Ron Curran, hell-raiser
1960-2003

Ron Curran, a former Bay Guardian city editor and a reporter with style, flair, and a passion for social justice, died Nov. 17 in Huntington Beach. He was 43.

Ron was a journalist's journalist, in the great tradition of the old newspaper movies he loved to watch. He drank black coffee from cardboard cups and Pabst Blue Ribbon from cans. He listened to George Jones, read James Ellroy, shot pool like a pro, and slept only when it was absolutely necessary.

And he could write.

In a 1997 article on Mayor Willie Brown's efforts to make the public pay for a new football stadium, he described the scene of a downtown rally:

"It was Vegas on the Embarcadero.... On a stage decked with a huge inflated football and scarlet and gold balloons, the 49ers band blared Dixieland, Gold Rush cheerleaders swiveled their hips and pom-poms, the team mascot ran around like a maniac, and nervous Niner officials, aware that polls show their stadium proposals trailing by anywhere from 4 to 30 percent, fidgeted before heaving their fourth-and-long Hail Mary. "

Pieces like that won him a number of awards, and he was known across the country as a leading voice of the alternative press. But the prizes and the plaudits meant nothing to him. The scoop was the thing.

"He was always so dedicated to his work," his sister, Virginia Dvaz, told me by phone from the family home in Danbury, Conn. "That's what he lived for."

• • •

Ronald Joseph Curran was born in the working-class city of Danbury in 1960. He attended public schools and played soccer at Danbury High. Years later, he was still proud of routinely beating arch-rival Greenwich, where, as he put it to me once with disdain, "all the kids were rich and had new cleats, and their uniforms were all clean."

He moved to Los Angeles in 1978 to attend the University of Southern California, where he briefly flirted with the idea of studying law. Instead, he turned to journalism and was writing for the LA Weekly, then a new and distinctly unconventional alternative newspaper, even before he graduated.

By 1983 he was a full-time reporter at the Weekly, and he stayed there for a decade, working up to the job of news editor. "He was so passionate about investigative reporting, about news," Weekly founder Jay Levin told me.

The young scribe had a classical, almost old-fashioned notion of a newspaper's role in the fight between good and evil. "When he came to us, he was so earnest, so determined to get the bad guys," Levin recalled.

He quickly developed the skills of an investigative reporter. One of his most famous stories, an exposé of how then-Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley had diverted resources from his home district in the low-income South Central neighborhoods to the wealthier enclaves in the valley and on the west side, grew out of months of painstaking work with public records, Levin said.

He joined the Bay Guardian as city editor in 1994 and oversaw a staff of young, talented writers who produced consistently amazing, award-wining work with his help and guidance. Along the way he found time to produce a weekly press column (The Naked Eye) and to write a string of big stories of his own.

Ron started working when much of the alternative industry was still young, and as he grew and matured along with papers he worked for, he never lost the sense of journalism as an adventure. He always looked for a way to help the underdog – and he always loved the offbeat, seamy side of life. He never felt very comfortable around people in suits, but he was completely at ease around the down-and-out, the freaks, the weirdos, the folks who lived on the edges of society.

For a while he rented a room at the Curtis Hotel on Valencia and 16th Streets – not the most upscale of accommodations – and he told me he loved the "grim beauty" of the place. He always said he expected to retire broke and wind up in a trailer park – and the thought of it made him smile.

And yet, for all that, he was endlessly optimistic and entrepreneurial. He left the Bay Guardian in 1999 and founded Bang!, a smart and quirky magazine that featured new writers (as well as Ron) and constantly pursued features that everyone else in the media was missing. Two years later he moved back to the L.A. area to help care for his ailing father, who died in August. He started Pulp Syndicate, a wire service aimed at the alternative press, and the business seemed to be doing well despite the recession.

On Nov. 17 he called a friend and said he was suffering from bad stomach pains and asked for a ride to the hospital. By the time he got to the emergency room, he was dead, apparently of internal bleeding. The cause of death has not yet been determined.

"The last time we talked was Sunday [Nov. 16]," Kurt Thomas, a longtime friend who was the Web designer for Pulp Syndicate, told me by e-mail. "He was in typical P.T. Barnum mode; with Pulp in the middle of getting a facelift, sending out tons of emails and postcards to clients, he gushed about our future together as biz partners.

"I was, as always, his captive audience. I believed in him – because he's always made me believe in myself."

Ron Curran leaves his mother, Nancy Curran, of Danbury; and three sisters: Stephanie McGrath and Melissa Saavedral, both of Danbury, and Virginia Dvaz of Waterbury, Conn. Services are pending. (Tim Redmond)