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Jim Michaelian, the race car driver who helped launch the annual Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, has died. He was 83.

The Grand Prix Assn. of Long Beach confirmed his death on Saturday, just weeks before this year’s race, which is scheduled for April 17-19.

Michaelian joined the Grand Prix Assn. of Long Beach in 1975, a then-fledgling competitive race, and grew it into one of the most popular street racing events in the world. The annual three-day event draws thousands of race car enthusiasts and brings tens of millions of dollars into the city of Long Beach.

“Jim was a leader of a small, passionate group who believed in the concept of bringing elite open-wheel competition to Long Beach in the 1970s,” said Roger Penske, Penske Corporation chairman, in a statement. “His vision and energy surrounding this great event remained boundless for 50 years.”

Penske Entertainment acquired the Grand Prix Assn. of Long Beach in 2024.

Michaelian was a competitive sports car racer for more than 25 years, competing in endurance events at tracks including Le Mans, Daytona Beach, Nürburgring, Dubai and Sebring in Florida. He told The Times in 2019 that he was still racing sports cars at 76.

“As long as I can achieve some level of success, I’m going to continue doing it until they tell me I can’t anymore,” he said then.

A native of Monterey Park, Michaelian (pronounced meh-KAY-lee-un) graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in physics. But he turned his attention to business and went on to earn an MBA there. Driven by a love of motor racing, Michaelian eventually talked his way onto the staff of the Long Beach Grand Prix.

He served as the association’s controller and chief operating officer before being appointed president and chief executive in 2001. During his 51-year tenure, Michaelian transformed Long Beach into an iconic stop in the world of motor racing.

A variety of races are run during the three days on the city’s seaside streets, culminating with a big-league IndyCar Series race Sunday. The races feature different types of cars, and one is for trucks, to appeal to a broad audience.

But the Long Beach Grand Prix is more of a festival that’s been built up around the racing. There are concerts, a lifestyle expo, a kids’ zone with go-karts and other activities, along with an array of food and drink spots, all centered on the Long Beach Convention Center and Shoreline Drive.

Michaelian said he kept the pulse of the crowd by constantly walking the track to monitor how the grand prix’s fans were enjoying the activities. He would survey for problems that might need fixing or whether changes needed to be made for the following year.

“Many young people don’t want to sit in the seats now,” he told The Times in 2019. “They’re out taking selfies, they’re chronicling their experience at Long Beach, and the only way to do that is for them to get around.

“So, if they’re moving around, I’m moving around” by creating more places where they can gather, listen to music and having food options nearby, he said then.

Last year, Michaelian was inducted into the Long Beach Motorsports Walk of Fame.

“Jim was a racer’s racer and a dear friend to IMSA and the motorsports community at large,” John Doonan, president of International Motor Sports Assn., said in a statement. “We will sorely miss his presence at Long Beach and racetracks everywhere.”

The Grand Prix Assn. of Long Beach did not release his cause of death.

Michaelian is survived by his wife, Mary, and his sons, Bob and Mike.

Former Times staff writer James F. Peltz contributed to this report.

A BELOVED Australian musician has died at 65.

Eurogliders founder Bernie Lynch died after battling with throat cancer.

His death was announced this morning by fellow band member Grace Knight, who gave an emotional tribute.

Brit-born Grace wrote: “It’s with the heaviest heart I’m posting this to let everyone know that Bernie passed away last Thursday evening in palliative care in Perth.

“Some of you will be aware that Bernie was diagnosed with throat cancer in early 2024 and underwent treatment.

“I am heartbroken and don’t know how to proceed without him.”

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Grace and Bernie wed after a long relationship in the 80s.

Although they separated after just a year of marriage, the pair maintained their friendship and musical collaboration for four decades.

She added: “I can’t imagine what our lives would have looked like had we not crossed paths with each other.”

Perth musician Bernie was the guitarist, singer and songwriter behind the legendary 80s band Eurogliders.

The group were best known for hit songs Heaven (Must Be There) and We Will Together.

Heaven climbed to the heights of number two on the Australian charts in 1984 and claimed a trophy for Best Single at the Countdown Music Awards.

Bernie had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 2024 and briefly returned to the stage after successful treatment.

But the disease was found to have spread to his bones and organs and he begun to deteriorate.

The singer took to the stage for his last gig with Eurogliders in November in Sydney.

Tributes from fans flooded in, with one calling Bernie “an artistic genius”.

Another wrote that “Bernie’s prodigious song writing talent will be his everlasting legacy”.

They added: “I was thinking of you guys listening to my favourite playlist (incl No Action and Another Day) this morning.

“This news saddens me. RIP Bernie.”

One distraught fan said: “Rip Bernie and condolences to you Grace and Euroglider families.

“Grew up with your music and still listen to it today.”

When Julie Uhrman and a fledgling ownership group that would quickly grow to more than 100 announced plans to start a women’s soccer club in the summer of 2020, the goal was to build something unique and different.

And in that she was wildly successful: four years after its founding, Angel City became the most valuable team in the history of women’s professional sports while funneling millions of dollars to community programs throughout Southern California.

What the team hasn’t done is win. And that, Uhrman said, has to change.

“It’s time to win,” said Uhrman, who this month is stepping down as the team’s chief executive to take a new role as principal advisor. “We’re in L.A. We live in a city of champions and we want to be on the same mantle as them. It’s a process but we have the right team in place, on and off the pitch, to accomplish that.”

Angel City will kick off its fifth season Sunday at BMO Stadium against the Chicago Stars. Over its previous four seasons, Angel City lost 12 more games than it won, finished with a winning record only once and made just one playoff appearance. And it has used four coaches, three sporting directors and more than 70 players in its search for success.

So this year sporting director Mark Parsons and coach Alexander Straus decided to try a new approach.

“We needed to rip it up and start again,” Straus said.

As a result, more than half the players on the opening day roster weren’t with Angel City at the start of last season. And nine women who started at least a half-dozen games last season aren’t there this year.

“This is Angel City 2.0,” Parsons said. “We’ve gone through a huge amount of staff change. We’ve gone through a huge amount of roster change. And January 2026 has become Year 1.

“Year 5 is Year 1 of building what we believe is a sporting organization that can get to the top and stay at the top.”

That’s probably not what the team’s long-suffering fans wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that this is the year Angel City wins a trophy. But after watching his team finish 11th in the 14-team NWSL in 2025, Parsons said that’s not realistic.

“You don’t go from 11th to being a top-four team. I think you come from 11th and you become a playoff team ,” said Parsons who, as a manager, took a Portland Thorns team with a losing record to an NWSL Shield and a league title in his first two seasons. “Last year was a tough year. Now we’re in a better place. So we’re still on the journey.”

Angel City coach Alexander Straus watches over a practice session at the team’s training facility in Thousand Oaks in February.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

So is the league. With the addition of expansion franchises in Denver and Boston, the NWSL entered its 14th season Friday with a record 16 teams, meaning each club will play a record 30 games. The top eight finishers in the table will make the playoffs.

For Angel City, the makeover to 2.0 really launched about six months before Parsons arrived when Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, became controlling owners of the club and committed $50 million to improving it. Part of that investment paid for the purchase and renovation of a sprawling state-of-the-art training center at Cal Lutheran University and part of it allowed Parsons to come in and tear things up.

When he took over as sporting director last winter, Parsons quickly set about overhauling the roster, leaving Angel City with one of the youngest teams in the NWSL, averaging 25 years of age, this season. Two players are still in their teens and eight others have yet to turn 23.

A year ago, eight players on the roster were 32 or older.

Among the key offseason additions are defender Emily Sams, an Olympic champion with the U.S. national team, and midfielder Ary Borges, a Brazilian international. They will join a core that includes Japanese midfielder Hina Sugita and Zambian striker Prisca Chilufya, who joined the team at the end of last season.

Of the four, only Sugita, a two-time World Cup veteran, is older than 26.

“We’re getting closer to competing for trophies,” Parsons said. “But making [the] playoffs right now is a logical next step. This year is about showing that we’re going in the right direction. But we can’t jump from 11th to one. Those days are over.

“We have overachieved the last 12 months in building a sporting organization, staffing departments and [constructing a] roster. There’s going to be ups and downs this year, like there is every year.”

Goalkeeper Angelina Anderson, entering her fourth season with Angel City, making her one of the team’s longest-tenured players, believes in Parsons’ deliberate approach and is confident the team is about to turn the corner.

“Having that methodical approach is really smart and it gives us kind of an overview of like, we want to win the championship, we feel like we’re in a really good spot, but there are daily, monthly, season-long challenges that we’re going to have to overcome if that’s where we want to get to,” said Anderson, one of three team captains. “It’s actually a very smart way for all of us to manage our expectations.”

Uhrman agrees too but being realistic is hard. When she helped launch Angel City, it was with the vision of building a winning team and nearly six years later, she’s still waiting for that vision to be released.

“Our aspiration is to win the championship. Our goal is to make the playoffs,” she said. “And we feel very comfortable that we can do that. It is a process. We’re realistic about where we are in the process and what we need to do to develop and grow.

“Believing in the fact that it’s a process is comforting because we are being realistic about what we are. But that doesn’t change what we want to accomplish.”

The list of candidates running for Los Angeles city and school board offices is set, with a number of incumbents facing what could be competitive primary elections on June 2.

Fourteen Angelenos have qualified to run for mayor, including incumbent Karen Bass, City Councilmember Nithya Raman and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt.

Seven City Council incumbents face at least one challenger, while Councilmember Monica Rodriguez is running unopposed to represent her northeast San Fernando Valley district.

City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto is running against three opponents — deputy attorney general Marissa Roy, human rights attorney Aida Ashouri and Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney.

In the race for city controller, incumbent Kenneth Mejia will battle it out against Zach Sokoloff, who is on sabbatical from his job as senior vice president of asset management at Hackman Capital Partners.

For the last week and a half, workers at the City Clerk’s Office have been verifying the legitimacy of voter signatures submitted by the candidates, finishing the last batch on Friday.

Gathering the required 500 signatures is relatively easy in citywide races but harder in council and school board districts. Some candidates who submitted petitions by the March 4 deadline failed to qualify because some of their signatures were deemed invalid.

In each race, if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote in June, the top two finishers will compete in a November runoff.

The field of 14 for mayor narrowed significantly from the roughly 40 who filed initial paperwork on Feb. 7. The qualifiers include a game streamer, a singer-songwriter and a tech entrepreneur, as well as government veterans like Asaad Alnajjar, a longtime engineer for the city. Rae Huang, a pastor and housing advocate, will also appear on the ballot.

Raman, a former Bass ally, shook up the race with her surprise entry, hours before the filing deadline.

A recent poll found that about 51% of Los Angeles voters are undecided on who they want for mayor. Bass led at 20%, followed by Pratt at just over 10% and Raman at slightly more than 9%, according to the Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics poll.

Tech entrepreneur Adam Miller was supported by just over 4% of those polled, with Huang at about 3%.

In District 1, which stretches from Glassell Park and Highland Park to Chinatown and Pico Union, four challengers are looking to unseat City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez. They are Maria Lou Calanche, a former Los Angeles Police Commissioner and founder of the nonprofit Legacy LA; Nelson Grande, an executive consultant and former president of Avenida Entertainment Group; Raul Claros, founder of CD1 Coalition, which organizes cleanup days; and Sylvia Robledo, a small-business owner and former council aide.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield is terming out in District 3, leaving the race to represent the southwestern San Fernando Valley open to a newcomer. The three candidates are Timothy K. Gaspar, who founded a private insurance company; Barri Worth Girvan, a director of community affairs for an L.A. County supervisor; and Christopher Robert “C.R.” Celona, a tech entrepreneur.

In District 5, which includes Bel-Air, Westwood, Hancock Park and other West L.A. communities, Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky faces two challengers: tenants rights attorney Henry Mantel and accountant Morgan Oyler.

With Councilmember Curren Price terming out in District 9, six candidates are vying to represent parts of downtown and South L.A. They are Jose Ugarte, who was formerly Price’s deputy chief of staff; Estuardo Mazariegos, a lead organizer at the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment; nonprofit director Elmer Roldan; entrepreneur Jorge Nuño; professor and therapist Martha Sánchez; and educator Jorge Hernandez Rosas.

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Westside communities of District 11, including Brentwood, Pacific Palisades and Venice, will face off against civil rights attorney Faizah Malik.

In District 13, which includes Hollywood and East Hollywood as well as parts of Silver Lake, Echo Park and Westlake, Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez is defending his seat against three challengers. They are Colter Carlisle, vice president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council; Dylan Kendall, an entrepreneur and founder of Grow Hollywood; and Rich Sarian, vice president of strategic initiatives for the Social District.

And in District 15, which includes San Pedro and other harbor-area communities as well as Watts, Councilmember Tim McOsker is running against community organizer Jordan Rivers, who is continuing his campaign after reports that he stabbed a neighbor when he was 12. Rivers said it was an “accident” that happened a decade ago.

Three seats are open on the Los Angeles Unified School District board.

In District 2, incumbent Rocío Rivas is being challenged by Raquel Zamora, an LAUSD teacher and attendance counselor.

In District 4, incumbent Nick Melvoin is facing off against Ankur Patel, director of outreach at the Hindu University of America.

District 5 school board member Kelly Gonez is running unopposed for her third term.

At the Basement, a haunted escape room experience in Sylmar, patrons attempt to evade a deranged serial killer by solving puzzles.

Now the actors, who work as game masters and perform as distressed abductees at the venue, will be frightening their guests while under union protection.

This week, the Basement’s union voted unanimously to ratify its first working contract, making it the first and only escape room to have a union and operate under a collective bargaining agreement. The group is recognized as part of the Actors’ Equity Assn., which represents more than 51,000 actors and managers in live entertainment.

Jenna Wagner, an actor at the Basement, said the new contract, bargained by a dozen employees including herself, will “improve general unit morale.” It addresses higher wages and greater safety provisions as well as scheduling and media protections.

The Basement’s workers are the first escape room actors to successfully unionize.

(THE BASEMENT: A Live Escape Room Experience and Elwood Walker)

“It’s, of course, setting a precedent. A lot of people don’t see working at an escape room as something worthy of being recognized. Sometimes when you say, ‘I’m an actor at an escape room.’ People just say ‘Oh, OK,’” Wagner said. “It feels very validating [to unionize like this] because we are actors. We are performing every day.”

The Basement’s union was formed two years ago. Management, led by founder and chief executive Kayden Ressel, voluntarily recognized its workers’ efforts to join Actors’ Equity. Ressel said he used to work as a scare actor at haunted attractions so he understood where his employees were coming from.

“Their values seemed to be in alignment with what I really wanted my business to be in the first place. So, we were excited” about the union efforts, Ressel said. He’s hoping the finalized contract “will raise the bar” for other escape rooms.

The Sylmar attraction first opened in 2014 and employs 15 people. Across 3,000 square feet, it offers four interactive room choices where groups get to decide between escaping different areas of the haunted house. Live actors are involved in three of the four experiences. (The Basement is one of the few escape rooms to hire actors.) Two other Basement locations can be found in Las Vegas and Kansas City, Mo.

Ressel said he’s considering offering a discount of 10% to 20% for customers who belong to unions.

The popularity of escape rooms in the U.S. goes back to the early 2010s, when interest in interactive experiences was at an all-time high. Today, there are around 75 escape rooms in the L.A. area and more than 2,000 across the country. According to data from the media company Room Escape Artist and the escape room app Morty, the industry stabilized at the current facility count in 2022, after shrinking more than 10% during the pandemic.

The Basement’s workers are the first escape room actors to successfully unionize.

(THE BASEMENT: A Live Escape Room Experience and Elwood Walker)

Noah Nelson, a professor at the California Institute of the Arts and founder of immersive arts publication No Proscenium, said Actors’ Equity’s recognition of the Basement’s workers is a step in the right direction as the union welcomes more nontraditional units.

“There’s something to be said about the value of live entertainment being recognized. It goes beyond the venues that people would traditionally associate with that whether that is a regional theater, a Broadway house or a concert venue,” Nelson said. “There is an industry here that stretches beyond just the big houses, and at the end of the day, I view the signs of organizing in these spaces as nothing but a good sign for the overall health of the industry.”

The Actors’ Equity Assn. was founded in 1913 and is known for representing live performers typically in theatrical productions. In recent years, the definition of live entertainment has expanded, and Actors’ Equity has recognized performers at the Griffith Observatory, Drunk Shakespeare companies and even the dancers at the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in North Hollywood. There also are ongoing negotiations for Disneyland’s cast members and the entertainers at the Casa Bonita restaurant in Denver.

Stefanie Frey, the director of organizing and mobilization at Actors’ Equity, said in a statement that the union views “escape rooms and similar immersive entertainment experiences as another live stage.” She also said the union expects “others in this growing community will seek out our union for representation.”

Actress Brooke Shields, the president of Actors’ Equity, said, “Negotiating a first contract is always a challenge, and in this case, we had no other unionized escape rooms to use for a model.”

“These workers stuck together through a long process, and seeing what they’ve achieved, I’m sure they agree it was worth it,” she said in a statement. “They have made history for a swiftly growing sector of our industry.”

For this year’s State of the Union address, as usual, the president was the center of attention. That’s just where Donald Trump lives, so it’s no wonder that he broke his record for the length of the nationally televised speech. He was the star of his own unreality show, with an audience of tens of millions. In front of him, idolatrous Republican lawmakers popped up and down to applaud like clowns in wind-up music boxes of old.

In fact, a president comes to the Capitol as a guest in Congress’ home, there only by invitation of the speaker of the House. It’s a historical nod to the separation of powers so essential to America’s system of government. But of course Trump acts as though he owns the place. And why not? The Republican majorities in the House and Senate essentially gave him the keys and title, along with much of their constitutional power over spending, federal appointments, war powers and more.

“What a difference a president makes,” a triumphalist Trump imperiously marveled about himself on Tuesday night, after exaggerating or falsely claiming his achievements of the past year.

Got that? Even with a Congress controlled by his party, with its majorities at risk in this midterm election year because of his unpopularity, Trump couldn’t find it within his narcissistic self to share the specious credit. Then again, he does act alone most of the time, and polls show he’s getting blame, not credit, from 6 out of 10 Americans.

For the good of the nation, Congress must take back its powers from Trump and, with them, more of Americans’ attention. No less than Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, pleaded as much just days before the State of the Union address.

In concurring with the Court’s 6-3 ruling last week striking down the centerpiece of Trump’s agenda — unilateral tariffs — as a usurpation of Congress’ constitutional taxing power, Gorsuch all but implored lawmakers to restore Congress’ intended role as a co-equal branch of government — and the president to respect it as such. (Spoiler: He won’t.)

Gorsuch’s opinion was a masterclass in why the founders created Congress in the very first article of the Constitution, saving the presidency and the judiciary for the second and third articles. I don’t agree with Gorsuch on much, but his concurrence should be required reading for Trump and for members of Congress who plainly need remedial civics lessons. It’s worth quoting at length; italics are mine.

“Our founders understood that men are not angels, and we disregard that insight at our peril when we allow the few (or the one) to aggrandize their power based on loose or uncertain authority,” Gorsuch wrote.

“Yes, legislating can be hard and take time,” he closed. “And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions. And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day. In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation’s future.”

Do you know what won’t endure? Trump’s policymaking by “impulse” and fiat, by hundreds of executive orders. Indeed, it would be in his interest to work with Congress on laws that will outlive him and stand as his legacy. Yet he wants to be a king, getting quick results on a whim, by the thumbing of a tweet or a Sharpie signature on paper. Legislating requires time, compromise and ultimately sharing credit.

Perhaps that’s why Trump is so intent on erecting edifices of tangible marble and gold in Washington and beyond: Those will endure when his policies don’t. And that’s the legacy he craves — mega-ballrooms, arches, statues, busts and buildings in his name and image.

Gorsuch wasn’t in the House chamber to hear Trump’s address and his slap at the court’s tariff decision. Just four of the nine justices were, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who wrote the main opinion, and two other justices who’d joined in opposing Trump’s tariff power grab. The president insisted he’d proceed with unilateral tariffs under separate laws, adding that “congressional action will not be necessary.” Republican lawmakers applauded.

The founders, in the Constitution, required presidents to annually report on the state of the union and to “recommend” to Congress “such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” Then it’s the president’s job to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Yet as usual, Trump outlined little in the way of a legislative agenda.

The president likes to note, as he did in his address, that he’ll preside over this year’s celebrations of the nation’s 250th birthday. But he should know that the nation wasn’t born in a day, on July 4, 1776. The founders squabbled 11 years more over the Constitution, and states took another two years to ratify it.

Yes, democracy has been hard from the start. That’s why Trump’s appeal for some Americans is his action-figure persona — forget norms, laws and the Constitution.

But perhaps if Trump’s poll numbers remain in the tank, even Republicans in Congress will summon the guts to protect the institution’s powers. And if they don’t, that’s all the more reason for voters to turn the keys over to Democrats in November.

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