MONDAY, JULY 25, 2011
Volume 10 Issue 216
Santa Monica Daily Press
PROBLEM WITH PLASTIC SEE PAGE 6
COMMUNITYPROFILES
EDGARDO FLORES
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THE REALLY RARE ISSUE
Raw food hot, but still uncooked BY COLIN NEWTON Special to the Daily Press
DOWNTOWN Soups served piping warm, kelp pasta covered in faux-cheese sauce made out of pulverized nuts. Are we in a world gone mad? No, just Santa Monica, at Planet Raw, a restaurant on Broadway that caters exclusively to raw food connoisseurs, who wouldn’t
dare digest anything cooked over 118-degrees. Chef Juliano Brotman, owner of Planet Raw, was raised in a family of traditional Italian restaurant operators, but became a vegan at 19. He opened a restaurant in San Francisco in 1991, and then moved it to Santa Monica in 2000. “Santa Monica loves us, we love them, it’s really a great little city,” Brotman said.
“Everybody’s health conscious, everybody’s green, clean air off the ocean. It was just a natural choice.” Brotman had many reasons for turning to raw food from his meat-based roots. One reason was environmental. “85 percent of landfill waste is packaged SEE RAW FOOD PAGE 9
FLORES
Filmmaker delves into anatomy of loneliness BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Daily Press Staff Writer
DOWNTOWN Tomorrow, filmmaker Edgardo Flores will experience something entirely new. The 34-year-old Santa Monica resident will see his first feature length film, “Ill Square,” projected onto the big screen at Pasadena’s Action on International Film Festival, a smorgasbord of genres and styles featuring hundreds of selections from nearly 80 categories. Watching it will be bittersweet, Flores said. First, the sweetness. “Ill Square,” which Flores describes as an “experimental musical” that tells the story of two lonely individuals seeking connection, consumed two years of his life before coming to fruition in 2009. It represents a success snatched from the jaws of defeat — Flores and his motley crew of actor friends were not planning on making “Ill Square” when the movie first came about. SEE CP PAGE 7
Daniel Archuleta daniela@smdp.com
PUTTING IT TOGETHER: Cook Alex Gomez prepares a raw meal at Planet Raw last week. The raw food trend is gaining traction in Santa Monica.
DMV now requires organ donor answer SHAYA TAYEFE MOHAJER Associated Press
LOS ANGELES There are about 100,000 people in the U.S. who would tell you the hours you spend waiting in line at the DMV are not a waste of your life — unless you fail to become an organ donor while you’re there. As of this month, California requires all license and identification card applicants to answer “yes” or “no” on whether they want their license to bear the pink dot identifying
them as a donor. The number of Americans who chose to donate is approaching 100 million, but because so few deaths leave organs in transplantable condition, less than 1 percent end up donating. Transplant and donor networks — and more than 100,000 people waiting for organs — hope putting the question more directly to drivers in the nation’s most populous state will boost the rate of Californians willing to donate. Previously,
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applicants could simply ignore the question and still have their paperwork processed. In California, 28 percent of drivers chose to give up vital organs and tissues after death in 2010, well below the national average of 40 percent. Transplant donor groups began pushing for the change to the DMV application after noticing that drivers are far less likely to decide to donate their organs if they apply for a license in person at the DMV office
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