July 2010
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“So that party last night? Douche bag tells me oh, I was in the Army- I was a...”
– Cute LA woman on the patio of The Oaks Coffee shop, Hollywood, CA
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Mongols Walk Among Us
An arrest in connection to the June 21 shooting outside The Echo nightclub that left three people injured portends the outbreak of a new gang war in the streets of LA.
“The suspect is Jose Luis Sanchez, 25, of Los Angeles. He is a suspected Mongols gang member, and the motive is believed to be his intent to shoot the Hell’s Angel at the club” Lt. Wes Buhrmester, LAPD Rampart Patrol...
June 2010
13 posts
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Watch Grazed by Bullets, Survivor Tells of Shooting at The Echo A night of ambient psychedelic rock at uber hip music mecca The Echo ended in bloody carnage last Sunday after a motorcycle riding gunman opened fire into the crowd outside the club in LA’s Echo Park. Two were shot and seriously injured while a third vic, music agent Adam D’Zurilla amazingly was just grazed by bullets....
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ACHIM FREYER At ACE Gallery
ACE Gallery was a spectacular white box whose monolithic walls and rays-from-heaven- like lighting lent import to any damn thing on the wall when it was in SoHo back in the day. And while the adjacent deli that sells tallboys remains on 6th Avenue, ACE has long moved to LA where it became grander; occupying theme-park-scaled gallery space at two locations. We hit their Wilshire Avenue space the...
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Academy, Smell The Coffee
Now this is how to run an awards show. Robert Scheer whose web magazine Truthdig.com won best political blog at the 14th Annual Webby Awards Monday night, wins the crowd too. The event was held, fittingly, on NYC’s Wall Street.
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The Gayest Building in Hollywood
The Hollywood-Western building, c. 1928, has been many things through the years; movie mogul Louise B. Mayer’s offices, rehearsal space for Guns and Roses, porn studios. But what it remains is a wacky awesome structure with muscular nudes peering down on passersby. A high school English teacher back in the Bronx offered extra credit if we could accurately count the steps to the...
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Finally, The Legman is Welcomed
Walking along Western Avenue we looked up to find an ingratiating bit of signage, holding promise of arroz con pollo. But turns out this eatery that courted New Yorkers has long joined the trash heap of history. In its place, one of those Central American pupusarias, a shack lit by a single bulb churning out corn meal mush and cabbage in a scene that might as well be in Guatemala City.
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One of A kind Entertainment Campus for the Down...
Our exclusive analysis of Hollywood’s Larry King Square being a haven for the down and out was met with skepticism, lacking photojournalism cred. Well some images that arrived at LegmanLA
show the square is a one of a kind entertainment campus for the indigent. You know, exactly what LA Live is to margarita guzzling douche bags.
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Inching Towards Urbanism
Our first visit to Sunset Plaza we took in the blond cougars draped in $10,000 worth of clothes dining outdoors while inhaling the traffic of Sunset Boulevard, and did an about face. Returning to the expansive (but free) parking lot, the Legman found the valets and security men had all abandoned their posts. They were gathered at the far end of the lot, huddled together and fixed on the adjacent...
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Hollywood Noir: Death at the Frolic Room
The Frolic Room, a bar aside the landmark Pantages Theater on Hollywood Boulevard is a location in murder-mysteries like LA Confidential and The Black Dahlia. This past April 5th reality emulated art when the bar became the scene of a grisly death. However, insiders say it is no mystery while police maintain it is not a murder.
Gerald Thomas Andersen, one of five ...
May 2010
5 posts
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LAPD Confronts Anarcho Cyclists
A Friday night ride brought cyclists into a confrontation with cops along Hollywood Boulevard, near Highland as best we can make out from this video posted on cycling scene site Midnight Ridazz. Holding promise for a truce during the popular monthly Critical Mass rides, Police Chief Charlie Beck announced a policy to better train LAPD officers on the rights of cyclists. Apparently this one...
The IFC Media Project presents... GREED: Preview... →
Our colleague and former Hollywood neighbor Charlie LeDuff bailed out of the Creative Capital of the Planet to get home to Detroit where he’s been making things happen. Dig his new real-deal reality show, Wednesday 26 May on Ifc.com
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Marilyn and JFK Reappear in LA
An LA gallery will exhibit what is purported to be the only extant photo of Marilyn Monroe with President John Kennedy. The show, which opens June 1st -Marilyn’s birthday- also features pics shot moments after her performance at JFK’s 45th birthday celebration.
The image depicting JFK and Robert Kennedy from behind with Marilyn between the brothers in severe profile was taken by...
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GWAR Walks Among Us
America Must Be Destroyed, the seminal album from GWAR used to amuse us 20 years back. Finding out the monstrously costumed metal band is our next door neighbor in Hollywood is more amusing. The band dwells along with Green Jello in a sprawling former half way house among an arcade of console video machines and walls encrusted with toy figures and last night we swung by for a bash celebrating...
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Its Soaking in, this Laid Back Milieu
Back from NYC and for the first time ever we feel relieved returning to LA’s laid back milieu. And we note a palpable uptick in energy all over town. For example, we hear there’s much celebration in the Downtown LA offices of Truthdig as the Webby Awards gave a nod to journalist Robert Scheer’s site for Best Political Blog - the jury prize -beating out The Huffington Post,...
April 2010
2 posts
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Booze, Hookers, Bad Men: Back in The New York...
Legging it down to Chelsea we found ourselves once again in our element at a fund raiser for New York gubernatorial candidate Kristin Davis. Fresh off a four month bid in Riker’s for running an escort service Davis, who took down former gov Eliot Spitzer, would legalize pot and prostitution and went about raising her campaign cash auctioning of “dates” (host Frank Morano...
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The Total Victory of the Food Network
We’re back in action, our banged up typing wrists finally recovering after impacting a damned Prius, the entitled driver of which mowed us down in LA traffic. Our fixie is unscathed but the Legman has set aside the bike to recuperate in New York for a while. And it was en route that we came to understand the existential hold of food culture that has gripped the American psyche. Seated...
March 2010
9 posts
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This Is How We Do It, In NYC
Someone swings in from New York asks a crowd of Angelenos to listen to how things are done in New York and what do you get? Rousing applause. Our jaw dropped at this head spinning occurrence over the weekend when Janette Sadik-Khan who heads NYC’s Department of Transportation spoke at the Los Angeles Street Summit, a bicycle-centric pow wow hosted by Occidental College’s Urban &...
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Best Square to be Down and Out in LA
While New York has its bustling Greeley Square, LA’s public space named after a journalist is far less utilized. Even the designation of Larry King Square is disregarded by the Angeleno on the street. But the intersection of Vine and Cahuenga presents a confluence of qualities that make it the hands down best city square to be homeless. Perhaps challenged by the Homeless Or Hipster...
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The Supergraphics Can Go Here
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One of our stops on Oscar night led to this revelation: “The recovery is here, it will be steady and long.” That’s what Marty Collins, co-owner of the new W Hotel ran by us at the E! party red carpet, the first glitzy event to roll into his new joint. Collins, CEO of Gate House Capital, is confident his venture’s generation of 500 jobs has been the tipping point. We...
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From the Moment I Awoke, an Endless Bout
To live is - to war with trolls In the holds of the heart and mind; To write is - to hold Judgment Day over the self. —Henrik Ibsen
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Bukowski Readings At the Frolic Room
The Frolic Room occupies a sliver of the ground floor in the landmark Pantages Theater where the starred pavement of Hollywood Boulevard begins. The theater opened in 1930, the bar sometime after and hasn’t closed a day since, remaining the oldest gin mill in Hollywood.* The Frolic is adorned with autographed glossies of its celebrity habitués, ones that hung around after the neighborhood...
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Architect Killed By LA Metro Bus
Raimund Abraham 1933-2010
It will be unnerving hopping on our next bus since architect Raimund Abraham was killed in Downtown LA Wednesday night. His car collided with a Metro bus at 5th and Main after lecturing at the Southern California Institute for Architecture. We once had a college room mate totally enamored with the easily quotable visionary-“Pratt (Institute) is BULLSHIT”...
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In LA, We Know What Time it Is
When we decided to head to elegant Santa Anita race track for a much needed change of luck (a recent finger crushing incident working on our veteran NYC bike messenger track bike has kept us from posting) Legman was thrilled to find Saturday a promotion day marking the track’s 75th anniversary, with park visitors getting a bad-ass wall clock. But the time displayed on Santa Anita’s...
February 2010
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LA Never Liked The Taurus Anyway. In Memorium...
“That won’t work, it will not get you far in Los Angeles. THAT is not an LA car” the art dealer prophesied, pointing at the Legman’s Ford Taurus outside a Williamsburg gallery when we announced our bailing the Big Bagel. His words were driven home each day since. From dirty stare downs at reds from blond air heads to comments from valets (this at the Beverly Hills Hotel...
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She Shot The Wife Shooter
We’re catching up on the blur that was the past two weeks, and cut off from the company supply cabinet as we are, that means sorting the loose scraps and cocktail napkins accounting for our meandering across LA’s cityscape. Top of the pile here is a Miller coaster with notes from last night’s opening of LA punk photos circa 1978 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery which was nothing but...
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Huff Po Links to The Fringe
” One of the things I love about new media is how fluid it is. You never know where an interesting link might take you — or where you may come across compelling content” writes Arianna Huffington.
So is that democratic notion why her Huffington Post drives traffic to the lunatic fringe, cop killer inspiring, Alex Jones site? The Anti Defamation League cited Jones as a dangerous...
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Out From Under the Bus
The man who was Hipster-In-chief
Artists, idealists, genuine cultural producers just don’t mesh with the worker bee world of cover your ass/ do as little as possible without getting caught/risk management; immersed in all that square shit they are simply out of their element. Case in point: Yosi Sergant, the LA publicist who coordinated a youth-centric arts front for the Obama election...
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A Dimension Beyond That Known By Man
February 3, 2010 - Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Last night’s opening at ACE Gallery in Beverly Hills was proof there is an Art World, as distinct from reality as that dimension we call the Twilight Zone. No recession specials here among the municipal scaled bronze works. And you’d never know the pawn shop on Wilshire was doing record business if you just touched down for the evening,...
January 2010
15 posts
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You Needn't Worry About Wacko Jacko
In a continuation of what the LA Times noted as last year’s trend of art world resizing in LA, Billy Shire Fine Arts is shuttering. The Culver City gallery’s show of British artist Dave McKean’s works inspired by silent cinema opening February 13th will be the last before the gallery moves exhibitions to La Luz de Jesus. That space, entering its 24th year has been newly...
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The Last Newspaper Reader
“They’re just a bunch of squares up there. No one goes out, the scene is dead. My friends stay home and watch tv” the old newspaper man says, spilling his disappointment after returning from a road trip north to Marin County. “Used to be a bunch of wonderful towns. Now I wouldn’t live in any one of them.” Dick can fix your script for you, make it nice for when...
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Picasso Blew
We still don’t know what to make of LA’s Downtown Art Walk, part art school spectacle, part drunken Mardi Gras but it gets us out of Hollywood for an evening. And last night as we were going to throw in the towel and head to King Eddy joining the company of men who’ve given up on life, we stopped into ARTY Gallery to find Len(Leonardo)Aaron, 94, sitting among his...
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Canada Trims Its Beaver
“Market research showed us that younger Canadians and women were very very unlikely to ever buy a magazine called The Beaver” says Mark Reid, editor of the Great White North’s second oldest magazine, who doesn’t share our affinity for the double entendre. Maintaining Canada’s street cred of producing the funniest folk on earth, he explains his mag dropping its...
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Worst Barber in Hollywood: A Regular Cut Up
Over the weekend the LA Times brought us an obvious and completely ordinary profile of the city’s oldest barber. We offer a more utilitarian tale as ever-on-the make for a cheap haircut contributor Chris Namon tells of his recessionary misstep getting his ear’s lowered by the worst barber in Hollywood. You got Thai Town salons advertising “First Haircut $3” and retro-barber shops...
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How We Roll-and Stroll-In LA
Stepping out for a stroll our neighbor- a medicine man of sorts- has no qualms flaunting a transparent pack, telling us “I got a license. It’s all good.” Unlike half the elected officials in town, he’s not confused about thelaw.
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For LA Food Critic, D is for Disinformation
We’re savoring our second cup of organic Sumatra Vienna roast, reveling in our view of the Observatory and mulling over a hike when a segment on KCRW’s Good Food show got our glad-to-be-in-LA stomach churning. This past weekend Jonathan Gold, whose LA Weekly column we embraced as a guide when first landing in town, was babbling on about LA’s restaurant grading. The Dirty Noodle Eater denounced...
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Celebrity Hat Rehab
The new season of VH1’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew about to drop has Dennis Rodman in the line up. We only hope the doc doesn’t wash away the abusive baller’s penchant for regodamndiculous head gear, like this Lord of the Rings lid Madonna’s ex was rockin’ when he rolled up on the Legman outside of LA club Area one night. Makes LA all colorful and what not.
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Our New Wheels
When it comes to business, Legman has dropped the ball again and again. But this time we see opportunity and we’re taking it, as it landed on our doorstep this morning in the shape of a fresh out of the showroom shopping cart. A thing of beauty that we imagine will make heads turn as we roll down the back alleys of Hollywood Boulevard, surface mining all that precious scrap . Now word on...