L.J. Williamson

A long line of officers stands at attention as Kelly Reynolds approaches the Temple.; Credit: L.J. Williamson

The Day the Man Came to Burning Man

Burning Man's reputation for bacchanalian revelry is well deserved. The festival is one of the planet's biggest parties, famously crescendoing in the immolation of a towering wooden stick figure on Saturday night, accompanied by a chaotic, high-firepower pyrotechnics display that, unlike most fireworks shows, feels all grand finale, all of......
Credit: L.J. Williamson

Burning Man Hippies Love Lime Sorbet With Jasmine and Violet

If you've been going to Burning Man and subsisting on Gatorade and Clif bars, you've been doing it all wrong. Held in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, since 1990, Burning Man began as a ragtag assembly of a few hundred artists, miscreants, hippies and pyromaniacs who set out to create an......
Gustavo Dudamel with the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles in October 2012; Credit: laphil.com/education/yola press photos

When a 14-Year-Old in South Central Wants to Learn the Cello

When her son Jacob was barely a year old, Teresa Esquivel noticed that music powerfully affected his demeanor. Certain tunes would even make him cry. In particular, if Pokémon was on, Jigglypuff's leitmotif would reduce him to wails, even if Jacob hadn't been previously focused on the TV. Jacob's parents......
Credit: L.J. Williamson

Chris Brown's Art: The L.A. Weekly Review

Street art is a commentary on the nature of ownership, and the push-pull between public and private property. Using the city as a stolen canvas is in and of itself an artistic statement that art hemmed into the confines of a gallery or museum could never make. The questions that......
Credit: Ryan Romero Photography

10 Awesome L.A. Trucks That Sell Things Besides Food

See also: *10 Best Vintage and Second-Hand Boutiques in L.A. *10 Best L.A. Art Galleries For Partying *Top 10 Weirdest Stores in L.A. First the food truck revolution brought us restaurants on wheels, mixing up your own neighborhood's restaurant offerings. Now, the next wave is shopping on wheels. Here are......
Credit: Flickr user veganfeast/

Top 10 Food-Centric YouTube Clips

The way to a music video audience's heart, it seems, is through its stomach -- or at least that's the route these videos take, with varying degrees of deliciousness. From rank amateurs trying to grab a little YouTube stardom to established rock stars, food is a good way to establish......
Girl Scout cookie; Credit: Flickr/Family O'Abé

Girl Scout Cookies: Sugar, God + Questionable Math Skills

It's Girl Scout Cookie season again, and in offices across America, helpful parents will be hawking cookies to their co-workers. Come March, you'll see the girls themselves embedded in front of local shopping centers pitching their wares. Those Thin Mints are as tasty as the girls are adorable. But before......