Vida Gives Us Life: Diverse Storytelling In Hollywood Is Possible
Saving community landmarks is never just about the building. It’s about how the community benefits from spaces that allow for the continuation and evolution of tradition. It’s not about staying static; it’s about having a safe space to flourish. It’s not about the bar. It’s about the energy that the bar makes possible.
A Love Letter To JAWS (1975)
Tourism has talons and these talons dig into communities in unflinching ways. Therefore, these places are complicated. Tourism touches most parts of the planet, but certain areas get more heat than others. This leaves locals stuck inside some twisted catch-22. What IS the cost of closing a beach? In the case of JAWS, the cost is four lives and 24 hours of income lost.
Origin Story Pt. 2: I Am From The In-Between
Coastal culture, port culture is uniquely transferable. The people who exist where water and land meet are a specific kind of people. They swashbuckle, they swear, they are hearty deviants. They run rampant on the wings of waves and flagrant sexual innuendo. They are salty bohemians, accepting of every walk of life that arrives into port.
Origin Story Pt.1: Los Angeles Borderlands
When you live on the borders
in the ephemeral, there is no comfort in place.
There is only comfort in being.
Abbott Elementary Educates Us On Difficult History
Abbott Elementary tackles "difficult" history in Season 3, Episode 6, titled "Willard R. Abbott". This episode’s writer (Ava Coleman) did an excellent job portraying a way to deal with problematic legacies, the importance (or lack thereof) of designation and plaques, rifling through layers of history + finding gems, and remembering that ultimately, people are what makes places important.
All Hail, Kalo ~~ All In A Weekend’s Time
My name was called and a tiny, black box with a golden chalice embossed on the front was presented to me. It was no short of a wedding proposal, from where I was standing. Still a ring inside that box. Mine? Piping hot, dripping in a vanilla maple glaze, yet to cool and turn matte.
Steam be damned, I bit into the single best thing to grace my palette in a long while.
American Fiction: Who Gets to Tell What Stories?
Generally, white publishers look for stories of Black trauma. The stories themselves are not a problem; they are valid because they are often rooted in reality. Telling these stories only becomes a problem when they are the only stories being told. American Fiction brings light to the complicated nature of publishing or making art while Black in a late capitalist world.
brat Summer: A Case for Charli XCX Changing the Course of History
A British pop star dropped a vomit green album of bangers this summer and she may have just saved democracy. The Brits have played their final hand against us, revolutionaries across the pond. One if by land, two if by Charli XCX.