Lina Lecaro Would Like A Word
The long-time writer at the LA Weekly defends her beloved publication as she approaches 30 years at the paper.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted to hug me when we first met a few weeks ago as police choppers buzzed above my Hollywood courtyard.
I had interviewed Jeff Weiss, a former LA Weekly writer who led a boycott against the new ownership, and she was worried I wouldn’t be open to her point of view. Plus we still live in a plague, thus we chatted in the courtyard during one of the last warm nights of fall.
As the fates would have it, we hit it off like old friends and our interview lasted hours and we chatted a good half hour after the tape stopped rolling. Kindred spirits with a love for music, Hollywood, fringe, and journalism, we are lucky to have Lina around to continue to carry the Weekly torch.
Below is a condensed version of the 90-minute podcast, which was an edit of our epic, rambling conversation. Exactly what you’d expect from two people who love hearing and telling stories of this beautiful city.
Tony Pierce: You are a native Angeleno?
Lina Lecaro: Yes. I was born in East LA , just like Cheech. My parents met in the Cypress Park area of LA. So my baby years were spent in East LA and then I moved to Glendale for a little while.
Then I moved to Atwater Village in an area that’s now getting gentrified, but at the time was pretty much, you know, the barrio.
It was called Toonerville.
A gang called Toonerville were based there.
When people tell me Silver Lake, Echo Park and now Atwater had gangs, it’s so hard to believe when you look at those places now.
Yeah. And the rents, I mean, come on now. It’s mind blowing to see that change.
Absolutely.
It’s funny because my parents were looking to move soon. They’re back in Glendale and we looked in the areas that were once low-rent, and they can’t even afford to live in the areas which were literally dangerous when I lived there.
Was L.A Dee Da your column from the beginning?
No. Not at all.
Whose was it before?
Pleasant Gehman, who I now DJ for — her witch-theme burlesque night, Belle Book and Candle.
Pleasant was like my idol as a kid because she created the L.A. Dee Da column and I read it religiously.
This was my imagination of it: you’d party all weekend with the coolest people at the coolest clubs.
You’re dressed fabulously in all of these venues — gay or straight, it doesn’t matter. Of course Jane’s Addiction is there somewhere. You are living the LA club kid, but also rock kid, life.
Then you write it down in that column for the Weekly. How much of that is true?
That’s great. Just to be clear, it started well before my time. Pleasant wrote it and I would read it.
For me as a kid, I would always get the LA Weekly, the LA Reader, BAM, the Nuart supplement: anything that was free. I would get it and read it back to back since I was like a preteen, honestly.
I grew up very protected because I lived in bad areas and I couldn’t do anything. So for me reading the LA Weekly specifically, but all of them, was my window to, “oh my God. When I get old enough, I’m going to be out there and I’m going to do it all.”
So for me, Pleasant Gehman who started this column, is a legend.
The beauty of it, was it was written in this snarky, sassy way that was very insider and punk rock. But she treated punk rock people like they were movie stars. Everybody’s name would be bolded.
Lina got an internship at the LA Weekly while in college and never left
Back in those days, we interns were the fact-checkers. So there would be an editor who would highlight anything factual, and then we’d have to get on the phone to call these people and check and make sure things were true.
And that takes some nuance too, because someone would be like, “oh no, I didn’t say that,” even if they said it!
But I had a real knack for doing the L.A. Dee Da column specifically because I knew the people.
So then they go, “you’ll just be the L.A. Dee Da girl that fact checks.” So every week I did that.
But by this time it had a new writer, Belissa Cohen. She started taking me to all the cool shows. I met all these people and it was amazing. It was a dream.
I was barely 21, maybe.
Did that matter at these clubs?
At Scream when I saw Jane’s Addiction, I had like a check cashing ID. Nobody gave a crap.
So I was working with Belissa for a few years there as her assistant and the moment I knew, “oh, this is it. No turning back. This is what I’m gonna do,” is she took me to the very first Lollapalooza at Irvine Meadows.
I remember going backstage and meeting Henry Rollins, Body Count, Siouxsie.
I got to see Nine Inch Nails in the pit.
In those days, journalists were treated really well and we got to eat with the artists.
And the funny thing is that I wanted to go to that concert. So I had bought a ticket for the second day and I was in the lawn.
So it was this feast-or-famine thing.
With all the changes of LA aren’t you happy that Melrose is still pretty much the same?
I don’t think it is the same. I think it’s sad now.
When you go down Melrose, you feel sad?
I don’t think it’s the same at all.
You don’t think the kids that go to Fairfax High are happy to have that in their backyard?
I think there’s shades of creativity and expression. And I think like the sneaker culture is a pretty cool new thing, but the punk rock spirit is not there other than … Headline Records.
I worked at a store called Necromance that sold all dead stuff. She closed up last year. But has an etsy store.
I worked for a clothing designer who made clothes for like all these rock stars… she’s gone.
So, no, I don’t think as somebody who actually worked on Melrose — Soap Plant is now in Los Feliz — so no, there’s a lot of little stores that look like Santee Alley to me.
But I love Santee Alley.
I love Santee Alley for a deal, but that’s not mom and pop, you know, creative stores. That’s just mass-marketed knockoffs.
This is why I’m so happy to be talking to you. When I talked to the woman who founded Code Pink, a liberal organization, she basically said she didn’t even want to talk about the GOP. She had issues with Obama.
You’re the same way. You’re like ‘Melrose is not punk rock.’
Melrose isn’t. No, not anymore. It’s still fun. But it’s like Urban Outfitters.
I actually don’t like Wasteland anymore because the people that are buying they’re now don’t want true, good vintage.
I’m really into fashion. They rejected some cool stuff the last time I tried to sell to them.
I feel this is because ‘the kids today’ aren’t punk rock. I hate to say it, but Supreme kind of feels like it’s the best reflection of what IT is about today.
So maybe that’s showing my age that I don’t think that that’s as cool as what we grew up with.
Well, you’re right. Show that age.
But my daughter’s generation might think differently. And that’s where I’m not cool anymore, because what I thought was cool is not what is cool today.
The End of L.A. Dee Da
When Belissa left I wasn’t ready to take on that column. They tried a few different writers and then it just kind of died.
But what I was ready to do and what I did for many years was maintain all the club listings and the calendar section. When I say club, I mean dance clubs, DJs, anything that’s not live music. Live music was Johnny Whiteside.
The reason the LA Weekly was the Bible and why people picked it up was the listings. People would read the other stuff: award-winning, amazing journalism. But the day-to-day “ I got to get my Weekly,” was to see who’s playing where, where the movies were and that kind of thing.
There was also a section called Picks of the Week. It used to be called Scoring the Clubs. And we would pick out our favorite shows. And I started writing little blurbs for that now and again. Then I did that kind of regularly.
And then I pitched to Sharon Bell who was in charge of the calendar at the time, “let’s do a Pick of the Week just for DJs and clubs,” because I really saw the whole DJ culture was emerging.
Then I had a very long rivalry with Dennis Romero because at this time, New Times is coming up. But we’re friends now. But we had a friendly rivalry for many years. He knows his shit about DJ culture.
For sure, but he thought, because the New Times covered it, the Weekly couldn’t?
I don’t know what he thought… but listen, we’ve talked about it many times since, and we’re cool. But there was a rivalry between us.
Well, there should have been.
Right, because we were the two weekly papers.
By the way, isn’t that the problem with the LA Times, that there isn’t another LA Times to compete?
Absolutely. 100 percent agree.
So Laurie Ochoa eventually became the editor in chief and I owe her everything. Not only did she give me my first cover story, she and Joe Donnelly gave me my column. Joe actually named it Nightranger.
That was my nightlife column in which I would go out and — it was very much in the spirit of the bold names and try to be snarky, but more cutesy.
I don’t really like to talk shit about people.
Did you have to go out every weekend?
I went out every night. Are you kidding?
Was it a have-to instead of a get-to?
I loved it. This is the thing. It goes back to my childhood. I was never free to do what wanted. So once I got that freedom, I ate it up. I loved going out to clubs.
What were your usual suspects, club-wise?
Oh my God, everything. I mean, seriously. I love to dance. So I would do all the dance clubs: Coven 13. Fetish Ball… I loved the fetish and the goth scene. Boardners for sure.
When I was younger I was really into the whole metal glam thing too. So I did that Sunset Strip thing for a while.
EDM, raves… Y-Que?
I got really into raves and did the Map Points, all of that while I was heavy into raves. I had Y-Que, where I worked, be a Map Point.
I’ve literally been through cut-open chain link fences… like the grittiest of the gritty.
I loved that community and that scene. Rock and roll was always in my heart. And I still did that, but me and my friends, when I lived on Beachwood Drive, we put black lights throughout our whole house and we would not wear an outfit unless we tested it under the black light to make sure that it totally glowed.
Nightranger started as a little column. It got bigger, bigger, bigger. Then I go to Coachella and I meet this guy named The CobraSnake.
I love him.
I say this as a joke, but I kind of discovered him because he was literally a kid in Dolphin shorts with a little Polaroid taking pictures.
I’m like, what is this all about?
And then he had a little website with the Polaroids and I was like, “oh, this guy I’m fascinated by him.” So I wrote an article about him and then Laurie and Joe thought, “you know, this is really interesting.”
He was tapping into the precursor of the Steve Aoki, Frankie Chan world. So then he became my photographer for my column.
But he only wanted to cover that scene and I wanted to cover everything. So then I was like, I’m going to buy a camera. I took my own pictures and I know I’m not a great photographer, but I ended up having a photo column in the Weekly for years, even after they killed Nightranger.
My column was killed after the New Times merged with Weekly. And then funny enough, all the people who were rivals are now part of the staff, which is interesting.
A lot of change happened too. We went through a few different music editors.
Randall Roberts: I worked with him for a while and then he went to the LA Times.
Kate Sullivan, who did a music blog before that. Actually, I gotta give her credit. Laurie, Joe and Kate were the ones that gave me Nightranger. Kate was the music editor at the time.
And she was like, “I want something like in the spirit of L.A. Dee Da.”
And I was like, “please let me have a shot.”
Then it was Gustavo Turner.
At the same time, Richard Cromelin reaches out to me and says, “you want to write for LA Times?” And so then I’m working for him and Bob Hilburn and Randy Lewis as well.
I mean, believe me, it doesn’t escape me, the legends that I got to work for. And to this day, that’s all I’m trying to do — if I can even impart a drop of the wisdom I learned from them, I’ll be happy.
Click bait, out-of-towners, and one guy who shall remain nameless
Then it’s called Village Voice Media now. I get Nightranger, my dream job. And then I find out I’m pregnant. So I hid my pregnancy up until like seven months and I still went out and I did all the things.
Not all the things.
Well, no, no drinking. I just mean as far as going out shit-face tired all the time, but yeah, I just didn’t want to lose that opportunity.
How did you hide your pregnancy at the club?
Big t-shirts? You know, whatever. This dress could hide it. I hid it up to about seven months.
I didn’t really hide it. What I did was I didn’t tell anyone at the LA Weekly that I was pregnant.
It’s none of their business.
And actually Laurie was a mother, so I knew that she would understand — she had two little ones at that time.
So I said, this is what I would like — getting this column was my dream. So, I would love it if I could just take a few months off and come back and do it afterwards.
She says, “well, we’ll see. Let’s see what happens.”
In the meantime Kate got Alie Ward, who I love. She filled in for my column, but she did a whole different thing. What she did was really interesting.
It was a timestamped column where she’d be like, “8pm I’m here, 9pm...”
And I really liked the way she did it, and she was good at it. So I really thought that’s it. They’re just going to keep her column. But then I remember talking to her when I was kind of ready to come back.
She was like, “this is too much work. You can gladly have the column.”
I think it was the nightlife aspect. You do need to be plugged into all these different little scenes and it’s a lot of names… it’s a lot. Not anyone could do it. I mean, people like you could do it, of course.
I’d forget the person’s name right away.
But we’re talking a long time ago.
Also, it would be so hard for me not to have a drink at every club.
I always had a drink at the club.
How did you report on Club #5?
I’m a two-cocktail girl. So however I would divide it out. It would be two cocktails for night. And that’s it.
The Other Newest One
This is the thing that really bothered me… Village Voice started bringing in editors who weren’t from LA.
Why would they do that?
Because they were from their other paper or some other.
And just as you would expect, those were the hardest ones because they didn’t know my history and they didn’t trust me the way the editors from LA did.
So we were talking about punk rock earlier.. I’m not going to say who it was, but a male editor, not a music editor… when I wanted to cover this punk rock art show, and I mentioned something about Darby Crash, and he didn’t know who Darby Crash was.
He’s fired.
You’re an editor at the LA Weekly in a section about culture and arts and you don’t know that?
To me there was something really wrong there. And more and more editors were coming in who were not from LA.
I would go to the office sometimes, but by then we could work from home on our computers.
Funny enough, the only thing that I kept as a regular gig was the photo column, which I only did out of necessity.
I did it for Gustavo.
My all-time favorite music editor though is the last one, Andy Herman.
We had a similar sensibility, he respected my history and my knowledge. And he gave me more work than the two previous editors did.
So Andy Herman, I love him. He’s was the last one before Brian Calle bought it and he was one of the people who was let go.
Fun Fact: The LA Weekly used to be in Culver City
To reflect back on the Culver City years, obviously there’s some great work that came out of that; great editors, great journalists.
I’m just saying my old school perspective on it is that a lot of changes happened there that weren’t very good.
That was the first time that I heard the word — even the term — clickbait. I had to start worrying about traffic in terms of what I was writing about. That wasn’t even something I thought about before. I just wanted to connect with people and I wanted to celebrate people in LA that were cool.
But all of a sudden when Village Voice Media and that whole era of the Culver City offices, it became really about that.
I’ve been in situations like that. And I often say, if you try to hit a home run against Nolan, Ryan, you’re probably going to strike out. How about just play baseball and see what happens?
I love that analogy.
If you go into a club looking for a hot headline, you’re never going to find it. It’s going to be forced.
If you are just being you and your friend gets punched by a rock star, and you’re prepared as a journalist, and you have a camera, and you know who Darby Crashes, you’re going to end up in the right place, the place you should be.
For a while it was really awesome, but there was a period there where it just wasn’t. I was not really happy. And I was actually looking into getting out of the profession.
I tried PR for a minute — hated it. When you’re used to being hit up and then now you’re hitting the others up, even though you know how it works, it’s not fun. But during those Culver City years, I tried a lot of other things because I was just like really disillusioned.
Since 2018, Lina has been the Weekly’s Culture and Entertainment Editor
I decided to become an editor at the Weekly because of Darrick Rainey.
Darrick had been there before and he had always been a champion of my work as a freelancer and always said I should be part of the staff.
And he finally said, “now this is your chance to do all the things you wanted to do… as an editor you will have that power to cover all the stories and the things of LA that you wanted to.”
He has been as the Weekly for… over a decade, maybe 15, 16, I don’t know how many years. I’ve known him for years. And he sat in on every meeting with every editor. He knows the heart and soul of LA Weekly.
He’s doing a great job as the editor in chief.
And he’s a person of color…
That never got mentioned during the BLM protests. All journalism outlets were looked at: “let’s see the makeup of the staff...”
No one mentioned that the boss at LA Weekly is a Black man.
I have zero regrets about working with him. It’s been so wonderful.
In terms of covering people of color, every editorial meeting that topic comes up. We try our best to reflect LA.
I am a proud Latina. My father is an immigrant from South America. My mother’s a Chicano — Mexican.
You put them on the cover of the paper.
I didn’t do that. That was not my idea. I was actually against that because I thought people might say, “oh, you put your parents on the cover.”
It’s an awesome picture.
Right! From the very first LA graffiti book.
Your parents are just beautiful people, too, on top of it.
I’m really proud of them. But I did, you know, I did feel a little like, maybe we should use another image. And they said, “this is the best image” for the article.
That just scratches the surface of what Lina and I talked about. Head over to the podcast where she talks about working at the Beastie Boys’ store XL, Kim Gordon’s x-girl, her issues with Silver Lake, remembering Sunset Junction, raising a daughter in the same neighborhoods where she grew up, and so much more.
Lina has a radio show on Luxuria
Give someone you love her book on LA Dive Bars
Bookmark this link to keep up with all of her work at the Weekly
How great was Lina? You know who we want to rock out with for 30 years? Our Patreons.
Thank you Nancy, Shawn, Matt, Sean, Emilio, Greg & Molli, Mark, Keira-Anne, Barney, Ben Welsh, Henry Fuhrmann, Jamie, Jen, The Lonely Chair and Trevor Wilson.
Thank you for helping make all of this possible!
Wanna see your name on this crazy blog or hear your name on the podcast? Click below.
(It’s cheaper than it has the right to be.)
Because we fancy, we also have Angel investors. Donate $25 or more and you will get your name on this website next to a number denoting how early you got in.
We are calling these generous souls Angel-enos.
Angelenos: #1 Ali Miller, #2 George Wright #3 Rita Joanne #4 Jason Sutter #5 Grant Haughton #6 Rob Baker #7 KevCheng #8 Brenda Garcia
Hear in LA is produced by Jordan Katz and Tony Pierce.
Editing, music supervision & mixing by Jordan Katz.
Songs by Orgōne and Jordan Katz.
This blog post was produced and edited by magical elves who trimmed down the transcript of the podcast to this representational sample and merged words and basically screwed everything to all hell so you should just listen to the interview for exactly what was said, ok.
OKAY?
Shout out to:
Cindy for the graphic.
Jen Adams for the encouragement to do this years ago!
Roy Jurgens for convincing Lina to talk to me. And our very first guest, Lenora Claire, whose episode also showed Lina that I wasn’t so bad.
Be more punk.
