Through the viewfinder with photographer ‘Shanty’ Cheryl Groff

PHOTO by ORTENZIO MORACA
It’s captured chaos: walls of arms akimbo, sweat evaporating into steam, colors smeared in the air like oils on a painter’s palette. This is life as viewed through the lens of “Shanty” Cheryl Groff, and if you ever dug deep enough to find your way [...]

Neil Strawder delivers Bigmista’s Barbecue

PHOTO by JENNIE WARREN
The proudest pitmasters will tell you that barbecue isn’t the impossible alchemy that some mistake it for, but the result of delicious trial and error. Neil Strawder, the man behind the farmers-market force that is Bigmista’s Barbecue, can make it all sound so simple. But the kind of [...]

Pro skateboarder Amy Caron takes a second job

PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY
In the hands—or rather, at the feet—of a skateboarder, ordinary things (rusted benches, overturned trash cans, empty swimming pools) present extraordinary challenges. But that’s the idea. You wouldn’t boardslide down a handrail if there wasn’t at least a chance, however marginal, you might land upright—and [...]

Cambodian activist Palin Soth inspires many opinions

PHOTO by JEFFREY R. GOULD
Activist? Community leader? Uncle (a Cambodian term of respect for one’s elders)? It’s difficult to know how to refer to Cambodian émigré Palin Soth, possibly because others—Soth included—are so quick with their own definitions.
“He’s against everything, and he’s personally against me,” Cambodian New Year parade [...]

University Art Museum Director Chris Scoates keeps looking ahead

PHOTO by JEFFREY R. GOULD
We’re midway through an interview, when University Art Museum Director Chris Scoates makes the sort of keen pronouncement that reporters yearn to hear.
“What we’re doing now won’t be interesting in five years,” Scoates says. “We have to keep pace with what’s happening. I [...]

Actress Wendi McLendon-Covey chooses Long Beach!

PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY
Wendi McLendon-Covey isn’t recognized by fans very often around here—and she likes it that way. “It’s totally fine,” says the actress, best known for her work as the sexxxay cop Deputy Clementine Johnson on Reno 911! But the ability to go incognito—at, say, George’s Greek Café on [...]

George Copeland, the Jackie Robinson of roller derby

PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY
George Copeland earns a paycheck and tips tending bar in the waterfront lobby of the Hyatt Regency. He spends a little of it on the bottles of beer he likes to pour over tall glasses of ice at the House of Hayden in the East [...]

Photographer Russ Roca shows us a world where bikes rule the roads

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA
Don’t mean to brag here, but Russ Roca simply cannot take a bad photograph (though he claims to have taken his fair share). The District Weekly contributor, whose work can be found throughout this issue and in a self-portrait above this [...]

The Big Red Bus’s Peter Joseph will make you a tourist in your own town

PHOTO by HEATHER SWAIM
A bar mitzvah, a Cambodian parade and a 30th birthday party—it’s all in a day’s work for Big Red Bus owner Peter Joseph. You’ve probably seen the giant double-decker cruising around town, whether it’s catering to a private [...]

Tom Crowe’s text message read ’round the city

PHOTO by HEATHER SWAIM
Tom Crowe never imagined himself as anyone of extraordinary importance—much less a full-fledged activist. But by Nov. 15, a week and a half after Prop. 8 passed on Election Day, one hopeful text message had changed that.
“You want a protest? You got a protest!” Crowe [...]