You may not follow the writer Mike Albo with any regularity, but you may immediately relate to his retail review of L.A.’s The Grove in The New York Times:
“The first time you go to the Grove, the immensely successful and completely fabricated commercial center in Los Angeles, you will try to hate it. But then you will watch the old-fashioned trolley passing by, or the dancing fountain as it splurts jovially to the cadence of a Sinatra song, and you will drop your snobby urban integrity and walk around consuming things in a mouth-breathing stupor just like everyone else.”
Turns out Albo will not be in Thursday’s paper any longer. The bimonthly columnist was fired for taking a press junket to Jamaica, in violation of editorial standards (Albo is also a travel writer for the paper), though the NYT originally concluded it saw no conflict of interest.
Albo’s talent lied in his outsider status. Reading his prose, you assumed he wasn’t born in the front row at a Thom Browne show. Fashion acumen wasn’t the draw; keen observation was. So thanks for injecting a little levity into the world of power-shopping, Mike. I love The Grove, too. — Paul Dexter
That sucks! His columns are hilarious.
I wonder if he was given the OK before – or after he took the trip; big different between those two situations. But – either way – if the call was so borderline they thought it was OK at their first look – firing him seems totally out of line.
And, btw, I can still recall his opening in that article. And several other times when I was impressed by the writing in those two sections, when I looked up at the by-line – it was his name that was there.