: Polaroids From The Underground
In 1974, a book called The Faith of Graffiti, featuring photographs by Jon Naar and an essay by Norman Mailer about a new art form rising from the streets and subways of New York City, found its way into the hands of a student at l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, France, named Marie-Paule. A seminal... More