Now, there is an overwhelming amount of newsletters online - and I thank you for reading mine - but, from where I am sitting I see a lack of newsletters that are about the great city of Los Angeles. For what I write about - men’s lifestyle, where I cover everything from cars, to watches, to clothes, to food, to wine and spirits and what the collectors are collecting - it all seems so focused on New York.
Don’t get me wrong, I love New York, I was born on Long Island and lived and worked in New York for years, but, to be honest, I love LA. I mean I really love it. There is something ineffable about Los Angeles, something that, once you get to know it, it gets under your skin and gets even better over time. I want to write, once a week, about what I love, but from an LA point of view. There will also be an array of guest columnists and a lot of varied viewpoints, but what makes this so special to me, is that we’re all from LA.
I have done a lot of things in my writing career over the last few decades. I helped to launch Yahoo! Autos, I started a few automotive focused startups, wrote for the buff books, the watch sites, had a column at a yachting magazine, and for the hometown papers when they were good (LA Times and LA Weekly) and covered everything from celebrity, to clothes, to collectors and cars, food, wine, spirits - you name it, I covered it. I even wrote “How To Make Beef Jerky” and "How To Ride a Bull” stories for Maxim when I was a contributing editor in the 1990s heyday of the Lad Rags.
I was a columnist at The Hollywood Reporter for over a decade - and still write for the magazine. At THR, I wrote heavily reported lifestyle features and columns on cars, watches, clothes, Hollywood collectors, food and beverage and lifestyle focused business reporting. For this weekly newsletter, I am going to continue to focus and write about what I love - what makes LA, so LA.
Expect something buzzy and insidery that drops tips on what to buy, what to drive, what to wear, what’s hot in collecting, where to eat and what to drink and going deep on strategies for getting jazzed about something new, something you never thought about.
Will there be celebrity and entertainment industry coverage? You bet! But, to be honest, I’m keenly interested in covering those stories that explore what people in Los Angeles and what those Hollywood industry insiders really want. Expect a lot of cars, a lot of food, a lot of clothes, a lot of profiles on the people that make LA buzz and, if I can stick the landing, a lot of insider gossip. My emails are always open.
Also, coming in the next few weeks we’ll launch our inaugural awards programming with Hollywood Car of the Year and a slew of “Of The Year” offshoots - watches, wine, spirits, restaurants - you get the picture. Our judges will be the people that make up the entertainment and culture industries - writers, producers, actors, musicians, directors, above the line and below the line - we’ll have their viewpoints and their opinions.
To me, and I hope to all of you, Hollywood is a state of mind more than an actual place and I hope that we’ll be able to cover this mindset in an interesting way.
In the meantime, I want to thank our team, who will all be doing double duty writing, making videos, shooting pics and posting on the socials: Juan Bruce, who also leads our event and performance strategy, Nikko Royce, our technical growth strategist, Carter Shafer, our road test and e-commerce editor, Karen Lubeck, our special projects editor who’s running point on our Hollywood Wine and Spirits of the Year, and Aditya Gaiki, my chief of staff. It’s a small but mighty team.
PS: So, if you are a PR rep, please send Carter and I all the latest and greatest and add us to your list. We can't wait to dig in and cover everything!
