Chris Isaak knows what you want to hear
The songwriter known for Wicked Game, and working with filmmaker David Lynch, performs at BeachLife Ranch this Sunday, September 24 by Ryan McDonald Long enough ago to predate cell phones, Chris Isaak got a 4 a.m. call from a woman who said she was coming over. Isaak agreed, but regretted it almost as soon as […]
South Bay punk pioneers gather to honor producer Spot
by Ryan McDonald When Wyn Davis thinks of Spot, what comes to mind is a man roaring down Pier Avenue on roller skates, the nominal safety bestowed by knee and elbow pads rendered irrelevant by the loss of peripheral vision from the camera he held tightly to his face. Davis is an owner and founder […]
Just the Man to See: Beloved musician and therapist Kevin Sousa touched thousands of South Bay lives before passing away last week
by Ryan McDonald In the darkest days of the coronavirus pandemic, Kevin Sousa would take the short walk from his Hermosa Beach home to the Hermosa Music Company, the recording and performance space he co-founded in the city’s light industrial district. Sousa opened the Hermosa Music Company around the time COVID-19 made crowded club shows […]
Fundraiser will benefit musician, chef Albert Kim
by Ryan McDonald Every Friday night for the better part of the previous decade, the Scott Whyte Band could be heard at Sharks Cove, a sports bar and restaurant on Manhattan Beach Boulevard. It’s been a few years since they’ve played as a group, but on Jan. 19, the band will get back together as […]
The Infinite Series of the Sea: Raymond Pettibon, punk’s most celebrated artist, creates spellbinding works of surfers and waves
by Ryan McDonald In surf speak, a “line” is the path a surfer chooses to take on a wave. The decision is typically a strategic one. If a surfer knows the wave they are riding will soon move into deeper water, and become weaker as a result, they might position themselves higher on the face, […]
After a brain hemorrhage nearly killed him, South Bay chef and musician Albert Kim reckons with recovery
by Ryan McDonald Early on in Albert Kim’s 61-day hospitalization at Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center, a member of his medical team examined Kim’s hands, and asked if he was a “working man.” Had Kim been conscious at the time, he might have smirked at the question. Kim was in a deep coma […]
Skateboard legend, Caballeros at Redondo BeachLife
By Ryan McDonald Last year, Steve Caballero announced that he and two other musicians he had been playing with were looking for a new vocalist. Caballero, a pioneering professional skateboarder whom Thrasher Magazine called the “Skater of the Century,” announced the search on Instagram, where, as of June 2021, he has some 644,000 followers, and […]
Former pro surfer Tom Curren at Redondo BeachLife
by Ryan McDonald Tom Curren is the rare surfer who inspires as much reverence in impatient youth as he does in his aging contemporaries. A three-time world champion who “retired” from competition three decades ago, his timeless style remains relevant no matter how much surfing progresses. Curren seems to operate with a blood pressure five […]
Pennywise’s Lindberg plans acoustic sets at BeachLife
by Ryan McDonald Jim Lindberg’s songwriting process almost always begins the same way. The question he has to answer, quickly, is where it will lead. “I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent staring at a wall, waiting for inspiration. It kind of always starts there,” said Lindberg, the frontman for Pennywise, the South […]
Pennywise’s ‘Bro Hymn:’ A hymn known by heart
by Ryan McDonald Justin Thirsk heard the plan the day before. He was nervous, but it was not the sort of thing he could prepare for. “I’m trying to think if I’d ever sung that part before that night,” he said in an interview last week. He paused. “No. There’s no way. I wouldn’t have.” […]
The Drop: Surfing and Addiction
by Ryan McDonald If ever a life called out to be transformed into a podcast, it is that of Rick “Raz” Rasmussen, a towheaded trafficker who jet-setted from jungle to red carpet before being gunned down in Harlem following a botched cocaine deal. He was 27, not far removed from a comfortable childhood in suburban […]
South Bay’s Slaughterhouse ready for its curtain call after a year pent-up by the pandemic
by Ryan McDonald On March 6 of last year, when face masks seemed a paranoid overstatement, the band Slaughterhouse played a show at the Factory, a venue in a converted industrial space about a half-mile west of the Los Angeles River. Proceeds went to aid victims of the bushfires that had recently ravaged the east […]
After siege by Trump mob, South Bay’s Rep. Lieu helps lead impeachment effort [Updated]
Minutes after President Donald Trump concluded the “Save America” rally last Wednesday by instructing the thousands of people gathered on the Ellipse, a park south of the White House, to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” to the U.S. Capitol, Rep. Ted Lieu heard a loud, persistent banging on the door of his office in the Cannon […]
Beached party: Beach Cities Republican numbers tumble over Trump
When newly elected Congressman Steve Kuykendall arrived in Washington, D.C. in January 1999, the Palos Verdes Republican made a point of visiting Tom DeLay as soon as possible. DeLay, a Republican from the Houston area then entering his eighth term in the House of Representatives, had served as the majority whip since 1995. In a […]
Trapped in paradise: Manhattan Beach’s Pages hosts authors Stan Parish and Daniel Riley for stories about places we can only imagine (for now)
In the penultimate chapter of Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio,” the newspaper reporter George Willard is preparing to leave the village where he grew up for the big city. He spends the day walking through the county fair, alone amid the crowd and increasingly conscious of the stakes of getting older. He has reached that fleeting, […]
Will the pandemic reshape downtown Hermosa Beach?
Across the United States, the coronavirus has made packed restaurants and carefree urban mingling impossible. In Hermosa Beach there is hope that in the long term the pandemic may lead to a city center that is more bustling and attractive to businesses than the version that preceded it, as well as fear that things will […]