empire

After 52 years of providing the Inland Empire with mini golf, roller skating and go-karting, Fiesta Village Family Fun Park is shutting down.

The Colton amusement park said in a statement Tuesday that it will remain open to the public for its final days this weekend.

“This decision has not been easy. For decades, Fiesta Village has been a place where families gathered, friendships grew and memories were made,” the company said in the statement.

Owner Michelle O’Brien said that rising operation costs and declining attendance were the main reasons behind the closure.

“It’s been a privilege to be the steward at the park. It’s devastating to have to close it, but you get to a point where there are no other options,” O’Brien said. “We’re so grateful that Fiesta Village carried a place in people’s hearts.”

The park first opened in 1974, with a mini golf course, waterslides and go-karts. O’Brien purchased it in 2002 and has operated it ever since. Under her and her husband Patrick’s ownership, the park added attractions such as the Scrambler and Tilt-a-Whirl, along with laser tag and a roller skating rink.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the theme park industry has struggled to fully rebound. Rising costs and a lack of tourism have made the business increasingly difficult to sustain.

Last year, California’s Great America, a Silicon Valley park operated by Six Flags Entertainment, had to cut its workforce and shorten its season. Even theme park giants such as Disneyland are seeing slight downturns in attendance. Disney previously said its U.S. theme parks saw a 1% drop in attendance compared with the prior year, which the company attributed to “continued softness” in attendance by international visitors. Disneyland’s Anaheim park also recently began offering $71 tickets to draw more local visitors.

For parks like Fiesta Village, the rising cost of essentials such as food ultimately makes survival harder, said Dennis Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services, a consulting firm. He added that competition from nearby parks is also drawing business away. As a Southern California venue, Fiesta Village sits within driving distance of destinations such as Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland.

“It’s hard for smaller parks to compete with the big entities that surround them. Particularly now as we continue to see this amazing growth in technology for rides and attractions,” Speigel said. “Big attractions are very expensive propositions for parks to put in, and parks like Fiesta Village can’t keep up with that.”

Given the current economic uncertainty, Speigel said, theme parks will probably see a “flat year” — meaning no major growth or decline industrywide.

After Fiesta Village’s final celebration with the public on Friday and Saturday, the park will host a private event Sunday before shutting down for good. It’s unclear what will happen to the property afterward.

“Thank you for allowing us to be part of your lives and your family traditions,” the company wrote. “We will always cherish the role Fiesta Village has played in bringing people together.”

Times staff writer Samantha Masunaga contributed to this report.

July 2 (UPI) — The couple who climbed to the top of the Empire State Building’s spire to hang a flag and get engaged was arraigned and released Thursday morning.

Angelina Nikolau and Ivan Kuznetsov were charged with burglary, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and criminal tampering for trespassing in a nonpublic area of the building and scaling the spire, ABC News and the New York Daily News reported.

The couple has made a name for themselves with a series of dangerous climbs around the world, but making it to the top of the Empire State Building gained national attention — and they were arrested when they climbed down.

“These activities continually create a risk to their own lives, as well as the lives of New Yorkers and first responders,” Assistant District Attorney Anthony Giliberti told reporters.

Prosecutors told the court that they believe the duo observed a security door to the building’s 104th floor with a broken lock, accessed it and climbed to the top of the spire.

Although Kuznetsov’s father said that they had already been officially married — and that the proposal at the top of the building was just a stunt — after hanging a flag at the top of the spire, Ivan got down on one knee and asked Nikolau to marry him.

Nikolau and Kuznetsov have been released on supervised bail ahead of their trial.

NEW YORK — A skyscraper-scaling daredevil told police that he and his girlfriend climbed the Empire State Building’s antenna and unfurled a banner about love and peace because he wanted to “do something special” for their engagement, prosecutors said Thursday at the couple’s arraignment on felony reckless endangerment, burglary and other charges.

The couple, who go by Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, said little as they left court, though Beerkus responded to a journalist’s question about the stunt by saying, “We believe in love.”

Authorities said the two — who were the subject of the 2024 Netflix documentary “Skywalkers: A Love Story ” about their “rooftopping” exploits and budding romance — created not only a spectacle but also a danger by ascending the famed skyscraper’s broadcast antenna Wednesday.

After reaching the top, 1,454 feet above Midtown Manhattan, the climbers displayed a black banner reading, “When the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace,” news helicopter video showed.

Then they collected the banner and descended to a slightly lower ledge, where an apparently successful marriage proposal unfolded. Nikolau posted images of the escapade on her social media accounts, including a photo that modeled an engagement-style ring above a bird’s-eye view of Manhattan.

Police waited about half an hour for the antenna to be powered down before Emergency Services Unit officers started ascending and eventually intercepted the climbers on their way down, according to the court complaint, which noted the danger to officers who climbed about 1,250 feet above the ground. The court document identified the two by their formal names, Angelina Nikolau and Ivan Kuznetsov.

“Skywalkers: A Love Story” follows Beerkus, now 32, and Nikolau, 33, as they make often unauthorized ascents of tall structures, sometimes posing as construction workers to sneak in.

The court complaint said police found a broken lock on a security door on the Empire State Building’s restricted-access 104th floor, which provides access to the antenna. The highest public floor is the 102nd, where there’s an observation deck. Going higher requires a key card, according to the court complaint.

The Empire State Building’s management has called the climb “unauthorized” but hasn’t answered questions about what interactions, if any, the daredevils had with security workers. Visitors to the skyscraper are screened and told not to bring large packages, sports equipment, costumes or masks, among other items.

Beerkus and Nikolau were released without bail, in accordance with New York laws that restrict when monetary bail can be set. Their attorney, Jason Krinsky, said outside court that once prosecutors provide evidence, he and his clients would assess it and determine next steps.

“What a way to propose — something you can only dream of,” Krinsky said. “So you’ve got to, you know, give him some credit for that.”

Other daredevils have climbed the antenna and other parts of the Empire State Building. Those ascents have largely been unauthorized, but actor and musician Jared Leto was allowed to climb up to the base of the antenna from the 86th floor in 2023 to promote a tour.

Peltz writes for the Associated Press.

When the gates opened at St. John’s Episcopal Church in San Bernardino on Good Friday, the music coming from inside wasn’t that of angel-faced choristers or pipe organs; it was the collective scream of electric guitars.

As the sky darkened over the white stucco church framed in palm trees and the dry peaks of the San Bernardino Mountains, fringed teenagers made their way inside, shaking their limbs and chattering in excitement. Fluorescent lights shone overhead in a room that, by day, hosted Bible studies and food pantries — that night, it would be the site of Spinkick Dance Hall, a regular underground music series where noses are bound to bleed and limbs to flail along to ear-splitting riffs.

It’s just one of many shows taking place from Pomona to Palm Desert, heralding a Latino-led youth revival where the freewheeling movement of mosh pits meets the raw power of punk rock: Inland Empire hardcore.

Teenagers congregate in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in San Bernardino before the start of the night’s hardcore shows on April 3, 2026.

(Katerina Portela / Los Angeles Times)

As the fast-paced and anti-establishment genre known as punk went mainstream in the ’80s, a harder and more unhinged variant emerged in the States; bands like Bad Brains, Minor Threat and Black Flag pushed the limits of vocalization and instrumentation into dissonant new sounds that would make up the subgenre known as hardcore punk.

“As a teenager pre-social media, the music scene was the release for teen angst,” said music photojournalist Zach Cordner. “It was a convergence of nationwide bands that would come to play at [the now shuttered Riverside venue] Showcase Theater, and through word of mouth people got inspired to make cassettes and zines.”

Cordner and his friend Ken Crawford grew up in Riverside in the ’80s and ’90s, photographing the initial wave of hardcore punk taking shape in the Inland Empire. They turned these photographs into a sprawling exhibition held at the Riverside Art Museum earlier this year, “60 Miles East.”

“The scene looks a lot different today than it did in the ’90s,” Crawford said. “It’s browner, it’s queer, and that’s a good thing, to see how it’s become way more diverse.”

Inside the church, the frontman of all-Latino hardcore band Barrio Slam emitted rough growls as the crowd broke into a bustling mosh pit. Teenagers did pinwheel kicks, wrapped Mexican flags over their shoulders and filled the air with chants of “F— ICE.”

Lead vocalist Victor Campos’ family moved from Guadalajara, Mexico, to Pomona, where he says he discovered hardcore through friends. Then, at age 14, Campos attended his first rock show.

“That was the first time that I saw hardcore and metal and the heavier side of music for what it was, and the violence and culture of the shows just sucked me in and I’ve been in it ever since,” Campos said. “It felt like freedom.”

Angela, 19, was in the mosh pit during Load Tha Nine’s performance when she was accidentally struck in the nose by another concertgoer on April 3, 2026, in St. John’s Episcopal Church in San Bernardino. Hardcore shows are characterized by intense music and rough dancing where bloody accidents are not an uncommon sight.

(Katerina Portela / Los Angeles Times)

Jose Ruelas and his Barrio Slam bandmates headbang as they perform on April 3, 2026, in St. John’s Episcopal Church in San Bernardino.

(Katerina Portela / Los Angeles Times)

Campos credits local Latino-led bands like Xibalba and Harsh Reality as inspirations to dive into making music and embrace his identity in the genre.

“In the I.E., it’s really the norm. We’re singing in Spanish, we’re proud. But when we tour, we see it’s not like that everywhere,” Campos said. “Some people still consider punk ‘not for us.’ My own family members will say, ‘You’re listening to white people music.’”

The show at St. John’s is just the tip of the Inland Empire’s DIY venue iceberg. Living rooms, restaurant dining rooms, tattoo shops and record stores have transformed into hardcore venues across the region as established locales closed down.

San Bernardino four-piece “beatdown” group Big Ass Truck is one band that found success beyond the I.E. scene. They signed to Nuclear Blast Records, and at the time of our interview, they had just returned from a tour of Europe.

“With the I.E. especially, we lose a venue like every week. If we have a venue, it’s not staying around for long. I’ve personally seen like three or four venues [in the last few years] just call it,” said Big Ass Truck vocalist Abel Abarca. “So we do get scrappy, and I think that’s what sets the I.E. apart from places like L.A. and O.C.”

San Bernardino hardcore band Big Ass Truck performs a surprise concert at Creator Fest on May 2, 2026, at Creator Tattoo in Pomona.

(Katerina Portela / Los Angeles Times)

Izzy Leyva, 17, describes being met with an immediate “sense of welcoming” at her first DIY hardcore show.

“It’s nice finding people my age to talk about life with. You can start conversations so easily,” Leyva said. “Especially after moshing with someone in the crowd. If you’re struggling to make friends in school, you’ll be able to find someone here.”

She enters the mosh pit fearlessly, dodging flailing arms to two-step — a synchronized dance move that requires punching and running in place — unleashing her energy in the punk sanctum.

“I never feel like an outsider here,” Leyva added.

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1. Mauricio Rivera performs with his band Barrio Slam on April 3, 2026, in St. John’s Episcopal Church in San Bernardino. (Katerina Portela / Los Angeles Times) 2. Toni Feliz shows her “IE” tattoo, a nod to her hometown, at Creator Fest on May 2, 2026, at Creator Tattoo in Pomona. (Katerina Portela / Los Angeles Times) 3. Izzy Levya, 17, two-steps during Marked for Death’s performance on April 3, 2026, in St. John’s Episcopal Church in San Bernardino. (Katerina Portela / Los Angeles Times) 4. Fans dance and “two-step” during Barrio Slam’s performance on April 3, 2026, in St. John’s Episcopal Church in San Bernardino. (Katerina Portela / Los Angeles Times) 5. Andres Rodriguez, 18, moshes during Marked for Death’s performance on April 3, 2026, in St. John’s Episcopal Church in San Bernardino. (Katerina Portela / Los Angeles Times)

As 25-year-old Guatemalan American vocalist Jorge Cruz entered the show, he embraced his friends and bandmates. Cruz, who fronts the voracious hardcore band KnuckleSandwich, says he sees TikTok as a major platform for hardcore fans to find one another.

“I saw shows online and was hooked … I used to be so nervous to be in the mosh pit, I’d throw up outside. But when I got in there for the first time, I feel like it changed me into someone who was more comfortable in myself,” Cruz said. “It was like a baptism.”

His music, ranging from songs like “Melting ICE” and corrido-hardcore fusion “El Corrido del Maton,” is inspired by his immigrant household upbringing and interest in Chicano studies.

“Especially with this growing anti-intellectualism going on, and conservatives in our government, writing about Chicano identity and the issues in America feels important,” Cruz said. “There’s no one out there to speak up for us than us.”

A day after attending the show, Garrett Boyer and Kenny Sylvia, longtime friends with nearly matching tattoo sleeves and baseball caps, stood talking in Creator Tattoo Parlor in Pomona.

The pair helps to run Division One, a local booking company that books anywhere from Corona storefront DBZ Books N’ Records to their very own tattoo parlor.

A few weeks prior, Boyer got a call from his sister: His niece was diagnosed with an aggressive childhood cancer called neuroblastoma that had spread through her body, causing his sister to tackle insurance and medical costs. Boyer said he reached out to the hardcore community for help and was “overwhelmed” by the response.

“The community really, really, really came together. A lot of people reached out and really quickly we threw this benefit show that raised thousands of dollars,” Boyer said. “That’s the core of what hardcore music should be and is. It’s community.”

A few months before that, they had united with local bands to throw a benefit show, raising money for immigrant coalition groups after increased ICE raids.

“We thought, ‘How could we not help?’ I’m second generation from El Paso. So many of my neighbors and even my partner’s family were directly affected,” Boyer said. “So many shows are not just about music but they can [impact] people’s lives.”

Brett Rock, bassist of San Bernardino hardcore band Big Ass Truck, performs during Creator Fest on May 2, 2026, at Creator Tattoo in Pomona.

(Katerina Portela / Los Angeles Times)

In Creator’s graffitied back lot area on May 2, bands Load Tha Nine, ’92 and Auditory Anguish opened up a DIY festival called Creator Fest, where 22-year-old Cynthia Garcia came out to “let off steam.”

Garcia, who fronts local band Exutoire, said discovering the local alternative scene “changed everything.”

“In high school, it was very much like nothing was happening. We’re all bored. We’re all depressed. We’re writing, and finally, we get to put the writing to use,” Garcia said. “We meet people that are like-minded and trying to get out of that boredom, and then [the music scene] just exploded.”

At Garcia’s shows, she says she constantly meets concertgoers from L.A., or even from San Diego, who drive hours into the I.E. to be part of its blossoming scene.

At Creator Fest, Abarca commanded the stage, building up the energy of the crowd until hair whipped in frenzies. Abarca says he sees I.E. hardcore continuing to evolve, fusing new genres and making the Inland Empire a place to watch as alternative music booms in the “scrappy” venues of San Bernardino, Corona, Pomona and Riverside.

“Latinos in the Inland Empire have always been hardcore,” Abarca said. “People just know it now because we make them hear us.”

AFTER years of “neglecting” Europe and the UK, Aussie duo Empire Of The Sun return for three sold-out nights at London’s Alexandra Palace next week, proof they are making up for lost time. 

“The Empire surges on,” says singer Luke Steele in a quiet moment away from the tour.  

“Empire still feels as intense as ever. It’s like being in a vortex. It’s like Lord Of The Rings when they put the ring on, or when you’re surfing and you’re caught in the wave. Being on this tour is always like that.  

“We’ve changed a few things and added a few new songs, and suddenly it changes the ripples of everything else.” 

Nearly 20 years after track Walking On A Dream first introduced Empire Of The Sun’s fantastical universe, Steele and non-touring band member Nick Littlemore are bigger than ever. 

“It’s incredible because these are our biggest shows and it’s the biggest following we’ve had,” says Steele proudly on a video call. 

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“It’s exploded in a completely different way, to a whole new generation who are my son and my daughter’s age.  

“My daughter Sunny is about to turn 18 and Walking On A Dream came out the week she was born. Nearly 20 years later, it has hit that next generation and it is so reinvigorating. I’m running into kids who are 15 asking, ‘Who’s this new band?’.  

“A lot of people have been asking about the band’s outfits — they’re fascinated by the fashion. 

“But for so many people, they just hear the songs on the radio or at a party and don’t even know what the band looks like. They’re just captivated by the melodies.” 

Steele is in Budapest to perform, and he has just got back from a scooter ride around the city’s sights on a rare day off. 

The pair have survived near burnout and band tensions, but Steele says the music always pulled him back and now he feels the healthiest and sharpest he has ever been. 

“We always had great shows in the UK, but it felt like we’d lost a bit of steam by not touring there frequently. Then the pandemic was tough — five years not being able to tour and stuff — so maybe now we’re making up for lost time.” 

Last summer’s sold-out Labyrinth On The Thames show at Greenwich’s Old Royal Naval College was Empire Of The Sun’s first London performance in more than six years. 

“That was special. It was amazing,” Steele says. “So it’s great we are coming back to the UK — to London and also Cardiff and Halifax — which I am told is right at the top of the UK but not as far as Scotland.” His music is better than his geography. 

Empire’s return has meant more than just filling venues. It is about the band’s influence on the fans, who have found their own lives reflected in the songs. 

“The music is so important. It’s important for us, for our sanity, but it’s amazing what the records have been doing to people,” he says. “I feel a bit more like a conduit now. I’ve been handed these keys, and it’s like, what are you going to do with them? What doors are going to open?” 

“I have to harness that power of influence in a clever, natural way. 

“Coming back with the new show and writing new records post-pandemic, it feels like the songs need to have new revelations and new messages in this crazy world.” 

Steele reckons part of the success of Empire Of The Sun’s performances has been down to his live band, which includes former Gomez guitarist Ian Ball and drummer Olly Peacock.  

“They are the greatest players — really seasoned musicians, which is incredible to have,” says Steele. “People with experience are worth everything in touring. Ian is my right-hand man. The one and only.  

“You rehearse for three months, then you get up in front of 80,000 people and suddenly my in-ear pack goes down, or the pedalboard dies. Ian is so calm. He just mooches over, cool as a cucumber, sorts it out and comes back before I’ve even noticed.”  

Steele says having a great team behind him means he can execute the ideas he has been inspired by. 

“There are quite a few songs from Ask That God in the set.  

“We always play the hits, like We Are The People and Alive, because that’s important for people’s memory, and then there are a couple of throwbacks from the earlier records. 

“It’s about trying to fit it all in without it becoming an exhausting meal for people.  

“The first show probably had too many songs — like eating that last chicken wing at the Chinese buffet, where you walk out thinking you’ve had too much. It’s a fine line. 

“I don’t like those shows where bands play for three-and-a-half hours. I want to see a concert, get blown away, and go and put my pyjamas on. You don’t want to lose people.” 

Almost two years into the Ask That God tour, Steele is still pushing the show forward. 

He says: “It’s so exciting and exhilarating, and then there are the fans who mean so much. 

“It always sounds so cliched to me, to talk about ‘the fans’ but as I’ve got older and seen their dedication they become like your friends. It’s more than someone buying an album. The music seeps into their lives. 

“The other day I met this girl who showed me a video of her three-year-old kid dancing to one of our songs. It’s amazing to be so far away from home and see how much the music touches people.  

“We played Poland recently and this girl had spent months making these elaborate Salvador Dali and Escher-style collage illustrations for each song. She printed them all in a book and had written a personal note at the end. 

“People really go on the journey with us, so I’m pretty thankful.” 

Being away for long periods from his own family in Australia is what hits Steele the hardest. 

“I’m not really going home until Christmas. We go from here to the American tour and it just keeps going, but they’re all coming out to the UK shows. 

“I find it hard. I go through different stages of exhaustion and depression, excitement and exhilaration. It’s like a wave.  

“I feel quite fragile because I’m so emotional. Being on the road is a real vortex. And when you get home it’s not easy — this pipe burst in the front bathroom of my new house I bought in Perth, and 700,000 litres of water flooded the whole house.  

“When I came back from tour in January from Miami, it was just like a swimming pool, so everything’s been gutted now. It’s just all concrete, so we’re in a rental for a while — we’re pretty much homeless now.” 

After living in the US then New Zealand, Steele moved back to Perth to be closer to his family. 

Steele, who was living in America during Donald Trump’s first presidency, says the country’s extremes fed into his songwriting. 

“I had to go because I was writing so many aggressive songs. Now I’m back where I grew up and it’s been awesome,” he says.  

“I haven’t lived there for 20 years, so it’s a perfect amount of time to get over the regret, you know? 

“And it’s been good to be the hometown hero.  

“Walking On A Dream became the soundtrack for Tourism Western Australia’s global campaign and it is even named after that song.  

“There’s also a music room at my school named after the family. It feels kind of cool to be given the keys to the city, where it all started.” 

Steele lost his dad, blues musician Rick Steele, last year and he recently paid tribute to him with a night of blues. 

“It was the one-year memorial and it was awesome to come back together, remember him and play the blues. The blues club he belonged to is stronger than ever, which is great. 

“I didn’t want him to pass away and then the club to fall over. His legacy moves on, and we’re about to do a grant the Steele family has started — the Rick Steele Music Grant. 

“We’ve also got a plaque on a park bench just down the road from his house, where he lived his whole life. He used to go there most mornings, get a coffee and sit on that bench. I think he’d think that was pretty cool. He’s got his own bench there.” 

For Steele, that sense of legacy, home and survival has fed back into the music. 

“It’s a good spot to be, because I feel the sharpest I’ve ever been and the healthiest. I got rid of all of that garbage, all the drugs and alcohol, years ago.  

“It was music that helped me to heal by writing every song and playing, recording and mixing it myself.  

“Music is still such a powerful phenomenon and medium. It’s a healer. It brings renewal, hope and vision.  

“Music was always the vessel, even after I said the band was done and went off to write a solo record.” 

That sense of purpose also seems to have softened the creative tension between Steele and Littlemore.  

They have not always seen eye to eye, but time, distance and their separate lives have made the partnership easier to understand. It’s like a marriage that works because both know when to step away. 

“I think Nick and I have been good at that,” he says.  

“We probably spend more time apart than together and, when we come together, it’s quite focused on the job at hand.” 

After side projects — Littlemore is the frontman of electronic trio PNAU — and an eight-year gap between third album, Two Vines, and the release of 2024’s Ask That God, time apart now seems to be part of how Empire Of The Sun have survived.

Steele says: “When we came back, it was like, OK, we’re older now — what are we actually talking about? What’s the real meaning? So we’re trying to bring more of that into the show and the theatrics.  

“But I think now we can sit back and soak in the fruits of our labour a bit.  

“For a while, you’re just trying to hold on to it, because you spend your whole life trying to get to a point where people are actually listening. 

“Now we have people’s attention, we have to treat that with respect and not take it for granted. 

“I haven’t spoken to Nick for a while, but we’ll probably start talking more now we are about 45 songs into the new record and trying to finish a huge batch of songs. It’s definitely going to be a little bit more edgy.  

“We’ve been working with different producers and in Hawaii, LA and Sweden. Each territory brings different colours.  

“Working with these different people, from different places gives you beautiful ingredients.” 

But before new music arrives, there is the small matter of shows in Halifax, Cardiff and three sold-out nights at Alexandra Palace. 

It is surely a pinnacle moment, which Empire Of The Sun have been building towards for nearly 20 years. 

“We’re going all out on that,” he insists.  

“They’re going to be massive shows.” 

MOSCOW — President Reagan, standing within the fortress walls of the Kremlin with a smiling Mikhail S. Gorbachev at his side, said Tuesday that he no longer sees the Soviet Union as “the evil empire.”

“You are talking about another time, another era,” he said in an exchange with a handful of reporters clustered around a 39-ton cannon dating from 1586 that stands in a plaza in the center of the Kremlin.

Reagan was disavowing one of his most famous indictments of the Communist state–a description of the Soviet Union that seemed to symbolize his ultraconservative, anti-Communist views when he used it seven years ago in one of his first presidential speeches.

The change seems to reflect an evolution in his views on the Soviet Union. It has been noticeable in his statements and policy decisions for some time but has emerged with dramatic vividness here in the President’s face-to-face encounter with Moscow.

The question about the “evil empire” statement came near the end of a walking tour of the Kremlin grounds and fabled Red Square, with all its memories of celebrations of the Bolshevik Revolution and May Day parades of Soviet military power.

Explains His Position

Asked if he still considers Moscow to be the seat of evil, Reagan answered, “No.” Surprised, reporters asked why.

Reagan hesitated, leaned his head to one side and thought a bit. Soviet leader Gorbachev tried to prompt him. “Are you happy with that concept?” he asked in Russian. The President then responded by saying that the phrase belonged to an earlier time.

Reagan recanted even though Gorbachev had told a crowd of Russians that he did not mind Reagan’s criticisms over the years. “We are so critical of our own country that even the President’s criticisms are weak,” the Soviet leader said. “We know what our problems are.”

In some ways, the President’s walk across Red Square was just as symbolic as his rejection of the concept of “the evil empire.” It would have been hard at the outset of his presidency to conceive of Reagan taking in the sights of Red Square and enjoying them. But on Tuesday the President said:

“I have always heard of Red Square. Mr. Gorbachev was kind enough to show it to me. And now I have seen it and set foot on it. It was much more impressive than I had imagined.”

Reagan’s determination to show how his mood had changed in recent years was evident later in the day when he spoke with writers and artists at the House of Writers in Moscow. In a short but warm speech that described his philosophy of acting and how it had helped prepare him for the White House, Reagan described the importance in the theater of avoiding rigid, stereotyped thinking and instead understanding the unique character of each situation and individual.

No Straitjacket

“Pretty soon,” he said, “at least for me, it becomes harder and harder to force any member of humanity into a straitjacket, into some rigid form in which you all expect to fit.

“In acting . . . you become in an intimate way less taken with artificial pomp and circumstance, more attentive to the core of the soul–that part of each of us that God holds in the hollow of his hand and into which he breathes the breath of life.”

Whatever view he may once have had of Soviet leaders and citizens, he could not be accused now of keeping them in a straitjacket. There was little doubt about the President’s warm feelings for many of them now, and this could be seen on his morning walk.

After meeting for more than an hour in the Kremlin, Reagan followed the Soviet leader on a tour of the grounds and Red Square. As the two men walked slowly, Gorbachev, with sweeps of his hand, pointed out the turrets, churches, palaces and other buildings. A cluster of aides and a long line of limousines trailed behind.

Red Square, an enormous plaza alongside the northeast wall of the Kremlin, is known to the outside world as the site of the massive demonstrations of Soviet military power on the annual May 1 celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution. But it has existed for five centuries, and its name has nothing to do with communism.

‘Red’ Means ‘Beautiful’

The plaza has been known as Red Square for three centuries. When the square was first named, the present-day Russian word for “red” meant “beautiful.”

Gorbachev pointed out the sights of the square: St. Basil’s Cathedral with its famous onion domes, the huge GUM department store, the Historical Museum and the Lenin Mausoleum that contains the body of V. I. Lenin, the first Soviet leader.

“We are not going to change anything here,” Gorbachev said as the two leaders stood outside the tomb. “There is no perestroika needed.”

Reagan made no attempt to enter the mausoleum to honor a man who has become a god-like figure in the Communist world, and Gorbachev made no attempt to try to persuade him.

The exchanges of Reagan, Gorbachev and some of the Russians in the square left little time for true sightseeing, but they were consistent with both leaders’ efforts to surround the tough negotiations over arms control with an aura of better feeling.

Need for Dialogue

At one point, Reagan and Gorbachev, talking with some Soviet citizens, turned philosophical about the need for face-to-face dialogue.

“What we have decided to do,” the President said, “is to talk to each other and not about each other, and that’s working just fine.”

Gorbachev used a Russian proverb to make the point: “If arguments are at the boiling point, then truth evaporates. So we should have dialogue.”

During this conversation, Reagan put his arm around Gorbachev and said, “I’m glad we are standing here together like this.”

In talking with one group of Russians, the superpower leaders said they had discussed annual student exchanges. “I have a dream,” the President said, “that if all young people of the world could get to know each other, it would be a better world.”

‘Grandfather Reagan’

At another point, a woman holding a small child told the President, “We want our children to live in peace.” Gorbachev then took the child from the mother’s arms and told the child, “Shake hands with Grandfather Reagan.”

Reagan took the child’s hand in his.

After the walk in Red Square, Gorbachev led Reagan back within the Kremlin walls, directing him to a small group of journalists and camera crews waiting near the huge cannon, which had never been fired. Gorbachev evidently had an announcement for Soviet television.

“We have received several important telegrams to tell the Reagans that newly born boys and girls are being named Ronald and Nancy and Reagana,” the Soviet leader said.

But the foreign journalists were interested in other issues. “Do you still believe you are in the evil empire?” Reagan was asked. “No,” he replied, surely and quickly.

Some of our finest contemporary writers got their laurels Friday night at the 46th Los Angeles Times Book Prizes ceremony at USC’s Bovard Auditorium.

At the awards ceremony, which opens the annual L.A. Times Festival of Books weekend, Oakland-born writer Amy Tan and literary nonprofit We Need Diverse Books received achievement honors, and finalists in 13 other categories became prize winners.

The presenters and awardees who took the stage balanced a spirit of playfulness — Times senior editor Sophia Kercher called the weekend’s festival “my personal Coachella” and Times columnist LZ Granderson saluted his fellow “booktroverts” — and one of reverence as they celebrated writing as an instrument for advocacy, imagination and history-keeping.

As Bench Ansfield virtually accepted his award in the history category for “Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City,” which exposes a pattern of landlords setting residential fires to collect insurance payouts, he said, “It’s a scary time to be a historian in the United States.”

“Our field, like so many other fields, is under attack,” Ansfield said. “To understand the crises in front of us, we have to understand our history.”

Among the crises highlighted was AI encroachment, the subject of science and technology category winner Karen Hao’s “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI.” The AI expert and investigative journalist’s book is a critical investigation into the rise of OpenAI and its impact on society.

In Hao’s acceptance speech, read by presenter Jia-Rui Cook in her absence, the author said she “can’t help but be disturbed by how the themes of this book have grown more relevant by the day.”

“That said, I have never been more hopeful of our chance to advance a different future,” the author said, adding that L.A.’s history of resistance movements — including the recent Hollywood strikes — made it an apt place to accept her award.

“Gatherings like this are one of many radical acts of resistance against the imperial project that seeks to strip us of our meaning and our humanity,” Hao said. “Let us continue to resist defiantly together and let us remember lessons in history: When people rise, empires always fall.”

Tan echoed Hao’s sentiments as she accepted the Robert Kirsch Award, which celebrates literature with regional and thematic connections to the Western United States, for her acclaimed portfolio of writing exploring identity and cultural inheritance — often through the lens of the immigrant experience.

In her speech, “The Joy Luck Club” writer said that while she never particularly considered herself a “political writer,” her stance on that has changed as government actions have made her think critically about her own identities.

“My birthright and that of millions of others is now being argued before the Supreme Court, and no matter what the outcome is, it’s been a kick in the gut to know that those in the highest echelons of government and those who support them believe that we don’t belong.”

As an author, Tan said, “I imagine the lives of the people I write about,” and that act of compassion, for writers, inherently “reflects our politics and our beliefs. And so yes, I am a political writer.”

Later, Caroline Richmond, executive director of We Need Diverse Books, celebrated the work of her nonprofit — the recipient of this year’s Innovator’s Award — which has made it so her daughter “has never really had to look that far to find herself on the page.”

Still, she said ongoing book bans are threatening those strides toward a more diverse literary marketplace.

“The work is very much far from over,” Richmond said, “but I have to remind myself that the people banning books are never the good guys in history, and it’s up to us in this room and beyond — as readers, as book lovers — to fight back because diverse books, we really need them now more than ever.”

As the ceremony wore on, the room was as charged with celebration as it was with resistance.

When writer-editor and former child actor Adam Ross accepted the Christopher Isherwood Prize for “Playworld,” a semi-autobiographical novel about a teen growing up in 1980s New York, he gleamed with joy about his second novel being out in the world and finding readers.

“When it became clear to me that I was writing something that was going to be a lot bigger and take a lot longer than I planned, I promised myself I would use all of my ability to capture my experience of a particular era in an enduringly magical city, and to hopefully express it in such a way that any reader willing to embark on a journey with me, but upon finishing close the book and say, ‘Yes, I know exactly what that was like,’” Ross said in his acceptance speech.

“Winning this award makes me feel like I succeeded in that endeavor,” the author said.

Other winners included Ekow Eshun, who topped the biography category for “The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them,” which parses Black masculinity as embodied by various civil rights activists, philosophers and other visionaries, and Bryan Washington, who accepted the fiction award for “Palaver,” which details the tense reunion of a Jamaican-born mother and her queer son, who are navigating years of estrangement in Tokyo.

The 31st annual L.A. Times Festival of Books will host 500-plus authors and celebrities and 300-plus exhibitors across more than 200 events including panels, book signings and cooking demonstrations. Top-billed guests include musician-memoirist Lionel Richie, veteran actor and recent Golden Globe Carol Burnett Award honoree Sarah Jessica Parker, and the mastermind behind “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry David.

The schedule for the Saturday-Sunday event can be found here.

Here’s the full list of finalists and winners for the Book Prizes.

Robert Kirsch Award

Amy Tan

Innovator’s Award

We Need Diverse Books

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose

Adam Ross, “Playworld: A Novel”

The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

Andy Anderegg, “Plum”

Krystelle Bamford, “Idle Grounds: A Novel”

Addie E. Citchens, “Dominion: A Novel”

Justin Haynes, “Ibis: A Novel” | WINNER

Saou Ichikawa translated by Polly Barton, “Hunchback: A Novel”

Achievement in Audiobook Production, presented by Audible

Molly Jong-Fast (narrator), Matie Argiropoulos (producer); “How to Lose Your Mother”

Jason Mott, Ronald Peet, and JD Jackson (narrators), Diane McKiernan (producer); “People Like Us: A Novel”

James Aaron Oh (narrator), Linda Korn (producer); “The Emperor of Gladness: A Novel”

Imani Perry (narrator), Suzanne Mitchell (producer); “Black in Blues”

Maggi-Meg Reed, Jane Oppenheimer, Carly Robins, Jeff Ebner, David Pittu, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Mark Bramhall, Petrea Burchard, Robert Petkoff, Kimberly Farr, Cerris Morgan-Moyer, Peter Ganim, Jade Wheeler, Steve West, and Jim Seybert (narrators), Kelly Gildea (producer); “The Correspondent: A Novel” | WINNER

Biography

Joe Dunthorne, “Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance”

Ekow Eshun, “The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them” | WINNER

Ruth Franklin, “The Many Lives of Anne Frank”

Beth Macy, “Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America”

Amanda Vaill, “Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution”

Current Interest

Jeanne Carstensen, “A Greek Tragedy: One Day, a Deadly Shipwreck, and the Human Cost of the Refugee Crisis”

Stefan Fatsis, “Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary”

Brian Goldstone, “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America” | WINNER

Gardiner Harris, “No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson”

Jordan Thomas, “When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World”

Fiction

Tod Goldberg, “Only Way Out: A Novel”

Stephen Graham Jones, “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter”

Mia McKenzie, “These Heathens: A Novel”

Andrés Felipe Solano translated by Will Vanderhyden, “Gloria: A Novel”

Bryan Washington, “Palaver: A Novel” | WINNER

Graphic Novel/Comics

Eagle Valiant Brosi, “Black Cohosh”

Jaime Hernandez, “Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection” | WINNER

Michael D. Kennedy, “Milk White Steed”

Lee Lai, “Cannon”

Carol Tyler, “The Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of Grief”

History

Char Adams, “Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore”

Bench Ansfield, “Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City” | WINNER

Jennifer Clapp, “Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters”

Eli Erlick, “Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950”

Aaron G. Fountain Jr., “High School Students Unite!: Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America”

Mystery/Thriller

Megan Abbott, “El Dorado Drive” | WINNER

Ace Atkins, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World: A Novel”

Lou Berney, “Crooks: A Novel About Crime and Family”

Michael Connelly, “The Proving Ground: A Lincoln Lawyer Novel”

S.A. Cosby, “King of Ashes: A Novel”

Poetry

Gabrielle Calvocoressi, “The New Economy”

Chet’la Sebree, “Blue Opening: Poems”

Richard Siken, “I Do Know Some Things”

Devon Walker-Figueroa, “Lazarus Species: Poems”

Allison Benis White, “A Magnificent Loneliness” | WINNER

Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction

Stephen Graham Jones, “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter”

Jordan Kurella, “The Death of Mountains”

Nnedi Okorafor, “Death of the Author: A Novel”

Adam Oyebanji, “Esperance”

Silvia Park, “Luminous: A Novel” | WINNER

Science & Technology

Mariah Blake, “They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals”

Peter Brannen, “The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything: How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World”

Karen Hao, “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI” | WINNER

Laura Poppick, “Strata: Stories from Deep Time”

Jordan Thomas, “When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World”

Young Adult Literature

K. Ancrum, “The Corruption of Hollis Brown”

Idris Goodwin, “King of the Neuro Verse”

Jamie Jo Hoang, “My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser”

Trung Le Nguyen, “Angelica and the Bear Prince” | WINNER

Hannah V. Sawyerr, “Truth Is: A Novel in Verse”