feature

Los Angeles has a secret magic to which you have to earn access, and the way you earn it is by making it, becoming a contributor to the city’s misapprehended culture of spectacle and soul, diversity and monolithic elitism. It’s a get-in-where-you-fit-in or get-edged-all-the-way-out kind of city, wherein a deceptively laissez-faire game of musical chairs can determine your fate. Kahlil Joseph has a private magic to which you have to earn access, and you earn it by resonating with the untapped nerve centers of Black culture that animate this city, and even then you might be denied.

Joseph is like the city (Los Angeles, not Hollywood), and the city enforces confidentiality, drive, wit, style and devotion often mistaken for diva-ism. The filmmaker and video artist moved to Los Angeles from Seattle for university, and was quickly followed by his brother, the painter Noah Davis, who would found the Underground Museum, a venue and near-speakeasy with West Coast casual gravitas and pan-African rigor and breadth, which became as important to the zeitgeist of Black Los Angeles as both brothers have.

Movie still from Kahlil Joseph’s film “Blknws: Terms & Conditions.” Funmilayo Akechukwu (Kaneza Schaal) channels a 93-year-old W.E.B Dubois, 200 years in the past.

(Courtesy Rich Spirit / BLKNWS©)

In somewhat rapid succession, Joseph lost his father, Keven Davis, an accomplished attorney who represented the likes of the Williams sisters and Wynton Marsalis, in 2012, and his brother Noah in 2015. Joseph navigated those years in the wake with unadorned reverence, while starting a family of his own and directing some of the most transcendent music videos of the 2010s. As testament to his resilience and that of the community around him, grief sharpened Joseph’s purpose and became a kind of grace he transmuted into moving images so saturated with feeling, sans easy pathos, they offered new ways of seeing. The stakes were higher and layered with the existential absurdity of abrupt shifts, which he carried with an elegant, slightly seething temperament that has found its expression in the work. It’s relevant that he shares a birthday with Miles Davis — this is Los Angeles, where it’s customary for a person to request your cosmic DNA before asking your name — and it’s relevant that like Miles, Joseph’s vocal tone is whisper-pitched, toward the mode of retreat that begets echo; you lean in and hear him twice. His quiet tone is not shyness or false modesty but circumspection and a sense of boundaries that imply respect and love for real communication. You sense this in his work ethic and what it produces, an intimacy of form that implies an almost ritualistic attentiveness to the world around him on its own terms. In the 2012 Flying Lotus music video “Until the Quiet Comes,” directed by Joseph and set in Los Angeles, death and rebirth are addressed as a duet, companions in the expansion of collective consciousness instead of foils or adversaries, as a fallen child leaves his body and returns more alive than before he was bloodied on screen. And the violent scenes aren’t grotesque or didactic — think of Miles’ muted trumpet sound reconfigured as resurrection visuals, of his ability to play and stage ballads so well that their uptempo momentum moves into territories too macabre to mute. Like Miles, Joseph tests and stretches his range.

With the closure of the family-run Underground Museum, first in 2020 and then officially in 2022, the path uptempo was visited by more obstacles and disappointments, a shift, if temporary, in Joseph’s role in the local community, as he became more private and distant from public elegy. On the phone recently, Joseph and I discussed the trauma economy, how much of a trap it is for Black art and artists, especially in this post-BLM, post-Obama, post-neoliberal dominance, post-nonprofit industrial complex dominance territory we’re all in now, whether we face it or not. As antidote and balm to the market for repackaged abjection, Joseph adapted the sensibility that makes his music video landscapes so lush and transgressive for the art world with “Blknws,” which debuted in 2019 as an imagined syndication or television network, a nonlinear merger of digitized Black archival material pulled from the center to the margins and the radical academic avant-garde — an infinitely looping ensemble wherein Fred Moten enters into conversation with memes of ghetto-fabulous street gymnasts doing backflips into a fried chicken spot, for example, collapsing so-called high and low into an endless woodshed for an impossible concert.

The result was so compelling that the project was commissioned by A24 as a feature film sans script, then purchased from them by Rich Spirit and released last year as “Blknws: Terms & Conditions.” In this longer and more structured form, what began as an intentional scattering of ashes becomes an elegiac letter home mediated by shipwreck. Joseph weaves together an imaginary “Transatlantic Biennial” and W.E.B. Dubois’ “Encyclopedia Africana” — a project that Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah transformed into a book, which Joseph’s father had given his brother before they passed. In this way, the film becomes a manifesto for alternate destinies within the Black experience, and a semi-formal goodbye letter to the delusional but politically expedient optimism of the 2010s, wherein the end of the neoliberal order becomes a gateway to renewed self-possession and agency. Since our grief is less of a ready-made commodity lately, we can reorient it around ourselves, a little safer and more sovereign from the gnawing public gaze. And we can be more honest about its paces and paths in that more autonomous landscape. “Blknws” arrives how a successful jazz album does, belligerently inconclusive about the next stylistic leaps the music might make but clearly in the process of launching in that unknown or unspeakable (perhaps secret) direction. The film is agitation made vivid and precise in the dialectic between theorized “Black Study” and practical applications of Black marronage, where we realize that big disembodied ideas are no more sophisticated than what can be danced and gestured at and spoken in our real and virtual conversations. Here, the multiverse becomes one transcendental, transatlantic consciousness where past and present, life and afterlife, blur the way they do in Joseph’s interpretation of “Until The Quiet Comes” to give us a film with a song-like hook and an album’s non-sequitur whimsy.

Movie still from Kahlil Joseph’s film “Blknws: Terms & Conditions.” The underwater study of Funmilayo Akechukwu (Kaneza Schaal) located in the hold of the ship.

(Courtesy Rich Spirit / BLKNWS©)

Over the last several months, I’ve discussed with Joseph what might become of the momentum propelling “Blknws: Terms & Conditions,” after the film’s run, as speculators enclose searching for clues and stake in his next project. He’s considered its potential evolution into a media company, a real paper, a production house, a series of related films, or a hybrid of all of these endeavors. Alongside his experience on all sides of the art world, he has an acute awareness of the wayward state of print and digital culture, writing and production, the constant closure or downsizing of veteran media outlets, the aftermath of diversity fever in the form of shrinking major magazines often starting with those who cover culture explicitly, the mass turn toward brand-name digital platforms that become extractive monopolies and diminish what can be covered and produced as writers and artists are overworked, understaffed and undervalued. Galleries are also closing and downsizing, and films that don’t oblige the content farm aren’t solicited as readily as influencer-helmed or easily digestible projects that can be played as background noise for scrolling.

After a screening last December of “Blknws: Terms & Conditions” at 2220 Arts + Archives, a space I co-curate, the rapt audience of local cinephiles seemed eager for some magic-bullet insight into Joseph’s path to creative breakthrough and relative creative freedom. Rather than hacks and shortcuts, he shouted out collaborators and inspirations — Wales Bonner, who hand-stitched garments for the film’s Ghana-based scenes; British composer Klein, who helped score the film; Joseph’s time in Brazil, where his father was from and where he went to high school. Sensibility and natural eclecticism, rather than unchecked ambition, is what propels Joseph; he has an innate knack for assembling bands and ensembles, good taste and good timing.

Kahlil Joseph with friends at the screening of “Blknws: Terms & Conditions.”

“I found the encyclopedia at the Underground,” he explains, of the DuBois work that became central to “Blknws.” “It seemed no one had looked through it, as if my dad and brother left it for me in the future.” And instead of ruminating on the weight of that inheritance, he integrates it into his film, whose refrain-as-question is do you remember the future? As if his father and brother are awake in some scenes, asking him to remember. Another resurrection. “I just want to make films,” Joseph reaffirms as a personal coda when the questions get too meta or abstract, never conflating the material conditions of the craft with the magical thinking that can unfold in scripts and on screen. Most everyone in attendance at 2220 seemed to be there to meet or support one of their favorite artists, one of the devout purists of our time who manages to remain that without getting smug, lazy or feral, all common pitfalls.

Last October, I gave Joseph a copy of Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast,” which I’d just finished reading myself for the first time. I was impressed to the point of restlessness with the authority of Hemingway’s memory, his recall; it’s one of those books you wanna throw at the wall and absorb word for word at the same time. Hemingway seemed to effortlessly savor and store every detail of his days, while remaining agile and present enough within them to focus on writing one true thing after another, in his daily sessions at the typewriter, as if possessing two coterminal minds and the capacity to access or silence both at will. A juggler too advanced for the circus, language’s great folk hero. Joseph is kind of like this, capable of intense simultaneous focus on both creative and mundane tasks without complaint, and he took to the book as I expected he might, sharing my sense of awe over the writer’s command of time and scene. They are both among the artists who have a polite way of making those around them feel like a team and want to work a little harder and little less aggressively (more communally) at the same time. Editors at his post-production studio have come from all over the country to work with him based on that leadership.

Joseph’s next feature, he suggests, will certainly be more narrative, more of a linear beginning-middle-end story, more Hemingway-esque in its commitments to the blunt daily reality that “Blknws” blurs with Black myth. He and his family have sacrificed unquantifiably in effort to defy stale archetypes and outdated patterns of art practice, and it might be his time or turn to be reciprocated for having endured those risks, time to give his family unequivocal and vivid afterlives on and off screen.

Britannia Hotels has been named the UK’s worst hotel chain for 12 consecutive years by Which? So I decided to book a stay at Britannia Hampstead to see if it really is as bad as everyone says

There aren’t many hotels that slap a £10 charge on opening windows or appear completely deserted in the run-up to Christmas. And there’s just one hotel chain that’s been crowned the worst in Britain for 12 years running.

To sample such treats, you need to book yourself into a Britannia.

The chain has become the stuff of folklore. Half a century after launching its first property, the Country House Hotel in Didsbury, Manchester, it has expanded to roughly 60 locations spanning the UK before acquiring Pontins.

Yet, the tale isn’t entirely rosy. Britannia has faced severe criticism over the years from disgruntled guests who claim it has transformed once-magnificent buildings into grubby, disagreeable, and uncomfortable accommodation that fails to deliver value, even at rock-bottom prices.

My initial encounter with Britannia occurred back in 2022, during those heady post-lockdown months when I caught the train to Bournemouth to stay at a hotel that has since been converted to accommodate asylum seekers. The jammed-shut windows and overpowering paint fumes made for a sweltering and clammy evening, whilst the empty outdoor pool, abandoned underwear in the courtyard, and scattered laughing gas canisters only heightened the overwhelming atmosphere of abandonment, reports the Mirror.

Have you had a memorable hotel stay, either good or bad? Email webtravel@reachplc.com

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With those troubling images fresh in my mind, I approached my local Britannia with considerable apprehension, eager to discover whether Britain’s most criticised hotel chain had made any improvements.

It hadn’t.

The Britannia Hampstead proved to be a dispiriting experience, though in distinctly different ways to its coastal sister property. Here’s how it stacked up against a recent stay at The Manor in Blakeney, North Norfolk. The Manor belongs to the Coaching Inn Group, which Which? readers crowned the UK’s best large hotel chain of 2025, whilst Britannia languished at the very bottom. This is what distinguishes excellence from mediocrity.

Atmosphere

During my Bournemouth expedition, there was considerably more activity. The hotel felt inhabited.

I was acutely aware of this because I could hear bickering couples and other guests’ television programmes seeping through my bedroom walls. I’d have gladly welcomed even the faintest sounds of human presence during this visit.

The six-floor London establishment, spacious enough to accommodate a 350-capacity conference suite, felt utterly deserted. The fairy lights twinkled away, yet the place seemed abandoned entirely.

By contrast, The Manor radiated energy. Despite being a solid hour’s bike ride from the nearest railway station, even during the depths of November, it bustled with life, warmth and friendliness.

Staff members were keen to engage in conversation, as were the patrons gathered at the bar, savouring special weekend breaks or enjoying a swift beverage in what doubled as their neighbourhood watering hole.

Accommodation

My stay at the Hampstead Britannia, while not award-winning, was a marked improvement from my experience in Bournemouth. In Bournemouth, I was greeted by a lone dead fly on the windowsill and a heavily stained armchair.

A protruding screw from a picture frame added to the room’s charm. For several hours, we were left in the dark as all lights, except for the bathroom’s, were non-functional. The only source of noise was the ear-splitting extractor fan until a friendly receptionist revealed that the main electricity switch was cunningly hidden beneath the kettle.

In contrast, my North London accommodation was simply… uninspiring. It was so spotless that my UV torch couldn’t detect a speck of dirt.I suspect the overpowering smell of cleaning products played a part in this. The decor consisted of dated, predominantly brown furniture, but it wasn’t offensive.

At times during the night, the absence of windows made me feel like I was serving time. However, I managed to sleep, wake up, and escape to share my story. Meanwhile, over in Norfolk, the situation is quite different. The Manor boasts 36 rooms, with the most affordable option available for £99 next week.

It offers typical budget hotel amenities, but with a touch of quality. There’s a cosy double bed, a decent-sized telly, and a tastefully decorated bathroom. Everything is sturdy, clean, and inviting.

Staff

Regarding the staff at the Britannia hotel that evening, I honestly can’t grumble too much. They appeared pleasant enough, though perhaps somewhat preoccupied during our brief exchanges.

The person on reception couldn’t quite explain why the restaurant and bar had shut up shop. Beyond that, my contact with employees was largely confined to curious glances thrown my way as I sat with my book in the deserted foyer.

By contrast, the Manor is entirely staff-focused. A significant number have clocked up well over a decade of service there.

Roughly half appear to belong to the Hill family, including Tore, Karen, Sophie and Wayne. Throughout my visit, they were consistently available to check everything was as it should be and to share local knowledge.

For myself, and the talkative regulars who greeted staff by their first names, this genuine friendliness is a huge selling point. It elevates the establishment from merely somewhere to kip and grab dinner, into a welcoming retreat where you actually want to spend time.

Location

This ought to be where Britannia excels. In my view, guests put up with substandard accommodation because of the ease of stumbling back to a city centre location following a work trip or lads’ weekend.

The Hampstead property delivers none of that convenience. It’s not close enough to either the Heath or Camden to genuinely claim either neighbourhood, and it’s an absolute trek from central London.

I can only picture the letdown awaiting tourists who hadn’t done their homework before making a reservation. Blakeney, by contrast, is a delightful destination.

The hotel sits just metres from the River Glaven, which meanders through the National Nature Reserve. The nearby Blakeney Point is famous for its seal colonies, with Beans Boat providing guided tours year-round.

Most Coaching Inn Group hotels occupy similarly picturesque and secluded rural settings.

Price

According to its website, windowless rooms at the London Britannia start from £55. However, mine came to nearly £90 including breakfast. Had I chosen the coveted window option, the cost would’ve reached the £100 mark.

Rooms at the Manor average £128 per night. Whilst that’s hardly bargain-basement, the Which? survey saw the hotel achieve four out of five stars for value for money – one of only two establishments to do so.

The other was Wetherspoons. I stayed at the Spoons Hotel in Canterbury last November, where overnight accommodation costs just £55, with an average price of £70.

Spoons comfortably wins the value crown in my opinion, with Coaching Inn Group trailing close behind. Britannia, though, delivers precious little for what represents a substantial price tag.

According to Which?, the average room rate across all its hotels stands at £84. Even in today’s money, that’s disappointing.

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The verdict

Nothing during my Britannia stay persuaded me that it’s improving or likely to shake off its unwanted ‘worst in class’ reputation any time soon. I’m confident it’ll claim the bottom position for a thirteenth consecutive year.

Britannia’s business model appears to involve acquiring impressive historic buildings and offering rooms at budget-friendly prices. Given the sheer scale of these properties, undertaking comprehensive modern refurbishments would represent a substantial financial gamble.

It seems the company’s leadership has calculated that maintaining minimal overheads is preferable, even if profit margins remain modest. The consequence is a chain comprising numerous dilapidated establishments that routinely disappoint guests.

By contrast, Coaching Inn Group demonstrates how things should be done. For virtually identical rates, guests can enjoy stays at its delightful properties, complete with cosy, welcoming rooms and employees who appear genuinely passionate about their roles.

Frankly, there’s simply no comparison between the two.

Britannia has been contacted for comment.

Super Bow LX is set for Sunday in Santa Clara, and don’t be surprised if someone who played high school football in the Southland on the Seattle Seahawks or New England Patriots makes a big play or even becomes the game MVP.

In fact, if you want to make a hunch bet in Las Vegas, former Narbonne linebacker Uchenna Nwosu of the Seahawks might be someone to consider. He’s the only athlete from the City Section competing, and two former Super Bowl MVPs were John Elway from Granada Hills and Malcolm Smith from Taft.

Nwosu has quite a story. He never started at Narbonne until his senior year. He was a junior varsity player focused on basketball.

His football coach, Manuel Douglas, remembers a meeting with Nwosu, who wanted to give up the sport.

“Coach, I’m not going to make it in football,” Nwosu told him.

“What are you an idiot?” Douglas said. “You’re 6-2 and too small for basketball.”

Douglas said, “He always had the grades. He just had to wait his turn. He had a moment he was going to quit and I wasn’t going to let him.”

Nwosu started 14 games his senior year in 2013, became the captain at USC and was a second-round draft pick of the Chargers.

“Perseverance,” is the word Douglas used to describe how Nwosu finds himself starting in the Super Bowl.

“He’s had to work from the beginning,” Douglas said. “People have their moments when they falter, but he never gave up.”

Among the other Southland high school graduates:

In 2017, USC quarterback Sam Darnold visits his former teammates at San Clemente High.

(Los Angeles Times)

Sam Darnold, quarterback, San Clemente: The hero of the Seahawks’ offense and the first former USC quarterback to play in a Super Bowl has been a legend in San Clemente for years.

Said San Clemente coach Jaime Ortiz: “Sam has continued to be the same Sam he was in high school. He is the leader of the locker room where he sets the example and makes everyone around him better. He is a man of few words and lets his actions do the talking. He is the ultra competitor and when he steps onto the field or basketball court, he was there to win.”

Former St. Monica receiver Kyle Williams now plays for the Patriots.

(St. Monica Yearbook)

Kyle Williams, receiver, St. Monica: The Patriots took a chance on a 5-foot-10 receiver, making him a third-round pick from Washington State.

Said St. Monica coach Thomas Barnes: “He is living and walking proof that a kid from St. Monica Prep can make it all the way to the big time. You don’t have to go to one of the big name schools, go to St. Monica and become the big name.”

Former St. John Bosco running back George Holani in 2023 for Boise State. He plays for the Seahawks.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

George Holani, running back, St. John Bosco: A backup running back for the Seahawks who’s filled in for the injured Zach Charbonnet, Holani twice ran for more than 1,000 yards at St. John Bosco before starring at Boise State.

Said coach Jason Negro: “I’m not surprised one bit in George’s journey from Bosco to the Super Bowl. He took the lessons he learned here and the ones that were instilled in him by his family and continued to climb the professional sports ladder.

“George is one of the most humble and hard-working individuals I’ve ever encountered in my career. He’s built on loyalty and culture, which is why he took the path from Bosco to Boise State.

“He trusted the process and understood he needed to be rooted in who he was to get to his ultimate destination, which is playing in the biggest game in the world.”

Chargers running back J.K. Dobbins (27) attempts to evade a tackle by Patriots linebacker Jahlani Tavai (48) in 2024.

(Greg M. Cooper / Associated Press)

Jahlani Tavai, linebacker, Mira Costa: Just looking at the family history of the Tavai family in the South Bay means there will be plenty of people cheering for him and the Patriots. There are six brothers, all of whom played football.

Said coach Don Morrow: “Jahlani deserves a lot of credit. He was a great athlete coming out of Mira Costa but wasn’t the biggest guy. He was tall and lanky. He really changed his body at Hawaii and got really strong and moved to linebacker.”

Mission Viejo wide receiver Brenden Schooler looks for room to run against Norco in 2015.

(Los Angeles Times)

Brenden Schooler, safety, Mission Viejo: The Patriots once had one of the most famous special teams player in Matthew Slater from Servite. Now Schooler is getting noticed after being signed as a free agent in 2022. He made the Pro Bowl in 2024.

Said defensive coordinator Brett Paton: “Brenden was alway the guy who did extra, first in and last out. Made everyone around him a winner, held his teammates to a higher standard, really good leader. And always came up with the big play when we needed it. In the CIF championship game versus Vista Murrieta, he had the game-changing pick at safety.”