Angeles

There’s a reason why people like to shop locally during the holidays. You don’t have to worry anxiously about when your gift will arrive — for the kids; it’s always for the kids. It doesn’t have to be like that.

This year, try visiting a local gift shop or a holiday craft fair and pick out a gift in person from a neighbor right here in L.A.

As in past years, many of the items in our Made in L.A. list are small-batch or made-to-order. You’ll find things including unique ceramics, puzzle candles, handmade jewelry and even a life-affirming baseball cap designed by an 11-year-old.

The best holiday gifts aren’t just those that arrive quickly. They also have heart. If you’re searching for the perfect gift, whether it’s the perfect handmade coffee mug or silk-screened tee boasting local pride, check out our list of favorites below.

Editor’s note: If you make a purchase using some of our links, the L.A. Times may be compensated. Prices and availability are subject to change. In some cases, listed websites may use location-based pricing.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez’s reelection bid, once helped by his high-profile fight against President Trump’s immigration policies, is in peril as he tries to recover from allegations of sexual misconduct.

The accusations, which Gomez denies, have left the 51-year-old Eagle Rock Democrat vulnerable to an upstart challenger from Highland Park who earned a reputation for antagonism while serving on the area’s neighborhood council.

Angela Gonzales-Torres, 31, is seizing on Gomez’s issues in the race to represent California’s 34th Congressional District, a Latino-majority territory spanning Koreatown, Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, Glassell Park and adjacent neighborhoods.

Gonzales-Torres, who has worked part-time jobs as an academic counselor for formerly incarcerated students and at an affordable housing development, is backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and counts support from other national progressive organizations.

Over the last week, she campaigned at UC Berkeley alongside fellow progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), appeared on left-wing streamer Hasan Piker’s show and rallied in Los Angeles with Parkland, Fla., school shooting survivor and activist David Hogg.

Gonzales-Torres has linked the accusation against Gomez to the politician’s onetime ally former Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Bay Area Democrat who saw his campaign for governor derailed when several women came forward with allegations of impropriety. Swalwell has also denied wrongdoing.

“We’re going to take on this apparent culture in Congress in which men appear to abuse their positions of power and abuse women and younger staffers,” she said on Piker’s show.

In August, attorneys representing a woman released a statement accusing Gomez of sexual assault. Days earlier, the House Ethics Committee had announced an inquiry into Gomez, elected in 2017, over alleged “inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer.”

Gomez denied wrongdoing while acknowledging mistakes outside his marriage — a sharp contrast with his image as the lawmaker who founded the Congressional Dads Caucus to champion family-friendly policies and famously carried his infant son in a baby carrier during the protracted votes for House speaker in 2023.

Gomez has avoided the public eye since the accusations surfaced, declining media interviews and campaign appearances, giving further momentum to his opponent.

“They’re trying to fly so far under the radar to not bring attention to the [allegations] or to me,” Gonzales-Torres said during a get-out-the-vote event in Eagle Rock.

Gonzales-Torres’ history in Highland Park

Gonzales-Torres, who graduated from UCLA, has described a childhood in Highland Park, where she was raised by her mother after her father was deported to Mexico following a domestic violence charge.

Reflecting the anxieties of thirtysomethings like herself, she’s talked about going without health insurance, working multiple low-wage jobs and questioning whether she can afford children.

In 2023, she was elected to the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council, on which she served two years advising City Hall on issues and policy matters. She opposed new liquor licenses and took stances against gentrification, a hot-button issue in Highland Park, where some longtime business owners and residents feel squeezed by rising rents.

Her year as president on the area council proved contentious, prompting several former colleagues to issue a statement Saturday criticizing her congressional bid.

Jens Jonasson, a member of the neighborhood council’s board of directors, characterized her tenure as chaotic, arguing that her unwillingness to compromise derailed board initiatives, including a proposed resolution supporting the Gaza Strip.

“She is not ready for the office she is asking voters to entrust to her,” Jonasson and three other board members said in the joint statement.

Darren Gold, who succeeded Gonzales-Torres as board president, alleged that she falsely accused him of shaking her. Gold was briefly removed from the board during an inquiry but reinstated after a city investigation.

In a 2024 podcast interview with Hear in L.A., Gonzales-Torres referred to Gold as a “very Zionist gentrifier man, a white man” and a “threat to my community.”

Gold told The Times he had never publicly staked out a position on Israel or Gaza.

“If she assigned me that label because I’m Jewish, that is antisemitic,” Gold said. “My concern is less about what she called me than whether she can turn her rhetoric into results and treat people respectfully when they disagree with her.”

Another board member, Caroline Aguirre, filed a police report in 2024 accusing Gonzales-Torres of aggressively pointing a finger at her during a meeting. The report did not result in an arrest or charges.

Gonzales-Torres declined to comment on the incidents involving Aguirre and Gold.

In 2025, Gonzales-Torres mounted a bid for one of 13 at-large neighborhood council seats, finishing last in a field of 23.

Her supporters pointed to her dedication to Highland Park and the work she’d done to help previously incarcerated youths.

Jesse Rosas, a Figueroa corridor business leader, echoed her concerns about neighborhood displacement and wants a representative more involved in the area.

“She’s a young lady who can bring change to the community for the better,” Rosas said. “I’ve seen her trying to do the best that she can.”

State Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, a Pasadena-area Democrat who met Gonzales-Torres through her work as an academic counselor, said she’s impressed with her interest in challenging federal immigration laws.

“She’s had a firsthand account into some of the way that the immigration raids are directly impacting our students,” Pérez said.

Gomez runs on anti-Trump record

Despite the abuse allegations, Gomez has the power of incumbency and name recognition in a vast and diverse district.

A spokesperson pointed to his lawsuit challenging the Trump administration over access to immigrant detention centers as well as his advocacy for tenant protections and affordable housing.

If reelected, Gomez said in a statement, he aims to reverse federal healthcare cuts, lower living costs for working families and push for an end to the Iran war.

“Anyone can promise to stand up to Donald Trump, but I’ve proven I can take him on and win, whether it’s in Congress, on the picket lines, or in the courts,” Gomez said.

Both candidates back progressive priorities such as a Green New Deal and Medicare for all. Gomez advocates redirecting funding away from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while Gonzales-Torres calls for abolishing ICE.

Gonzales-Torres is also criticizing Gomez for receiving financial support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. An AIPAC-affiliated political action committee spent more than $1.7 million supporting his 2024 campaign, and the group helped direct donations this cycle.

For some voters in the district, neither candidate is ideal.

Ray Rios, president of the Hillside Homeowners Assn. in El Sereno, wants to see more from Gomez when it comes to federal funding for the district. He also voiced skepticism over the DSA’s anti-policing platform and questioned whether Gonzales-Torres can build the institutional relationships needed to deliver federal resources.

“Her lack of experience is a consideration, a big consideration,” said Rios, who intends to vote for Gomez.

While Gomez beat back progressive challengers in recent election cycles, the local DSA chapter has built momentum across the district, winning City Council seats, noted Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

“Even without the allegations, this would be a competitive race,” Guerra said. “Then you add that, and that really hurts him.”

Before it gets topped with seafood, seasonal produce and a medley of sauces, each tostada begins as a blank canvas. Local chefs are the artists, using the tostada as a vehicle to showcase their cultural backgrounds, kitchen expertise and the ingredients they love. Each bite is intentionally crafted to hit certain taste and textural marks: the crispy tostada, buttery seafood, zesty citrus and creamy avocado, plus unexpected elements that take it over the top, like tart grapefruit, piquant pickled onions or earthy salsa macha.

The best part? The seafood tostada comes ready to eat as-is, requiring no more than a dash of salsa or a squeeze of lime to complete the chef’s vision. It’s not unlike a meticulously prepared tasting menu course, except these chefs are handing over tostadas at taco trucks, food halls, raw bars and everywhere in between.

Seafood tostadas originated in coastal regions across Mexico, but in L.A., the dish pulls global influence, including a tostada topped with tuna carpaccio and cachucha pepper aioli at a Central American restaurant in Venice; salmon and chicatana ant mayo at a modern Mexican haunt in the Arts District; and scallops and wasabi aioli that merge Baja California and Japanese flavors at a Frogtown favorite.

For a refreshing bite on a hot day, or anytime really, here are 20 of the best seafood tostadas to try in L.A.

— Danielle Dorsey

Thank You Coffee’s Kabocha Squash Latte, or KSL, has garnered a cult fandom over the years. The gourmet, Asian-inspired take on the pumpkin-spice originator is made with fresh squash and house-made syrup, and it will return to the Chinatown and Anaheim locations in early November. Until then, and finding a home in the newly opened Chinatown space, are two new seasonal lattes. The cozy apple latte (pictured) is fragrant, comforting and available through November, made with a house syrup involving cold-pressed apple juice, green tea, sour plum powder, ginger, cardamom and more. It’s topped with a dash of even more sour plum powder, which gives the effect of tart green apples on the nose and tongue. The sweet corn latte, inspired by cornbread, is a sweet-savory mix of brown butter, malted milk powder, annatto seed and beyond, and can be found through October.

The surge in soccer fans this summer was bad for some businesses in Los Angeles.

World Cup host cities had lofty economic expectations for the summer tournament. But the city’s hotels only got a 1% bump in occupancy, according to a report published this week by Hospitality Education and Research Organization, a project of the Hotel Assn. of Los Angeles.

Seventy-two percent of surveyed hotels said the tournament hurt their 2026 finances, and 48% called the impact “extremely negative.” Just 2% said it met projections.

Downtown occupancy reached 66% in June, down from 71% a year earlier, the report says. Room nights fell between 10% and 12%.

Ahead of World Cup tournaments, FIFA holds large blocks of rooms. But FIFA canceled or released up to 70% of the hotel room blocks it had reserved in host cities, including Los Angeles.

“We understood that we were maybe going to be disappointed with attendance going into the World Cup simply by the volume of cancellations that came out of the room block agreement,” said Jackie Filla, president and CEO of the Hotel Assn. of Los Angeles.

The disappointing turnout led to staff reductions. Of the hotels surveyed 82% reduced seasonal staff and more than six in 10 reported reducing employee shifts, scheduled hours, or permanent staff.

Hotels did raise prices, with the average daily rate hitting $228, the highest of any comparable L.A. event in three years. But occupancy was 71%, well below the 83% recorded during Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

The survey drew 58 responses from 210 hotels, and the analysis was done by travel-data firm Rove using CoStar and AirDNA data. International visitors were also scarce, with Los Angeles welcoming 700,000 international arrivals in June and July — roughly 80,000 visitors below 2024 levels for the same period, the report says.

“We particularly didn’t see a lot of foreign visitors and that’s something that was disappointing,” Filla said. “Foreign visitors do spend three times the amount of money as the average domestic traveler.”

Short-term rentals, meanwhile, gained. Their demand rose 23% and revenue 21% versus July 2024, while hotel revenue fell 3.3%. Airbnb, the tournament’s official fan accommodation, offered new hosts $750 incentives.

The city is currently weighing a temporary proposal to ease its short-term rental rules through the end of 2028 to accommodate tourists. “That will really, truly undercut the business of hotels,” Filla added. “We saw some of that with the World Cup.”

The worry is carrying over to the Olympic Games, set to be hosted in Los Angeles in 2028. Six in 10 surveyed hoteliers expect an Olympic rental surge to hurt their bookings and rates, the report says.

The World Cup “gave us false hope to recover from a negative year,” one Los Angeles hotelier said, according to the report. “I also feel [the] same thing will probably happen for [the] Super Bowl and Olympics.”

Members of the Republican Party have joined Democrats in questioning remarks made by United States President Donald Trump about the California cities of Los Angeles and San Diego.

Much of the backlash came on Tuesday, a day after Trump told a midterm rally in Nebraska that Americans should be willing to make sacrifices to gain victory in the US-Israeli war against Iran.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

Those sacrifices, he implied, could include the destruction of American cities, in case of an Iranian attack.

“It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe,” Trump said, seemingly in reference to the knock-on effects of the war, including rising fuel and fertiliser prices.

“They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon.”

Trump has downplayed the impact of the war – now in its eighth month – despite polling that shows the conflict is widely unpopular in the US. He has also repeatedly promised the war would end soon, though no lasting ceasefire has been reached so far.

The fallout from his Nebraska remarks was swift. Gavin Newsom, an outspoken critic of Trump and the Democratic governor of California, said the president was “deranged”.

“This is not only madness. This is dangerous,” Newsom said in a video on the social media platform X, in which he called for Congress to rein in Trump’s behaviour.

Newsom, a possible contender in the 2028 presidential race, has clashed repeatedly with Trump.

Last year, the two faced off over Trump’s decision to deploy federal troops to California, as part of an effort to support a crackdown on undocumented immigration in the Los Angeles area.

In December, a federal judge ruled that the deployment had been illegal and ordered its end. Newsom, who opposed the deployment, cited that conflict in his remarks about Trump’s Nebraska rally.

“The president of the United States – the same one who sent in the National Guard into Los Angeles, sent 700 active duty Marines to the second largest city in the United States of America – just invited Iran to take out Los Angeles and San Diego,” Newsom said.

He added that Trump’s remarks should convince those who “didn’t think the November election mattered” to vote in the upcoming midterms.

Some from Trump’s own party have also expressed shock at his remarks.

Jim Desmond, a Republican running in a competitive race for the House of Representatives near San Diego, was among those who distanced themselves from Trump’s statement.

“I vehemently disagree with President Trump’s comments. America must stand up to Iran and defend our interests, but the first responsibility of our Commander in Chief is to protect the American people and our homeland,” Desmond wrote on X.

“No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage.”

US Representative Kevin Kiley, an independent who caucuses with Republicans and is running for re-election in northern California, also called Trump’s comments “unhelpful”.

But the White House has dismissed criticism of the remarks, calling it part of a “media freakout” that “is not rooted in reality”.

“He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped,” White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung wrote on social media.

“America is safer because of the President. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.”

California has the largest population and economy of any state in the US. Because of its population, it also has the most seats in the House of Representatives, at 52.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs in November’s midterms, along with a third of the Senate. Also on the ballot are key state and local races.

With Republicans’ control of Congress on the line, the results of the midterms are expected to weigh heavily on the final two years of Trump’s second term.

A pet project of architect Frank Gehry, a smaller concert hall to complement his legendary Walt Disney Concert Hall, is taking shape in downtown Los Angeles for an opening next September.

Elements Gehry devised to set it apart are already visible, as construction on the $337-million addition to the Colburn School of Performing Arts reveals details the architect conceived years ago.

The centerpiece of the expansion will be a 1,000-seat concert hall named for Pasadena philanthropists Terri and Jerry Kohl with an in-the-round design meant to create intimacy between the performers and the audience. The hall will include an orchestra pit and a stage similar in size to the one at Disney Hall so it can accommodate grand orchestra, opera and dance performances.

Gehry set out to create an immersive hall that would inspire artists and envelop the audience, said Meaghan Lloyd, his chief of staff and right-hand at his firm, Gehry Partners.

“Frank’s passion was bringing the audience closer to the performers and getting the relationship between the two just right, so that the audience can feel the performers, the performers can feel the audience reacting,” Lloyd said.

Kohl Hall will be part of the school where Colburn’s symphony orchestra, bands, youth string programs and children’s choirs will perform. It will also be available for rent for outside productions such as jazz and classical music concerts. It is expected to be in use more than 200 times a year.

The hall will open with a concert on Sept. 25, the Colburn School announced Tuesday. The weekend celebration will include inaugural performances at the Dance Center, a new dance instruction and performance venue being built as part of the 100,000-square-foot Gehry-designed addition.

The new Dance Center will double facilities for the school’s Trudl Zipper Dance Institute. The dance facilities will include a 100-seat theater for dance and four professional-size studios for dance instruction and rehearsal.

Beginning next year, the hall will be the home of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, a group of professional musicians about half the size of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. LACO concerts will feature premieres of new fanfares by celebrated film composers, including a work by John Williams to be performed at LACO’s inaugural concert in the hall.

The fanfares are curated by Grammy nominee and singer Seth MacFarlane, best known as the creator and star of “Family Guy.”

Part of the hall’s commercial appeal is expected to be its size, in a sweet spot between the 2,265-seat Disney and the popular 415-seat Herbert Zipper Concert Hall already on the Colburn campus. The nearby Dorothy Chandler Pavilion seats about 3,200 guests. The Peacock Theater at L.A. Live seats 7,100.

Kohl Hall’s in-between size “is the missing piece of the venue puzzle” for Los Angeles, Colburn President Sel Kardan said.

A key feature already in place, hanging from the ceiling, is an array of steel clouds packed with concrete, designed to improve acoustics and evoke a sense of airiness. The clouds were made in the Netherlands by a firm with a history of building steel ship hulls that now specializes in building complex steel constructions like the clouds using digital data.

The exterior metal cladding of the addition features a luminescent pink paint coating called Pink Kandi.

Japanese acoustical engineer Yasuhisa Toyota will serve as the hall’s acoustician, as he has for all of Gehry’s concert halls, beginning with Disney Hall.

The long-awaited Colburn School addition will be the third Gehry-designed building on Bunker Hill, which already has Disney Concert Hall and the Grand LA, a $1-billion apartment, hotel and retail complex he designed for New York mega-developer Related Cos.

The Colburn School dates to 1950 and moved to its current location downtown in 1998, where it has more than 2,000 students, most of whom range from middle school to college age.