At Sea on L.A. Style’s Sixth Anniversary

L.A. Style is 6 years old. If it were human, it would have survived kindergarten, and that’s a feat on today’s mean streets of magazinedom.

In celebration, the coffee-table publication has dressed up as a “Sixth Anniversary Collector’s Edition” dedicated to the ocean.

“More than any other city in the country, L.A. has been defined by its beach culture,” executive publisher and editor-in-chief Joie Davidow writes. So, the magazine sets out to probe that metaphorical high tide line where the sea and SoCal culture interact.

There are moments here. Marc Cooper’s article on L.A. Harbor is packed tighter than a container ship with such facts and stats as: “since 1970, tonnage moved through Worldport has increased an astounding 700 percent.” Alan Rifkin evokes the healing properties of waves on adolescent Angst with a flair any balding beach boy will groove on.

And the idea of commissioning photographic interpretations of ocean-oriented literary excerpts is a good one: Matt Mahurin’s illustration of a John Fante blurb from “The Road to Los Angeles,” in particular, gives pause.

But the package as a whole is flat. The stories, taken together, have no editorial raison d’etre. No ambition.

For a magazine that just hit the big Oh-Six, there is an oddly post-menopausal tone to this party, with pieces on middle-aged Boogie boarders and the proverbial geriatric swim team.

It may be that the editors have conceded ruminations on the youthful side of the so-called “beach culture” to other publications. There’s nothing wrong with taking a more mature view of L.A.’s affair with the ocean.

For some reason, though--is it simply too depressing?--the magazine fails to weave the one unifying thread here: entropy.

But there it is. Ron Curran dissects the dubious rationale for oil drilling, and determines that eventually we’re gonna get greased. Other articles explain that the fishing industry is dying; that so many rivers have been dammed that there is no more sand washing down to replenish California’s beaches; that California dolphins have more PCBs in them than those found anywhere else.

The port of Los Angeles, while prospering economically has lost so many jobs to robotic advances that it has also lost its Brando-esque soul.

Even an elegant paean to Southern California’s northernmost beaches bemoans the relatively recent indignity of having to make beach camping reservations through Ticketron.

As one old-timer tells author Peter Steinhart, the ocean of the 1930s and ‘40s was much different, “it was a far more diverse, more thriving ecosystem.”

As the ocean is diminished, so, it seems, is our capacity to analyze and understand our vital connections to it.

REQUIRED READING

Even as the welcome home parades continue, the left-wing organization Fairness and Accuracy in Media is stirring up a storm of criticism for media coverage of Operation Desert Storm.

One of the many interesting tidbits in the special issue of Extra! is an obituary column of sorts for the reporters and commentators who lost their jobs over the way they covered the war. Small-town journalists fared worst, the report says, citing examples such as the Round Rock, Tex., editor who got canned for publishing a Palestinian-American’s accusation that George Bush “is the biggest liar in the United States.”

Management set the record straight with its own editorial: “We hope that flag flying from our office and the yellow ribbon on our tree will remove any doubt about our loyalty to the President and our men and women in uniform.”

Last October, John R. MacArthur, the publisher of Harper’s, visited author Graham Greene in France, to chat and to “use” Greene “in the cause against U.S. intervention in Panama.” It may have been the last interview with the author before his death, and it appears in the June issue of the Progressive. It’s a good one.

Greene, who had toured Panama often, and had written about the country in “Getting to Know the General,” said that he found the invasion “disgusting, really disgusting.” He also expounded on his writing, his politics and the way Hollywood tended to butcher his books. Elsewhere in the issue, two articles discuss the lingering pain in Panama following the U.S. invasion.

This summer marks the 75th anniversary of the National Park Service. Life magazine has responded by dedicating a “Summer Special” to the nation’s 357 parks, from Cape Krusenstern National Monument in Alaska, to Christiansted National Historic Site in the Virgin Islands.

As Edward Hoagland says in an accompanying essay, a British ambassador “once remarked about us that our national parks are the best idea we ever had.” Life’s glorious photographs from dozens of parks lend credence to that view.

RENEWED ON THE NEWSSTAND

Last Spring, Games magazine lost in the game of life, and went belly up so quickly and quietly, the bimonthly magazine’s devoted readers were left to puzzle over what had happened. Now comes word that the magazine has been purchased by the puzzle catalogue company Bits and Pieces, and is ready with a new July issue.

Like the old Games, the revived Games ($14.97 a year, P.O. Box 55481, Boulder, Colo. 80323-5481) is a colorful, well-produced publication, packed with features, puzzles, crosswords, picture games and word games--a few of boggling complexity, more just pleasantly stimulating.

According to the “Welcome Back” message by editor Will Shortz, the entire Games staff abandoned their new-found jobs and returned to their alma mater’s masthead as soon as it was resurrected. It remains to be seen whether readers will be so loyal, since the new publisher is not honoring old subscriptions.