Did you you read Caitlin Hernandez's LAist longread about the history of LAX and how to keep it from driving you totally around the bend? This time on Off-Ramp we're digging into one of the most surprising and weirdest aspects of the airport's history ... when the airport created a ghost-town that today resembles what LA will look like a few months after the apocalypse. We'll drive there with author Denise Hamilton, who set a novel there, and a former resident.

Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live; and bythe Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

Off-Ramp theme music by Fesliyan Studios.

When the Grammy Museum honored Big Jay McNeely in 2017, when he was 90, they said:

McNeely is a true original and the last of a generation of blues/R&B musicians who inspired the early rock pioneers, and are still around to remind us where popular music came from.

As Off-Ramp jazz correspondent Sean J. O'Connell put it when he interviewed him for the show: 

"Big Jay McNeely was etched into pop music immortality in 1951. Photographer Bob Willoughby captured McNeely at a concert at Los Angeles's Olympic Auditorium 1951. In the photo, the Watts native is blasting his tenor sax on his back, the camera capturing the raised fists of post-war teenage hysteria seething in undershirts and pompadours at the foot of the stage. From Central Avenue with Charlie Parker and Art Tatum in the 1940s to the R&B circuit of the '50s and '60s, McNeely was there through a roller coaster of musical evolutions and had a good time along the way. His showmanship and soul are both youthful and timeless. He is rock & roll history, alive and well."

Big Jay died a year later, but not before our listeners got to hear his story, and now you do, too.

Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live; and bythe Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

Off-Ramp theme music by Fesliyan Studios.

Bob Willoughby photo used with permission from his estate.

Corita Kent, world's best-selling artist; Mary Jones, first trained librarian, ousted for a man: Charles Lummis; three women directors find their muse at the L.A. Film Festival.

Mary Jones, the city librarian you should know about; jellyfish get the spotlight at the Aquarium; showering with Sanden Totten;

Visit the youth homeless center that inspired Miley Cyrus's Happy Hippie Foundation ... The Cactus Store, the garden store for the drought-conscious ... Ride with Angelyne!

From knife-wielding performance artist to creator of our Happy Place - may Chris Burden RIP. Win a chance to ride with Angelyne. And why does the sun make you sneeze?

Luke Zamperini and Off-Ramp fly in the last B-24; Temple Grandin and an ABC journalist consider autism; we tour a homeless camp along the Arroyo Seco.

Matching anecdotal evidence with scientific proof of global warming ... Billy the Mime speaks ... Why walk 16 miles of Wilshire Blvd ... Brains On! ... Larry Mantle on The Big Fight

What do you call a 125-pound mountain lion? Anything he wants! Plus, we unmask @LosAngelesRain and visit a small perfume center in Koreatown.

Director of "1915" on growing up with the Armenian genocide as family history; Jane Lynch sings as a candle; Brains On!