PEOPLEGreg Stevens was recently announced as the new president at Cabot Wealth Management. Rob Lutts and the firm’s managing partners made the announcement last week. It was effective Jan. 1. Stevens has been with Cabot for 20 years and has been instrumental in managing the growth and success of the firm over those years. He takes over the role of president from Lutts who founded the firm in 1983. Lutts will remain with Cabot as part of the management team. “I am confident that Greg will be a solid leader for the firm and, along with other senior leadership, will continue to ensure that our key focus is the same as it has been for 40 years — doing everything we can to help our clients achieve their goals,” said Lutts. The firm, based in Salem, is a leading wealth management firm that provides a wide range of services including investment management, financial planning, estate planning, tax filing and planning. Cabot is a national firm that serves clients across the country.
Aubrie L. Gallagher recently joined Downey Law Group, LLC/DLG Closing to its law practice based in Topsfield and Haverhill. Gallagher is an experienced estate planning, probate, and trust administration attorney, having practiced as a solo practitioner for over 10 years. An Amesbury native, she graduated from Massachusetts School of Law in 2011. She comes from three generations of estate planning and probate attorneys, following in the footsteps of her mother, attorney Janice Weyland Sinclair, and her grandfather, attorney Wendell P. Weyland, who was a CPA and estate attorney in the Topsfield/Boxford area. Gallagher lives in Amesbury with her husband and family.
Hancock Associates, a leading provider of land surveying, civil engineering and wetland science services, has announced the semi-retirement of Don Frydryk PE, PLS. Frydryk joined Hancock Associates, which has offices in Danvers, as a Regional Office Manager when the firm acquired Sherman & Frydryk, LLC, a land surveying and civil engineering firm located in Palmer. He will continue in a smaller, part-time role as Business Development Coordinator and focus on business development for Hancock’s western Massachusetts offices and mentoring staff.
MILESTONESConnolly Brothers Inc., a construction management firm based in Beverly, recently completed a 52,000-square-foot design-build fit-up project for Calare Properties. The facility, located in Milford, will serve as a new state 911 Public Safety Answering Point, State 911 Training Center, Municipal Police Training Committee Academy and offices for the Massachusetts Department of Correction Professional Standards Unit. The two-story building was vacant for seven years, presenting challenges for Connolly’s design team. At first, it was critical to ascertain an understanding of the existing infrastructure, such as underground plumbing and structural components. Connolly proceeded to update the structural requirements, such as reinforcing second-floor and roof bar joists, strengthening steel column brace frames and creating four new grade beams, in order to meet updated building code requirements for use group risk category of the building. Connolly provided additional accessible entrances and replaced the exterior stairs with new granite. The electrical requirements to support the 911 Communication Center required a high level of coordination between Connolly’s design and construction teams, as this included design of 22 workstation consoles that support the intricate technological infrastructure needed to support the operating requirements for a 911 emergency dispatch center. Connolly served as both Architect of Record and Construction Manager for this design-build project. The project team also included Platinum Fire Protection, D+D/DNET and Tech Mechanical.
Guitars flutter, an accordion wheezes and a singer unwinds the triumphant tale of Fernando Ochoa Jauregui, a Modesto-area builder of food trucks and trailers.
“He still parties just because he feels like it,” the lyrics go. “But what he enjoys the most is partying with a banda at festivals in his town with a beautiful lady by his side.”
In a video accompanying the Spanish-language corrido, images flash of Ochoa beaming in front of shiny cars and atop jet skis. In some, he wears hats with the logo of his company: 8A Food Trucks. It ends with footage of stacks of cash and a money-counting machine.
The narrative ballad, titled “El del 8A” on YouTube, gives the impression that Ochoa is a kingpin at the helm of a burgeoning empire — one who “gives thanks to his father for making him a good kid.”
But unhappy 8A Food Trucks customers across California — from Sacramento to Salinas and San Bernardino — tell their own stories. They describe toiling as cooks, custodians and construction workers, saving for years to get a chance at starting their own business, only to have their dreams dashed. In a rough and tumble industry, largely secluded in poor, immigrant neighborhoods and farming communities, they allege Ochoa stands out for his callousness.
In lawsuits and interviews, former clients accused Ochoa and his company of not delivering trucks or trailers they ordered and refusing to return their partial or full payments. Others alleged that they received vehicles so poorly built that they couldn’t be used. And some have accused Ochoa of taking back trailers they’d purchased from him.
All told, 15 alleged victims claimed more than $475,000 in losses, according to a Times analysis.
In an interview, Ochoa, 28, disputed several of the allegations and acknowledged some mistakes, chalking them up in part to his inexperience in business, which he said led to delays in completing projects for customers. “I’m trying to deal with this scandal so I can make my business better again — I had a real company,” he said. “I’m not a business expert. I just know how to build trucks.”
Ochoa has become a symbol in Spanish media of the perils that lurk in the mobile food industry. In a 2023 report on him, a Univision news anchor warned those entering the business to exercise extreme caution. The controversy comes at a fraught moment for vendors in Southern California. Several in the L.A. area were robbed by gunmen last summer in brazen attacks that highlight the risks of selling food on Southland streets.
Alejandro Gonzalez was in a dispute over payment for a trailer when an old Toyota Camry pulled up to the drive-through window of Mi Casita Purepecha, his San Bernardino restaurant, on Feb. 1.
“Are you Alejandro?” the front-seat passenger asked Gonzalez, who was standing at the window.
The restaurateur said he was — and the man pulled out a gun and pointed it at him.
In the confusion of the moment, Gonzalez said, he turned to help customers inside the Mexican restaurant and the Camry sped away. Gonzalez, 44, didn’t recognize the men. But he said he fears that they are connected to Ochoa. Asked about the incident, Ochoa said he did not send armed men to Mi Casita Purepecha.
Gonzalez and his wife, Paulina Quintal, had contacted 8A Food Trucks in early January about building them two trailers so they could start a mobile food business. Ochoa delivered a trailer to their home two weeks later. Gonzalez said that he and his wife paid for it in full, and gave the builder a check for the down payment on a second one.
San Bernardino resident Alejandro Gonzalez said that this mobile food trailer, which he purchased from 8A Food Trucks, was stolen from his driveway in January.
(Alejandro Gonzalez)
Soon, however, men working for Ochoa appeared at Mi Casita Purepecha to dispute Gonzalez’s ownership of the trailer he’d bought days earlier, he said. Then, after the couple’s check for the second trailer didn’t clear, a third party passed along what Gonzalez said was a threatening voicemail from Ochoa.
On Jan. 21, Gonzalez said he returned from an errand to find his trailer had been stolen from his driveway. Seeking answers, he said he traveled to 8A Food Trucks’ headquarters in Ceres, Calif., but found the site deserted. The next day, Gonzalez said, the men with the gun visited him.
Gonzalez filed reports with the San Bernardino Police Department over the theft and the run-in at his restaurant. Regarding Ochoa, Gonzalez said, “I don’t know how he sleeps.”
Ochoa denied stealing the trailer from Gonzalez and Quintal’s home — “I would never do that,” he said — and alleged that they had not fully paid for it, saying that the check that bounced was meant to go toward the money they owed on it. Ochoa said he had sent two people to Mi Casita Purepecha to address those matters — and not to intimidate the couple.
“None of my people are armed,” he said. “We are businessmen; we dedicate ourselves to working and building trailers.”
Though the dollar amounts in most of the cases involving Ochoa are not large, for fledgling operators trying to break into the mobile food industry — many of them working-class immigrants — it’s enough to sidetrack their business dreams. And their predicaments highlight the vulnerability of California’s food industry workers, many of whom lack a financial safety net or the time and experience required to navigate the legal system. Some are undocumented and fear speaking to authorities.
“There were nights that we would cry, my husband and I,” said Adriana Nicanor, a San Joaquin resident. She and her husband filed a lawsuit against Ochoa and 8A Food Trucks last year that asserted he never delivered a trailer and claimed he refused to return their $20,000 deposit. They secured a default judgment, court records show, but have been unable to collect on it.
“It’s very frustrating,” Nicanor said. “My brother lent me that money. There were times we would struggle. Who asks for this?”
For many of Ochoa’s clients, making a down payment on a truck or trailer — both of which typically include kitchens — was an important first step in fulfilling a long-held entrepreneurial ambition. Some said that the alleged losses were especially painful because they came at the hands of one of their own: a Mexican immigrant who lived in the Central Valley and previously worked at an industrial shop before founding 8A Food Trucks in 2019.
He’s taking advantage of “the campesinos — the farmworkers,” said activist Alicia Espinoza, a Moreno Valley resident who has helped organize some of Ochoa’s accusers. “My dad, when he came to this country, he was a strawberry picker. It just hurts me that this guy could take advantage of people like him.”
Ochoa said he has many happy customers and has gone out of his way to help them achieve their aspirations, noting, for example, that he has sometimes accepted payment in installments. “Not many businesses do that,” he said. “You know, we’re not a bank.” As for the Nicanors, Ochoa denied that he failed to meet an agreed-upon deadline for delivery, and said he plans to pay them back.
Mi Casita Purepecha owner Alejandro Gonzalez said a car pulled up to the restaurant’s drive-through window and a passenger pulled a gun on him Feb. 1.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Several of those making allegations against Ochoa reside in Stanislaus County, an agricultural hub whose biggest city is Modesto. Wendell Emerson, a deputy district attorney for the county, confirmed that his office is conducting “an active criminal investigation” of Ochoa. He declined to comment further.
After the incident at Mi Casita Purepecha, Gonzalez closed the restaurant and left San Bernardino, relocating his family — he and his wife have three children — to a place they feel safe.
“I don’t know how long it is going to be,” Gonzalez said. “I feel like I lost everything.”
Lawsuits reveal a pattern
Ochoa is an entrepreneur of the internet age.
Food industry workers who’ve done business with the Colima, Mexico, native said that they found him via social media, where his posts depict a professional at the helm of a prosperous company.
The Instagram account for 8A Food Trucks includes several images of gleaming vehicles, their stainless steel kitchens spotless under bright lights. The “8A” in the company’s name is a play on words: pronounced in Spanish, it sounds like “Ochoa.”
A recently divorced father of two young girls, Ochoa has positioned 8A as a brand beyond the world of food services: There are Instagram pages for a hat company with 8A in the name, and another for a jet-ski rental service. It’s all part of a slick image that Ochoa has cultivated online, where it’s easy to find his self-aggrandizing corridos and photographs of him posing in front of his black Chevrolet Corvette.
“Now they see me living well,” the lyrics of one song go, “driving around in a Corvette, buzzing.”
Ochoa’s flaunting of his success has infuriated customers with whom he’s tussled.
For Norma Estevez and her husband, Sebastian Delgado, entering the mobile food trade was a step toward realizing an important goal: owning a business they could pass onto their three children. But Estevez and Delgado, both Mexican American, believe they lost more money than any of Ochoa’s other alleged victims.
The Salinas couple contacted Ochoa in 2021 to build a pair of trailers, selecting him, Estevez said, because he was Latino. “He didn’t have many clients,” she said, “and you could tell he has this aspiration to succeed.”
Estevez needed the trailers for a big opportunity: She had signed a contract with a produce company in nearby Watsonville to feed 70 field workers for 10 months beginning in February 2022. The owner had predicated the deal on her securing a trailer and having proper permits.
Ochoa told her that each trailer would cost $41,000, and promised to complete construction by the end of January, according to Estevez, who showed The Times invoices that documented the deal.
She and her husband sent Ochoa $60,000 over the course of several months, and as the deadline approached, they scheduled a day to pick up the trailers from 8A Food Trucks’ shop, Estevez said. But Ochoa canceled on them, she said, explaining that “his mother had arrived from Mexico and that he needed to pick her up from the airport.” They rescheduled, but he again put them off.
By then, Estevez’s contract with the Watsonville company had begun, and she scrambled to honor it. She was forced to buy meals for the workers, spending about $37 per person a day for the next week and a half — an all-in cost of nearly $26,000. Eventually, she rented a kitchen for $800 a week, and did so until the contract concluded, turning only a small profit on the deal.
And without the trailers, Estevez wasn’t able to renew the contract. “I felt embarrassed … like we had lost a great opportunity,” she said.
Ochoa acknowledged that he didn’t meet the agreed-upon deadline — and that the situation was similar to that of other clients who didn’t receive their vehicles on time. But, he said, others were willing to wait. “Norma’s situation was that if she didn’t get the trailers by a certain date, then she wasn’t going to need them,” he said.
Estevez and Delgado filed a lawsuit against Ochoa for breach of contract and other claims in July 2022. Months later, the parties agreed to a settlement that called for Ochoa to pay Estevez and Delgado about $70,000, including attorney’s fees, according to court documents. Estevez said that Ochoa has only paid $30,000, leaving her deeply disillusioned.
“We were like him, we came to this country to better our lives,” she said. “He knew our dream and ambitions — we told him how hard we worked for it.”
Gonzalez, meanwhile, isn’t the only person who alleged that a trailer purchased from Ochoa was later taken back by him.
Shelly Lopez and her husband, Jesus Avalos, said they paid Ochoa $37,000, and after nine months of delays — and their appearance in a Univision 19 Sacramento segment to discuss them — the Sacramento couple received a trailer in January 2023.
A man Shelly Lopez identified as Fernando Ochoa Jauregui came to her Sacramento home, she said, in February 2023 to take the trailer that 8A Food Trucks had recently sold her.
(Courtesy of Shelly Lopez)
After just a week, though, Ochoa told Lopez that he needed to take it back to his shop to make some adjustments, she said. A video that Lopez provided to The Times shows a man she identified as Ochoa connecting the trailer to the back of a pickup truck in February 2023.
“I didn’t want to let him take it,” Lopez said. “But my husband said, ‘It’s OK, he’ll make the repairs and bring it back to us.’”
It was the last time Lopez and Avalos saw the trailer.
“We had so many fights after that,” she said. “It would come up whenever we were driving and saw people running their businesses, selling food. I would blame him for it.”
Ochoa said that Lopez hadn’t paid for the trailer in full, and that she was making payments in installments. He said that he only retrieved the trailer after she told him it needed repairs. After seeing her negative public comments about him, Ochoa said that he decided to void the payment plan, and resolved to return her funds.
Lopez said she has not gotten the money back.
‘He’s been laughing at us’
In recent days, Ochoa has come under attack online by disgruntled customers — and his former mother-in-law.
Gisela Macias, 48, said that strangers began showing up at her Modesto home over the summer in search of Ochoa. They came, she said, to demand he pay them back for vehicles they’d purchased but never received. The visits were so frequent that she began recording interviews with some of the people to post on TikTok.
Ochoa said that the internet activism and local TV news stories have led to an exodus of clients, which has imperiled his ability to pay back customers like Estevez. He said that he can only make payments in $1,000 increments. “I know it’s not much,” he said, “but I have no business due to everything that’s being said about my company.”
He said he had to close 8A Food Trucks’ headquarters in Ceres because angry clients kept going there to confront him. But his braggadocio is still easy to find on the internet. A 2023 corrido about Ochoa titled “Por 8A Me Conocen” includes the boast that “business is steady and we’re never going to stop.”
“I fought hard and little by little grew the empire that I founded,” the singer trills.
It incenses Estevez. “He’s been laughing at us — the people who had dreams, who worked hard to save money to make those dreams a reality,” she said.
These days, the equipment that Estevez and her husband bought for their two trailers — ovens, cooking wares and more — is mothballed in their garage. It’s hard for her to enter the space without crying.
“That’s our dream right there, collecting dust,” she said.
Times researcher Scott Wilson and columnist Gustavo Arellano contributed to this report.
PEOPLEIan Staber recently joined SV Design in Beverly as the project manager for the firmâs commercial architecture team. Staber brings 13 years of experience ranging from architectural design, kitchen and cabinet design, project management, and facilities management, having worked for multiple firms between Connecticut, the Boston area and Colorado. As project manager at SV Design, he oversees several local, affordable housing developments and is working on multifamily and institutional projects from conception to completion. Staber has a bachelorâs degree and masterâs in architecture from Northeastern University. Most recently, he had worked with Seger Architects in Salem on projects ranging from office fit-outs, multifamilies, dormitories, and restaurants. He lives in Salem with his wife and two kids. On the side, he creates custom calligraphy designs and paints large scale murals as Esoteric Calligraffiti.
Lou DiFronzo, Matthew LaLone and Carole Wedge were recently elected to the board of directors for Northeast Arc, a nonprofit organization based in Danvers that serves children and adults with disabilities. DiFronzo, who lives in North Reading, is a partner at Seyfarth Shaw, LLP, and provides advisory legal services to his clients concentrating in commercial transactions and general outside counsel counseling to private companies. He has been involved in numerous complex financing and M&A transactions helping his clients to achieve their business objectives. LaLone, who lives in Melrose, is President of Administration and General Counsel at Energy North, one of the largest wholesale distributors of fuel in New England and Upstate New York. It also operates and owns 70 gas stations, convenience stores, car washes and food service locations as well as providing 45,000 households with heating oil and propane. Wedge, who lives in Concord, recently retired as a principal at Shepley Bulfinch, a national design firm with studios in Boston, Durham, Hartford, Houston, and Phoenix. As the former president and CEO, she is recognized for her leadership in the firmâs evolution and growth into an innovative organization with an open and diverse culture.
MILESTONESWilliam Raveis Real Estate recently won the National Top Brokerage Award at Inman Connect in Las Vegas. Since 1998, the Inman Innovator Awards have honored companies, individuals and new technology that increases productivity, efficiency and transparency for consumers and real estate professionals alike. Out of more than 150,000 real estate firms in the country, only a handful of companies meet the criteria to qualify. Inmanâs highest honor of âTop Brokerage 2023â was awarded to Raveis, which has been a real estate industry leader for 50 years. âWeâve been on a winning streak with number one for global, HGTV Ultimate House Hunt, best local agency awards, and now we are officially the number one real estate company in the United States,â said founder and CEO William âBillâ Raveis. âWe are very proud to be recognized and owe our outstanding success to the wonderful sales associates and employees at William Raveis.â The company has more than 4,500 sales associates, 400 employees, and over 140 office locations from Maine to Florida, with local offices in Marblehead and other North Shore communities.
The demise of Oakland’s only In-N-Out restaurant due to increasing crime could be the last straw for community members — and possibly a blessing in disguise for local leaders who’ve been pleading for help.
This week, In-N-Out announced that the burger joint near Hegenberger Road, a main route to and from the Oakland International Airport, would close its doors in March.
“Despite taking repeated steps to create safer conditions, our customers and associates are regularly victimized by car break-ins, property damage, theft and armed robberies,” Denny Warnick, chief operating officer for the company, said in a statement.
Some Oakland residents believe the crime problem persists at least in part because of Mayor Sheng Thao.
The group Oakland United to Recall Sheng Thao, led by a former Alameda County Superior Court judge whom Thao removed from the city’s Police Commission in June, has faulted the mayor for not declaring a state of emergency on crime, not replacing the police chief she fired in February, and missing the application deadline last year when Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office offered more than $276 million to cities and counties to fight retail thefts.
On Friday, the group published a notice of intent to recall and plans to start collecting signatures in early February for a petition to put a recall on the ballot. The mayor did not respond to the notice by the legal deadline, the group said on X, formerly Twitter, so the recall petition won’t include any response from Thao to the group’s criticisms.
“After missing the deadline to apply for a retail theft grant worth millions of dollars to assist Oakland in battling crime, she has now failed once again to respond to voters as to why she should not be recalled,” Seneca Scott, spokesperson for the group, said on X. “Mayor Thao must realize that there is no defense for the indefensible. The current state of Oakland is deplorable, and she is directly at fault.”
In a statement to The Times, Thao said, “As mayor, I have prioritized this critical gateway to Oakland and surged police presence and employed technology to deter and respond to criminal behavior.”
Thao said the added public safety resources have led to a reduction in property crimes along the Hegenberger corridor.
“However, more is necessary, and I will be working with regional and state leaders to protect this tourist gateway into Oakland,” she said.
Others in the city believe the current situation is largely the result of state or local laws that they believe impede enforcement, such as Proposition 47 from 2014 and Proposition 57 from 2016. In a statement, the Oakland Latino Chamber of Commerce said In-N-Out’s decision to close its Oakland outlet is sad, but departures like that are happening more and more in their communities.
“Many businesses small and large in the state are suffering from ongoing crime, and a lot of times the police have their hands tied and can’t do much because of a city ordinance or laws that end up protecting criminals instead of the victims,” the statement said.
The chamber said,”when the city, state leaders and prosecutors do very little to stop crime, this is the end result, businesses close and people start giving up.”
Several In-N-Out restaurants have been relocated over the course of its 75-year history. But the Oakland location will be the first the company has had to close.
“We feel the frequency and severity of the crimes being encountered by our customers and associates leave us no alternative,” Warnick said, despite the location being “busy and profitable.” The company can’t ask its customers or employees “to visit or work in an unsafe environment,” Warnick said.
The move drew headlines across the country, in part because it reinforced the argument by some conservative pundits that the liberal Bay Area is being destroyed by crime. The politics surrounding the closure became so intense, the largest group of In-N-Out aficionados on Facebook decided to ban posts about the Oakland closure, SFGate reported.
In an interview, Oakland City Councilmember Treva Reid conceded that her district is reeling from rampant crime, but said she regrets that this caused the company to close its doors. It wasn’t the first, as many local businesses have had to close their operations.
Reid has been dealing with the problem since she took office in January 2021.
What should be a welcoming economic hub for locals and tourists coming into the city from the airport is instead a place where “you have to look all around you when you’re pumping gas,” Reid said.
The community “lives in the midst of all the disparities that you can imagine [and] we carry the weight of that in this district,” she said.
For the last two years the councilmember has been calling on local, regional and state partners to create a regional interagency public safety task force because the current siloed approach isn’t addressing the problem.
The councilmember’s office has been wrestling with the issue from different angles, including adding more foot patrols, securing a commitment from the California Highway Patrol to dedicate overtime hours to the area, increasing efforts to suppress burglaries, and obtaining $1 million for community safety ambassadors.
Reid said the district saw a 40% reduction in crime, and yet “you’ll hear from businesses that it’s not enough.” The councilmember doesn’t contradict them.
“People are showing up in this corridor like [committing crimes] is their everyday job,” she said. “They’re clocking in and clocking out and wreaking havoc in between.”
In bimonthly meetings, Reid gets about 75 business owners at the table with department leaders, faith leaders, the neighborhood council, the police department and the sheriff’s department to figure out what can be done.
“We are a force multiplier of advocacy, to put a demand on our city and county local leaders to get the resources into this corridor to make it look clean and beautiful … and tackle this crime issue,” she said.
In 2023, auto burglaries in the area dropped 23% from the previous year’s total due in part to additional resources deployed by the Oakland Police Department from July through December.
Against this backdrop, Oakland’s 700-person police department has been operating with a vacuum at the top since last February, when Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong was fired for mishandling police misconduct cases. At the end of 2023, the Oakland Police Commission presented Thao with three potential candidates, and she rejected all of them.
Tim Gardner, co-founder of the online publication Oakland Report, criticized the decision to fire Armstrong, saying Armstrong fostered relationships and trust with the community. Thao, he said, has lost that trust.
He’s appealed to the City Council to establish a task force dedicated to improving public safety, with regular reports to the community to track its progress. The council didn’t bite.
“[Councilmember Reid] was the most engaged and responsive of the council members, all the others kind of wanted to avoid it,” he said. “Because to put together a task force that is dedicated to the safety problem, would kind of be an admission that you have a problem.”
Even though Gardner doesn’t live in Reid’s district, he said residents throughout the city need to hold their local leaders accountable to do more to ensure public safety. He said what affects one district, affects them all.
Reid is trying to create a different kind of task force, a regional one that would be held accountable for the situation in her community. In the short term, she said, many people are reaching out to help.
She said she hopes they’ll stay long after the spotlight cast by In-N-Out’s departure fades.
Dangerous winds continued to thrash Southern California on Sunday, causing some power outages in Los Angeles neighborhoods and triggering warnings that Interstate 5 near the Grapevine could be shut down because of snow and ice.
A wind advisory remained in effect across Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties until 7 p.m. Sunday, with gusts ranging from 25 mph to 50 mph across the region. Gusts of up 70 mph are possible in mountain areas, said meteorologist Robbie Munroe of the National Weather Service.
Wind advisories remained in effect in San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties until Sunday at noon, officials said. There is also a slight chance of rain Sunday night in the coastal and valley regions.
Temperatures across the region ranged from the low to mid-50s on Sunday and were expected to drop into the 40s overnight, according to the weather service. Valley areas could see temperatures dip to the low 30s, Munroe said.
“Take extra care with pets and plants,” he said.
The cold air has also brought snowfall, icy conditions and fog along Interstate 5 near the Grapevine, which has made for hazardous driving conditions, prompting authorities to warn drivers about delays and possible closure of the busy roadway. A crash involving dozens of vehicles on a foggy stretch of Interstate 5 near Bakersfield on Saturday left two people dead and nine others injured.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power reported power outages throughout its service area on Sunday affecting more than 2,500 customers, according to its website. Southern California Edison’s website reported 17 outages in Los Angeles County affecting more than 3,600 customers, and three outages affecting 384 customers in Orange County.
Although the latest cold front might remind Southern Californians of last year’s massive winter storm, Munroe said that current conditions decrease the odds of witnessing a similar white winter.
“This is a pretty cold system, but it lacks the combination of cold and moisture that we saw last year,” he said.
Ahead of statewide minimum wage increases for fast-food workers, hundreds of California Pizza Hut franchises announced cuts in their delivery services, laying off more than 1,100 drivers, according to federal and state filings.
The Pizza Hut locations, run by two different franchise operators, reported the change to their business models for restaurants from Orange to Stanislaus counties, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications filed to the California Employment Development Department.
The layoffs of more than 1,100 delivery drivers are expected to go into effect as soon as February, just weeks before the state’s $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers is set to go into effect.
The pay increase is the result of Assembly Bill 1228, which applies to California workers employed by any fast-food chain that has more than 60 locations in the United States. California’s minimum wage is currently $15.50 for all workers. Statewide, the increase is estimated to affect more than 500,000 workers. The legislation also created a council of representatives of workers and employers to partner with state agencies to recommend minimum standards for work hours and other working conditions. Restaurant owners opposed the legislation, arguing they couldn’t bear the increased costs without raising prices for their customers.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the new wage requirements were a factor in the move, but the notifications said the companies “made a business decision to eliminate first party delivery services and as a result the elimination of all delivery driver positions.”
Officials with the two Pizza Hut operators, PacPizza affiliates and Southern California Pizza Company, did not immediately respond to questions from The Times. The PacPizza operators include Southern PacPizza, CalPac Pizza II and Cal PacPizza.
The restaurants affected include those in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Sacramento, Tulare and Kern, among others.
The parent company of Pizza Hut, in a statement to Business Insider, said it was “aware of the recent changes to delivery services at certain franchise restaurants in California.”
“Our franchisees independently own and operate their restaurants in accordance with local market dynamics and comply with all federal, state, and local regulations while continuing to provide quality service and food to our customers via carryout and delivery,” according to the statement.
Surveillance video caught a driver crash straight through a smoke shop in Fullerton on Wednesday morning in an accident that police say was due to the motorist driving under the influence.
About 3 a.m., a white Mercedes-Benz pulled into the parking lot in front of Cobra Smoke Shop & Vape Store on Euclid Street. The driver seems to lose control of the vehicle as it accelerates into the glass storefront, through the store, and out the back, according to the video footage. Two individuals — the owner in the back of the store and a part-time worker at the cashier — were in the store at the time of the incident but were not injured, according to Fullerton police.
“In the video, you can see it seemed like she stopped and then she put her hands up and then the car just accelerated,” Seja Karim, 22, the manager of the family-owned smoke shop, said when describing the footage shot by a closed-circuit security camera. “I think she hit the gas instead of the brake and ran into the whole store.”
The owner came out from the back of the store, thinking the car crash was part of a robbery scheme and someone from the car would start stealing inventory, Karim said.
Fullerton police identified the sole occupant of the car as a 22-year-old woman from Santa Ana. Sgt. Ryan O’Neil, a Fullerton Police spokesperson, said the woman was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and taken to the Fullerton Police Department, where she was cited and released.
“The message we want to send is that during the holiday times, be safe and make good decisions when you go out drinking,” O’Neil said. “Line up a sober ride so you can get home safe to your family.”
As one of the few smoke shops in the area open 24/7, the shop is popular among customers even around midnight, Karim said. She said it was fortunate that no customers were in the store at the time of the car crash.
“Around that time, it gets pretty crowded, but thankfully, there was no one here at this store,” she said.
The car cleared the shelving cases but plowed into the “cigar room” where the shop keeps all of its cigars, some of which sell for $80 each, and a humidifier used to maintain a certain humidity level in the room. Karim estimates the loss to be over $100,000 from the cigar room alone.
Before workers had the chance to fix the gaping hole in the storefront, customers trickled into the smoke shop that same morning, stepping into the open-faced store to get their nicotine fix.
“We never closed,” she said. “We just cleaned up the area and got right back to business.”
After a long and tiring day at work, Mark headed to an East Hollywood movie theater that he called “always a fun, chill” time — and bought an eight-hour ticket.
At this cinema house, there were no movie posters touting “Barbie,” no IMAX screens, no buckets of buttery popcorn. This month’s curated selections include “Tiny & Tight Size Queens 2” and “Stepmom Seductions.”
Mark had come to the Tiki Theater: the last porn theater in Los Angeles.
It is a place that has outlasted more vaunted film houses such as the ArcLight Hollywood and its historic Cinerama Dome, which shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A cyclist rides past the entrance to the Tiki Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
“I just want to feel free here, watching something very primal,” said Mark, 34, during a recent screening at the Tiki.
“I think sex is beautiful, and I like sharing it with others — whether the energy is weird or not,” said Mark, who described himself as “gay with a side of bi” and declined to share his last name because, well, he had come to watch porn.
The Tiki, a red-tiled storefront theater next to a snack bar selling “natural juices,” is a Santa Monica Boulevard institution — an X-rated bulwark against online porn, videos that can be watched privately at home, and other factors that have all but rendered adult film theaters obsolete.
Three miles west on Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood’s Studs Theater — a straight and LGBTQ+ porn house in a 1940 building that once housed one of the legendary Pussycat theaters — shut down last year.
Now, Tiki is the last adult film theater in a city that once had scores of them, according to L.A. Department of Building and Safety permit records reviewed by The Times.
Open 24 hours a day, the Tiki beckons customers with signs in both English and Spanish: CINE XXX PARA ADULTOS and XXX ADULT THEATER.
Passersby in front of the Tiki Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Curious passersby sometimes peek inside. On a typical day, most shuffle away, a few linger, and only a handful stand at the ticket counter — right there on a bustling sidewalk — and pay for a ticket: $20 for four hours, $25 for eight hours and $30 for 12 hours.
No refunds.
Inside, patrons are welcomed by a darkness penetrated only by the light of the theater’s sole silver screen.
At the Tiki, the ringmaster of porn is Juan Martinez, the theater’s longtime manager.
Most days, the 59-year-old immigrant from El Salvador works 12-hour shifts in a tiny box office with a mini fridge and stacks of neatly organized porn DVDs. He has been working there for more than 15 years.
“Honestly, I don’t even need to work that much anymore,” Martinez said in Spanish. “I just need enough for my food. But I appreciate this place because it was one of the places where I started out when I came to the United States.”
Signs inform patrons on the front doors to the Tiki Theater.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The hardcore sex and nudity on screen do not faze him, he said. Martinez described himself as a romantic — even though he recently had to break up with a girlfriend because her mom did not like his job.
Martinez is Tiki’s projectionist, maintenance worker — and bouncer, if need be. He also programs Tiki’s 24/7 screenings, which, as advertised by the black signs taped on the outside hallway, feature “3 new movies, very recent” every day.
“I have a lot of appreciation for this place,” Martinez said. “I go about maintaining it, fixing everything, whether it’s the plumbing, electricity. I adjust the cameras, I take care of everything. I do it like it’s something personal. I do it with lots of care.”
Juan Martinez, the manager of the Tiki Theater, has worked at the establishment for more than 15 years.
(Juan Martinez)
Martinez’s early life hardly would have suggested a future at the Tiki. In his homeland, Martinez studied health and medicine.
The Salvadoran military drafted him at 17, enlisting him as a battlefield nurse during the country’s grueling civil war.
Martinez said he retrieved drowned bodies from rivers and corpses booby-trapped with bombs. He said guerrillas hid explosives within tree branches, waiting for the moment soldiers would touch them.
“Boom! Boom! Boom! And people would die,” Martinez recalled. “Sometimes, I saw people without eyes, without hands.”
At 19, Martinez left the military. He immigrated to the United States with his two sisters and younger brother.
Before he found work at the Tiki, he was a busboy at a Thai barbecue restaurant, a maintenance worker at the Hollywood Cabaret, another now-defunct porn theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Now, he uses his Tiki earnings to help build a home for a granddaughter in Santa Clarita.
As he told his life story from the box office, the groans and awkward dialogue of a porno could be heard coming from the theater. Martinez paused his story as a man approached the ticket stand.
Tiki Theater manager Juan Martinez is pictured at age 20, one year after he immigrated to Los Angeles from El Salvador.
(Juan Martinez)
Martinez talks to customers through an opaque window. Theatergoers can’t see him, nor can he really see them.
The man slid a crisp $25 into the window’s deal tray.
“Hello,” the customer said. “How are you?”
“Good, how many hours?” Martinez replied.
“Eight.”
The customer grabbed the ticket from Martinez’s tan hands.
From his side of the window, Martinez removed the rod that serves as the outdoor turnstile, allowing the man to step inside, into the darkness.
The Tiki’s single viewing room, about the size of four parking spaces put together, has black-painted walls and six rows of cushioned leather seats. It can seat about 30 people.
An adult film on the screen inside the Tiki Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Men tend to sit toward the back, watching the main screen while a smaller television propped in the room’s upper right corner consecutively plays a second porn film.
Among the patrons on a recent weekday was Mario Lopez, visiting for the first time after a friend recommended it. Lopez, 37, was unimpressed. He bought a four-hour ticket but said he probably wouldn’t return.
“It wasn’t what I thought it would be,” Lopez said in Spanish with a laugh. He expected “más ambiente” — more ambiance. Nevertheless, he stayed for over an hour because he struck up a conversation with Luis Arjeta, another customer.
Arjeta, 51, has been frequenting the Tiki for five years. He used to come up to five times a week, but this was his first visit in about three months.
“I like the type of movies they show here,” said Arjeta, who bought a 12-hour ticket. He likes the longer tickets — eight and 12 hours — because they allow reentry and he can enter and leave at his own discretion during the allotted time period.
Arjeta, who is, like Martinez, a Salvadoran immigrant, described Tiki as “a refuge.”
“What happens when police shut down places like these?” Arjeta said in Spanish. “These are places that grant us the opportunity to be more comfortable.”
Back in the 1970s and ’80s, there were a lot more places like the Tiki in Los Angeles.
With names like Copenhagen Adult Cinema, The Cave, Sin-O-Rama (which, in a 1977 advertisement in The Times, said customers could “Get your sex education here”), and more, these adult theaters were a common sight in Hollywood and East Hollywood.
“There used to be a lot more of them,” said Kim Cooper of Esotouric, a tour company that advocates for historic preservation and public policy. “And clearly with the spread of porn onto people’s phones, it really changed the way that people perceive that sort of material.”
An employee mans the ticket booth at the Tiki Theater.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Before video cassette recorders became common in American households in the latter half of the 20th century, making pornography viewable in the privacy of one’s home, those who wanted to see sexual content had to go into public spaces to view it.
“That has now become part of American history and going there is an act of nostalgia,” Cooper said, “but it’s also showing that there’s always been a need for this type of content.”
Construction of the Metro Red Line and large-scale redevelopment in the 1990s helped transform seedy Hollywood streets that had become known for their drugs, prostitution and porn purveyors into round-the-clock tourist destinations.
Richard Schave, who co-runs Esotouric with Cooper, his wife, said the sex shops near Hollywood and Western “are all really important spaces that are all gone.”
All but Tiki.
“Tiki is the real deal,” Cooper said. “You walk in there, you’re part of something that’s very old. I think it’s kind of magical.”
Though Tiki is the last porn theater standing, that doesn’t mean it’s a stranger to change.
Originally known as the Mini Theater in the early 1970s, it welcomed nude performers to its stage. Now, that stage is occupied by cleaning supplies.
Tiki once had an iconic sign: a bright-red marquee with a palm tree, a totem pole, and the words: “Tiki Theater Xymposium / ADULT XXX LIVE NAKED GIRLS.”
It’s unclear, Cooper said, when it was torn down.
“One day, we go by, and we were like, ‘What just happened?’” Cooper said. “This beautiful thing, this jewel of the city.”
The Tiki Theater is believed to be the last porn theater in Los Angeles.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
“It had such a Polynesian exotic look to it,” Willard said. “I say, ‘Maybe there’s hula dancers in here. Maybe there’s mai tais.’ I went in and I realized I was the only one awake and sober and conscious.”
He also tweeted: “lousy film, but theater would make a terrific racquetball court.”
Nowadays, a sign outside the theater warns: “Movie theater viewed by LAPD.”
The Los Angeles Police Department “doesn’t have any cameras in that area and did not post that sign,” said Capt. Kelly Muniz, an LAPD spokeswoman. “That sign was likely posted by management or the property owner.”
And in somewhat fractured Spanish, the theater also used to have handwritten signs saying smoking and drinking were prohibited and warned patrons: “No habran el pantalon or el zipper.” Don’t open your pants or the zipper.
Willard said at the time that he thought porn theaters no longer existed.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Mark, the recent customer, more than a decade later.
“I always wonder how these places survive,” he said.
As he pondered the Tiki’s future, Mark’s eyes kept drifting to the screen, to a tight shot of actors’ private parts.
“I’m too distracted by what’s happening on the screen,” he said, “to share any last words.”
In response to last winter’s abnormally high gas bills, the Southern California Gas Co. has launched a text-messaging service that aims to alert customers so they can adjust their gas and energy use accordingly.
At the time, a combination of out-of-state natural gas supply constraints, early cold weather conditions and low storage inventories in the western region drove up commodity prices, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
To give customers a direct notice of potential increases in the future, SoCalGas recently created the Natural Gas Price Notice. This is an alternative way customers can be alerted, other methods include through email, mail correspondence and the utility’s website.
Don Widjaja, the service provider’s vice president for customer solutions, said people are used to getting important messages through their cellphones.
“We feel that this is an opportunity to meet the customer where they are and the expectation is, a text message alert is important and it’ll catch your attention,” he said.
Once the customers have the information, they can make an informed decision about their gas usage, especially during a seasonal billing increase, Widjaja said.
The optional notification system will send customers a text message when there is a 20% or more increase in the monthly natural gas commodity cost, which affects a portion of the bill.
The alert will not notify customers when their increased usage leads to a higher bill. Customers who wish to track their usage can do so from their online account.
If there is a need to send out the alert, it will be between December and March 2024.
Customers can sign up for the text alert through their online SoCalGas account.
Customers who are looking to save energy can start by lowering the temperature on their thermostat. Pacific Gas & Electric says customers can decrease their bill by about 2% for each degree that the temperature is lowered on the thermostat. Turning down the temperature from 70 to 65 degrees, for example, saves about 10%.
Cold showers in the winter aren’t ideal but cold water uses less energy, according to Widjaja. That also applies to doing laundry with cold water.
As Southern California enters the winter season next month, the crisp and anticipated 50-degree weather makes it difficult for people not to turn on their wall heater or furnace.
Instead of using the natural gas-powered wall heater, people can opt to use a space heater instead.
To avoid using the heater for long periods of time, retain the heat in the house by ensuring any gaps or cracks are sealed.
The Natural Resources Defense Council advises that people check their baseboards and attic hatches for openings that can be sealed to make the living space less drafty.
Wind can also get in through the front door if the weather-stripping is worn. If the weather-stripping can’t be replaced, cover the opened space with a towel or blanket.
It’s late 1937, and you’re F. Scott Fitzgerald, the once-celebrated writer, and you’re getting paid $1,000 a week, which, especially during the Depression, and even for the gilded coffers of MGM, isn’t toy money.
From your place at the Garden of Allah apartments on Sunset, in what is now West Hollywood, you might decide to amble the couple of miles to Hollywood Boulevard, to the Stanley Rose Book Shop, knuckled right up against Musso and Frank. There, you might find other scribblers, with names like Saroyan and Steinbeck, to share a convivial drink nearby; some of Hollywood Boulevard’s many bookshops are open almost as late as the bars.
Or you’re Ray Bradbury, and on a late April day in 1946 — April the 24th, if you must know — you head downtown, to Booksellers Row, centered on 6th Street between Hill and Figueroa. You’d get there by bus or Red Car, or on your bicycle, because you do not drive, not even one single block, not since you saw that gory accident about 10 years earlier.
You walk into Fowler Brothers bookstore, which opened in 1888 as a church supply shop, and by the time it would close its doors for good in 1994, it was the oldest surviving bookstore in the city. On that day, a brilliant and fetching book clerk named Maggie McClure caught his attention; Bradbury caught hers because she thought he was shoplifting books into his vast trench coat. They married not quite 18 months later.
L.A. is a universe where you can twinkle in the galaxy of your choosing — farming, tech, academia, movies, and, for much of the 20th century, bookshops. Whole solar systems of bookstores — new, used, rare, secondhand, antiquarian — clustered in certain cities: in Glendale, along Brand Boulevard; on Ventura Boulevard in the Valley; in Pasadena, on Colorado Boulevard, from Old Town to Vroman’s, still the oldest book-seller in Southern California; on and near Hollywood Boulevard; in Long Beach, orbiting around the legendary Acres of Books, founded the year after the 1933 earthquake, with miles of shelves where Bradbury went to shop, even though the science fiction section bore the label “screwball aisle.”
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L.A. in the 1920s and ‘30s was beginning to shake off its reputation for hayseed Babbittry, or at least to acquire a critical mass of urban sophisticates possessing expansive tastes and sometimes the wallets to indulge them. The Zamorano Club, a men’s group named for the man who brought the first printing press to California, welcomed bibliophiles, oenophiles, foodies, collectors, art patrons, conversationalists, and tastemakers. Colleges and universities needed libraries to match the reputations they wanted to attain — and bought accordingly.
The movie studios needed research libraries so directors and producers could find out what Daniel Boone wore and what Cleopatra ate, and those libraries had huge budgets and farsighted librarians. California historian Kevin Starr once wrote that Jake Zeitlin — a pioneering rare-book seller and publisher — calculated that over 20 years, MGM alone spent $1 million bulking up its library.
Department stores ran book departments as big as modern-day bookstores, and in its column “Gossip of the Book World,” The Times let readers know when authors were due in town for book signings. Amelia Earhart would be at Robinson’s on Aug. 8, 1932, signing copies of her book “The Fun of It,” and as a bonus, her Lockheed-Vega plane had been dismantled, brought downtown from Burbank, and reassembled right in the store.
If you’ve seen the great 1946 L.A. noir film “The Big Sleep” — and if you haven’t, shame on you, go watch it at once, after you’ve finished reading this — one scene may have eluded your notice: Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe walks out of one bookstore and heads right across the street to another, in search of a particular book, just as a rainstorm gears up. It is the rainstorm, not two neighboring bookstores, that was the Los Angeles rarity.
Even without today’s enticements of fluffy coffees and lounging sofas, book lovers of yore managed to endure the rigors of strolling from store to store in these neighborhoods. And, like moons to the bigger stores’ planets, specialty bookshops found bibliophiles’ markets for volumes about art, fitness, science, ethnic interests, photography, erotica, comics, sports, mystery and horror, architecture, and the spiritual. The glorious Bodhi Tree on Melrose Avenue was founded in the groovy year of 1970, extolled by Shirley MacLaine’s autobiography in the 1980s, and put out of business in 2011 by the usual suspects: online book sales and metaphysical books going mainstream in chain bookstores. The Thomas Bros., makers and sellers of those seminal Southern California map guides, once had stores in Los Angeles and in Long Beach — killed off by GPS and by a consequent public indifference to knowing all by yourself which way is north.
Beyond its Hollywood mother ship, Pickwick Books, in its flush years, operated branches in Canoga Park, Costa Mesa, San Diego, San Bernardino, Bakersfield, Montclair and on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Dutton’s books reached readers in North Hollywood and Brentwood. The Martindale’s chain flourished in Century City, Santa Monica, the Wilshire District and in Beverly Hills, where its clientele was so flossy that the store carried Paris Match and an Arabian-horse magazine.
Fowler Brothers’ last move was to 7th Street, among the department stores and high-end shops. Fowler Brothers had sold books to Charles Lindbergh, Bobby Kennedy, John Philip Sousa, Irving Stone and of course Ray Bradbury. Marie Leong worked there for something like 25 years, full- and part time, and loved it partly because the owners were a family, and so was the feeling of the store; “when I wanted to do something with my daughter, like something at school, they’d let me come in late or leave early — so nice.”
Fowler Brothers’ location seemed ideal. Judges and jurors came in on their lunch breaks, as did workers in need of office supplies. Weekends, downtown was still a desert, but the weekdays were hopping. And then L.A. started digging up the street for a subway. Customers couldn’t navigate their way through the chaotic breaks in the street and stopped coming. The sidewalk out front collapsed from a construction leak. “My boss said, ‘I’ve had enough; we have to close this,’ ” Leong remembered. And in March 1994, that was the end. Ray Bradbury made a swan-song visit on the last day.
Online book shopping tends to herd you further and further down a rabbit hole of your known tastes and shopping habits. Wandering through a real bookstore promises the element of surprise, and lets you discover and cultivate interests you never knew you had.
A vintage postcard from Patt Morrison’s collection shows the Spell occult bookstore in Torrance. Its Pacific Coast Highway address is today home to a strip mall with an Italian restaurant, a liquor store and a massage parlor.
Phil Mason ran a used bookshop on Western Avenue, marked by a distinctive red door. Magnificent Montague shopped there often, on the lookout to add to his enormous archive of black Americana books and ephemera. Montague was the Los Angeles R&B disc jockey whose joyous catchphrase for some especially fabulous recording was “Burn, baby, burn!” In 1965, young men and women took up Montague’s chant with a different meaning during the Watts riots.
Mason once assured me that he was the only registered monarchist on the L.A. County voter rolls. After he died, his books were sold off at a dollar each. I made two trips there, buying all that my yellow Civic hatchback could hold, and slowly driving my treasures home.
In Pasadena, there’s a boutique coffee place, part of a chain, where Prufrock Books once stood. As a poor student, I yearned after its treasures and still wonder what became of a book I coveted fiercely, one whose title I’ve forgotten but which had been signed by all of the Hollywood Ten.
As happens so often, just when something has almost vanished, we rediscover its virtues. So it promises to be these days, with new independent bookstores bursting upon us in Pasadena, Santa Monica, Highland Park. Barnes & Noble, originally the superstore scourge of independents, must be hoping for a joyous and prosperous welcome when it returns to Santa Monica next year.
It’s a delight to see all of these, of course, but the city can’t ever regain the deep bench of booksellers so many had before the Internet Age. Certainly since then, L.A. has registered often, by many metrics, as the biggest book-buying market in the nation, undented by the arch mockery from that 212 island.
We have serious readers now, as we had before — and we had the serious antiquarian bookshops for them and for serious collectors. In 1969, The Times described the ambience of Zeitlin and his partner’s legendary rare bookshop in a red barn on La Cienega as “that of a cathedral or a museum, or at least a temple for culture with a capital ‘c.’ ” Just a few years before he died, in 1987, Zeitlin sold 144 illuminated manuscripts, some dating to the 700s, to the Getty Museum for $30 million.
Their store names are still redolent of the aroma of fine books and manuscripts, of old paper and ink and leather on their vanished shelves: Caravan; Argonaut; Heritage; Aquarian Book Shop, the oldest Black bookstore in town. A few, like Heritage books and Michael R. Thompson, still do business, but by appointment only, on private premises.
And then we come to Dawson’s, once the oldest bookstore in the city. Michael Dawson is a third-generation Los Angeles bookseller from the celebrated antiquarian book and photography sellers. It’s been a family business since 1905, and still is, with appointment clients only since the Larchmont store closed in 2010. In those great ages of L.A. bookshops, “every bookseller sort of knew each other. There was the [Larry Edmunds] film bookshop [still on Hollywood Boulevard.] I worked for Heritage bookshop in the late ‘70s before they moved to La Cienega, then to Melrose, then closed. It was a very active community.”
Rare booksellers published catalogs of their treasures and sent them to their mailing lists of collectors. Collectors came to them with wish lists for the booksellers to track down.
A vintage postcard from Patt Morrison’s collection shows Bethany Bookstore on Los Feliz Boulevard in Atwater Village. Today the building is home to an Indian restaurant and grocery.
And then, said Dawson: “The thing that was really hard for the out-of-print book trade was the advent of the internet.” Sites like AbeBooks made it easy for people who “were looking for books at the best possible price. That made bricks-and-mortar shops less competitive.” The online sellers didn’t have to factor in overhead or as many employees, for example.
In the pre-internet age, “that one book you wanted that was out of print, that you might have gone to Chevalier to find — now you can find a hundred copies online instantly and you pick the cheapest one.” Dawson’s got online early, “and for about two years there was an uptick in our business. We were selling about $15,000 a month.” Then came a downturn, as more people calling themselves booksellers appeared online — “You just need a room and a hundred books. The value of everything just declined.”
Even rare books declined in value, because they might not have been so rare after all. “Some things you thought were always going to hold their value, but you go online and you see 10 copies of something you used to consider rare,” he said.
Dawson’s buyers “were always more or less collectors,” who “really valued the book as an object, not just for information.” He hopes — just a hope, mind you — that there’s a glimmer of this in people who grew up with the internet as their bookstore. He hears anecdotally that “they are intrigued by the book as an object. They enjoy the tactility of it. They don’t just want an e-book.” Similar to the people buying vinyl records again.
But there just aren’t many shops like Dawson’s around for them anymore. “I have thoughts about 30 or 40 years from now, people would pay money — like a cigar bar — for a place where you could go sit in an armchair and take an 18th century book off the shelf, one bound in leather, with rag paper — and live the experience of being in a rare bookshop.”
For that is the kind of thing that a bookstore must offer these days to survive — like downtown’s Last Bookstore’s slumber parties: not just a book, but a book experience.
Explaining L.A. With Patt Morrison
Los Angeles is a complex place. In this weekly feature, Patt Morrison is explaining how it works, its history and its culture.
CUPERTINO, CA – SEPTEMBER 12: An attendee looks at a new iPhone X during an Apple special event at … [+] the Steve Jobs Theatre on the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
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When creating a website or developing marketing materials for yourself, a starting point might seem to be listing your awards and accomplishments. You likely have admirable credentials and skills that could be noted. If you have a long track record or experience, it could seem fitting to include these too.
While these are all valid points, individuals who see these resources may not be strongly attached to statements that focus on you. As visitors click on to your website, they might only glance at the achievements you have listed there. They’re more likely to look for material that speaks to them.
That’s why, when building a personal brand, I always encourage professionals to think about their customers and target audience first. Once you understand what they’re looking for, you can address their needs. You’ll be able to design solutions that resolve their challenges and help them improve their lives or businesses.
Follow these steps to create a personal brand that helps others connect to you.
1. Walk in Your Customer’s Shoes
I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the work of Donald Miller, bestselling author of “Building a Story Brand,” through my coach Rod Santomassimo, founder of the Massimo Group. Miller emphasizes the importance of understanding the problems you are helping your customers solve. Instead of focusing solely on showcasing your strengths, direct your attention to your customers and their needs.
2. Create Customer Avatars
Before I sat down to build my own personal website, JamesNelson.com, I spent ample time thinking about the audience. I created avatars who represented the types of visitors who would likely be interested in the site. I did the same during the process of writing my book, “The Insider’s Edge to Real Estate Investing.” It was important to know who the book was for and why they would choose it. The audience included college students and individuals who were just starting to learn about real estate and think about making their first investment. It also consisted of veteran real estate investors who might be looking to step up their game. Addressing multiple audiences can work, as long as you have meaningful messages for each one.
3. Craft A Compelling Value Proposition
Spend some time thinking about the value you provide to your customers. You’ll want to clearly define your value proposition and highlight how your products or services solve your customer’s pain points. Focus on the benefits they will gain by connecting with you. My speaking coach, Joel Weldon, is quick to note that the audience is always more interested in what’s in it for them as opposed to hearing about you. The more your marketing materials can speak to those points, the better.
4. Emphasize How They Can Improve
As you address your customer’s challenges and provide solutions, be sure to include how their lives or businesses will change. On your website or other promotions, help individuals see what they’ll be able to accomplish if they connect with you. Perhaps they’ll be able to increase their savings, build a portfolio, or reduce the length of time they need to accomplish tasks. If the customer can envision themselves in a new way, they may be more likely to reach out for what you’re offering.
5. Establish Yourself As The Expert
As you share resources, focus on providing the information your target audience is hoping to find. If you can give them what they’re looking for, they’ll start seeing you as an individual who can help solve their problems. The chances of them turning to you the next time they need a solution will increase as well.
Once you place yourself in the journey of a consumer, you’ll be able to connect with them and provide a product or service that helps them solve their problems. As you do so, think of the values you stand for, and how that sets you apart from competitors. The more you can reach customers on an emotional level and establish yourself as an expert, the more you’ll grow your network and future business opportunities.
The strongest Santa Ana wind event of the season is forecast to increase the risk of wildfire danger across Southern California, as well as the potential for power shutoffs.
Fire weather conditions are forecast from late Saturday through Monday night due to Santa Ana winds along with low humidity, according to the National Weather Service. A fire weather watch was issued for Los Angeles and Ventura counties, warning of dry conditions in the region and widespread single-digit humidity. The strongest winds are expected Sunday, when gusts of 35-50 mph will be common, with isolated gusts of up to 60 mph in mountain and foothill locations.
Dry and breezy offshore winds will last into Tuesday, which could extend critical fire weather conditions across L.A.
In Northern California, the weather service also issued a red flag warning for portions of the Bay Area for Saturday and Sunday, starting earlier for elevations above 1,000 feet. Gusty offshore winds and relative low humidity will increase critical fire weather conditions for the North Bay, East Bay, Santa Clara hills and mountains and the San Mateo coast.
Southern California Edison’s team notified customers that the high winds and dry vegetation could increase the possibility of Public Safety Power Shutoffs in order to keep communities safe from fires that are ignited by downed power lines.
“We know that shutoffs significantly affect our customer’s daily lives and create hardships for them,” officials said in the announcement. “We’re working to limit the scope of possible shutoffs to only the areas that are facing the highest threat of wildfire and we are taking actions to keep our customers informed.”
The utility has notified 150,240 customers that they could be subject to shutoffs from Sunday until Tuesday. If a shutoff is necessary, the utility will try to restore powers to customers as soon as it’s deemed safe and after crews have inspected power lines.
Santa Anas are easterly winds that develop due to high pressure over the Great Basin area in Utah and Nevada and pass into Southern California. They warm up and accelerate as they pass over the mountains, resulting in strong gusts through the mountain and valley regions.
Californians can keep their power on during the blackouts by buying a backup generator, installing solar panels or powering their homes with electric vehicles.
The driver of a BMW plowed through a tobacco shop in Brea on Thursday afternoon, knocking down display shelves and narrowly missing a customer and a shop employee.
A customer leaning on the counter and an employee behind the register were hit by debris when the black BMW 440i crashed through the front door, according to surveillance camera video obtained by OnSceneTV. No one appeared to be directly hit by the car.
When the car came to a stop, the female driver can be seen rolling down her window and peering out at the carnage around the vehicle, according to the video. She then appears to try to put the vehicle in reverse.
Police told OnSceneTV the driver was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and the building was deemed unsafe by a city building inspector. The Brea Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday morning.
Store employee Ansh Sedh said he believes the driver was trying to pull into a parking spot when she drove into the tobacco shop. He said the car pressed a display into his leg.
“I tried to step back as much as possible but there’s only two or three feet of space. She pushed everything onto me,” Sedh said outside the shop shortly after the crash. “I didn’t realize I was hurt until the adrenaline went down.”
Sedh explained that a friend who was in the shop was taken to the hospital with a minor injury to his leg.
Store owner Kevin Salma was stunned by how quickly it happened.
“It’s crazy. A car slammed into the shop. Everything happened in a quick second,” Salma told OnSceneTV. “You see this in the movies only.”
Salma said a customer in the shop was hurt, but he didn’t know if the driver was injured in the crash.
/EIN News/ — Hacienda Heights, California, March 20, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Burning Daily is excited to announce its new range of CBD as well as Hemp products to its online customers. Burning Daily is a leading provider of the most trusted and highest-quality hemp and CBD-based products. Their mission is to provide customers with the best and safest cannabidiol or CBD products and services possible and committed to providing customers with an enjoyable, safe, and responsible experience.
Leading Online Hemp Retailer
Founded by Dennis Sanders, Burning Daily has grown into a leading online retailer of hemp products such as Delta-8, Delta-10, THC-O, and HHC.
CBD Trends
According to recent studies, one in three American adults has tried some type of CBD product.
Those numbers are even higher among younger generations, especially millennials. The rise in popularity of these products has also led to a significant influx of producers and providers claiming to sell high-quality and safe products, while that’s not always the case.
In fact, CBD product sales in the United States were estimated around $4.17 billion in 2022. By 2026, that same study estimates CBD product sales are expected to reach roughly $4.23 billion in value. Finding a trusted source for quality and safe CBD products, like Burning Daily is the key to having a positive experience.
