Atlantic

We took Atlantic all the way to the Pacific, traveling from the San Gabriel Valley to Long Beach on foot. On the last morning of May, a group of us set out at 7:45 a.m. from a barren In-N-Out parking lot in Alhambra, where Atlantic Boulevard begins. We kept walking until we reached the water, 12 hours and more than 55,000 steps later.

In all, our group passed eight freeways, two highways, and one river, twice. We walked through a dozen cities: Alhambra, Monterey Park, Commerce, Vernon, Maywood, Bell, Cudahy, South Gate, Lynwood, Compton, Long Beach and, of course, Los Angeles.

We spent only about 1.5 miles, a half-hour, in the city of Los Angeles itself, all in East L.A. We spent more time in Lynwood than Los Angeles. We spent far more time — more than a third of our day — in Long Beach.

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To walk Atlantic was to connect the dots about how our region functions economically, from the port to the factories to the suburbs. It was also to realize just how expansive and multifaceted Long Beach is.

This is the sixth such walk of one lengthy street that, ending at the ocean, we’ve completed across Los Angeles. Our pursuit began in 2022 with Wilshire’s 16 miles, continued in 2023 with Sunset’s 25, maxed out in 2024 with Western’s 28-plus miles, and stepped back in 2025 with Pico’s 15.5 miles. Earlier this year, roughly 30 of us strolled all of Santa Monica’s 14.5 miles.

This time, we started with a group of 16, ranging in age from 20-something to sexagenarian, and finished with 12. Some walkers left and joined us along the way. Ten, including one Long Beach local, completed the street.

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1. Pedro Moura, center, gives a pep talk before leading a group on a 25-mile walk the length of Atlantic Boulevard. (Scott Strazzante/For The Times) 2. In so-L.A. fashion, a Tesla Cybertruck rolls past a pile of possessions flooding the sidewalk in front of an apartment building. 3. Josiah Fields, 15, earns money by cleaning car windshields at the intersection of Atlantic and Alondra Boulevards. 4. During the final mile of the their 25 mile walk, Chloe Stepney and Trevor O’Brien lead the way past Louis Burgers III on Atlantic Avenue. (Scott Strazzante/For The Times)

We’ve been playfully calling our annual jaunts the Big Walk. This one, we called the Bigger Walk. I suppose that makes Western the Biggest. We’ve come to believe the ideal distance for an all-day effort is about 20 miles. That seems long enough for it to feel like a real feat and short enough to include more interested folks and ample break time.

After a tranquil time on Santa Monica, I wrote that we expected Atlantic to be the opposite experience — “unwieldy, at times unwelcoming, and excessively industrial.” That was an overstatement at best and factually wrong at worst.

We did visit Vernon, the city that proudly promotes itself as “exclusively industrial.” But by one measure, Atlantic was literally the most welcoming street we’ve done yet. Many more people greeted us. The actual street was at least as pedestrian-friendly as Western or Sunset. At no point did we have to walk on the road or in a minuscule median.

We did, though, have to cross five crosswalks just to continue on Atlantic at one point, at an absurd intersection with Ferguson Drive, Goodrich Boulevard, Telegraph Road and Triggs Street. Railroad tracks and the famed old East L.A. Union Pacific Station stood to our left, and the 5 freeway to our right. Clearly, pedestrian convenience had not been front of mind during the area’s planning.

Oil might be the simplest way to illustrate how Atlantic differs from more famous L.A. streets. On Pico Boulevard, there are oil derricks hidden behind elaborate, towering facades. Along Atlantic, the derricks are just everywhere in plain sight for a while. We did walk atop both the Long Beach Oil Field, a mega giant field, and the Wilmington Oil Field, the third-largest oil field in the contiguous United States.

That’s Atlantic, lacking in pretense, not hiding anything, but exceeding our expectations. We saw more plants native to our region, including Cleveland sage and Sacred datura, than along Santa Monica. And we kept encountering vibrant pockets where we did not know they would be. Monterey Park was the first to impress us, with gorgeous Cascades Park tucked into a lush little valley.

A rose peeks through a fence at St. Rose of Lima Church on Atlantic Boulevard.

Lykayla Melendez poses in her quinceañera dress at Cascades Park along Atlantic Boulevard.

In East L.A., chilaquiles, tamales, tejuino and ribs were all available street-side, and one of our members noticed the newer location of the famed La Azteca Tortilleria in a strip mall near the Metro station. Azteca has been the No. 1 seed in Times columnist Gustavo Arellano’s tortilla tasting tournaments with KCRW; we picked up a couple dozen to go.

Farther south, Bell is best known locally as the home of brazenly corrupt city officials earlier this century. When we passed through, the shade provided by a pocket park in the city center became a crucial respite for our lunch break. Across the street, a community market was just starting up for the afternoon. We caught a couple songs from a talented mariachi band.

Once we crossed the 105 overpass, we quickly encountered four sizable parks, each no more than two miles from the last. We saw one pump track, two tennis courts and skate parks, several sports fields, and an impressive number of food trucks, including Instagram-famous Kitchen’s Corner BBQ. At least another dozen food vendors seemed to be setting up for evening service as we marched by in the late afternoon.

By the third park we passed, we were in Long Beach, specifically North Long Beach. The fourth, Scherer Park, is a sprawling, 26-acre gem. Soon enough we were in Bixby Knolls, where, for more than a decade now, Long Beach officials have been investing in improving bicycle and pedestrian access. It shows. We had a delightful happy hour on Ambitious Ales’ front patio overlooking Atlantic.

August Fagerstrom and Pedro Moura fist bump a well-wisher on Atlantic Avenue.

Official lists of the longest L.A.-area streets are almost impossible to find. Often, such lists are kept by cities. The longer the street, the less likely that all of it is within one city’s limits.

We can say this: There are not many stretches of a single street with the same name longer than Atlantic in the L.A. Basin. Western Avenue, definitely. Imperial Highway, depending on your perspective on what constitutes a street. Sunset is about the same length. And that’s about it.

Unless you want to be particularly persnickety and disqualify Atlantic on the grounds that it technically has two names. For its northern 10 miles, Atlantic is a boulevard. For its southern 15, it’s an avenue. Where Maywood becomes Bell, it switches. But it’s Atlantic all the same, and that was good enough for us.

Surely you’ve been wondering about the origin of the name. Atlantic has been named for the distant ocean since the 19th century, when a Brit tried to christen a city after himself and named its three major streets Pacific, American and Atlantic avenues, from west to east. American is now Long Beach Boulevard, so it no longer makes much sense.

At the end of their 25-mile walk, Chris Kirkham celebrates with fellow walkers at Atlantic Avenue and Ocean Boulevard.

Speaking of names: Our Alhambra is named after a Washington Irving book inspired by his visit to the 13th-century Islamic fortress of the same name in what is now Spain. You can walk to the actual Atlantic from that Alhambra in about 150 miles.

This was easier than that, at least. If you’re eager to explore the backbone of Los Angeles, curious for a challenge, you could do worse than attacking Atlantic. I promise you’ll see something new. We saw a street juggler. We saw a live chicken and a dead turkey. We saw a discarded box of Pacifico beer that had been cooking in the sun so long it turned from yellow to white.

Pedro Moura points out Chloe Stepney’s sock tan line as they celebrate the end of their 25-mile walk down Atlantic with a dip in the Pacific Ocean at Alamitos Beach.

After we rinsed our weary feet in the Pacific, some of us waddled back up to Downtown Long Beach and scarfed down Sonoratown burritos and chivichangas before heading home. It was a Sunday well spent.

Ben Gibbard remembers late 2023 as a time of competing realities.

Onstage, the frontman of Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service was thriving as his two bands toured together to mark the 20th anniversaries of Death Cab’s “Transatlanticism” and the Postal Service’s “Give Up.”

Behind the scenes, Gibbard’s personal life was in shambles.

“I was getting off phone calls — very difficult phone calls — 20 minutes before going on in an arena,” he says. The singer and his wife, photographer Rachel Demy, were in the middle of an agonizing breakup that would eventually lead to divorce. Yet audiences in the thousands were turning up nightly to see Gibbard reanimate the peak-millennial classics that made him one of indie rock’s defining stars.

“I’d just tell myself, You’re a professional — you’re gonna go out there and do it, and no one’s gonna know,” he recalls. “It was all waiting for me when I got offstage, of course. But for two hours I was able to disconnect and be a performer, which was incredibly …” Gibbard, 49, trails off into a laugh.

“I don’t know if it was healthy,” he says. “But it was helpful.”

Two and a half years later, that split-screen experience — “this idea of how we compartmentalize our pain or our grief or our trauma,” as Gibbard puts it now — forms a through line of Death Cab’s ruminative new album, “I Built You a Tower.” Due Friday from Anti Records, where the group landed after leaving its longtime home of Atlantic amid a corporate shake-up, the LP sets thoughts of broken fences and never-ending storms against tuneful arrangements that can churn, shimmer or chime.

“I pledge myself to your misery / I kneel at its throne,” Gibbard sings in his still-boyish tenor over the sleek new wave groove of “Trap Door,” “Respecting your proclivity / To languish on your own.” In the fuzzed-out “Envy the Birds,” the frontman recounts an argument between two lovers “spraying bullets of grievances”; the driving “Riptides” is narrated by a guy “too tired to end the war.”

“This record is definitely the result of a divorce,” Gibbard says plainly during a recent visit to Los Angeles from his home in Seattle. “But I didn’t want to make a score-settling record or an angry record. This wasn’t an opportunity to defame someone or make this about how I’d been wronged. People drift apart — relationships don’t work. And I think how that’s affected me at almost 50 is a very different mindset than I found myself in when I was 33 or whatever the last time it happened.”

Gibbard means his first divorce, in 2012, from the actor and singer Zooey Deschanel — a split that inspired Death Cab’s 2015 album “Kintsugi,” on which one song asks, “Was I in your way when the cameras turned to face you?” and another chides an unnamed celebrity: “You’ll never have to hear the word ‘no’ if you keep all your friends on the payroll.”

“There’s some gnarly stuff on that record,” says Gibbard, who’d moved to L.A. to be with Deschanel then promptly left as soon as their marriage collapsed. “It’s not exactly a kind album.”

Bassist Nick Harmer, who formed Death Cab with Gibbard in the late ’90s after the two met as students at Western Washington University, agrees that “I Built You a Tower” represents a shift in perspective. “There’s so much more self-examination — and so much more self-indictment,” he says. (Death Cab’s other members are drummer Jason McGerr, guitarist Dave Depper and keyboardist Zac Rae.)

Which isn’t to say that Gibbard entirely resists placing blame. In “Trap Door” he sings about “a trap door in your heart and a button on your desk well-worn from being pressed.”

The frontman says that in recent years he’d “tried to get away from using the word ‘heart’ because that had been a touchstone for so many of our early records.” Yet this line seemed worth holding onto when it came to him.

“I Googled it to see: Did I already write this?” he says, laughing. “Or is there a very popular song called ‘There’s a Trap Door in Your Heart,’ and now I’m just rewriting it? We’ve made a lot of songs at this point — you gotta check your work.”

Indeed, “I Built You a Tower” is Death Cab’s 11th studio LP. After the band’s previous album, 2022’s “Asphalt Meadows,” fulfilled its deal with Atlantic, Death Cab reupped with the major label for one more record, Gibbard says, based on its strong relationship with the company’s then-CEO, Julie Greenwald.

“Julie was our shepherd and our protector the whole time we were there,” the singer says of Death Cab’s nearly two-decade run at Atlantic, which began with 2005’s Grammy-nominated “Plans.” Yet just days after they reached an agreement for “Tower,” Greenwald was fired and replaced by a new leader, Elliot Grainge, about whom the band felt less than optimistic.

Ben Gibbard

(Cielito Mercado Vivas / For The Times)

“We weren’t given the impression that Elliot had spent a lot of time with ‘Transatlanticism’ in college,” Gibbard says of the 32-year-old exec, who made his name signing rappers like Ice Spice and Trippie Redd. With Greenwald’s help, Gibbard says, Death Cab negotiated an exit from Atlantic with ownership of the new album.

Did Grainge try to persuade the band to stay?

“Never heard a word,” Gibbard says.

In an email, Grainge (whose father is Universal Music Group Chairman and Chief Executive Lucian Grange) said that Death Cab’s music “has meant a great deal” to him.

“Working together may not have been in the cards for us; however, that does not lessen my enthusiasm for the band,” he wrote. “They have delivered an impressive body of work over their decades-long career, and I am looking forward to their new music.”

Death Cab’s Harmer says he and his bandmates “talked for half a beat” about putting out “Tower” on their own before thinking better of the idea.

“We’re not businesspeople,” Gibbard says. “Music is the only thing we know how to do.”

At a friend’s wedding in 2024, the frontman had been seated next to the musician Allison Crutchfield, who was then heading up Anti’s A&R department; early this year, Death Cab announced that it had signed to the indie label, whose other acts include Fleet Foxes and Madi Diaz.

This summer, the band will tour behind “I Built You a Tower,” including two shows in August at L.A.’s Greek Theatre. After the “Transatlanticism”/”Give Up” anniversary outing — not to mention a subsequent tour on which the group looked back at “Plans” — Gibbard is “very ready to play some new material,” he says.

Doing the hits was fun. “But at a certain point,” he adds, “it’s really about moving ahead.”

WE’VE all gone a little K-razy – with Brits obsessed with K-pop, K-drama and K-beauty.

So it’s no wonder Virgin Atlantic chose to launch new direct flights to South Korea’s cool capital Seoul.

From the music legends BTS and Netflix hits KPop Demon Hunters and Squid Game to the latest in advanced skin treatments, would my first trip live up to the hype?

After a whistlestop three days, I can ­definitely say yes — it was all I thought it would be and so much more.

The journey from Incheon International Airport to the city centre was eye-opening as we rattled along a highway next to the great expanse of the Han River that splits the city into its historic northern half and glitzy southern districts.

In the shadows of the countless skyscraper apartment blocks, locals gather on the riverfront’s parks, walking trails and cycling paths.

WAIL OF A TIME

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TEMPTED?

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And this high-tech capital of endless high rises and neon-lit streets is also home to ancient palaces and surprisingly tranquil green spaces.

Locals and tourists alike flock to the five grand Joseon-era palaces and if you wear a Hanbok — the traditional Korean clothing — admission to them all is free.

While it may seem a little odd to us, embracing the traditional garb is actively encouraged and there are plenty of boutique rental shops surrounding the palace district that will, for a small fee, dress you head to toe in the brightly coloured garments and even braid your hair.

With little time to waste, we went straight from the plane to the palaces.

Top tip: plan your days carefully.

The ­magnificent main palace, Gyeongbokgung, is closed on Tuesdays, while the nearby ­Changdeokgung shuts its gates on Mondays.

We spent time wandering Changdeokgung’s ancient courtyards — just make sure to book ahead if you want to see its famous, tranquil Secret Garden.

Next morning, it was time to shake off the jetlag and embrace modern Seoul with a K-Pop dance class in the city’s university ­district.

Our incredibly patient instructor walked us through a routine to the Saja Boys’ hit Soda Pop, from Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters.

The 90-minute session was an absolute blast, and even someone with two left feet like me could just about pick up the moves — albeit I was a few beats behind the music!

More modern-day Korean fun came next with a visit to one of the flagship Olive Young K-beauty stores in the Myeong-dong shopping district.

You’ll find smaller stores on almost every street corner here, packed with Korean beauty products from floor to ceiling.

The trick is to do your research before you go — it can be overwhelming looking at the overflowing aisles but you can score amazing bargains, with some products just a third of the price you’d pay in the UK.

Next up was another Korean trend that has taken social media by storm — colour analysis.

Stepping into a deliberately all-white room, your personal stylist will assess the colours that suit your skin tone best.

While I am sure the colours picked for me suited the Korean aesthetic — you’ll rarely see very bright tones on locals strolling streets by day or night — I felt they missed the mark.

After my colour analysis, we stumbled across the Roof Cat Me cafe which, as a feline fan, was a must.

The £10 entry fee included unlimited drinks for the humans — and the chance to chill next to some of the most beautiful pedigrees, all of whom appeared extremely happy with their spotlessly clean, custom-built hangout.

What surprised me the most was the great value — and warm welcome — we got everywhere we went.

While the efficient metro system costs just 80p per journey, it was also very easy to grab an Uber — and journeys were a fraction of the price we’d pay in the UK.

Download the Naver app to get around though, as Google and Apple maps are limited to public transport routes.

Food and drink was also very reasonable.

Local beers cost just £2.50 and you can even enjoy unlimited beef Korean barbecue for around £15.

And what’s more important, even at night I felt completely safe on the buzzing streets of bars, clubs and restaurants.

There is none of the edgier atmosphere you can get in big cities.

We ticked one last thing off the bucket list with a trip to the Gangnam southern district — known for its upscale shopping and nightlife made famous by the original smash-hit song from Psy.

There was just time to pose under the giant Psy hands statue outside the COEX mall before it was back to the airport and I was boarding my Virgin Atlantic flight home to London.

My feet were tired but my skin was glowing.

Seoul is a dizzying, delightful mix of old and new — and it more than lives up to the hype.

May 13 (UPI) — Ten suspected hantavirus patients are being flown from the British islands of St. Helena and Ascension in the South Atlantic back to the United Kingdom to complete their self-isolation at a former COVID-19 facility, the country’s main infectious diseases agency said.

The eight passengers and two crew from the hantavirus-hit Hondius cruise ship are part of a program to relocate “some contacts who are already isolating to places where they can safely self-isolate with access to appropriate specialist medical services,” the U.K. Health Security Agency said in a news release on Tuesday.

“England’s National Health Service high consequence infectious disease network is well equipped to respond if they become unwell. Currently none of these contacts are symptomatic and this is precautionary to support communities in U.K. overseas territories,” the agency said.

The patients being flown to Britain all left the MV Hondius when it stopped in St. Helena on April 24, with the ship going on to Cape Verde, where it was refused permission to dock, before finally disembarking on Tenerife on Sunday.

UKHSA did not say where the patients would be taken on arrival in Britain, but Arrowe Park Hospital in northwestern England, where at least 20 other patients from the Hondius are currently quarantined, was the most likely destination. The hospital has a specialist isolation wing and was a designated quarantine facility during the pandemic in 2020.

The agency said plans were underway “where it is safe and possible” to discharge the 20 existing Arrowe Park patients, 18 Britons, a German citizen and a Japanese national, after completing a three-day quarantine.

Each patient assessed as fit to safely serve out a 45-day isolation period at home will receive a tailored support package with daily monitoring from health protection teams across the country until they receive the all-clear, said UKHSA.

“We are grateful to the passengers for their cooperation and patience in what we appreciate has been a very unsettling period for all involved. As this first assessment period concludes, our priority remains to ensure everyone is safe and well supported, wherever they complete their isolation. Our teams will continue to be there for all of the affected individuals every step of the way,” said the agency’s chief scientific officer, Professor Robin May.

On Saturday, the British military conducted an airdrop of medics and four tons of oxygen and other medical supplies on Tristan da Cunha, another island in the St. Helena and Ascension Island British Overseas Territory, to treat a hantavirus patient who left the Hondius when it stopped there in mid-April.

The patient is a resident of Tristan da Cunha, population 220, one of the most remote places on Earth, 1,510 miles southwest of St. Helena and 1,750 miles west of Cape Town, which has no airstrip and very limited medical facilities.

Three of six passengers who fell ill from suspected rodent-transmitted virus have died, and one is in intensive care, the WHO says.

Three people have died on a cruise ship in the Atlantic, with at least one confirmed to have suffered from hantavirus, a rare disease transmitted to humans from rodents.

Health authorities are now investigating a suspected outbreak of the virus on the MV Hondius, which is sailing from Ushuaia in Argentina to Cape Verde.

In a statement on Sunday, the World Health Organization said that one case had been confirmed and at least five other passengers were suspected of being infected.

“Of the six affected individuals, three have died, and one is currently in intensive care in South Africa,” WHO said in a statement.

“Detailed investigations are ongoing, including further laboratory testing and epidemiological investigations. Medical care and support are being provided to passengers and crew. Sequencing of the virus is also ongoing.”

WHO added that it was “facilitating coordination” between countries to evacuate the two other passengers showing symptoms of the infection.

Hantavirus, a rare disease transmitted to humans through the droppings or urine of infected rodents, can be fatal in severe cases and cause hemorrhagic fever.

Infected couple among casualties

South Africa’s National Department of Health said earlier on Sunday that there had been an outbreak of a “severe acute respiratory illness”, which had killed at least two people, and that a third person was in intensive care in Johannesburg, according to the AFP news agency.

The ministry’s spokesperson, Foster Mohale, confirmed that the patient being treated in Johannesburg tested positive for hantavirus.

A 70-year-old was the first to develop symptoms. He died on the ship, with his body now being held on the island of Saint Helena, a British territory in the South Atlantic, the spokesman said.

The patient’s 69-year-old wife also fell sick and was evacuated to South Africa, where she died in a Johannesburg hospital, he added.

Mohale told AFP that authorities have not confirmed the nationalities of the deceased. But the person in intensive care was reported by AFP to be a 69-year-old Briton.