Offering

We’ve taken so much — and had so much taken from us. It wouldn’t feel right to begin 2023 without an acknowledgment of what, and whom, we have lost. We love to cheer and revere the dub, but it’s necessary to validate the shared experience of an L. So, first things first: We are sorry for what happened. We’re hurt. We miss you, _______________. That’s worth repeating to yourself, to your families, to your homies, or shouting from the Dons to Westlake to Inglewood and beyond. Inhale deeply, exhale, sit with the truth. Live with what is as it really feels.

The world hasn’t been giving us what it’s supposed to. And it’s clear that not enough folks understand. In Los Angeles, the taking has been good for so long. Or so it has been described by those for whom taking is vocation. L.A. is the perfect realization of all the myths fit to print. A paper of record declared New York is the new L.A. because of a few sound baths and matcha variations. Another publication happy-to-announced that L.A. has entered a new Gilded Age because, evidently, art is happening. Meanwhile, a local supermarket read, hoping to get in the mix, giddily reported that a “massive tent home (with Jacuzzi)” on skid row was demolished as a part of a “routine cleanup.” We’re not sure what folks are getting from such prescriptive accounts. But the distortions and the discourse about the city amount to a bizarre paradox that echoes around the basin: Los Angeles has come more into view while somehow feeling more and more out of focus.

If L.A. is a phenomenon, then maybe it is time to, as the phenomenologists once said, return to the thing itself. There’s a more direct experience of Los Angeles out there. But it cannot be accessed via objectification; you can’t simply arrive empty-handed, take what you desire and be gone. Rather, you must bring something to contribute. Make your offering to L.A. and it shall give back again and again.

And lo, we present “Offering.” This issue is a welcome to you and yours. Put on your house shoes. Leave your L.A. fantasies at the entryway and we’ll find somewhere nice to place your housewarming gift while our host committee receives you, makes you feel at home. Nuestra casa es su casa. So don’t be brand new. The fam — Channel Tres, Mia Carucci, Kehinde Wiley, to name a few — is ready to give you the full tour.

May we all be at your service. Feel free to receive all you need. Just remember this is a pay-it-forward type of deal.

Ian F. Blair
Editor in Chief

Image logo by Intoflora For The Times