Recessions and Depressions

Kardashian Ass Man -- A Product of Economic Stress?

This Kardashian phenomenon is really part of a national zeitgeist concerning big butts. Hear us out: The rise of well-proportioned Kim Kardashian and her big-bone-ded sisters corresponds to the national malaise we call the Great Recession (2007-2009) and beyond. According to new research published ... More >>

Five Artsy Things to Do This Week, Including 'Anti-Rock' Band Destroy All Monsters and Charles Garabedian's Pseudo-Biblical Painting

With the exception of a panel of artists talking economics, this week's recommendations are all old-school, exhibitions and performances of artists working before Watergate. 5. Highbrow Comedy Guy de Cointet is one of those stuff-of-myth artists: He grew up in Paris, was friendly with Yves St. Laur ... More >>

Get Your Subaru Forester Running

Latinos Lost Two-Thirds of Wealth During Great Recession, Are More Segregated in L.A. Than Any Other Group

cafepress.com​The richest guy in the world (Carlos Slim Helú) is Mexican. But when you think wealth, you don't think Latino. And, well, you're mostly right. A new report from the Pew Research Center says that during this Great Recession, the wealth gap between whites and Latinos and whites a ... More >>

38 Degrees Ale House & Grill: Beer Lover's Paradise... in Alhambra

Daniel DrennonClay Harding, co-owner of 38 Degrees with 38 taps​ Apparently the economic downturn has not hindered craft beer drinkers. They say, even in a recession, folks will still seek an escape from tough times at the movies. The same can now be said of beer bars. Despite dozens of ho ... More >>

Short Attention Span Dinner Theater: Your Week in Food, 5/16-5/20

Flickr/Lauren Manning​ In which we highlight the past week in food, either at home or abroad. "My friends, the ones eating monkfish, assume that I was talking to a dealer. In a manner of speaking, I was." Nathan McCall: The Butcher of Hillhurst Avenue. "It's self-heating. (That's halfway b ... More >>

Aloe Blacc's Golden God Voice

UCLA Study: In Vicious Cycle, Job Interviewers Are Biased Against Unemployed

Whatever you do, don't tell them you're a reject​Besides a skimpy check from Obama every month, there are few perks to being unemployed. Depression. Self-doubt. Existential crisis, underscored by bed sores. And now, according to UCLA researchers, there's an even more degrading downside to goi ... More >>

Food Retailers Struggle To Stay Open: Small Business Owners' Rent-Induced Malaise

Celia SoudryStan's Produce​ The National Bureau of Economic Research claims that the recession is over, but many small business owners and their unemployed workers would most likely disagree. On Sunday, January 9th, owner Stanley Bosco informed employees, as well as longtime customers, that h ... More >>

Homicides Plummet, But L.A. Suicides Are Up Since Recession Started

​For the second year in a row, a resident of L.A. County is more likely to die by their own hand than be killed by someone else. In 2010, suicides were essentially unchanged -- down 1% -- from 2009, and they remained above pre-recession levels, according to statistics from the L.A. County coroner. ... More >>

When Kids Think

Workers At Andaz Hotel In West Hollywood On Strike, Picketing

​Updated with reporting and photos from Weekly reporter Steve La, at the Andaz. Workers of Unite Here Local 11 hotel workers union began picketing the trendy and tony Andaz at 4 this morning, as a work stoppage starts there over "staff cuts, reduced hours, and excessive injury rates," accordin ... More >>

Rodger Jacobs, Writer, Stuck In Vegas And Near Homeless, Gets Some Help -- From L.A.

Sam Morris, Las Vegas SunRodger Jacobs​This is a story about two cities and, perhaps, how different they are. Sunday the Las Vegas Sun published a first-person essay by Rodger Jacobs, a longtime L.A.-based journalist, playwright and documentary film producer, who moved to Las Vegas to care fo ... More >>

Top Ten Business Tips from the Grateful Dead

Uncle John's Bank​The Atlantic has just published a really interesting article by Joshua Green about the opening of the Grateful Dead archives at UC Santa Cruz. But it's the intriguing second half that gives the article its title, "Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead." Green makes the arg ... More >>

Stage Raw: Yes, You Can Do Something of Consequence

COMPREHENSIVE THEATER LISTINGSNEW THEATER REVIEWS This week's THEATER FEATURE On Bobrauschenbergamerica and Orpheus DescendingCheck here on Monday afternoon for the 2009 L.A. Weekly Theater Awards nominees!YES, YOU CAN DO SOMETHING. The local blogosphere has been generating a number of letters like ... More >>

The Price of Shooting Stars

Back to (Cooking) School: Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Los Angeles Gets More Students An Anti-Griddle

In questionable economic times, people tend to hit the bars, go to movies--and go back to school. In the Food Network Era, when food is not only a daily necessity but a commodity, popular entertainment, the subject of reality television, and even a venue for celebrity, we thought we'd check in and s ... More >>

Hollywood's Catered Stimulus

Why $23 million creates just 21 jobs

THE LITTLE ZINE THAT COULD

Restaurant Recession Tally: 4,000 Fewer Restaurants Than A Year Ago; Fine Dining Hit Hardest

On Tuesday, the NPD Group, a Chicago-based market research company, released its spring 2009 report, an annual census of commercial restaurant locations in the United States compiled in the spring and fall each year, which showed a decline of 4,000 restaurants nationwide from the previous year. Whil ... More >>

Raise Your Arms, Flick Your Bic, and Close Your Eyes

Staycations Here to Stay?

Southland residents are looking no further than their own back yards, relatively speaking, when it comes to planning summer getaways. According to a feature in today's L.A. Daily News, 2009 represents the second year so-called staycations are in vogue. Last year holiday travel was cut by skyrocketin ... More >>

Brother -- Can You Help an Old Jew?

Fashion Week Diary, Supplemental: A Note on The Fancy Bathrooms, and Other Random Miscellanea, Etc.

1. A Word on Bathrooms: If you ever get a chance to pee in the Los Angeles Theater in historic downtown LA, I urge you to visit the Ladies' restroom. There, you will see this. It's way more impressive than I've managed to capture in the photo. 2. The Guests: Can you imagine these guys at Paris ... More >>

Pacific Energy Bankruptcy: Another Southland Domino?

Long Beach-based Pacific Energy Resources, whose drilling explorations extend from Wyoming to offshore California to Alaska, filed for bankruptcy today. The Chapter 11 move comes amid continued economic chaos and plunging demand for oil. Only last June PE's president, Darren Katic, told an interview ... More >>

Jacksonian Seizure: The Rise and Fall of Michael Jackson and His Investments Mirror Americans' Spendy Ways

Is the King of Pop's Neverland Booty Our Folly Too?

Soup Lines and 35-Cent Martinis: At the Edison Downtown, Where the Depression Is Still a Happy Hour

Hot tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches with bargain cocktails

It's the Economy, Moron

No one shops till they drop anymore. That's because the only thing dropping these days is the economy. Yet you wouldn't know this from bus-stop billboards across the city advertising a film called Confessions of a Shopaholic. The movie, starring Isla Fisher, is based on one of British author Sophie ... More >>

Sam Cherry

Bukowski's Buddy

Halibut

A short story

The Interregnum Riots

Was the uprising of ’92 the end of black power?

The Death Count

In people, freedoms and decency lost, it’s still too early to know

U.S.A. Today

A Modernist classic is revived

Fop Art

Damien Hirst and the ybas