David Zahniser

Death Watch

David Zahniser
THE MOST SHOCKING THING about the latest calamity at South L.A.’s beleaguered Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center is that the news can still shock and amaze. After all, the 252-bed hospital has lost a key accreditation, endured needless patient deaths and produced one of the worst nicknames possible for......

Come Home, Wayward Angelenos

David Zahniser
WANT AN EASY WAY TO MAKE POLITICIANS in Los Angeles squirm? Ask them where their kids go to school. That was the lesson from this week’s love fest at the Los Angeles Central Library, where Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa welcomed, yet again, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger — the Republican who took a......

Reform, Hucksters

David Zahniser
THE BEST WAY TO UNDERSTAND some of the bizarre behavior at City Hall is to view its politicians not so much as policy experts or as community advocates, but as advertising executives. How else to explain the name of Councilman Dennis Zine’s monthly newsletter, the Zine Line? Or his annual......

The Faint Endorsement

David Zahniser
“AIN’T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH” was the song that a grade-school marching band used this week to greet Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as he went to South Los Angeles to do what had been demanded of him by impatient Democrats for so many months: endorse Phil Angelides, the party’s candidate for......

The New Fall Guy

David Zahniser
MAYOR ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA paused at his noisy victory party to offer one more admonition about the education bill that had just allowed him to roll over the L.A. Unified School District: This is a partnership, not a takeover. Yet the symbols of invasion were everywhere. He had a parent army......

The Power Agenda

David Zahniser
THIS ISN’T ABOUT POWER, declared Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa a few days before the state Senate was set to vote on legislation that would put him at the top of the organizational chart of the Los Angeles Unified School District. But if it isn’t, why can’t the mayor and......
Photography by Rena Kosnett

Welcome to Gentrification City

David Zahniser
Paul Giannotti couldn’t wait another day to embrace the big city. Bored in his placid corner of the San Fernando Valley, he had been searching for a shorter commute, an apartment with charm and a much larger selection of restaurants. So he and his girlfriend, Dianne Marti, uprooted themselves from......
Photography by Rena Kosnett

The Evidence Room: Five Signs You're Gentrifying

David Zahniser
You’ve seen THE SIGNS.A high-end restaurant shows up on a block that never had one. An eight-foot fence is erected around a 1920s cottage, making it nearly invisible from the sidewalk. Earth tones spread like a rash through a residential neighborhood, delivering a million shades of green and brown. Gentrification......

Soulless Converts

David Zahniser
TENANTS-RIGHTS ADVOCATE LARRY GROSS had just gotten off the telephone with an Orange County bureaucrat who wanted to know how Los Angeles was coping with the conversion of thousands of rent-controlled apartments to pricey condominiums — a process that has been forcing out renters across the city. Lake Forest, a......

Antonio's Black Problem

David Zahniser
MAYOR ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA’S top legal adviser sat down this week with a dozen reporters, methodically walking them through each of the 81 long-awaited wording changes to the mayor’s legislative plan for the Los Angeles Unified School District. But the presentation also served a second purpose — as a primer on......