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Jul. 22nd, 2018 09:47 pm
jonathan gold
Losing both Anthony Bourdain and Jonathan Gold in the same year is a bit much. It's really hard to lose two high-profile white men who were able to show the world how and what it meant to be empathetic, and to really champion people who are often overlooked and under-appreciated.
I've always loved Jonathan Gold's writing, and when we moved back down here we bought a copy of Counter Intelligence to help us re-orient ourselves in Los Angeles. And even recently via his writing we discovered a new Syrian place near us. I finally watched City of Gold (which is on Hulu) and it's fascinating.
Things that I didn't know:
1. He covered NWA before anyone else did. I hate linking to LAWeekly now because they got taken over by Trump turds, but his original NWA profile is still on there. This sentence in particular, just got me: Boyz-N-the-Hood,” five and a half minutes of cheerful vignettes from the short, happy life of a ghetto hoodlum, became the cornerstone of the California street sound, one of the first West Coast rap records rooted as much in the hardcore New York break style as in Kraftwerk.
2. His brother is an environmentalist activist. In one part of the documentary, his brother's like, so, did you eat any endangered species lately? And he's like, "Yeah, I had an ortolan souffle last week". Although he did get him to write an op-ed for the shark fin ban, which was apparently huge to getting that bill passed. BTW my own thought on it: shark fin is overrated; the actual soup is only good because of ALL THE OTHER INGREDIENTS IN IT. So ban away, ban away (also, yes even if shark fin was delicious on its own).
3. So I guess this documentary happened before he kind of panned David Chang's new restaurant in LA. Now I'm dying to know what the gossip is. Though honestly I think David Chang and a bunch of his male contemporaries, are way too thin-skinned, and they have a lot of blind spots.
I've always loved Jonathan Gold's writing, and when we moved back down here we bought a copy of Counter Intelligence to help us re-orient ourselves in Los Angeles. And even recently via his writing we discovered a new Syrian place near us. I finally watched City of Gold (which is on Hulu) and it's fascinating.
Things that I didn't know:
1. He covered NWA before anyone else did. I hate linking to LAWeekly now because they got taken over by Trump turds, but his original NWA profile is still on there. This sentence in particular, just got me: Boyz-N-the-Hood,” five and a half minutes of cheerful vignettes from the short, happy life of a ghetto hoodlum, became the cornerstone of the California street sound, one of the first West Coast rap records rooted as much in the hardcore New York break style as in Kraftwerk.
2. His brother is an environmentalist activist. In one part of the documentary, his brother's like, so, did you eat any endangered species lately? And he's like, "Yeah, I had an ortolan souffle last week". Although he did get him to write an op-ed for the shark fin ban, which was apparently huge to getting that bill passed. BTW my own thought on it: shark fin is overrated; the actual soup is only good because of ALL THE OTHER INGREDIENTS IN IT. So ban away, ban away (also, yes even if shark fin was delicious on its own).
3. So I guess this documentary happened before he kind of panned David Chang's new restaurant in LA. Now I'm dying to know what the gossip is. Though honestly I think David Chang and a bunch of his male contemporaries, are way too thin-skinned, and they have a lot of blind spots.
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