Seven McDonald

Andrew Rakos is sitting over a plate of scrambled eggs at Jerry’s Famous Deli in Studio City, talking about the medical-marijuana controversy currently going on in America, and specifically his hometown of West Hollywood. Rakos is not opposed to the legalization of medical marijuana, or to the idea of marijuana......

It is a rare L.A. morning: Everyone is wearing overcoats. The winter air is crisp; the light that shines through the trees is bright. Bespectacled Matthew Kogan sits under a heat lamp at a round yellow table on what he calls “the doughnut side of the Farmers Market” — that......

Faded Buddhist peace flags swing in the late-afternoon breeze as Lucas Elliott sits barefoot on the sofa in his one-bedroom apartment at the Oakwood Toluca Hills complex, the one near Universal Studios. Like many young actors, Elliott, a Colorado native who appears this month in Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo......

It’s sunny at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Los Angeles. Dressed in his service alphas (khaki shirt, olive-green service coat), Private First Class Rogelio Mendoza arrived here this morning on a bus from Bakersfield. Now he’s waiting for the 11:45 a.m. departure to Oceanside, where he is scheduled to......

ERIC WOKE UP EARLY THIS MORNING. Maybe it was the dawn light in his eyes or the heat in his bedroom or just the fact that he was thirsty, but the 27-year-old pro online gambler couldn’t get back to sleep. So he threw on some shorts and his Rip Curl......

LEANING BACK INTO A MIDCENTURY COUCH in the Atwater Village storefront office of his independent label Everloving Records, Andy Factor is talking about what a lot of people are talking about these days: how things in the music industry are changing, and how they are also staying the same. “Everyone......

Alexis Smart is sitting in the warmly lit breakfast nook of her Echo Park bungalow, attempting to explain what flower essences are. “I guess flower essences are the closest to homeo­pathy,” she says between sips of twig tea as the sun sets through the window behind her. Smart, an ethereally......

DAN SHARP AND DAN HOLZMAN are cruising down Washington Boulevard in Sharp’s used 1989 Honda Accord. The two are on a mission to buy a beer-making kit from Culver City Home Brewing Supply. “You know where you’re going?” Holzman asks his friend, who sits behind the wheel wearing a T-shirt......

ADRIAN FERENC IS LEANING UP AGAINST the “Used Country” section at Amoeba Music in Hollywood. Dressed in red lace-up Vans and a cotton button-down shirt, the 22-year-old mathematics student protects his prime front-row spot for tonight’s in-store performance by rock critics’ second-favorite blues-rock duo, the Black Keys. With his full......

Eric Ernest Johnson’s head is bent down over his Technics turntable as he delicately drops a needle onto one of his all-time favorite albums, Listening to Richard Brautigan. It is late at night in his Craftsman home, a few blocks north of Koreatown. “This is a prime example. This is......