Mario Contreras
Meet the Lady Who Heroically Blots Out Our Towns Blight
Every weeknight, the Evening News on network television scrambles across our great nation to find heroes and heroines.
They time their stories when Americans from all walks of life are sitting down at sunset to enjoy the twin rituals of the setting sun and the Evening News.
Sound Bites or the Sound of Bites?
Large networks are hoping you take a bigger bite out of their stories than from the dinner table.
Culver City has so many hidden heroes and heroines.
A Local Hero Who Never Should be Forgotten
Everything begins with a story.
In mythology, heroes and heroines follow a path to perform a moral deed that always is bigger than they are.
The moral deed is often a physical sacrifice that saves lives against negative forces.
Thanks for the Memories
A teacher in the School District for more than 30 years, Howard Zager has been a great human influence to students in Culver City schools.
A Reliable Rumor in Culver City
In Culver City, where so much is spoken and heard from the traditional temples of power — from City Hall to middle-class neighborhoods with well-kept city streets — it is beyond me how uncertain truths circulate from one end of the city to the other.
What is not imaginary, though, is the hottest coffeehouse in Culver City this summer.
May I Introduce You?
The Rumor Mill is a coffeehouse featuring four internet stations with artful pictures displayed along the walls of the café.
Visitors are served a variety of sandwiches and healthy food.
Reporting Live, Local and Lonely from Culver City
When was the last time you read a local Culver City newspaper?
This morning? Yesterday? Last week? Last month?
When was the last time you admitted to anyone that you read any of the four local newspapers in Culver City?
If Only We Were as Ready for People as for Gadgets
Reflections from Culver City on the Virginia Tech tragedy two days later:
In an era when new communications technologies are emerging every day, we see the rise of the blogs, the latest electronic facebook, blackberries and websites such as MySpace and YouTube.
Have to Know It Now
All deliver instant messages that can educate and inform us in daily situations as they are occurring, moment by moment.
Still, these amazing high-tech gadgets cannot come close to being as effective as human beings.
Meeting and Passing Danger
[Editor’s Note: In the wake of a likely gang-related attack on a jogger along the Ballona Creek bike path early on the evening of Thursday, March 29, a courageous correspondent for this newspaper set up his own vigil to monitor activities. His report follows.]
As an experiment this past weekend, I decided to do exactly what the headline says — meet and pass danger on the bike path that runs through Culver City alongside Ballona Creek.
I wanted to follow the route an average resident of Del Rey or Culver City would during the path’s peak hours — near sunset, when the long shadows of evening stretch out westward, the entire length of the bike path.
Pity, the Threatened Bike Path Has No Voice
[Editor’s Note: In the aftermath of the ironic assault on a Culver City jogger last Thursday evening, along the Ballona Creek bike path, apparently by 2 members of the Culver City Boyz gang, our correspondent offers sad reflections evoked by the case.]
Growing up in Culver City as a child of the 1970s, I remember the excitement I felt when my elementary school teacher announced that there was going to be a bike path.
The path would run along the legendary Ballona Creek, which curved behind our school.
Was Last Nights Political Panel Too Snooty for the Blue-Collar Residents...
[Editor’s Note: The newspaper’s correspondent was disappointed when he returned from last night’s Del Rey community meeting. The announced theme was to be how pending developments in Marina del Rey and Culver City will affect the cozy Del Rey neighborhood on Culver City’s western border. The intense part of the meeting lasted an hour and a half at Marina del Rey Middle School before people began filing out. Some 45 members of the Del Rey Homeowners and Neighbors Assn. jousted with 2 Culver City officials — Todd Tipton, the Interim Director of the Community Development Dept., and City Councilman Scott Malsin — and Stan Wisniewski, the Director of the County Dept. of Beaches and Harbors. Rounding out the panel were 3 people who work in the offices of other elected officials. The newspaper’s correspondent was impressed most by the commitment of Mr. Malsin. But overall, he regretted that scant attention was paid by the panel to the needs and issues of blue-collar residents who live nearby. Instead, he said, disproportionate time was devoted to more remote communities, esoteric traffic projections and ocean transportation — “subjects,” he said, “that really don’t affect us.” Here is his personalized report.]
Gangs Conduct Business on Elenda Street with Little Interference
Part III
[Editor’s Note: See earlier stories, “It’s a Wonderful Life — or Is It?” Jan. 22, and “The Nasty Truth About the Culver City Girlz,” Jan. 23.]
How many of these drug-selling, power-flashing girls are students at Culver City High School or the Middle School?
I was told by a former member of the Culver City Girlz gang that the number is about 15. But new recruits seem to bob up regularly, she said.
The intoxicating appeal of popularity leads to sexual experiences with many boys. The girls create an aura of fear. They command fear-based respect from lonely girls who long to belong, who ache to fit into a family of friends.
The Nasty Truth About the Culver City Girlz
Part II
[Editor’s Note: See earlier story, “It’s a Wonderful Life — or Is It?” Jan. 22.]
At this point, the real news starts. What is behind the 13-year-old daughter’s allegations of child abuse and molestation against her father?
What did this newspaper discover that the Police Dept. apparently did not? For this part of the story, I needed to do leg work.
