The post ‘The Glutster,’ Javier Cabral appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

While I was never a straight-A student, I wasn’t a screw-up either. But tell that to Mexican-immigrant parents who dropped out of school after first grade and took pride in seeing their offspring get the education they never had. I’ll never forget that dreadful parent-teacher conference in seventh grade or the silence in our minivan on the way home. There was no congratulatory feast at Shakey’s Pizza that night, as I was about to enter an academic era marked by one perpetual frustration: mathematics requirements.

I’ve never passed algebra. I coasted through middle school arithmetic classes, and, in high school pre-algebra, when math bit me in the rear, I bit back and weaseled my way to a C by teaching my teacher—who was having troubles with his wife at the time—how to play “Angel Baby” on the acoustic guitar. Geometry came next, and I passed with no trouble.

Fast forward to my still Algebra-less senior year in high school. Without a passing grade in algebra, I couldn’t graduate—but I got lucky again. Apparently, my problem with algebra was shared by many other students and posed a threat to the pristine record of my “California Distinguished” high school. The administrators decided to count Accounting I as an algebra equivalent. I passed that with a B+.

When I entered Pasadena City College in the hope of transferring to a four-year institution, the placement exam put me two classes below the California transfer requirement class of Statistics 50; that left me with a long way to go. Eighty percent of my fellow incoming students also place into below-college-level math, according to PCC’s research office.

Four and half years later, I still haven’t passed. I have enrolled in algebra class and failed more than once. OK, let me be honest: I’ve failed algebra seven times. I started to question my character, my brain, my capabilities, and even my values. How was I able to write a cover story for Saveur magazine in 2011 but unable to pass a class that involved mixing numbers with letters?

I forced myself to get my cognitive functions tested at the school’s Disabled Student Programs & Services (DSP&S). It took a full semester of weekly, proctored tests to find out that—yes—I did indeed have an official mathematical deficiency in my brain. What did that stamped piece of paper get me? Extra time to take tests if I needed it. But I still had to pass algebra.

A DSP&S adviser saw my frustration and almost convinced me to drop out of school. She showed me an article in a magazine arguing against college education. Nonetheless, I disregarded her—and many others who gave me similar advice—and tried my luck with slower-pace pre-algebra classes that were computer-based. I still failed and failed.

Ready to break down in desperation, I made an appointment with my academic counselor. He pulled out a folded sheet of paper stashed away in a drawer. It advertised a new class that combined two segments into one, landing you right in Statistics 50. In short, passing this class would get me to the next-to-last step. It was called “Exploring Topics in Mathematics.”

The class met four days a week for exactly an hour and 25 minutes, just long enough to let us learn something new but not long enough to drag on. The 35 students enrolled were just as varied as you would imagine. Most were African-American or Latino. One was Asian with tattoos. Another was a heavily made-up white Goth girl who was half-an-hour late everyday. There was the elderly lady who was a painter and the middle-aged Iranian lady who was just about to get married. All of us were math failures.

The teacher was Professor Jay Cho, a slender, soft-spoken 41-year-old from Korea who had received his masters in mathematics from UC Irvine. On day one of class, he immediately won our hearts by deeming textbooks of any kind unnecessary. That was a good $150 saved. “Nobody does it this way,” he told us. “But I’m doing it this way.”

Continuing in his heavily Korean-accented English, leaning on his desk, Cho said, “You can just call me Cho for short, or, as some of my past students called me, notorious C-H-O.”

Before long, going to class started to feel like a family reunion. It was, dare I say it, fun. Everybody shared the pain, and there was a relieving sense of acceptance. Cho taught us how to complete linear equation problems, something that used to give me headaches, by relating them to blood alcohol levels when you drink and drive. (It worked. I got a B on that exam.) He used the almost-daily tardiness of the Goth girl to teach us relative frequency approximation of probability. I loved it. It was a modern-day version of Stand and Deliver.

Inevitably, some of my classmates wasted everyone’s time. A lot of them would seize onto Cho’s examples and contrast them with some irrelevant personal experience. Cho might be discussing how, say, your heating bill goes up in the summer, and some student might start talking about how his heating bill actually goes down in the winter because his neighbor pays for it. These random personal anecdotes might spark fiery debates on tangential topics, like how long it takes for a beer to burn off. But Cho always let these conversations run their course without losing control of his class. Even disrespectful behavior didn’t faze him visibly. One time, a classmate was rude enough to have a friend walk in (without knocking) in the middle of class and deliver a venti Caramel Frappuccino. Cho remained unruffled.

Twenty of the 35 of us passed the class. That was a far higher rate than normal for the level of math we were being taught. We’d learned about probability models, confidence intervals, and chi-squares.

Cho later told me that the curriculum was created after he and colleagues surveyed professors in other fields and asked, “What math do your students need to be successful in your class?” Pasadena City College has been supportive of efforts by Cho and his like-minded colleagues to implement an alternate sequence for math that is friendly to majors in social sciences and humanities. The working name is “Quantitative Literacy,” and it will include math topics like proportions, finance, and data analysis.

But my story doesn’t end there, because after passing “Exploring Topics in Mathematics” I still had to get through Statistics 50, also taught by Cho. And how did that go?

I failed.

The only bright spot was that it wasn’t algebra for the eighth time in a row. But it still meant I’d be unable to transfer to a four-year school—unless I were to take it again and pass. Cho felt I just hadn’t devoted enough time to studying. I wish the explanation were that simple.

According to California’s current regulations, I am ineligible for college. Technically, I’m even ineligible for a high school diploma. The thinking in such policymaking is that 1) despite all the failed attempts, those of us who fail algebra are secretly able to pass it; we just have to push ourselves a little harder. And: 2) that higher education would be wasted on someone who can’t pass algebra.

But are those assumptions valid? Can I really pass algebra? I don’t think so. Should I, as a result, be unable to enroll in college and pursue a major in languages or art history? Again, call me biased, but I don’t think so. I don’t think my inability to solve quadratic equations should be a deal-breaker for any further education. I don’t think it should have brought me or so many of my classmates to the brink of high-school-dropout status.

“Math is becoming a filter for a lot of people,” Cho told me recently. “Structurally, we are designed to lose a lot of students. The state gives us a lot of money for nothing. Returning students are forced to retake the class and shut out valuable space for new students.” In Cho’s view, his new teaching style addresses the problem. In my view, Cho’s an amazing teacher, but not a miracle worker.

Either way, the Statistics 50 requirement is here to stay, because, officially, high school graduates are all required to master Algebra II. And community colleges can’t set lower standards than high schools. All of this is bad news for me. I’ve finally dropped out, and now I’m supporting myself through writing. It’s also bad news for so many students who are jobless and trying to get a college education after 20 years out of school. I would love to learn more about art, philosophy, literature, and history in a college setting. Math requirements will prevent that. Should they?

The post How I Almost Didn’t Fail Algebra appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I bought my dearest—a jet-black, four-stroke 2006 Bajaj Chetak scooter—in 2008, during my first year at Pasadena City College. I also coughed up an extra hundred bucks and became certified in the California Motorcyclist Safety Program. With every ride, I fell more in love. I rode my scooter to school, to work, for leisure when I was bored, and for therapy when I was depressed. Until the morning of January 8, 2013, despite many close calls, I never had an accident.

That day, I was in Eagle Rock riding north on Figueroa, just a block away from Colorado, the only other street on my two-street commute to Pasadena. All of a sudden, the cracks in the pavement underneath me widened, with a two-inch difference in height between the two split sections. My front wheel started to wobble between the two layers and eventually hit a pothole. I fell, as did the 227-pound scooter, which crushed my left foot, while my knees and head (in a helmet) dragged and screeched along the cement.

It all happened so fast. I attempted to get up, but I couldn’t put any weight on my left foot, and blood was soaking the surrounding sock. A man who lived nearby rushed to help me out of the street and guide me to the sidewalk. I then realized that my left kneecap, dark grayish-white, was visible.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you want me to call 911?”

“FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK,” I answered. “No, I’m fine, thank you. I’ll just call my girlfriend. Thank you very much, sir.”

“Are you sure?” he said. “You’re bleeding a lot and I can see your bone. You need medical help fast.”

“Yes. I’m sure,” I said, already fearing medical bills. “I’ll just call my girlfriend to pick me up. We live close by. Thank you very much.”

Meanwhile, someone had called 911, and sirens were in the near distance. I managed to unlock my iPhone with bloody fingers and call my girlfriend to pick me up. I stopped receiving Medi-Cal when I turned 21, and these days I make barely enough freelancing money for rent, let alone health insurance. When a fireman arrived with a first aid kit and digital pad in hand, I asked not to receive any help from the ambulance on the way.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “You might have a concussion and not even know it.”

After checking my vitals and pleading with me to change my mind, he produced a waiver, which I signed with trembling hands.

“You can go to an urgent care and they’ll clean you right up,” he said sympathetically. “There’s one right next to the ER on Fair Oaks.”

My girlfriend arrived and drove me to the nearest urgent-care clinic, HealthCare Partners on Fair Oaks. Each dip and bump on the way there felt like a hammer blow to my foot. When we arrived, despite a full house of miserable-looking patients, the receptionist expedited my admittance. But the nurse who examined me was taken aback by the sight of my knees. I had three deep abrasions that were filled with coarse pebbles, jagged glass particles, and other debris from the dirty concrete. “It would probably be better if you went to the ER,” she told me. “You might need a specialist to clean it out.”

We were back to square one—and panicking. This time, we drove to the ER at Huntington Hospital and had our car valet parked. Cost: $7. Inside, the nurse expedited my admission—until my girlfriend said the words “no insurance.” I’m used to this: when you say you don’t have insurance, everyone’s demeanor changes fast. No more fast-track admission. In this case, though, it was an advantage, because there was no way I could afford what they were about to do to me. My girlfriend asked a nurse how much I could expect to be charged. “I have no idea,” the nurse replied. My girlfriend kept pressing. “Easily a couple of thousand just for seeing the doctor,” the nurse finally revealed. “I’m not supposed to tell you anything, but all we’re going to do is clean out the wounds, and that’s about it.”

“OK, thank you very much,” my girlfriend replied, grateful for the nurse’s candor.

With that, we were off again and dispatching the valet to get our car, with me waiting on one foot. For our third stop, we visited a branch of Medical Urgent Care Clinics. That it was on the second floor of a building with no elevator was not ideal, but it had good reviews on Yelp. I managed with my girlfriend’s help to hop up the stairs. To our happy surprise, the place was empty, and they treated me right away. The cost: a flat $75 cover fee. Dr. Saravia, a young, pretty doctor who received her training in Guatemala, expressed empathy upon seeing my bloodied leg, much of it dirt-black from the road rash, and then she began to clean me up, with the help of a younger nurse. Sensitive to my finances, she consulted me before every injection she felt she needed to make, telling me the price of each. It was like being in a restaurant and hearing the specials. Most were vaccinations, and I chose to get them all and pay the $25 per-shot fee.

Two-and-a-half hours later, my wounds were all cleaned up. I ended up requiring stitches on both knees because the cuts were too big to heal on their own. For three or four weeks, I’d be unable to bend my legs. The doctor told us that she suspected that my left foot had some breakage and sent me to get X-rays at a separate location, five minutes away.

At the X-ray shop, we learned that each X-ray would cost $75. My girlfriend repeated the two magical words, “no insurance,” and began to engage in a combination of pleading and haggling. They agreed to do an X-ray of my foot and one of my knees for $75 total. When the results came back, I was told that my fourth metatarsal had sustained a tiny splintering. “It’s small,” said my X-ray technician with a smile, “but it’s enough to put you out of combat.” As a motorcyclist with three bikes at home and some past falls of his own, he was sympathetic.

Then it was back to the Urgent Care Center, where I got a temporary fiberglass cast put on my left foot for $50 and a prescription for 8000 mg of ibuprofen for my painful swelling. I also had to buy a pair of extra-tall crutches, which were $50. The earliest appointment with an orthopedic doctor was for the following Thursday.

At the orthopedic clinic, I was told the initial consultation would cost $250 plus any extra treatment. As I checked in, my girlfriend made sure to mention that I had no insurance. At this point, we weren’t just saying it to save money; we were also noticing that it seemed to result in more down-to-earth and candid opinions from the doctors about treatment. My young and lively orthopedist suspected I might have gotten a “Lisfranc fracture,” a rare foot injury, but luckily an X-ray result revealed otherwise. I got off easy and would need only a flat-soled steel sandal for my foot to heal. Cost of the orthopedic expedition, including sandal: $260.

It’s been a little over a month since the accident, and I’ve finished my ibuprofen and antibiotics. My knee wounds are finally drying up and my purple foot is getting better every day. Unfortunately, my professors dropped me from three of my final four classes, since school policy is to drop a student on the first day if he doesn’t show up. This delays my hoped-for transfer date by a year. I also fell behind on my freelance food photography and food writing work. I now owe my girlfriend $550 for rent, and I spent $761.80 on my medical treatments. Still, it’s a lot less than I’d owe if I’d let an ambulance take me to a hospital.

A few years ago, when everyone was debating healthcare reform, people talked about changing the system to give patients more incentives to save money. Having insurance makes you spend more, it was said, and having skin in the game makes you save. I admit they have a point. If I’d had insurance I would have said yes to the ambulance. I would have gotten my treatment in the ER. I would’ve said yes to most of the recommendations made by my doctors. I would not have been panicking about money. I would not have driven around to a half dozen different places patching together treatment. The way I did things, I made sure that my doctors did only what they felt was absolutely necessary, and I saved a lot.

But it was a hell of a way to cut costs.

The post Smacked to the L.A. Pavement, Without Health Insurance appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Pueblo Liquor is located at 4600 Whittier Boulevard, right at the base of the Whittier Arch, or “El Arco,” a five-story landmark that stretches across the street. It is open 16 hours a day, 112 hours a week, and its only employees are its two owners: Lily, 46, and her husband Peter, 47. (Lily told me all this but never told me her last name, no matter how many times I asked or how many 99-cent glass bottles of Tehucán mineral water I bought.) They emigrated from the People’s Republic of China in 1992, and they commute to East Los Angeles from their home in Rosemead daily, sometimes twice daily, if their children have a shorter school day.

Lily and Peter bought Pueblo in 1992, when its former owner died of a stroke. They kept its name. For the past 20 years, they have been selling not only liquor but also a small selection of groceries: bananas, milk, dried chiles, and ground spices, among other things. To be exact, Lily sells 60 to 72 gallons of milk a week. At $3.50, a gallon of milk from Pueblo Liquor is about a quarter cheaper than a gallon at the surrounding supermarkets. What allows Lily to keep paying $2,200 a month in rent is sales of malt liquor, soft drinks, energy drinks, lottery tickets, Nyquil, single servings of over-the-counter Tylenol, and rolling papers.

Three years ago, a study by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health found that 25 percent of residents of Boyle Heights and unincorporated East Los Angeles have high cholesterol, and 30 percent have hypertension. There are about 50 percent more liquor stores per square mile in Boyle Heights than in other similar-sized neighborhoods or cities in the county. That’s why several organizations and activists have designated the area a “food desert” where healthy, affordable food is difficult to obtain. The UCLA-USC Center for Population Health and Health Disparities has even begun a program in which corner stores get $25,000 makeovers to make them healthier. In Boyle Heights, a market called Yash La Casa now sells fresh fruits from the local farmers market and has a juice bar with free Wi-Fi.

I like these makeovers. It’s always good when more stores sell healthy food. But is Boyle Heights or East L.A. really a “food desert”–and are stores like Pueblo Liquor really the problem? I grew up in the area. I still live there. Everyone I know in East L.A. goes shopping once every week or two at a real supermarket. Healthy food is available to us.

I think a lot of the attention focused on liquor stores arises from confusing the symptom with the ailment and from failing to understand the cultural context.

During one of my visits to Pueblo Liquor, I stayed by the counter from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on a Monday afternoon and recorded each transaction that took place. Every customer except for one (an African American) was Latino–and probably Mexican. This is what I saw:

1. A man in his 40s came in to cash $10 he’d won from a lottery scratcher.
2. A lady in her 50s walked in and said “just one.” Lily knew what she meant and handed her a single Marlboro Light cigarette for 50 cents.
3. A lady in her 40s quietly asked for a pack of Zig-Zag rolling papers.
4. My neighbor, a woman in early 30s, came with her two children and bought her son a Yoo-Hoo and her daughter a Sunny Delight.
5. A balding man bought a six-pack of chilled Bud Light.
6. A black man bought a Carmex lip balm.
7. A woman bought a hefty notebook and a packet of dividers.
8. Two young girls with backpacks bought two prepackaged ice cream cones. The price had recently gone up to $2.20, but the girls only had $2 and exchanged awkward glances. Lily smiled and said, in Spanish, “Next time bring the rest of the change.”

No one seemed to be looking for radicchio or wheat germ. People go to liquor stores because they need something small and simple, and they need it fast. In Mexico, the equivalent institution is the tiendita, the little corner store that sells things like milk, soda, and snack foods. It’s a way of life. Sure, people buy liquor at a liquor store in East L.A. but it’s just as often where you go when you forgot that can of jalapeños, or you need sliced white bread for a sandwich, or you need that gallon of milk. If you’re an undocumented construction worker or custodian or scrap metal collector, it’s where you go to get a quick snack–like a bag of Doritos and a soda–to tide you over until your real meal that evening.

Liquor stores can be targets of robberies or centers of problems in neighborhoods, but a store like Pueblo Liquor is just there to sell people in the area the things they want to buy. Lily and Peter aren’t trying to force anyone to eat Cheetos instead of kasha or Budweiser instead of papaya juice. They get along well with their customers. They speak better Spanish than English, and when prices go up Lily knocks off a dime or a quarter if her customers are short. When customers return the next time, they pay it back. Lily doesn’t know her customers by name, nor do they know her by name, but they pretty much know each other anyway.

A lot of reporters writing about East L.A. seem to consider the residents there to be both more ignorant than they really are and more knowledgeable than they really are. On the one hand, you hear people talk as if the residents of East L.A. fail to grasp that a homemade stewed beef taco is healthier and cheaper than a burger and fries. Well, East Angelenos get it–they don’t have a choice but to get it. They have to make food at home simply in order to save money. On the other hand, you hear people talk as if the only thing stopping residents of East L.A. from eating tofu and steamed kale for dinner is an overabundance of Yoo-Hoo chocolate drinks. That’s of course not the case either. While most people in the area know home-cooked food is healthier than McDonald’s, they don’t spend a lot of time considering the finer points of nutrition.

I know from experience. When I was growing up in East Los Angeles, I ate a lot of junk. Like a lot of my friends, I was raised on stuff like Capri Sun and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Only later, as I got older and more curious, did I start reading about food and nutrition on my own and change my habits. And I educated my parents, too–slowly. After six years of food writing and constantly defending why I spend $2.39 per pound on a skinny free-range chicken instead of 99 cents on a pound of plump drumsticks, I’ve finally gotten them to change their habits. Today, my parents eat meat sparingly, stick to whole grains, and use agave syrup instead of table sugar.

That’s the sort of change that comes slowly, as a product of education and improved economic circumstances. It costs more to eat healthier, and it takes more knowledge, too. So either healthy food needs to be cheaper, or people need to be better educated–or, ideally, both. Instead of just bringing healthier, more expensive food to the corner store, policymakers would be better off ensuring that nutrition gets more attention in schools and that health food is subsidized so that it’s not an economic burden for people to make the change.

And if I want a six-pack of beer or a dozen eggs in a hurry, I’m still going to pay a visit to Lily.

Javier Cabral is responsible for TheGlutster.com (formerly Teenage Glutster), a food, booze, music, and general desmadre blog. He currently is an Associate Producer for KCRW and freelances for Saveur Magazine and LA Weekly.

*Photo courtesy of stevendepolo.

The post In Defense Of the Liquor Store appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Join me on a shopping day and let me show you.

My excursion starts with a beverage. “La gente preguntó por ella,” says Jorge Caballero in response to my query about how he came to be selling unsweetened almond milk. (“The people asked for it.”) Caballero is assistant manager of the Top Valu supermarket chain located along historic Whittier Boulevard. It’s a Latino favorite, and the store sells about a dozen cartons of alternative milk a week. Only one of those units is getting sold to me–I promise. The rest are purchased by other inner-city almond milk lovers.

Perusing Top Valu’s aisles, I spot a pack of fresh New Zealand lamb necks, 1.52 lb for $3.48. How is lamb that is grass-fed, free-range, raised without hormones or steroids (according to the New Zealand Lamb Cooperative), and flown thousands of miles so cheap? Caballero says, “No se vende tanto” (It doesn’t sell much). What he means is that you launch a product by pricing it low, to increase sales. It’s a golden rule among supermarkets in East Los Angeles.

I walk a few scenic blocks east to Cuevas Health Food store on Atlantic Boulevard, East L.A.’s only official health food store, complete with brown-rice pasta and aisles loaded with supplements. It’s been around since 1990, and I occasionally stop in to buy some jalapeño almond “cheeze” or grape seed vegenaise. I’m not vegan, vegetarian, or anything like that, but I do like to dabble and detox a bit once in a while.

The prices at Cuevas are higher than at Whole Foods. The 16-ounce glass container of vegenaise goes for $6.61 here, compared to over $5 at the corporate health giant. But the nearest Whole Foods is about nine miles away, and gas isn’t cheap. Plus, Cuevas is family-run, so “locavore” style it is.

As owner Berta Cuevas rings me up and we chat, I happen to confess to my flesh-eating ways. She reprimands me for this. Then I ask her what the most popular item is, and she answers “la soya,” referring to soy in all its forms. What does she think of all the newfangled anti-soy health-food trends? “Antes de que digan algo, que lo prueben primero,” she answers. (“Before you say something, try it first.”) She’s had soy in her daily diet for the past 20 years.

Deeper east into the Commerce shopping center is my mother’s favorite of all these up-and-coming health market underdogs, El Super. El Super really is quite super, and their slogan is “El Super-Cuesta Menos” (El Super-Costs Less). They are notorious in the barrio for their weekday-specific food deals. For example, on “Fruit Wednesdays” (Miercoles de Frutas), you might find four pounds of ripe roma tomatoes de primera (first quality), big and without bruises, on sale for 99 cents. They have a designated day for meats, too. On these days, the store is like one big mosh pit.

About two years ago, El Super started carrying soyrizo, a highly seasoned textured soy protein equivalent to the traditional Mexican sausage chorizo. This year, I noticed they had frozen 100-percent mamey fruit pulp, juicy and plump tunas (prickly pear fruit), and even baggies of raw chia seeds. Recently, my mother overheard a customer asking a butcher for pollo ranchero. My mother followed her lead and came back home with a whole pollo de rancho that made for a delicious caldo de pollo (chicken soup) and green pipian sauce.

Upon further investigation, I’ve found out that El Super carries free-range chicken for $2.50 a pound (compared to the water-injected conventional chicken that sometimes goes for 99 cents a pound). The butcher informs me he gets a few such chickens delivered daily and that these pricier specimens have never been frozen. Since these are not advertised anywhere, you have to ask for them amid the carnivore-bartering hustle. Further down the meat department, I find a freezer chock full of flash-frozen venison, all the way from New Zealand, again. I almost do a back flip. A one-pound package (more than enough for two people) will set you back nine bucks, but it is lean, not too gamey, and wildly delicious when prepared like carne ranchera at home.

In the bakery section, El Super has the thrifty eater covered, thanks to delightful, crusty, airy, and soft whole-wheat renditions of the Mexican staple bread, Birotes (aka Bolillo). And are you ready for this? Six for 99 cents! (Ninety-nine is the magic price point for Mexican émigrés in America). The people of East Los Angeles are catching on, and lines sometimes snake all the way to the back freezer refrigerator section of the store.

I cannot, on this excursion, go to a certified Farmers Market. That’s for Saturday mornings, when the East L.A. Farmers Market sets up in the parking lot of the East L.A. Civic Center. It has been around for four years now. I used to volunteer there in exchange for a box of tree-ripened yellow summer peaches. And this year will mark the one-year anniversary of the Boyle Heights Farmers Market, located right atop the Mariachi Plaza station off the Gold Line.

We might not think of East Los Angeles as a pioneer in healthy eating, but East Angelenos must be eating healthier. As Jorge Caballero of Top Valu told me, “Esas comidas todavía están disponible porque si se están vendiendo, si no, ya no estaran ahí.” Translation: “The foods are still there because they are selling; if they weren’t selling, then they wouldn’t still be there.”

And I’m not the only one buying.

Javier Cabral is a 22-year-old resident of East Los Angeles and is responsible for TheGlutster.com, a food, booze, music, and general desmadre blog. He currently freelances for LA Weekly, OC Weekly, Alhambra Source, and Saveur Magazine.

*Photo by Javier Cabral.

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