One night as an 11-year-old in 1965, I watched an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the family living room—the CBS sitcom was produced in glorious black and white and ran from ‘61 to ‘66. I was an avid young fan even though I didn’t always understand the story lines, but it was the early ‘60s when “family…
May 4th, 2007 marks the 37th anniversary of the shooting deaths of four students by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University. It seems few remember those who were felled by bullets during national anti-Vietnam war protests triggered by President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. The killings represent a monstrous crime… and we must never forget the students gunned down…
The following account of a community being gentrified, is now so commonplace a story across America as to hardly merit attention. While this chronicle concerns a district in the City of Los Angeles, the dynamics apply to cities everywhere. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and North Hollywood is a district in the north-western section of L.A. known…
During the last few months in New York City, someone has taken to destroying the illicit stencil graffiti art and wheat-pasted posters of that city by splashing them with brightly colored daubs of paint. Nicknamed “the Splasher” by the media, the perpetrator has for the most part ignored the majority of street art, preferring instead to purposefully target and deface…
The group show American Beauties: Different Stories, opened on April 1, 2006 to an appreciative crowd who gathered at the Space On Spurgeon gallery in Santa Ana, California, to view the art and meet the artists. In his review for the OC Weekly, No Punches Pulled: American Beauties’ is life, unedited, Justin Edward Coffey wrote: “Before the heat of the…
The political activist side of John Lennon seems to have been largely dismissed or forgotten by the general public, and corporate media reports on the anniversary of his murder are not likely to mention anything more controversial than Beatlemania. Obviously Lennon had an enormous impact upon my generation, setting us free with the primal rhythms and energy of rebellious rock…
