The early 1980s Los Angeles of my childhood always felt like a place where you could brush against greatness and not even recognize it.
Take the strange, faceless building at Melrose and Sycamore avenues, just up from the house where I grew up. It stood apart from the Melrose Avenue hodgepodge, which included an auto body shop, an old bookstore famous for selling movie scripts, and a trendy boutique that sold vintage fedoras and marked the beginning of Melrose’s turn as a fashion mecca.
In a street filled with signage screaming for your attention (“THOUSANDS OF BOOKS,” yelled the bookseller), that corner lot had nothing. Just two concrete-plastered boxes seemingly closed off to the world. The only hint of life was a tree growing from what appeared to be some kind of courtyard hidden from view. I passed by all the time — sneaking a Chunky bar at the corner liquor store, grabbing an ice cream cone from Baskin-Robbins.
I didn’t give the building a second thought until my best friend and I started a little weekly newspaper we photocopied for 3½ cents a copy from a shop a few doors away. Jack and I hit up Melrose merchants to buy ads (usually just their business card), and a few agreed to help these teenage publishing tycoons. Because of this, cracking the code of that strange little building became a brief obsession. One day, I found a door around the side and knocked. No answer. So I left a copy of our paper and returned a few days later. No luck. So I gave up. Why was I wasting my time with this piece of junk?
It took another 15 years to learn that the concrete box I so easily dismissed is one of L.A. architectural treasures. It is called the Danziger Studio and was one of architect Frank Gehry’s first L.A. commissions.
Even back in the 1960s, it was hailed as something special. Architecture critic Reyner Banham called it a brilliant elevation of the “stucco box” so ubiquitous around the city. As it turned out, the surface was not concrete but “a gray rough stucco of the type sprayed onto freeway overpasses. Gehry had to learn the decidedly unconventional technique himself,” according to the Los Angeles Conservancy.
A vintage postcard from the collection of L.A. Times staff writer Patt Morrison shows a May Co. department store and its clean lines.
In his obituary for Gehry, Christopher Hawthorne described the studio as a “spare, even self-effacing stucco box, plain outside and filled with light and surprising spatial complexity inside.” The building “looked Modern but also suggested sympathy for the postwar visual chaos of L.A. evident in the work of artists such as Ed Ruscha and David Hockney.”
I discovered the provenance of the hidden gem in the 1990s, when Gehry had reached “starchitect” status with his shape-shifting museum in Bilbao, Spain, and just before he gained legend status for L.A.’s Disney Hall. The Danzinger Studio shared none of those over-the-top designs. But that made me more impressed. I started driving by whenever I was in the neighborhood, slowing down in hopes of understanding what made it great. One day, I even gave it a walk-around, assuming it must look a lot better inside. (It turns out it does.)
I came to appreciate its beauty and grace — as well as something much larger about L.A. design. Suddenly, my idea of great architecture broadened beyond the ornate church, grand mansion, distinctive Spanish Colonial or gleaming glass skyscrapers like the Westin Bonaventure hotel. I gained a respect for the simplicity of design and function over style, like a cute working-class courtyard apartment, the streamlined simplicity of a May Co. department store and even the crazed efficiency of a mini-mall.
Plaza Cienega is in the Beverly Grove area of Los Angeles.
(Google street view)
I have wondered whether I would have valued the Danziger Studio had it not been designed by Gehry. But it didn’t matter, because this discovery gave me the confidence to have my own, sometimes unpopular, L.A. opinions. I am in the minority, for example, in loving the much-derided 1960s brown-box addition to the old Times Mirror Square complex just as much as the landmark Art Deco original. And sorry, the mini-mall at 3rd Street and La Cienega Boulevard is one of my favorite L.A. buildings, period.
The car wash hadn’t yet opened for the day, but its owner was already on edge.
He scanned the street for law enforcement vehicles and hit refresh on a crowdsourced map that showed recent immigration sweeps.
“They were busy in our area yesterday,” he warned his employees. “Be careful.”
But except for staying home, there were few precautions that the workers, mostly men from Mexico, could take.
The business is located along one of L.A.’s busiest thoroughfares. Workers are exposed to the street as they scrub, wax and buff the parade of vehicles that streams in between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m., seven days a week.
Immigration agents descended on the business multiple times this summer as part of a broader campaign against L.A. car washes. Masked men hauled away around a dozen workers, most of whom were swiftly deported. The Times is not identifying the business, the owner or the workers.
The raids had spooked remaining employees — and many had stopped showing up to work. The replacements the owner hired were mostly other immigrants who showed him Social Security cards that he hoped were legitimate.
Still, it was an open secret that the car wash industry, which paid low wages for back-breaking labor, largely attracted people without legal status.
“Americans don’t want to do this work,” the owner said.
After the raids, he had been forced to close for stretches during the typically lucrative summer months. He was now operating normally again, but sales were down, he had maxed out his credit cards and he was unsure whether his business would survive. Clients — frightened by the raids — were staying away.
“My target is to pay the rent, pay the insurance and pay the guys,” the owner told his manager as they sipped coffee in the early morning November chill and waited for their first customer. “That’s it.”
The manager, also an immigrant from Mexico, nodded. He was juggling his boss’ concerns with personal ones. He and his team had all seen friends, relatives and co-workers vanish in immigration raids. He left home each morning wondering whether he would return in the evening.
The mood at the car wash had once been lighthearted, with employees joking as they sprayed down cars and polished windows. Now everybody, the manager included, kept one eye on the street as they worked. “We say we’re OK,” he said. “But we’re all scared.”
A few minutes before 7 a.m., a BMW sedan pulled in for a wash. The manager flipped on the vacuum and said a prayer.
“Protect me. Protect my colleagues. And protect the place I work.”
The owner was born abroad but moved to Los Angeles after winning the U.S. green card lottery.
He used his life savings to buy the car wash, which at the time seemed like a sound investment. There are some 36 million vehicles in California. And in Los Angeles, at least for most of the year, people can’t rely on rainfall to keep them clean.
His business already took a major financial hit this year during the L.A. wildfires, which filled the air with smoke and ash. Customers didn’t bother to clean cars that they knew would get dirty again.
Then came President Trump, who promised to deport record numbers of migrants.
I’m not brave. I need the work
— Car wash employee
Previous administrations had focused on expelling immigrants who had committed crimes. But federal agents, under pressure to meet arrest quotas, have vastly widened their net, targeting public-facing workplaces that pay low wages.
Car wash employees — along with street vendors, day laborers, farmworkers and gardeners — have become low-hanging fruit. At least 340 people have been detained in raids on 100 car washes across Southern California since June, according to the CLEAN Car Wash Worker Center, which advocates for workers in the industry.
The owner was shocked when agents toting rifles and dressed in bulletproof vests first stormed his business, blocking exits with their vehicles and handcuffing employees without ever showing a search warrant.
“It was a kidnapping,” he said. “It felt like we were in Afghanistan or Iraq, not in the middle of Los Angeles.”
Some of the men that the agents dragged away in that raid and subsequent ones had been living in the U.S. for decades. Many were fathers of American children.
The manager was racked with survivor’s guilt. He was from the same small town in Mexico as one of the men who was detained and later deported. Another worker taken by agents had been hired the same morning as the raid.
That’s when many employees stopped showing up. One stayed home for almost a month straight, surviving on groceries his friends and family brought to his apartment.
But eventually that employee — and his brother — returned to the car wash. “I’m not brave,” the brother said. “I need the work.”
The brother had been in the country for nearly 25 years and had three U.S.-born children, one of whom had served as a Marine.
He had toiled at car washes the whole time — crouching to scrub tires, stretching to dry roofs and returning home each night with aching heels and knots in his neck. Less punishing industries weren’t an option for somebody without valid work documents, he said, especially in the Trump era.
He had been at the car wash during one of the raids, and had avoided being detained only when the owner stepped in front of him and demanded agents speak to him first.
The man said he had made peace with the idea that his time in the U.S. might come to an end. “At least my children are grown,” he said.
The two brothers were working this brisk November day, hand-drying Audis, Mercedes and a classic Porsche. They earned a little over minimum wage, and got to keep most of their tips.
Their bosses had told them that if immigration agents returned, the workers should consider locking themselves inside the cars that they were cleaning. “Don’t run,” the manager said. “They’ll only chase.”
At the cash register, the cashier watched a website that tracked Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions around the region. So far, there was no activity nearby.
She had been present during the immigration sweeps, and was still mad at herself for not doing more to stop agents from taking her co-workers. “You think you’re gonna stand up to them, but it’s different when it happens,” she said. “I was like a deer in the headlights.”
As workers cleaned his Toyota Camry, a retired history professor waited on a bench, reading a biography of Ulysses S. Grant. The ICE raids had scared some clients away, but had prompted others to express their support. He said he had made a point to patronize the business because he was angry at the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“They’re not getting the worst of the worst, they’re getting the easiest,” he said.
He noted that a friend of his — a Latino born in the U.S. — now carried a copy of his birth certificate. Just in case.
“That’s not the America I grew up in,” the customer said.
The owner of the car wash, too, was trying to square the promise of the United States with the reality that he was living.
“I thought Trump was a businessman,” he said. “But he’s really terrorizing businesses.”
The owner had paid taxes on his employee’s earnings, he said. So had they. “They were pushing the economy, paying rent, paying insurance, buying things.”
“Fine, take the criminals, take the bad guys,” he continued. “But these are hard workers. Criminals aren’t working at a car wash or waiting in front of a Home Depot.”
The owner had recently obtained American citizenship. But he was disillusioned — by the raids, L.A.’s homelessness crisis, high healthcare costs. He said his wife longed to leave the U.S. and return home.
“This is not the American dream,” he said. “This is an American nightmare.”
As the sun began to sink on the horizon, the last car of the day pulled out of the car wash — a sparkling clean Tesla.
The manager turned off the vacuum, recoiled hoses and exhaled with relief. He and his staff had survived another day. Tonight — at least — they would be going home to their families.
In the architectural age of minimalism and millennial gray, a wild and whimsical antidote made of old clinker bricks and jumbled shingles sits on a quiet street at the edge of L.A. and Culver City.
Formally, the spellbinding property is named the Lawrence and Martha Joseph Residence and Apartments, named after the Disney artist and his wife who obsessively spent three decades building it. But locals call them the Hobbit Houses — fitting, since they look straight out of a J.R.R. Tolkien novel.
The complex looks comically out of place amid Culver City’s commercial corridor along Venice Boulevard. It’s surrounded by modern apartment buildings, boxy and inoffensive, built to blend in with today’s taste.
A bathroom in one of the Hobbit houses in Culver City adorned in glass tiles and ornate fixtures.
Amid that urban blur, the Hobbit Houses beg for your attention.
An electric lamppost flickers, mimicking fire. The tree in the front yard features a face, with eyes and a nose. The homes are filled with quirky leaded glass windows, uneven angles and heaps of wood shingles, resembling a thatched straw roof.
This year, the property hit the market for the first time. Offers poured in, and it sold to perhaps the most fitting possible buyer outside Bilbo Baggins himself: real estate agent Michael Libow.
At $1.88 million, Libow didn’t have the highest bid. His main qualification was that he owns and lives in one of the finest examples of Storyboook style in the region: the Witch’s House, a medieval-looking masterpiece that is more befitting a “Hansel and Gretel” adaptation than the streets of Beverly Hills.
The broker, seeing his connection to the style, promoted Libow to the seller, an out-of-state bank trust. The Hobbit Houses were his.
Michael Libow peers through a heavy wooden door of a Hobbit house that he purchased in early 2025.
“It’s like a companion piece to my own home,” Libow said. “It’s a little oasis in a city that’s been overdeveloped.”
Now that he owns both, Libow has declared himself, tongue-in-cheek, the “King of Storybook,” and said he intends to protect the property and be a spokesperson for the style.
“This is my legacy: bringing a little bit of joy to as many people as I can,” he said. “It’s about preservation, but it’s also about bringing a sense of awe and wonder to the world.”
The Hobbit Houses are one of Southern California’s finest examples of Storybook architecture, a fantasy style that fittingly emerged in L.A. in the 1920s around the start of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Inspired by cinema setpieces and centuries-old European cottages, architects designed playful homes with turrets and gables on the outside and nooks and crannies on the inside. When done well, the finished product looks lifted from a fairy tale.
A cat digs around on the roof of a Hobbit house in Culver City.
Disney artist Lawrence Joseph built the Hobbit Houses from 1946 to 1970. Over the years, the property developed a lore all its own. He rented out spare units to Hollywood tenants such as actor Nick Nolte and dancer Gwen Verdon, and the place also housed one of the men who kidnapped Frank Sinatra’s son (authorities found most of the ransom money Sinatra paid, $240,000, in one of the units).
Lawrence died in 1991, and his wife, Martha, got to work protecting the property. She obtained landmark status in 1996 and donated an easement to the Los Angeles Conservancy, ensuring that it can’t be remodeled or torn down.
The property, which includes nine units across four buildings, needed some work when he bought it, so Libow and his property manager, Ben Stine, have spent the last few months playing a developer’s version of “Minesweeper,” trying to make small improvements for the tenants — electric work, a tankless water heater — without disrupting anything protected by the L.A. Conservancy easement.
The Hobbit Houses came with a 15-page report detailing all the things protected on the property: not just the buildings themselves, but also the facade, landscape features and the interiors, including the custom furniture that Lawrence carved himself. Even the wallpaper can’t be touched.
“Protections within a structure are very unusual. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Libow said.
Detail of the flooring inside a Hobbit house in Culver City.
That means for renters, much of the furniture is included with the rent. The latest vacant unit — a two-bed, one-bath with a den — includes bar stools and a rocking chair that Lawrence carved.
The house is wrapped in clinker brick, a term for when clay bricks are set too close to the flames when being fired in a kiln, giving them distorted shapes and colors. Such bricks were sometimes trashed in older architectural eras, but these days, they’re prized for the unique look they bring to buildings, and perfectly natural for Middle Earth architecture in Culver City.
Inside, Lawrence’s sailing background shines through with nautical-themed interiors. A ship’s wheel serves as the chandelier, hanging above vertical-grain boat-plank floors that lead to a galley-style kitchen with a curvy bar.
“The idea behind Storybook is to have something fanciful and whimsical, which involves movement rather than rectilinear rooms,” Libow said. “There’s barely a right angle on the entire property. Everything’s amorphous in shape.”
Detail inside a Hobbit house in Culver City.
There are no knobs to be found; doors open with hidden latches and levers. A built-in fold-down desk pops out in the living room. In the master bedroom, a “cat door” slides open to provide easy access for felines that hang around the property.
The nine units range from 200 square feet to 1,200 square feet. The vacant unit, which spans around 1,000 square feet, hit the market a few months ago for $4,500 per month.
It’s a high price for the neighborhood — most two-bedroom apartments nearby fall in the $3,000 range — but interested renters still swarmed.
“These aren’t your typical tenants that need four walls and a sink. We get a lot of people in the creative industry,” Libow said. “You’re renting a lifestyle here.”
Libow said like his own home, which serves as a regular stop for Hollywood tour buses, the Hobbit Houses are a regular resting point for people walking through the neighborhood.
“Construction workers will walk by on their lunch to look at the turtles in the pond. It’s a break from reality, even if just for a minute,” he said.
Michael Libow outside one of his Hobbit houses in Culver City.
Libow and his property manager spend a lot of time on the grounds, looking for projects or small improvements they’re allowed to make under the conservancy. But for Libow, who bought it as a collector’s item as much as an investment, it’s a labor of love.
“It’s not the most functional style of architecture, but it is the coolest,” he said. “It’s weird, but I’m weird myself. I connect with weird.”
There is a small chance of scattered showers before conditions clear.
The cold front will have moved away from Los Angeles, but the cold core of the low-pressure system will still be around. “This will bring enough instability to the area for a slight chance of thunderstorm development,” the National Weather Service in Oxnard said.
Snow levels were at around 7,000 feet on Monday but were expected to drop to 5,000 feet by Tuesday. Officials issued a winter weather advisory for the eastern San Gabriel Mountains and the northern Ventura County mountains that is set to last through Tuesday night. About 2 to 5 inches of snow could fall in the mountains.
“As for the Grapevine area, there is a chance of a dusting of snow Tuesday morning as the snow levels lower,” the weather service said. The Grapevine is a key travel corridor on the 5 freeway that connects L.A. and Santa Clarita with the Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The highest point of the Grapevine section is the Tejon Pass, which peaks in elevation at 4,144 feet above sea level. At that location, “some non-accumulating snow is possible,” the weather service said.
Temperatures have chilled with the latest storm. While the L.A. coast and San Gabriel Valley on Monday reached the mid-60s, due to late arriving rain, most of L.A. County’s coastal areas and valleys “struggled to get out of the 50s,” the weather service said.
Wednesday
Sunny skies but cool. Highs in the high 50s.
Thursday
Thursday’s storm is expected to drop from 0.25 to 0.75 inches of precipitation. That’s on top of the 0.74 inches of rain that fell on downtown L.A. in the 24-hour period that ended at 9 p.m. Monday. Before that, the weekend storm that began Friday brought 2.68 inches of rain to downtown.
Koreatown resident Scott Lyness was well aware that the city of Los Angeles was looking to tackle its food waste problem.
While bicycling to work, he saw the growing number of green trash bins popping up on curbs. He read the notice sent to his home instructing residents to expect green bins to be delivered at some point.
Still, Lyness was not prepared for what came next: 13 green bins deposited earlier this month outside the apartment building he manages on New Hampshire Avenue.
That’s on top of the three bins that the city delivered the previous week at a smaller building he also manages next door, and the two green bins that those properties were already using.
Lyness, 69, who works as a project manager at USC, said the two buildings don’t have anywhere near the room to store so many full-size cans — and don’t generate enough organic waste to fill them. He’s tried to have his tenants contact city offices to say they don’t need them. He said he’s even thought about throwing them into the street.
“Our neighborhoods are being inundated with green waste bins,” he said.
City officials are working furiously to get Angelenos to separate more of their food waste — eggshells, coffee grounds, meat bones, unfinished vegetables, orange peels, greasy napkins — to comply with SB 1383, a state composting law passed in 2016. They’ve even implemented Professor Green, an online chatbot that can help residents decide what can and can’t go in the green bin.
SB 1383 requires that 75% of organic waste be diverted away from landfills by the end of the year and instead turned into compost. Food and other organic waste sent to landfills is a significant source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Methane has a global warming potential about 80 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
To reach that goal, crews from L.A.’s Bureau of Sanitation have deposited huge numbers of 90-gallon green bins in front of some apartment buildings, including duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and larger buildings that have been grandfathered into the city’s curbside trash collection program.
Scott Lyness, 69, stands near green waste bins outside the apartment building he manages in Koreatown.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Residents are already familiar with the green bins, which were long reserved for lawn clippings and other yard waste but now are the destination for food scraps as well.
Most large apartment buildings in L.A. have been spared from the recent round of green bin deliveries, since they participate in recycLA, the city trash franchise program that relies on private waste haulers.
Sanitation officials say that Angelenos who prefer smaller, more manageable containers should fill out a form to get a 30- or 60-gallon replacement. They point out that the bins are part of a much larger effort by the city to reach its zero-waste goals and “lead on sustainability.”
Most of the green bins’ contents are taken to a facility in Bakersfield, where the resulting compost can be used by farmers, said Heather Johnson, a sanitation spokesperson.
“While some may find [the bins] inconvenient at the moment, in the short term they will result in more diverted waste and cleaner air,” Johnson said in an email.
Despite those serious intentions, Angelenos have been poking fun at the “Great Green Bin Apocalypse of 2025,” as journalist and podcaster Alissa Walker framed the situation on Bluesky. Walker recently shared a photo showing what appeared to be 20 green bins in front of one property, right next to a discarded sofa.
“This one is probably my favorite,” she wrote. “I like how they lined them all up neatly in a row and then left the couch.”
Green organic waste bins outside an apartment building in Koreatown.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
After Walker urged others to send in pictures, Silver Lake resident Tommy Newman posted a photo on Bluesky showing eight bins outside an eight-unit building, just south of Sunset Boulevard.
“Unless they are running a juice bar in there, how could they possibly create this much organic waste on a weekly basis?” wrote Newman, who works at a county housing agency.
Over on X, another observer summed up the absurdity in a different way. “LA gave every multi family unit a green bin due to a bureaucratic fever dream about composting,” the person wrote. “I have 5 personally.”
In recent months, L.A.’s sanitation agency has sent teams of “ambassadors” into neighborhoods to educate residents about the need to throw food in the green bins.
That means keeping food out of the 60-gallon black bins where residents have been accustomed to dumping most of their garbage, which ultimately winds up in landfills. Recyclable items, including glass and aluminum, will continue to go into blue bins.
The changes were also spelled out on fliers sent out by the city last summer, with a clear warning in all capital letters: “Unless we hear from you immediately, we will deliver a 90-gallon green container to your residence.”
Lyness saw those alerts and knew about the change. But he contends that most people would have missed the news or thrown the fliers away. Depositing an inordinate amount of bins around town is just not the way to encourage people to properly dispose of their organic waste, he said.
The city’s new food-waste program, which is projected to cost $66 million a year, is one reason the City Council approved a huge increase in trash fees earlier this year, in some cases doubling them. Each 90-gallon green bin costs the city $58.61, tax included, though residents are not being directly charged for the recent deliveries.
Sanitation officials say they have delivered more than 65,000 green bins across the city, with 4,000 to go. For residents waiting for them to be removed or replaced with a smaller bin, only 1,000 orders can be carried out in a regular workday, those officials said.
Around the corner on North Berendo Street, Lyness’ neighbor Lucy Alvidrez agreed that the green bins were troublesome while dragging in her black bin Thursday afternoon.
“They sure got carried away with it,” she said, pointing across the street to an apartment building with about two dozen green bins on its front curb.
Alvidrez, 69, who has lived in the neighborhood for two decades, never had an issue with trash collection until the city dropped off four green bins, one for each unit in her building. She was more fortunate than Lyness: sanitation workers took two of the bins back, upon request.
Alvidrez said she would prefer that the city “spend our money feeding the homeless” instead of purchasing bins that no one needs, she said.
A dozen green organic waste bins occupy a street in Koreatown..
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Nearby, Lyness opened a neighbor’s green bin, which was filled to the brim with trash that wasn’t compostable and should have gone in a black bin. If no one knows what to put in the green bins, nothing is going to improve, he said.
Southern California will be under a severe weather threat Saturday, with the most powerful wave of an incoming atmospheric river storm peaking over the weekend in Los Angeles County and bringing a risk of mudflows, debris flows and, possibly, a tornado.
If rain falls as forecast, this storm could result in downtown Los Angeles seeing its wettest November since 1985. Heavy rain brings the possibility of damaging flooding and landslides, with fire-scarred hillsides from the Eaton and Palisades fires at risk of fast-moving flows of mud and debris.
The severe weather threat is expected for much of Saturday, from midnight through 9 p.m. A flood watch will be in effect for a wide swath of Southern California from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday. Evacuation warnings are in effect through 11 a.m. Sunday in areas near recent burn scars due to the risk of mud and debris flows. The warnings encompass areas near the Palisades, Eaton, Kenneth, Sunset and Hurst fires that burned in January.
But it remained unclear as of late Thursday which areas would be hit hardest by the storm. Peak rainfall rates Saturday of 0.75 to 1.25 inches per hour are expected along a relatively narrow band of land — about the width of a Southern California county. That’s enough rain to trigger a landslide, which can occur when rain falls at a rate of half an inch or more per hour.
Forecasters don’t yet know where that peak rain will be focused.
“The problem is, we just don’t know exactly which county” will be most affected, said Ryan Kittell, meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Oxnard. “If you look at all of our projections, some of them favor L.A., some of them favor Ventura, some of them favor Santa Barbara County. And so at this point, unfortunately, for that Saturday time period, we just can’t tell with certainty which county is kind of in the bull’s-eye.”
If the band of most intense rain lines up over L.A. County, it can expect rainfall rates of about 1 inch per hour, Kittell said. If the band is concentrated elsewhere, L.A. could still see a rate of half an inch per hour, and landslides would still remain a possibility.
The area with the most severe weather could see spinning thunderstorms that could produce damaging wind or a tornado or two, Kittell said.
“While 99% of the area will not see such conditions, any portion of our area, especially in the coastal and valley areas, could see it,” Kittell said. “Consider changing any plans that you might have for Saturday. Stay home and indoors.”
In case of lightning, he noted that it’s best to stay inside and away from windows. Those who must go out should never attempt to drive through a flooded roadway.
There’s still a chance that Saturday’s storm could be less impressive than expected. It is being powered by a “cut-off low,” which is so notoriously difficult to forecast that it’s referred to as “weatherman’s woe.” Because the low-pressure system powering the storm is not pushed along by the jet stream, “it will just spin around like a top and go where it pleases — very difficult to predict,” Kittell said.
Still, Kittell said, most of the more than 100 different computer forecast projections suggest moderate to heavy rain. In the most likely scenario, downtown L.A. will receive 2.62 inches of rain between late Thursday and Sunday, which would cause flooding on roadways and minor, shallow debris flows.
(National Weather Service)
Getting that 2.62 inches of rain through the weekend would vault this month into the category of wettest November since 1985, Kittell said. Downtown L.A. would need to exceed 2.43 inches of rain in November to break that 40-year-old record.
There’s a 30% chance of a worst-case scenario where downtown L.A. receives 4.81 inches of rain, producing mudflows and debris flows. With debris flows, the fast-moving landslides pour down hillsides and pick up not just mud but other debris that can move cars and crash into homes with deadly force. A total of 4.81 inches of rain would be one-third of downtown’s annual rainfall.
Both mudflows and debris flows can be triggered with rain falling at a rate as low as half an inch per hour. But it depends on the burn scar, Kittell said. It would take rain falling at twice that rate — an inch per hour — to trigger flows in some burn scars, he said.
The National Weather Service office in Oxnard said that on Saturday there’s about a 70% chance that the Eaton and Palisades fire burn scars will see rain fall at a rate of 0.5 inches or more per hour. There’s a 38% chance of a rainfall rate of 1 inch or more per hour in those areas.
Rain is expected to start falling by Friday morning in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties. Precipitation was forecast to begin Thursday in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
The heaviest rain for Southern California is expected late Friday into Saturday.
(National Weather Service)
Although tornadoes aren’t usually associated with California, they do happen. For the most part, “they’re weak, they’re brief, and usually don’t cause a whole lot of issues,” Kittell said. “But we do get quite a few of them.” Sometimes they form on land, or they begin as waterspouts — a tornado over the ocean — and move onto land.
“They are not like the kind that you typically hear about in the Midwest that last for 15, 30 minutes, or even an hour or two, and are a mile or two wide and cause destructive damage,” Kittell said. “We just don’t have the environment for that,” yet they still pose a threat.
A tornado lasting for five minutes touched down in Santa Cruz County last December, injuring three people, downing trees and power poles, stripping trees of branches, overturning vehicles and damaging street signs.
This weekend’s atmospheric-river-powered storm created a long band of rainfall that on Thursday was stretching across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco. It was set to move south and east as it headed to Southern California.
The storm downed trees in the San Francisco Bay Area on Thursday and flooded low-lying streets. A tree split and fell in San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood, crashing onto a vehicle, local news outlets reported. A tree also fell on a fence in Santa Rosa. Rising waters inundated a section of roadway just west of the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport, firefighters said.
Solo vehicle crashes were reported on Highway 1 in Santa Cruz County, the California Highway Patrol said. A pickup truck overturned along Highway 152 between Watsonville and Gilroy, and all lanes of Highway 17 connecting Santa Cruz and San Jose were shut down for some time Thursday night following a crash involving a CHP cruiser; a CHP officer sustained minor injuries.
Rainfall totals were impressive for the region, with San Francisco seeing 1.28 inches — that’s more than half the average monthly rainfall for November for the city. Napa received 1.45 inches; San Francisco International Airport, 1.5; and San Rafael, 2.3 inches.
Through Sunday, Long Beach is expected to receive 2.38 inches of rain; Redondo Beach, 2.48; Oxnard, 2.49; Thousand Oaks, 2.63; Santa Clarita, 2.77; Covina, 2.89; and Santa Barbara, 4.21.
San Diego could get 2 to 2.5 inches of rain; Riverside, San Bernardino, Escondido, and San Clemente, 2.5 to 3 inches; and Anaheim and Irvine, 3 to 4 inches, according to the weather service.
Even the deserts could tally impressive rainfall. Palm Springs may get 1 to 1.5 inches of rain, and Joshua Tree National Park could receive 1.5 to 2 inches.
This storm will not be much of a snow maker for Southern California’s mountains. Snow levels are expected to remain at around 10,000 feet for most of the storm’s duration, said Dave Munyan, a forecaster with the National Weather Service’s San Diego office. By Sunday morning, snow levels will fall to about 7,000 to 7,500 feet, but by then, there won’t be much more moisture left in the storm. Big Bear is forecast to receive around an inch of snow, and Idyllwild is expected to remain snow-free, Munyan said.
“You’re going to get your accumulating snowfall — hefty accumulating snowfall — on the highest peaks of the mountains,” Munyan said.
Winds from the southeast and east are expected to trigger delays at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday and Saturday.
Looking to next week, a storm could return to Southern California on Monday and Tuesday, with another rolling in Thursday and Friday. Both storms are likely to have minor effects. But forecasters are closely watching the second of the two storms, which could develop into something more significant, Kittell said.
A strange scene unfolded at the Adams/Vermont farmers market near USC last week.
The pomegranates, squash and apples were in season, pink guavas were so ripe you could smell their heady scent from a distance, and nutrient-packed yams were ready for the holidays.
But with federal funding in limbo for the 1.5 million people in Los Angeles County who depend on food aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — or SNAP — the church parking lot hosting the market was largely devoid of customers.
Even though the market accepts payments through CalFresh, the state’s SNAP program, hardly anyone was lined up when gates opened. Vendors mostly idled alone at their produce stands.
A line of cars stretches more than a mile as people wait to receive a box of free food provided by the L.A. Food Bank in the City of Industry on Wednesday.
“So far we’re doing 50% of what we’d normally do — or less,” said Michael Bach, who works with Hunger Action, a food-relief nonprofit that partners with farmers markets across the greater L.A. area, offering “Market Match” deals to customers paying with CalFresh debit cards.
The deal allows shoppers to buy up to $30 worth of fruit produce for only $15. Skimming a ledger on her table, Bach’s colleague Estrellita Echor noted that only a handful of shoppers had taken advantage of the offer.
All week at farmers markets where workers were stationed, the absence was just as glaring, she said. “I was at Pomona on Saturday — we only had six transactions the whole day,” she said. “Zero at La Mirada.”
CalFresh customers looking to double their money on purchases were largely missing at the downtown L.A. market the next day, Echor said.
A volunteer loads up a box of free food for a family at a drive-through food distribution site in the City of Industry.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“This program usually pulls in lots of people, but they are either holding on to what little they have left or they just don’t have anything on their cards,” she said.
The disruption in aid comes as a result of the Trump administration’s decision to deliver only partial SNAP payments to states during the ongoing federal government shutdown, skirting court order to restart funds for November. On Friday night, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson temporarily blocked the order pending a ruling on the matter by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
A study published by her team last year found that 25% of residents in L.A. County — or about 832,000 people — experienced food insecurity, and that among low-income residents, the rate was even higher, 41%. The researchers also found that 29% of county residents experienced nutrition insecurity, meaning they lacked options for getting healthy, nutritious food.
Those figures marked a slight improvement compared to data from 2023, when the end of pandemic-era boosts to state, county and nonprofit aid programs — combined with rising inflation — caused hunger rates to spike just as they did at the start of the pandemic in 2020, de la Haye said.
“That was a big wake-up call — we had 1 in 3 folks in 2020 be food insecure,” de la Haye said. “We had huge lines at food pantries.”
But while the USC study shows the immediate delivery of food assistance through government programs and nonprofits quickly can cut food insecurity rates in an emergency, the researchers discovered many vulnerable Angelenos are not participating in food assistance programs.
Despite the county making strides to enroll more eligible families over the last decade, de la Haye said, only 29% of food insecure households in L.A. County were enrolled in CalFresh, and just 9% in WIC, the federal nutrition program for women, infants and children.
De la Haye said participants in her focus groups shared a mix of reasons why they didn’t enroll: Many didn’t know they qualified, while others said they felt too ashamed to apply for aid, were intimidated by the paperwork involved or feared disclosing their immigration status. Some said they didn’t apply because they earned slightly more than the cutoff amounts for eligibility.
Even many of those those receiving aid struggled: 39% of CalFresh recipients were found to lack an affordable source for food and 45% faced nutrition insecurity.
De la Haye said hunger and problems accessing healthy food have serious short- and long-term health effects — contributing to higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity, as well greater levels of stress, anxiety and depression in adults and children. What’s more, she said, when people feel unsure about their finances, highly perishable items such as fresh, healthy food are often the first things sacrificed because they can be more expensive.
The USC study also revealed stark racial disparities: 31% of Black residents and 32% of Latinos experienced food insecurity, compared to 11% of white residents and 14% of Asians.
De la Haye said her team is analyzing data from this year they will publish in December. That analysis will look at investments L.A. County has made in food system over the last two years, including the allocation of $20 million of federal funding to 80 community organizations working on everything from urban farming to food pantries, and the recent creation of the county’s Office of Food Systems to address challenges to food availability and increase the consumption of healthy foods.
“These things that disrupt people’s ability to get food, including and especially cuts to this key program that is so essential to 1.5 million people in the county — we don’t weather those storms very well,” de la Haye said. “People are just living on the precipice.”
More than 30,000 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers temporarily lost power Saturday after a widespread outage affected several parts of the city, according to the utility.
The power loss occurred at about 12:55 p.m., impacting customers in Koreatown, Arlington Heights, Leimert Park, Palms and adjacent areas, an LADWP spokesperson said. LADWP began working on the issue at 1:30 p.m., and as of 4 p.m. power had been fully restored to all areas.
The cause of the power outage remains under investigation.
The revelers who packed Tuesday’s election night party in L.A.’s Highland Park neighborhood were roughly 2,500 miles from the concert hall where New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani celebrated his historic win.
Yet despite that sprawling distance, the crowd, heavily populated with members of the L.A. chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, had no trouble finishing the applause lines delivered by Mamdani, himself a DSA member, during his victory speech.
“New York!” Mamdani bellowed on the oversized television screens hung throughout the Greyhound Bar & Grill. “We’re going to make buses fast and — “
“Free!” the crowd inside the bar yelled back in response.
In Los Angeles, activists with the Democratic Socialists of America have already fired up their campaigns for the June election, sending out canvassing teams and scheduling postcard-writing events for their chosen candidates. But they’re also taking fresh inspiration from Mamdani’s win, pointing to his inclusive, unapologetic campaign and his relentless focus on pocketbook issues, particularly among working-class voters.
The message that propelled Mamdani to victory resonates just as much in L.A., said City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who won her seat in 2022 with logistical support from the DSA.
“What New York City is saying is that the rent is too damn high, that affordability is a huge issue not just on housing, but when it comes to grocery shopping, when it comes to daycare,” she said. “These are the things that we’re also experiencing here in Los Angeles.”
City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, appearing at a rally in Lincoln Heights last year, said New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s message will resonate in L.A.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
DSA-LA, which is a membership organization and not a political party, has elected four of its endorsed candidates to the council since 2020, ousting incumbents in each of the last three election cycles. They’ve done so in large part by knocking on doors and working to increase turnout among renters and lower-income households.
The chapter hopes to win two additional seats in June. Organizers have begun contemplating a full-on socialist City Council — possibly by the end of 2028 — with DSA members holding eight of the council’s 15 seats.
“We would like a socialist City Council majority,” said Benina Stern, co-chair of DSA’s Los Angeles chapter. “Because clearly that is the logical progression, to keep growing the bloc.”
Despite those lofty ambitions, it could take at least five years before the L.A. chapter matches this week’s breakthrough in New York City.
Mayor Karen Bass, a high-profile leader within the Democratic Party with few ties to the DSA, is now running for a second term. Her only major opponent is former schools superintendent Austin Beutner, who occupies the center of the political spectrum in L.A. Real estate developer Rick Caruso, a longtime Republican who is now a Democrat, has not disclosed his intentions but has long been at odds with DSA‘s progressive policies.
In L.A., DSA organizers have put their emphasis on identifying and campaigning for candidates in down-ballot races, not citywide contests. Part of that is due to the fact that L.A. has a weak-mayor system, particularly when compared with New York City, where the mayor has responsibility not just for city services but also public schools and even judicial appointments.
L.A. council members propose and approve legislation, rework the budgets submitted by the mayor and represent districts with more than a quarter of a million people. As a result, DSA organizers have chosen the council as their path to power at City Hall, Stern said.
“The conditions in Los Angeles and New York I think are very different,” she said.
Since 2020, DSA-LA has been highly selective about its endorsement choices. The all-volunteer organization sends applicants a lengthy questionnaire with dozens of litmus test questions: Do they support diverting funds away from law enforcement? Do they oppose L.A.’s decision to host the Olympics? Do they support a repeal of L.A.’s ban on homeless encampments near schools?
Once a candidate secures an endorsement, DSA-LA turns to its formidable pool of volunteers, sending them out to help candidates knock on doors, staff phone banks and stage fundraising events.
During Tuesday’s party, DSA-LA organizers recruited new members to assist with the reelection campaigns of Hernandez and Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, a former labor organizer. They distributed postcard-sized fliers with the message, “Hate Capitalism? So do we.”
Standing nearby was Estuardo Mazariegos, a tenant rights advocate now running to replace Councilmember Curren Price in a South L.A. district. Mazariegos, 40, said he first became interested in the DSA in the seventh grade, when his middle school civics teacher displayed a DSA flag in her classroom.
The crowd at the Greyhound in Highland Park reacts to results on Tuesday.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Mazariegos hailed the results from New York and California, saying voters are “taking back America for the working people of America.” He sounded somewhat less excited about Bass, a former community organizer who has pursued some middle-of-the-road positions, such as hiring more police officers.
Asked if he supports Bass’ bid for a second term, Mazariegos responded: “If she’s up against a billionaire, yes.”
“If she’s up against another comrade, maybe not,” he added, laughing.
When Bass ran in November 2022, DSA-LA grudgingly recommended a vote for her in its popular voter guide, describing her as a “status quo politician.”
Councilmember Nithya Raman, who represents a Hollywood Hills district, is far more enthusiastic. Raman has worked closely with Bass on efforts to move homeless Angelenos indoors, while also seeking fixes to the larger systems that serve L.A.’s unhoused population.
“Karen Bass is the most progressive mayor we’ve ever had in L.A,” said Raman, who co-hosted the election night party with the other three DSA-aligned council members, DSA-LA and others.
Raman was the first of the DSA-backed candidates to win a council seat in L.A., running in 2020 as a reformer who would bring stronger renter protections and a network of community access centers to assist homeless residents.
Two years later, voters elected labor organizer Soto-Martínez and Hernandez. Tenant rights attorney Ysabel Jurado became the fourth last year, ousting Councilmember Kevin de León.
Stern, the DSA-LA co-chair, said she believes the four council members have brought a “sea change” to City Hall, working with their progressive colleagues to expand the city’s teams of unarmed responders, who are viewed as an alternative to gun-carrying police officers.
The DSA voting bloc also shaped this year’s city budget, voting to reduce the number of new recruits at the Los Angeles Police Department and preserve other city jobs, Stern said.
To be clear, the four-member bloc has pursued those efforts by working with other progressives on the council who are not affiliated with the DSA but more moderate on other issues. Beyond that, the group has plenty of detractors.
Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., said DSA-backed council members are making the city worse, by pushing for a $30 per hour hotel minimum wage and a $32.35 minimum wage for construction workers.
“No one is ever going to build a hotel in this city again, and DSA were a part of that,” he said. “Pretty soon no one will build housing, and the DSA is a part of that too.”
The union that represents LAPD officers vowed to fight the DSA’s effort to expand its reach, saying it would work to ensure that “Angelenos are not bamboozled by the socialist bait and switch.”
“Socialists want to bait Angelenos into talking about affordability, oppression and fairness, get their candidates elected, and then switch to enact their platform that states ‘Defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets … while cutting [police] budgets annually towards zero,’” the union’s board of directors said in a statement.
In New York City, Mamdani has proposed a series of measures to make the city more affordable, including free bus fares, city-run grocery stores and a four-year freeze on rent increases inside rent stabilized apartment units.
Some of those ideas have already been tried in L.A.
In 2020, weeks into the COVID-19 shutdown, Mayor Eric Garcetti placed a moratorium on rent hikes for more than 600,000 rent-stabilized apartments. The council kept that measure in place for four years.
Around the same time, L.A. County’s transit agency suspended mandatory collection of bus fares. The agency started charging bus passengers again in 2022.
City Councilmembers Nithya Raman and Eunisses Hernandez celebrate at the election night party they co-hosted with Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter and two other council members.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
In recent months, the DSA-LA has pushed for new limits on rent increases inside L.A.’s rent-stabilized apartments. Raman, who chairs the council’s housing committee, is backing a yearly cap of 3% in those buildings, most of which were built before October 1978.
Hernandez, whose district stretches from working-class Westlake to rapidly gentrifying Highland Park, is a believer in shifting the Overton Window at City Hall — moving the political debate left and “putting people over profits.”
Like others at the election party, Hernandez is hoping the council will eventually have eight DSA-aligned members in the coming years, saying such a shift would be a “game changer.” With a clear majority, she said, the council would not face a huge battle to approve new tenant protections, expand the network of unarmed response teams and place “accountability measures” on corporations that are “making money off our city.”
“There’s so many things … that we could do easier for the people of the city of Los Angeles if we had a majority,” she said.
Dr. Roy Meals, a longtime hand surgeon, likes to move his feet. He has climbed mountains and he has run three marathons.
But when he shared his latest scheme with his wife a couple of years ago, she had a quick take.
“You’re nuts,” she said.
Maybe so. He was closing in on 80, and his plan was to grab his trekking poles and take a solo hike along the 342-mile perimeter of Los Angeles. His wife found the idea less insane, somewhat, after Meals agreed to hook up with hiking companions here and there.
Dr. Roy Meals with his book, “Walking the Line: Discoveries Along the Los Angeles City Limits.”
But you may be wondering the obvious:
Why would someone hike around a massive, car-choked, pedestrian-unfriendly metropolis of roughly 500 square miles?
Meals had his reasons. Curiosity and restlessness, for starters. Also, a belief that you can’t really get to know a city through a windshield, and a conviction that staying fit, physically and mentally, is the best way to stall the work of Father Time.
One more thing: Meals’ patients over the years have come from every corner of the city, and the Kansas City native considered it a personal shortcoming that he was unfamiliar with much of L.A. despite having called it home for half his life.
To plot his course, Meals unfolded an accordion style map for an overview, then went to navigatela.lacity.org to chart the precise outline of the city limits. The border frames an oddly shaped expanse that resembles a shredded kite, with San Pedro and Wilmington dangling from a string at the southern extremities.
Dr. Roy Meals takes a break from his walk to talk with Louis Lee, owner of JD Hobbies Store, along West 6th Street in downtown San Pedro.
Meals divided his trek into 10-mile segments, 34 in all, and set out to walk two segments each week for four months, traveling counterclockwise from the 5,075-foot summit of Mt. Lukens in the city’s northern reaches.
Day One began with a bang, in a manner of speaking.
Meals slipped on loose rocks near the summit of Mt. Lukens and tumbled, scuffing elbows and knees, and snapping the aluminum shaft of one of his walking sticks.
But Meals is not one to wave a white flag or call for a helicopter evacuation.
“Later, at home, I employed my orthopedic skills to repair the broken pole,” Meals writes in “Walking the Line: Discoveries Along the Los Angeles City Limits,” his just-published book about his travels.
Dr. Roy Meals walks along West 6th Street in San Pedro.
Meals, now 80 and still seeing patients once weekly at a UCLA clinic, remained upright most of the rest of the way, adhering to his self-imposed rule of venturing no farther than one mile in from the city limits. To get back to his starting point each day, he often took buses and found that although it was slow going, riders often exited with a thanks to the driver, which struck him as “wonderful grace notes of acknowledgment.”
The doctor ambled about with the two trekking poles, a cross-country skier on a vast sea of pavement. He carried a small backpack, wore a “Los Angeles” ballcap and a shirt with the city limits outline on the front, and handed out business cards with a link to his book project.
Those who clicked on the link were advised to escape their own neighborhoods and follow Meals’ prescription for life: “Venture forth on foot, and make interesting, life-enriching discoveries. Wherever you live, be neighborly, curious, fit, and engaged!”
Meals was all those things, and as his surname suggests, he was never shy about sampling L.A.’s abundant offerings.
He tried skewered pig intestines at Big Mouth Pinoy in Wilmington, went for tongue and lips offerings at the Tacos y Birria taco truck in Boyle Heights, thoroughly enjoyed a cheeseburger and peach cobbler at Hawkins House of Burgers in Watts, and ventured into Ranch Side Cafe in Sylmar, curious about the sign advertising American, Mexican and Ethiopian food.
Meals tried hang-gliding at Dockweiler Beach, fencing on the Santa Monica border, rock climbing in Chatsworth, boxing and go-kart racing in Sylmar, weightlifting at Muscle Beach in Venice.
Dr. Roy Meals stops to take in the American Merchant Marine Veterans Memorial Wall of Honor while walking one of many paths he wrote about in his book.
In each sector, Meals sought out statues and plaques and explored points of history dating back to the Gabrielinos and Chumash, and to the days of Mexican and Spanish rule. He also examined the history of those peculiar twists and turns on the city perimeter, mucking through L.A.’s long-simmering stew of real estate grabs, water politics and annexation schemes.
What remains of the foundation of Campo de Cahuenga in Studio City was one of several locations that “stirred my emotions,” Meals writes in “Walking the Line.” There, in 1847, Andres Pico and John C. Frémont signed the treaty that ceded part of Mexico to the U.S., altering the shape of both countries.
In Venice, Meals was equally moved when he accidentally came upon an obelisk marking the spot where, in April 1942, more than a thousand Japanese Americans boarded buses for Manzanar.
“May this monument … remind us to be forever vigilant about defending our constitutional rights,” it read. “The powers of government must never again perpetrate an injustice against any group based solely on ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, race or religion.”
At firehouse museums, Meals learned of times when “Black firefighters were met with extreme hostility in the mixed-race firehouses, including being forced to eat separately. … Little did I know that visiting fire museums would be a lesson in the history of racism in Los Angeles,” he writes.
Dr. Roy Meals walks past a display of an armor-piercing projectile in San Pedro.
Although Meals visited well-known destinations such as the Watts Towers and Getty Villa, some of his most enjoyable experiences were what he called “by the way” discoveries that were not on his initial list of points of interest, such as the obelisk in Venice.
“Among those that I stumbled across,” Meals writes, “were the Platinum Prop House, Sims House of Poetry, and warehouses stuffed with spices, buttons, candy, Christmas decorations, or caskets. These proprietors, along with museum docents and those caring for disadvantaged children, bees, rescued guinea pigs, and injured marine mammals genuinely love what they do; and their level of commitment is inspiring and infectious.”
His book is infectious, too. In a city with miles of crumbling sidewalks and countless tent villages, among other obvious failings, we can all find a thousand things to complain about. But Meals put his stethoscope to the heartbeat of Los Angeles and found a thousand things to cheer.
When I asked the good doctor if he’d be willing to revisit part of his trek with me, he suggested we meet in the area to which he awarded his gold medal for its many points of interest — San Pedro and Wilmington. There, he had visited the Banning Mansion, the Drum Barracks, the Point Fermin Lighthouse, the Friendship Bell gifted to L.A. by Korea, the varied architecture of Vinegar Hill, the World War II bunker, the sunken city, the Maritime Museum, etc., etc., etc.
Meals was in his full get-up when we met at 6th and Gaffey in San Pedro. The trekking sticks, the T-shirt with the jigsaw map of L.A., the modest “Los Angeles” hat.
“Let’s go,” he said, and we headed toward the waterfront, but didn’t get far.
Dr. Roy Meals takes a break from his walk to visit with famed San Pedro resident John Papadakis, 75, former owner of the now-closed Greek Taverna in the neighborhood.
A gentleman was exiting an office and we traded rounds of “good morning.” He identified himself as John Papadakis, owner of the now-closed Greek Taverna restaurant, a longtime local institution. He invited us back into his office, a museum of photos, Greek statues and sports memorabilia (he and son Petros, the popular radio talk show host, were gridiron grinders at USC).
San Pedro “is the city’s seaside soul,” Papadakis proclaimed.
And we were on our way, eyes wide open to the wonders of a limitless city that reveals more of itself each time you turn a corner, say hello, and hear the first line of a never-ending story.
Down the street, we peeked in on renovations at the art deco Warner Grand Theater, which is approaching its 100th birthday. We checked out vintage copies of Life magazine at Louis Lee’s JD Hobbies, talked to Adrian Garcia about the “specializing in senior dogs” aspect of his “Dog Groomer” shop, and got the lowdown on 50 private schools whose uniforms come from Norman’s Clothing, circa 1937.
At the post office, we checked out the 1938 Fletcher Martin mural of mail delivery. Back outside, with a view of the port and the sunlit open sea, we met a merchant seaman, relaxing on a bench, who told us his son worked for the New York Times. I later found a moving story by that reporter on his long search for the man we’d just met.
“Traveling on foot allowed me to reflect on and grow to respect LA as never before,” Meals wrote in his book.
On our walk, while discussing what next, Meals said he’s thinking of exploring San Francisco in the same manner.
We were approaching Point Fermin, where Meals pointed out the serene magnificence of a Moreton Bay fig tree that threw an acre of shade and cooled a refreshing salt-air breeze.
Dr. Roy Meals walks along the L.A. Harbor West Path, one of many paths he wrote about in his book, in San Pedro.
“If anything,” Meals told me, “I’m quicker to look at small things. You know, stop and appreciate a flower, or even just an interesting pattern of shadows on the street.”
The message of his book, he said, is a simple one.
SAN FRANCISCO — About 24 hours after President Trump declared San Francisco such a crime-ridden “mess” that he was recommending federal forces be sent to restore order, Manit Limlamai, 43, and Kai Saetern, 32, rolled their eyes at the suggestion.
The pair — both in the software industry — were with friends Thursday in Dolores Park, a vibrant green space with sweeping views of downtown, playing volleyball under a blue sky and shining autumn sun. All around them, people sat on benches with books, flew kites, played with dogs or otherwise lounged away the afternoon on blankets in the grass.
Both Limlamai and Saetern said San Francisco of course has issues, and some rougher neighborhoods — but that’s any city.
“I’ve lived here for 10 years and I haven’t felt unsafe, and I’ve lived all over the city,” Saetern said. “Every city has its problems, and I don’t think San Francisco is any different,” but “it’s not a hellscape,” said Limlamai, who has been in the city since 2021.
Both said Trump’s suggestion that he might send in troops was more alarming than reassuring — especially, Limlamai said, on top of his recent remark that American cities should serve as “training grounds” for U.S. military forces.
“I don’t think that’s appropriate at all,” he said. “The military is not trained to do what needs to be done in these cities.”
Across San Francisco, residents, visitors and prominent local leaders expressed similar ideas — if not much sharper condemnation of any troop deployment. None shied away from the fact that San Francisco has problems, especially with homelessness. Several also mentioned a creeping urban decay, and that the city needs a bit of a polish.
But federal troops? That was a hard no.
A range of people on Market Street in downtown San Francisco on Thursday.
“It’s just more of [Trump’s] insanity,” said Peter Hill, 81, as he played chess in a slightly edgier park near City Hall. Hill said using troops domestically was a fascist power play, and “a bad thing for the entire country.”
“It’s fascism,” agreed local activist Wendy Aragon, who was hailing a cab nearby. Her Latino family has been in the country for generations, she said, but she now fears speaking Spanish on the street given that immigration agents have admitted targeting people who look or sound Latino, and troops in the city would only exacerbate those fears. “My community is under attack right now.”
State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said troop deployments to the city were “completely unnecessary” and “typical Trump: petty, vindictive retaliation.”
“He wants to attack anyone who he perceives as an enemy, and that includes cities, and so he started with L.A. and Southern California because of its large immigrant community, and then he proceeded to cities with large Black populations like Chicago, and now he’s moving on to cities that are just perceived as very lefty like Portland and now San Francisco,” Wiener said.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, defended such deployments and noted crime reductions in cities, including Washington, D.C., and Memphis, where local officials — including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat — have embraced them.
“America’s once great cities have descended into chaos and crime as a result of Democrat policies that put criminals first and law-abiding citizens last. Making America Safe Again — especially crime-ridden cities — was a key campaign promise from the President that the American people elected him to fulfill,” Jackson said. “San Francisco Democrats should look at the tremendous results in DC and Memphis and listen to fellow Democrat Mayor Bowser and welcome the President in to clean up their city.”
A police officer shuts the door to his car after a person was allegedly caught carrying a knife near a sign promoting an AI-powered museum exhibit in downtown San Francisco.
A presidential ‘passion’
San Francisco — a bastion of liberal politics that overwhelmingly voted against Trump in the last election — has been derided by the conservative right for generations as a great American jewel lost to destructive progressive policies.
With its tech-heavy economy and downtown core hit hard by the pandemic and the nation’s shift toward remote work, the city has had a particularly rough go in recent years, which only exacerbated its image as a city in decline. That it produced some of Trump’s most prominent political opponents — including Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris — has only made it more of a punching bag.
In August, Trump suggested San Francisco needed federal intervention. “You look at what the Democrats have done to San Francisco — they’ve destroyed it,” he said in the Oval Office. “We’ll clean that one up, too.”
Then, earlier this month, to the chagrin of liberal leaders across the city, Marc Benioff, the billionaire Salesforce founder and Time magazine owner who has long been a booster of San Francisco, said in an interview with the New York Times that he supported Trump and welcomed Guard troops in the city.
“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff said, just as his company was preparing to open its annual Dreamforce convention in the city, complete with hundreds of private security officers.
The U.S. Constitution generally precludes military forces from serving in police roles in the U.S.
On Friday, Benioff reversed himself and apologized for his earlier stance. “Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” he wrote on X.
He also apologized for “the concern” his earlier support for troops in the city had caused, and praised San Francisco’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, for bringing crime down.
Billionaire Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, also called for federal intervention in the city, writing on his X platform that downtown San Francisco is “a drug zombie apocalypse” and that federal intervention was “the only solution at this point.”
Trump made his latest remarks bashing San Francisco on Wednesday, again from the Oval Office.
Trump said it was “one of our great cities 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” but “now it’s a mess” — and that he was recommending federal forces move into the city to make it safer. “I’m gonna be strongly recommending — at the request of government officials, which is always nice — that you start looking at San Francisco,” he said to leading members of his law enforcement team.
Trump did not specify exactly what sort of deployment he meant, or which kinds of federal forces might be involved. He also didn’t say which local officials had allegedly requested help — a claim Wiener called a lie.
“Every American deserves to live in a community where they’re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted or shot, and that’s exactly what our administration is working to deliver,” Trump said, before adding that sending federal forces into American cities had become “a passion” of his.
Kai Saetern, 32, was playing volleyball in Dolores Park on Thursday. Saetern said he has never felt unsafe living in neighborhoods all over the city for the last 10 years.
Crime is down citywide
The responses from San Francisco, both to Benioff and Trump, came swiftly, ranging from calm discouragement to full-blown outrage.
Lurie did not respond directly, but his office pointed reporters to his recent statements that crime is down 30% citywide, homicides are at a 70-year low, car break-ins are at a 22-year low and tent encampments are at their lowest number on record.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Lurie said. “But I trust our local law enforcement.”
San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins was much more fiery, writing online that Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had turned “so-called public safety and immigration enforcement into a form of government sponsored violence against U.S. citizens, families, and ethnic groups,” and that she stood ready to prosecute federal officers if they harm city residents.
Attendees exit the Dreamforce convention downtown on Thursday in San Francisco.
“If you come to San Francisco and illegally harass our residents … I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day,” she said.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) — whose seat Wiener is reportedly going to seek — said the city “does not want or need Donald Trump’s chaos” and will continue to increase public safety locally and “without the interference of a President seeking headlines.”
Newsom said the use of federal troops in American cities is a “clear violation” of federal law, and that the state was prepared to challenge any such deployment to San Francisco in court, just as it challenged such deployments in Los Angeles earlier this year.
The federal appellate court that oversees California and much of the American West has so far allowed troops to remain in L.A., but is set to continue hearing arguments in the L.A. case soon.
Trump had used anti-immigration enforcement protests in L.A. as a justification to send troops there. In San Francisco, Newsom said, he lacks any justification or “pretext” whatsoever.
“There’s no existing protest at a federal building. There’s no operation that’s being impeded. I guess it’s just a ‘training ground’ for the President of United States,” Newsom said. “It is grossly illegal, it’s immoral, it’s rather delusional.”
Nancy DeStefanis, 76, a longtime labor and environmental activist who was at San Francisco City Hall on Thursday to complain about Golden Gate Park being shut to regular visitors for paid events, was similarly derisive of troops entering the city.
“As far as I’m concerned, and I think most San Franciscans are concerned, we don’t want troops here. We don’t need them,” she said.
Passengers walk past a cracked window from the Civic Center BART station in downtown San Francisco.
‘An image I don’t want to see’
Not far away, throngs of people wearing Dreamforce lanyards streamed in and out of the Moscone Center, heading back and forth to nearby Market Street and pouring into restaurants, coffee shops and take-out joints. The city’s problems — including homelessness and associated grittiness — were apparent at the corners of the crowds, even as chipper convention ambassadors and security officers moved would-be stragglers along.
Not everyone was keen to be identified discussing Trump or safety in the city, with some citing business reasons and others a fear of Trump retaliating against them. But lots of people had opinions.
Sanjiv, a self-described “techie” in his mid-50s, said he preferred to use only his first name because, although he is a U.S. citizen now, he emigrated from India and didn’t want to stick his neck out by publicly criticizing Trump.
He called homelessness a “rampant problem” in San Francisco, but less so than in the past — and hardly something that would justify sending in military troops.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” he said. “It’s not like the city’s under siege.”
Claire Roeland, 30, from Austin, Texas, said she has visited San Francisco a handful of times in recent years and had “mixed” experiences. She has family who live in surrounding neighborhoods and find it completely safe, she said, but when she’s in town it’s “predominantly in the business district” — where it’s hard not to be disheartened by the obvious suffering of people with addiction and mental illness and the grime that has accumulated in the emptied-out core.
“There’s a lot of unfortunate urban decay happening, and that makes you feel more unsafe than you actually are,” she said, but there isn’t “any realistic need to send in federal troops.”
She said she doesn’t know what troops would do other than confront homeless people, and “that’s an image I don’t want to see.”
Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
Former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner is planning to announce a challenge to Mayor Karen Bass in the 2026 election, arguing that the city has failed to properly respond to crime, rising housing costs and the devastating Palisades fire.
Beutner, a philanthropist and former investment banker who lives in L.A.’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood, would become the first serious challenger to Bass, who is running for her second and final term.
Beutner said in an interview Saturday that city officials at all levels showed a “failure of leadership” on the fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead.
The inferno seriously damaged Beutner’s house, forcing him and his family to rent elsewhere in the neighborhood, and destroyed his mother-in-law’s home entirely.
“When you have broken hydrants, a reservoir that’s broken and is out of action, broken [fire] trucks that you can’t dispatch ahead of time, when you don’t pre-deploy at the adequate level, when you don’t choose to hold over the Monday firefighters to be there on Tuesday to help fight the fire — to me, it’s a failure of leadership,” Beutner said.
“At the end of the day,” he added, “the buck stops with the mayor.”
A representative for Bass’ campaign declined to comment.
Beutner’s attacks come days after federal prosecutors filed charges in the Palisades fire, accusing a 29-year-old of intentionally starting a New Year’s Day blaze that later rekindled into the deadly inferno.
With the federal investigation tied up, the Fire Department released a long-awaited after-action report Wednesday. The 70-page report found that firefighters were hampered by poor communication, inexperienced leadership, a lack of resources and an ineffective process for recalling them back to work. Bass announced a number of changes in light of the report.
Beutner, a onetime advisor to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, could pose a serious political threat to Bass. He would come to the race with a wide range of experiences — finance, philanthropy, local government and even the struggling journalism industry.
Although seven other people have filed paperwork to run for her seat, none have the fundraising muscle or name recognition to mount a major campaign. Rick Caruso, the real estate developer whom Bass defeated in 2022, has publicly flirted with the idea of another run but has stopped short of announcing a decision.
Bass beat Caruso by a wide margin in 2022 even though the shopping mall mogul outspent her by an enormous margin. Caruso has been an outspoken critic of her mayorship, particularly on her response to the Palisades fire.
Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said he believes that Beutner would face an uphill climb in attempting to unseat Bass — even with the criticism surrounding the handling of the Palisades fire. However, his entry into the race could inspire other big names to launch their own mayoral campaigns, shattering the “wall of invincibility” that Bass has tried to create.
“If Beutner jumps in and starts to get some traction, it makes it easier for Caruso to jump in,” Guerra said. “Because all you’ve got to do is come in second in the primary [election], and then see what happens in the general.”
Earlier Saturday, The Times reported that Beutner’s longtime X account had featured — then quickly removed — the banner image “AUSTIN for LA MAYOR,” along with the words: “This account is being used for campaign purposes by Austin Beutner for LA Mayor 2026.” That logo was also added and then removed from other Beutner social media accounts.
Beutner’s announcement, which is currently planned for Monday, comes in a year of crises for the mayor and her city. She was out of the country in January, taking part in a diplomatic mission to Ghana, when the ferocious Palisades fire broke out.
Upon her return, she faced withering criticism over the city’s preparation for the high winds, as well as Fire Department operations and the overall emergency response.
In the months that followed, the city was faced with a $1-billion budget shortfall, triggered in part by pay raises for city workers that were approved by Bass. To close the gap, the City Council eliminated about 1,600 vacant positions, slowed down hiring at the Los Angeles Police Department and rejected Bass’ proposal for dozens of additional firefighters.
By June, Bass faced a different emergency: waves of masked and heavily armed federal agents apprehending immigrants at car washes, Home Depots and elsewhere, sparking furious street protests.
Bass’ standing with voters was badly damaged in the wake of the Palisades fire, with polling in March showing that fewer than 20% of L.A. residents gave her fire response high marks.
But after President Trump put the city in his cross hairs, the mayor regained her political footing, responding swiftly and sharply. She mobilized her allies against the immigration crackdown and railed against the president’s deployment of the National Guard, arguing that the soldiers were “used as props.”
Beutner — who, like Bass, is a Democrat — said he voted for Bass four years ago and had come to regret his choice.
He described Los Angeles as a city “adrift,” with unsolved property crimes, rising trash fees and housing that is unaffordable to many.
Beutner said that he supports Senate Bill 79, the law that will force the city to allow taller, denser buildings near rail stations, “in concept.”
“I just wish that we had leadership in Los Angeles that had been ahead of this, so we would have had a greater say in some of the rules,” he said. “But conceptually, yes, we’ve got to build more housing.”
Beutner is a co-founder and former president of Evercore Partners, a financial services company that advises its clients on mergers, acquisitions and other transactions. In 2008, he retired from that firm — now simply called Evercore Inc. — after he was seriously injured in a bicycling accident.
In 2010, he became Villaraigosa’s jobs czar, taking on the elevated title of first deputy mayor and receiving wide latitude to strike business deals on Villaraigosa’s behalf, just as the city was struggling to emerge from its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Slightly more than a year into his job, Beutner filed paperwork to begin exploring a run for mayor. He secured the backing of former Mayor Richard Riordan and many in the business community but pulled the plug in 2012.
In 2014, Beutner became publisher of the Los Angeles Times, where he focused on digital experimentation and forging deeper ties with readers. He lasted roughly a year in that job before Tribune Publishing Co., the parent company of The Times, ousted him.
Three years later, Beutner was hired as the superintendent of L.A. Unified, which serves schoolchildren in Los Angeles and more than two dozen other cities and unincorporated areas. He quickly found himself at odds with the teachers union, which staged a six-day strike.
The union settled for a two-year package of raises totaling 6%. Beutner, for his part, signed off on a parcel tax to generate additional education funding, but voters rejected the proposal.
In 2022, after leaving the district, Beutner led the successful campaign for Proposition 28, which requires that a portion of California’s general fund go toward visual and performing arts instruction.
Earlier this year, Beutner and several others sued L.A. Unified, accusing the district of violating Proposition 28 by misusing state arts funding and failing to provide legally required arts instruction to students.
He also is immersed in philanthropy, having founded the nonprofit Vision to Learn, which provides vision screenings, eye exams and glasses to children in low-income communities.
The estimated cost of Brightline West’s high-speed rail line connecting Southern California to Las Vegas has surged to $21.5 billion, nearly doubling from its last publicly confirmed estimate of $12.4 billion in January 2025. The updated figure was disclosed in a US Department of Transportation (DOT) report released this week.
Brightline West will travel 218 miles on the median of Interstate 15 at speeds of up to 200 mph, making the trip in about two hours. (Image: Brightline West)
According to Bloomberg, the increase is primarily driven by rising labor and material costs. In response, Brightline West is seeking a $6 billion federal loan from the Trump administration to replace a previously planned $6 billion bank facility.
The company also intends to raise additional equity to cover the remaining cost escalation.
“We have had very productive conversations with USDOT and the Federal Railroad Administration over the last few months to continue to move Brightline West forward,” said Brightline CEO Mike Reininger, speaking to Bloomberg in September.
Brightline West previously secured a $3 billion federal grant under the Biden administration, structured as a reimbursement contingent on meeting minimum spending thresholds.
Will Trump Derail It?
The future of federal funding for Brightline West has come under scrutiny amid broader cuts to high-speed rail initiatives.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration canceled a $64 million planning grant for a proposed Dallas–Houston rail line. Then in August, it withdrew $4 billion in federal support for California’s Los Angeles–San Francisco high-speed rail project, whose cost has ballooned from $33 billion in 2008 to $128 billion.
Brightline West appears to remain on track, however, likely due to its mostly private financing model.
“We are excited to be the only high-speed rail project currently supported by the Trump administration,” Reininger told Bloomberg.
Slow Train Coming
Stations would be located along the route in Victor Valley, Hesperia and, eventually, the Southern Nevada Supplemental Airport, not shown on this map, which is scheduled to open near Jean, Nev. between 2035-37. (Image: Brightline)
In September 2018, Brightline announced it had acquired the old XpressWest high-speed rail project, which had previously received approval to build a Vegas-to-LA high speed rail.
Two years later, construction costs were projected to be $8 billion. That amount was updated to $10 billion in mid-2023. During a bond offering in January 2025, the cost was updated again to $12.4 billion.
The last estimate, which was never officially announced, was $16 billion, according to the DOT.
In April 2024, construction on the project began following a groundbreaking ceremony, though only field investigation work and utility installation have been completed so far.
The Las Vegas terminus will be constructed by McCarthy Building Co. on Las Vegas Boulevard near Blue Diamond Road. Although that’s 2.5 miles south of the Las Vegas Strip, ride-hailing services, resort shuttles, and car rentals will be accessible at the station.
The Southern California terminus will drop passengers in Rancho Cucamonga, where light rail connections can carry them the 37 additional miles southwest to downtown LA, which for most people will take about an hour.
Brightline West has abandoned its initial hope of opening in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics in LA, admitting that service won’t be possible until at least December 2028.
The Florida-based company previously promised to charge $119 for a one-way coach trip and $133 for VIP service. It has not said if that estimate will rise in step with the project’s construction cost.
In 1965, Robert “Rabbit” Jaramillo and his friends were on the cusp of becoming rock ‘n’ roll royalty.
Their Eastside quartet, Cannibal and the Headhunters, had a spring smash with “Land of 1,000 Dances.” The hypnotic tune with a memorable “nah na na na nah” chorus earned them appearances on TV music variety programs like “American Bandstand.” They played at concerts with chart toppers like the Temptations, the Righteous Brothers, Marvin Gaye and the Rolling Stones. The vocal group’s tightly choreographed performances impressed the Beatles, who asked them to be an opening act for their second U.S. tour that summer.
The Headhunters returned to L.A. in August with the Fab Four to play two shows at the Hollywood Bowl just weeks after the Watts riots. Jaramillo danced with such energy that his pants ripped while he and the others scooted across the stage on their behinds, drawing delighted shrieks from the hometown crowd.
“We were the act, the act!” Jaramillo told the Times in 2015. “Didn’t make no difference what color you are. We’re here, we’d perform, and we’d do our best to show ‘em a good time.”
When the Beatles run ended a few nights later, the Headhunters went back on the road through the fall with another popular British Invasion act, the Animals.
But Jaramillo and his friends never recorded another hit, and he left the group two years later.
“He wanted to keep going, but he needed to make money for his family,” said his daughter, Julie Trujillo. “He always had regret about that.”
Jaramillo died Aug. 8 of congestive heart failure in Pueblo, Colo. He was 78.
After leaving the band, he slunk into such musical obscurity that when Tom Waldman began to research what became his 1998 book “Land of a Thousand Dances: Chicano Rock ‘n’ Roll from Southern California,” the word was that the former Headhunter was already dead. Instead, Waldman found him in Pueblo, where Jaramillo had moved in the late 1970s to continue his post-Headhunters career as a railroad signal maintainer.
His still-strong tenor was reserved for belting gospel songs at the Pentecostal church he attended.
The book sparked renewed interest in the Eastside’s 1960s Chicano rock scene, and Jaramillo reunited with bandmates to perform for a few more years before adoring crowds. As the last surviving Headhunter, he appeared in documentaries and radio interviews for the rest of his life to recount that magical summer of 1965 when four Mexican Americans from L.A. proved to the world they could shine next to some of the biggest rock groups of all time.
Born in the Northern California city of Colusa to Mexican immigrants, Jaramillo and his family moved to Boyle Heights when he was young. He grew up in an era when young Mexican Americans on the Eastside were absorbing genres from across Los Angeles — doo-wop from South L.A., surf rock from the coast, the tight harmonies and lovelorn lyrics of Mexican trios — to create a distinct genre later on called Chicano rock or brown-eyed soul. While attending Lincoln High, Jaramillo, his brother Joe and their friend Richard Lopez started a group called Bobby and the Classics, practicing their moves inside what used to be a chicken coop in the Jaramillos’ backyard.
With the addition of Frankie Garcia as lead singer, Bobby and the Classics renamed themselves the Headhunters after a shrunken head that Jaramillo hung on the rearview mirror of his ’49 Chevy. Their stage personas were based on their neighborhood nicknames: Cannibal for Garcia, Scar for Lopez, YoYo for Joe. Robert was Rabbit because of his large front teeth.
The teens quickly became local favorites, performing at church halls and auditoriums. A local producer recorded “Land of 1,000 Dances” with members of car clubs singing along and clapping in the studio to re-create the verve of an Eastside party. It topped out at No. 30 on the Billboard charts, which Jaramillo found out while picking peaches in Northern California with his brother and Lopez to help their family’s finances.
“We get a call — ‘You guy’s gotta come back! The record’s a hit!,” Jaramillo recounted decades later in a documentary. “‘We gotta go to this ‘Hullabaloo’ show!’ We made enough money to get our sorry butts back home.”
Eastside Chicano rock group Cannibal and The Headhunters perform on the NBC TV music show ‘Hullabaloo’ in March 1965 in New York City, New York. Robert “Rabbit” Jaramillo is second from right.
Their rollicking appearance on the nationally syndicated program was what members claimed caught the attention of Paul McCartney, who supposedly told Beatles manager Brian Epstein he wanted the “Nah Nah boys” to open for them.
“I remember asking him how big of a deal that was, and Dad said, ‘I never knew anything about the Beatles,’” Trujillo said. “To him, all he cared about was that he was singing.”
Trujillo said her father shared anecdotes over the years about the Headhunters’ short stint in the spotlight: the time he and Ringo Starr sneaked away from chaperones to get high, or when Cher sat on Jaramillo’s lap while the two took a crowded taxi somewhere.
“I do remember my dad saying that their manager screwed them a bit, that they weren’t getting any money and the guys just had to start careers,” Trujillo said. “But we didn’t see him as a famous person. We just saw him as Dad.”
The performing itch returned to Jaramillo when he retired from the Santa Fe railroad in the 1990s and moved back to Southern California. Gregory Esparza joined the Jaramillo brothers and Lopez in 1999 to take the place of Garcia, who had died three years earlier. Esparza said those Headhunters never performed much publicly because of a copyright dispute over the name, but he remembered rehearsing with the original members “hundreds” of times.
“It was about reliving what they had at such a young age — reaching the top of the mountain at faster-than-light speed,” said Esparza, who’d go on to front another legendary Eastside Chicano rock group, Thee Midniters. “Getting that recognition really meant a lot to them.”
He recalled a festival in San Bernardino where the promoter told the group that they wouldn’t get paid if they identified themselves as the Headhunters. “So Rabbit goes on stage, gets a big smile and said, ‘You all know who we are!’ and everyone cheered.”
Health issues brought Jaramillo back to Colorado in the mid-2000s, but singing never left his life. He was inducted into the Chicano Music Hall of Fame during a 2017 ceremony at Su Teatro in Denver, drawing roars from the audience when he went onstage with his cane only to toss it aside and dance to the Headhunters’ signature song. Fellow congregants at Jaramillo’s longtime church, Good Shepherd Fellowship in Pueblo, regularly asked him to perform Christian songs — a favorite was “My Tribute” by gospel pioneer Andraé Crouch. He also loved to do karaoke with his grandson Daniel Hernandez, preferring oldies like “Daddy’s Home” and “Sixteen Candles.”
“No one knew who he was, and he never said who he was,” said Hernandez, a Phoenix resident who grew up in East L.A. but spent time with Jaramillo in his later years. “But after he sang, we would always have people buying us beers and telling him, ‘Hey, you’re a great singer!’”
Jaramillo is survived by two brothers; eight children; 15 grandchildren; and 17 great-grandchildren. Services were held at Good Shepherd Fellowship and ended with his casket being wheeled out to “Land of 1,000 Dances.”
Comics have long been on the front lines of democracy, the canary in the cat’s mouth, Looney Tunes style, when it comes to free speech being swallowed by regressive politics.
So Jimmy Kimmel is in good company, though he may not like this particular historical party: Zero Mostel; Philip Loeb; even Lenny Bruce, who claimed, after being watched by the FBI and backroom blacklisted, that he was less a comic and more “the surgeon with the scalpel for false values.”
During that era of McCarthyism in the 1950s (yes, I know Bruce’s troubles came later), America endured an attack on our 1st Amendment right to make fun of who we want, how we want — and survived — though careers and even lives were lost.
Wake up, Los Angeles. This isn’t a Jimmy Kimmel problem. This is a Los Angeles problem.
This is about punishing people who speak out. It’s about silencing dissent. It’s about misusing government power to go after enemies. You don’t need to agree with Kimmel’s politics to see where this is going.
For a while, during Trump 2.0, the ire of the right was aimed at California in general and San Francisco in particular, that historical lefty bastion that, with its drug culture, openly LBGTQ+ ethos and Pelosi-Newsom political dynasty, seemed to make it the perfect example of what some consider society’s failures.
But really, the difficulty with hating San Francisco is that it doesn’t care. It’s a city that has long acknowledged, even flaunted, America’s discomfort with it. That’s why the infamous newspaper columnist Herb Caen dubbed it “Baghdad by the Bay” more than 80 years ago, when the town had already fully embraced its outsider status.
Los Angeles, on the other hand, has never considered itself a problem. Mostly, we’re too caught up in our own lives, through survival or striving, to think about what others think of our messy, vibrant, complicated city. Add to that, Angelenos don’t often think of themselves as a singular identity. There are a million different L.A.s for the more than 9 million people who live in our sprawling county.
But to the rest of America, L.A. is increasingly a specific reality, a place that, like San Francisco once did, embodies all that is wrong for a certain slice of the American right.
It was not happenstance that President Trump chose L.A. as the first stop for his National Guard tour, or that ICE’s roving patrols are on our streets. It’s not bad luck or even bad decisions that is driving the push to destroy UCLA as we know it.
And it’s really not what Kimmel said about Charlie Kirk that got him pulled, because it truth, his statements were far from the most offensive that have been uttered on either side of the political spectrum.
In fact, he wasn’t talking about Kirk, but about his alleged killer and how in the immediate aftermath, there was endless speculation about his political beliefs. Turns out that Kimmel wrongly insinuated the suspect was conservative, though all of us will likely have to wait until the trial to gain a full understanding of the evidence.
“The MAGA gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said, before making fun of Trump’s response to the horrific killing.
You can support what Kimmel said or be deeply offended by it. But it is rich for the people who just a few years ago were saying liberal “cancel culture” was ruining America to adopt the same tactics.
If you need proof that this is more about control than content, look no further than Trump’s social media post on the issue, which directly encourages NBC to fire its own late-night hosts, who have made their share of digs at the president as well.
“Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!” Trump wrote.
This is about making an example of America’s most vibrant and inclusive city, and the celebrity icons who dare to diss — the place that exemplifies better than any other what freedom looks like, lives like, jokes like.
If a Kimmel can fall so easily, what does that mean the career of Hannah Einbinder, who shouted out a “free Palestine” at the Emmys? Will there be a quiet fear of hiring her?
What does it mean for a union leader like David Huerta, who is still facing charges after being detained at an immigration protest? Will people think twice before joining a demonstration?
What does it mean for you? The yous who live lives of expansiveness and inclusion. The yous who have forged your own path, made your own way, broken the boundaries of traditional society whether through your choices on who to love, what country to call your own, how to think of your identity or nurture your soul.
You, Los Angeles, with your California dreams and anything-goes attitude, are the living embodiment of everything that needs to be crushed.
I am not trying to send you into an anxiety spiral, but it’s important to understand what we stand to lose if civil rights continue to erode.
Kimmel having his speech censored is in league with our immigrant neighbors being rounded up and detained; the federal government financially pressuring doctors into dropping care for transgender patients, and the University of California being forced to turn over the names of staff and students it may have a beef with.
Being swept up by ICE may seem vastly different than a millionaire celebrity losing his show, but they are all the weaponization of government against its people.
It was Disney, not Donald Trump, who took action against Kimmel. But Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr threatening to “take action” if ABC did not sounds a lot like the way the White House talks about Washington, Oakland and so many other blue cities, L.A. at the top of the list.
Our Black mayor. Our Latino senator and representatives. Our 1 million undocumented residents. Our nearly 10% of the adult population identifies as LGBTQ+. Our comics, musicians, actors and writers who have long pushed us to see the world in new, often difficult, ways.
Many of us are here because other places didn’t want us, didn’t understand us, tried to hold us back. (I am in Sacramento now, but remain an Angeleno at heart.) We came here, to California and Los Angeles, for the protection this state and city offers.
But now it needs our protection.
However this assault on democracy comes, we are all Jimmy Kimmel — we are all at risk. The very nature of this place is under siege, and standing together across the many fronts of these attacks is our best defense.
Seeing that they are all one attack — whether it is against a celebrity, a car wash worker or our entire city — is critical.
“Our democracy is not self-executing,” former President Obama said recently. “It depends on us all as citizens, regardless of our political affiliations, to stand up and fight for the core values that have made this country the envy of the world.”
So here we are, L.A., in a moment that requires fortitude, requires insight, requires us to stand up and say the most ridiculous thing that has every been said in a town full of absurdity:
Isadore Hall, a former state legislator and Compton City Council member, launched a campaign Monday to challenge Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia.
Hall, who is backed by a slew of prominent endorsers, argues that Mejia has been more focused on “social media theatrics” than protecting tax dollars.
He said he would bring common sense leadership and accountability, citing his lengthy track record in elected office and master’s degrees in management and public administration, as well as experience weeding out government waste and fraud in Compton.
Hall, who moved to Los Angeles in 2016 and represented parts of the city in both the Assembly and the state Senate, said he launched his bid after being asked by “some elected officials,” along with several pastors and labor leaders, though he declined to provide specifics.
Hall’s endorsements include L.A. County Supervisors Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger, L.A. City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, California Treasurer Fiona Ma, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara and five state legislators. If elected, Hall would be the city’s first Black controller; Mejia, who is Filipino American, previously made history as the first Asian American elected to citywide office in L.A.
“It’s one thing to be a great finance person or an auditor or a person who understands numbers … but you also have to have a temperament. You also have to understand the importance of governance,” Hall said, arguing that Mejia’s office is poorly managed and lacks good communication with city department heads and other local leaders.
It’s still unclear whether other candidates will enter the race for controller — a coveted role that is one of three citywide offices, along with mayor and city attorney.
L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez has been rumored to potentially be interested in a bid for either mayor or controller, though she declined to discuss her plans with The Times last week.
Hall and Mejia represent vastly different flanks of the Democratic Party, and the coming race will almost certainly pit L.A. establishment politics against the city’s ascendant left.
Three years ago, despite being heavily outspent, Mejia made political mincemeat of Paul Koretz, who had held elected office since before he was born. Young voters who were previously unaware that L.A. even had a controller were galvanized by Mejia’s unorthodox campaign, which directed an unprecedented spotlight toward L.A.’s chief accounting officer, auditor and paymaster.
Mejia’s successful campaign coincided with a moment where faith in L.A. City Hall was at a nadir amid numerous criminal scandals and an explosive leaked recording of some City Council members frankly discussing politics in sometimes racist terms. The question in 2026 will be whether the civic pendulum has shifted and if the phrase “veteran politician” still doubles as an effective slur. Mejia will also now be running as the incumbent rather than an outsider.
Hall, 52, has spent roughly 15 years in elected office, beginning with the Compton school board in his mid-20s.
Like Mejia, who is now 34, Hall found success in politics relatively young. But his career ascended the old-fashioned way — through incrementally higher offices and with the support of the pastors, labor and community groups who have long powered the Democratic political machine in South L.A. and surrounding cities.
After losing a hard-fought bid for Congress in 2016, Hall was appointed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown to the California Agricultural and Labor Relations Board. Hall was originally seen as a shoo-in victor during his congressional campaign, but underdog challenger Nanette Barragán succeeded, in part, by hammering him on his ties to special interests in the oil, alcohol and tobacco industries, according to prior Times reporting.
Mejia first made his name with unsuccessful runs for Congress as a Green Party candidate. He found his stride and exploded as a political pied piper of sorts during the 2022 election, where his energetic TikTok videos, sharp billboards and occasional dances in a Pikachu costume helped fuel the energy of the moment.
Attempts by critics to paint Mejia in 2022 as too “extreme” because of his anti-police positions and past bombastic tweets largely fell flat.
As the race heats up, Mejia will almost certainly attack Hall for a number of controversies involving campaign finance.
During his 2014 campaign for state Senate, rivals attacked Hall for his use of campaign funds to pay for expensive dinners, limousine rentals, luxury suites at concerts and trips — expenses he defended as legitimate campaign costs.
Hall said last week that he hadn’t been an expert in the complex rules of congressional campaign finance but held his accountant accountable for the error and learned from the experience.
When Leah Marx began visiting Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles in 2010, it did not immediately raise alarm among the people who ran it. Most of the time, jailers just looked at her federal ID and let her in without asking why she was there. If they did, she said she was investigating a human trafficking case. It was a good-sounding story. Believable. Perfect to deter further questions.
Marx was in her late 20s, just beyond her rookie year at the FBI. She had been sitting at her desk when her supervisor handed her a letter from an inmate alleging jailers were brutalizing people in their custody. It was different from other letters. It had details.
Now she and her FBI colleagues were at the jail conducting secret interviews, trying to separate fact from rumor. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department ran the jails. With a daily population of 14,000 inmates or more, it was the nation’s largest jail system, and had been known for years as a cauldron of violence and dysfunction.
An inmate at Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
The agency was in the hands of a would-be reformer, Sheriff Lee Baca. He’d promised transparency. He’d won praise for his ambitious inmate education program. But stories persisted of violent and corrupt jailers, of deputy gangs, of an institutional culture so entrenched it resisted all efforts to root it out.
Marx seemed an improbable federal agent (at first, even to herself). She had been getting a master’s degree in social work when someone suggested she try the FBI. She did not know they hired people like her.
She was new to L.A., and living alone with her dog. As she gathered inmate stories, she made it a point to emphasize that their charges were irrelevant to her.
“I think they started to believe that I was there to actually hear what was going on,” she told The Times.
Inmates were telling her versions of the same story. A jailer would assault an inmate while yelling “Stop resisting,” then charge the inmate with assault on a police officer.
Then-Sheriff Lee Baca meets with inmates at Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles in October 2011 to listen to their complains and issues about the jail.
(Los Angeles Times)
As she weighed the credibility of inmates against jailers, Marx was informed by a painful episode in her family history. Growing up in Wisconsin, she knew only the outlines of a tragedy too painful for the family to discuss — her grandmother and uncle had long ago died in a house fire in California.
In high school, she learned that the fire had been intentionally set, that the suspected arsonist worked at the local police department. He’d benefited from the air of impunity his position afforded.
“Someone’s position doesn’t dictate whether they are more truthful or less truthful than anyone else,” Marx would recall. “You don’t get instant credibility due to your position or your role.”
In this series, Christopher Goffard revisits old crimes in Los Angeles and beyond, from the famous to the forgotten, the consequential to the obscure, diving into archives and the memories of those who were there.
At the jail, she found an inmate eager to help — Anthony Brown, a bank robber waiting to be transported to state prison on a 423-year prison sentence.
He told her about a jailer who had offered to bring him a contraband cellphone for the right price, and she orchestrated a sting in summer 2011. An undercover agent handed over the money, and the jailer delivered the phone to Brown.
The phone was supposed to help Brown document what he saw. And it gave the FBI leverage to launch an ambitious operation. The FBI would rent out a warehouse said to be full of drugs, and use the compromised jailer to recruit corrupt colleagues to moonlight as guards.
But the plan was dead before it could even get off the ground. Nor did Brown get anything useful with his phone during the week and a half that he had it. On Aug. 8, 2011, deputies found the phone in his cell, stashed in a Doritos bag.
Baca shakes hands with a trainee at a 2022 graduation ceremony at the Sheriff’s Training Academy and Regional Services Center in Whittier.
(Los Angeles Times)
Baca did not talk like other lawmen. He often sounded like a social worker, or a panelist at a self-improvement seminar. “I tend to be one that says, ‘All right, constant growth, constant creativity,’” he would say. “All humanity matters.”
Baca had been raised by his grandparents in a Mexican American family in L.A. He dug ditches, washed cars and hauled barley sacks. He joined the Sheriff’s Department at age 23 in 1965, got a PhD from USC and worked his way up to become one of the state’s highest-ranking Latino law officers.
When he took over the Sheriff’s Department in 1998, he promised a new age of law enforcement at the vast, scandal-plagued agency. By the summer of 2011, he was almost 70 and had run the department for 13 years. Voters had reelected him three times.
Baca celebrates with supporters at a Pasadena hotel in November 1998 after hearing he leads the sheriff’s race.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
When it became clear that the FBI had been secretly investigating his jails for a long time, the man who preached reform and accountability faced an unprecedented test. He could cooperate fully with the federal investigation. Instead, he decided to go to war.
His department turned Marx’s informant into a ghost, shuttling him between facilities under a series of fake names, as Marx tried doggedly to find him. Even a federal writ failed to produce him. When Marx finally found him 18 days later, at Lancaster State Prison, he met her with hostile silence — he believed the FBI had left him for dead.
Baca, furious about the intrusion onto his turf, told the local FOX 11 morning show “Good Day L.A.” that the feds had broken the law by planting a phone on one of his inmates.
“Who polices the police?” a host asked.
“We police ourselves,” Baca replied.
Even as he spoke, his department had a surveillance team on Marx. That afternoon in September 2011, as she approached her apartment, two sheriff’s sergeants were waiting for her.
“I’m in the process of swearing out a declaration for an arrest warrant for you,” said Sgt. Scott Craig. He had his jacket off, and his gun was showing.
Marx interpreted it as an attempt to intimidate her. She told him to call the FBI.
“And the first thought I had is if they were willing to come to my house and do this, what else are they capable of?” she said.
U.S. Atty. Andre Birotte Jr. announces indictments of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials in 2013.
(Los Angeles Times)
Baca confronted U.S. Atty. Andre Birotte, who had approved the jail investigation. According to Birotte’s trial testimony later, Baca erupted angrily, “I’m the goddamn sheriff. These are my goddamn jails. You want to gun up in here? Is that what you want?” Birotte took the phrase to mean, “Do you want our agencies to go to war?”
Inside the FBI, there was an ongoing debate about whether to include Baca in the jail investigation. He was a valuable law enforcement ally. His deputies worked with the feds on many task forces. But the incident outside Marx’s apartment largely ended that debate.
“If that isn’t a clear indication that we cannot work with them, I don’t know what is,” said Carlos Narro, who was the FBI’s public corruption supervisor in L.A. at the time.
The sheriff had catastrophically misjudged his adversary. Instead of quashing the probe, his heavy-handed tactics had only fueled it. Was it possible to expand the case beyond civil rights violations to an obstruction of justice case? How exactly was Brown made to vanish inside the jail system?
James Sexton had some answers. The son of a Southern sheriff, he had joined the LASD hoping to make his name. He was only a few months into his job as a custody deputy at the downtown jail in 2009 when he learned the price of nonconformity. A robbery suspect sucker-punched him, he says, and his colleagues ostracized him for failing to retaliate with a beating.
Still, Sexton’s tech prowess and other skills began to win him some attention, and ultimately earned him a job with an elite intelligence unit. In August 2011, his expertise with the jail computer system made him useful. The brass had an unusual request. They wanted him to make an informant disappear.
“We were going to make it difficult for other law enforcement agencies to find him on the computer,” he said. “And then they all looked at me.”
Sexton had learned the price of defiance. He helped to change Brown’s name. The aliases included John Rodriguez, Kevin King, Chris Johnson and Robin Banks.
When sheriff’s officials decided to unload Brown on the state prison system, Sexton wrote an email notifying his bosses.
“Gents,” Sexton wrote, “I’m going to handle booking our friend back under his true alias.”
The email would become a crucial piece of evidence. In it, Sexton coined the term that would become inseparable from the whole scheme. The subject line: Operation Pandora’s Box.
Sexton thought the Brown episode was behind him. But in early 2012, he said, he was scared. He had reported misconduct on an unrelated case, involving another jailer’s possible association with a skinhead gang.
He knew he would never be trusted again. Co-workers were calling him a rat.
He decided to become an informant for Leah Marx. He was surprised at how little she acted like a cop. “I got a social worker,” he said. “You gotta love the calculation of the FBI. She is easy to talk to. I should have been smarter.”
The main exercise yard on the roof of Men’s Central Jail.
(Los Angeles Times)
Sexton talked to the FBI dozens of times. He told a federal grand jury how he had manipulated the jail computers to hide Brown from his federal handlers. This admission would hurt him severely. In December 2013, he was indicted, one of 18 current or former sworn members charged with civil rights violations, corruption, inmate abuse or obstruction. Among them were the two sergeants who had confronted Marx outside her home.
At trial, Sexton’s attorney portrayed him as an “overeager kid” trying to help the FBI, a low-ranking jailer who exaggerated his importance in the scheme. The attorney compared him to Walter Mitty, the character with the boring office job who escapes into elaborate imaginative worlds — a defense Sexton hated. He was convicted and received an 18-month term. He was thrown into solitary confinement. He counted the days by plucking teeth off a comb.
After four months in prison, Sexton appeared before a federal judge and said, “I stand before you as a broken man.” The prosecutor agreed to let him go home.
The sheriff was not an easy man to pin down. As he sat down to face questions from the feds, his sentences traveled winding paths through vague precincts to fog-filled destinations.
He bragged about the thousands of inmates who were getting an education in his jails, thanks to programs he had established. “No one is a greater believer in inmate rights than I am,” he said.
His answers were frequently long-winded, muddled and incoherent. Again and again, he denied having advance knowledge of what his department had done — from making Brown disappear, to threatening Marx with arrest.
The FBI had not asked his permission to infiltrate his jails because it had not trusted him, but Baca seemed to find this fact intolerable, if not incomprehensible. He seemed personally hurt by it.
“There’s no evidence of a malicious intent on my part to undermine the mission of the FBI,” Baca said. “You wanna catch all the crooked deputies I have; in fact, it’s helpful because I don’t have enough budget to do it all myself.”
For Baca, this interview — which prosecutors would portray as a web of falsehoods — represented the culmination of a long series of misjudgments and self-inflicted wounds.
Baca announcing in January 2014 that he would not seek a fifth term.
(Los Angeles Times)
Baca had once told the ACLU, “I will never, ever resign. I intend to be sheriff as long as I live.” He had run unopposed at the last election, his fourth. But in January 2014, he stood outside the department’s Monterey Park headquarters, fighting emotion as he announced his resignation. He had been sheriff for 15 years and had worked at the department for nearly half a century.
In late 2016, the 74-year-old Baca went to trial. His supporters wore lapel pins in the shape of a badge. His defense: He had been in the dark about what his subordinates were doing to foil the feds. Some of Baca’s prominent friends, including two former L.A. County district attorneys, testified to his law-abiding reputation. The jury deadlocked.
At the retrial, prosecutors called convicted high-ranking co-conspirators to the stand. A former captain said Baca had personally approved the plan to send sergeants to Marx’s house, adding: “his advice to us was just not to put handcuffs on her.”
In March 2017, Baca became the 10th and highest-ranking participant in the obstruction scheme to be convicted. His lawyer pleaded with the judge, saying Baca had Alzheimer’s disease that amounted to its own terrible punishment, “a sentence that will leave him a mere shell of his former self.” But the judge gave Baca three years, excoriating him for abusing the public trust.
Baca, flanked by attorneys David and Nathan Hochman, leaves federal court in Los Angeles after he was arraigned on charges of obstructing justice, and lying to the federal government. Nathan Hochman is now L.A. County district attorney.
(Los Angeles Times)
At 77, Baca turned himself into a low-security facility outside El Paso. According to a friendly biography, he reorganized the prison library and renovated the prison pond, and cleared brush from the grounds. He inspired other inmates by his example. He made friends, he gave advice. He told people to make use of their time.
He went home in 2021. Three years later, at age 82, he wandered away from home in San Marino. He turned up six miles away at a Denny’s, badly confused.
If not for Baca’s decision to “gun up” against the feds, they probably would have brought a handful of civil rights cases against jailers — and Baca would have won reelection.
“All the big prosecutions we did was because of how they reacted,” says Brandon Fox, the former prosecutor. “This was an existential threat to the Sheriff’s Department, but it was of their own making because of what they did.”
Brown is in state prison serving his 423 years. He filed suit claiming the Sheriff’s Department had effectively kidnapped him during those 18 days, and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved a $1-million payout to settle the claim. Among the ironies: He got nothing of value on the cellphone that so enraged the sheriff, and prosecutors never called him to testify at trial, knowing the defense was likely to eviscerate him.
In the end, 22 members of the Sheriff’s Department were convicted as a result of the probe initiated by special agent Leah Marx. It seems likely her youth and inexperience helped her, that veteran agents would have weighed the odds and decided it wasn’t worth pursuing.
“We don’t know how many more civil rights cases we could have brought because the department came in and disrupted our investigation,” Marx says. “They tried to intentionally stop what we were doing. And so, sadly, we don’t know where it would’ve gone. And that’s a little frustrating.” The podcast “Crimes of the Times,” featuring “Pandora’s Box: The Fall of L.A.’s Sheriff,” is now available wherever you get your podcasts.
California lawmakers just paved the way for a whole lot more housing in the Golden State.
In the waning hours of the 2025 legislative session, the state Senate voted 21 to 8 to approve Senate Bill 79, a landmark housing bill that overrides local zoning laws to expand high-density housing near transit hubs. The controversial bill received a final concurrence vote from the Senate on Friday, a day after passing in the California assembly with a vote of 41 to 17.
The bill had already squeaked through the state Senate by a narrow margin earlier this year, but since it was amended in the following months, it required a second approval. It will head to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk in October.
One of the more ambitious state-imposed efforts to increase housing density in recent years, the bill was introduced in March by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who stresses that the state needs to take immediate action to address California’s housing shortage. It opens the door for taller, denser housing near transit corridors such as bus stops and train stations: up to nine stories for buildings adjacent to certain transit stops, seven stories for buildings within a quarter-mile, and six stories for buildings within a half-mile.
Single-family neighborhoods within a half-mile of transit stops would be subject to the new zoning rules.
Height limits are based on tiers. Tier 1 zoning, which includes heavy rail lines such as the L.A. Metro B and D lines, allows for six- to nine-story buildings, depending on proximity to the transit hub. Tier 2 zoning — which includes light rail lines such as the A, C, E and K lines, as well as bus routes with dedicated lanes — allows for five- to eight-story buildings.
An amateur map released by a cartographer and fact-checked by YIMBY Action, a housing non-profit that helped push the bill through, gives an idea of the areas around L.A. that would be eligible for development under SB 79. Tier 1 zones include hubs along Wilshire Blvd., Vermont Ave., and Hollywood Blvd., as well as a handful of spots in Downtown L.A. and the San Fernando Valley.
Tier 2 zones are more spread out, dotting Exposition Blvd. along the E line, stretching toward Inglewood along the K line, and running from Long Beach into the San Gabriel Valley along the A line.
Assembly members debated the bill for around 40 minutes on Thursday evening and cheered after it was passed.
“Over the last five years, housing affordability and homelessness have consistently been among the top priorities in California. The smartest place to build new housing is within existing communities, near the state’s major transit investments that connect people to jobs, schools and essential services,” said Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva (D-Orange County) in support of the bill.
Other assembly members, including Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), Juan Carrillo (D-Palmdale) and Josh Hoover (R-Folsom) voiced their support.
Proponents say drastic measures are necessary given the state’s affordability crisis.
“SB 79 is what we’ve been working towards for a decade – new housing next to our most frequently used train stations. This bill has the potential to unlock hundreds of thousands of new multi-family homes,” said YIMBY Action California director Leora Tanjuatco Ross.
Critics claim the blanket mandate is an overreach, stripping local authorities of their ability to promote responsible growth.
Assemblymember Rick Zbur (D-West Hollywood) argued against the bill, claiming it will affect lower-priced neighborhoods more than wealthy ones since land prices are cheaper for housing developers.
Councilmember Traci Park, who co-authored the resolution with Councilmember John Lee, called SB 79 a “one-size-fits-all mandate from Sacramento.” Lee called it “chaos.”
The resolution called for L.A. to be exempt from the upzoning since it already has a state-approved housing plan.
The bill has spurred multiple protests in Southern California communities, including Pacific Palisades and San Diego. Residents fear the zoning changes would alter single-family communities and force residents into competition with developers, who would be incentivized under the new rules to purchase properties near transit corridors.
However, support for SB 79 surged in recent days after the State Building and Construction Trades Council, a powerful labor group that represents union construction workers, agreed to reverse their opposition in exchange for amendments that add union hiring to certain projects.
In a statement after the deal was struck, the trades council president Chris Hannan said the amendments would provide good jobs and training to California’s skilled construction workforce.
Wiener, who has unsuccessfully tried to pass similar legislation twice before, said the deal boosted the bill’s chances.
The Griffith Park carousel — a “crown jewel” of the park, where Walt Disney first dreamed up Disneyland — is getting a new lease on life just in time for its 2026 centennial. The city of Los Angeles’ Recreation and Parks Commission inked a million-dollar deal to buy the historic amusement ride late last month.
Beloved by Disney, who snapped up a similar historic wooden ride to serve as the King Arthur Carrousel at his Anaheim theme park, the Griffith Park merry-go-round took its last twirl in 2022.
Its previous operator, Julio Gosdinski, died suddenly near the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving the amusement in limbo just as COVID restrictions were starting to ease. It was reopened briefly in the spring of 2021 but was closed again a year later, in need of repairs and without a clear owner to make them.
Gosdinski’s stake in the historic amusement remains tied up in Los Angeles County probate court, where Gosdinski’s mother and sister are vying with another owner for control, records show.
After the parks commission agreement, the stable of hand-carved basswood and poplar horses will spin under city auspices, part of a broader restoration of the section of the park, which is slated to be completed ahead of the Olympic Games in 2028.
The carousel is one of the oldest wooden merry-go-rounds in California, and one of just a handful designed by the famous Spillman Engineering Corp. and its predecessor that remain in operation in the state.
Others are operated at the Pike in Long Beach, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Balboa Park in San Diego, and at Tilden Park in Berkeley, where Griffith Park’s original merry-go-round remains the state’s fastest wooden spinner.
Visitors ride the Griffith Park merry-go-round, a favorite haunt of Walt Disney and his daughters, on Aug. 24, 1951.
(USC /Corbis via Getty Images)
The current merry-go-round was built in 1926 and relocated to Griffith Park in the depths of the Great Depression in 1937. Like others of its ilk and era, the carousel includes horses carved by the famous artist Charles Looff, creator of the Santa Monica Pier.
“Walt Disney regularly frequented the Merry-Go-Round on Saturdays, watching his daughters ride around and daydreaming of one day creating his own theme park,” the city agreement said.
But the amusement will require significant repairs before it can reopen, document show.
Today, the merry-go-round cannot even be moved by hand.
Still, L.A. could be getting the carousel for a song. It is among the dwindling number of four-across merry-go-rounds of its type still in existence, and still retains nearly all its original features, according to appraisals commissioned by the city.
According to the department’s proposal, the sellers had higher offers but wanted the merry-go-round to keep twirling in its longtime home.
Three years from now, millions of tourists will pour into L.A. for the 2028 Olympics. For most of them, a hotel room or Airbnb will suffice.
Some require a more extravagant stay.
Ten bedrooms. Twenty bathrooms. A private movie theater and infinity pool overlooking the city. A battalion of chefs, butlers and drivers catering to the smallest of whims.
The Earth’s elite — not just the athletes, but the royals, oligarchs and uber-wealthy families coming to watch them — won’t be here for three summers. And the market for mega-mansion rentals is already getting competitive.
“We’re getting five to 10 inquiries per week,” said Hank Stark, founder of LuxJB.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
“We’re getting five to 10 inquiries per week,” said Hank Stark, founder of ultra-luxury vacation rental company LuxJB. “There are only so many homes of this size in L.A., and people want to secure their spot as early as possible.”
LuxJB owns 14 mansions around L.A., including in Beverly Hills, the Hollywood Hills and West Hollywood. Three of them have already been secured for the Olympics — not just for the last two weeks of July while the Games are taking place, but for most of the year.
“If you’re an Olympic federation from a specific country, you’ll be here all year training athletes before the Games begin,” Stark said. “If you’re a major sports brand, you’ll want a presence in L.A. before and after July.”
The crown jewel of LuxJB’s collection is a 39,000-square-foot behemoth complete with nine bedrooms, four kitchens, a gym, spa, movie theater, pickleball court, basketball court and a team of three maids. A client just rented it out from January to August 2028 for $300,000 per month.
That’s $2.4 million total. Pre-paid.
It’s an eye-popping price, but there’s a bit of savings to be found since LuxJB covers utilities. They run about $25,000 per month once you factor in heating the pool.
The home is on the pricier end of LuxJB’s offerings, which start at $1,900 per night for smaller five-bedroom villas and $150,000 per month for larger mansions.
The backyard and pool of a LuxJB mansion.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Stark said the rentals make sense for many. For example, a superstar athlete who travels with an entourage and wants some privacy.
“You can’t put [Cristiano] Ronaldo in a hotel room surrounded by strangers. He’s the most valuable player in the world,” Stark said. “Plus, our place has a $6,000 zero-gravity massage chair.”
LuxJB is currently fielding interest from two Olympic committees looking for a large enough place to hold news conferences and host media outlets, as well as U.S. companies wanting to book houses for their top brass.
The mansion’s downstairs gaming room.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Stark said it’s common for companies to rent their mansions for months at a time, and far in advance. Studios rent them for red carpet season during the fall and spring to host celebrities nominated for Emmys, Grammys and Oscars. Nine of LuxJB’s 14 homes are already booked for next summer, when the 2026 World Cup brings a handful of major matches to L.A.
But bookings three years out?
“It’s rare,” Stark said. “But rentals are disappearing, especially after the [January] fires, when so many were leased to house victims long-term. So I don’t think demand will slow down any time soon.”
The main reason why the market isn’t hotter is because there aren’t that many rooms or houses available yet. Most hotels don’t accept reservations more than a year in advance, and rental companies such as Airbnb and VRBO typically don’t accept bookings more than two years out.
There’s a reason for such policies: A lot can change in three years. Homeowners can sell their homes, take them off the market, or die.
“There are only so many homes of this size in L.A., and people want to secure their spot as early as possible,” Stark said.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Stark doesn’t have to worry about major changes, since LuxJB owns its homes. But other luxury rental companies, such as the Nightfall Group, rent out homes on behalf of owners, so three years out can be a bit too soon for some.
That hasn’t stopped the calls from coming, though.
Nightfall founder Mokhtar Jabli said he has received a steady stream of inquiries since the company created a 2028 Olympics landing page on its site highlighting available rentals. They’ve already booked one: a 10,000-square-foot home with six bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, a movie theater and infinity pool in the Hollywood Hills.
For the month of July 2028, the guest paid $160,000.
“That house rents for around $110,000 during a typical year, but they paid a premium to book it so far in advance,” Jabli said.
It came from a longtime client who knew which house they wanted and locked it in before it was blocked by a long-term lease. The owner typically doesn’t take bookings so far out but was willing to make an exception — as long as the guest was willing to pay more.
Jabli said prices for Olympic bookings are around 40% higher than usual, but he expects that number will go up as the Games get closer.
Nightfall has rentals in luxury markets across the globe, and around 100 in Los Angeles. Its homes typically start at $50,000 per month, but the company also offers concierge services, so the house is only the start. Jabli said some clients pay $500,000 per month for swanky add-ons such as private jets, yacht rentals, security guards, drivers, chefs and housekeepers.
The company regularly hosts international athletes: soccer stars Ibrahima Konate from France and Amine Adli from Morocco, most recently. Jabli expects wealthy Olympic athletes in more lucrative sports, such as basketball or soccer, to book homes to share with their families rather than staying in the Olympic Village on UCLA’s campus.
One of the bathrooms in a LuxJB mansion.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Another factor in the Olympic rental market is Southern California’s uneven, sporadic enforcement of short-term rental regulations. Rules change from year to year and city to city, and a legal booking today could be outlawed by 2028.
For example, on Aug. 5, Beverly Hills banned short-term rentals entirely, requiring initial leases to be at least 12 months. Los Angeles beefed up its Home-Sharing Ordinance in March, calling for increased fines and more staff to monitor violations. But the city’s scaled-back budget has put many of those enforcement plans on pause.
It’s unclear whether exceptions will be made for the Olympics, when millions of visitors will descend on a region already starved for housing.
Either way, the glut of deep-pocketed tourists should serve as a shot in the arm to a luxury market that has been waning since the COVID-19 pandemic. Homes will rent for thousands per day. Millions per year.
“L.A. is going through a crisis, both in the high-end luxury rental business and beyond,” Jabli said. “Hopefully, 2028 brings it back to the L.A. we know.”
