"He's king; the L.A. loft scene is his throne"

Steve Lopez, writer for the LA Times, does a great job writing feature stories. He does this because he is a good writer. He can take the reader somewhere. In his article "He's king; the L.A. loft scene is his throne" he really shows the reader downtown LA and Mr. Brady Westwater. It is his attention to detail that really gets to a reader.

The best part of Lopez's writing is that it shifts as the story needs to shift. He shifts from first person to second person to third person, and does it so fluently that one hardly has time to notice.

He begins his story in second person.

"You might guess that a 2,500-square-foot, three-bathroom unit, with private elevator and a price tag of $4.9 million, was in Bel-Air or Holmby Hills.But not this one.
Would you believe it's beyond the eastern edge of downtown L.A.'s skid row, surrounded by warehouses and not far from the railroad tracks?Stop shaking your head."

Then he shifts nicely to first, and stays there for awhile. While in first, he makes a few jabs at himself, it really shows that style of the place they were at. The mannerisms of Westwater and makes the reader laugh a little. It's a light hearted article, why not laugh?

"don't think the concept was working for Zion, who wondered what my relationship to Westwater was."This is the guy who once called me the worst columnist in America," I told Zion."

Finally Lopez lets the real estate agent Russell Roney tell the story and the narration slowly slips into third person before the story ends.

"Roney represented a Hollywood Hills couple who wanted to sell and buy something smaller because their sons had grown and moved out. Nothing in the hills jazzed them, so they came downtown on a lark, and Roney liked what he saw just as much as his client, Vicky Deger."

And the rest of the story reads like a news article, but one the audience wants to read because of the beginning. The end of this story is where all pertinent information is given, but no one would care if it wasn't for the beginning.

Lopez also has a great way of shifting focus. Lopez, in this article alone, takes you from a runway to a building downtown, into the lives of a local couple, and then finally, the whole of LA. Lopez gives you scope.

FIN