Colin Marshall sits down in Vesterbro with Mikael Colville-Andersen, urban mobility expert and CEO of Copenhagenize . They discuss where Los Angeles, with its "pockets of goodness," ranks on the global scale of Copenhagenization; what it takes for a city's population to become "intermodal"; his experience growing up in an English-Danish-Canadian household, biking all the time before the onset of the "culture of fear"; the qualities of a mainstream bicycle culture, including a lack of specialized...
Dec 15, 2013•1 hr 11 min
Colin Marshall sits down in the Copenhagen offices of Gehl Architects with founding partner Jan Gehl, architect, Professor Emeritus of Urban Design at the School of Architecture in Copenhagen, and author of books including Life Between Buildings , Cities for People , and How to Study Public Life . They discuss what important change occurred in Copenhagen in 1962, and what led to it; the midcentury "car invasion" in Europe and the first modern shopping mall's construction in Kansas City; the re-e...
Dec 07, 2013•1 hr 6 min
Colin Marshall sits down in Nørrebro with Classic Copenhagen blogger and photographer Sandra Høj. They discuss the city's current enthusiasm for tree-cutting; the small things in Copenhagen that draw her eye, from pieces of street art to weird details on houses; how she started blogging in the wake of the Muhammad caricature crisis with an interest in disputing the global perception of Danes as living obliviously in a land of pastries and fairy tales; her mission to describe "the good, the bread...
Nov 28, 2013•1 hr 6 min
Colin Marshall sits down in Copenhagen's Nørrebro with Lars AP, author of the book Fucking Flink and founder of the movement of the same name , which aims to make the Danish not just the "happiest" people, but the friendliest as well. They discuss just what it feels like to bear the label of "happiest" and whether "most content" might not suit the country better; the difference in impact of the word "fucking," especially in a book title, between Denmark and the States; the seemingly inward-turne...
Nov 21, 2013•1 hr 5 min
Colin Marshall sits down before a live audience at the New Urbanism Film Festival at Los Angeles' ACME Theater with Tim Halbur, Director of Communications at the Congress for the New Urbanism , former Managing Editor at Planetizen, creator of the two-disc DVD set The Story of Sprawl , and author of the children's urban planning book Where Things Are from Near to Far . They discuss the anti-Los Angeles indoctrination he received in San Francisco, and what that indoctrination might have had right;...
Nov 15, 2013•57 min
Colin Marshall sits down in Silver Lake with showman, "histo-tainer" and "Ambassador of Americana" Charles Phoenix , curator of vintage midcentury slides and author of books like Southern Californialand , Americana the Beautiful , and Southern California in the 50s . They discuss the postwar period's appealing mix of the highest and lowest American sophistication; how the country's new middle class became "buying machines" and "cultural monsters"; the "time travel in a box" he experienced when h...
Nov 08, 2013•1 hr 9 min
Colin Marshall sits down in Hollywood with lawyer turned social dynamics expert Jordan Harbinger , co-host of the Pickup Podcast and co-founder of confidence education program The Art of Charm . They discuss how much time he spends explaining that he isn't Tom Cruise from Magnolia ; how he conceives of The Art of Charm's mission to teach confidence, which involves teaching emotional intelligence; whether and how our generation of men have come out especially socially inept; the still-strong numb...
Oct 31, 2013•1 hr 10 min
Colin Marshall sits down above downtown Los Angeles in the U.S. Bank tower with Stephen Gee, senior producer at ITV Studios and author of Iconic Vision: John Parkinson, Architect of Los Angeles , the first book on the man who designed such landmark structures in the city as Union Station, the Memorial Coliseum, Bullock's Wilshire, and City Hall. They discuss how such a visionary could have gone unknown so long; Los Angeles' relationship to its public buildings; Parkinson's notion, during a time ...
Oct 26, 2013•1 hr 3 min
Colin Marshall sits down in North Hollywood with Carren Jao , Manila- and Los Angeles-based writer on architecture, art, and design. They discuss what rain does to the aesthetic of Los Angeles; the role of the river here as the connection people don't realize they have; the difference between the floods Los Angeles used to routinely endure and the ones Manila routinely endures now; how, growing up in the Philippines, she got interested in the shape and form of cities; Manila's "improvisational" ...
Oct 17, 2013•57 min
Colin Marshall sits down in the Los Angeles Central Library's Maguire Gardens with Nathan Masters , writer interested in all things Los Angeles, especially the history of the city, about which he writes as a representative of Los Angeles as Subject for KCET and Los Angeles Magazine . They discuss how he regarded the distant downtown Los Angeles skyline while growing up in the Orange County town of Anaheim; the changing ways the county of his youth has regarded itself relative to Los Angeles; how...
Oct 07, 2013•1 hr 8 min
Colin Marshall sits down at the intersection of Los Feliz, Thai Town, and Little Armenia with Caleb Bacon , writer on the TBS sitcom Sullivan and Son and host of the podcast Man School (as well as the podcast Sullivan and Son: Behind the Bar ). They discuss his feeling in his own guest seat; his move to Los Angeles from Albany purely in search of "good times and good weather"; the deliberately old-school-sitcom nature of Sullivan and Son , and the opportunity its Philadelphia setting provides fo...
Sep 23, 2013•1 hr 7 min
Colin Marshall sits down at the University of Southern California with Richard Rayner, author of the novels Los Angeles Without a Map , The Elephant , Murder Room , The Cloud Sketcher , and The Devil's Wind as well as the non-fiction books The Blue Suits , Drake's Fortune , The Associates , and A Bright and Guilty Place . They discuss the three or four Los Angeleses in which he's lived since arriving in the city from England in the early eighties; the "up-for-it-ness" of the Los Angeles he first...
Sep 02, 2013•1 hr 7 min
Colin Marshall sits down in Silver Lake with Besha Rodell , who has written about food in New York and Atlanta, and last year came to Los Angeles to become the Weekly 's restaurant critic. They discuss the secret appeal and non-Australian origins of the Outback Steakhouse's Bloomin' Onion ; her Australian youth, and the friends who insisted she join them at Koala Blue after she came to the States; what counts as authentic Australian cuisine, and the tortured question of "authenticity" in Los Ang...
Aug 25, 2013•1 hr 6 min
Colin Marshall sits down at the top of the Hotel Wilshire with Lynn Garrett, proprietor of popular online community Hidden Los Angeles and fifth-generation Angeleno. They discuss how best to prepare Germans for their Los Angeles vacation, since their guidebooks have failed; which human needs the many persistent myths about this city fulfill; how here, you are your own salvation; the revitalization of the Los Angeles River, as against the notion that "all it is is dead bodies and gang members"; L...
Aug 13, 2013•59 min
Colin Marshall walks through downtown Los Angeles with Brigham Yen, Realtor and author of the urban renaissance blog DTLA Rising . They discuss the sort of neighborhood that can rise from nothing, and whether Los Angeles' downtown has come back from a deeper state of nothingness than other downtowns; the "bones" of a city's center, and how Los Angeles' have remained sound through all its problems; the late introduction of public space here; his car-centric youth in the San Gabriel Valley suburbs...
Aug 07, 2013•1 hr
Colin Marshall sits down at the Old Pasadena offices of Rigler Creative with Thomas Rigler, Steve Reich, and Caitlin Starowicz, creators of City Walk , a new television and web series from KCET and Link TV on the transformation of American cities and our ability to walk in them. They discuss the walkability of Old Pasadena right beneath them; City Walk 's origin as a project purely about the health benefits of walking, and how it expanded; their own discovery of the new walkability of American c...
Aug 02, 2013•1 hr
Colin Marshall sits down above Gastown, Vancouver, British Columbia with novelist Timothy Taylor , author of Stanley Park , Story House , and The Blue Light Project , as well as the short story collection Silent Cruise . They discuss what, exactly, Vancouver is; what, exactly, CanLit is; his being born into a nomadic lifestyle; his inadvertent prediction of the modern locavore movement; whether one can live in Vancouver without developing an interest in architecture; his fascination with creativ...
Jun 16, 2013•1 hr
Colin Marshall sits down in Mount Pleasant, Vancouver, British Columbia with comedian and podcaster Dave Shumka, co-host with Graham Clark of Stop Podcasting Yourself . They discuss what everyone in Vancouver is, a little bit; the city's much-touted "livability"; becoming that icon of fun that is a comedian in "No Funcouver"; the origin of Stop Podcasting Yourself ; the newly classic Vancouver lifestyle up in downtown condos versus the classic classic Vancouver lifestyle in his hundred-year-old ...
Jun 13, 2013•1 hr 3 min
Colin Marshall sits above Hastings Street in Vancouver, British Columbia with Gordon Price , Director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, former Councillor for the City of Vancouver, and creator of the electronic magazine Price Tags . They discuss his personal definition of "Vancouverism"; his city as a mid-20th-century version of 19th-century city-building; the balance of trying to maintain the place's Edenic qualities while shipping out its natural resources; the D-word of density,...
Jun 05, 2013•1 hr 5 min
Colin Marshall sits down in Vancouver's Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden with JJ Lee , menswear writer, broadcaster, and author of The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit . They discuss where to buy pocket squares in Vancouver (and whether to just have your kids make some); what to wear during the city's "false start summer"; his own uses of color, and his gradual approach toward "weird clothes"; our coming age of wide-open, postmodern suit-wearing, a recovery from...
May 28, 2013•1 hr
Colin Marshall sits down in Yaletown, Vancouver, British Columbia with Paul Delany , professor of English at Simon Fraser University, editor of the reader Vancouver: Representing the Postmodern City , and author of the article " Vancouver: Graveyard of Ambition? " They discuss whether it makes sense to talk about a "postmodern" city in 2013; the influence of Douglas Coupland, William Gibson, and Jeff Wall; Vancouver's future-oriented open-endedness; his path to Vancouver from England via the Uni...
May 24, 2013•1 hr 2 min
Colin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with Leslie Helm , former Tokyo correspondent for Business Week and the Los Angeles Times , editor of Seattle Business , and author of Yokohama Yankee: My Family's Five Generations as Outsiders in Japan . They discuss the Asia connections of Los Angeles and Seattle; Japan's changing place in the zeitgeist since when he covered their economic bubble; how he observed the West's acceptance of Japan from his vantage as a quarter-Japanese yet Japanese-born "ou...
May 16, 2013•1 hr
Colin Marshall sits down in Los Feliz, Los Angeles with Joseph Mailander , who since 1981 has written fiction and poetry as well as political and cultural analysis in the city. His new collection is Days Change at Night: Notes from Los Angeles' Decade of Decline, 2003-2013 . They discuss his long relationship with Argonaut Street; the unique changelessness of Playa del Rey; how Los Angeles became the first recognizably great city built on a mechanical scale; the pronunciation of "Playa del Rey",...
May 09, 2013•1 hr 6 min
Colin Marshall sits down in Los Angeles' Franklin Hills with Jeff Weiss, music writer for the LA Weekly and many other publications, editor of The Passion of the Weiss , co-host of the podcast Shots Fired , and co-author of the book 2pac vs. Biggie . They discuss the total time of his life spent waiting for rappers to show up to interviews; Tyler the Creator and Odd Future as today's representatives of Los Angeles, and what the collective has to do with West Coast experimentalism and the city as...
May 04, 2013•1 hr 4 min
Colin Marshall sits down in Pasadena with journalist Patt Morrison, best known for her " Patt Morrison Asks " column in the Los Angeles Times , her years hosting Life and Times and Bookshow with Patt Morrison on public television as well as Patt Morrison on KPCC , and her book Rio L.A.: Tales from the Los Angeles River . They discuss her childhood in an Ohio town of 2,000 people, where the nearest cool place was a book; how and why her family decided to pull up stakes and stay on the move before...
Apr 23, 2013•1 hr 1 min
Colin Marshall sits down in Glassell Park with comedian and man of cinema Chris Gore , who has talked movies on such television shows as The X Show , The New Movie Show with Chris Gore , and Attack of the Show ; has written books including The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide , The Complete DVD Book , and The Fifty Greatest Movies Never Made ; hosts the podcast PodCRASH with That Chris Gore ; and has a new comedy album and picture book coming up called Celebrities Poop . They discuss how he...
Apr 16, 2013•1 hr 7 min
Colin Marshall sits down above Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles with Tyson Cornell, proprietor of Rare Bird Books and Rare Bird Lit , former longtime Director of Marketing & Publicity at Book Soup on the Sunset Strip, punk rocker, and co-editor of the forthcoming essay collection Yes Is the Answer: And Other Prog Rock Tales . They discuss the seeming contradiction between Los Angeles' image as an "unreaderly" place and its rank as the largest book market in America; this city's tendency...
Apr 12, 2013•1 hr 4 min
Colin Marshall sits down in Mexico City's Colonia Condesa with Gabriela Jauregui , writer, poet, and co-founder of the publishing collective sur+ . They discuss her childhood in Coyoacán and at what point during it she realized she lived in a place with a rich literary history; her coming up reading and speaking Spanish, English, and French; the real beginning of Latin American small presses, and what it means for the excitement of Spanish-language literature; why Mexican books get shrinkwrapped...
Apr 08, 2013•1 hr
Colin Marshall sits down in Mexico City's Colonia Condesa with Juan Carlos Cano and Paloma Vera, founders of the architecture and urbanism practice CANO | VERA . They discuss how everything in Mexico City's built environment exists "behind," being interesting in irregular ways; all the untrue superlatives you hear growing up about how Mexico City is the biggest in the world, and what an abstract concept "the biggest city" turns out to be anyway; the miracle of Mexico City's continued improvisati...
Apr 01, 2013•1 hr 2 min
Colin Marshall sits down in Mexico City's Colonia Roma with Nicholas Gilman, author of the book and blog Good Food in Mexico City: Fondas, Food Stalls, and Fine Dining . They discuss the culinary importance of places like Mercado Medellín; how Mexico City's art, not its food, first brought him here (make a beeline though he did to the handmade tortillas when he first arrived at 18); all the warnings about "what you shouldn't do" in Mexico City — or, for that matter, the New York City of the seve...
Mar 26, 2013•57 min
