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Volume 8 Issue 142
Santa Monica Daily Press ONE DOWN SEE PAGE 12
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THE WE CAN DO IT! ISSUE
‘Books’ and ‘readers’ swap stories BY WILL WEISS Special to the Daily Press
When you read a book, the experience is always uniquely your own. No matter the author, what you get is always your interpretation of the language on the page. But at Santa Monica Public Library’s Living Library event, when an individual “checks out” a “book,” the circumstances are tremendously different. Face-to-face with a human being who embodies and speaks proudly for a social category, one realizes quickly that the book has feelings too. In these conditions, emotions and reactions are exchanged freely, but not impolitely. And when discussing that which is seldom discussed, the topic that is on everybody’s lips is language itself. “I prefer the term ‘short-statured,’” said Michael Gogin, president and producer at Mad Swede Records and president of the Los Angeles chapter of Little People of America. Gogin, who has been a musician, actor and executive in the entertainment industry for decades, has been afflicted since birth by spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia. “If you look up dwarf in the dictionary, you’ll find a description that includes ‘grotesque,’ ‘ugly,’ ‘misshapen.’ Some little people identify with that term; I don’t.” Many of the speakers at Saturday’s event, which organizers expected would reach
Brandon Wise brandonw@smdp.com
TALKING TEXT: Graham Traynor (far left) talks with ‘living book’ Oscar Sanchez, an ex-gang member, at the Living Library event at the Main Library
SEE BOOKS PAGE 11
on Saturday afternoon. The event gives attendees a chance to hear the stories of people from diverse backgrounds.
COMMUNITYPROFILES CHRISTINA PEROZZI
Perozzi helps spread the beer gospel to ‘chicks’ BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Special to the Daily Press
Brandon Wise brandonw@smdp.com PEROZZI
Gary Limjap
DOWNTOWN The last thing you want to say to Christina Perozzi is “Oh, I’m not a beer drinker.” “That, to me, is like throwing down the gauntlet,” Perozzi said as she sipped her Allagash White, an unfiltered Belgianstyle brew flavored with coriander and bitter orange peel. Or at least that’s how she described it as she held the glass up to the warm light of Father’s Office, Santa Monica’s premier craft beer bar, and inspected the cloudy white tinge.
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SEE CP PAGE 10
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How can you argue with one of the top beer sommeliers on the West Coast? The term “sommelier” conjures images of wine experts in stuffy French restaurants that look down their nose at you when you mention the movie “Sideways.” But Perozzi sees beer as an equally sophisticated beverage without the pretension of white table cloths. Accordingly, she calls herself the Beer Chick, complete with custom T-shirt and pink and white blog at www.beer-
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