Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
Adolfo's been a reporter at NPR affiliate KPCC since 2000. He's reported on three L.A. mayors, four L.A. Unified superintendents, and covered the LAPD batons and rubber bullets flying at the May, 2007 MacArthur Park immigrant march. In 1994 he co-founded the poetry-performance group The Taco Shop Poets. He continues to wander the sidewalks, streets and freeways of Southern California searching for the right words for the sounds he hears.
A parking lot a block from MacArthur Park used to be the Vagabond Theater. As a teenager in the late 1960s painter John Valadez spent a lot of time there watching art house films.
The soldiers finished their tour of duty in Iraq by walking into an El Monte ballroom.
Two large banners hung on either side of Disney Hall's massive pipe organ. Both had the same image: a young man, hands outstretched, head cocked back letting his curled locks of hair hang, his mouth open slightly, eyes shut but not forcefully.
I'm not itching for many more credentials to provide me validation. Nevertheless, I inched north on Spring Street headed to Phillipes for the Latino bloggers meeting.
The little girl who belted out boleros after school at the donkey cart in Olvera Street is now fronting one of L.A.'s best new Latin bands.
My cousin Margarita had a big smile on her face the first year she made salted cod for the holidays.
Two friends joined me recently to catch Steven Soderbergh's film about Ernesto "Che" Guevara at the Nuart.
This is the Phoenix of Mexico.
When is a walk more than a walk? When it's a caminata. Or make that a posada.
Bernard Madoff's victims weren't trucha con el Salvatrucho de Norwalk.
Back in the day Darren de Leon's poetry crew and mine were the Beatles and Rolling Stones of the Chicano poetry scene.
Marisela Norte's first book is a sampling of three decades-plus of fierce notebook writing on the East L.A. - downtown L.A. buses.