Posts by Mark McDermott
Redondo Beach Police Officer Greenleaf and K-9s [PHOTOS]
For 25 years, criminals on the run in Redondo Beach have had to contend with a fearsome duo: a 6’7 bald-headed cop by the name of Greenleaf, and his even more legendary K-9 partners.
Read MoreOfficer Greenleaf aims to retire with K-9 championship
For 25 years, criminals on the run in Redondo Beach have had to contend with a fearsome duo: a 6’7 bald-headed cop by the name of Ken Greenleaf, and his even more legendary K-9 partners. It all began in 1985. Greenleaf planned on being a school teacher but almost accidentally entered law enforcement when a…
Read MoreOf love, basketball, and survival: The Ray Johnston Band
Ray Johnston was living the dream. In fact, he was living the very specific dream he’d had since he was 9-years-old growing up in Montgomery, Alabama. Always precocious, Johnston wrote a one-page autobiography at that age that his mother Martha still keeps. He graded his life thus far as “around an A plus” before predicting…
Read MoreFood expert Brian Wansink offers to help local restaurants
Brian Wansink has been called the Sherlock Holmes of food, and like his namesake, he isn’t above a little deviousness to make his point. Take the mysterious case of the bottomless bowl. Wansink, the director of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, conducted a study in which 54 participants were invited – in groups of…
Read MoreChef Jack takes fight to leukemia again
In early June, John and Lisa Witherspoon were struggling mightily to absorb the awful news that their son, Jack, had for the third time in his 11 year-old life been diagnosed with leukemia. And then they got a little help. It came, as it so often had before, from Jack himself. Seeing how distraught his…
Read MoreGreyhound trips and motel room blues: Mike Zito’s different kind of soul music
The road Mike Zito took has included a long string of Motel 6’s, a very long stay in a little guitar shop in South Saint Louis, more than a few detours into drug-hazed ditches, and one very sad, long ride on a Greyhound bus. When he arrives at Café Boogaloo this Friday, the fact that…
Read MoreRedondo Beach war veteran leader John Simpson passes away
John Simpson, the fiery, eloquent war veteran whose passionate leadership and devotion to his fellow soldiers helped create the new Redondo Beach Veteran’s Memorial, passed away last Thursday. He was 79. Simpson only last month was honored by Assemblywoman Betsey Butler as the District 53 Veteran of the Year for the role he played as…
Read MoreRedondo pier concert series launches
The Redondo Pier summer concert series has been rebooted, and its sunset-speckled stage is now home to the most ambitiously diverse and largest array of acts of any of the free concert series in the South Bay. The series, dubbed the “2011 Summer of Music,” features acts that range from flamenco to prog-rock, from down-home…
Read MoreBBR launches campaign to de-power plant in Redondo Beach
The citizens group Building a Better Redondo last week launched an initiative effort aimed at rezoning the AES power plant site so that power generation would no longer be allowed beginning in 2020. The “slow growth” group intends to gather signatures and place an initiative on a municipal ballot that would give voters the option…
Read MoreCarmageddon? So what
The end is nigh.
Or, at the very least, hell on Earth could arrive somewhere in the middle of the historically epic traffic jam expected to clog the Interstate 405 Freeway and its environs when a 10-mile stretch of the road closes for 53 hours beginning midnight Friday.
Read MoreJanice Hahn wins race for Congress
Democrat Janice Hahn on Tuesday night won the special election to replace Jane Harman as the District 36 representative in the U.S. Congress. Hahn defeated Republican Craig Huey by 54.6 to 45.4 percent in a hard-fought campaign. Huey, a local businessman, is believed to have spent $900,000 of his own money. Hahn, a Los Angles…
Read MoreRedondo Beach employees accept pay cuts, two-tier pension in budget deal
All seven city employee unions tentatively agreed to wage concessions, enabling the City Council to adopt a balanced budget at a specially called meeting Thursday night. Some of the unions have agreed to make six percent wage cuts permanent and accept a new, two-tiered retirement system that will reduce benefits for new employees. Negotiations went…
Read MoreHuey versus Hahn
The District 36 Congressional race mirrors a national divide about the role of government Democratic congressional candidate Janice Hahn had a dismaying realization as she watched the first debate among the Republicans vying for the presidency last week. “I kept listening and listening and then it occurred it me,” Hahn said. “These people hate government.…
Read MoreRedondo fireworks resemble Batman signal [PHOTO]
The Redondo Beach fireworks resemble the Batman signal when viewed from the Hollywood Riviera. Image .
Read MoreMan arrested for attempted murder in Redondo Beach
A 24-hour manhunt resulted in the arrest of a 53-year-old Hawthorne man accused of stabbing a business associate in the parking lot of an Artesia Boulevard business last Wednesday. Elar Camacho was arrested Thursday and charged with attempted murder. He was held in the Redondo Beach Police Department jail on a $1,030,000 bail. According to…
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