Jay Levin Returns to LA Publishing w/RealTalkLA

Founder/publisher of the LA Weekly, Jay Levin is back on the scene with a new glossy monthly, RealTalkLA, backed up by an extensive website. Targeted to the "culturally creative multi-ethnic market" of SoCal, or sumthin along those lines:

"Our LA society and region have evolved into an extraordinarily dynamic creature that is under the radar of traditional media. The region is multileveled, intricately subcultured and infinitely textured. It extends far beyond the grasp of marketers and social analysts—and yes, it is more complex and diverse than even poets and novelists have captured."

I've got a story in this debut issue, interview with Leo Zhao – designer, idm dj & 'rhizomatician' – newly sporting a look that I would be tempted to call... "Yakuza Intellectual"? Ironically, just as Leo catches his 15 minutes of fame, he's off to Berlin – apparently where all the edgy action in Europe is these days! I was pretty surprised Jay wanted to run this story, the way it kicks off with the highly esoteric Deleuzian theory of rhizomes, but that just goes to show why Jay Levin is Jay Levin, yo (it was under Jay's reign that Michael Ventura was a staff writer at the Weekly. There are a lot of good writers at LA Weekly, but I don't remember seeing anything on the scale of Ventura's incendiary & visionary essays there in years).

Be interesting to see how this project fares against heavy competition – myriad alt weeklies & city-focused mags.Tweet