customer

As a criminal investigation into Southern California Edison’s actions before last year’s deadly Eaton fire continues, the state’s for-profit utilities are lobbying for legislation that would protect their shareholders from paying for future catastrophic fires they cause.

According to slides recently presented by a Pacific Gas & Electric executive to a group of state senators, the utilities are asking for a permanent cap to limit their corporate liability for a fire where they are found to have acted negligently or imprudently. The slides were reviewed by The Times.

“If ratepayers are forced to pay the lion share for fires utilities cause, there is no imperative for the for-profit utilities to take safety and fire mitigation seriously,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog.

The utilities say their shareholders must be shielded from wildfire costs because the risk of future fires has damaged their credit ratings. Lower credit ratings mean the companies must pay higher interest rates on borrowing, an increased cost that gets passed on to electricity customers.

“It is in our customers’ interest to have action in 2026,” Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Wall Street analysts last week when asked about the utilities’ push in Sacramento for a liability cap.

Caroline Choi, Edison’s executive vice president of public policy and corporate affairs, told The Times that the proposal would not change the utilities’ focus on preventing fires. “Safety is our number one priority,” she said.

Executives at Edison and PG&E also recently told their investors that without the liability protection they may cut what they are spending on capital improvements, including to connect new housing developments and green energy projects.

PG&E recently sent letters to thousands of its customers, saying their projects could be delayed next year as it defers $2 billion in spending.

Those comments and PG&E’s letter have angered consumer advocates, wildfire survivors and some lawmakers.

On Sunday, state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes Altadena, sent a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission, pointing out that both companies continue to pay millions of dollars in dividends to their shareholders, while complaining that the wildfire risk had financially weakened them.

“Their decisions to delay or reduce investments in critical projects are particularly troubling given the billions of dollars in profits reported by their parent companies in recent years,” Perez wrote. “The Legislature must not be pressured to roll back utilities’ financial accountability for wildfires through threats to withhold the investments needed to serve our communities.”

The state’s three biggest for-profit utilities, which also include San Diego Gas & Electric, have been lobbying for protection from wildfire costs since early 2025. That’s when videos emerged showing two bright flashes coming from Edison’s transmission lines, just before the Eaton fire ignited.

A government investigation released in August concluded that the devastating fire ignited when an out-of-service transmission line that Edison had not used since 1971 was briefly reenergized in the high winds, causing sparks that landed in dried brush below.

The fire killed 19 people and destroyed a wide swath of Altadena, leaving thousands of families homeless.

Last week, Pizarro told investors that executives believed the utility acted prudently before the fire. If the utilities commission agrees that the company acted prudently, Edison’s liabilities for the fire would be fully covered by a $21-billion state wildfire fund.

If the commission instead determines that Edison acted imprudently — a California regulatory standard that is similar to negligence — the company’s shareholders would still pay no more than $4.3 billion for the Eaton fire under a 2019 law known as Assembly Bill 1054.

The law was passed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers to protect utilities from bankruptcy if their power lines spark a catastrophic fire. Since then, utility equipment has continued to spark major wildfires, even though the companies have charged customers tens of billions of dollars to prevent them.

The slides presented to state senators propose that the cap on damages — when a utility is found to have acted imprudently — be made permanent. Under current law, the cap will end when the state wildfire fund, as well as an additional $18-billion reserve created last year, are depleted, leaving shareholders exposed to greater costs of future fires.

The proposed limit on shareholder liability would be equal to 20% of each utility’s transmission and distribution equity rate base, which differs based on the size of the grid maintained by each company. This number for Edison is now $4.3 billion. For PG&E, it is $5.1 billion, according to the slides, while it is $1.5 billion for SDG&E.

The companies’ customers would have to shoulder the rest of a fire’s costs, which would be added to monthly electricity bills.

Mark Toney, executive director of the Utilities Reform Network, called the idea of permanently capping shareholders’ liabilities for fires “completely unacceptable.”

“There needs to be a cap on ratepayers’ liability,” he said.

Earlier this year, the utilities’ stock prices began to rise as executives told investors that Newsom was working on legislation to reduce the companies’ financial risks from fires.

But wildfire survivors were angered when details emerged that Newsom’s proposal would limit payments to victims for pain and suffering and cap attorney fees. Another proposed measure would have increased property insurance premiums across the state by reducing the amounts that insurers could collect after a utility-caused fire.

The utilities’ stock prices then fell when legislators agreed to a much smaller legislative package that did not have the protections the companies wanted. That bill died after the Assembly declined to vote on it.

The utilities are now asking Newsom to call a special session in which lawmakers would debate how to reduce the utilities’ fire risks, including the possible limit on what shareholders would pay.

“A predictable limitation would enable utilities to maintain investment grade credit ratings to better access capital at lower borrowing costs for customers,” Lynsey Paulo, a PG&E spokesperson, said in an e-mail.

In February, Edison disclosed that the Los Angeles County district attorney was investigating whether Edison should be criminally charged for its actions leading to the Eaton fire. And last month, an investment firm published a report claiming that there was evidence that Edison “acted with conscious and willful disregard for the rights and safety of others,” which would make its shareholders liable for all Eaton fire costs. The costs have been estimated to be tens of billions of dollars.

Pizarro told investors last week that he believed there was no evidence that Edison acted criminally before the fire. And he similarly dismissed the investment firm’s report.

“Just to be very crystal clear on this, not only do we not see any basis for felony liability, we certainly don’t see any basis for allegations of conscious or willful disregard,” Pizarro said on the conference call. “I think I said this to all of you before — that is not something I lose sleep over.”

THE UK’s best restaurants used to be ruled by cocky French chefs with big hats and even bigger bellies.

But that all changed thanks to a trio of rock ‘n’ roll Brits.

Kitchen mavericks Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal turned the stuffy industry on its head with their trendy establishments, where members of the Spice Girls, Oasis and Hollywood’s finest would compete with high-society folk for the most sought-after dinner reservations going.

New BBC documentary Rise Of The Rockstar Chefs explores the rise of the three men who were blazing a trial — when they weren’t barking at their sous chefs.

Gordon sums them up as “council house rebels with a f***ing cause”, while Marco says: “Chefs have always been naughty. They were naughty before me, and they’re naughty after me.

“But the likes of Gordon and Heston made it rock ’n’ roll.”

According to Gordon, it was his mentor Marco who exhibited the most rock-star behaviour.

The Leeds-born chef won legions of new admirers by posing semi-naked in black-and-white snaps taken by provocative photographer Bob Carlos Clarke for his cook book White Heat.

And some customers couldn’t get enough of Marco, including a female diner on a date in Harveys, his restaurant serving French cuisine in Wandsworth, South West London.

Gordon, 59, said: “Marco left service, ran through the restaurant, ran upstairs, jumped in the cubicle, did whatever in the bathroom, and then jumped through the window of that bathroom.

“He then dropped down the f***ing skylight, back on to my hot plate having done whatever.

“And then she then went back into the restaurant and continued eating her dessert with her boyfriend.”

Marco also had form for fighting with customers, according to Gordon.

During his time running Harveys — Gordon’s first-ever chef’s job — seeing scruffy-haired Marco brawling in the restaurant would be a common sight, especially if a diner had the nerve to point out something was wrong with their meal.

Gordon recalls: “I remember, I think it was my second week, this customer had complained the pigeon was overcooked and Marco said to him, ‘Do me a favour. Dinner’s on me, and what you didn’t spend in my restaurant, buy your wife some new clothes.’

“This guy said to him, ‘Say that again, what did you say to me?’, and then this guy started walking towards Marco, knocks into me, and then they start going at it.

“This customer, he’s like sprawling all over the floor and I’m boning out my pigeon.”

Nick Munier, who was Marco’s maitre d’ at Harveys, where actor Oliver Reed would often be found lying drunk on the floor, revealed what happened if a customer asked a waiter for salt and pepper.

He added: “What we used to say is ‘You’ve ruined your own meal, we won’t be serving you any more food.”

“We’d start to clear the table and everything will be clear and the guest would be left embarrassed with nothing in front of them, and the only thing they could do was leave.”

Munier also witnessed Marco chuck the entire contents of his cheeseboard trolley against a wall because he was unhappy with how it looked.

He recalled: “No one was to clean them and he wanted me to see these cheeses through service, so that next time I don’t make the same mistakes.”

Celebrities were not safe from Marco’s wrath either.

Actor Nigel Havers said he was booted out of The Canteen, which Marco set up with Sir Michael Caine in 1992 in Chelsea Harbour, for commenting about waiting time.

He revealed: “I went there in the first week and it took three hours to get the first course.

“Someone came over and said, ‘How was the meal?’ I said ‘I don’t really remember the food, it took three hours’. Marco looms up and says, ‘Get out of my restaurant’.

“It was scary, and you’re paying through the nose to be harangued by this chef, this mad fool.”

Despite their rock ’n’ roll personas, neither Gordon nor Marco claim to have dabbled in drugs, although other chefs in that era certainly did.

Gordon says: “Chefs were becoming heavy drinkers, drugs were getting involved in the industry.

“Heart attacks every other week.

“Everyone thought you could stay up all night and do drugs and cook.

“That was the opposite of where I came from.”

Marco, 64, added: “I’ve never taken drugs in my life and I didn’t drink until I was 41.”

Gordon and Marco’s tumultuous relationship and rivalry is very much at the core of this three-parter, which also celebrates 60-year-old Heston’s visionary role and how he quietly equalled their three Michelin star haul from his Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire.

The trio meet in person for the first time in decades in the third episode, but it is the coming together of Gordon and Marco which is likely to provide the most drama, given the mighty fallout between them.

The pair came to blows inside Harveys during Gordon’s last service in October 1989.

Marco secretly did not want to lose his protégé, and the skirmish became famous as it was the first and only time Gordon cried in a kitchen.

The F-Word star explained: “I got absolutely pummelled.

“It was almost like, if I can’t have you and own you, I’m going to destroy you.

“There was an issue with the timing, I think it was something to do with the red mullet and I answered him back.

“He was angry, literally two fists, chef jacket buttons flying everywhere, and he’s shaking me on this coffee machine and then a glass bowl of coffee fell and smashed everywhere, and the kitchen went silent.”

When Marco was quizzed about the alleged ruckus, he said: “Not true.”

Gordon continued: “I bawled my eyes out. I was f***ing upset.

“I was in shock that I was leaving and this level of aggression — he knew I could run this restaurant without him and it was a relationship that was coming to an end and he wanted to finish me before I got to somebody else.

“I’ve never forgiven him for that.

“It still brings back incredible moments when you read ‘the chef who made Gordon Ramsay cry’ — why is that a headline?

“Did I f**k up massively and destroy his reputation? Nothing of the sort.

“Was it justified? No, it wasn’t.

“It was just another scenario where he wanted to prove he was better than me and he wanted to dine out on it. You sad c***.”

Marco responded again: “It’s not personal, it’s service.”

Gordon eventually got his revenge on Marco by not only equalling his Michelin stars total but by becoming a household name worldwide.

Both Gordon and Heston profited from the era where the chefs became the stars by landing big-money TV deals, with the former getting further exposure by fronting a cooking show across the pond.

Marco attempted to downplay their achievements, saying in the documentary: “I don’t do TV.

“They like to manipulate, they like manufactured drama — it’s called reality TV.

“Don’t blame me for that.

“Have it, Gordon — it’s all yours.”

But that didn’t stop Marco from hosting ITV’s Hell’s Kitchen for two series from 2007 to 2009 before the show was axed, much to Gordon’s delight given he hosted the debut series in 2003.

Gordon added: “I couldn’t believe my luck.

“I was so happy for Marco to pick up the slack and step into my shoes.

“All that s**t you have given me for doing TV, now you’re following in my footsteps.

“Boy, has the tide turned.

“That was the start of Marco’s demise on TV because Hell’s Kitchen tanked.

“Of all the f***ing people, how many times I’ve told him, do not take sloppy seconds.”

• Rise Of The Rockstar Chefs starts on BBC Two on Thursday at 9pm.

When we went looking for the best independent gift shops in Los Angeles, we discovered a Tarot Arts store in South Pasadena, found a fun mix of paper goods — and stickers! — at Paper and Plant Co.’s new location in Highland Park and met three adorable shop cats at Adelaide, a charming flower and gift shop in Altadena, which was forced to close temporarily following the Eaton fire.

We’re fortunate in Los Angeles that holiday shopping doesn’t have to revolve around a crowded mall — or an Amazon delivery.

Shopping local can be fun.

At Little Flower in Pasadena, you can enjoy a meal or savory treat while browsing the shop’s shelves stocked with seasonal goods. At Curious in Hermosa Beach, you can book a haircut at a speakeasy-style barber inside the “pop and pop shop.” Or you might catch an art show at Tim Biskup’s Face Guts in Verdugo Village, right next to his unique lifestyle store, Home Guts.

This holiday season, why not try shopping in your neighborhood? Whether you need something for a teacher or loved one, shopping small helps support businesses that may have had a tough time of late. Many store owners shared that the holidays can make or break their entire year. “The holidays matter a lot to us,” says Ivana Suvak of Goods in Santa Monica. “I think in-person retail matters more than it used to. We’re all online all day, but walking into a shop, touching something, smelling it, discovering something you weren’t looking for and talking to another person … I don’t think that can be replaced.”

Shopping local makes a difference beyond just your gift recipient — it helps your neighbors. “My thought every year is: If you build it, they will come,” says Sonya Gallardo, who owns Highlow Gift Shop in Torrance. “To make the heavy investment, I have to have faith that my customers will remember my shop, and new customers will want to shop small and find me.”

Here’s a list of our favorite gift shops in Los Angeles.

On the balcony of a pink dockside building in San Pedro, a neon sign reading “Saturday Morning Fish Market” glows in the darkness. There’s a quiet stillness in the harbor — the only sounds are of the occasional gull and car whirring by. That is, until 1 a.m. rolls around.

Doors open at 1:30 a.m. at the Saturday Morning Fish Market.

This is when people begin to gather outside the roll-up door, some carrying backpacks ready to be filled.

At 1:30 a.m., a man in an orange apron lifts the door, releasing rays of white light onto the customers. They file inside, stepping onto the wet floor, eager to see the night’s beauties: freshly caught fish, filleted, deboned, washed and thrown onto thick mountains of crushed ice.

Shellfish, sardines, squid, mackerel and a market favorite, glowing salmon filets, sit on display. One employee pulls out crabs with a small net before letting a customer take their pick of the lot. Machines whir in an adjacent room, where fish are processed. Out back, sea lions bark, hoping for scraps.

• Share via Close extra sharing options

The Saturday Morning Fish Market, more formally known as J Deluca Fish Co., has existed for some time — owner John DeLuca claims a variation of the business began operating as early as the late ‘60s. As a child, DeLuca would greet his grandfather when he’d return to the San Pedro port with his catch, perhaps a fresh tuna or a bass to sell. For decades, the wholesale seafood distributor would open its market to the public just once a week — from 1:30 to 7:30 a.m. on Saturdays — usually seeing a smattering of mostly locals, the seafaring type, who might be shopping around after a late-night shift.

1

2

3

1. Harikrishnan Babuchandran holds up his fresh fish. 2. Customers can watch their fish be processed. 3. The fish that’s for sale changes from week to week. (Linnea Stephan / For The Times)

The Saturday Morning Fish Market in San Pedro has existed in some form since the late ‘60s but thanks to social media, flocks of new customers are wanting in on the late-night seafood-buying adventure.

Neither DeLuca nor his son and co-owner, Chris, could have predicted the San Pedro institution would experience the boom in popularity it’s seeing now, especially in an industry that’s struggled over the past two decades.

Thanks to social media, the market is witnessing an unprecedented revival. At its pre-pandemic peak, it would get around 800 to 1,000 customers on a typical Saturday morning. Nowadays, up to 2,000 people walk through the doors, according to Chris, many of whom are visiting for the first time.

Owners John and Chris DeLuca.

Regarding Instagram and TikTok, where posts giving a glimpse of the late-night fish market have gone viral, John, 73, says, “I know absolutely zero.”

To his credit, he does exhibit some understanding of its effect. And he’s glad for it. “People that live within walking distance never knew we existed. Now they do, and it’s got nothing to do with me,” he says, grinning.

What’s most notable is the number of young people roaming around the market well before the crack of dawn, Chris says. The business has changed a lot since his “father’s generation,” and social media unlocked access to a new audience.

“I think people like those hidden gems and people like that fresh seafood experience,” he says.

Between rows of sea bass and salmon, the energy is buzzing. Abdul Fahwami, dressed in jeans and flip-flops, visits the fish market at least once or twice a month, depending on how many people he‘s having over at his house that week.

“Every time we come here, we buy a minimum of between 100 and 200 pounds,” he says. “Red snapper is one of the best fish.”

Branzino is a favorite among customers and employees.

He smiles as he watches employees process his fish on a long table. First, blades run against the fish scales, removing them in quick fashion. Then, there’s a swift slice across its belly, starting at a hole near the tail and ending up near the gill plate. Finally, the guts are removed and filets are cut, skin optional.

Prices change week in and week out, and depend on supply. While prices are typically 10% to 40% less than at stores, market representative Joe Castelao says the team values the “quality of our products” over “trying to cater to bargain finders.” Another advantage for customers is the ability to buy seafood in bulk, which often isn’t possible at your standard, local grocer.

On this day, there wasn’t much branzino, the fish Fahwami came early to look for. “I found only 11 pieces,” he says. “I took all of it!”

Not far away, a man named Terry Jackson waits in line; he’s wearing black overalls and swaying side to side, eager to advance.

Customer Terry Jackson at the Saturday Morning Fish Market.

“It’s definitely worth waking up a little late — or a little early, you could say,” he says. “The quality of the fish is good, plus the pricing.”

His fish of choice? “Tuna, my new favorite is tuna!” he says, proudly raising a plastic bag full of bright red filets.

Briskly pacing across the market floor are team members Mike and George Stahl, a father-son duo both wearing orange aprons and gloves.

Mike got into the seafood business about two decades ago. At the time, he lived in Florida and often purchased products from J Deluca Fish Co. By 2018, he’d moved his family out to California and started working at the market.

He says his favorite part is the variety of duties. “No two days are the same,” he says. “One day I could be selling a couple containers of squid, the next day I could be meeting face to face with someone at a conference on the other side of the country.”

Staff member George Stahl helps a patron.

He brought in his son George during the pandemic. As George explains, “We were bored and didn’t have anything to do at home so my dad said, ‘Why don’t you come down and put some boots on and start working?’”

George has become somewhat of a micro-celebrity around the market, frequently appearing in its Instagram posts. However, his time with the company might be temporary — he’s currently in school and plans to be a physical therapist at some point.

While the market is riding a wave of success, John doesn’t gloss over the grim outlook of the fishing and seafood industry as a whole. He says the industry has taken a hit over the years, between restrictions, overfishing and changing regulations.

“It’s a dying business,” John says, bleakly. “There’s very few seiners down here because it’s very difficult to make a living [fishing].

But for now, they’re able to survive. They watch as customers walk out of the market into the wee hours of the morning, proudly grasping their bags of the day’s freshest catch.

“A lot of things have gone the opposite direction,” John says. “But we’re still here.”

The fish market’s blue neon sign shines through the night.