Do you agree?

World Modeling best of LA?

Robert, it's not if I agree or not. The question is who cares about this or LA Weekly.

The newspaper chain that publishes them does this once a year in every city. An old girlfriend of mine owned a boutique that did business with them. They jack up the advertising for that one issue and throw in a few "edgy" "best of..." entries, like "Best Crack Alley" or "Best Homeless Shelter." Funny, because no one fucking reads those things except for the hooker ads anyway.

I wonder if the Village Voice is owned by the same company as LA Weekly.

I'd always thought vv was full of this edgy, great writing. until i actually read it a few years ago-it sucks. MA is full of commies and space cowboys and the boston phoenix, which kinda spoiled me. it has the escort section, but manages to pull pulitzers and for several years had a guy whose stuff rivaled the bbc's traffik. it was so good that he's underground running narconews

basically, the former pres. of mexico who citigroup paid 12billion for his silent majority ownership of banamex got mad when the dude fingered him as one of the biggest cocaine traffickers out there, filed a few baseless suits, and now wants him dead. some of the only interesting journalism i've ever seen.

oh yeah, caroline knapp (drinking, a love story) wrote there before she croaked too. but nothing beats cartel gossip and escort ads in the same rag. narconews is fucking fascinating and worth checking out if you're down to reading hisexcellency's posts a second time.

New York Press, which was sorta the right-of-center Village Voice, had Jeff Koyen on staff for a few years. He published the greatest, most intense zine known to man in the 1990s, Crank. But then he went to Prague or something similarly faggy, and it went to shit.

Chicago doesn't have shit. The local alternative weeklies don't even have a set newsroom to follow scoops like that. Just a couple editors, a couple copy editors, and 23459804354 advertising reps.