David Zahniser

Tom Labonge: The Mayor of (Fire-Blackened) Griffith Park

David Zahniser
As Griffith Park burned Tuesday night, there was one politician who kept showing up on our television screens, one man who sounded deeply sad and yet strangely reassuring as the flames raced toward scores of homes and the newly rebuilt Griffith Observatory. Acting as the unofficial mayor of Griffith Park,......
(Photo by Kevin Scanlon)

Cynthia Ruiz

David Zahniser
Nothing says Los Angeles quite like the random pieces of furniture that line our city’s dumpy and unloved boulevards. Perhaps you already know the drill: First you see the mattress, propped up against a streetlamp. Then a couch. Then a chest of drawers. Then the individual drawers, piled up in......
(Photo by Kevin Scanlon)

Jerilyn Lopez Mendoza

David Zahniser
{mosimage} Environmental attorney Jerilyn Lopez Mendoza remembers vividly the night police officers showed up at her home, instructing her and her neighbors to evacuate because of a chlorine-gas leak nearby.Mendoza, a sophomore in college at the time, fled with her family shortly after midnight to wait out the chemical scare......

Reyes Rodriguez

David Zahniser
Tropico de nopal is enchanting. The slender, two-story art gallery — once the home to a printing company — has the gentle curves found in so many Streamline Moderne buildings from the late 1940s. Sunlight streams in through the upstairs windows, bathing the wood floors in light. On the roof,......

Bratton's Mea Culpa Tour

David Zahniser
Last week started out so promising for Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton. One day before scores of police officers marched into MacArthur Park and created the LAPD’s biggest public relations fuck-up in years, the city’s top law enforcement officer was the toast of the town. Bratton sat quietly a......

Urine Luck, L.A. Gangs!

David Zahniser
Imagine how confused L.A.’s gang members must be right now. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa can’t stop talking about them, making them the centerpiece of his yearly State of the City Address, his $6 billion budget and even an angry face-to-face confrontation with the Los Angeles Times editorial board. Yet look carefully......
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Power Failure

David Zahniser
YOU’D THINK FROM READING the blogs and the newspapers that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was having his Worst Week Ever, as the wags at VH1 might say, failing in his bid for the 2016 Olympics and then seeing his bid for power at L.A. Unified struck down in yet another courtroom......

Serving Two Masters

David Zahniser
When Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Los Angeles City Council announced plans last year for a $1 billion bond measure to pay for affordable housing, developers and lobbyists from all over Los Angeles flocked to the campaign to lend their support. And few companies were more eager than CityView, a......

Targeting a Weiss Guy

David Zahniser
Members of the city’s civic elite were wringing their collective hands last week, stunned over the dismal participation shown by the electorate in the March 6 municipal election. With turnout falling to single digits in even the most competitive contests, the city’s leaders were left wondering what went wrong. It......

Is This the Part They Call Reform?

David Zahniser
IF ONLY THERE WERE A WAY we could freeze this moment in Los Angeles politics. Just for a year, maybe two. One day after the school board election, voters finally found themselves with perhaps the perfect resolution to the 20-month, yet seemingly endless, battle between Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the......