The 38,000-acre Borel fire in Kern County has leveled the tiny, historic mining town of Havilah. The fire ignited Wednesday in the Kern River canyon and spread rapidly as it met with strong winds, officials said. It ran through Havilah on Friday night and razed almost the entire town, appearing to spare only a few buildings.
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, leaving many residents homeless.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Breckenridge Mountain is obscured by smoke from the southeastern flank of the Borel fire near the community of Twin Oaks.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Members of the Iron Mountain Hand Crew move to the front as dozens of firefighters manage the southeastern flank of the Borel fire near the community of Twin Oaks.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, killing livestock and leaving many residents homeless.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, leaving many residents homeless.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, leaving many residents homeless.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, leaving many residents homeless.
Former President Trump’s top rivals in the Republican Party lined up behind the 2024 nominee on Tuesday, promising he would “make America safe again” from violent criminals and dangerous undocumented immigrants who they suggested are invading the nation via an “open” southern border.
After questioning his abilities and integrity during the primaries, they gave full-throated backing to a man they once loudly reviled, saying that unifying behind their former foe was crucial for the nation’s future. Trump, who entered the convention hall to thunderous applause, looked on approvingly as his former opponents urged voters to return him to the White House.
“For more than a year, I said a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for President Kamala Harris,” said Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. “After seeing the debate, everyone knows it’s true. If we have four more years of Biden or a single day of Harris, our country will be badly worse off. For the sake of our nation, we have to go with Donald Trump.”
But Haley said her message was aimed at voters who may have qualms about the former president.
Former Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks during the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“We should acknowledge there are some Americans who don’t agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time. I happen to know some,” said Haley, whom Trump nicknamed “Birdbrain” during their 2024 primary contest. “My message to them is simple. You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him. Take it from me, I haven’t always agreed with President Trump, but we agree more often than we disagree.”
Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, entered the Milwaukee arena shortly before speeches by Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom he bested in a testy 2024 GOP primary, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, one of his opponents in the 2016 election.
“Let’s send Joe Biden back to his basement and let’s send Donald Trump back to the White House,” said DeSantis, whom Trump nicknamed “Ron DeSanctimonious.” “Our border was safer under the Trump administration and our country was respected when Donald Trump was our commander in chief. Joe Biden has failed this nation.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Haley and DeSantis apparently learned a lesson from Cruz — aka “Lyin’ Ted” — whose failure to endorse Trump after losing to him in the 2016 GOP primary earned him boos at that year’s convention and some enmity from Trump loyalists. He has since fallen back in line with the man who suggested his father was potentially involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The praise of Trump was interspersed with speeches about crime and immigration, and some of the most moving and powerful moments of the night came from families of crime victims.
On Tuesday, Cruz listed the names of Americans allegedly killed by people who are in the country illegally, including Kathryn Steinle, a 32-year-old woman who was shot in 2015 while strolling with her father on the Embarcadero in San Francisco.
“As a result of Joe Biden’s presidency, your family is less safe. Your children are less safe. The country is less safe. But here’s the good news: We can fix it. And when Donald Trump is president, we will fix it,” Cruz said. “We know this because he’s done it before.”
Tuesday night’s convention theme was “Make America Safe Again.”
Speaker after speaker, from politicians to law enforcement officials to people labeled “everyday Americans,” blamed crime in the U.S. in part on an “invasion” of criminals crossing into the country from the southern border with Mexico — though studies for years have shown immigrants are less likely to commit crimes here than natural-born U.S. citizens.
Kari Lake, a prominent 2020 election denier who lost a 2022 bid to become Arizona governor and is now running for the U.S. Senate, blamed “disastrous” Democratic policies for the surge in fentanyl and other opioid deaths in the country and along the southern border — which she said Trump would end.
Kari Lake speaks at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Lake said President Biden and Democrats “have handed over control of my state, Arizona’s border, to the drug cartels,” and that “because of them, criminals and deadly drugs are pouring in and our children are dying.”
Anne Fundner, a mother from California, said her 15-year-old son, Weston, died from fentanyl in 2022 — which she blamed on the “open border” policies of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“This was not an overdose, it was a poisoning. His whole future, everything we ever wanted for him, was ripped away in an instant — and Joe Biden does nothing,” Fundner said.
She said Trump must be elected to help end fentanyl’s scourge on American families like hers. “This fight is not for me. My son is gone,” she said. “This fight is for your children.”
Crime and homelessness are perennial campaign talking points among Republicans, often couched as the result of liberal policies in states such as California.
Republicans claim the title of the “law and order” party, which has been a particularly useful point of political redirection for Trump as he has faced multiple criminal investigations and been convicted of dozens of felonies in recent years.
Democrats dismiss the Republican criticisms as inaccurate or overblown. Cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco do struggle with crime and homelessness issues, Democrats say, but not to the extent Republicans suggest — and cities in red states struggle with similar issues.
Democrats also blasted Republicans for platforming individuals at the RNC who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and siege on the U.S. Capitol.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump leaves the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Officer Michael Fanone, a Capitol Police officer who was injured in that attack, condemned the presence of insurrectionists at the convention.
“What happened on January 6th almost cost me my life and brought our democracy to the brink,” Fanone said in a statement. “This is a moment to come together and oppose those who call for violence in politics, but the RNC’s decision to give a platform to the same people who rioted against our democracy on January 6th does the opposite.”
Crime data vary across the country and within individual states.
However, the clearest trend in crime data in recent years nationwide, experts said, is that violent crime is down. Republicans often dismiss such data by saying they are fabricated or the result of lower reporting rates.
A wind-driven wildfire along Interstate 5 near the Grapevine exploded to more than 12,000 acres by early Sunday and had charted a path south toward the town of Castaic, prompting evacuations throughout the area, officials said. The Post fire, which originated Saturday in Gorman in northwestern Los Angeles County, was only 2% contained Sunday afternoon as high winds, low humidity and steep terrain hampered firefighting efforts.
Meanwhile, firefighters were battling another brush fire in the San Bernardino County community of Hesperia that broke out after 6 p.m. Saturday in the 18000 block of North Highway 173. That fire has burned more than 1,300 acres and was 20% contained.
The Post Fire
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Fire crews battle a hot spot on Orwin road.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Fire crews battle a hot spot.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Crews conduct a burn-out operation Sunday near Hungry Valley Road.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Firefighters at work in Gorman.
(Eric Thayer / Associated Press)
Members of the Little Tujunga Hot Shots at work.
(Eric Thayer / Associated Press)
The Post fire advances on structures in Gorman.
As the fire spreads, experts are gauging the severity of this year’s fire season. A wet winter has nurtured a potentially heavy fuel load of thick grasses, which are drying as temperatures rise.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)
As the fire spreads, experts are gauging the severity of this year’s fire season. A wet winter has nurtured a potentially heavy fuel load of thick grasses, which are drying as temperatures rise.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)
A smoldering hillside is left behind by the Post fire.
The Lisa Fire
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
CalFire drops water from a helicopter to battle the wind driven Lisa fire from the air in a canyon east of Moreno Valley on Sunday in Beaumont. As of 6:45pm the fire had burned 867 acres.
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Robert Gauthier, Jason Armond, Gina Ferazzi, Times Photography Wire Services
Benjamin and Christine Granillo bought their 2.25-acre property in San Bernardino County four decades ago. They built their home by hand and surrounded it with a lush grove of avocado, orange and lemon trees.
“We thought we’d be here for the rest of our life,” Christine Granillo, 77, said as she tended to her trees on a recent afternoon.
But their neighborhood in unincorporated Bloomington is rapidly transforming, as developers convert the 10 Freeway and its adjacent communities into a logistics corridor connecting goods shipped into Southern California ports with online shoppers across the nation. An industrial real estate company based in Orange County is demolishing 117 homes and ranches in rural Bloomington to make way for more than 2 millionsquare feet of warehousing space. The project will serve as yet another distribution center dedicated to storing and moving the vast array of products consumers want delivered to their doorsteps.
Benjamin and Christine Granillo, who built their home by hand in rural Bloomington, will soon look out on a sprawling online fulfillment center.
All the neighbors across the street from the Granillos sold their homes to the developer, and many have already been bulldozed. The Granillos opted not to sell — and now look out their stately front gate at the rubble, soon to be supplanted with a 479,000-square-foot fulfillment center. Their street will become a busy truck route. Next door will be a parking lot with hundreds of truck and trailer stalls.
Christine Granillo mourns the loss of her neighbors and her view of the San Bernardino Mountains. But, she added, “What can you do about it? There’s really nothing you can do about it.”
In November 2022, San Bernardino County supervisors voted 4-0 to approve the Bloomington Business Park, a 213-acre industrial park that promises to bring several thousand jobs to Bloomington, a majority Latino community of 23,000 residents.
The deal came with trade-offs familiar to the Inland Empire communities being asked to shoulder the massive distribution centers integral to America’s online shopping habit: An environmental impact report found the development would have “significant and unavoidable” impacts on air quality. But it would bring jobs to a working-class community in need of them, and Howard Industrial Partners has pledged to provide millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements: new streets with traffic lights and sidewalks; a modern sewer system in an area that still relies on aging septic systems.
And because the warehouse project would be about 50 feet from Zimmerman Elementary School, the developer agreed to pay $44.5 million to the Colton Joint Unified School District in a land swap that will usher in a state-of-the-art school nearby.
Joaquin Castillejos, with the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, advocates for residents whose neighborhoods are targeted for warehouse projects. But he said people are feeling the impact of years of poor planning.
Gary Grossich, a member of Bloomington’s Municipal Advisory Council, recommended that supervisors support the development. Surrounding cities like Rialto and Fontana are embracing warehouse development, he said, and this was an opportunity for Bloomington to reap the benefits of a booming industry.
“The warehouse industry was the hot market,” he said, “and that was the only way that myself and others could see that we were going to get to the greater good, which is to get more sheriff’s deputies, more public safety, more services for our community and eventually balance our books.”
Mike Tunney, vice president of development at Howard Industrial Partners, said the developer shares those goals. “Overcoming these types of challenges and opportunities are the fundamental tenets of our development philosophy,” Tunney said.
But the project has left Bloomington fractured, with a stinging sense of winners and losers: Many who sold their homes say they got a good price and were happy to move on, while many of the neighbors left behind see a future with more concrete and semi-trailers and a hollowing out of the community’s rural culture.
Esmeralda Tabares, left, calls the conversion of rural neighborhoods to industrial developments “just a complete shift in the culture and lifestyle” of Bloomington.
Esmeralda Tabares, 23, part of a group called Concerned Neighbors of Bloomington, described the transition from rural residential to industrial development as “just a complete shift in the culture and lifestyle we have.” Many Bloomington residents ride horses; her family owns a plant nursery.
She questions why San Bernardino County is relying on a developer to provide the community with critical infrastructure such as sidewalks and sewers.
“It’s just easier for them to shift to a warehouse and say, ‘Well, we’re going to let them come in and take over your community,’” she said. “But now what community is that going to be? Because they’re taking people out, and soon who’s going to go to the school? Who’s going to live here?”
Agents associated with Howard Industrial Partners approached Raquel Diaz several years ago about selling her home in a Bloomington neighborhood a mile south of the 10 Freeway with an offer that wouldn’t go through until the county approved the project.
She and her family had purchased their home in 2012 for $140,000. It was the first home for her family of five, she said, and they were “super excited.” But the three-bedroom house on Locust Avenue quickly became a nightmare.
The house flooded whenever it rained. It reeked of moisture, and she and her husband worried about raising young kids amid mold.
Their street had no sidewalks, but that didn’t stop people from speeding by in their cars. Accidents were alarmingly common, she said. Her kids were forbidden from checking the street-side mailbox or taking out the trash.
“We ended up with a lemon of a house,” she said. “We were happy to be in Bloomington, and it just didn’t end up working out for us.”
By the time the county approved the warehouse development, home prices across Southern California had skyrocketed. Diaz said the developer encouraged them to find a home they wanted to buy — even if it cost above the price they had originally negotiated — and to make sure it was on a hill. The company would cover the cost.
Unincorporated Bloomington is transforming, as developers look to raze neighborhoods near the 10 Freeway to create a logistics corridor dedicated to online shopping needs.
They selected a five-bedroom, five-bathroom home in Highland, a nearby suburb at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains, and closed on the property in January 2023 for $1.05 million. The 3,800-square-foot home has a pool and views. It’s on a sewer system, and while their residential street doesn’t have sidewalks, the nearby roads have sidewalks and bike lanes.
“It still feels unreal where we ended up,” she said. “It’s beautiful. I completely love where I live.”
Diaz has heard other residents say that homeowners were harassed and pressured to sell. She is adamant that’s not the case.
“No one is forcing me out,” she said. “It was a blessing to get the opportunity to be able to have a new start.”
Carolina Rios also saw the developer’s offer as an opportunity.
Rios and her family paid $225,000 for their Bloomington home and lived there about 13 years. She has fond memories of the three-bedroom house on Laurel Avenue: She threw her daughter’s quinceañera there, and she and her husband were married in the yard.
But the house was old, and instead of storm drains, the homes on her street had pipes under the driveways that flowed into ditches. The street flooded every time it rained. They had to walk atop pallets and bricks to cross the yard.
“Across the street, their ditch was 24/7, 365 days a year full of water and mosquitoes and raccoons and snakes and all sorts of fun wildlife to go to the zoo and look at,” she said. “But not in my house, around my kids.”
She agreed to sell in 2016; she said the developer adjusted the purchase price in 2023 — to $1.4 million — after the county approved the project, in recognition of rising home prices. In late December, she closed on a new house in Riverside with an extra bedroom, a swimming pool and an enclosed patio. She paid $1.2 million in cash.
She knows some people are opposed to warehouse development, but she says the industry is bringing good jobs. Her oldest children, ages 27 and 24, both work at a FedEx warehouse in Bloomington, where they have flexible hours and get frequent raises, she said.
Jessie Ortiz practices roping skills in the backyard of his family’s Bloomington home.
While some homeowners seized on the opportunity to move out of Bloomington, Felipe and Blanca Ortiz felt blindsided when their landlord agreed to sell the ranch home they were renting.
The Ortizes and their four children have lived on the two-acre property for more than a decade. They’ve maintained their family traditions from the Mexican state of Morelos, raising horses, goats and chickens on their small property.
They loved riding their horses through the hills behind their home, and regularly traveled to other cities to ride their horses in parades, decked out in traditional Mexican cowboy and cowgirl attire. They organized 100-horse processions as fundraisers for neighbors in need.
“It’s their entire lives,” Felipe Ortiz said, as he shared TikTok videos of his kids performing on horseback.
Felipe Ortiz and his family are being evicted from the ranch home they have rented for more than a decade.
In February, the family got a notice informing them their rental agreement would end in 60 days. It came from a company connected to Timothy Howard of Howard Industrial Partners — the only indication the family had that their rental home had been sold.
That same day, footage from the Ortiz family’s security camera shows an excavator knocking down the chain link gate in front of the ranch. The two youngest Ortiz kids, ages 6 and 12, were home at the time. The family viewed it as an act of intimidation.
Tunney, with Howard Industrial Partners, said it was “regrettable” that the previous owner didn’t disclose the sale to the Ortiz family.
“Additionally, it was not disclosed to us that there were occupants on the property,” Tunney said. “The incident with the excavator was inadvertent as the operator was scheduled to work at a nearby site and confused the addresses.”
Several months later, the family is still living in the home, waiting out the eviction process. Ortiz says he is struggling to find another property that will accommodate the family of six and their eight horses. As their search wears on, he said, his kids are traumatized. His youngest returns from school each day wondering if their home has been knocked down.
“Every day, the machines pass by here to knock down homes behind us,” Ortiz said. “And you’re left with the fear that they are coming to knock down our house.”
As homes are demolished in rural Bloomington to make way for a warehousing project, the neighbors who remain look out at rubble.
As the demolitions proceed, a coalition of environmental groups has sued San Bernardino County and Howard Industrial Partners, trying to halt the project. The lawsuit, alleging violations of state environmental and fair housing laws, seeks to vacate the county’s approval and require a more “meaningful” review.
Adrian Martinez is deputy managing attorney for Earthjustice, the group representing the plaintiffs. He called their effort a key moment in “the fight against the freight industry and its disregard for public health.”
“There are people who don’t want these warehouses in their communities and they just want to be left with peace,” Martinez said. “I think the inflection point is this kind of misguided notion that to give a community resources, you have to stuff thousands of trucks in the community and air pollution. And there’s no place in the country that this story is more robust than the Inland Empire and Bloomington in particular.”
A hearing is scheduled for later this month in San Bernardino County Superior Court.
“Everyday, the machines pass by here to knock down homes behind us,” Felipe Ortiz says of his family’s plight. “And you’re left with the fear that they are coming to knock down our house.”
Meanwhile, just a couple miles away, residents in southeastern Bloomington are starting to hear from developers interested in building more warehouses in the area.
Daniela Vargas, 24, said her parents bought their house there more than two decades ago. For her parents, both Mexican immigrants, it’s a deep source of pride to own a home they could pass down to their four children.
Vargas’ family raises chickens on their land, but the surrounding area is pockmarked with industry. Just a short drive from the family’s home is another warehouse complex, a railroad and the 10 Freeway.
Recently, they’ve received phone calls and “strange-looking mail” from developers interested in buying their home, Vargas said: “It looks like a check that says, ‘Here’s X amount of money, call us to make it real.’”
She said her family doesn’t want to leave, but it feels inevitable that their neighborhood will be the next to transform.
“Anyone that moves out of Bloomington, it’s all valid reasoning,” Vargas said. “My family is really prideful. But if the decision comes that warehouses are going to be developed here and everybody is leaving, we can’t remain with so much pollution around us, with so much traffic and with no real neighbors or neighborhood amenities.”
This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative,funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to addressCalifornia’s economic divide.
When Pastor Frank Wulf thinks about his congregation being unable to worship in their home of 100 years, he is reminded of the Old Testament scripture of the Israelites in exile.
Wulf’s church, Echo Park United Methodist Church on North Alvarado Street and Reservoir Street in northeast Los Angeles, is not currently safe for occupation. The century-old dome over the church’s bell tower was damaged by the recent atmospheric rivers that pounded California, and structural engineers say it could topple into the church and lead to a snowball effect of collapses that could injure people inside the structure.
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1.Pieces of a collapsed roof lay on the floor below the golden dome that sits atop Echo Park United Methodist Church. 2.Notices are taped to the doors at Echo Park United Methodist Church, which has been a community beacon for 100 years. 3.Rain damaged and moldy walls inside Echo Park United Methodist Church, which has been a community beacon for 100 years.(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
But just as the Israelites did when the Persians let them back into the land of Israel, Wulf says they will rebuild.
“The church is really not a building but a community of people, a community that’s cared for each other over a long period of time,” Wulf said.
Wulf’s congregation has been out of its historic home since Feb. 1, the pastor said.
That came after the first pounding storm of the season led to the partial collapse of the tower, exposing the wood that holds up the golden dome.
The wood had badly deteriorated: There was dry rot, termites and water damage.
The first structural engineer who inspected the building told Wulf and his team that the church was not a safe place for groups to congregate.
The evacuation of the building affects not just the 40 or 45 people who attend Sunday services, but also the others in the community whom the church serves.
Wulf said services for homeless Angelenos, such as showers outside the building and free food, have had to be paused.
He also had to inform the 12-step groups for people struggling with alcoholism or other substance use disorders that they could not meet at the church, at least for now.
Pastor Frank Wulf of Echo Park United Methodist Church in one of the rooms severely damaged by the recent heavy rainfall.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The church had been building temporary shelter for migrants bused to Los Angeles from Texas. It was supposed to welcome four families to live in the space in mid-February, but it had to halt that program as well.
“Our primary commitment is to keep everyone safe,” the church team said in a statement on a GoFundMe page they posted to raise money for the work needed to reopen.
Wulf has not decided yet if they will repair the century-old building.
“Would this be the appropriate time to perhaps take the whole building down and start from scratch?” he asked.
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.
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.
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.”
They were all there. Elvis, Ken and Barbie, cowboys, you name it.
One of the wildest Halloween parties in Southern California was back in full force.
West Hollywood’s Halloween Carnaval returned to a one-mile stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard for the first time since before the pandemic.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Joe Castro is somewhere among those heads as he joins thousands of revelers at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
A dancer performs in the shadows on stage along with a DJ. After a four-year hiatus, tens of thousands of revelers attend the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
An Uber driver dressed as Jack Skelington sits in traffic on Santa Monica Blvd. as a long stretch is shut down for the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
A gaggle of “Slappy” dummies parade along Santa Monica Blvd. in support of R.L. Stine’s, Goosebumps series, joining thousands of revelers at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The “Psycho Bunnies,” join thousands of revelers at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Daisy Cobos dressed as “Madame Leota,” the witch from Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Justin Marchert as “Squidward,” plays a clarinet at the corner Hancock and Santa Monica Blvd. as Halloween revelers pass by.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Brynna Holland with Alex Tomlinson dressed as a convict at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
After a four-year hiatus, tens of thousands of revelers attend the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Cowboys engage in a long kiss in front of religious protesters near the entrance of the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval.
When Jackie Lacey sought a second term as Los Angeles’ top prosecutor in 2016, she wound up running unopposed.
The man who ousted her from office, George Gascón, has a much steeper hill to climb to win reelection next year.
During his first term in office, Gascón has frequently been at odds with his own prosecutors and law enforcement, who say his policies aimed at reducing mass incarceration and racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system have led to spikes in violence. Data show the violent crime rate is trending down, but some experts have cautioned against making connections between short-term shifts in the crime rate and a prosecutor’s policies.
Gascón’s positions have motivated one of the largest primary fields in the history of the office, with a mix of former federal prosecutors, county judges and deputy district attorneys taking a run at the self-described “godfather of progressive prosecutors” in 2024.
Gascón, who announced his own reelection campaign and claimed the endorsement of L.A.’s powerful Federation of Labor last week, still figures to be well-funded and has largely retained the support of the burgeoning L.A. progressive bloc that vaulted him into office in 2020.
But in a sign of the divide in the race, Gascón declined to attend the first debate last week. Hosted by police unions that spent millions against the progressive candidate in 2020, contenders at the forum spent two hours making the case that Gascón is unfit for office and needs to be replaced.
Here are the contenders vying for Gascón’s office next March, listed in the order they announced their candidacy:
