As a writer\u2014particularly and especially as a writer within the Los Angeles landscape\u2014it’s hard to muster some random grouping of words that remotely become even a semblance of the poetry that was the culmination of Jonathan Gold\u2019s writing.<\/p>\n
In fact, I would be hard-pressed to believe that a writer doesn\u2019t have to contend with Gold\u2019s work in one way or another if they want to write about any form of culture or life within this vast stretch of weirdness we call home\u2014because it was Gold who allowed us to relish that weirdness and to understand the patchy, pocket-y, complicated, immigrant-centric cultural quilt that is SoCal.<\/p>\n
Gold died Saturday of pancreatic cancer. He was 57.<\/p>\n
Gold’s life wasn’t remarkable solely because he wrote about food. He was a punk cellist, using his music degree from UCLA to create, well, punk music. With a cello.<\/p>\n
He was a performance artist who, finding himself naked on stage, found a way to find himself naked in a world of clashing cultures; a man who, amidst the chaos of this place we call Tinseltown, eagerly dismissed the glitz and refinery in favor of a luu suk\u2014a Thai soup made from pig\u2019s blood\u2014or chicken neck tacos or, hell, even mozzarella sticks. All these dishes were hailed, at least once, as his favorite dishes of the year in his yearly roundups.<\/p>\n
But again, it was more than the food.<\/p>\n
When Gold spoke to a far too limited crowd of Long Beach locals back in 2013, he was more than just the first food writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism\u2014an honor that included his famed porno burrito write-up on the sadly-shuttered El Atacor No. 11\u2014he was also deeply embedded in Long Beach culture.<\/p>\n
He had sincerely authentic opinions about Snoop and Warren G\u2014a given since his 1989 profile on N.W.A. became the gold standard of music profile (and birthed the term \u201cgangsta rap\u201d). Even deeper was his love of Nate Dogg, the Long Beach rapper who passed at age 41 and just two years before this event.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t prepared for the impact of his death\u2014even more than Tupac,\u201d he wrote in his obituary for Nate. \u201c[He was] a rap enthusiast’s equivalent of a jazzbo’s listing Kid Ory solos on Louis Armstrong sides\u2014but his crooning was as vital to the early ’90s as Biggie’s lisp or Cobain’s howl, a sound affixed to America’s pop consciousness like a natty prison tattoo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Did you see what he did there? Like Nate Dogg\u2019s jazz-like ability to turn the vulgar into the relatable over the course of a G-funk structure, Gold creates jazz with his words, dropping one of the South\u2019s most respected trombonists while noting East Coast rap and Seattle grunge in a single line to honor a lost Long Beach legend.<\/p>\n
He had a true love affair with Bixby Knolls’ Bake-n-Broil, and he even admitted, albeit cautiously, that he had largely eschewed Long Beach in favor of L.A. proper\u2014something he would make up for later by praising the work of Thomas Ortega, particularly the culinary masterpieces created at his flagship Long Beach restaurant Playa Amor (with a second on the way).<\/p>\n
Even when stepping outside his definitive space of control, Gold found the best within us, even if it was ugly\u2014and he found it by championing the underrepresented, the marginalized, the misunderstood.<\/p>\n
In other words, he easily found the possible in the seemingly impossible: creating a sense of harmony and humanity amidst chaos, tying in sustenance to politics, culture, and a greater sense of place and being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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