Seven McDonald

The Path of a Flower

Seven McDonald
Since graduating from Michigan State University, Stacy Wright has lived in a lot of places: Costa Rica; Spain; Australia; Maui; St. Johns in the Caribbean; Park City, Utah (“that whole ‘mountain people’ thing that was popular after school”); Brazil; and Thailand to name a few — not to mention the......

Rainbow Bright Eyexyk

Seven McDonald
Photo courtesy Eyexyk LedesmaEyexyk [née Isaac] Ledesma always looks fierce. Every day before he leaves his loft, the 22-year-old waif makes sure he’s wearing something that makes him feel confident. Generally speaking, that is something brightly colored and body-conscious. Ssurre, people stare, but he’s used to it. Anyway, it’s better......

L-u-v- Vs. L-o-v-e

Seven McDonald
Illustration by Ryan Ward“Echo” and “Cassie” have known each other since elementary school in Beverly Hills. Back in middle school they were “Mean Girls.” You know: “You can’t talk to me, today! You can walk 10 feet behind me!” That was when the two, who asked to remain anonymous, started......
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California Girl

Seven McDonald
Photos by Larry HirshowitzBianca Branaman understands what L.A. designers do best: simple, body-conscious, casual. Pieces that allow us to feel true to ourselves, able to go anywhere, do anything.The daughter of painter Robert Branaman, who illustrated Beat poetry books for City Lights, and debutant-turned-spiritual-seeker Susan Mack, whose father was a......

Portrait of the Artist as a (Very) Young Man

Seven McDonald
It’s 3:45 in the afternoon, and Travis Kaupp is picking at the eraser end of his No. 2 pencil, covering his white shirt — mandatory dress for the young poet and his fellow students — in shreds of dirty pink. Kaupp and his English teacher, Steve Abee, are seated in......

Who is Your Musical Hero?

Seven McDonald
Photos by Mark the Cobrasnake Jared Southard Musician: Low Flying Owls 26 years old, Sacramento Musical hero: Iggy Pop “Iggy Pop is rock & roll is punk rock. When everyone was doing all that hippie bullshit, he was fucking stabbing himself with glass bottles. Peace, love and happiness meant nothing......

There’s Something About Claudia

Seven McDonald
There’s something about “Claudia,” as she wants to be known here. She’s always meeting men. She’s very pretty, of course, but so are her friends. Yet Claudia’s charm goes deeper than her looks, and appears to inspire the kind of spontaneous exchanges with strangers that leave her girlfriends shaking their......

An Elephant Man

Seven McDonald
Chris DeRose is an actor — he did an early Aaron Spelling series called San Pedro Beach Bums, some CHiPs episodes, stuff like that — but on Tuesday, May 3, when he chained himself to the fence of the elephant exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo in protest of the......

Thoroughly Postmodern Lily

Seven McDonald
Lily, 13, is all curled up on the sofa in her Los Feliz living room and this makes her appear even smaller than she already is. Lily, who describes herself as a “normal but weird seventh-grader,” is discussing bar mitzvahs, specifically the one she attended yesterday, for her friend Miro......

The Single Guy

Seven McDonald
Photo by Scott NathanScott Nathan lives just north of Hollywood Boulevard, in a nondescript, 40-unit pink stucco building owned by a friend. His two-bedroom apartment, which he describes as very “bachelor,” features a lot of heavy ashtrays and stacks of magazines; a painting of Bijou Phillips’ grandmother, which the actress......