For Greg Kelly, 67, model building is a form of meditation. He was raised in Long Beach, the third in a family of 12. “My dad and older brother would build little balsa wood airplanes, I was probably 3 or 4, and they’d work on it on the kitchen table. I’d just sit and watch, […]
WATTS TOWERS
THE WATTS TOWERS

Mystery surrounds L.A.’s Watts Towers, starting with the name of the passionate visionary who built them–Simon Rodilla, Sabato “Sam” Rodia, Don Simon?—and continuing to his exact whereabouts from 1910-1918, the number of years he worked on the towers (33 or 34?), and the forces that drove him. A self-taught laborer, Rodia was born in Italy […]