The Crown City Podcast

02/27/2024

Community Corner: In times of social unrest and environmental challenges, poetry can offer a way to connect, heal, and inspire.

That is the message that four acclaimed poets will share at the Altadena Public Library on Tuesday, Feb. 27, as part of the Altadena Poets Laureate Reading Event. The event, which is free and open to the public, will feature readings by Hazel Harrison, Teresa Mei Chuc, Elline Lipkin, and Thelma Reyna (Episode 9 of The Crown City Podcast), who have all served as Altadena Poets Laureate in the past.

The program, which began in 2016, honors two local poets every two years for their contributions to the literary and cultural life of the community.

“I believe in the universality of human feelings and many of the things that we deal with in life,” Thelma Reyna, one of the featured poets for the upcoming event, said as she expressed her faith in the program. “I feel confident that usually what we community poets write does resonate with a number of fellow human beings.”

Text From

02/26/2024

Since The Crown City Podcast was launched in the fall of 2020, it has been a self-produced and hosted labor of love.

At such a difficult time in all our lives, I wanted the show to be a place of open and honest discourse. I also wanted it to be a platform to introduce others to some of the most inspiring people I know.

To date, I have hosted elected officials, authors, historians, activists, civic leaders, and small business owners. Every episode is different (even if there are some similar questions) and every “season” brings new opportunities for the show.

That is why I have some very exciting news to share!

For the upcoming Fourth Season of The Crown City Podcast, the show will be produced in collaboration with the incredible team at Pasadena Media.

Pasadena Media is the amazing non-profit that oversees Pasadena’s public, education, and government access channels and operates the community media training center and television studio.

This is a dream partnership and I cannot be more excited about where the show will go from here.

The biggest change will be that the podcast will be recorded on video, and for a host with a face for podcasting, that will be a big but really fun adjustment.

I am grateful to Pasadena Media for this opportunity and to all those who have supported the show over the years.

Please stay tuned to Instagram for more information!

02/19/2024

February 19th is a significant date in American history.

“On this day in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which gave the U.S. Army the authority to remove civilians from the military zones established in Washington, Oregon, and California during WWII. This led to the forced removal and incarceration of some 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, who had to abandon their jobs, their homes, and their lives to be sent to one of ten concentration camps scattered in desolate, remote regions of the country” (​Japanese American Citizens League​).

Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt profoundly affected Japanese Americans in Pasadena.

Councilmember Gene Masuda’s parents, Sam and Alice, were among thousands of local Japanese Americans rounded up and held in “relocation centers” until the war ended.

After being taken to the Santa Anita Racetrack in Arcadia, the couple was eventually separated. Masuda’s father was sent to another relocation camp, Manzanar, in Owens Valley, and his mother, pregnant at the time with Gene’s older brother, interned at Tule Lake (Pasadena Now).

May we use this Day of Remembrance to reflect on the nation we want to be and the values we want to uphold.

02/12/2024

Community Corner:

- a Burbank native and the innovative mind behind the Proud Stutter podcast, is making waves with her latest endeavor — a comic book dedicated to shedding light on the stuttering experience.

Chupkov, alongside Proud Stutter’s board member Julian Benavidez and illustrator Indy Ho, aims to liberate and represent the stuttering community through this unusual medium. The self-published comic book, titled “My Stutter: Life of Verbal Turbulence,” will be unveiled at a launch at this evening, February 12th at 6 p.m.

The event will bring together people from the Los Angeles stuttering community to share their stories and experiences.

If you are able, come and support this wonderful community!

02/10/2024

02/04/2024

Who needs take out when you make the best pizza at home.

01/26/2024

A huge congratulations to friend of the podcast on her third Caldecott Honor for picture book illustration.

The book is a triumph written and illustrated by one of the kindest and coolest people I have gotten to know doing the show.

It is a well earned and much deserved honor Marla!!!

01/25/2024

Celebrating Cheeseburger Week in style.

01/15/2024

Today we celebrate the man and the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A titan of the civil rights movement, Dr. King traveled extensively, but found himself in Pasadena on several occasions.

In 1958, Dr. King spoke for several days at , giving formal speeches, dining with students and meeting with faculty.

At the invitation of Pastor Marvin T. Robinson, a fellow civil rights activist, of (Friendship Baptist Church), Dr. King returned in 1960 while fundraising for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

In a sermon entitled, “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” Dr. King delivered the above highlighted line, “For in a real sense the Negro cannot be free in Pasadena or Los Angeles until the Negro is free in Jackson, Mississippi and Montgomery, Alabama. We are all involved in a single struggle.”

As a poignant example that intolerance and racism were not isolated to the South, prior to Dr. King’s visit to Friendship Baptist Church, an 18-foot tall cross was burned on the lawn of a black family in Altadena.

We are not that far removed from such incidents by either location or time and it is the responsibility of us all to make sure those times are not repeated.

Finally, Dr. King would return to Friendship Baptist in 1965, where Pastor Robinson introduced him as the “Moses of the 20th Century.”

Let us remember not only the man but also the crusade.

As Dr. King said 64 years ago, civil rights remains our unifying “single struggle.”

For more information about Dr. King and Pasadena, please read great 2011 article “Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Visits to Pasadena” in the Patch.

📷Original photo credit of Dr. King at Friendship Baptist goes to the amazing as it is part of their J. Allen Gawkins Collection (JAH19072n8).

01/14/2024

It’s Neighbor Day in Pasadena!

Come celebrate with wonderful friends Mika and Russell from for an evening filled with fellowship, fun music and great beer from !

Unfortunately, Covid knocked me out this week and I am still in isolation.

Support what makes Pasadena such a great place to live, work and play with portions of each pint and merch sold being donated to local nonprofits.

Thank you for the organizers for bringing Pasadena together!

01/11/2024

I love public art that enriches our built environment.

As such, I am so proud and grateful to friend of the podcast Victor (Episode 22) and Lisa for sharing their talents with Pasadena and creating another beautiful mural.

01/10/2024

We made it almost four years, but it finally caught up to us (and with a vengeance).

With Covid raging in Southern California, please be safe everyone and take care of yourselves. Especially our littles ones.