Mending house and home
It’s hard to move through the cramped room. Statues, porcelain tea cups, and trinkets of all kinds cover every surface. The place looks like an antique shop that hasn’t been open in months. Sometime in the fall, the resident of this San Diego home died alone of natural causes. The body was not discovered until March. In a home...
Welcome to the Cabaret
Hands moving in a fluid like motion and gracefully fluttering fingers displaying a flurry of emotions visually telling a story. American Sign Language Cabaret also known as ASL Cabaret is a variety show produced by Mona Jean Cedar and Jo-Ann Dean.
Mona Jean Cedar said, “ASL Cabaret has already exceeded my expectations. We started three years ago in a...
Life Behind Elote
A lime green cart bumps along Vanowen Street, a pop of color against the gray concrete. The cart’s bell jingles as the wheels maneuver over the cracks in the sidewalk. With its chipped coat of paint, the wood near the bottom shows its true signs of wear.
A man pushes the cart as he honks his horn. The honking serves...
Corbin’s Monsters
Tucked away in a cramped garage in Calabasas, California, monsters are created. The smell of burnt fuel and melted metal stains the atmosphere. The monsters that leave this space are flame-spitting, ear-splitting, sensory-polarizing devil’s chariots.
Corbin Goodwin, a 25-year-old mechanical engineering major at CSUN, gained notoriety when his first mad creation was featured on the /Drive Channel on YouTube. His...
MENDing the community one grocery bag at a time
Valley food bank answers the call for those in need during the pandemic
Imelda Canales packages food to be distributed at MEND's biweekly Food Bank in Pacoima, Calif., on March 9, 2021. Photo by Katya Castillo.
Cars start lining up by 7:45 a.m. on San Fernando Road in Pacoima, to...
Work hard, play harder
Certain characteristics such as height and hair and eye color are determined by a person’s genetic makeup before birth. It has been argued that personality traits like sarcasm or shyness can be passed from parent to child. For BDSM community member Janice Hartz-Pettit, the apple did not fall far from the tree; genetically speaking or not.
Hartz-Pettit and her mother...
Life Illustrated
It starts with a blank sheet of paper. Concentrating, while a cascade of ideas release from the lead of a pencil onto the page, is how animation begins.
Animator Scott Claus used to work on one drawing an hour, sometimes for 10 to 12 hours.
Born and raised in Oregon, Claus studied motion pictures and television at the University...
Clipping the Clippers
NBA stars are constantly in the spotlight. They need to have the newest kicks, the freshest clothes and blinged-out watches; it may as well be a part of the job description. One of the biggest aspects of the overall swagger a player must uphold is “the cut.”
If you walk on the court with a bad haircut, you’ll be a...
MusicAli Speaking
The sound of seventeen carefully blended voices fills the room in a swelling crescendo as the cohesive group of UCLA students concentrates on executing the songs they’ve spent more than one hundred hours rehearsing. One soprano with shiny dark hair and a powerful falsetto stands out among the assembly.
Ali Hepps is a 19-year-old student starting her sophomore year at...
A Page in Time
Home to more than 250,000 books and no database to keep track of them all, The Last Bookstore is a literary treasure hunt where you truly never know what you might find. The store buys, trades and sells used and new books, LPs, DVDs and CDs. They also host readings, concerts, plays, film screenings and more.
Entering, you leave...