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How Asian-language tattoos have helped me feel at home in my own skin

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The Chinese language is difficult, and perhaps no one has struggled more with it than the inkers and bearers of America’s Chinese-character tattoos.

Most infamous was probably the tattoo on Britney Spears’ hip, which intended to be the character for “mysterious,” but ended expressing something closer to “strange.”

Another popular choice is the Chinese character for “freedom,” which mistranslates to mian fei, or “free of charge.” I’ve also seen tattoos intended to represent the Chinese character for “power” represented as dian, which means “electricity” rather than “strength.”

I got my first tattoo in 2014 at My Tattoo in Alhambra, a road map of Los Angeles in black and red. My second came from a tattoo parlor in a neon lit alley in Shihlin Night Market in Taipei, a Chinese family stamp that depicts the meaning of my last name, a bear.

A Chinese dragon is one of the featured tattoos on display at Jelly Los Angeles.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Each tattoo attempts to express something different that is important to me, and I often considered using Chinese. But I could never see the Chinese character tattoo as anything more than an embarrassing stereotype. I associated it with exoticizing Asian culture, robbing it of meaning, except as decoration. I joked that getting one might pigeonhole me as one of those guy who owns one too many kimonos.

There’s probably no need to get this tangled up over a tattoo. But I don’t think I’m alone. Asian Americans often grow up with mocking, racist or alienating representations of our culture. And sometimes that has the ironic, contradictory effect of making us feel stereotyped by our own cultures.

Mainstream culture’s version of Asian American identity can feel like a costume you never agreed to wear. To construct an identity that could contain all parts of myself, I felt like I had to shed that skin and create some distance from it.

Now, conical rice paddy hats, the sound of a gong, and kung-fu have all become things I find very hard to enjoy or appreciate. These basically harmless aspects of Chinese cultures, through the lens of past pain, can still hurt.

When I moved to Venice Beach two years ago, I saw Chinese tattoos on skaters, lifters, pickleball players, surfers and tourists, hardly any with Chinese heritage. Some tattoo parlors advertised with giant posters of translated Chinese characters in the window. None of them seemed self-conscious or apologetic about it, which made my hesitation feel unnecessary. I envied their nonchalance.

I decided to ink a Taoist verse in a line down my forearm. I met my tattoo artist, Shane, at Devocean Tattoo, a tiny storefront shop. He asked a lot of questions about the characters before getting started — as a white tattoo artist he’s all too aware of the inaccurate Chinese tattoo stereotype.

Tattoo artist Mikey Ekimoto tattoos the Korean symbol for “taste, savor, flavor” on Frank Shyong’s wrist at Ocean Front Tattoo in Venice.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

The pain of a tattoo always seems to land just short of intolerable, depending on where you get it. When the tattoo gun’s twin needles pierce your skin, it stings enough that the body instinctively seeks to stop the pain, whether by flinching or flooding your brain with endorphins. It’s enough pain to frustrate your attempts to avoid thinking about it.

But the most important thing about the pain of a tattoo is that it will end, as with most pain in life. What you’re left with is a feeling of victory over suffering. Or at least, a sense that you have less to fear from it than before. I used to see tattoos as talismans of pain, but now I believe they also represent healing.

When the words on my arm healed, my anger faded with the pain.

There are no easy rules that neatly separate cultural appropriation from cultural appreciation because there is no single way to respect people’s pain. Trying to determine which Chinese-character tattoos are the most authentic or appropriate is pointless, because the most culturally accurate thing to do is to never get one.

Preserving the body is considered an important aspect of filial piety within the context of Confucianism, and that precept encourages long hair, forbids suicide and is interpreted as prohibiting tattoos.

Chinese American tattoo artist Em Jia has a Chinese character tattoo on the back of their neck.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

I spoke to a Chinese American tattoo artist, Em Jia, who has a tattoo that plays with this concept. Their mother used to eye Jia’s tattoos with distaste, warning them that all the luck was bleeding out of their body. So Jia inked the words fu chi dou mei you, which means “luckless.”

Tattooing the words was their way of refusing shame and practicing self acceptance, a “way of finding freedom,” Jia said.

But they’re still uncomfortable about seeing Chinese-character tattoos on non-Asian people. They feel protective of their connection to Chinese culture and language. I think it’s a natural reaction for anyone growing up with Long Duk Dong from the 1984 movie “Sixteen Candles” and racist Asian jokes on prime-time TV.

“Now I open a bag of shrimp chips and I don’t give a f— about what anyone says,” said Jia, 26.

Later that day, I met Mike Cho, a Korean American from Philadelphia and the owner of Ocean Front Tattoo in Venice Beach for the last 11 years. Cho said the store experiences steady demand for Chinese tattoos, as does pretty much every other tattoo parlor on the boardwalk.

Korean American tattoo artist Mike Cho wears, among others, a tattoo on his neck with Korean figures that translate to his last name.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

His skin has enough ink to print a whole newspaper, with tattoos pretty much everywhere but his face. His last name is inked in Korean on his throat, and the Korean characters for the number 17 tattooed on his neck, because he moved to Los Angeles at the age of 21 with just $1,700 in his pocket.

I told him that I wanted to get a Korean word tattooed after traveling to Seoul last year, and wondered what he thought.

At the time I was struggling to find pleasure in food following a difficult breakup. At Gwangjang Market, after I spotted a golden brown seafood pancake sizzling on a flattop grill, I ordered one and devoured it. It was the first meal I remember enjoying in more than a year, and I wanted to memorialize the feeling with a tattoo of the Korean character for “savor,” mas.

Cho, 45, had no problem with me, a Taiwanese guy, getting a Korean character tattoo. Actually, he found the question a bit confusing. He had never thought twice about getting his own Asian-language tattoo.

“Just thought it was cool,” Cho said. “I was more worried about what my parents would say. I didn’t go home for five years!”

I’ll likely meet other Korean Americans who will be bothered by my tattoo. But I can accept that, because I’m trying to imagine a future in which all of these clashing feelings can find some equilibrium. And before pain heals, it has to find expression.

When a tattoo is finished, the area is red, throbbing and swollen. The wound oozes and scabbing cracks the skin. Soon a soft outline of new skin forms around the cuts, peeling and flaking for a while, until one day, you wake up, and there is no scar, just your skin.

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Frank Shyong

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November 24, 2023
Compton honors late N.W.A rapper Eazy-E by naming a street after him

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Eric Darnell Wright Jr. remembers his father driving down Muriel Avenue in Compton for Thanksgiving dinner.

It was there that his now 86-year old grandmother, Katie Wright, would prepare large meals for all her kin, including her son Eric Lynn Wright — better known as the late N.W.A rapper Eazy-E.

“It wasn’t no entertainment,” Eric Darnell Wright, the rapper’s son who goes by Lil Eazy-E, recalled. Only family existed in these moments. “It was just kind of like the hip-hop world was out of it.”

Erica Wright, the artist’s oldest daughter, never really cared for the rapper Eazy-E. “I cared about Eric,” she said of her father.

The siblings said they were heartbroken they weren’t able to spend enough of those moments with their dad, who died in 1995 at the age of 31.

On the day of Wright’s funeral, cars rolled down Harvard Boulevard near the First African Methodist Episcopal Church. His gold coffin was wheeled into the church as thousands of people — including fans, family, gang members, mothers and children — watched.

A horseman, Sam Jones, rides past as lowriders cruise during a ceremony renaming Towne Center Drive in Compton as “Eazy Street” on Wednesday.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

More than a quarter-century later, Wright’s son still remember his father cruising in his “six-four” through the streets of Compton to N.W.A classics like “Straight Outta Compton.”

Decades after Wright and N.W.A helped put the city on the map with the chart-topping single “Boyz N the Hood,” Eazy-E was celebrated Wednesday with an honor befitting someone who loved to cruise down the avenues of his famous and sometimes infamous hometown.

Compton officially renamed Towne Center Drive as “Eazy Street.”

“It’s about time,” a man in the crowd yelled as officials raised the lime green sign for the public to see.

Family, friends and community leaders pose with the new Eazy St. sign during Wednesday’s ceremony.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

The happy disruption and ceremony featuring lowriders, musical performances and original gangsters in a Best Buy parking lot perfectly encapsulated Wright’s rugged personality, his loved ones said on stage.

Eazy-E’s graphic lyrics from old albums blared from the stage where former N.W.A member DJ Yella exchanged greetings with Wright’s loved ones. Members of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony showed up for the event to pay respects to Wright, who appeared on their track “Foe tha Love of $” the year he died.

Black hats embroidered with “Compton” in bold white letters poked above the hundreds of attendees who danced in the crowd.

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1. An attendee at Wednesday’s ceremony shows his N.W.A tattoo. 2. Another attendee wears a ‘We Want Eazy’ chain. 3. A woman named Bee shows her Eazy-E tattoo while wearing an N.W.A T-shirt. 4. MC Benyad, a member of the group Blood of Abraham that recorded for Eazy-E’s Ruthless Records label, signs N.W.A’s second album for a fan. (Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

With fellow N.W.A members Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, DJ Yella, MC Ren and Arabian Prince, Wright brought notoriety to Compton with the group’s West Coast rap albums.

Before the fame, Wright was a high school dropout who dealt drugs for a living.

Two album releases — N.W.A’s “Straight Outta Compton” and Wright’s solo project “Eazy-Duz-It” — were considered the opening of a new era for hip-hop, a genre and industry that had primarily been lyrically defined and commercially dominated by East Coast acts until that point.

Both albums were released under Wright’s label, Ruthless Records, which he co-founded with manager Jerry Heller.

With iconic music videos showing Eazy-E and his group parading through the streets, Wright, a Compton native, quickly rose to the status of American pop culture icon.

Alonzo Williams — one of Wright’s earliest collaborators — owned Compton’s Eve After Dark nightclub, which helped launch acts including Dr. Dre and Eazy-E. He now heads the Compton Entertainment Chamber of Commerce that organized the event and spearheaded the naming of Eazy Street.

“Always putting in work,” a member of the crowd yelled in recognition of Williams during the event.

Wright went to Williams for advice when setting up Ruthless Records. Williams introduced Wright to a graphic designer and later Heller.

DJ Yella, who performed with Eazy-E in N.W.A, speaks to friends and fans during a ceremony honoring the late rapper.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

“Eazy was one of the realest cats that I ran into back in the day,” Williams said after a cruise down Eazy Street. “I got a lot of respect for him because no matter how much money he made he stayed true to himself.”

Even after Wright found fame, Williams said, the rapper would often visit him at his garage, where N.W.A. recorded their first songs.

Actually, Wright never wanted to be a rapper, Williams added. But he fell into a character — a crazy 5-foot-4 trash talker — that he created and enjoyed acting out while out on the streets.

Williams remembers asking how long Wright intended to “play the role.”

“As long as they’re buying tickets,” Wright replied, according to Williams.

“The character on stage was one thing, but I knew the man,” Williams said. “He was a fun-loving father.”

“I’m glad to be a part of his entrance into the music game. I’m glad to be part of his legacy,” Williams added.

Gerald “Bop” Payton echoed the sentiment in the parking lot with recording artist Rondevu — who was on the first Ruthless Records album with Eazy-E before he became famous for “Boyz N the Hood,”

Payton, a childhood friend who first met Wright at the age of 10, claimed there are five versions of “Boyz N the Hood,” He’s on one, though it has never been released, he said.

Payton said he was there to witness Eazy-E’s meteoric rise to the top of hip-hop and was at the side of Wright’s hospital bed in 1995. The artist died just days after he announced he had been diagnosed with AIDS.

Kathie Wright and Eric Darnell Wright Jr., children of Eazy-E, listen as friends and family give speeches honoring the late rapper.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

Wright’s parents, Katie and Richard Wright, were working class, Payton recalled. And the prominent rapper was one of the only children in the neighborhood with both parents at home during a time when Los Angeles and places like Compton were wracked with sky-high murder rates wrought by gang wars.

Payton’s own father, a lieutenant in the Compton Police Department, was one of seven officers living on their block, “so we had to keep everything on the down low.”

Payton said memories of his friend’s first car, first job and mischievous adventures hang in his head like they happened yesterday.

“He used to hate [that] I could finish his sentences,” Payton said. “We always knew what each other was thinking. I might not have thought he was right, but nothing could come between us.”

He and Wright drove around in a Chevrolet El Camino in the 1980s, and took turns playing the role of driver and chauffeur, opening doors and pretending to ask for autographs in order impress young girls in the neighborhood.

The reason Wright was first interested in records “had nothing to do with making money,” Payton said. He was trying to impress a girl.

Early on, Payton said he didn’t think Wright had a future behind the mic. That caused some tension.

“I just couldn’t believe anybody was going to like it. And he didn’t take that well,” Payton recalled.

Looking back at everything his friend accomplished, he added: “This is just another big ‘I told you so’ from him to me.”

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Brennon Dixson

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November 23, 2023
Patt Morrison: What gives L.A. that Thanksgiving feeling? It certainly isn’t the weather
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Cognitive dissonance, SoCal style: The calendar says it’s November, but the sky swears it’s April, maybe even July.

It’s Thanksgiving. And for a hundred years and more, pilgrims from the East and Midwest to this Pacific coast have sometimes found themselves a bit flummoxed over how to carry off a holiday built 400 years ago around the original Pilgrims on the Atlantic coast.

“Nobody gets much thrill out of Thanksgiving Day here in the West,” is how Times columnist Harry Carr moped over the holiday doldrums in 1923. “You have to be somewhere near the tracks of the Pilgrim Fathers to get much meaning out of Thanksgiving.”

But we manage, somehow. We suffer through a snowless, Puritan-free holiday by surfing, rock-climbing, skiing — when the smell of smoke isn’t necessarily burned turkey, but might be brush fires.

In 1957, Thanksgiving Day marked the hunting season for the West Hills Hunt Club — the horseback, top hat and riding-coat kind of hunting — with the “Blessing of the Hounds.”

The singularly American version of Thanksgiving plays by rules more rigid than Christmas. Christmas observances are global and elastic; Thanksgiving is one day of fixed, ritualized practices no matter where in these United States you celebrate it.

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There’s a charming movie from 2000 called “What’s Cooking?” It’s set in Los Angeles, with a damn fine cast playing four families — Black, Vietnamese, Jewish and Latino — bringing their own varied flavors of life and food to the Thanksgiving table, trying in the midst of family freak-outs and cooking catastrophes to pull off the impossible: a perfect Thanksgiving. (The mash-up of scenes of four families’ potato-mashing techniques is classic.)

For the longest time, in Los Angeles as elsewhere, Thanksgiving was principally a religious holiday, a tip of the capotain Puritan hat to the dogged Calvinism of the Mayflower crowd. The Times routinely printed, at astonishing length, Thanksgiving Day sermons from well-known local pastors.

That, at least, felt like home for the hundreds of thousands of Protestant middle Americans who migrated to L.A. and, in the land of Spanish missions, built themselves white clapboard New England-style steepled churches.

In 1896, The Times patted its city on the back: “It was a wise foresight that first ordained that church service should precede Turkey on Thanksgiving Day. Grace before meat is peculiarly fitting on this particular holiday … before dinner, [the ordinary American] may be devout — after dinner, he is comatose.”

In 1899, on the cusp of the 1900s, The Times did a good deal of throat-clearing to announce a new secular civic celebration. “Thanksgiving day will be celebrated in Los Angeles this year as it never was before. … Heretofore Thanksgiving day has been one of the quiet holidays of the year, devoted to the services in the churches and, of course, to football.” But now, “there will be a military and civic parade, patriotic exercises at the cycle track, a football game, golf, a banquet, a sacred concert, and a number of other sources of amusement and pleasure.”

California’s Thanksgiving observances and re-creations celebrated the Massachusetts Native Americans but breezed right on past the local Native Americans who had been all but erased from the city’s demographics. In the 1899 Thanksgiving parade, a group of white pioneers marched; it was named, without irony, “Native Sons of the Golden West.”

A turkey asks a fair question — “What should I be thankful for?” — on this vintage postcard from Patt Morrison’s collection.

On a 1923-postmarked card from Morrison’s collection, a correspondent asks her brother — who was possibly away at school, given the St. Olaf College mailing address — “Will you have turkey?”

Thirty years on, L.A. Thanksgivings were frankly secular and uniquely ours: sports, games, picnics at the beach, a “fairyland” parade downtown, warm-weather pleasure drives through the hills.

The studios gave everyone the day off. In 1940, The Times assiduously documented the movie stars’ holiday doings: Broderick Crawford heading off on a Honolulu honeymoon; housemates Franchot Tone and Burgess Meredith throwing a dinner for friends; Errol Flynn motoring to Palm Springs for the tennis; Donald Crisp and George Brent out on the water on their respective yachts; Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor golfing with Jack Benny and his wife, Mary Livingstone; and “the Bela Lugosis are going to his mother’s for dinner.” (That’s your straight line, amateur comics — go for it.)

Thanksgiving 1929, a month after Wall Street — as Variety headlined it — laid an egg, The Times noted in many column inches of type that free food was served for the “unfortunates” at the Salvation Army, the Midnight Mission and sundry churches. In years before, food giveaways were staged in poor neighborhoods, and veterans in the Old Soldiers’ Home in Sawtelle — now the VA grounds in Westwood — were fed lavishly.

The county jail’s Thanksgiving menu made the news, probably because of who would be eating it.

Sweet potatoes, fruit Jello, and roast pork — not turkey — would be served to all the inmates, from the lowliest cutpurse to what amounted to the celebrity wing, and its residents:
- Alexander Pantages, the millionaire theater magnate convicted of raping a 17-year-old dancer.
- Asa Keyes, once the L.A. County district attorney, who sent men to the cell he now occupied; he was convicted of taking a bribe.
- Leo (Pat) Kelley, back in town from San Quentin’s death row, for resentencing for the lesser charge of manslaughter, for murdering his older, married “cougar” girlfriend. Kelley said he’d put on 25 pounds in San Quentin — and he probably packed on a few more at Thanksgiving.
A vintage postcard from Patt Morrison’s collection is addressed to “Dear Little Raymond,” and bears a 1912 postmark. It was sent from Florida to Brattleboro, Vt.

That episode is a clear contender for winning the most-SoCal-Thanksgiving-incident-ever sweepstakes. But if mine were the sole vote, the palm has to go to this, from Thanksgiving 2000.

Wendy P. McCaw, a woman we described as the “billionaire environmentalist-libertarian,” bought the venerable Santa Barbara News-Press in 2000, and just this past July, declared the paper was bankrupt and closed it down.

For Thanksgiving of that first year, an editorial urged locals to donate generously to a local food bank, but with an asterisk: no turkey, please. “We cannot — in good conscience — recommend continuation of a tradition that involves the death of an unwilling participant … donate a turkey if you wish, but you can also donate all the other goodies associated with a holiday meal. Beans and rice are a good protein substitute for turkey.”

Santa Barbarans did not all take kindly to the suggestion, and to show their displeasure, donated 700 more dead turkeys than the food bank had asked for.

Regale your holiday guests with this Thanksgiving verse, found on a 1915-postmarked postcard from Patt Morrison’s collection.

Explaining L.A. With Patt Morrison

Los Angeles is a complex place. In this weekly feature, Patt Morrison is explaining how it works, its history and its culture.
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Patt Morrison

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November 23, 2023
A work potluck party at San Pedro Taco Bell turned into a boozy bash with sex and vomiting, lawsuit claims

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A company Christmas potluck for employees of a San Pedro Taco Bell turned into a boozy bash, with one worker having sex with his wife in front of spectators and another vomiting into a guacamole bowl, according to a lawsuit by one of the employees.

The worker, Alana Bechiom, filed the lawsuit last week in Los Angeles Superior Court. She’s seeking unspecified damages in the suit.

When Bechiom reported the incident to human resources, the lawsuit claims, three co-workers who took part in the party were fired, but Bechiom said she was physically threatened and her car window was smashed, and she claims Taco Bell and and the franchise owner did nothing to protect her against the threats.

“While we don’t own or manage this location, the franchisee who owns and operates this restaurant has shared that they take these claims very seriously,” a Taco Bell spokesperson said in a statement.

The franchise owner, Alvarado Restaurant Group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The alcohol-fueled party took place on Dec. 18, 2022 at the Taco Bell on 1031 S. Gaffey St. in San Pedro, where Bechiom had worked as a cashier, according to court records.

Workers were “encouraged to bring food in a potluck-styled buffet,” and Bechiom had decided to take a guacamole bowl to the party.

When she walked in, however, the lawsuit claims, she noticed the windows in the restaurant were covered with wrapping paper, and the cameras in the Taco Bell lobby were also covered.

She had been socializing in the parking lot for a while but, when Bechiom walked back in, according to court records, she found one of her male co-workers was “having sex with his wife in front of everyone at the party.”

The co-worker’s wife, the lawsuit states, was bent over and kissing two other co-workers, including a supervisor, simultaneously.

“[Bechiom] was shocked, disgusted and outraged by what she saw and ran,” according to the suit.

But before leaving, the lawsuit states she went back into the Taco Bell to get her guacamole bowl. Instead she found two of her co-workers vomiting, with one retching into her bowl.

Bechiom complained to her supervisor about what she saw and about someone vomiting into her bowl, but the supervisor then threatened to fight her, according to the suit.

After she reported the incident, three of the Taco Bell employees, including the supervisor and the male co-worker who had sex with his wife, were fired, the lawsuit claims.

But Bechiom claims she continued to receive threats from co-workers who called her a “snitch.” Four days after the party, she claims, someone smashed the window of her car.

When she reported the threats, she claims, Taco Bell and the franchise owner offered to transfer her.

Bechiom resigned, and is suing Taco Bell and Alvarado Restaurant Group for alleged discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation and failure to investigate.

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Salvador Hernandez

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November 22, 2023
Three rentals and an ADU? A narrow two-story in Venice makes the case for building up

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Walk past the street-facing 1990s duplex and beyond a 1920s Sears Roebuck kit bungalow, and an accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, rises before you at the end of the property. It’s a slim, two-story rental clad in inexpensive white vertical corrugated metal.

Only then do you realize this single Venice lot has four rental units.

With Southern California in desperate need of housing and state and federal laws constantly evolving to make permitting ADUs easier, the detached home by architects Todd Lynch and Mohamed Sharif of Sharif, Lynch: Architecture feels like a harbinger of what’s to come.

“When the city encouraged us to increase housing, I thought of the Venice property,” said owner Ricki Alon, who had previously worked with the architects and builder Moshon Elgrably on another project. “Given the unique site constraints, I didn’t believe they could do it. I was worried it would be too crowded and negatively affect the small guest house.”

The two-bedroom ADU was built five feet from an existing duplex and four feet from the property line.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Alon was hesitant at first, but after a persuasive Zoom call with the architects, they all agreed that a fourth unit would add value to the bustling community.

“We viewed it as a challenge and a way to transcend ADUs in an SB9 world,” Sharif said, referring to Senate Bill 9, the 2022 state law that allows homeowners to convert their homes into duplexes on a single-family parcel or divide the lot in half to build another duplex for no more than four units.

Alon loved their initial sketches despite her skepticism, and the project moved ahead.

“It’s taught me how to think differently about how things are arranged and how I store things,” Henry Schober III said of his 13-foot-wide rental.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The large windows in the living room overlook the courtyard and give the ADU an open and airy feel.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“We decided to go as high as possible,” Sharif said of the eventual design, a slim, two-story ADU built on what was previously a driveway. Slipped into the lot, the 1,200-square-foot ADU, or IDU as the architects like to refer to the infill dwelling unit, was built an inch from the 1920s bungalow, five feet from the duplex and four feet from the property line.

Resting a few feet from a dingbat apartment to the south, the ADU is lifted off the ground to preserve two parking spots in the alley and a swimming pool in front. “Its entire width is dictated by that two-car side-by-side dimension,” said Sharif, who teaches in the undergraduate and graduate design studios at UCLA. Lifting the volume to preserve the pool also created shade and an open space that all residents could share.

“They refused to get rid of it,” Alon said of the water feature. “They insisted on building around it.” Today she admits it was the right decision. “Now, when you walk in, you experience a wonderful, absolutely lovely environment. I’m glad they did not listen to me,” she added with a laugh.

The narrow living room, seen from the staircase, and the first-floor office and en-suite bathroom. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Even though you can’t see the rental from the street, the ADU has enormous curb appeal and a touch of glamour. A Midcentury-style Sputnik pendant light hangs outside the front door, giving it an elegant feel, and the white cladding gives it a distinctive quality from the other rentals, which are clad in orange metal and gray siding.

The driveway before Sharif, Lynch: Architecture added a two-story ADU alongside a bungalow, right, and duplex, in back.

(Sharif, Lynch: Architecture)

Up a short flight of stairs, the front door opens to the ground floor and the two-story entry, which features a compact first-floor bedroom, study and en-suite bathroom.

“We wanted every room to have a bathroom to suit roommates,” Sharif said.

Tenant Henry Schober III, a 38-year-old attorney specializing in data privacy, uses the ground floor as his office and a bedroom for out-of-town guests.

“It’s a place that I’m comfortable spending a workday in,” said Schober, who goes to the office once or twice a week. “I don’t feel like I’m trapped in my house.”

Tenant Henry Schober III takes advantage of the ADU’s rooftop deck, which offers panoramic views of Venice. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

An overhead view shows the ADU’s proximity to the modern duplex and bungalow.

(Steve King Architectural Imaging)

Up the stairs to the second floor, the main living area and kitchen measure just 13 feet wide; large windows and operable skylights add light and cross-ventilation throughout the linear floor plan.

“The windows make you feel like you’re in an amazing penthouse in SoHo,” Alon said. “It gives the room a great energy.”

The rest of the second floor houses a powder room, bathroom and bedroom. Because of limited space, there was no room for a formal dining room. However, Schober said that’s easier to maneuver than the limited storage, which has taught him to think differently about how he stores and displays things.

The pool was preserved to create a communal area for all tenants.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“I eat at the long breakfast bar, and when I have people over, I use the common space or the roof deck,” he said.

The home’s two floors feel like three, Lynch said, “because of the way the stairway draws one upward through the IDU and then because of how the roof steps up again.”

The roof deck serves as another outdoor room, further expanding the living space. From the rooftop deck, Schober has panoramic views of Venice, not to mention ample room for a dining table, barbecue and sauna.

After renting an apartment temporarily a few blocks from the beach, Schober was still determining whether he wanted to rent another apartment in Venice.

The master bedroom on the second floor.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“It originally turned me off to Venice,” he said. “The price points were so high. It felt like people were paying for the ZIP Code. Landlords were asking five grand for an apartment next to a parking lot.”

But when he saw the two-bedroom ADU, he changed his mind. “When I walked in, I thought, ‘I’m going to live here,’” said Schober, who is originally from Philadelphia and moved to Los Angeles from Switzerland.

“The apartment and the secluded feel changed my attitude,” Schober said. “You get the convenience of Venice and access to all the restaurants and shops, but you’re not in the thick of things. I lived in San Francisco for a decade, Europe for six years. I view the apartment as an oasis in a neighborhood that is not as transformed as others.”

Schober said the strength of the architects’ vision is that the unit is quietly tucked away in a congested neighborhood. “Since you are set back from the street, there is no foot traffic,” he added. “It doesn’t feel like I am living among a bunch of units. There is little street noise, and you would never know you live a stone’s throw from Lincoln Boulevard.”

Stairs lead up to the rooftop deck.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Perhaps most impressive, the ADU defies the notion that you can’t have parking, privacy and quality of living, including a swimming pool, on a tight infill lot with other properties.

In a sense, Schober said, “It seems the solution to the housing crisis is building up.”

“There is a community feeling, and people know each other,” Sharif said. “They sit around the pool, and it’s very intimate and private.”

After a 10-month building process, the team completed the project this spring at a cost of approximately $410 per square foot.

Looking back, Alon is grateful that she moved forward with the project.

“It’s not just a unit that brings value to the property,” she said. “It enhances the entire property for everyone. Adding housing in this condensed community is important, but this team made it something beautiful that people will enjoy. You don’t have to add a huge amount of square footage to add quality of living.”

A lucky cat figurine sets the tone inside Henry Schober III’s two-bedroom ADU in Venice.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

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Lisa Boone

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November 21, 2023
Biden-Harris reelection campaign ramps up political fundraising in Hollywood

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Raising campaign money from Hollywood after a long hiatus during industry strikes, Vice President Kamala Harris sounded confident as she told supporters Monday that President Biden will win the 2024 election.

“It will not be easy,” she said. “There are powerful forces in our country right now that are trying to divide our nation. And it will be incumbent on us to hold it together for the sake of the strength of our nation and our future.”

Harris delivered the remarks at a glitzy fundraiser held at the Los Angeles home of Hollywood philanthropists and lawyers Leslie and Cliff Gilbert-Lurie. The event showed how Democrats are intensifying efforts to attract political donations from Hollywood now that the entertainment industry strikes have ended. It also revealed some of the challenges Democrats confront as the party splinters over the Israel-Hamas war, with protesters staging a small demonstration outside the fundraiser.

Harris and Biden have been largely absent from the political fundraising circuit in Los Angeles this year as Hollywood was hobbled by striking actors and screenwriters pushing for better pay and benefits. The heightened tension between Hollywood workers and studio executives made tapping into donations from the entertainment industry politically fraught. Candidates didn’t want to risk crossing picket lines, and executives didn’t want to be seen cutting big checks to politicians while negotiating with workers.

But with actors reaching a deal to end their strike earlier this month, following the conclusion of the writers’ strike in September, Hollywood is resuming its role as a major source of campaign cash for national Democrats.

Monday’s fundraiser included more than 140 guests and raised close to $500,000, Leslie Gilbert-Lurie told the crowd gathered at her home’s poolside lounge with lights strung around trees in the yard. Inside the modern home adorned with art, people sipped wine and nibbled on crostinis with squash and truffle walnut hummus with pomegranates.

The fundraiser also attracted about two dozen protesters opposed to the Israel-Hamas war who yelled “Free Palestine!” and “Shame on you!” as people entered the home. Before Harris arrived, they threw fake blood in front of the Gilbert-Luries’ house and placed red handprints on the ground. About a dozen police officers stood in front of the home.

Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, who is the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president, spoke to the group about his work to combat antisemitism and hate.

“You saw it outside walking in here today,” he said, referencing the protesters. “This is the times that we’re living in right now.”

Before Harris delivered her remarks standing between two American flags, a woman in the audience called for a cease-fire. Security led her out of the home.

Harris told the audience to “take a minute” before she continued speaking, noting that Americans have to continue their fight against antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hate.

“This is a very critical moment in the history of our country and the history of the world, and so much of what we have each fought for and believed in our entire lives is at stake in this election and in this moment,” she said.

While politicians have avoided fundraising during the Hollywood strikes, Biden’s campaign has been picking up donations in the Bay Area. Throughout this year, Biden has held fundraisers in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, tapping into the region’s tech-industry wealth. Last week, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, Biden and Harris attended a Democratic National Committee fundraiser while hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters opposed to the Israel-Hamas war chanted outside the the Merchants Exchange Building.

In October, Biden’s campaign said it raised more than $71 million in the third quarter, surpassing fundraising by former President Trump and GOP primary candidates.

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Queenie Wong

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November 21, 2023
A fifth hotel has reached a tentative agreement with striking workers

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Unite Here Local 11, the union representing hotel workers in Southern California who have been striking on and off for nearly five months, said it has reached a tentative contract agreement with Le Merigot Santa Monica.

The contract will — once it’s ratified — raise wages, strengthen pensions and increase investments in healthcare for about 100 employees at Le Merigot,union spokesperson Maria Hernandez said.

Le Merigot, a Marriott hotel, is the fifth property to reach a deal with the union.

The first was the Westin Bonaventure, which reached a tentative deal just as contracts were set to expire June 30 for more than 15,000 hotel workers at some 60 properties in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The second was the Biltmore in downtown L.A.’s financial district, which announced a deal in September. Last month, the union announced agreements with Loews Hollywood and Laguna Cliffs Marriott in Dana Point.

“We have now won standard-setting contracts in downtown L.A., Hollywood, Orange County and Santa Monica. There are no excuses for the rest. Workers deserve to share in the prosperity of the tourism industry,” said Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11.

The union has declined to give specifics on wages and other economic details of the agreements it has reached thus far, and the contracts have not yet been put to a vote by workers.

Keith Grossman, an attorney representing a group of more than 40 Southern California hotel owners and operators in talks with the union, did not respond to a request for comment.

Peter Hillan, spokesperson for the Hotel Assn. of Los Angeles, said Le Merigot was not a member of the hotel group. Santa Monica hotels that are part of the coordinated bargaining group include Fairmont Miramar, Le Meridien Delfina, Courtyard by Marriott, Hampton Inn & Suites and the Viceroy, Hillan said.

The union held a gathering with faith community leaders Thursday to discuss instances of violence against picketing hotel workers as well as the alleged exploitation of unhoused migrant workers brought in to replace striking workers at Le Meridien Delfina in Santa Monica.

The event, held at St. Augustine By-the-Sea church in Santa Monica was attended by local leaders including former Los Angeles Councilman Mike Bonin and Santa Monica Human Services Commissioner Luis Barrera Castañón, the union said in a news release.

The union also sent a letter last week to Santa Monica City Attorney Douglas T. Sloan urging the city to investigate possible violations of local laws by Le Meridien Delfina and other hotels that hired migrants as replacement workers.

The letter notes potential violations of hourly wages below Santa Monica‘s minimum of $19.73 and failures to provide “panic buttons” for workers’ safety and related training.

The letter cites reporting by The Times that also prompted an investigation by Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón. In the letter, the union said it has also requested that the California labor commissioner investigate the hotels’ and subcontractors’ compliance with state laws regarding itemized wage statements and lunch and rest breaks.

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Suhauna Hussain

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November 20, 2023
Shocking video appears to show CHP officer fatally shoot man on 105 Freeway

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Disturbing video recorded by a bystander appears to show a deadly encounter in which a California Highway Patrol officer shot a man repeatedly after a struggle in the middle of the 105 Freeway in Watts on Sunday afternoon.

The CHP confirmed Monday that a shooting took place on the freeway, but did not provide basic information.

The Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office confirmed the person had died, though it did not provide identification, pending notification of family. A cause of death was not released.

CHP officials said they responded to the freeway about 3:15 p.m. Sunday after receiving multiple calls about a man walking through traffic near the Wilmington Avenue exit.

After the trooper made contact with the pedestrian, “a struggle ensued and an officer-involved shooting occurred,” the CHP said in a release. Authorities said over a police radio that the man had a Taser and fired it at the officer, leading to the shooting, according to audio posted on the Citizen mobile app.

The CHP directed all inquiries to the California Department of Justice, which investigates police shootings in which unarmed people are killed, according to the department.

The state DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The video begins with a CHP officer on top of another person as the two struggle on the pavement in the middle of what appears to be a closed stretch of freeway.

After a few seconds, while the two tussle, a gun seems to go off and a bullet ricochets off the pavement near the body of the man, who remains on the ground.

The CHP officer then stands up and shoots at least four additional times at the prone man, the video shows.

The man lies motionless for the rest of the minute-long video. The CHP officer remains by the body with his gun drawn.

Travis Norton, a law enforcement officer who runs the California Assn. of Tactical Officers After Action Review, said video is a limited way to understand a police shooting.

“It is hard to diagnose without knowing what the officer saw, experienced and interpreted was happening,” Norton said. “All I see is a very short scuffle. I see the suspect point something that appears to look like some sort of weapon. … From the video, without knowing anything else about it, the use of deadly force appears appropriate.”

But other experts said the use of force raises many questions.

Ed Obayashi, a police shootings expert who investigates the incidents for numerous law enforcement agencies in California, said investigators will immediately ask the officer why he was engaging with the person without a partner or backup in the immediate vicinity.

Obayashi also said that investigators will look into why the officer felt the need to shoot the man after standing up and disengaging from him.

“Why did you shoot him while he was on the ground?” Obayashi said investigators will ask. “You separated yourself from the individual; why was he still a threat to you?”

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Noah Goldberg

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November 20, 2023
What can you build on L.A.’s steep, narrow lots? How about this surprisingly roomy home

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When architect Simon Storey’s clients took him to a steep lot of undeveloped land for sale in Silver Lake, he advised them to pass. Storey’s firm, Anonymous Architects, is used to building on difficult sites, but he knew this particular lot would be especially challenging.

“It’s more difficult and more time-consuming,” says Storey.

The lot lingered on the market for a few years and then the asking price dropped. That’s when Storey and his wife, Jen Holmes, decided they were willing to take on the difficult ground-up construction.

Sloped lots typically require excavation and complicated and costly foundations, and have issues ranging from erosion to drainage to landscaping. It’s not for the faint of heart.

“It’s such a huge pain. But I proved myself right: It wasn’t easy,” he says.

The stairs and dining area inside Simon Storey and Jen Holmes’ home in Silver Lake. The stairs were inspired by a floating staircase in Storey’s previous home dubbed Eel’s Nest.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Storey and Holmes bought the 2,900-square-foot lot in 2017 for $92,000 and started to plan their home. The land was not just steep — a grade of 33% — but also long and narrow. (For comparison, the steepest street in Los Angeles, Eldred Street in Highland Park, has the same slope.) The couple bought the land from entrepreneur Judd Schoenholtz, who bought the lot in a trust sale. Ironically, Schoenholtz was considering how to build on it and had looked at some of Storey’s other houses for inspiration. “Simon is probably the only one who could figure it out,” he says with a laugh.

Working within the constraints of a narrow lot was familiar to Storey, who had previously built his own home in Echo Park, a compact but elegant structure whose 960 square feet exceeded the 780-foot-lot it was built on.

Storey’s previous home, dubbed Eel’s Nest after the slender homes typical of dense neighborhoods in Japan, was a study in efficient urban living. He found ways to enlarge the space, just 15 feet wide, through the clever use of windows and skylights, high ceilings and a floating staircase that did double duty as a light well.

Storey and Holmes wanted to take the best parts of Eel’s Nest and the lessons learned from living in that space for more than a decade and apply them to this new project, which they called the Box. Once again the constraints of the lot dictated the design. “We had no choice but to go right up to maximum width and stick with it for the entire building,” explains Storey.

Simon Storey stands in his home office with a wall shelf of miniature models.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

An aerial view of the Box.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The result is a long building that spans just 18 feet across and 100 feet long. Yet adding just three more feet than their previous house makes a dramatic difference. “Every inch makes an outsize difference. I don’t think of it as being a narrow building,” says Storey.

Storey wanted the house to be as utilitarian as possible. He chose a corrugated cement panel typically used for farming and industrial buildings in Europe as a siding material above the two-story concrete base.

With the structure built three feet from the property line, the couple were constrained by city code in the amount of windows allowed on the side of the building. As a result, the windows are arranged in a horizontal expanse, providing panoramic views of the hills in Silver Lake and Echo Park.

The entrance to the house is set back another five feet, allowing double-height windows that span two stories, bringing in more light. The floating staircase from Eel’s Nest makes another appearance in the Box, across from the entrance. A narrow walkway on the top floor connects the front and back of the house but allows light to filter in on both sides to the floor below. The skylight in Eel’s Nest also reappears in the Box, bringing more light into the shower in the primary bathroom.

Custom panels hide parts of the interior, including the bathrooms.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

With a workshop sitting between the ground-floor garage and the two main stories of the house, Storey and Holmes were able to construct all of the cabinetry, millwork and even features like their stair treads on-site. “Anything made of wood we built ourselves,” says Storey.

Holmes, who works in development at LACMA but was an art student in college, found her sculpting skills came in handy. “I knew how to weld but didn’t do it for 20 years,” explains Holmes, who took a half-day welding class at Gearhead Workshops in Torrance to brush up on her skills.

In fact, much of the construction they did themselves, as a budgetary consideration but also to ensure the level of detail met their standards. Weekends, holidays and vacation days for nearly three years were spent working on the house.

The couple estimate they spent 5,500 hours working on the house, not including the hours spent on planning, designing and general contracting, and saved about $520,000 in construction costs based on pricing from comparable projects Storey has worked on.

Jen Holmes designed the kitchen to her specifications. She wanted to cook and entertain for parties of four or 20.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“I’d take naps on a furniture blanket on the floor or in the car,” says Holmes, who became a regular at the nearby Whole Foods to pick up meals before they had a working kitchen. “Everyone [who works] there knows me and I know all of them.”

Other expenses included $300,000 for the foundation, more than three times what it would have cost for a similarly sized project on a flat lot, and about $20,500 for geology consultants to survey the slope. All together the project came in at roughly $1.3 million. However, the average homeowner shouldn’t expect such a deal. Acting as his own architect, general contractor and builder helped Storey and Holmes save considerably. Additionally, every hillside lot presents its own hidden expenses — and what a house costs to build is often very different than its market value in competitive L.A.

Before they started on the cabinets, the pair worked on sealing the envelope of the house to ensure better air quality and circulation. They meticulously identified every gap in the framing stage, foaming and caulking the gaps to improve efficiency.

Windows throughout the Box provide views of Silver Lake and Echo Park. Storey had to figure out clever ways to add windows within city codes due to the property’s layout.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Simon Storey and Jen Holmes built their window frames and cabinetry themselves, picking out the lumber to sift out unwanted marks.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Once that was complete, they set about building their own window frames and cabinetry. The two handpicked all of their own lumber from Bohnhoff Lumber Co. in Vernon, a decision Storey says is key to guaranteeing high quality. “It was a cost issue but also a quality issue. There is a shocking level of inconsistency when you don’t pick it yourself.” The natural wood provides a calming contrast to the industrial materials used on the exterior.

Most of the casework is a mix of red and white oak. With construction of the house happening during the pandemic, the cost of white oak saw a precipitous rise. Storey and Holmes began to introduce red oak as an accent material, though the effect is still monochromatic. “I don’t want to live somewhere austere, but I like things that are minimal,” says Holmes.

Simon Storey and Jen Holmes on the second floor of their home.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Meticulously placed cabinetry creates subtle storage opportunities.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

All of the cabinetry and woodwork is custom, designed to suit the couple’s needs. Separating the kitchen and living room is a multipurpose room-within-a-room that includes a custom pantry on one side and cabinetry to house their record collection and stereo on the other.

“Every element of the house has a function,” says Storey. The focus on utilitarian design is a carryover from Eel’s Nest. “We are squeezing as much utility into the building as possible.” Appliances, primarily Fisher & Paykel, are hidden behind custom wood panels, as are closets and bathrooms.

With four bedrooms and three bathrooms, the house was designed to be flexible enough to adapt to changing needs. Planned prior to the pandemic, Storey’s design called for his office to occupy the back of the house, with living spaces in the front. However, the office can easily be converted into a guest suite for relatives or visitors that includes a kitchenette and a private entry.

The Box at dusk.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

As a passionate cook, Holmes programmed the layout of the kitchen to her specifications. The sink is placed in a central island, facing the views. “Every party I go to, people end up in the kitchen,” says Holmes. “I wanted it to be comfortable to cook in but also a place to entertain. We can have four or eight or 20 people here and it doesn’t feel too big or too small.”

While Holmes wanted the kitchen to be as functional as possible, Storey wanted the kitchen to not look like a kitchen at all. “The fridge and freezer vanish. Nothing screams ‘kitchen.’ We had competing objectives but managed to merge into a perfect solution,” he says, adding, “It’s a good allegory for marriage.”

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Marissa Gluck

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November 20, 2023
10 Freeway to reopen early — in time for Monday morning commute

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Good news for Los Angeles commuters: A crucial tranche of the 10 Freeway south of downtown L.A. will open Sunday night and will be ready for the busy morning commute — a day earlier than previously expected and weeks ahead of original projections.

“This thing opens tonight and will be fully operational tomorrow,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a Sunday morning news conference, where he was joined on the deck of the freeway by Mayor Karen Bass, Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). “This is a significant and big day.”

The mile-long section of freeway between Alameda Street and Santa Fe Avenue has been closed for more than a week, since a massive pallet fire broke out below it Nov. 11. About 300,000 vehicles use the freeway corridor daily.

Newsom and Bass stressed that it was the urgent action and collaboration of local, state and federal officials and construction crews that made it possible to get the freeway open so quickly. Repair crews have worked around the clock since the fire.

“This is a great day in our city,” Bass said Sunday. “Let me thank everyone who worked 24 hours to make this effort happen.”

The closure did not cause widespread gridlock across the city’s freeway system, but it has snarled traffic in parts of the city and created longer-than-normal commutes for hundreds of thousands of Angelenos. Preliminary data from transportation officials also suggest that the closure has prompted more Angelenos to take public transit, heeding calls from local officials.

“Thanks to the heroic work of Caltrans and union construction crews and with help from our partners — from the Mayor’s office to the White House — the 10’s expedited repair is proof and a point of pride that here in California, we deliver,” Newsom said in an earlier statement.

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, there had been fears that the damaged section of freeway might have to be demolished and replaced, potentially putting it out of commission for a far longer duration. But within days, it became clear that the impaired section could, in fact, be repaired, and Newsom announced Tuesday that the freeway would reopen in three to five weeks.

An all-hands-on-deck scramble toward a more ambitious target paid off, with Newsom telling reporters last week that all lanes in both directions would be open to traffic by this coming Tuesday “at the latest.”

The freeway will now be fully open to traffic by Monday morning — ahead of the holiday weekend.

“To all Angelenos, I would just say this, tomorrow the commute is back on,” said Harris, who has a home in Brentwood. “Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.”

The fire is being investigated as an arson. The California Office of the State Fire Marshal on Saturday released a photo and description of a “person of interest” in connection with the fire.

Caltrans, the state transportation department that is part of Newsom’s administration, has long been aware of conditions under the freeway, where small businesses stored supplies including flammable wood pallets. Caltrans inspectors were on site as recently as Oct. 6, according to state officials, tenants and a lawyer for the company leasing the land.

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Julia Wick

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November 19, 2023
Authorities release photo and description of ‘person of interest’ in 10 Freeway arson fire

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The California State Fire Marshall’s office released a photo and description of a “person of interest” in connection with the massive arson fire that burned beneath Interstate 10 south of downtown Los Angeles leading to the closure of the freeway.

Photographs from the scene taken at 12:31 a.m. on Nov. 11 show a man walking in the vicinity of Alameda Street and the 10 Freeway. He is wearing blue shorts and a black jacket and carrying a black backpack and a green scarf. He also has a knee brace on the right knee, and what appears to be burn injuries on his left leg.

The fire, which closed both the westbound and eastbound lanes of the freeway affecting 300,000 vehicles who use the route daily, began under the overpass at Alameda Street and was fueled by wood pallets stored there.

The freeway — one of the most heavily used routes in the country — is expected to open to traffic on Tuesday.

Not long after the fire was extinguished did authorities determine that it was caused by arson. Although the exact cause of the fire was not revealed, Gov. Gavin Newsom at a news conference on Monday said that “there was [malicious] intent.”

In addition to pallets, sanitizer accumulated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was stored under the overpass and helped fuel the flames, according to sources familiar with the probe who were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

The office of the State Fire Marshal, which has jurisdiction over the property, which is owned by Caltrans, appealed for witnesses to call a tip line with information and noted those tips could be given anonymously.

“We have identified the point of origin of the fire,” State Fire Marshal Daniel Berlant said.

If the suspect is identified, authorities are asking the public to contact the State Fire Marshall’s arson and bomb unit at arsonbomb@fire.ca.gov or contact the Cal Fire arson hotline at 800-468-4408.

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Thomas Curwen

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November 18, 2023
Bystander fatally shot during street takeover in South Los Angeles

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A 23-year-old male bystander was shot and killed Friday night during a South Los Angeles street takeover, police said.

Officers responded to an assault with a deadly weapon call near 54th Street and Manhattan Place about 11:55 p.m. Friday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

They arrived to find a man on the ground suffering from a gunshot wound as numerous vehicles and pedestrians were leaving the area, police said.

Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics responded and pronounced the victim dead at the scene. The victim’s identity is being withheld pending next of kin notification, authorities said.

In recent years, street takeovers have become a regular occurrence in neighborhoods across Los Angeles County, where drivers perform stunts in the middle of busy intersections or race their vehicles in residential streets as spectators look on, posting videos on social media. These gatherings have on occasion turned deadly, with shootings and vehicle crashes.

The Los Angeles Police Department has joined other California law enforcement agencies in stepping up efforts to crack down on the illegal phenomenon, including impounding vehicles of anyone caught participating or attending street takeovers. Authorities are also pushing for state legislation calling for stiffer penalties for those who engage in such activities.

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Brennon Dixson

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November 18, 2023
‘Driving in traffic is stressful’: More commuters are trying public transit after fire closes 10 Freeway

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Caprice “Kip” Harper was among those commuters who heeded the call from transit officials to take public transportation after a fire under the 10 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles closed that vital thoroughfare.

Harper, an archaeologist for the state, opted for a 50-minute commute on the Metro’s A line train from Pasadena to downtown L.A. Thursday morning to partake in a strike held by California state scientists calling for more pay.

“I wanted to chill out,” she said. “Driving in traffic is stressful, and I also wanted to save energy for the protest.”

Preliminary data from transportation officials suggest that the closure of the freeway may have prompted more motorists like Harper to jump on public transit to avoid the traffic headache created in downtown Los Angeles after a fire erupted under the 10’s overpass at Alameda Street on Saturday morning. The fire was fueled by wood pallets stored there and is being investigated as an arson.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority recorded a 10% increase in ridership on the E line train that runs parallel to the 10 Freeway Monday and Tuesday, L.A. Metro Communications Director Dave Sotero said. L.A. Metro also reported a 25% increase in parked cars at outlying stations including Norwalk, Lakewood, Azusa and East L.A. on Thursday.

“Metro usage is up and we need to continue that until we get to Tuesday,” Mayor Karen Bass said at a press conference Friday, urging commuters taking the Metro system this week to make it a habit even after the freeway opens.

It remains unclear, however, if there has been a notable uptick in ridership on the entire regional system this week in response to the freeway closure. L.A. Metro said it does not yet have data on overall ridership for this month.

While Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that the 10 Freeway would reopen by Tuesday — much sooner than expected — the roughly 300,000 commuters that drove that stretch of the freeway daily have been tasked with finding alternative routes or modes of transportation until then. But many commuters have chosen to continue driving, opting for side streets through neighborhoods in the city’s core.

To help speed up the commute for those taking public transit, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation has adjusted signal times along the A and E train lines for faster service into downtown L.A. The L.A. Metro has also added buses to Line 66, which runs along Olympic Boulevard, and Line 51, which runs along Soto Street, while Metrolink increased the number of commuter trains from San Bernardino and Covina to Union Station. Bass even rode the Metro’s E line train to work Wednesday morning, encouraging commuters to take public transit while the 10 is closed.

Although taking the Metro had a “comparable” commute time to driving, Harper’s first 15 minutes of her Thursday commute was spent getting to the nearest Metro station, Fillmore Station. It’s a reality that deters many locals from ditching their car and hopping on the train.

For many others, mass transit wasn’t a viable option.

Ashley Olmeda, 30, said taking public transit just does not make sense for her when the nearest Metro train station to her residence in Alhambra is an 18-minute drive to Memorial Park Station in Pasadena. She instead drove 40 minutes to downtown L.A., a drive that would have normally taken 15 minutes. But it was still the better alternative to taking public transit, she said.

“There’s no Metro near me, so I would have to go out to Pasadena to the nearest Metro station,” she said. “But if I had access to one, I would [take public transit].”

For others, using public transit is not feasible when they need to get around the city throughout the day.

Tom Somers, 69, came into downtown L.A. from La Cañada Flintridge to go to court Thursday morning. As a lawyer, he needs to be able to travel freely between the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in downtown L.A. to his office in Koreatown.

“I’d like to [take the Metro]. I’d really like to,” he said. “But I need to get to court and the office and driving makes more sense for that.”

He instead opted for a 65-minute commute to downtown L.A., which would normally have taken him 35 minutes, he said.

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Ashley Ahn

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November 17, 2023
10 Freeway to reopen by Tuesday, much earlier than originally thought

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Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that the fire-damaged 10 Freeway would reopen sooner than expected — Tuesday “at the latest.”

“Five lanes in both directions,” Newsom said at a news conference Thursday evening at the site of the fire in downtown Los Angeles.

More than 100 columns along the swath of the freeway were damaged — nine or 10 of them severely, officials said. Construction crews have erected wooden structures to shore up the overpass while the repair work gets underway.

“By Tuesday next week, trucks, passenger vehicles in both directions will be moving again,” Newsom said. “We’ve doubled the crews, we’ve doubled down on our efforts here.”

Newsom said 250 contractors were working on repairing the bridge, including 30 carpenters joining efforts in the most recent day.

“Things continue to move favorably in our direction,” Newsom said. “The bridge structure itself seems to be in better shape than we anticipated.”

Mayor Karen Bass thanked Los Angeles residents who had switched to public transit and heeded calls to avoid crowding surface streets while the 10 remained closed this past week.

“This is a good day in Los Angeles,” Bass said.

Gloria Roberts, appointed director of Caltrans District 7, thanked the governor and mayor for their leadership. She also praised Caltrans workers who had logged numerous hours at the site.

“Proud to bleed orange,” she said, sparking chuckles and smiles from the governor and mayor.

The fire, which arson investigators believe was intentionally set, started at a property under the 10 that was being leased from the California Department of Transportation. No arrests have been made, and the investigation remains ongoing.

Although the exact cause of the fire has not been revealed, “there was [malicious] intent,” Newsom said at a news conference Monday afternoon. The cost of the repair project also remains under assessment.

In addition to pallets, sanitizer accumulated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was stored under the overpass and helped fuel the flames, according to sources familiar with the probe who were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

The fire was reported early Saturday, shortly after midnight, in the 1700 block of East 14th Street after a pallet yard under the freeway caught fire and spread to a second pallet yard, damaging the freeway overpass and destroying several vehicles, including a firetruck, authorities said.

As part of its investigation, the Los Angeles Fire Department will inspect other underpasses in the city, according to Mayor Bass.

“L.A. city wants to make sure our house is in order,” she said. “We have a number of leases under the freeway as well. So we are looking at those to make sure that what we’re doing is appropriate as well.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that immigrant businesses had occupied the space beneath the freeway while their landlord dodged Caltrans, to which it owed thousands of dollars in unpaid rent. State officials, tenants and a lawyer for the company leasing the land maintain that Caltrans was long aware of conditions under the freeway that fueled the fire.

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Jeremy Childs, Ruben Vives

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November 16, 2023
A ‘catfishing’ cop killed three family members. A relative is suing the sheriff’s office that gave him a badge

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Relatives of the Riverside family killed by “catfish” cop Austin Lee Edwards nearly a year ago filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Virginia sheriff’s office that hired him.

Edwards, a former Virginia state trooper then employed by the Washington County, Va., sheriff’s office, killed Mark Winek, 69; Sharie Winek, 65; and Brooke Winek 38, in their Riverside home on the morning of Nov. 25, according to authorities. He set fire to their home and kidnapped Brooke’s then-15-year-old daughter. Police said Edwards, 28, “catfished” the girl by telling her during previous online conversations that he was 17.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Central California, the teen’s aunt, Mychelle Blandin, sued the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and Edwards’ estate for damages, citing violation of 4th Amendment rights, battery and negligent hiring, supervision and retention, among other allegations. Blandin, who is the guardian of the 15-year-old’s younger sister, has also sued on behalf of the younger child, and is seeking unspecified financial compensation.

After kidnapping the teen, Edwards drove into the Mojave Desert with the girl, where he died in a confrontation with law enforcement. Police initially said he was killed in a shootout but later said he died of a self-inflicted gunshot with his service weapon. The girl wasn’t physically uninjured.

“Our law enforcement agencies and their process for screening new hires must be held to the highest standards,” Alison Saros, an attorney for Blandin, said in a news release. “These individuals are meant to protect us, but the Sheriff’s Office failed to follow the proper processes. Sadly, the Winek family has suffered irreparable tragedy.”

A memorial stands out in the darkness at the home where three family members were murdered Nov. 25, 2022, in Riverside.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The Washington County Sheriff’s Office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Times previously reported that Edwards told the Virginia State Police during his application process that he was detained for psychiatric evaluation and went to a mental health facility in 2016, showing that the agency knew about his mental health issues. This visit led to two custody orders, which typically allow law enforcement to take someone into custody and transport them for mental health evaluation, and a judge revoking his gun ownership rights.

Col. Gary Settle, the state police superintendent, wrote in a letter to the state’s inspector general after the slayings that Edwards’ admission wouldn’t have automatically disqualified him from being hired, but should have prompted Virginia State Police to investigate further.

“Unfortunately, the error allowed him to be employed, as there were no other disqualifiers,” Settle wrote.

After resigning from Virginia State Police after nine months, Edwards applied to work at the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. He used his father and a close friend as references in his application. He was hired as a patrol deputy nine days before he killed the Wineks.

In a statement after the slayings, Washington County Sheriff Blake Andis said that Edwards had started orientation at his agency and that none of Edwards’ prior employers had disclosed any red flags.

Mychelle Blandin (center) is comforted by her friend Tammy Porter (left) and her husband, Ben Blandin, as she holds a photo of her mom and dad. Mychelle Blandin’s parents and sister were victims of a triple homicide in Riverside that authorities say began with a “catfishing” case involving Blandin’s niece.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“It is shocking and sad to the entire law enforcement community that such an evil and wicked person could infiltrate law enforcement while concealing his true identity as a computer predator and murderer,” Andis said.

During the murders, police believe Edwards presented his badge to Sharie and Mark Winek and told them he was there for an investigation in order to lure Brooke Winek and her 15-year-old daughter back to the Riverside home, The Times previously reported.

He put bags over the heads of Sharie and Mari Winek, who both died from asphyxiation, according to their coroner’s reports also included with the lawsuit. Edwards then stabbed Brooke Winek, who died from a wound to her spinal cord, according to her coroner’s report.

“Edwards never should have been hired by the Sheriff’s Department. He was barred by the courts from owning or possessing a gun because of his mental illness and because he was a clear danger to the community,” said David Ring, Blandin’s attorney. “He used his position as a sheriff’s deputy and the gun they gave him to kill these innocent victims.”

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Summer Lin, Erin B. Logan

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November 16, 2023
Caltrans long aware of conditions under 10 Freeway that fueled fire

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The state was long aware of conditions under Interstate 10 where a massive fire Saturday severely damaged the freeway south of downtown Los Angeles — with Caltrans inspectors on site as recently as Oct. 6, according to state officials, tenants and a lawyer for the company leasing the land.

The fire was fueled by wood pallets stored under the freeway and is being investigated as an arson.

The plot of land was leased by Caltrans to a private company that subleased it to small blue-collar businesses at much higher rents.

For years, a pallet distributor, a recycler, a mechanic shop and a garment factory supplier operated between the freeway pillars on East 14th Street a block east of South Alameda Street. Along the perimeters, homeless people camped and lighted fires to keep warm.

The conditions did not raise any apparent alarm bells among state officials who regularly inspected the site. Google Earth photos from January 2023 and March 2022 show dozens of columns of pallets stacked two stories high, amid piles of tires, wood boxes, cardboard and old vehicles, all visible from four streets and a freeway offramp.

“Caltrans staff inspect all airspace lease sites at least annually to check for potential safety hazards and lease violations,” said Eric Menjivar, a spokesperson for Caltrans District 7, which maintains state highways in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Areas under and next to the freeway are considered airspace.

“Staff also monitor what is placed or stored on site by the tenant. If deficiencies are noted, Caltrans staff notifies the tenant for remedy. The State Fire Marshal also inspects regularly for fire and life safety.”

Menjivar said Caltrans inspected the property Oct. 6 after Caltrans had filed a lawsuit to remove its tenant, Apex Development Inc., for noncompliance with the lease. The suit, filed in September, said the company had not paid its rent in more than a year and had illegally sublet the land to a host of small businesses.

The California Department of Transportation has not provided inspection reports requested by the Times.

Jose Luis Villamil Rodriguez, who started renting a spot on the property from Apex in 2011, said he watched Caltrans inspectors regularly come to the site.

“They would even take photos,” he said. “Everyone knew what was under the freeway, they saw the pallet yard and so I’m pretty sure they were aware of it.”

Rodriguez said the pallet yard business had been under the freeway for about seven years. He said the owner was constantly storing and moving the pallets. Rodriguez said he never interacted with the inspectors. Out of caution, Rodriguez said he had fire extinguishers at his job site. “Whether others didn’t, I wouldn’t know,” he added.

Caltrans had rented the 48,000-square-foot lot to Apex and its owner, Ahmad Anthony Nowaid, starting in 2008. Under Apex’s lease agreement, the property could be used only for parking operable vehicles and “open storage”; other uses required the approval of Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration, something the company does not appear to have secured. Apex was also not allowed the storage of inoperable vehicles, flammable materials or other hazards.

The lease agreement between Caltrans and Apex was filed in court as part of the state’s lawsuit against the company for unpaid rent. As of September, Apex owed nearly $80,000 in back rent on the property that burned.

A court hearing in the suit is scheduled for early 2024.

Apex, through its attorney Mainak D’Attaray, confirmed that Caltrans had inspected the lot at East 14th Street at least once a year. The lawyer also disputed that the various small businesses renting from Apex were there illegally; Caltrans “was fully aware of the sublessees and their operations,” he said in a statement.

The attorney argued that state officials were wrongly blaming the company and knew about homeless encampments and the overall conditions at the site.

“Even the State of California’s Fire Marshall inspected the premises,” D’Attaray said in a statement. “Apex is sympathetic to the loss of property and the adverse impact the fire has caused the people of Los Angeles. But Apex was not involved in the fire. Apex is being unfairly scape-goated for something over which it had no control.”

The lot at the edge of the Fashion District is one of five that Caltrans had rented to Apex’s owner, Nowaid. Caltrans had filed eviction proceedings for all five properties, saying Nowaid’s firm owed a total of at least $620,000 in unpaid rent.

Earlier this week, Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized Apex and its owner without specifically identifying Nowaid.

“This guy and this organization, whoever the members of that particular organization are, have been bad actors,” Newsom said at a news conference. “They stopped paying their rent, they’re out of compliance, and as was stated yesterday … they have been subleasing this site to at least five, maybe as many as six tenants, without authorization from Caltrans or authorization from our federal partners.”

D’Attaray said that the eviction suits were retaliation by Caltrans for a lawsuit that Apex had filed in June, accusing the agency of interfering with his business.

He said the governor and Mayor Karen Bass were trying “to excuse their own failures to adequately address the public safety issues caused by the unhoused.”

Apex had repeatedly called the Los Angeles Fire Department to report fires started by homeless people who pitched tents around the perimeter of the lot, D’Attaray said. He claimed that the city’s fire and police departments responded “dismissively.”

“The unhoused persons camping along the fence line of the premises were allowed to remain and accumulate all types of refuse and materials over which Apex had no control,” D’Attaray said in the statement.

A spokesperson for Newsom rejected the idea that the governor’s statements were off base.

“CalFire currently believes the fire was caused by arson — the criminal act of deliberately setting fire to property — in a fenced-off area that Apex was responsible for maintaining while they continued to assert rights under the lease,” the spokesperson said.

A representative for Bass did not respond to requests for comment.

A Caltrans engineer, who asked to withhold his name because he was not authorized to speak, said that it was the state agency that should have seen this coming.

“Caltrans has known about this for a long time,” the engineer told the Times earlier this week. “They have permitted lessees to store flammable stuff underneath these freeways for decades. They’ve had a couple of fires in the last three years that have affected columns, but inspectors can’t completely get underneath the bridge to make a thorough inspection because of all the junk.”

In Atlanta, a similar fire in 2017 caused a portion of the 85 Freeway to collapse after a 39-year-old homeless man who police said had been smoking crack set fire to an upholstered chair on top of a shopping cart.

The fire ignited combustible materials stored under the freeway. Federal investigators found the Georgia Department of Transportation partly responsible.

In an alert sent out to transportation agencies across the country, the National Transportation Safety Board warned: “Although catastrophic fires fueled by materials stored underneath bridges are relatively rare events, the loss of this structure demonstrates what can happen if bridge owners are not vigilant about monitoring and controlling such materials.”

The I-85 closure snarled commuter traffic on the region’s busiest throroughfares for six weeks. In response, Caltrans wrote up a policy directive directly based on that incident that prohibited the storage of flammable materials under its bridges and required access for bridge inspections.

It is not clear if it was enforced.

Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) said the fire on Saturday “should have never happened.

“There’s already protocols in place,” he said. He praised the governor’s response to the fire and his administration, which has pushed the effort to “Fix the 10.”

Santiago said he felt confident that the governor’s office and Caltrans would provide information about the state’s leases, including a review of litigation and enforcement mechanisms.

“Once we get the information there needs to be strong accountability mechanisms in place to prevent anything like this from ever happening again and putting the public at risk.”

Carina Quinto, who runs a mobile mechanic shop out of the freeway underpass, was bewildered by officials. She had been watching news reports about the fire and was surprised to hear officials say they had no idea what was going on under the underpass.

“Supposedly the city didn’t know the kind of businesses that were running under the freeway. They knew exactly what we were doing,” she said. Someone from sanitation came regularly to check that oil was properly disposed, she said.

When asked for proof of the visit, she said, it burned up in the fire.

Times staff writers Taryn Luna and Thomas Curwen contributed to this report.

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Rachel Uranga, Matt Hamilton, Ruben Vives

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November 16, 2023
Southern California home values near record despite the high cost of borrowing

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Southern California home prices are nearing a record high at a time of sky-high mortgage rates, a double blow that’s hammering housing affordability across the region.

In October, the average home price for the six-county region climbed 0.12% to $831,080, according to data from Zillow. It was the eighth consecutive monthly increase, leaving prices just 1% below the all-time high reached in 2022.

“I don’t understand how people are affording these insane mortgages,” said Nicholas Uribe, a 31-year-old property manager who is trying — so far unsuccessfully — to buy a single-family home in the San Fernando Valley.

Although prices are slightly lower than during the peak, a home is drastically more unaffordable. In October, the monthly payment on the typical L.A. County home was $4,830, according to Zillow. In June 2022, when prices peaked and rates were lower, the typical payment was nearly $900 less.

Some experts say they don’t expect prices or mortgage rates to drop considerably in the near future — a forecast that, if realized, could dash the hopes of people like Uribe.

In theory, he should be better off than he is. In 2019, he paid $329,000 for a Sylmar townhome that his agent now estimates is worth about $500,000.

He’s also making more money. But despite his higher paycheck and home equity, he feels stuck.

With interest rates roughly double what they were in 2019, Uribe said he could barely afford to buy a comparable townhome at today’s prices, let alone the single-family home he’d like to trade up to.

With today’s rates, the top of his budget is about $500,000, which he said “gets you nothing in the San Fernando Valley.”

On a recent afternoon, only three San Fernando Valley houses were for sale on Redfin priced at $500,000 or less. One was accepting only cash. All three were one- or two-bedroom abodes that were smaller than Uribe’s townhome and appeared run-down.

The trend of declining affordability is playing out across the country. How the nation and Southern California arrived at this moment, experts say, is a tale of under-building, pandemic trends and federal monetary policy.

During the height of the pandemic, people rushed to purchase a home, motivated by stay-at-home policies and mortgage rates driven to record lows by the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies. That demand surge collided with a shortage of homes for sale and caused prices to skyrocket.

But as inflation soared, the Federal Reserve reversed course, tightening policy in a switch that helped send mortgage rates sharply upward. From November 2021 to November 2022, rates climbed from below 3% to 7%.

Initially, prices in Southern California fell as shocked buyers backed away and inventory swelled. Then the flow of homes hitting the market ground to a near-halt.

Increasingly, homeowners chose not to sell and give up their rock-bottom mortgages. Some like Uribe couldn’t afford to move. Others could but thought it a bad deal to pay so much in interest.

When rates dropped into the 6% range and then stayed there for much of this year, it wasn’t enough to entice back many sellers. It did bring back a fair number of well-heeled buyers — especially first-timers without a mortgage — who decided they had put off their home purchase long enough.

According to a Zillow survey done earlier this year, half of recent home purchasers were first-time buyers, which the real estate firm said is probably the highest share since around 2010 when a first-time buyer tax credit juiced demand.

Demand for housing remains weaker than during the pandemic, but the combination of a little more demand and a lot less supply has been enough to push prices up.

In Southern California, home prices bottomed in February. The median price has risen 8% since then to come in just under the all-time high of $839,674.

In recent months, mortgage rates have surged past 7%, further crimping the budgets of potential buyers.

According to the California Assn. of Realtors, only 11% of households in Los Angeles and Orange counties could afford the median-priced house in the third quarter, the lowest level since the mid-2000s housing bubble.

Looked at another way, a median-income household in those two counties would need to fork over 76.5% of its income to afford the average-priced house in September, according to Intercontinental Exchange, a financial services firm.

The September payment-to-income ratio is the highest level in a data set that starts in 1992 and contrasts with a long-term average of 35.6%.

Andy Walden, vice president of enterprise research with Intercontinental Exchange, called today’s current levels of affordability unsustainable, but said that doesn’t mean prices will fall.

“Sometimes a correction means home prices grow at a lower rate than incomes,” he said.

That process could be underway. While prices rose in October from September, the increase was the smallest since values resumed their climb earlier this year.

Nicole Bachaud, a senior economist with Zillow, said part of the current downshift is seasonal.

Overall, Zillow predicts home prices across Los Angeles and Orange counties will dip 1.5% over the next year. In the Inland Empire counties of Riverside and San Bernardino, prices should rise 0.2%.

Bachaud said home prices should be more or less flat because the lack of affordability will serve as a ceiling, while tight inventory will serve as a floor.

A substantial increase in inventory could ease the experience for buyers, and there have been minor signs of improvement.

In Los Angeles County, Redfin data show the number of new homes hitting the market each week is now 2% below year-ago levels, compared with 30% declines seen earlier this year.

Experts said more homeowners may finally be done waiting and are choosing to sell. But buyers shouldn’t expect a surge of additional options any time soon.

More than 60% of all U.S. homes with a first-lien mortgage have rates below 4%, according to Intercontinental Exchange data, and the gap between the rate homeowners have and the rate they’d get in today’s market is the largest since 1980.

That gap — and the disincentive to sell that it brings — should shrink over time as more people decide they must move and rates retreat a bit, Walden said.

“But it’s going to take years for that to take place,” he said.

In the meantime, people wait.

Shawna Jamison is one of them. She hoped to be out of her 565-square-foot San Diego condo by now, but a combination of personal and market factors have kept her there.

The 37-year-old bought her San Diego unit nearly a decade ago, then a few years later moved to Orange County for a job promotion and rented the one-bedroom out.

The plan was to transfer back to the San Diego office in several years and buy a bigger place in the city she loved. But the pandemic delayed office transfers and permanent work from home policies weren’t established, giving the software analyst pause about moving back south.

It wasn’t until late 2022 that she got the OK to transfer to San Diego. She returned to her condo, but by then mortgage rates had surged.

She’s searched for a larger home ever since, but can’t find anything within her budget.

“I was waiting for my personal situation to align,” she said. “But as soon as my personal situation aligned, the interest rate situation is a disaster.”

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Andrew Khouri

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November 16, 2023
L.A.’s post-fire push for public transportation: Free rides, faster trains, more buses

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As gridlock seizes the streets of downtown Los Angeles following the 10 Freeway fire, L.A. officials are imploring drivers to ditch their cars and finally hop on public transit — and they’re using free rides, faster trains and more buses on city streets as incentive.

The Commuter Express bus service, which heads directly into the downtown area from multiple locations with few stops, will be free for the rest of the year.

“This is an opportunity for Angelenos to take advantage of the public transportation system that we have today,” Mayor Karen Bass said during a news conference Tuesday announcing the fare changes. A helicopter tour provided evidence, the mayor said, that downtown streets during the evening rush hour were an “absolute parking lot” in the fire’s aftermath.

Arson has been blamed in the massive blaze that forced the shutdown of the freeway in downtown Los Angeles.

On Tuesday, officials said the vital section of road would not have to be torn down, but repairs are likely to take weeks.

That poses the threat of significant gridlock on other freeways in the downtown area, as well as surface streets that the Los Angeles Department of Transportation has identified as detours. To mitigate some of that traffic, public officials are urging people to take public transportation, and making rides on Commuter Express buses free for the rest of 2023.

Riders would not have to pay the fare, which ranges from $1.50 to $4.25 for a one-way ride.

“All you have to do is board, enjoy the ride and let us take you to your final destination,” said Laura Rubio-Cornejo, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, at Tuesday’s news conference.

After Bass announced free rides on all Commuter Express buses Monday, officials said they saw a significant increase in the number of passengers.

On Tuesday, there was a 19% increase on the number of riders when compared to Monday, said Colin Sweeney, a spokesperson with the city’s Department of Transportation.

The DASH bus service, which operates shorter routes within neighborhoods in Los Angeles, including the downtown area, have also been free since 2020.

DASH buses have seen a “slight decline” in the number of passengers this week in the downtown area, but Sweeney said the that could be a sign of residents heeding the mayor’s call to avoid trips to the downtown area whenever possible.

On Monday, the first weekday after the fire, Rubio-Cornejo said downtown surface streets being used as detours saw a 14.7% increase in traffic throughout the day.

On Tuesday, however, she said streets saw a 26% increase along the same streets, which she noted were already among the most congested routes in downtown Los Angeles under normal conditions.

With rain expected to worsen roadway conditions Wednesday, officials urged commuters to opt for public transportation instead.

L.A. Metro sees about 950,000 riders a day, but Lilian de Loza Gutierrez, director of community relations for Metro, said the system could handle more.

“Metro has the capacity to welcome even more Angelenos,” she said at a Wednesday news conference.

Gutierrez also encouraged people to use public transportation to get to events taking place this weekend in the downtown area, including the L.A. Auto Show at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and Friday’s Clippers game and Sunday’s Lakers game at the Crypto.com Arena.

As further incentive, Metrolink has temporarily increased the number of trains from San Bernardino and Covina to Union Station, said Randall Winston, deputy mayor of infrastructure for Bass’ office.

L.A. Metro has also added buses to Line 66, which runs along Olympic Boulevard, and Line 51, which runs along Soto Street. Those two lines, Winston said, were the most affected by delays Tuesday.

Mayor Bass also directed L.A. Metro to increase the speed on the E line, which runs along the 10 Freeway between Santa Monica and East Los Angeles with 29 stops in between.

That line, Winston said Wednesday morning, had a 10% increase in riders Tuesday.

The line is expected to be 5% to 10% faster.

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Salvador Hernandez

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November 15, 2023
L.A. County reports first flu death of season, renews call for residents to get vaccinated

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Los Angeles County has confirmed its first flu death of the season, and with the bulk of the season still ahead, health officials are reminding residents to get vaccinated.

The person who died was elderly and had multiple underlying health conditions, according to the county Department of Public Health. There was no record of the person being vaccinated for flu this season, officials added.

“Although most people recover from influenza without complications, this death is a reminder that influenza can be a serious illness. … Annually, thousands of people nationwide are hospitalized or die from influenza-associated illness,” health officials said in a statement.

Statewide, nine people have died from flu since Oct. 1, according to the latest data from the California Department of Public Health.

Flu season usually runs from October through May and peaks around February, but every season is different. An estimated 670 Californians died from flu during the 2022-23 season, public health figures show.

Federal health officials have long recommended most everyone get an annual flu shot. But that call has taken on increased urgency in recent years, given the additional threat posed by COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

Health officials are preparing for the possibility of a renewed “tripledemic” this winter, with all three viruses circulating widely at the same time. Last year, Southern California was hit hard by an early onslaught of RSV, a historically strong start to the flu season and a COVID-19 spike — straining a healthcare system already stretched thin and sending patients to the emergency room in droves.

“Current indicators of influenza activity in Los Angeles County are in line with past seasons and have been rising in recent weeks,” officials said.

As of the week that ended Nov. 4, the most recent period for which data are available, flu activity was still considered low statewide, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But flu activity is increasing as the holiday season approaches, and officials largely recommend everyone age 6 months and older, especially older adults and those with weakened immune systems, get vaccinated.

Although some healthy people may be unfazed by flu season, officials say they should still get the shot so they don’t spread the illness to someone who might not recover as quickly.

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Anthony De Leon

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November 15, 2023
Rams will move headquarters and practice facility to Woodland Hills

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The Los Angeles Rams will move their practice facility to Woodland Hills next season as part of a large-scale real estate development planned by owner Stan Kroenke that could help give the car-centric Warner Center district a more urban feel.

The Rams officially announced the long-expected move Tuesday at an outdoor shopping center that Kroenke bought earlier this year as he assembled a 100-acre parcel for future development that will include a new headquarters for the Rams.

The move will center the Rams, now based in the city of Agoura Hills, in Los Angeles’ Woodland Hills neighborhood. The team plays at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on game days, but spends most of the year at its headquarters and practice facilities.

“It’s important for us to have a foothold in L.A.,” said Kevin Demoff, chief operating officer of the Rams.

A temporary practice facility similar to the one the team now uses at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks will be built on what is now a parking lot next to an unoccupied office tower the Kroenke Group bought in Warner Center in 2022.

Kroenke plans to build a more permanent and expansive training facility and team headquarters on the site in the future, part of what is expected to be a sprawling mixed-use complex that may include stores, restaurants, hotels and residences.

The parking lot at the former Anthem building in Warner Center will be the new location of the Los Angeles Rams practice facility.

(Los Angeles Times)

Work will start shortly on the temporary football compound at Erwin Street and Canoga Avenue, Demoff said. Asphalt and two one-story buildings will be removed to make way for two practice fields and a network of temporary modular trailers that will be similar to the setup the team uses at Cal Lutheran.

The trailers will include office space and meeting rooms for coaches, players, scouts and staff, along with a weight room, a training room, a locker room, a media room and a meal room.

City Councilman Bob Blumenfield called the facility “a great use that brings a lot of value” to the neighborhood and “not much traffic.”

The 13-story tower on the site that was formerly home to health insurer Anthem Inc. may be part of the future mixed-use campus or could be eventually razed to make way for other uses.

Kroenke Group is working on a new land-use design for the site that also includes the former Woodland Hills Promenade, a largely inactive shopping center built in 1973, and the thriving outdoor mall Topanga Village built next to the Promenade in 2015. The move was announced at the Village, which will remain a cornerstone of the Kroenke complex that could take many years to complete.

Los Angeles city officials are encouraging dense mixed-use development in the Warner Center neighborhood that could include new housing, offices, shops, restaurants, hotel rooms and entertainment venues.

The planned building boom may help Warner Center finally achieve its original purpose. In the early 1970s, planners decided that the west San Fernando Valley land, once the site of movie mogul Harry Warner’s horse ranch, should be turned into a “downtown” for the Valley.

As it developed, however, Warner Center bore only passing resemblance to the densely built urban districts people associate with that word.

Today, the neighborhood is mostly a mix of office towers that jut up from a sea of cookie-cutter, low-slung office buildings served by acres of surface parking lots. Apartments and stores are mostly isolated in discrete blocks, and the whole expanse is cleaved by wide, fast-moving streets that flow to freeways.

Kroenke’s $325-million purchase of the Village in January further signaled the billionaire businessman’s intention to build a sports-centric development like the one around SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

In Inglewood, Kroenke controls nearly 300 acres surrounding SoFi Stadium, in what was formerly the Hollywood Park horse racing venue. When the Inglewood complex is completed, it will be 3½ times the size of Disneyland and contain a performance venue, hotel, stores, restaurants, offices, homes and a lake with waterfalls.

With the additional 100 acres in Woodland Hills, Kroenke is now one of the largest real estate developers in the Los Angeles region, Demoff said. His company could build and operate as much as 7 million square feet of property in Woodland Hills as envisioned under the city’s Warner Center 2035 Specific Plan.

“Stan and everybody else is a believer in the potential of Warner Center,” Demoff said. “Everything keeps growing here.”

The Kroenke Group owns and operates shopping centers in 39 states with a combined total of 40 million square feet, the company said.

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Roger Vincent

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November 15, 2023