Slake Magazine — A City And It's Stories

Dan Peterka

Dan Peterka and Alex Bacon are the co-founders of GAMA (Guerilla Arts Movement of America) in Los Angeles, which can be found online at gamafunction.com

Craig Gaines

Craig Gaines is a freelance copy editor who maintains a blog about writing at thewritingguide.wordpress.com. He lives in Los Feliz.

Alex Bacon

Alex Bacon and Dan Peterka are the co-founders of GAMA (Guerilla Arts Movement of America) in Los Angeles, which can be found online at gamafunction.com

Laurie Ochoa

During Laurie Ochoa’s eight years as editor in chief of the L.A. Weekly, the paper won more national journalism awards than any other alternative newspaper in the country. She was the executive editor of Gourmet from 1999 to 2001 and spent ten years as a reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times, including five years as editor of the food section. She wrote Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery, which was nominated for James Beard and Julia Child cookbook awards.

Joe Donnelly

Joe Donnelly is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in numerous publication and anthologies. Donnelly was the deputy editor of the L.A. Weekly from 2002 to 2008. Before that, Donnelly was the arts editor of New Times Los Angeles and editor in chief of the seminal Los Angeles pop-culture magazine Bikini. Donnelly earned a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley. Donnelly, who is also Slake’s publisher, started dreaming up Slake several years ago when he asked himself a simple question: why doesn’t a city as cool and interesting as Los Angeles have a publication as cool and interesting as the city?

Hank Cherry

Hank Cherry is a writer, editor, filmmaker, and tennis fan. For now, Los Angeles is home.

Shannon Donnelly

Shannon Donnelly’s passion for photography started during a fondue mishap, cheese of course being her first love. Discovering that she could not build a career around eating cheese, Donnelly turned to her second passion, travel. Finding she also could not build a career solely on a desire to drift aimlessly, she decided to try something even more ludicrous and picked up a camera. Donnelly is now, surprisingly, an award-winning photographer based in Los Angeles, but obviously still looking for a job.

Ray DiPalma

Ray DiPalma’s recent books include Pensieri (Echo Park Press, 2009), The Ancient Use of Stone (Seismicity Editions, 2009) and Further Apocrypha (Pie in the Sky Press, 2009). Various of his writings have been translated in Italian, Spanish, Chinese, French, Danish, and Portuguese. He teaches in the Humanities Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York and has recently been a visiting writer at Otis College of Art and Design.

Luke Davies

Luke Davies is the author of three novels, including the cult best seller Candy, and four volumes of poetry, including Totem, which won The Age Book of the Year Award. He won the Australian Film Institute’s Best Screenplay Award for his adaptation of Candy, which starred the late Heath Ledger. Davies is a film critic and essayist. His short film Air, shot in Texas, screened at the Marfa and Malibu International film festivals, and in 2010 will screen at the Festival des Antipodes in St. Tropez. He recently shot his second short film, The Imbecile, in Paris. His first children’s book, Magpie, will be released in 2010.

Mark Z. Danielewski

Mark Z. Danielewski was born in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles. He is the best-selling author of the novels House of Leaves and Only Revolutions, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction.

Jamie Brisick

Malibu was where the world cracked open for my two older brothers and me. On the stretch of sand between First and Third points, we encountered bums, Vietnam vets, leather-clad punks, and rakish surfers. Out in the sparkling waves, West Val stoners, East Val bongheads, Hollywood vampires, Santa Monica rich kids, Venice gypsies,Topanga hippies, Colony […]

Iris Berry

Iris Berry is a writer, actress, and musician, a native Angeleno, and one of the original progenitors of the L.A. punk scene. Her short stories and poetry have been widely anthologized. She has written several books and recorded two collections of her poetry and spoken-word pieces, Life on the Edge in Stilettos and Collect Calls. In the 1980s she was a singer for the punk rock band the Lame Flames, and later the Ringling Sisters, with legendary producer Lou Adler. Berry also sang and wrote songs for the Dickies, the Flesheaters, Pink Sabbath, and Honk If Yer Horny. Berry has appeared in numerous films, TV commercials, documentaries, and music videos. She also co-produced The Sensuous Woman, a series of burlesque and comedy variety shows with Margaret Cho. Berry just completed a book of prose, The Daughters of Bastards, and is writing a short-story collection, Punk Hostage, and a memoir of the 1980s. In March 2009, she received her second certificate of merit and achievement from the city of Los Angeles.

Erica Zora Wrightson

Erica Zora Wrightson is a Pasadena native who writes about proximities, distances, and the ingredients of place. Her nonfiction can be found in the L.A. Weekly. She resides in Angeleno Heights.

Dave White

Dave White is the author of the memoir Exile in Guyville and is featured in the anthology Love Is a Four Letter Word. He writes about film, TV, and pop culture for Movies.com, MSNBC.com, and QueerSighted.com.

John Tottenham

John Tottenham has dedicated himself to the lucrative, fast-paced world of poetry for the past decade, a morbid addiction that he is now trying to quit. His work has appeared in Artillery, The Southern Humanities Review, Dialectical Anthropology, and other publications. The musician Matt Johnson (otherwise known as The The) is working on a multimedia interpretation of his book, The Inertia Variations.

Jervey Tervalon

Jervey Tervalon is the author of five novels including Understand This, for which he won the Quality Paper Book Club’s New Voices Award. He was awarded a key to the city of New Orleans for his best-selling novel Dead Above Ground. He was selected as a Disney Screenwriting Fellow and was commissioned to adapt a novel and short story for the South Coast Repertory Theater. He teaches creative writing at USC.

Deborah Stoll

Deborah Stoll is a native New Yorker who enjoys living in Los Angeles. She contributes arts pieces to The Economist’s online literary magazine, More Intelligent Life, and writes cocktail-inspired stories for the L.A. Weekly. Her TV show The Foundry was a semifinalist at Slamdance. You can find more information and tawdry tales at bubbemaisse.com.

C. R. Stecyk

C. R. Stecyk is an artist based in Ocean Park, California. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in a number of public collections. A surfboard he built and painted is in the permanent archive of the Smithsonian Institution. He has been profiled in several films, including in Dogtown and Z Boys.

Jerry Stahl

Jerry Stahl is the author of six books, including Permanent Midnight, I, Fatty, and Pain Killers, and has written numerous screenplays. “Sammy Talks Frank” is taken from his upcoming novel, Jumping from the H.

Robert Sobul

Robert Sobul is a filmmaker who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son.

David Schneider

David Schneider was born and raised in San Francisco. He has worked in commercials, film, television, and theater since moving to Los Angeles in 2002. He would like to thank Mom, Dad, Jeffrey, Matthew, Michael, Jenny, C. J., Dana, Michael, Adam, Emily, Nana, Oliver, and Christine.

John Powers

John Powers is a contributing editor at Vogue, where he writes about film and politics, and is critic at large for NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He was film critic at the L.A. Weekly from 1985 to 1993, and returned to the paper in 2001 to write a weekly media/politics column, “On,” until 2005. He is the author of Sore Winners (and the Rest of Us) in George Bush’s America. He and his wife, Sandi Tan, live in Pasadena. His work can be found online in the People Are Talking About section of Vogue.com and on the Fresh Air Web site.

Geoff Nicholson

Geoff Nicholson is the author of numerous books, most recently The Lost Art of Walking and Gravity’s Volkswagen. He lives on the lower slopes of the Hollywood Hills.

Arty Nelson

Arty Nelson has written for the L.A. Weekly, Bikini, Raygun, Arena, Interview, Black Book, Frank, Vogue, and numerous art catalogs. He is the author of the novel Technicolor Pulp and is a writer on HBO’s How to Make It in America.

Judith Lewis Mernit

Judith Lewis Mernit writes about natural resources, Western politics, and the great outdoors from Venice, California. Her work has appeared in the L.A. Weekly, Mother Jones, Sierra, Utne, the Los Angeles Times, and High Country News, where she is a contributing editor.

Richard Lange

Richard Lange is the author of the short story collection Dead Boys and the novel This Wicked World. He received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and is a Guggenheim Fellow in fiction.

Steven Kotler

Steven Kotler is a New Mexico-based writer. He is the author of the forthcoming A Small, Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life (Bloomsbury, October 2010); 2006 PEN finalist;West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief; and the 1999 novel The Angle Quickest for Flight, a San Francisco Chronicle best seller and winner of the 2000 William L. Crawford IAFA Fantasy Award. His articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Details, Wired, Popular Science, Discover, Playboy, Outside, and ESPN The Magazine. He also writes The Playing Field, a blog about the science of sport and culture, for PsychologyToday.com, and is the co-founder of the Rancho de Chihuahua dog sanctuary in Chimayo, New Mexico.

Fred Rochlin

Fred Rochlin The Tropicana motel was one of the first commissions that Fred Rochlin and his partner Ephraim Baran received at their architectural firm Rochlin & Baran. Rochlin’s first two architecture jobs – working for Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, Lloyd Wright, and for Charles and Rae Eames — were as creatively inspiring as he hoped. And the Rochlin & Baran firm was responsible for many important buildings in California. But as the late architect told his daughter Margy Rochlin, the developer of the Tropicana insisted on design elements that he and Baran considered ugly — a kidney-bean-shaped pool, a retaining wall of irregularly cut Palo Verde stone that was supposed to give the motel a South Seas look — and it was a job he wanted to forget. Still, right before the Tropicana was torn down in 1988, Rochlin parked himself across the street from the motel, painted a watercolor of the landmark and gave it to his daughter. In his ’70s, Rochlin became an acclaimed performance artist and author.

Theresa Kereakes

Theresa Kereakes grew up in Southern California and studied at UCLA. Theresa photographs raw and candid images of artists who are now household names: Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Joan Jett, The Sex Pistols and more. She has worked internationally and now divides her time between Nashville, New York, and Los Angeles.

Photos from: Tales from the Tropicana Motel

Kelly Fajack

Kelly Fajack was raised in Manhattan Beach, California. His photography career began at 13 when he sold an image to Surfing magazine. Since then, has traveled to more than 40 countries on six continents to shoot for such clients as AOL, Fiat, and Fujitsu Siemens. Fajack’s work has been published in magazines Le Figaro, Time and Grazia

Michelle Huneven

Michelle Huneven’s most recent novel, Blame, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and named a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her first and second novels, Round Rock and Jamesland, were New York Times notable books and finalists for Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. She has received the Southern California Booksellers Award for Fiction, a G. E. Younger Writers Award, and a Whiting Award. She teaches creative writing at UCLA and lives with her husband in the town where she was born, Altadena, California.

Daniel Hernandez

Daniel Hernandez is a journalist based in Mexico City, working on a nonfiction book to be published by Scribner. He was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times and then moved to the L.A. Weekly, where he wrote on art, politics, culture, and the 2006 presidential election in Mexico. He does commentary and journalism in English and Spanish for various media outlets. His blog, Intersections, is featured on La Plaza, the Latin America news blog at LATimes.com. His work has appeared in The New York Times, the Guardian, Extra! at FAIR, El Pais, and more.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Jacob Heilbrunn is a senior editor at The National Interest and author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons.

Jonathan Gold

Jonathan Gold, restaurant critic for the L.A. Weekly and author of Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles, is the first food writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. In addition to his writing for Gourmet, Saveur, and other national food and travel magazines, Gold has a shady past as a composer and performance artist, spent time as the rap and heavy-metal correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was the L.A. Weekly’s music editor, and wrote about music and popular culture for Spin, Rolling Stone, and Details.

Polly Geller

Polly Geller grew up in Rome and left for the Brave New World at seventeen to attend Dartmouth College. She recently graduated with an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design. Her poetry has been published in The Strip; her prose has been published by NameCalling.org and 32WordStories.com. Her translations from Italian have been published in the literary journal Or, and her thesis, a translation of Adriano Spatola’s only novel, L’oblo, (The Porthole), will be published by Otis Seismicity Editions/Agincourt in the fall.

Pleasant Gehman

Pleasant Gehman is a writer, dancer, actor, painter, and musician. She has written for Rolling Stone, the L.A. Weekly, Spin, and Los Angeles Magazine among others. Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. She is the author and/or editor of six books, including the acclaimed memoir Escape from Houdini Mountain and The Underground Guide to Los Angeles, which spent nine weeks on the Los Angeles Times best sellers list. She lives in Hollywood.

Matthew Fleischer

Matthew Fleischer was a staff writer at the L.A. Weekly and senior editor of L.A. City Beat. He writes for the Los Angeles Times Magazine, among other publications. “You may have heard, or said to yourself absentmindedly, that nobody walks in L.A. This is untrue. Any number of schizophrenics walk in Los Angeles. Plenty of crackheads, too. And so do I. When I’m not writing, I wander, usually by foot.”

Anne Fishbein

Anne Fishbein is a Los Angeles photographer whose work is collected in many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. Her monograph, On the Way Home, was published by Perceval Press.

John Albert

John Albert grew up in Los Angeles. As a teenager he co-founded the cross-dressing “death rock” band Christian Death, then had a stint playing drums for Bad Religion. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. Weekly, Fader, and Hustler among others, winning national awards for sports and music writing. Albert’s essays have appeared in several anthologies, including Reality Matters: The Show I’ll Never Forget and The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything. The film rights to his book Wrecking Crew (Scribner), about the true-life adventures of his amateur baseball team composed of drug addicts, transvestites, and washed-up rock stars, have been optioned four times, most recently by the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.