Agustin Gurza

October 11, 2008

CULTURE MIX

Pilar Díaz no longer Abandoned, and that's OK

IT'S BEEN a year since Los Abandoned suddenly broke up and L.A. lost one of its most creative bicultural bands. At the time, lead singer and songwriter couldn't get herself to talk about why she had abandoned the acclaimed quartet, whose logo was a broken heart.

September 6, 2008

CULTURE MIX / AGUSTIN GURZA

Los Angeles International Latino Film Festival to begin Sept. 12

IN THE film "Paraíso Travel,” a young immigrant named Marlon finds himself lost and broke shortly after arriving in New York and being separated from his girlfriend, the cunning and sexy Reina, played by Angélica Blandón. He meets an older man, a fixer for new arrivals, who helps him find shelter and asks the naive illegal what else he might need.

August 16, 2008

CULTURE MIX / AGUSTIN GURZA

Gregorio Luke takes Latino Museum post

GREGORIO LUKE approaches with a contented grin, reaches into the vest pocket of his black business suit and hands me a business card as if we had never met before. "It's something very special," says the former director of the Museum of Latin American Art, whom I've known for almost a decade.

August 9, 2008

CULTURE MIX

The Armenian Navy Band sets sail for America

When music promoter Debbie Ohanian calls from her home in Miami Beach to tip me to some great new band, I always listen. In the past decade, she was one of the pioneers in bringing cutting-edge Cuban bands to the U.S., sometimes at personal risk, as when she staged the first concert in Miami for Los Van Van, despite violent protests.

August 2, 2008

CULTURE MIX

Salsa dancing is not an extreme sport

Attention all rude and narcissistic salsa dancers who bumped, elbowed and butted my wife and me on the dance floor last Sunday at Paseo Colorado, the Pasadena mall that hosts free music events in its courtyard: Salsa is a social dance. It's not roller derby, bumper cars or sumo wrestling. So try not to clobber the guy next to you, crash into other couples or force fellow dancers off the floor.

July 26, 2008

CULTURE MIX

KPFK makes room for pochos and much more

Five years ago, after being named the first Latino program director in the 50-year history of KPFK Pacifica Radio, Armando Gudiño took a call from a worried listener. She was an older woman, he recalls, a staunch liberal who had given money regularly to the member-supported station, known for its progressive politics and occasionally chaotic infighting.

July 5, 2008

CULTURE MIX

Mural memorializes Ventura's Tortilla Flats

It took just one month for a new freeway mural in Ventura to be hit by graffiti. The tagger was considerate, however, taking pains not to mar the piece, which commemorates a neighborhood destroyed in the 1950s to make way for the 101 Freeway. Instead of writing directly on the artwork, the tagger left a message on the back of an adhesive bandage, which was then applied as carefully as a mother treating a scrape on a child.

June 28, 2008

CULTURE MIX

When Antigua Cultural Coffeehouse closes its doors, more will be lost than a morning cup of joe

Forget short, tall and venti, that strange code for ordering Starbucks. The sizes at Antigua Cultural Coffeehouse are ce, ome and yei, the Mayan words for one, two, three. Somehow, that's easier to follow.

May 31, 2008

CULTURE MIX

At the West Coast Salsa Congress, the rhythm can't be stopped

His name is synonymous with the business of salsa dancing. Albert Torres is a former drug addict and petty criminal who escaped from a dead-end life by becoming a music entrepreneur -- please don't call him a promoter -- best known for his global dance competitions called the Salsa Congress, a name that hints at his belief in the unifying power of the music.

May 17, 2008

CULTURE MIX

Boyle Heights goes upscale

On the surface, almost everything appears as it has for decades on East 1st Street in Boyle Heights, the neighborhood east of downtown known as a haven for immigrants and blue-collar families. It's mid-afternoon and a couple of tipsy men spill out of Las Palomas Bar, arms locked over their shoulders, heading toward the nearby birrieria, a restaurant specializing in goat stew. Others greet more soberly as they pass traditional mom-and-pop shops that line the thoroughfare, selling soccer trophies, mariachi outfits and secondhand clothes.

May 10, 2008

CULTURE MIX

Museum showcases female punk scene

Lysa Flores looks far too stylish to be one of the female voices of East L.A. punk, to borrow the subtitle of an exhibition opening next week at the Claremont Museum of Art. Waiting one cloudy morning recently for a table at a trendy cafe in her Los Feliz neighborhood, the singer-songwriter is sporting a red silk scarf under a long gray herringbone overcoat revealing black leggings that stop just above her buckled ankle boots. There are no pinks or blues in her curly black hair and no pins, hoops or studs in her nose or eyebrows.

April 12, 2008

CULTURE MIX

A Million Dollar dream

PASSERSBY were greeted to a most unusual sight this week on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. Unusual in recent memory, that is. The iron gate at the entrance of the historic Million Dollar Theater was wide open. Nobody was manning the box office, but the unshuttered exterior, in all its Churrigueresque glory, was a sign that life is returning to the ornate auditorium, which this year celebrates its 90th anniversary.