L.A. Weekly: A Look Back at 40 Years of Irreverence and Devotion to L.A.
When editor-founder Jay Levin had the mad idea to start a weekly alternative newspaper in Los Angeles in 1978, corralling a small group of investors including actor Michael Douglas, there were already such notable predecessors as Los Angeles Free Press and the Village Voice. But Levin's L.A. Weekly soon tapped into — and helped to propel — a riotous explosion in art, music, fashion, film and literature that had long been simmering around the Southland and by the late '70s had begun welling up with a force that could no longer be contained in the underground....