Jill Stewart
LA Weekly
United Kingdom
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Past articles by John:
The Women Behind Nix Hydra Are Taking on Aggressive Male Video Gaming
Four years ago, Lina Chen and Naomi Ladizinsky's plan to shake up the gaming world on behalf of girls seemed exceedingly improbable, even to them. Chen had a psychology liberal arts degree and Ladizinsky a film studies degree, both from Yale, where they'd met. They were out to disrupt one... → Read More
What L.A.'s Spanish Street Names Mean in English
In a city that's about 55 percent Spanish-speaking, not to mention those adorers of Spanish who learned it at school or on the fly, we still have a couple million Angelenos who haven't got a clue how colorful L.A.'s Spanish-named streets really are. How much more fun — not to... → Read More
Schools All Closed in Los Angeles Due to Terrorist Threat Phoned to LAUSD Board Member
City News Service and FOX News are reporting that all Los Angeles Unified School District schools will stay closed today in response to a reported bomb threat, Schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines said, a bizarre, dark and possibly historic event. The apparent bomb threat, of which no details were released, was... → Read More
LA Weekly Film Critic Amy Nicholson Wins Best Critic at the National Arts and Entertainment Awards
Amy Nicholson, movie critic for LA Weekly and Voice Media Group, won the prestigious Best Critic in Broadcast or Print, and Best Online Commentary, at the National Arts and Entertainment Awards gala thrown by the Los Angeles Press Club Sunday at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel. Nicholson won best critic for... → Read More
Bizarre Landslide Buckles and Wipes Out an L.A. Commuter Road in the Rural ' Burb of Canyon Country
Mother Nature had a hissy fit yesterday and today, buckling Vasquez Canyon Road east of Bouquet Canyon in the countrified Los Angeles suburbs, pushing up and rumpling a 150-foot stretch of roadway, in some places 20 feet into the air, and dragging Southern California Edison's transmission poles right along with... → Read More
The Two Biggest Douches in California Besides Charlie Sheen Are Heading to Jail for Revenge Porn
Women everywhere should be rejoicing now that L.A.'s douchiest resident, Charles “Gary Jones” Evens, the revenge porn nightcrawler who hacked into 300 email accounts to steal and post the private nude photos of utter strangers, is heading to prison. Studio City resident Evens, a shake-down artist who targeted innocent women,... → Read More
L.A.'s Stupidest Smuggler Faces 10 Years in Prison Today after Getting Interpol on HIs Fishy Case
An evil international criminal based in the quiet San Fernando Valley neighborhood of West Hills sent Interpol and U.S. federal agents tracking him around the globe, mockingly hid out in Mexico for years, finally got nabbed by "special agents" for the United States Fish & Wildlife Service and today is... → Read More
If You Hate the DWP, They're Offering the Public Refreshments and a Mic This Week
They're calling it a community meeting, and it's the public's chance to meet a key DWP leader and give the agency a piece of your mind about how L.A.'s least-popular department can go green, perhaps without ripping off residents on electricity and water rates or those special fees and taxes... → Read More
Day of the Dead, a List of 10 People We Lost in L.A. in 2015, and Miss The Most
The Mexican spiritual holiday Día de Muertos is nothing like the hard-partying, skull-faced hoopla celebrated by L.A.'s own indigenous peoples, the hipsters. On the first day of the two-day observation in Mexico, children craft a child's altar indoors to welcome angelicas, the spirits of dead children, to enter their homes. On day two, the... → Read More
From the Reddit Snoo to Justin Bieber's Banana, Pretty in Plastic Turns Ideas into 3D Art (VIDEO)
Julie B. was raised by two science teachers, and she's pretty sure that's why she see something two-dimensional and her brain transforms it into 3D. Plus the fact that she employs team members (mostly women, with a few guys), such as her metalsmith Terry, who can handle everything from delicate... → Read More
Le Petit Paris in Downtown Is a Soaring New Space for Lingering With Friends
In the booming Los Angeles of 1913, Hotel Stowell opened on Spring Street, then known as Wall Street of the West. The hotel stood out for its vivid facade and artsy Earnest A. Batchelder tiles in the lobby, and Charlie Chaplin lived there. Decades later the Stowell had devolved to... → Read More
Die In California Owning a Home and Save $10,000 Thanks to Law Signed by Jerry Brown
Not only does it suck to die, but in California there's a special shakedown involved. If you're among the among the millions of Californians in the middle class, there's no way to transfer your house title to your kids when you're old without shelling out $2,000 to $10,000 to hire... → Read More
By Ripping Out Its Lawns, Is L.A. Choking Out Its Worms, Butterflies and Birds?
In her busy bird-supplies shop in Sherman Oaks, Bonnie McFarlin describes her motionless butterfly habitat with dread. "In a good year we would have, I don't know, 25 or 50 monarchs in there at a time, and this year we had none." McFarlin, who co-owns Wild Wings Backyard, worries about... → Read More
In a Desert of School Failure, 96th Street Elementary in Watts Soars by Rewriting the Rules
By all rights, 96th Street Elementary School in Watts shouldn't be busy on a summer morning. School doesn't start until Aug. 18, and the front door is hemmed in by construction fencing to boot. But parents keep popping by the plain brick complex under the roaring flight path of LAX... → Read More
Is There a Kinder, Gentler Way to Get Anti-Vaxxers to See the Light?
Some of the first people to notice the anti-vaccination phenomenon in California were Santa Monica physicians like pediatrician Alice Kuo, whose UCLA clinic on 16th Street sits midway between the upscale industrial art galleries at Bergamot Station and pricey Montana Avenue, a shopping district favored by one of the most... → Read More
L.A. Weekly Nabs Several Nominations in Southern California Journalism Awards
Numerous L.A. Weekly reporters, critics, columnists, editors and freelancers are finalists for the Southern California Journalism Awards to be held June 28 at the Millennium Biltmore, honors bestowed each year by the 500-member Los Angeles Press Club. Among the finalists, culled from more than 900 entries to the Press Club, are film critic Amy Nicholson,... → Read More
Upsets Galore in Los Angeles Elections
In big upsets, L.A. elected the first Asian-American to City Council since the 1990s and replaced LAUSD incumbents with a Republican and a Latino charte... → Read More
Voter Guide for Los Angeles City Council and LAUSD Election, May 19, 2015
If you haven't chosen yet from the shortest Los Angeles-area ballot (for a non-special election) in awhile, here are your reminders about who is running, and where. A lot is on the line in the Southeast cities, the struggling and aging 'burbs of L.A., some of which boast a nearly... → Read More
Schools Are Failing Minority Kids in Science and Math. Emilio Pack Is Solving the Problem
One of the 54 fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People Issue 2015. One of Emilio Pack's most vivid childhood memories is that of his Cuban immigrant single mom, desperate to hold together her extended family amid the poverty and street violence that gripped their chosen new city, performing illegal... → Read More
The Son of a Billionaire Created One of the Coolest Arts District Galleries. And You Can't Get In
Let's just agree that Ash Chan has the most enviable hipster job in Los Angeles, as owner of the Container Yard, the kinetic cultural space he has been ... → Read More