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By John Farrell
All’s Well that End Well is Shakespeare’s premier entry into the world of sex farce.
Yes, it’s written in iambic pentameter (as one of the players in Shakespeare by the Sea’s premier production, which opened on June 6, points out to another) but that doesn’t disguise the plot: one woman’s (Helena played by Angela Gulner) machinations for sex-licit sex-with the very reluctant Bertram (BJ Allman) and the lengths she would go to to have her way.
By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor
Jim Frelekian’s family has been running the San Pedro institution known as Slavko’s since the 1940s. The business itself has ran continuously as a poultry shop, in one form or another, since 1922.
Known for its fried chicken and complementary potato nuggets, Slavko’s menu is also filled with sandwiches, mostaccioli, ćevapčići and a host of other items that spans Croatian, Italian, and American cuisine. Jim, a third generation Croatian San Pedran, has carried the family’s light of the fire for the past 40 years, after he inherited the business from his father, Slavko, the restaurant’s namesake. When asked who was in line to carry on the light of the fire after him, his faced lit with pride.
“Brian is my right hand guy… my spark plug,” Jim said of his eldest son. “In a small business you really have to wear a lot of hats. Otherwise you wouldn’t survive.”
Jim noted that Brian brought fish; chicken nuggets and most recently lobster.
“All those little things can make it happen. He wants to make it happen, and I want to help him make it happen,” Jim said.
“Passion is like self confidence or experience. You can’t get it unless you do it.”
Brian said he always knew that Slavkos was going to be his life and he reveled in it. Looking like a younger and thinner version of his father behind thick dark rimmed glasses, Brian’s eyes lights up as he talks about what he’s sees in the restaurant’s future.
“I want to see it go to the next pinnacle,” Brian said. “This has a lot of room to grow. You know… when you’re really into what you’re doing, you’re not working. And when you have a business, and you put in a lot of time and energy and you see the successes, it just motivates you more and you just get excited.”
For much of 2012, the popular poultry market and restaurant was closed for renovations to accommodate the 90-plus-year-old building as a sit-down eatery. But that wasn’t the only reason. Installing a larger refrigeration system powered by 156 solar panels brought the market-restaurant into the 21st century, while saving 60 percent off their electric bill to boot. Slavkos Harbor Poultry Co., once known only as the Harbor Poultry Co., has been around since even before the introduction of the ammonia refrigeration system — a time when refrigeration was literally meant a large sealed room kept cool with large blocks of ice.
Jim explained that for the longest time they couldn’t decide on what else to do with the extra space. To resolve their dilemma, they decided to follow the advice of their customers.
“People had been coming in and saying that they wanted to be able to sit down in this place,” Jim said. “So we said, ‘lets put in a few tables and see what happens. We don’t want to pay for things twice, but if it doesn’t work out, we’ll just put shelving in [and turn it into a grocery store]. But so far, it has worked out real good.”
Slavko’s Harbor Poultry Co. was named for Jim Frelekian’s father, Slavko Frelekian. Before its incarnation into a restaurant, the shop was a place where chicken was slaughtered and sold to local markets and residents.
Jim’s grandfather brought the family to the United States after World War I from Croatia. His grandfather arrived first, followed by his grandmother.
Before World War II started, Slavko had already opened Slavko’s Best Seafood, right across from the now closed Ramona’s bakery on Pacific Avenue — a block away from the Slavko’s building. He would supply fish to the Japanese American community that lived on Terminal Island at the time. His relationship with them was so close that he learned Japanese. When he was drafted, Slavko served as an interpreter in the Pacific theater of the war.
“Dad didn’t buy the place until after World War II,” Jim said of his father, Slavko Frelekian.
Slavko worked at Harbor Poultry Co. before opening Slavkos Best Seafood.
After the war, Slavko went into business with Harbor Poultry with his brother. He eventually bought out his brother and brought on a new partner.
Slavko’s brother bought Harbor Poultry and told Slavko that when he returned home, they would go into business together.
“My dad, his brother, and his brother-in-law bought this place and they just kept selling poultry products.”
Jim credits his father’s foresight that Slavko’s needed to own its own building if it was going to have any sort of longevity.
My dad told his brothers, we must solidify ourselves. ‘We should either buy this property, where Harbor Poultry is, or buy that property,’” Jim recollected. “Well, they didn’t want to do that. Eventually we bought my uncle out and Earl (uncle by marriage] left.”
Jim noted that patience and perseverance allowed them to buy the building after it had changed hands a couple of times, especially since their first opportunity was missed.
When Harbor Poultry came to be solely owned by Slavko, Jim explained that he believed the place should be renamed Slavko’s because of all the time and effort Slavko spent building the business.
Jim explained that before the advent of supermarkets in the 1960s, small mom and pop markets supplied most of the community’s dietary needs. Combined with the fact that new regulations made it impossible for the Poultry Co. to continue providing freshly slaughtered chickens, the business had to evolve. That next step in the evolutionary chain was the offering of ready-made food. Jim said he got worried when the supermarkets started offering ready-made food too, but it turned out Slavko’s had a better product that local residents trusted.
Slavko was the family’s cook, always coming up with new recipes, but he didn’t often put those recipes on the menu. Jim said he had to encourage, if not push a little to get the elder Frelekian to put some of those homespun recipes on the menu and expand the market’s budding offerings.
Up until 1970, Slavko’s barbecued its chicken. That is, until Kentucky Fried Chicken opened up in San Pedro. Slavko’s got into gear and started frying chicken and potato nuggets of their own. Initially, Slavko’s bought their spuds from Speedy Spuds in Wilmington, but according to Jim, nobody liked them. After the negative feedback, Slavko’s elected to fry their own potato nuggets with seasoning. Jim never dreamed that tasty spuds would become its most potent symbol.
Jim says that the key to Slavko’s success was their ability to give the customer what they wanted. He explained that shortly after they began providing ready-made meals, they would market their product to the holidays that local San Pedro residents celebrate. They would have corned beef and cabbage in March in celebration of Lent, the traditional Italian dish, mostaccioli, and the Croatian sausage, ćevapčići year around.### “When they zig we zag,” Jim explained. Jim says that he may not be the brightest guy, but Slavko’s has managed to stay ahead of the curve with that philosophy.
If you missed the infrastructure meeting, June 3, you can view speaker presentation by visiting these links:
Port of Long Beach Capital Improvement Projects
Al Moro, Chief Harbor Engineer
Port of Long Beach Capital Improvements Presentation
City of Long Beach Mobility Element
Ira Brown, City of Long Beach Planner
OCTA Projects: West County Connectors, I-405, Summer Freeway Closures
Sarah King, OCTA Senior Community Relations Specialist
Dennis Mak, West County Connectors Project Manager
Niall Barrett, I-405 Improvement Study Project Manaher
West County Connectors Project Update
I-405 Freeway Construction Update
FY2013 Update on Streets, Sidewalks, Curbs and Trees
Ara Maloyan – Acting Director of Public Works/City Engineer
FY2013 Street Improvement & Paving – 5th District
Paving Budget Document
Unused capacity exists in many aspect of life. An elderly couple lives alone in a house with 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms. Thus, the couple may be said to have unused housing capacity. On the freeway, driver-only vehicles display unused passenger capacity. Congresses is crippled by the unused capacity for compromise. A different kind of unused capacity was discussed forty years ago by Claire E. Vough. In a book, Tapping the Human Resource, Vough explained: “Nobody in this world works at top capacity…The point is, everyone has a great deal of untapped reserve capacity.” Vough’s point applies to the employees who work for the City of Los Angeles. Based on my 27 years Downtown, I can report that the skills and abilities City employees bring to the job are typically underutilized. I can also report that many employees feel trapped in a work environment that expects too little of them. It’s my opinion that City employees could be far more productive than their leaders allow them to be. Employees are not blind; they can see for themselves that the civil service system has been corrupted-that the politicians run City government. That lowers their morale-and their productivity. Mayor Villaraigosa doesn’t know anything about managing job performance. He seems not to give a damn about morale or productivity. He spends 60% of the budget on employees, supports personnel practices that inhibit employee performance, and bills the tax-payers for a corrupted, under-achieving civil service! Fortunately, Los Angeles will soon have a new Mayor. Hopefully, it will be Eric Garcetti. I’m confident he will honor his Oath into Office and enforce the civil service provisions of the City Charter. I’m also confident that Mayor Garcetti will pay close attention to the following words from The Greatest Management Principle in the World, by Michael LeBoeuf: “In today’s work world, few drop dead from exhaustion but many die from under-satisfaction…To get people excited about a job, the job must usually have four key ingredients: 1) a meaningful goal; 2) a way to keep score…; 3) control over goal achievements; and 4) a meaningful reward system.” -Samuel Sperling, Monterey Park
When Janice Hahn was Councilwoman, she wrote a formal, Official Letter to the Owners of the Wilmington Watson Railyard, the B. N. S. F. Railroad that the Public Lobbyist got her to do, on behalf of the Thousand Children and Elderly of East Wilmington who have been and still are being exposed to Carcinogenic Levels of Invisible Diesel Particulates from Diesel Locomotives using, especially, the South Watson Yard, where the homes of those one thousand live, according to A.Q. M.D. Director, Ms. Susan Nakamura in her Letter to the Lobbyist about this Public Hearing. Then, as Congresswoman Hahn, an Official Stationery, she wrote a second letter to B. N. S. F. following up her Council Office one, again, on behalf of the thousand and the elderly that the Public Lobbyist, Donald Compton represents, because B. N. S. F. had not responded, properly, to her first letter that should be fact checked. According to the Contact Person, Elose Swanson, Ms. Hahns Director for District 44, to the Lobbyist, on 1 May, 2013, the Railroad, still, has not responded in a responsible, fact checkable manner. By now, everybody who wants to [?] knows that the railroad has an extant route around that would take the carcinogenic Diesel Locomotives, at least, out of the South Watson Yard, where the homes are nearby, and put some in the industrial zone, where the diesel operation belongs [?] the aforementioned date, Wednesday, 1 May, 2013, at about 5 PM, by prearrangement, the lobbyist talked, by phone, to Director, Elise Swanson and asked her if Congresswoman Hahn would be willing to call for a press conference in order, so to speak, out the railroad for its public health menace that is carcinogenic, still despite it having an extant route around? In essence, Ms. Swanson said is not [?] for a press conference on this subject, despite Ms. Hahn being here, for awhile. -Donald Compton, Wilmington
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By Andrea Serna, Arts and Culture Columnist
The Rolling Stones are the embodiment of rock ’n’ roll.
As the longest running act in the business they define the genre as well as the generation from which they came.
In his book, Life, Keith Richards explained his music.
“It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases–a thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart.”
I was determined to see this act one last time. What else could I do? I began my rock ’n’ roll adventure as a 16-year-old teenybopper in 1964 with the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl. I was not ready to surrender to time, and neither were hundreds of thousands of fans across the country.
The Stones booked four concerts in the Southern California with the most recent one being at the Staples Center. Baby boomers cashed in their 401k’s for the most expensive concert of their lives.
My first distinct memory of the Rolling Stones was watching the iconic TAMI Show at the Vineland Drive-In Theater. It was a dream lineup that included the Beach Boys, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye and a kick ass performance by James Brown. But the Rolling Stones closed the show and history was made.
At the time, they were a blues band, not wanting to cultivate the screaming fans of bands like the Beatles. Their best known hit back then was the bluesy, “Time is On My Side.”
The Stones were in the center of the blues revival in 1960s Great Britain. Their music has always contained the blues roots of rock, but their manager urged them to move from cover songs to writing their own music.
Teenagers skipped homework to decipher the lyrics to songs like “Satisfaction.” “But he can’t be a man cuz he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me”…sounds clear today, but endless days were invested in the definition of those lyrics. Our parents musical heroes sang about love and romance, this was way different.
The Staples Center concert on May 20 opened with a video montage with the famous and the anonymous saluting the impact that the Stones had on their lives.
Johnny Depp appears in the video to confirm what we all know:
“The Stones make really good music to do really bad things to.”
Additional video of early concert fans contributed to the sense of revisiting history, as well as our own youth.
In The Tami Show, the extent of technology was a few small boxy amps on stage to project their talent. In the 21st century, laser lights, video screens and one of the cleverest set designs going support the show. A giant pair of lips served as the backdrop and a “tongue pit” provided an extension of the stage for Mick to dance around for more than two hours of inspirational athletic display. No wonder baby boomers think they can live forever; Mick seems to prove you can. Many concertgoers will come away awe-struck at his energy.
He gave us a quick glimpse of his yoga tree pose, which must be one of his secrets. But his real power is in his love of performing. It was easy to see how thoroughly he and the rest of the group enjoy performing in LA, an important touchstone in their career. And LA returned the love 20,000 times in what appeared to be a nearly sold-out concert.
The Rolling Stones were legendary for their opening acts. Last time I saw them, it was during the Steel Wheels tour at which Guns and Roses opened. Axel Rose quit the group on stage that night in what appeared to be some kind of dopey joke. Who quits their band when they are opening for the Stones?
Past opening acts included Stevie Wonder, Prince and Tina Turner. But this night it was just the boys.
Mick announced, “Tonight’s special guest is YOU GUYS!” and the crowd cheered and sang along.
After all, many of the special guests they have had on this tour have not held up to the challenge of being on stage with the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band. Gwen Stefani and Lady GaGa received mixed reviews and Katy Perry downright stunk. As a consolation, back-up singer Lisa Fisher’s vocals soared on “Gimme Shelter.”
Although they touched on all the classics, an eclectic set-list proved they were not afraid to pull deeply from their massive catalog. Keith Richard’s solo set was especially rewarding. The 1969 “You Got the Silver” takes on a new meaning when sung by a silver haired Richards. “Before They Make Me Run,” written in 1977 in response to Richard’s heroin arrest in Canada, was tenderly presented by a man who faced his demons and survived.
“Paint it Black” from 1966 is transformed this night with a light show that fills the venue and cheats the audience of its significance. Hitting the charts during the Vietnam escalation, this song was a chilling reminder to teenagers facing the draft that death could arrive at your very doorstep. For this fan, with a guy in the army, it was painfully close to home. The song, coming to the US three years after the assassination of Kennedy cemented the dark aspect of the Stones reputation.
On “Midnight Rambler,” occasional Rolling Stone, Mick Taylor displayed his impressive guitar work, which left some in the audience asking, “who is that guy?” It occurred to me that perhaps Taylor should have stuck with the band. He bowed out about half way through the show, while all the old skinny guys never seemed to run out of energy.
Ron Wood also showed off his guitar prowess and Charlie Watts mesmerized with thundering drum sets, especially on the classics. The closing piece, “Satisfaction,” confirmed why this band will always be No. 1. The song that was their first #1 hit in 1965 brought the entire stadium to their feet. Watts’ ferocious drumming makes the music happen —correction, makes the music thrush through your veins. This is what rock is meant to do.
The pursuit of satisfaction is particularly significant to the so-called “me generation”, and here is where Mick, Keith and the boys have solidified their place in our musical history. “You Can’t always Get What You Want”, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” “Start Me Up” (even if it takes a little blue pill) – and even more Americans are dependent on some form of “Mothers Little Helper.” These songs remain the mantra of the 60s generation and are still relevant in the 21st century as we evaluate the path of our own personal history. Mick and Keith achieved Richard’s stated goal of creating a thread that runs through all of us.
Perhaps the only complaint of the entire evening was a somewhat mushy sound system in the Staples Center. Oddly, the gigantic venue seemed almost too small to contain the exhilarating sound of the Rolling Stones. Their music is best experienced outdoors beneath the open sky with giant blow-up dolls and balloons floating high overhead.
You have the sun, you have the moon, you have the air that you breathe – and you have the Rolling Stones! –Keith Richards
SAN PEDRO — Port of Los Angeles officials announced June 3, the development of its Energy Management Action Plan initiative designed to improve energy efficiency.
Included in the plan will be the nation’s largest port energy assessment.
The Energy Management Action Plan, unveiled during an energy workshop with representatives of the port, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, marine terminal operators and others, will serve as the port’s blueprint to identify, develop and implement various programs to improve energy efficiency, reliability, quality, cost and resiliency while keeping up with the accelerating electrification and energy demand at the port.
LOS ANGELES –Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced, May 30, the signing of an agreement with Yang Ming, a marine transport company, to extend its lease at the Port of Los Angeles for an additional nine years.
Yang Ming’s current lease at the West Basin Container Terminal ends in 2021; with this agreement, it extends to 2030 and represents additional port revenues of between $365 and $525 million, depending on cargo volumes.
In conjunction with the lease extension, Villaraigosa signed a Memorandum of Understanding May 28 in Beijing to expand and modernize the Yang Ming terminal facilities at the port. As part of the agreement, the port will invest $122 million in improvements at the terminal, including construction of a new 1,260 linear foot wharf at Berths 126 through129, dredging to a depth of -53 feet at the newly constructed wharf, and expansion of the West Basin Intermodal Container Transfer Facility. The West Basin Container Terminal is a partnership between Yang Ming, China Shipping and Ports America.
China is Los Angeles’ number one trading partner, representing 39.4 percent of Los Angeles’ total global trade numbers. The export sector supports 312,677 local production jobs and every $1 billion in new exports creates more than 6,000 good jobs for Angelenos. In 2012, China’s total trade with the LA Customs District was $159,261,157,840.
Long Beach Police Department are asking victims of an alleged sexual assault perpetrator, who worked as a massage therapist, to come forward.
On May 19, officers were dispatched to Dee Dee Thai Spa, at 200 Argonne Ave., where they arrested 48-year-old suspect Juan Pablo Zea of Long Beach for inappropriately touching one of his female clients during a massage.
Zea was working as an independent contractor for the spa. Prosecutors have charged him with one count of misdemeanor sexual battery.
SACRAMENTO – In response to research indicating that false confessions by children younger than 18 have led to an increase in wrongful convictions, the California Senate approved a measure that Sen. Ted W. Lieu authored, which requires law enforcement agencies statewide to videotape interviews of minors accused of homicide.
The Senate voted 36-0, May 29, on Senate Bill 569.
Specifically, SB 569 would:
The Long Beach Police Department announced May 31, that for the first time in four years, the Long Beach Police Academy is training recruits to become police officers.
Will the approval of the fiscal year 2013 budget, the Long Beach City Counil authorized Academy Class 86, the first since fiscal year 2009. The $2.9 million cost was funded using a combination of one-time resources and position savings within the police department.
The academy will allow the City of Long Beach to replenish officers who have retired. Fifty recruits were hired to attend the academy. During the 27-week course recruits will be instructed on criminal law, investigations, drivers training, report writing and cultural sensitivity.
Real people. Real news. Random Lengths is the Los Angeles harbor area's remaining independently owned progressive news magazine. We cover news in Carson, Wilmington, Long Beach, Lomita, Torrance, Rancho Palos Verdes and San Pedro.
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