L.A. Is Too Good to Host the 2024 Olympics

The Olympic Movement Is Relentlessly Corrupt, so Why Should Southern California Help Save It?

Los Angeles should drop its bid for the 2024 Olympics—before it gets chosen.

It’s true that Paris has long been the favorite to be awarded the games during an upcoming vote in September. The Paris bid has broad international support, the City of Light has come close to winning the games in recent bids, and sentiment is on its side. 2024 would be the 100th anniversary of the last Olympics in Paris, the 1924 Games portrayed in the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire.

But the contest is changing. All other contenders for …

Does Blink-182 Know Something California’s Governor Jerry Brown Doesn’t?

While Politicians Keep Trumpeting the State’s Success, This Summer’s Songs and Films Sound Skeptical

How is California doing these days? The answer may depend on whom you believe: Governor Brown or Blink-182.

This summer has exposed a divide in perception of California, between the political …

Southern California, 2001

Rain won’t affect bamboo’s determination
to flower. The sand has no choice of where
it will blow, on what night, into which barrio,
whose eye. Nothing is certain. (To know …

Meet the Toughest Mountains in California

The Tehachapi Range May Intimidate High-Speed Rail Builders, but This Stubborn Barrier Actually Ties the State Together

Don’t mess with the Tehachapis.

California has taller mountain ranges, more famous mountain ranges, even more beautiful mountain ranges. But no mountains here are tougher—or more important—than the Tehachapis.

A mishmash of …

The Fall Gusts That Bring Out L.A.’s Crazy

Why Are We So Fascinated By the Santa Ana Winds?

If you reside in Los Angeles, you’ve felt the heat of autumn and perhaps cursed the “devil winds,” the hot gusts that blow through the mountain passes in southern California …

Wet and Wild

The Chlorinated Water and Scantily Clad Bodies of Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography 1945-1982

 

No dream of Southern California is complete without a swimming pool. What started as a totem of status and privacy became, in the postwar years, an affordable luxury for middle-class …