The city is is still reeling from the recent loss of Jonathan Gold, the seminal Pulitzer Prize-winning dining critic who revealed cultural culinary touchstones, strip-mall dining destinations and an entirely new way of experiencing and learning L.A.: by exploring the city through its food, its immigrants, its inclusiveness.
As a tribute on what would have been Gold’s 58th birthday, multiple landmarks and buildings will light up in yellow on Saturday—creating a “city of gold,” according to the L.A. Times.
City Hall, the Pacific Wheel on the Santa Monica Pier, the LAX pylons and the Times’ new building in El Segundo will be participating, among others. Additional forms of tribute are already popping up in Los Angeles; Gold imprinted himself upon the restaurants he frequented, those he reviewed, readers, the city’s media community and generations of chefs. Fittingly, restaurants around the city are hanging photos and commissioning murals and physical imprints, such as a booth always reserved for Gold in Guerrilla Tacos’ new brick-and-mortar:
Yesterday, L.A. muralist Jonas Never enshrined Gold with his annual L.A. Times 101 Best Restaurants list at the corner of Margo’s in Santa Monica:
Those looking to aid Gold's wife, Laurie Ochoa of the L.A. Times, and their two children may do so by contributing to a new GoFundMe campaign, which will assist them as they face immediate expenses and future education costs.
Gold championed every corner of L.A.’s culinary map, working for decades to break tired, white-washed stereotypes of diet- and trend-driven Angelenos. Here, in this clip from the award-winning documentary City of Gold, he discusses the importance of pushing past these preconceived notions—we recommend revisiting the film on Saturday, and then visiting the “city of gold” light tributes:
