Writing: Since 1994, I have written on arts/culture, especially music, film, and food, for a variety of publications including National Public Radio, KCET’s Artbound, the Los Angeles Review of Books, KPCC’s Take Two, Character Media, Vibe, Wax Poetics, the LA Times, Oakland Tribune, Village Voice, SF Bay Guardian, URB, LA Weekly, Scratch, SJ Metro and Minneapolis City Pages, amongst others. I keep an online portfolio of my published work.
In 2003, I edited and co-authored the book, Classic Material: The Hip-Hop Album Guide, a compendium of over 40 long-form reviews of hip-hop albums released between 1983 through 2001, written by leading hip-hop critics of the time including Elizabeth Mendez Berry, Jon Caramanica, Jeff Chang, Kris Ex, Ernest Hardy, Hua Hsu, Serena Kim, Chris Ryan, Dave Tompkins, and others.
In 2015, I published my first academic book, Legions of Boom: Filipino American Mobile Crews in the San Francisco Bay Area (Duke University Press), which explores the vibrant party scene created by Filipino American teenagers in the 1980s and ’90s. Drawing from dozens of oral history interviews with DJs, promoters, and other organizers, Legions of Boom traces how these DJ crews transformed suburban garages and school gyms into vibrant community spaces that nurtured creativity, belonging, and cultural identity among a generation of Fil-Am youth.
In 2025, I published Cruising J-Town: Japanese American Car Culture In Los Angeles (Angel City Press), the first book ever written about Asian American car culture. It is the companion book to the Cruising J-Town museum exhibition I curated (see below), and both explore the 110+ year history of the Japanese American community in Southern California and its long relationship to the world of cars and trucks: from street racers to car customizers, hot rods to gardening trucks, gas stations to design centers, and much more. The Cruising J-Town project uses car culture as a way of telling the individual, family, peer group, and neighborhood stories of a community whose roots in Los Angeles go back six generations and growing. The Cruising J-Town exhibition was produced by the Japanese American National Museum and hosted by the Mullin Gallery at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena from the summer through fall of 2025.
Scholarship: I am a Professor of Sociology at CSU-Long Beach, teaching courses in popular culture, the sociology of food, social issues and race/class/gender. I’ve also written on Asian Americans and hip-hop (1,2), retro soul music, and the critical geography of the Kogi BBQ truck, among other essays. A portfolio of my scholarly writing is available here.
I am available as a speaker for campus and community events.
Audio: Since 1993, I have been a DJ. I first had a radio show — The O-Zone — at KALX FM in Berkeley from 1994 – 2004, and then created the Shades of Soul show for both Radio Sombra (2013-2015) and Artform Radio (2020-2022).
From 2014-2016, I was co-host on the Pop Rocket podcast and from 2017 through 2021, I was the co-host of Heat Rocks, an album-oriented podcast I taped alongside music supervisor Morgan Rhodes. (Heat Rocks is currently on hiatus). I am working on a new podcast on the songs of Asian America.
Thanks to the audioblog I started in 2004, Soul-Sides.com, I produced two compilations: Soul Sides Vol. 1 (Zealous Records, 2006) and Soul Sides Vol. 2: Covers (Zealous, 2007).
Personal: I reside in Los Angeles, along with my wife Sharon Mizota.