Free Republic

In one sense, the Yoshinoya Japanese Kitchen across the street from MacArthur Park couldn’t be in a better location. Thousands of potential customers stream by each day on foot, headed to and from work, home, shopping, school and the Metro station. In another sense, it couldn’t be in a worse location. The fentanyl epidemic is often literally at its doorstep, along with the same raft of public safety issues that prompted the exasperated owner of nearby Langer’s Delicatessen to tell me in August that he was thinking of shutting down after 77 years in business. Yoshinoya manager Hortencia Garcia told...

The way the presidential campaign is shaping up, Ventura musician Jon Gindick may do something he's never done before. "I've never voted for a Republican," the registered Democrat told me. "I like Trump." A waiter told me he thought Trump's trade restrictions would create more jobs at higher wages. A couple wearing matching red, white and blue shirts told me their healthcare costs had tripled under Obamacare — a program Trump says he'll shred. To Gindick, Trump's remarks about criminals coming across the border were refreshingly honest, and not at all a condemnation of all immigrants or Latinos in general....

...Once, tough-guy columnists like Chicago's Mike Royko, New York's Jimmy Breslin and Boston's Mike Barnicle ruled the roost from the local bar, hanging with cops, barbecuing politicians and spinning tales of urban angst. But few local columnists these days have captured that compelling voice, and the reason has much to do with the way the world, and the newspaper racket, have changed.... Across the country, many metro columnists are polite or parochial or tend toward soft-feature blandness. Some newspapers seem to dole out the slots on demographic grounds -- fielding a white man, a woman and a minority -- who...