The Alt-Weekly: An Appreciation

Those of us who purchase the LA Times for its sports section still feel the smarting of the latest sticker shock: 75 cents per copy. Yes, 75 cents for a gutted sports and books section with an opinion page as soft-pedaled and limp wristed as ever.


This is precisely why we turn to the alt-weekly and more importantly, the LA Weekly. We read it for what it isn’t: the LA Times, and we read it for what it is: Marc Cooper, Ella Taylor, Nikki Finke, Steven Mikulan, and Jonathan Gold. Even for someone like me whose politics veer rightward, I appreciate its writers’ straightforward, “like us or loathe us, this is what we are” style. During the election season, the LA Weekly left nothing to guess. They really liked Obama. I didn’t agree with Marc Cooper (or once upon a time, Harold Myerson) but they were readable, enjoyable and didn’t dance around their firm principles. And of course, who could skip the delicious skewering of Hollywood at the hands of Nikki Finke? Ah, delightfully wicked reading. Jonathan Gold? Always the first column I read.
Unfortunately, like many other newspapers, the LA Weekly faces grim prospects. It’s “obituary” in fact has already been written here/ and here (Witnessla.com). If it is true, then I bid you goodbye LA Weekly. We loved you and your mid-nineties rival, the villainous New Times. In Marc Cooper’s piece on the demise of the Weekly, he wishes to scandalize New Times for its corporate slashing and for reporting he believed lacked ethics. But it is hard for me to hate a paper that delivered body blows from the likes of Jill Stewart, the Finger, Keven McCallester, and Cooper himself. Some of us felt that the NewTimes pushed the Weekly when it got lazy in its own pretensions. It improved dramatically in the last five years.
Today, it is gasping. My latest edition of the LA Weekly looks thin, barely breaking a hundred pages. I hope there’s life left to give us a few more years. If not, we can try to find alternatives, but those are becoming scarcer everyday.

Homage

This blog pays homage to one of the great LA writers of all time, the LA Weekly’s venerable restaurant critic Jonathan Gold. I submit that Mr. Gold not only writes about food, he brings the world to your doorstep. Vietnam, Mexico, China, El Salvador, Malaysia, and Uzbekistan (Uzbekistan?) are among the many countries’ cuisines that have been showcased in Gold’s columns. Jonathan Gold demystifies the unknown and the “spooky,” those regions that were once only in our imagination. When we eat nam kao tod at a Thai joint that he recommends, we are a step closer to our brethren from the Far East. After breathing in the silky mole of the city of Bell’s La Casita Mexicana, our friends to the South seem far less hostile. For this reason, Gold is a civic treasure and worthy of respect.
Gold also gives us the “essentials,” restaurants that speak more than most, those places that tell us who we are as Angelenos and where we are going. These serve great food and reflect the character of Los Angeles. Each year he compiles and updates a list of ninety nine of those restaurants. This year, I’m visiting all ninety nine. If Mr. Gold tells me to eat extra-spicy grasshoppers at an Oaxacan eatery, I’ll consume them with bells in tow. If he writes of the wonders of live prawns, I’ll smile, close my eyes and pretend they’re caramelized onions. And I’ll eat them. There are those who grouse, saying some restaurants on the list are unworthy or that Gold seems misinformed about the “latest” fad or trend. To these I reply: when you win a Pulitzer, come up with your own #%@! list.