Judith Lewis

A Common Man, Once More

Judith Lewis
It’s been 20 years since I vowed never to see Bob Dylan again. He’d just muddled his way through a packed show with the Grateful Dead at the Minneapolis Metrodome. “Man, his voice is really shot,” said my friend Janise later over 3.2 beer at some downtown bar. Janise and......

Astroturf Wars

Judith Lewis
He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown. —Daniel 11:14 HARVEY NISKALA LIKES TO DESCRIBE what he does as “environmentally sustainable” architecture. A senior vice president and project manager at the City of Industry–based Glorious Land Co. (GLC), Niskala talks of building new communities......
Photo by Shari Abercrombie

On the Road with Bernadette

Judith Lewis
Bernadette Sullivan doesn’t do Republicans. I mention this because it stunned me at first to hear that a working actor would turn down jobs in a market where work is evaporating and competition is fierce. But I also offer it as an antidote to widely held negative opinions, especially among......

Little Shop of Spokes

Judith Lewis
Last August, when a gallon of gas was poking over the three-dollar mark, Chris Kelly would sit behind the counter of his Hollywood bike shop, chuckling and rubbing his hands together like an Enron executive conspiring to game the California energy market. “Oh, I’m a bad person, I’m a bad......

Ports of Exhaust

Judith Lewis
MIGUEL LOPEZ WAS RUNNING LATE. The Teamsters representative to the ports had been planning to address public officials, environmentalists and others gathered in downtown L.A. to discuss, among other things, ways to reduce air pollution created by “goods movement” — the transporting of imported products from the ports of Long......

The Lonesome Death of Martin Lee Anderson

Judith Lewis
ON THE EVENING OF FEBRUARY 9, 1963, a socialite tobacco farmer named William Zantzinger struck Hattie Carroll with his cane when she didn’t bring his drink as fast as he wanted it. Carroll, who had been working the bar at the Baltimore hotel where Zantzinger was attending a ball, died......
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Illustration by PJ Fidler

The Epic Vulture

Judith Lewis
No creature that has ever evolved, not the passenger pigeon, the flightless dodo or even the turgid-blossom pearly mussel, has a history that demonstrates more vividly man’s impact on the Earth than the California condor, the massive, black-bodied, bald-headed bird that spent the Pleistocene Era feasting on dead mastodons and......
Jessica Radford Hoelle turns us on to biodiesel. Photos by Orly Olivier

Green and Bare It

Judith Lewis
Every morning a little after 11 o’clock, Jessica Radford Hoelle would lift her slender self off of the chaise longue where she had been recovering — either from a night out in Black Rock City or an early-morning rope bondage seminar — slip her pedicured feet into her fuzzy pink......

LA Vida

Judith Lewis
Where to find biodiesel Two types of biodiesel can be had in Los Angeles County: One percent petroleum B99 and an 80 percent petroleum/20 percent biodiesel blend called B20. (Sellers get tax breaks for that 1 percent petroleum, so you won’t find B100 unless you make it yourself.) Fill up......

Things to Do Before You Get Pregnant

Judith Lewis
WHEN GREENPEACE USA RELEASED the interim results of its National Mercury Testing Project last week, two ironies jumped out: One is that the same administration that conferred legal rights on the unborn fetus has so far refused to regulate emissions of a toxin known to damage fetal brains in the......