Orange County's Leading Source Of News, Culture And Entertainment
Orange County's Leading Source Of News, Culture And Entertainment
At around 8 a.m. on Jan. 26, a group of officers from the Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD) lined the shopping center at the intersection of Jefferson Place and 17th Street with yellow caution tape. That same morning, a separate group of officers broke down the door of Sky High Holistic Collective and began to …
Continue reading “Who’s Winning the Great Santa Ana Pot War: Licensed Dispensaries or Rogue Shops?”
[metaslider id=2110] Click through our photo slideshow of the grand opening ceremonies above. Tucked away in the industrial zone of Santa Ana, a giant red building has just become Orange County’s newest legal medical marijuana dispensary. Only MedMen isn’t like any collective out there, in fact, they’re paving a new path for patients and how …
Continue reading “MedMen Is Changing The Way Patients Shop For Meds”
Hymn No. 558 in the 960-page United Methodist Hymnal is “We Are the Church,” and the chorus to this call for Christian unity echoes through the high-arched ceiling at Santa Ana United Methodist Church (UMC). It’s Pentecost, the day that commemorates when the Holy Spirit came to the Apostles, and the multicultural congregation—Latinos, Filipinos, Cambodians, …
With this being a fruitful period — and debatably the second golden age of West Coast hip-hop — it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the genre’s new heroes are steadily becoming legends. There’s that, then there’s G Perico. Last year, the rising jheri-curled rapper was shot as he left his studio in South Broadway. …
Continue reading “G Perico Holds the Torch for West Coast Gangsta Rap”
These days, Anaheim city council meetings are about as exciting as Angels baseball, complete with the same shoddy attendance. City staff set up chairs in the overflow room with an expected vote on Anaheim’s controversial anti-camping ban Tuesday night, but they weren’t needed. Meetings have devolved into bore-a-thons, with councilwoman Kris Murray’s soulless technocratic talk …
Continue reading “Anaheim City Council Creates Working Group to Study its War on the Homeless”
Last week I drank a $12 cup of coffee. I don’t regret an ounce of it. Since it opened as downtown Long Beach’s first third-wave coffee shop nearly two years ago, Recreational Coffee has become my safe space to ask dumb coffee questions and explore the outer nerdy reaches of morning joe. With a full …
Continue reading “Long Beach’s Recreational Coffee Is Way More Than Another Third-Wave Shop”
I’m almost 30, and I’m a virgin. I’m an overweight, straight-ish guy (I’m attracted to a few men, but those cases are exceedingly rare). I’ve also gone through an absolute hell of a life thus far, losing a testicle to cancer and having an abusive father who threatened a teenage me into celibacy by invoking …
Sasha Rodriguez was 15-years-old when she went to Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 2010. After a night of experimenting with dance music’s beloved molly (MDMA, or ecstasy), Rodriguez overdosed and died at a nearby hospital. The repercussions of the incident banned EDC from LA forever and placed a dark cloud …
Continue reading “Having a Bad Drug Trip at Lightning in a Bottle? Here’s How to Get Help”
I’ve been to a Taco Mesa and Taco Rosa over the years, but the Tortilleria Organica and Cafe in Orange taught me there’s always room to grow and improve upon an already lasting concept. Chef Ivan was kind enough to show me around the busy kitchen, explaining all the updates he’s made to the brand. …
Alex Rivera’s science-fiction flick Sleep Dealer was released nearly a decade ago, but it remains relevant for its radical vision of a future world we now live in, with increased border patrol, digital culture, natural-resource containment and drone warfare. It’s an amazingly prophetic film, especially when you recognize the concept was developed in the mid-’90s. …
Continue reading “Alex Rivera Looks Back on the Legacy of His Sci-Fi Magnum Opus, Sleep Dealer”
CHAPTER ONE Undercover Canadian police couldn’t believe their eyes at the Tycoon Club in Vancouver. Oblivious to the surveillance, law-enforcement colleagues, including two cops from Southern California, partied inside a hangout for the Big Circle Boys, a violent, Asian, organized-crime family. The Guangzhou-spawned syndicate specialized in extortion, home-invasion robberies and narcotics trade—particularly heroin, international human …
“He tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge at 14.” Dr. Vincent Valenzuela is reading a hospital report regarding a young patient he saw two years ago at Kaiser Permanente’s Santa Ana medical offices. The pediatrician’s eyes skim through the report in disbelief. “At his last physical, there weren’t any red flags, but …
Continue reading “Kaiser Permanente’s Mental-Health Screenings for Preteens Expand Beyond OC”