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This Month’s Special: The 2012 Food Lover’s Guide

By Lesley Bargar Suter — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Anyone who has palled around with me even a little knows that I have a serious thing for goats. I find them generally adorable, I appreciate their non-discriminating palates, and, most of all, I like what they produce: goat’s milk yogurt, kefir, and goat cheese. For years I’ve been imagining a fantasy future for myself in which I find a patch of land, acquire a small herd of Nubians, and make incredible, aged artisanal goat cheeses for a living. The hitch? I have no idea how to make goat cheese. I’ve never even made ricotta or yogurt. In the world of milk-crafting, that is the equivalent of a track star having no clue how to tie his or her shoes.

Wait, scratch that—I had no idea how to make goat cheese until last month, when I attended the Foodcrafting 101 class at the Institute of Domestic Technology. Highlighted in this month’s Los Angeles magazine Food Lovers Guide, the class is one of several the Institute conducts at the bucolic Zane Grey Estate in Altadena. In a mere six hours I learned how to can peach preserves, bake homemade bread, create my own custom mustard, and finally, make chèvre with the milk from the Estate’s goats nibbling hay a few feet away. (Yes, that was the sound of my head popping like a balloon.)

It was a thrilling experience, not only because I got one step closer to my pipe dream but because of the sense of empowerment that comes with making something so basic with your own hands. My classmates seemed to share the feeling. Who knows? Perhaps one of them might be the next It producers of tangy sourdough, traditional German pickles, gourmet “nutella”, high-end chocolate, or small-batch ice creams—all of which are having a moment, at this moment, thanks to local talents.

The pages of this month’s Food Lovers Guide on newsstands now reflect the recent explosion of the DIY food trend in L.A. Things like home-brewing, flour milling, beekeeping, and mycology (growing mushrooms)—once fringe hobbies (OK, nerd hobbies)—are suddenly au courant. The result is an unprecedented boom in artisanal products for sale at neighborhood farmers’ markets, gourmet shops, and specialty stores. Buying these goodies doesn’t just mean you’ll make the best grilled cheese sandwich on the block (with gooey cabecou cheese on rustic Store Front sourdough with caramelized onion jam)—it’s reviving lost arts.

To help you make sense of it all, we’ve composed a delicious and indispensable field guide to edible L.A., a true encyclopedia with information on where to find everything from avocado honey to fragrant za’atar. As for the goat cheese, you can find that at my house, where I’ve made two batches since my class in September. I may not have the land or the herd, but I’ve got the recipe and I know where to buy the raw milk. Step one to life dream, complete.

To read "The Food Lovers Guide to L.A.: An Encyclopedia of Good Taste," pick up a copy of the November issue on newsstands or subscribe NOW

Bare Method

By Shayna Rose Arnold — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:42:00 GMT

Photographs by Jeff Lipskey

Plastic surgery seems to be a topic everyone has an opinion on. But “The New Face and Body of Plastic Surgery” doesn’t champion or denigrate the industry’s trends. Was this topic harder than most to approach with an open mind?
Yes, particularly because I came in with my own judgment on the topic—superficial, grotesque—and had to shake that off to approach this in a fresh way. I realized plastic surgery is treated in media usually in one of three ways: endorsement, circus act, or horror story. I didn't want this to be an endorsement of plastic surgery because a list of "Best Plastic Surgeons" is not at all the editorial mission of an L.A. mag story. I didn't want the circus act of "twins getting face-lifts!" because that's stuntwork, not journalism. I didn't want to do horror stories of surgery gone wrong, because that's just a cheap way to exploit a reader's emotions and it's an insult to their intelligence.

So as I was researching and coming up with ideas, I realized there were new things to say, an opportunity to cover not only the procedural elements of cosmetic surgery, but also to take a cultural and sociological look at it—at how these procedures have become cheaper, easier, and more democratized, and, with that, the kind of woman (and in a few cases men) who are getting it aren't the Beverly Hills matron or the blond bimbo we've endured as a stereotype of our city for three decades. There's a whole spectrum of procedures that reflect a new aesthetic—and in turn, that reflects a demographic shift in L.A. Or, to put it more simply: Butts are the new boobs.

Because of what we see on TV (hello, Real Housewives!), we think of plastic surgery as something rich, mostly white women do to look younger, thinner, and to have bigger boobs. But that’s not the full picture, is it?
Not at all. I will say reality TV has had a bizarre and surprising influence on "normalizing" plastic surgery (which we're defining as any artificial manipulation to the face and body, including less invasive procedures such as Botox), where the people on these programs are casual and cavalier—they make it all look fun, with Botox parties and breast implants as gifts. We have a good time with that in a piece called "Seven Unreal Things We Learned From The Real Housewives"—it's a caricature exported as "reality."

Use of Botox has spiked 621 percent in the last decade. Whoa. Why do you think that is?
The last five years, it was the economy. The surgeons I interviewed all said that the financial collapse led to a drop in face-lifts and other expensive procedures, and women instead were opting for "surgery lite"—Botox, fillers, and other injectables known as MIPs—minimally invasive procedures. It's the difference between a few hundred bucks a pop and several thousand. Another reason for the spike in injectables is that FDA approval happened over a decade ago, but women were afraid of "poison" in their face. Over the years Botox has become more common, and women feel more confident that it’s safe. I should also mention that the marketing of these products, from television ads to brochures wallpapering your dermatologist’s office, have had a huge impact on pushing these products. What women need to know, though, is that injectables are largely unregulated in terms of who can have them and where they can be done. It's a Wild West of people claiming to be experts, but it's important that women and men who want to get an injectable do so through a board-certified physician.

Your research uncovered facts like the highest price for an all-in-one makeover ($100,000) and the percentage of all procedures done in the U.S. happen in our Pacific/Western region (31 percent). What one stat surprised you the most?
I think the stat that shocked me was that 70 percent of cosmetic procedures are undergone by women who earn less than $50,000 a year. That's not in the story, because that's not a figure I reported—it's one mentioned in Lauren Greenfield's documentary Beauty CULTure, which came out this year. It struck me that a fair number of multiple procedure patients are working-class single mothers who are going back into the dating and/or professional world and see plastic surgery as an opportunity to make their lives better. For many of them, it might be; I don't know.

In an essay she contributed to the package, Greenfield says “everything is something to be changed.” Is the growth of the plastic surgery industry indicative of larger changes in our culture?
Yes, that the new virtue is not in good deeds but in perfect features. Greenfield observes this, and I agree. We look at our body parts as projects in constant need of improvement. And that's something people might not realize. It became clear to me in my research that one procedure, like Botox, leads to another, like an eyelift, which leads to a face-lift…basically as soon as you fix one thing, you notice something else, and it never ends.

We reported how difficult it was for the magazine to find the right cover model for the issue. What look were you going for, and why?
This was so telling—and depressing. We wanted a model who was healthy-looking. A natural beauty with curves that reflected a "new ideal"—that is, a rounder figure, natural breasts, hips ,and backside. We asked for a size 6-8, and we couldn't find a single model—not ONE—who was that size. There is no plus-size market in L.A. Our photo editor, Amy Feitelberg, called every agency in the city. Finally we managed to get a model who was a size 4 and looked fleshy enough. Other than that, it was all size 0s. I guess I was a little clueless about that.

$10.4 billion was spent on cosmetic procedures in the U.S. last year alone. Where does the industry go from here?
I kept asking doctors for their predictions on next trends and oddly, they didn't have a grand vision of what will happen next in terms of innovation. It strikes me that they're making enough money so they're not entirely concerned about improving their process, other than making their process go faster (like our 60-minute face-lift) so they can get more patients and make more money. But I did observe that the market for injectables and other minimally invasive procedures is so booming, that's where the money is—the subtler tweaks and natural-looking results without going under the knife. We have a list of those items in a sidebar called “10 Things to Stick into Your Face Besides Botox." I should note that plastic surgery is a global fascination, so there are things going on in Asia, particularly South Korea, that might make their way here, but with our FDA approval process, it won't be for several more years, I imagine.

This Month’s Special: The 2012 Food Lovers Guide

By Lesley Bargar Suter — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 18:42:00 GMT

Anyone who has palled around with me even a little knows that I have a serious thing for goats. I find them generally adorable, I appreciate their nondiscriminating palates, and most of all, I like what they produce: goat’s milk yogurt, kefir, and goat cheese. For years I’ve been imagining a fantasy future for myself in which I find a patch of land, acquire a small herd of Nubians, and make incredible aged artisanal goat cheeses for a living. The hitch? I have no idea how to make goat cheese. I’ve never even made ricotta or yogurt. In the world of milk crafting, that is the equivalent of a track star having no clue how to tie his or her shoes.

Wait, scratch that—I had no idea how to make goat cheese until last month, when I attended the Foodcrafting 101 class at the Institute of Domestic Technology. Highlighted in this month’s Los Angeles magazine Food Lovers Guide, the class is one of several the institute conducts at the bucolic Zane Grey Estate in Altadena. In a mere six hours I learned how to can peach preserves, bake homemade bread, create my own custom mustard, and finally, make my own chèvre in view of the estate's herd of goats nibbling hay a few feet away. (Yes, that was the sound of my head popping like a balloon.)

It was a thrilling experience, not only because I got one step closer to my pipe dream but because of the sense of empowerment that comes with making something so basic with your own hands. My classmates seemed to share the feeling. Who knows? Perhaps one of them might be the next It producers of tangy sourdough, traditional German pickles, gourmet “nutella,” high-end chocolate, or small-batch ice creams—all of which are having a moment at this moment, thanks to local talents.

The pages of this month’s Food Lovers Guide now on newsstands reflect the recent explosion of the DIY food movement in L.A. Things like home brewing, flour milling, beekeeping, and growing mushrooms—once fringe hobbies (OK, nerd hobbies)—are suddenly au courant. The result is an unprecedented boom in artisanal products for sale at neighborhood farmers’ markets, gourmet shops, and specialty stores. Buying these goodies doesn’t just mean you’ll make the best grilled cheese sandwich on the block (with gooey cabecou cheese on rustic Storefront sourdough with caramelized onion jam), you’ll be reviving lost arts.

To help you make sense of it all, we’ve compiled a delicious and indispensable field guide to edible L.A.—an encyclopedia—with information on where to find everything from avocado honey to fragrant za’atar. As for the goat cheese, you can find that at my house, where I’ve made two batches since my class in September. I may not have the land or the herd, but I’ve got the recipe and I know where to buy the raw milk. Step one to life dream, complete.

To read The Food Lovers Guide, pick up a copy of the November issue on newsstands or subscribe NOW.

Q&A: The Road Taken

By Amy Wallace — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 17:38:00 GMT

Photograph courtesy of Suzanne Rico

For years Suzanne Rico was the morning anchor at CBS2. Then in 2010, she abruptly got fired. Instead of moping around, licking her wounds, she and her husband sold their cars, rented out their house, and traveled around the world with their two young sons. The experience changed her and her relationship to her family, her work, and herself. In the November issue of Los Angeles, she writes about the odyssey and how it still reverberates through her life. Here she talks with editor-at-large Amy Wallace about how the story came to be:

Had you done much writing before you went on this trip?
I hadn’t. I’d written one piece for the L.A. Times. I enjoyed it so much, but it took me so much time, and I was basically learning on the job while raising two kids and carrying a full load at work. But when I decided to go on this trip, people started saying to me, “I can’t believe you’re going to do this! You need to keep us up to speed!” So I started this e-mail list, and I’d just send stories of what we were doing. And after the third or fourth story, I had such incredible response and people were sending them to friends and people were asking if they could get on my e-mail list. So finally a close friend of mine, Lisa Joyner, said, “I’m setting you up a blog.” I said, “A blog?” She set it up for me. She picked the name: Walking Papers.

So suddenly you were a blogger.
Yes, I was an unpaid blogger trying to blog from places like the wilds of Turkey and Namibia and the Ruta 40 in Argentina. Let me tell you how difficult it is to upload a blog from some of these places. It’s damn near impossible. You could do it faster by carrier pigeon. I don’t think that made me a very good blogger. I would blog once a week or once every ten days. Whenever I could get to an Internet connection.

There’s a scene in the story when your computer goes dead after one of your sons delivers it a swift kick. In addition to everything else, technology was not always your friend on this journey.
One time we were in Namibia, and we drove 300 kilometers over what was supposed to be a paved road. It had rained, and there were rivers going across the road, so 300 kilometers took us 10 or 11 hours. Where we were going was said to be the one Internet outpost in the middle of nowhere. But when we finally got there, they said, “Well, we don’t have Wi-Fi, but you can drive 50 kilometers to a gas station, and they have it.” So the next day we drove there, to a little solar-powered hut in the back of this gas station. I went in, but they were only set up for PCs, and my computer was a Mac. There was no way I was ever going to send a blog post from there. Here I was driving my family around Namibia trying to upload a blog. And at some point I just had to say, OK, I can’t do it, and it’s just going to have to happen when it happens.

That’s right: patience.
Exactly. Which is kind of the whole theme of my story: not to apply that “I must do this NOW!” thing and let it ruin your whole trip.

So when you did succeed at posting to your blog, what kind of feedback did you get?
Amazing. It’s always nice to hear positive feedback. But what made me happy is when I started to reach people I didn’t know. Having encouragement come all the way from Australia or England, with people saying, “Wow, I’m so proud of you. And the fact that you’ve jumped off this cliff makes me feel like I can, too.” That was immensely rewarding. It validated what I was doing and made me feel that even in the outer reaches at the end of the world, I wasn’t alone. There was camaraderie. People said, “This is inspirational” and “You’re so courageous.” And while I didn’t really feel courageous at all—I just kind of felt like I was putting one foot in front of the other and trying to learn along the way—I think people did get a sense of, If she can do it, I can do it, too. And not necessarily travel around the world but change your life.

To go for it.
Yes.

So when you came home to L.A., what made you want to turn the blog into a longer piece?
It was kind of to prove that I could. In a lot of ways this is a totally new frontier for me. I’ve been in journalism my whole career, but I’ve never written stories, and I’ve certainly never told my own story. I’ve told other people’s stories my whole life. If you interview me and you tell my story, or if one of the talk shows wanted to talk to me about our trip, they’d put their spin on it. This was the only way I could really tell it from my perspective. It was so personal and it meant so much to me—what we did and being able to make a 180-degree turn in my life—that I felt compelled to share it. But I didn’t know if I could tell it in a way that would be meaningful to other people. I hope that it is and that somebody else sees themselves in me and says, “I don’t have to go around the world, but maybe I can try to find a more compelling career or make my marriage better or start treating my body in a way that makes my life more fulfilled or worthwhile”—or whatever their particular demon that they’re struggling with is. You really just have to do it by taking a step forward. And writing the story was a huge step forward for me.

The trip around the world opened a door, it sounds like, to a new way of expressing yourself.
Yes, and there was another thing that I didn’t address in the story that was important for me. When I got fired—and then on top of getting fired, I decided to leave the only business, the only career, I’ve ever known—I thought maybe it would be over for me. I thought no one would ever value my skills or my talents ever again. That’s a fear I think so many people have. And what I found was exactly the opposite: that all those years I spent honing a craft were worthwhile, and people saw the worth in me despite the fact that I no longer had that virtual name tag that says “Anchorwoman.” All the work I did over the years still had value to a lot of people, and when I came back to L.A., people still wanted my input. So the trip opened a lot of doors.

Somebody asked me the other day, How do you keep from slipping backward? It’s a really good question, and the answer is, I slip backward all the time. I find myself waxing and waning in how well I do with this new philosophy that I have about life, but every time I backslide, I find it easier and easier to catch myself. I make the necessary adjustments and get back on my path and start moving forward again.

Since you’ve returned, your mom—who plays an important role in the story: Your kids’ missing her is part of what brings you back to L.A.— has gotten a scary diagnosis.
Yes, when the person asked me about backsliding the other day, I told them, “I have a mom in the hospital who is fighting Stage IV cancer. If I needed any more of a reminder about what’s important in life than that, then I think I would be a big, fat failure.” But what are your core values? What is most important? Is it that I’m some rich, famous writer or journalist? No. It’s that my family thinks I’m a good person, and that I can help them and that I can be present for them. Especially in this time. Every day I’m reminded of that.

It’s as if you had to go very far away to remember how important quality time is with your family. Like you had to make a clean break to get in touch with that again.
That’s right.

I think a lot of people will relate to that.
Well, and I do wonder on an intuitive level: Did all that have to happen so I could be here for my mom? If I were working at CBS, and getting up at 3 in the morning, and trying to juggle all of that along with my mom’s illness, how present would I be for her? I wouldn't be able to be. But now, every day, I say to myself, OK, I’m going to put running shoes on and my sweats, and I’m headed to the hospital. And if I can get a run in today, then that’s a bonus. It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever experienced, being able to hold her hand every step of the way. And saying, I will be here for you.

To read "The Road Taken," Suzanne Rico's feature in the November issue, pick up a copy on newsstands or subscribe NOW.

Rocket Man

By Shayna Rose Arnold — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 16:48:00 GMT

Photograph by Dan Winters

Dan Winters, whose photographs of Endeavour appear in the October issue of Los Angeles magazine and in Last Launch, his soon-to-be-released photo tribute to America’s space shuttle program, tells us how he captured such detailed shots of the engineering feat in motion:

The process you follow when shooting a space shuttle starts the day before a launch—and includes drilling, electronic trigger settings, sandbagging your tripods. Sounds like a workout.
It’s a lot of work. It’s also painfully hot and incredibly humid with massive amounts of mosquitoes, so that exacerbates the process of setting everything up. I’ve photographed in some pretty weird situations before, whether extreme cold or heat, so I’m definitely no stranger to adverse conditions—that’s just part of the deal. It makes things not so pleasant, but on the flip side it’s incredible to be so close to the shuttle and that piece of history. It’s inspiring. The good outweighs the bad.

You couldn’t be anywhere near the cameras, which are set with shutter triggers, during the launch. What went through your mind while you waited to see what was captured on film?
The only thing I thought about is if the trigger worked, because I already knew the picture I was going to get. It’s just a matter of if it works. I’ve had it not work before and that’s the frustrating part. You do what you can to make sure the camera is going to fire, but misfires happen. I got very few misfires, though. I just try to take in the launch, which I shoot from the press site, as well.

It sounds a lot like what the engineers and astronauts must be going through for the shuttle—hoping all systems go.
You’re so right. Absolutely.

For those who haven’t experienced it firsthand, what is it like to witness a space shuttle launch?
It’s really interesting. The first time I saw a launch was in 1998, and the thing that surprised me the most was the sound. The shuttle clears the tower before you can hear it, in the same way that if you’re at a baseball game and you see a ball hit, it takes a second to hear the ball’s contact with the bat. There’s a delay, and so you see the intense cloud of smoke when the main engines start, and then after six seconds the solid rocket boosters start, and this all happens before you hear anything. I had an idea in my mind of what a launch would sound like, but it was so vastly different from the truth. It actually sounds like packing materials—like, pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.

What work is done on the photographs once the launch is over?
I take all the files and really quickly back them up onto three different hard drives and load them up on the computer. Then, what I like to do is take the images and play with them at night at the hotel and do a quick edit. It’s really funny, the launch is so loud that even after the shuttle is out of view the cameras [which are triggered by sound] continue firing, so I end up with a lot of frames of just smoke. As a rule I don’t delete anything. I just play around a little bit and then we get back to the studio and run through it. For the photographs of Endeavour, I didn’t do a lot of manipulation other than synchronizing color intensities so the photographs match and look like a consistent piece of work.

ALSO: See Dan Winters' photographs of Endeavour in The Final Frontier

Chefs of the Year: A Preface

By Lesley Bargar Suter — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 00:43:00 GMT

It just made sense. We’ve put together countless (honestly, I can’t even count anymore) lists outlining the city’s best dishes, restaurants, and drinks, but although we’ve kicked the idea around for years, we’ve never dedicated an issue to the people behind L.A.’s finest food. It was time.

This isn’t about “best new chefs,” and this isn’t about the best chefs of all-time, either. These are the chefs of the year. What does that mean? The 20 recipients of our Chefs of the Year awards did something in the last 12 months that particularly impressed us. Sure, in many cases that “thing” was opening a new restaurant, but others earned our kudos for launching a side business importing obscure international ingredients. Or maybe they had a particularly loud voice in the foie gras debate. Or maybe they honored the work of local farmers. Or maybe they just cooked us a mean pizza. Either way, these chefs are deserving of special recognition because of how they spent the last year, both in and outside of the kitchen. For that, they should be proud.

But any time you put a list together, that means leaving some people out. I’ve gotten pretty used to the emails and phone calls protesting the absence of such-and-such a sandwich/burger/pizza/chef/sushi roll/wine shop/pie/etc. That, I’m prepared for. My biggest concern with this cover story was and still is excluding a few of L.A.’s very finest chefs simply because this year didn’t stand out particularly in the scope of their long, esteemed careers. Wolfgang Puck? Not on our list. (I’ll wait for you all to finish gasping.) Michael Cimarusti, chef-owner at Providence, which many, including me, believe is likely L.A.’s best restaurant—period? Nope, not on our list either.

Are we punishing consistency? I hope not. At least, it’s not the aim. Meryl Streep can’t win the Oscar every year (or can she?) even though we all know she’s one of the world’s greatest actors. Sometimes a 23-year-old Hilary Swank is going to come out of nowhere and beat the pants off her for cutting off all her hair and playing a transgendered adolescent murder victim. But I digress…

The “Chefs of the Year” package looks at the last 12 months as a snapshot, and honors those culinary talents who stood out—rising stars and veterans alike. It’s as simple as that. Try their food for yourself—heck, applaud after dessert if you’re so inspired. These chefs deserve it.

To read "Chefs of the Year," pick up a copy of the September issue on newsstands or subscribe NOW.

Postscript: The Takeover Artist

By Matthew Segal — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:38:00 GMT

Photograph courtesy LAUSD

In “The Takeover Artist,” which appears in the September Los Angeles magazine, writer-at-large Ed Leibowitz profiles John Deasy, following him through his first year as the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Executive editor Matthew Segal speaks with Leibowitz about Deasy, who’s set out to radically transform a system that is facing profound challenges—challenges that will no doubt shape the city’s future.

Ed, you opted to follow Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent John Deasy for an entire school year. What was the thinking behind that approach?
The first day of school is one of possibilities. All the days that follow, at least in a school district such as the LAUSD, are going to be about hard realities and minor miracles. For Deasy, the school year would test his optimism and his ambitions against these realities and give our readers a sense of how well they held up. Deasy himself has a formula for measuring academic progress over time—a teacher’s “value-added” influence on his or her students’ performance during a given academic year. I wanted to chart Deasy’s impact on the entire school system from that same perspective.

Deasy’s a busy guy—up at 3:30 every weekday, home by 10 or 11 at night, with half a Sunday to devote to leisure. What did he say when you proposed the story to him?
He was enthusiastic, although he was puzzled why I would want to devote so many months—and why Los Angeles magazine would allocate so many words—to such a story. He had commanded a lot of press during his meteoric career in education, but most of it in the form of newspaper articles and short TV segments.

How much access did he give you?
A tremendous amount. Over the school year I spent a good deal of time on the 24th floor of LAUSD headquarters, sitting in not only on sessions Deasy led but also on those led by his subordinates. Some of those meetings were filled with so much jargon and acronyms that I could have benefited from a decoder. The bureaucratic language of public education administration is something.

So Deasy says he wants to see to it that as of 2016, every single kid who graduates from a public school in Los Angeles is capable of getting into a Cal State or a UC school. Currently about 38 percent of LAUSD kids don’t even graduate, let alone meet the basic criteria to get into a state school. In a nutshell, what does he say to the many skeptics out there?
This moment didn’t make the article, but at one point, when I was in his office and asked him that very question, he pointed up to an axiom he’d scrawled on a whiteboard in his office that read, “If we appear to seek the unattainable, we do so to avoid the unimaginable.” It’s actually a truncated quote lifted from the Port Huron Statement, the founding document of Students for a Democratic Society that Tom Hayden wrote 50 years ago. The “unimaginable” isn’t just fully imaginable but the norm now at the LAUSD—thousands of poor students of color relegated to a life of continuing hardship through a substandard education. Of course, by the end of the ’60s, the SDS itself disintegrated after falling far short of the unattainable.

Right. But in terms of what is truly attainable, even when the district was flush with money before voters approved Proposition 13 in 1978, nowhere near 100 percent of LAUSD high school grads could have gotten into a Cal State or UC school. Do you think Deasy really believes this is achievable under any circumstances, let alone the ones he currently faces?
Deasy comes from a science background, which made it all the more surprising to me that his sense of moral right so often seems to trump clear and otherwise overwhelming evidence that works against his aspirations—not the least of which was that mandate for 100 percent four-year college readiness.

You liken his effort to the Apollo moon shot of the 1960s—setting lofty goals that might seem impossible but are ultimately achievable if we work hard enough. But there were resources with the Apollo mission.
Sure, there were unlimited funds for the moon shot. California doesn’t have deep pockets in this economy, and even in better times, any surge in home prices isn’t going to support the state’s schools to the degree it used to before the Prop. 13 anti-tax revolt virtually froze property taxes for most California home owners.

We should back up for a minute. I think people may have a general idea that the district is strapped for money. Objectively speaking, how bad are things in the district?
The LAUSD gets about $6,000 a year per student from the state to educate a student body that for the most part needs an enormous amount of extra support, especially at the middle and high school levels, because of poverty, because of the language barrier, because of external threats to their education from neighborhood violence to eviction from overcrowded apartments. There are many students who will attend two or three schools before the academic year’s over, just because their living situation is so tenuous. New York City’s public school students face similar challenges, but its school system receives $18,000 a year for each student from the city and state—more than triple what L.A. does.

So it’s the classic situation of trying to do more with less. Do you get the sense, then, that, to borrow from the Apollo analogy, he’s sort of aiming for the stars in the hopes that they might reach the moon? Aim for 100 percent college readiness and you might reach 70 percent?
I think he’d argue that being happy with a 70 percent success rate means you’re happy with consigning 30 percent of an entire generation to a life of poverty, with some even winding up homeless or in jail.

One of his critics in your story suggests that what he really seems to believe in is magic.
I don’t know if I’d entirely agree with that, but one thing that did become clear to me is that once you make a high-stakes bet like 100 percent college readiness for all students, you have to make other implausible assumptions in order to envision a big win in your favor. At one LAUSD meeting Deasy declared that based on his experience students don’t drop out because the bar is being raised higher but because they are bored or not challenged enough. He also said that the district already had enough resources to meet his goals. As for the money, the district has so much less this year than last year that it had to cut ten days off the academic calendar—I heard the cleaning fluid budget was cut at my son’s local elementary school for the summer to save a few bucks. Under Deasy’s college-readiness curriculum, students who fail algebra would have to take it again until they pass it. At one point during this same meeting, school board member Marguerite LaMotte asked what would happen if she took college-ready algebra semester after semester and kept failing. Would she be deprived of her diploma? Deasy didn’t have an answer.

A lot of people in L.A. just don’t care about the LAUSD. They don’t have kids, or the kids they have don’t attend a school in it. Casey Wasserman, the multimillionaire who runs a sports-management agency, has invested heavily in Deasy. He also had some strong words about L.A.’s wealthiest citizens.
Going back to the Apollo comparison, there was a national consensus after Sputnik that Americans had to be the ones to take that first step on the lunar landscape. Among L.A.’s civic elites, there’s little curiosity about the LAUSD’s students and their future, let alone concern. There was a real threat of humiliation—a potential loss of national or even international standing of L.A. civic leaders—if they did not band together to build Disney Hall. There’s apparently no comparable risk of disgrace for disregarding the city’s poorest, whether they’re school age or beyond.

The district covers an area far larger than the city itself—several hundred square miles, in fact—and has more than 660,000 students. Can you explain why it’s so big?
The LAUSD grew much like L.A. did, in fits, bursts, and seeping sprawl—without a granule of central planning. Communities that agreed to dissolve themselves and become part of the city became part of the LAUSD, so did unincorporated areas of the county. It was all a matter of absorption.

Is that why there’s been no serious effort to break up the district into smaller districts?
There actually have been efforts, although much of the impetus has come from areas like the West San Fernando Valley, which would depart the LAUSD with some of its best-off students and parents, leaving other pieces of the district the poorer. Can you make the LAUSD contiguous with L.A. city limits? Then what do you do with those unincorporated pieces of the system that might be hundreds of miles away from one another?

In a way the push for charter schools is one means of addressing the district size. What is Deasy’s overall view of charters, which operate within the district and receive some of the district’s funding but operate outside of it at the same time?
Deasy says he’s agnostic about charters, and at one point he told me that as many charters had been closed down during his administration for poor performance as had been opened. Under his local school initiative program, he did partner up with Steve Barr, who launched Green Dot, one of the better charter school operators, to develop learning academies that would be LAUSD schools but have charter-like independence. When I spoke with Barr, he told me that the district won’t be able to turn itself around until it can provide safe, effective middle and high school education for upper-middle class kids who now typically leave the LAUSD after elementary school. The idea is to broaden the parent constituency in the higher grades beyond the most disadvantaged to include those who have the kind of money and the political and public-opinion-making power to make the sort of ruckus that politicians and the press will have to listen to.

Because L.A. is so big, the city’s problems are almost by necessity large as well. So it’s always eye-opening when there’s measurable progress in any troubled area. The city used to have too few schools. A multibillion-dollar bond measure passed by voters almost a decade ago changed that. Now we have plenty of new schools, some of them quite fetching.
We love building things in Southern California, more than we do allocating funds that might actually allow those buildings to function as they’re meant to. So we have brand-new libraries with bare shelves that are closed a good deal of the time on weekdays, and beautiful new public school campuses where classrooms remain as crowded as ever, not for lack of space but for lack of available pay for teachers. I visited a history class with Deasy at a brand-new middle school that had one teacher in it and 50 students.

Nine months out of anyone’s lifetime—including yours, the writer’s—is significant. Then again, considering what Deasy is trying to achieve, it’s a sliver of time.
Given the shelf life of an LAUSD superintendent—less than five semesters—the 2011-2012 school year could turn out to be a large chunk of the time Deasy will have had to transform the district. I was researching other articles during the school year, but I rarely spent so much time on one subject as I did talking with Deasy, attending speeches, school board meetings, and strategy sessions, and visiting the occasional school site.

What do you think is going to stick with you most from this story?
What impacted me most is how the LAUSD is a system incapable of being moved, that if anyone tries to change it in any major way, it will budge just enough to crush the would-be change agent and then go back to being inert. And still, knowing the outcome, so many adults decide that, for their students’ sakes, they have to get in the way. Deasy is arguably the district’s leading change agent, and I admire his commitment and, to a degree, his impossible dreams as well. Still, there is another story that I wasn’t at liberty to explore as fully but that affected me at least as much—about remarkable teachers and principals who operate on quicksand, their livelihoods constantly under threat from layoffs, their salaries and instruction hours cut back by unpaid furloughs, their campus budgets constantly chipped away at. Yet they manage to pull resources out of nowhere and inspire kids who are counting on them not just for an education but for so many other things—support, encouragement, two solid meals a day, and a relatively safe haven from the violence and turmoil that’s often beyond the school gates. I do hope the superintendent will realize how much he and these adults who work under him have in common, even if they fall behind the 100 percent standard of excellence he has set as his own bar.

To read "The Takeover Artist" by Ed Leibowitz, pick up a copy of the September issue on newsstands or subscribe NOW.

A Postscript Q&A: The Dream Factory

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 19:49:00 GMT

Photograph by Niles White

What did you think when I called you with this assignment?
I thought it was just such a great opportunity. I've been on a lot of lots and I've shot on a lot of stages, but the idea of pointing the camera at the thing rather someone that's inside it—in other words, making the location the character and presenting it more from a blue collar perspective was new. For me, that was kind of magical.

How did you approach the project?
I saw it almost as landscape photography. Landscape [photography] is all about the capturing bigness and close-ups. I want to see where I am, but I also want to see the tidbits, the little details that occupy the place, as well. I was treating the lot almost like archeologically, like, here it is.

The lot is physically huge and has decades of history and lore. What was the biggest challenge in capturing that on film?
This was the first time that I have ever shot a big photo-essay feature in color without lighting, just with available light. I've never done that before. The reason I did it—because we did have a whole truckload of lights available, I just never pulled them out—was because when I got into the places I felt like they had this really magical feel to them and I thought if I could get that feel without lighting, that would be really great. It's great to transform with light if your location isn't great, but for this, I felt the opposite. I felt that I'd be diminishing the locations if I started trying to transform them.

Tell me about shooting the prop hall. I thought that was going to be a huge challenge because it’s so massive. How do you show something that size and make it interesting?
You go to some of the prop houses that are small and the props are really concentrated, so when you photograph them you get amazing landscapes of all sorts of different props that aren't really related. But the Warner Bros. prop house is so big that there's all this sameness—there’s rows and rows and rows of chairs, a section that had lamps, a section that had paintings... We had to [move things around] and prop out the prop department so that we represent what was in there in a single frame.

Before you were on this project I saw Stage 16 and thought, "Oh, Dan's going to make this so gorgeous." Seeing your image of that space without light is pretty amazing.
When you're shooting a photo essay or a series of portraits, the first one is the one that informs the rest in the series. You've really got to think it through, because you are committing to an aesthetic that has to stay consistent all the way through. We started with the sewing room and made that decision [not to light it], and kept that going.

You live in Texas. When you know you're coming here to shoot something, do you typically have an idea what it is? Or do you wait and see?
Both. Having done a lot of motion picture theater interiors and a lot of interiors, and architectural stuff, I kind of know the drill.

Did you learn anything about Warner Bros. or the movies that you didn't know before this project?
Yeah! I always try to learn. One thing I learned is that there's a scenic department, a background department that exists and is functional. It's surprising in this day and age since you assume it's all green-screened. The idea that there's an active space for that, that they're doing all that casting and molding and walking in there and smelling that resin. Seeing the individual spaces where people work on specific things—that was really special.

The “Best” of LA: The Unofficial Chain Store Confessions Edition

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 20:51:00 GMT

Photograph courtesy weheartthis.com

Every August we put out our annual Best of LA issue with a cheer—and a sigh of relief. Putting the package together requires months of reporting (eating, drinking, shopping, doing—hey, we’re just sayin’, not complainin’), writing, and designing. The issue celebrates L.A.’s best local resources: independent mom-and-pop shops and L.A.-based brands, businesses, and people. But we’d be lying if we said we’re not familiar with the big box stores dotting the city. Heck, we even have some favorites. So in the Best of LA spirit, here is our first-ever unofficial list of chain store picks. Grab a hat, a pair of shades, and a cart. We’re going shopping.

IKEA
The parking lot and pickup area of the Burbank IKEA are packed and hellish. The bizarre layout and sad cafeteria at the Carson location is just depressing. But if you’re willing to drive to Covina, a shopping mecca awaits. This IKEA branch is spacious and usually well stocked. We don’t want to know what sort of wage-slavery the Swedish chain engages in to produce those $9.99 faux-mod throw pillows. We just want the flow of birch veneer bookshelves and cheap beveled mirrors to never stop. 848 S. Barranca Ave., Covina.

Fresh & Easy
If you can make your way past the union protesters outside, the Glassell Park branch of the chain we call “the Freasy” is the ultimate in-and-out grocery destination. The spacious parking lot—a flat plane of asphalt, not a garage—includes spots for hybrids and “families.” With the Eagle Rock and Silver Lake Trader Joe’s accommodating much of the fancy-grocery population, the aisles here, except on Monday nights, are relatively clear. And let’s not forget that Fresh & Easy stocks a huge selection of organic, preservative-free produce and foodstuffs at prices that are regularly below those at TJ’s.

Trader Joe’s
Speaking of TJ’s—yes, there’s a spankin’-new one on Fairfax across from the Grove that features wide-open aisles and freshly written signs for tomato-basil hummus and other Trader Joe specialties. But we’re partial to the West Hollywood location on Santa Monica Boulevard at Poinsettia. It’s rarely crowded on Sunday mornings, the staff’s especially helpful, and there’s plenty of parking.

Costco
A trip to the Los Feliz Costco can be a battle of epic proportions. Should you survive the dizzying spins around the parking lot and make it through the zombie-like crowds, you can score some sweet deals. We can’t quite bring ourselves to shop for processed bulk food here, but we love the electronics, garden, and optical departments, where you can find discounted scanners or iPod speakers, composting bins, patio furniture, and contact lenses at a fraction of the cost elsewhere.

GAP
We hadn’t been inside a Gap in years, but a recent trip has us declaring that the go-to-basics chain is cool once again. While we cooed over tan suede platforms and ikat print shorts, it was the workout clothes that really caught our attention. The Gap’s GapFit line of performance wear in bright colors and edgy designs makes you look like you’re ready for a role as an extra in the Tron sequel.

H&M
From accessories to seasonal wardrobe staples, H&M is our favorite spot for inexpensive, trendy pieces. Sure, we get excited every few months by the latest designer collaboration, but it’s the quality of the garments that we particularly admire. We have H&M hats, blazers, and dresses that have stood the test of time—years and counting for some pieces—and unlike other cheapo chains, these items aren’t disposable after one season.

Sephora
What’s not to love about Sephora? After years of drugstore mishaps, being able to try on foundation or the latest shade of lipstick before you buy is a revelation. For its sheer size, parking ease, and late hours (it closes at 10 p.m.), we’re partial to the one at the Americana at Brand.

Houston’s
Here's what a veggie burger looks like at most restaurants--particularly  food chains: a "medley" of corn, broccoli, black beans and other non-meat  salad bar fixins' compressed into a spray-tan orange air-hockey puck on a  hamburger bun. Usually, it's the extra $1.50 avocado you order to mask the  nuked Gardenburger knock-off that does most of the flavor lifting. Houston's  veggie burger, however, is a whole different meatless beast: First of all,  it's massive and messy, just like a real burger, without trying to imitate  the flavor and texture of beef with soy or gluten products. It's also a  gorgeous shade of dark red, probably from the beets mixed into the brown  rice, oats, beans and vegetables that don't look like they've come from a  baby food jar. Then there's the special sauce, some kind of molasses-tinged  barbecue situation that many home cooking vegetarians and cult-followers of  the Houston's original have tried to emulate. I don't know why or how  Houston's conceived of such brilliance on a bun, because goodness knows they don't have to, but it gets my vote for Best of Everywhere.

The Sommelier Challenge

By Shayna Rose Arnold — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:26:00 GMT

Photograph courtesy rampantcuisine.com

Bacon-Wrapped Oysters
Champagne with oysters is one of the most common classic pairings. And being a champagne fanatic, I happen to love champagne with bacon just as much. I strongly believe that throwing a plate of bacon-wrapped oysters on a table with a chilled bottle of nonvintage champagne would be a great start to a dinner party. The crisp and fresh bubbly would cut right through the richness of the bacon and pair deliciously with the salty brine of the oysters.

Recommendations:
NV Lallier Grand Cru “Blanc de Blancs” (Champagne, France); $40 at The Wine House.
NV Taittinger “La Française” Brut (Champagne, France); $35 at Lincoln Fine Wines.

Breakfast Cereal
I have very fond memories of late nights in college pouring a bowl of cereal and pairing it with a can of Miller Lite. Using that as a springboard, I believe that beer is the way to go with regard to the cereal-and-milk combination. Specifically, a stout. This is more difficult because of the vast range of breakfast cereals out there. But the ingrained correlation between coffee and cereal translates well to the traditional dark-roasted and coffee-flavored stout ales out there.

Recommendations:
Great Divide Brewing Company “Espresso Oak Aged Yeti” Imperial Stout (Colorado); $11 (22 oz.) at Wally’s Wine and Spirits.
Guinness Stout (Ireland); $2 (12 oz.) at Wally’s Wine and Spirits.

Vegetable Soup
In my experience, vegetable soup falls into two categories: hearty cold-weather soups and fresh warm-weather soups. Regardless of the category, it's important to choose a wine that has good acidity and freshness to keep up with the inherent acidity in a lot of vegetables. My recommendation is for a young and vibrant sauvignon blanc. Serving it well chilled will introduce a nice point-counterpoint interplay between the temperature of the wine and the temperature of the hot soup. Plus, the acidity and brightness of the wine will keep up beautifully with the flavors of the soup.

Recommendations:
2010 Lucien Crochet Sancerre “La Croix du Roy” (Loire Valley, France); $28 at The Wine House.
2011 Mud House Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, New Zealand); $15 at Wally’s Wine and Spirits.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
I've never been asked to pair a beverage (besides, perhaps, a tall glass of milk) with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I feel that a traditional glass of wine would be annihilated by the texture as well as the sweet-salty combination of this classic dish. If I had to pick one wine that would be able to stand up to this classic, it would be Madeira. The nutty and complex flavors of Madeira, along with its semisweet expression, would be a killer drink to have with a PB&J.

Recommendations:
1997 Cossart-Gordon Bual Colheita (Madeira, Portugal); $39 (500 ml) at Woodland Hills Wine Company.
Blandy’s Rainwater (Madeira, Portugal); $15 at Wally’s Wine and Spirits.

Lucky Boy Breakfast Burrito
There have been many mornings when I've rolled out of bed and made myself a great breakfast burrito, and I know from a lot of experience that Riesling is the best pairing for this dish. Since I like to judiciously apply hot sauce to my breakfast burritos, I especially enjoy Rieslings with a little bit of sweetness (the sweetness buffers the spice of the hot sauce). Stick to young German Riesling that either says “Feinherb” or “Kabinett” on its front label. It'll be a refreshing, slightly fruity but perfect combination.

Recommendations:
2010 Joh. Jos. Prüm Riesling Kabinett (Mosel, Germany); $27 at K&L Wine Merchants.
2010 Mönchhof Estate Riesling (Mosel, Germany); $13 at The Wine House.

Tofu Soup
Traditional spicy tofu soup in Korean cuisine is a fantastic earthy dish with a lot of bold flavors and spice. There are few wines on the market that can stand up to that combination, but I find that slightly off-dry bold white wines from Alsace, France, are the best way to go about it. Gewürztraminer is a rich and perfumed white wine with a good body and oftentimes is found with a little bit of sweetness. It is definitely built to stand up and play well alongside spicy tofu soup.

Recommendations:
2009 Domaine Bechtold Gewürztraminer “Silberberg” (Alsace, France); $23 at Solano Cellars.
2006 Domaine Beck-Hartweg Gewürztraminer “Frankstein” (Alsace, France); $25 at Wally’s Wine and Spirits.

Fried Chicken
This is one of my guilty pleasures: fried chicken and Beaujolais. Don't fall into the trap of assuming that Beaujolais is a fruity and insipid wine. Sure, there are some wines with “Beaujolais” on their label that fit that description, but Beaujolais is actually a region in France where the gamay grape is king. In my opinion, it is one of the most undervalued wine categories out there. The great examples are fresh, have a lovely purity of fruit and good structure, and are undeniably drinkable. Try it for yourself.

Recommendations:
2010 Lapalu Beaujolais “Vieilles Vignes” (Beaujolais, France); $16 at Wally’s Wine and Spirits.
2009 Pierre-Marie Chermette Domaine du Vissoux “Cuvée Traditionelle” (Beaujolais, France); $17 at The Wine House.

Mac and Cheese
A dry rosé from the south of France, particularly from Provence, is a great foil for a serving of mac and cheese. The fresh nature of those wines are the perfect vehicle to clean up the palate after a bit of cheesy macaroni. When it comes to rich and creamy dishes, finding something that can act as a complement and can refresh the palate after each bite is key.

Recommendations:
2011 Domaine Sainte Lucie “MiP” Côtes de Provence Rosé (Provence, France); $15 at Woodland Hills Wine Company.
2011 Commanderie de Peyrassol Côtes de Provence Rosé (Provence, France); $17 at K&L Wine Merchants.

Chili
As strange as it may sound, I think the perfect pairing for chili is a great margarita. Not the store-bought margarita mix cocktail. I’m talking about a freshly squeezed lime with good tequila and agave nectar margarita. The richness of chili, along with its traditional heavy nature, begs for something a little stronger and very refreshing.

Recipe:
Start with fresh limes and a good reposado tequila (4 Copas and Partida are favorites of mine). Get your hands on some agave nectar (Trader Joe’s usually stocks this).

Pour 2 ounces of tequila, 1 ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice, and 1/2 ounce of agave nectar into a shaker. Shake hard and pour into a rocks glass.

4 Copas tequila; $65 at Wally’s Wine and Spirits.
Partida tequila; $60 at Wally’s Wine and Spirits.

Want even more suggestions? Or think you can stump him? Follow sommelier Eduardo Porto Carreiro on Twitter: @_eduardo_pc.

ALSO: Read more about Eduardo Porto Carreiro in "L.A. Archetype: Sommelier"