Slake Tells LA's Stories

PORN, celebrity, poetry and sharp graphic design: It’s got a little of everything, just like the city it chronicles.

I’D heard enough good things about the new LA-centric quarterly, Slake, to have high hopes for it. But so far, to my initial assessment, Slake – a publication of fiction, art, photography and journalism -- has exceeded he high expectations I had for it.

Part of the reason for my high hopes – and my lack of interest in being “objective” in my assessment -- comes from its founders: Joe Donnelly was very briefly an editor of mine at New Times LA, and Laurie Ochoa was the well-regarded editor of the LA Weekly, to which Joe moved just before New Times went under. (Both were canned by the new owners.)

I expected the journal to include work by Weekly writers – there’s a typically witty, incisive piece here by John Powers on celebrity and crime, “Out Stealing Purses.” And local legend (and current Weekly scribe) Jonathan Gold offers a brilliantly observed piece about sex and the still life in “Fallen Fruit.” I’m looking forward to reading the story “Separation” by novelist Michelle Huneven and the report by Judith Lewis.

But there are surprises here, including a provocative essay (or is it a manifesto, or a piece of fiction?) by House of Leaves author Mark Danielewski, a witty meditation by walking freak Geoff Nicholson, “The Hollywood Pedestrian,” and a striking photo essay by Shannon Donnelly. Slake includes a number of drawings and paintings by Sandow Birk. 

There are also a lot of names I barely know, and there is no clear house style or single vision, though the graphics work together well. (Like LA, you might say, it has no obvious center.) The focus on life in Southern California, on its art and literary scene, feels fresh.

“There’s too much intellectual talent, creative talent, and dynamism in this city not to have something really great to reflect that, to serve as an amplifier,” Joe Donnelly told when he met to discuss Slake with The Misread City. He also wanted to reflect the move of the city's culture to the Eastside.

“In LA, we’re dependant on New York as an intellectual and cultural filter. Having lived long stretches in both cities, I can say that LA is a more interesting place. New York is ossified – it was an awesome 20^th century city." Manhattan, he says "is a shopping mall now.”

But LA has had a problem New York doesn’t: Its publications are pieces of out-of-town media chains. Or as Donnelly puts it: “They all suffer from the same problem – outside ownership,” by people who don't quite get the West Coast And they’re all obsessed with celebrity and consumerism: “The bling, the stuff, the how-to-live-this–lifestyle.”

Part of what is heartening about Slake is its commitment to print. It’s full of long pieces of prose – Ochoa has compared their mission to that of the Slow Food movement – and to the kind of graphic design that makes sense only on paper. The visuals, he says, “help take some of the earnestness out of it.”

But Donnelly didn’t want to be like the other literary journals: He thinks of Granta, with its visual austerity, as a little “like cod-liver oil  --  good for you, but hard to digest," and finds McSweeney’s entertaining, "but sometimes its reliance on irony and postmodernism leaves me a little cold. It can feel out of touch with the real world to me." 

Of course, the difficulty of launching a magazine in Los Angeles was well known even before the latest print-media meltdown. And unlike the institutional support enjoyed by Black Clock, which is put out by Cal Arts, an off-the-mainstream publication does not have it easy. So as much as I love Slake and want it to thrive, I wonder about its ability to survive in a ruined economy. (The LATimes estimable media critic James Rainey praises the publication and wonders as well, here.)

Donnelly can’t promise Slake will survive, but he and Ochoa are already working on another one, and hope to get more sponsors on board. (The first issue has a few, including the Hammer Museum and Pasadena’s Europane Bakery, where by coincidence I had an excellent lunch on the 4^th.)

 It’ll be a scramble, he says. “But we want to publish books, we want to have an imprint, we want to grow our website but not have it replace this [magazine]. We want to do documentaries – these are the grand ambitions.”

Several Slake contributors -- Gold, Danielewski, Huneven and David Schneider -- will read at Skylight Books this Sunday at 5 pm.

Here’s a tip of the pen from The Misread City to Slake – long may your flag fly.

BREAKING: The retro-minded Los Angeles architect Stephen Kanner has died. Here's an appreciation by Frances Anderton of KCRW's "DnA: Design  and Architecture."

Culinary Adventure with Jonathan Gold

THE food writing of Jonathan Gold is so vivid, colorful and at times almost embarrassingly sensual that as a reader, it's not hard to feel you are actually along for the ride with him as he seeks out restaurants dedicated to, say, regional Mexican cuisine, a groovy wine bar or the street food of urban southeast Asia.

But it's even more delectable to be able to follow the celebrated scribe to a meal in a foreign city, as yours truly was able to do during the international book festival in Guadalajara. Somehow I'd spent a day and a half and not had much of what Mexicans call "tipica" cuisine -- some fine enchiladas at the hotel, and some white wines from Baha, both decent but not memorable.

The first excursion came after Gold appeared in a panel on LA writers and humor, which also included writers Jerry Stahl and Paul Beatty. (Gold recalled his days editing the LA Weekly's humor column: "I thought what would make it distinctive," he said, "is that nothing in it would be funny.")

After the panel, a caravan of us followed Gold and his journalist wife Laurie Ochoa to what seemed like a remote neighborhood, Tlaquepaque, for a restaurant called El Parian. The cab driver seemed a bit confused by our request to head there, telling us (we thought) that we'd have to walk a long way after he dropped us off and that we'd know where we were because we'd see, "too many restaurants, too many artistanos, too many mariachis." I could not tell -- as we used to say in high school -- if this was a threat or a promise.

The meal ended up being very good: Many of us, including The Misread City, got birria -- a dish of stewed meat that is usually goat but here was calf. The restaurant's speciality is what may be the largest drink in the world: Mostly fruit, ice, triple sec, with a large shot of tequila on the side, its container is so large it is marked "BAR" -- the quotes are theirs, not mine -- presumably so it is not confused with a large soup bowl. (Across from me was UK-to-LA novelist Geoff Nicholson, an excellent guy whose Psycho-Gourmet blog I am digging.)

Gold said of the day's eating that he had consumed so much beef that he was constructing a cow in his stomach, piece by piece. (Now I know why he turned down the offer of the very fine pickled pig skins I was nibbling on.)

Somehow, by the way, the mariachis never showed up, though Gold, Ochoa, and novelist Mark Danielewski ended up, after the meal, at a bar at which two musicians serenaded them and a couple of drug lords who had footed an enormous bill for the performance.

The second night was longer and harder to explain -- all I will say of it is that Gold led us to a very cool bar at which we seemed to be the only gringos. And I think the man's reputation must precede him, even abroad -- a plate of what looked like pig's feet, served with lime and a chile paste, showed up next to Gold before, I think, anyone had had a moment to even order a beer.

Photo credit: I will not compromise the man's privacy by posting his picture, so here is a cow.