Past the halfway mark of the Olympic quadrennial, LA28 has passed its own halfway point for ticket sales.
LA28 announced Friday it sold more than 6 million tickets during its first two drops, accounting for more than half of the expected Olympic ticket availability.
The remainder of an estimated 10.5 million Olympic tickets will move to first-come, first-served sales beginning in 2027. Additional inventory across every sport will be added during the next stage and ticket limits will be lifted, but LA28 did not announce the opening date.
“Overall the level of enthusiasm, the interest in the Games, the excitement to commit this far out from the Games has all been really affirming for how LA28 is coming together and the excitement everyone’s feeling about it,” said Allison Katz-Mayfield, LA28’s senior vice president of Games delivery revenue.
More than 700,000 of one million $28 tickets were sold during the first two drops. While fans have clamored for tickets, many were disappointed and frustrated with high prices and limited availability that seemed to sell out almost instantaneously. Each LA28 ticket drop came with the fine-print condition of “subject to availability.”
LA28 wanted to be “conservative” with the initial inventory available during the first two drops, Katz-Mayfield said, because organizers didn’t want to sell tickets only to discover later that fans might be stuck with limited visibility of an event. For example, Crypto.com Arena’s footprint will be changed to accommodate artistic gymnastics, with up to six apparatuses on the floor along with areas for judges, broadcast positions and media. The seating plan, which will be different than ones used for Lakers games or concerts, is still being developed. The same goes for the planning of temporary venues.
“It’s a fan-focused approach from my perspective,” Katz-Mayfield said. “We don’t want to be in a position where we sell something that doesn’t equate to the experience that someone is expecting to have.”
LA28 said more tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis for every sport next year as organizers refine venue layouts. Tickets that appear unavailable one day could go on the market weeks later as organizers gain a clearer picture of setups. With first-come, first-serve purchasing, the ticketing platform will remain open continuously through the Games.
“If you’re one of those people that has a very, very specific idea of what they want and they don’t want to move off that at all … then continue to check back because we’ll have tickets on sale through Games time,” Katz-Mayfield said. “So you can check on that first day. But you could also check two months later, and it could be different.”
New sports remained a hit for fans, who scooped up all available tickets to softball, lacrosse, flag football and squash during the second drop, LA28 reported. All tickets available for Oklahoma City’s softball and canoe slalom events were sold through for both drops. More tickets for those events will be added in 2027.
Although many fans have their hearts set on a single, high-demand Olympic event, others might be open to discovering different sports during the Paralympics. Tickets for the Paralympics will also go on sale in 2027, beginning with a lottery for assigned time slots, similar to the first Olympic ticket drops. About 25% of the total 14 million tickets between the Games are earmarked for the Paralympics, which will be in L.A. for the first time.
The Paralympics are typically priced at much lower prices than the Olympics. The Paris Olympics had single tickets as high as $1,065 (980 euros in July 2024) for swimming and track and field and as low as $26 across all sports. Half a million tickets for the Paris Paralympics were $16 and half of all tickets were priced less than $27. There were also Paralympic ticket packages for multiple sports and families. The strategy paid off with approximately 2.5 million tickets sold, the second-most ever for a Paralympic Games, and a record 12 million total tickets sold between the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics.
Despite starting earlier than previous Games, LA28 said it is already on pace to surpass Paris’ sales record after the 2024 Games sold 5.39 million tickets through their second drop in May 2023. Paris sold 9.5 million Olympic tickets total.
Fans who registered for Olympics tickets will already be registered for the Paralympic lotteries and LA28 is working to open registration specifically for the Paralympics.
“[Don’t] forget how great the Paralympics are,” Katz-Mayfield said, “and how much opportunity there’s going to be there to see different sports, new sports, be a part of the Games, and see world-class athletes compete, maybe in a way that you haven’t seen before if you’ve only seen the Olympics.”
Selling millions of tickets before schedules or matchups are even set has “given [LA28] a lot of confidence in where we’re at today,” Katz-Mayfield said. The early ticket sales have given the private organizing committee a strong foundation for one of its largest revenue drivers.
Ticketing and hospitality are expected to cover almost $2.5 billion of LA28’s total $7.1-billion budget for the Games. It is the second-largest source of expected revenue to help cover what LA28 has promised will be a privately funded Games.
Community activist Karen Bass achieved a decisive victory in the Democratic primary for the 47th state Assembly district by assembling a coalition that extended beyond the traditional base of African American voters to include Latinos and organized labor.
That broader coalition, which allowed her to trounce two candidates who have long been part of the African American political establishment in the area, may signal a changing of the guard in South Los Angeles. The district extends from Westwood through Culver City to the Crenshaw area.
Bass captured 48% of the vote in the Democratic primary, while Nate Holden, who represented part of the area as a state legislator and city councilman for 20 years, received 21%. Attorney Rickey Ivie finished a distant third, despite support from many of the area’s most prominent black leaders, including current Assemblyman Herb Wesson (D-Culver City), County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, City Councilman Bernard C. Parks and state Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City).
Bass and political experts said that her campaign had benefited from demographic shifts, grass-roots organizing and the power of organized labor.
The candidate said people had seemed to appreciate that, before running for office, she had toiled in the community for more than a decade as the executive director of the Community Coalition, a group that led the fight against rebuilding liquor stores in South Los Angeles after the 1992 riots, and championed education reform for schools in poor neighborhoods.
“I think the idea of new leadership resonated,” Bass, 50, said Wednesday. “People wanted a new style of leadership. I think they liked the fact that I was an activist who had been deeply involved in the community for years.”
Working in the community gave Bass a huge base of grass-roots supporters to draw on in one of the most ethnically diverse districts in the state, said Los Angeles City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, who, along with Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D- Los Angeles), formed a powerful group of Latino leaders that backed Bass.
“She has demonstrated that successful candidates in multiracial districts are going to have to build coalitions, and Karen Bass has been building coalitions for 30 years,” Villaraigosa said. Bass benefited from a $250,000 independent campaign by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which also flooded the district with 450 volunteers to get out the vote on election day.
“She is part of a new paradigm, of an African American/labor alliance for South Los Angeles,” said Miguel Contreras, head of the labor organization.
The 47th Assembly District was redrawn in 2002 to make it less heavily African American, making it imperative to build alliances beyond a single ethnic group. That’s an increasingly important skill in Los Angeles, where the growing Latino population means there are few areas where someone can be elected with the support of black voters alone.
Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles), a Bass backer, said Bass had done the best job of reaching out to diverse groups. Bass said she had courted Jewish voters in the western end of the district, while organized labor had helped her by targeting Latino voters on her behalf. Ideology also played a role, Ridley-Thomas said, saying that Bass is more liberal than Ivie, Wesson and Burke.
“Ivie is a middle-of-the road, moderate Democrat and Karen is definitely left of center and progressive,” said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State L.A..
A Baldwin Vista resident who teaches health communications at the USC School of Medicine, Bass agreed that she was a better ideological match with voters in the predominantly Democratic district.
The 47th Assembly District was one of 100 state Senate and Assembly contests that drew California voters to the polls Tuesday.
Though Tuesday’s winners must still compete in the November general election, most districts have been drawn to strongly favor either Republicans or Democrats. As a result, odds are good that the people who will take seats as new lawmakers in December will include Van Tran, who would become the first Vietnamese American elected to the Legislature, and Lori Saldana, a San Diego community college teacher who shocked the Democratic establishment by spending just $50,000 to beat other Democrats who enjoyed hundreds of thousands of dollars of support from some of the biggest interests trying to influence the Legislature.
Saldana’s clear win over former Gov. Gray Davis aide Vince Hall and Democratic pollster Heidi Von Szeliski was the biggest decided upset in the state, but three races were too close to call Wednesday as counties tallied absentee ballots.
Interest groups, including trial lawyers, business groups and unions, sank nearly $7 million into races, either directly or through independent expenditure campaigns, but no special interest group emerged as a clear winner.
The election allowed some politicians to extend their careers, including Board of Equalization member Carole Migden, who won the Democratic primary in a liberal San Francisco state Senate district, and Assemblyman John Campbell (R-Irvine), who beat fellow Assemblyman Ken Maddox (R-Garden Grove) for the Republican nomination in a conservative Orange County Senate district. Johan Klehs, a Democrat who has served eight years in the Assembly and six years on the Board of Equalization, appears headed back to the Assembly. Unopposed, he won the nomination in a Democratic-leaning district east of San Francisco.
Another former assemblyman seeking a comeback, Democrat Tom Umberg, had a slight lead of 51.2% to 48.8% over opponent Claudia Alvarez in the heavily Latino 69th Assembly District, which includes Santa Ana. Alvarez held out hope Wednesday that the absentee ballot tally could swing the race her way.
Also awaiting absentee ballot results were the trial lawyers who sank hundreds of thousands of dollars into the 21st Assembly District south of San Francisco. A four-way race among Democrats has been narrowed to a neck-and-neck contest between Redwood City Councilman Ira Ruskin, with 37.4% of the precinct vote and attorney Joe Carcione, with 36.6%.
I spent my 10-year-old niece’s last week of summer freedom with her, jumping into and swimming in our family’s lake and overall being feral in nature.
She told me after our trip that she was dreading her return to school, communicating her Gen Alpha feelings via a simple broken heart emoji. It felt too soon for me too.
That energy is what inspired this week’s edition of The Wild, our weekly outdoors newsletter. Below I outline three great hikes around Los Angeles that are kid-friendly and great options to decompress after your family’s first week back to school (including if you’re a kid-free household with a tired educator). I hope you find these trails as rejuvenating as I did!
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Before we dive in, a few quick reminders:
You will not have cellphone reception for at least two of these hikes. Download trail maps ahead of time on your hiking navigation app, and also download an offline map of your driving route on your phone’s GPS navigation app.
Pack extra water, especially if traveling to the San Gabriel Mountains, as mountain weather can be hard to predict, and it can be hotter than you anticipate.
Take your time on twisting mountain roads; use paved vehicle turnouts to let faster traffic pass you, and watch out for cyclists; turn on your headlights when entering Angeles National Forest, regardless of the time of day.
Let someone know where you’re going, including what time you’ll be back. Place a completed version of this form (or something like it) on your vehicle’s dashboard — just in case!
And practice Leave No Trace principles, including not feeding any wildlife, picking up after yourself (including toilet paper) and not playing any loud music, as it bothers grumpy hikers like me and also the wildlife (the latter being more important than the former).
OK, now that you’re prepared to be safe and good to nature, let’s talk about those hikes!
The view of the L.A. area and our local mountains from Bee Rock in Griffith Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
1. Old Zoo — Bee Rock Loop (Griffith Park Explorer Segment 7)
Distance: 5 miles Elevation gained: 930 feet Difficulty: Moderate Dogs allowed: Yes Nearest to: Atwater Village Accessible alternative: Rio de Los Angeles Park loop
The Old Zoo — Bee Rock Loop is a 5-mile hike that takes you up to Bee Rock, an epic lookout point in Griffith Park. The route is part of Friends of Griffith Park’s Griffith Park Explorer, which organizes official trails into 15 hikeable segments (rather than you getting lost or ending your hike far from where you parked — not that I’ve ever experienced that).
I have passed Bee Rock at least a dozen times and each time told my hiking companion, “I really need to hike up there sometime!” I finally did last week, and I am already itching to return.
After leaving, I wanted to know how this local monolith got its name. I went to The Times’ archives, where I couldn’t find a precise answer.
Bee Rock as seen from the Bill Eckert Trail in Griffith Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
“Bee Rock acquired its name from the millions of bees which store their honey in its tiny caves which honeycomb it,” a March 1940 Times story read. Seems reasonable.
Retired ranger Bill Eckert told hikers per a 1985 story that Bee Rock got its name “because bees were attracted to the sweets at the old zoo’s refreshment stands and made their homes in the rock’s crevices.”
Eckert has a trail named after him, so I did feel inclined to believe his story.
As I searched for a clear answer, I felt better when I discovered that even experts like Gerry Hans, president of nonprofit Friends of Griffith Park, aren’t sure.
“There are theories and legends,” Hans wrote in a blog post in 2022. “The first is that the outcrop simply looks like a beehive. Another tale describes maintenance workers at the Old Zoo dumping spoiled soda syrup off the cliff, which lured swarms of bees. A third theory suggests that bees naturally take up residence in the holes and pocks on the cliff side overlooking Spring Canyon.”
Hans wrote that he had seen bees in the rock’s small caverns, but to do so, you must have good binoculars.
Armed with those facts and maybe some binocs, you can head out on the trail.
To begin your hike, you’ll park at Merry Go Round Lot One and head to the Lower Beacon Trail just past the southeast corner of the parking lot. Take good care in selecting where to start, as there are about five different paths you could take here.
You will head west on the Lower Beacon Trail, briefly walk southwest along the Fern Canyon Trail before taking the Upper Zoo Trail for much of the way. You’ll reach the Bee Rock Trail at 1 mile into your hike.
Views from the Bee Rock Trail around golden hour in Griffith Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
You will follow the Bee Rock trail northwest for a short jag before you come to what might feel like a dead end.
The Bee Rock Trail narrows and heads south. You will take a few switchbacks up, wondering how you suddenly became surrounded in tree canopy. Hopefully the sky is helicopter-free and you can hear the local chatter of acorn woodpeckers and California scrub jays.
You’ll arrive at a chain-link fence where you can take a narrow dirt path to the rocky outcropping atop Bee Rock. If hiking with children, it’d be good for the adults to go first, as there are a few spots where the fence has been cut, and the allure of venturing farther than one should out onto boulders is high.
The view is stunning, and on a Thursday evening, I had it all to myself as the sun lowered near the horizon. It was a clear day, and I could see a large swath of Glendale and nearby Mt. Thom and Tongva Peak in the Verdugos and farther away Josephine Peak, Strawberry Peak and several other summits in the San Gabriel Mountains.
From here, you can turn around and head back to your car, especially if the smaller hikers among you are tired, or continue onward to complete the loop. The rest of the trail is not challenging, as you’re either walking on a flat trail or headed downhill. And it’s generally not crowded. If you’re hiking with a teenager, the rest of the trail offers a quiet few miles to talk together about the school day.
One of the pools along Soldier Creek.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
2. Lewis Falls
Distance: About a mile out and back Elevation gained: About 300 feet Difficulty: Easy, but requires proper footwear Dogs allowed: Yes Nearest to: North of Azusa Accessible alternative: West Fork National Scenic Bikeway
The 1-mile out-and-back trek to Lewis Falls offers hikers a gorgeous journey along Soldier Creek, lined with California bay laurels, oak trees and hulking old conifers. The trail runs mostly parallel to the creek until you reach its end, where you must cross the creek, rocks and logs to reach Lewis Falls.
You will start by finding parking, its own adventure, as there is no lot. Rather, you will need to find a spot along Highway 39 near the trailhead. I didn’t have any trouble on a weekday, but on a weekend, it might be more challenging. That is essentially the only real downside of this trail.
A large old conifer provides shade along Soldier Creek.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
You will hike slightly northeast for about half a mile before reaching the falls. Along the way, you’ll have ample opportunity to take a dip in Soldier Creek, as multiple pools remain, even this late in our summer.
If you find yourself saying, “Wow, this trail is really steep,” you are likely on the wrong path. You will spot multiple spur trails, likely created by either an impatient human or dexterous deer. You can identify them mostly by looking them over and realizing they offer a quicker, more dangerous option than the trail before you.
Soldier Creek features several shorter waterfalls as well as nearby Lewis Falls.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Although it is generally called Lewis Falls by hikers, the cascade historically had a different name.
“Longtime San Gabriel Mountains visitors and old maps refer to Soldier Creek Falls as ‘Lewis Falls,’ in honor of forest ranger Anselmo Lewis, who once patrolled these parts,” former Times outdoors writer John McKinney wrote in a 1998 article.
Although this trail is short, it does require a bit of technical expertise but nothing too tricky. You will find yourself navigating boulders and, at one point, using a root to step down onto the rest of the trail. It requires just a little patience and looking ahead of yourself to determine the safest route.
I was greeted by small blue dragonflies as I hiked along the creek. Instead of racing back to my car, I lay down on a log and listened to the sounds of rushing water and chirping birds. Soldier Creek provides any hiker willing to slow down with an opportunity to reset, regardless of whether you have homework waiting for you at home.
And if you aren’t ready to go home, consider heading five miles north on Highway 39 to the Crystal Lake Recreation Area, where further adventure — and a snack at the Crystal Lake Cafe — awaits.
Once you reach Mt. Hillyer, you’ll be greeted by large rocks that are fun to scramble along.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
3. Mt. Hillyer via Silver Moccasin Trail
Distance: 5.8-mile lollipop loop Elevation gained: About 1,100 feet Difficulty: Moderate Dogs allowed: Yes Nearest to: About 45 minutes northeast of La Cañada Flintridge Accessible alternative: Paved paths through Chilao Campground
This 6-mile jaunt along the Silver Moccasin Trail, which is just over 50 miles when fully open, takes you through high desert and pine trees.
Shaped like a lollipop, the trailhead sits about half a mile northwest of the Chilao Visitor Center, which is typically open on the weekend. You will head north for a mile before turning left (or west) off the Silver Moccasin Trail.
You will follow Horse Flats Road to the Rosenita Saddle trailhead, where you’ll take the trail southwest to Mt. Hillyer.
Views of the San Gabriel Mountains from the trail to Mt. Hillyer.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Keep an eye out for Jeffrey pines, which will have deeply furrowed bark and round prickly cones. Their bark smells like butterscotch or vanilla, which I always love pausing to sniff.
The trail also features Coulter pines that produce massive cones nicknamed widowmakers because of their size. The Coulter pine cones can weigh up to 11 pounds. If you’re in the area when it’s windy, please watch your head.
To reach Mt. Hillyer, you’ll follow a short spur trail about half a mile southwest from the Rosenita Saddle trailhead. Mt. Hillyer features several large boulders, perfect for kids to scramble and play on. It’ll also offer you sweeping views of the San Gabriel Mountains.
A hiker takes the path to Mt. Hillyer in the winter in Angeles National Forest.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
You can make the trail a loop by continuing south until it jags back east, meeting back up with the paved road you previously took.
And for the ultimate weekend adventure, grab a first-come, first-served campsite at Chilao Campground, and then you can hike and check out the Chilao Visitor Center, which is open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday through November. As a bonus, there’s a short, flat nature trail at the east end of the nature center parking lot where you can typically find massive Coulter pine cones to inspect. A seasonal creek flows through this area too.
Regardless of which option you choose, I hope you make great memories in our local public lands.
3 things to do
The Milky Way is seen in the western night sky near Mt. Pinos in the Los Padres National Forest.
(Raul Roa / Los Angeles Times)
1. Ponder astrophysics in Pasadena Caltech will host a stargazing lecture from 8 to 10 p.m. Friday at the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (1216 E. California Blvd. in Pasadena). Philosophy professor Charles “Chip” T. Sebens will lecture about basic questions that remain regarding atoms. A Q&A and then guided stargazing will follow. The event is free, and no registration is required. Learn more at events.caltech.edu.
2. Improve insect habitat near Altadena The Invertebrate Club of Southern California needs volunteers from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday at Eaton Canyon. Participants will yank invasive plants to help restore the canyon. Volunteers must be 14 years or older. Registration is required. Sign up at signupgenius.com.
3. Peek at sandpipers in Pacoima The San Fernando Valley Audubon Society will host a bird walk from 8 to 10 a.m. Saturday. Guests will meet at the ranger station (10965 Dronfield Ave. in Pacoima) before heading out on a 1- to 3-mile walk through riparian areas, grassy lawns and unique rock formations. Birders can expect to see 30 to 50 species. Learn more at the group’s Instagram page.
The must-read
Johnson’s Beach, along the Russian River, is one of the most popular spots along the lower Russian River.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The lower Russian River and the small communities along the watercourse in Sonoma County offer visitors every kind of adventure, whether you want to stay in a tent and simply float or you want a high-end outdoors experience. That’s what I gleaned from reading Times staff writer Christopher Reynolds’ article about how to get the most out of a visit to the Northern California sylvan paradise. “On summer weekends, thousands show up in Guerneville with kayaks, canoes, inner tubes — just about anything that will float, preferably with a cooler attached,” Reynolds writes. “Then they spend hours gliding downstream past scenery that might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.”
After finishing the piece, I immediately searched online for how far away L.A. is from Guerneville. It’s a long drive, but my colleague makes it sure feel worth it.
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
Everyone should feel safe to recreate and work in outdoor spaces. To better ensure Deaf and Hard of Hearing folks feel supported wherever you recreate or volunteer, consider taking CorpsTHAT‘s upcoming “ASL for the Outdoors” virtual classes. Classes run from September to November and range from beginner to advanced. The fee is $250 per student. You can learn more, including how to register, at the organization’s website.
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
The best part of a Happy Meal is the toy that comes with your food. But now that you’re all grown up, you might be looking for a different type of treat.
In an effort to fill seats during off hours and typically slow nights, L.A.’s restaurants and bars are tempting patrons with discounted burger combos that replace toys with cocktails. It’s an adult take on a kid’s Happy Meal. These deals also address a growing concern among restaurant-goers regarding the price of dining out, a cost that has risen in recent years due to factors such as increased minimum wage, rising rents and inflated food costs.
And because it’s L.A., you can expect global interpretations of the classic comfort dish, including a Mexico City-inspired hamburguesa that’s turned a Monday industry night into a citywide destination, a New York-founded Korean restaurant serving a short-rib burger with gochujang aioli and a French-hued take with cognac sauce and optional fondue.
Treats — er, drinks — run the gamut from classic martinis and house wine to margaritas, ice-cold beer and makgeolli. Often overlapping with happy hour, be sure to take note of the specific days and hours each deal is offered.
Here are 16 burger-and-drink combos for those times your inner kid needs an adult happy meal.
Her Honor just needed to do more of the same: hail her own accomplishments, deliver well-timed zingers and keep as cool as a cucumber while baiting Raman into self-immolation.
Bass did none of that, while Raman stepped up the way she needed to.
This time, the challenger offered concrete answers instead of word salads. She mostly stuck to the allotted time limits while Bass repeatedly whined that she wasn’t given enough time. Raman effortlessly turned the mayor’s rhetorical traps around like Bugs Bunny twisting Elmer Fudd’s rifle right in his face.
Take the moment when Bass pointed out that Raman had missed the second-most votes among councilmembers during her six years in office. Raman responded that she missed many meetings while representing the city on the South Coast Air Quality Management District and other governmental boards. Bass’ clap-back — that Raman’s colleagues also had other official responsibilities yet “they find their way to work” — drew “ooohs” from the audience at the debate, put on by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.
If this were still the primary, Raman would have flustered her way to a non-answer. This time, she calmly said that she must not be such a bad councilmember, since Bass had appointed her to those boards.
“Well, we really need to look at that,” Bass stammered before asking Raman if she was “getting ready to resign” from them.
“I’m sorry?” Raman asked off mic as Bass challenged her to step down from all her boards. “No,” Raman then said firmly before shrugging and letting the moderator move on to the next question.
The moment was par for the mayor’s night.
Again and again, Bass went after Raman in the pettiest, most personal ways. She kept mocking the MIT graduate as a clueless egghead with no idea what’s going on in the city, stating twice that Raman governed as if L.A. were “an academic institution” — a line that sounded like a MAGA talking point and that was originally trotted out by Councilmember Imelda Padilla.
Bass tried to paint Raman as a member of an ineffectual city establishment, not a newcomer, which fell flat, considering that Bass has held one elected office or another for 22 years while Raman has been in politics only since 2020.
Bass frequently resorted to her trademark nervous laughter and repeated obviously crafted lines with all the enthusiasm of someone gulping down cod oil. Her furrowed brow and exasperated looks, which she had effectively used in previous debates, made her come off as embittered, tired and unable to defend the indefensible mess that has been her first term.
At one point, the mayor even compared street taco vendors to homeless encampments, with both supposedly disrupting the fabric of a well-run city.
Somewhere, Jonathan Gold is shaking his head in disgust.
“You have lots of plans and lots of ideas but have done very little,” Bass told Raman at another point.
And what have you done, Mayor Bass?
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass speaks with a woman after the end of a mayoral debate against challenger Nithya Raman in Sherman Oaks.
(David Butow/For the Times)
I’ve really tried to like Bass. Her trajectory from South L.A. activist to nonprofit founder to Sacramento, Washington and City Hall is impressive and important. Yet when Angelenos needed her to rise and succeed as their city faced one crisis after another during these past four years, Bass stumbled and stumbled again. Her flop of a debate performance left her sounding like someone with no vision or kindness — career suicide for someone who has made her reputation on both traits.
At this point, the architects of Bass’ campaign need to burn sage to drive out bad spirits or just bow out altogether. Any time something could go wrong, it has.
Bass placed first in the primary with 34% of the vote — an abysmal number for a Democratic incumbent in a deep blue city. Her campaign’s cynical gambit to boost washed-up reality TV star Spencer Pratt into the general election, because he’d be an easier opponent than Raman, failed. The Lineage fire in Boyle Heights brought back memories of the deadly Palisades inferno, angering a voting bloc Bass desperately needs — Latinos.
Then came news this week that a poll the Bass campaign had promoted, claiming that she held a commanding lead over Raman, turned out to be fake. Bass came out looking like someone incapable of overseeing paint dry, let alone running America’s second-largest city.
And now, this debate.
The audience, which was heavily pro-Bass, eventually started applauding more and more of Raman’s responses. Bass, desperate to trip up her opponent, talked over her so much that the councilmember responded with the line of the night and possibly the race:
“You gotta let me answer, Mayor Bass. This is my time.”
Raman still faces an uphill battle. Nearly all of the city’s power structure — elected officials, labor unions, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, business owners and even the three other democratic socialist councilmembers — has endorsed Bass. The mayor has outpaced Raman in fundraising. Raman has to win over voters who supported Pratt’s conservative stances while not alienating her progressive base. She did herself no favors with the Democratic Socialist of America’s local chapter, which didn’t endorse her in the primary and will decide next week whether to endorse her in the general election, by stating that the city needs to maintain the current size of its police force.
But in Wednesday night’s debate, she offered voters a distinct choice between how she would run L.A. and how Bass has.
Councilmember Nithya Raman speaks with staff and supporters after a mayoral debate with incumbent Karen Bass in Sherman Oaks.
(David Butow/For the Times)
All the mayor could sputter in her closing remarks was that Raman “does not have the support of [any] of her colleagues” — yet another line she had repeated ad nauseum.
When it was her turn, Raman said she keeps hearing from residents “that this city feels rudderless.”
“I have news for you, Angelenos. You’re right,” she continued. “No one is in charge right now.”
Then, instead of launching another fusillade against Bass, Raman went for something few people associate with L.A. nowadays:
Hope.
“You have every right to expect more from your city,” Raman proclaimed, her voice strong and clear. She urged Angelenos to “raise our expectations” of what’s possible and strive for a city that’s “affordable, functional, safe, joyful, ambitious.”
A few months ago, that would have sounded like the delusional ramblings of someone with no chance at winning. After tonight’s debate, Raman seems like L.A.’s final, best chance.
Nearly every week, I pass a colleague in the office who taunts me with four words: “Count of Monte Cristo, Count of Monte Cristo,” as he shakes his head. He’s disappointed his favorite book didn’t make the cut of our 101 best book club picks list, which served as the 2026 LA Times Festival of Books curtain-raiser. I don’t mind the barb. There’s nothing more exciting than an impassioned reader — even when they’re wrong. I’m all for rallying around a book or author and debating their merits like it’s a sporting match. Our book lists, after all, aren’t meant to be final verdicts. They’re invitations to read more (and, maybe, better).
Reading List
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To compile our expansive list we surveyed more than 200 bookish luminaries — along with a few zealous book club members. Our readers had their own ideas for their top book club picks, many of which we deeply considered. Here you’ll find some of our worthy Los Angeles Times reader selections.
“A favorite book my book group read and discussed is ‘Farenheit 451.’ It was fascinating to see what the past thought the future might bring,” reader Margaret Hardy writes of the 20th century classic. “In terms of technology and control by the government we are seeing today what Bradbury was thinking about in 1953. We felt that the future was found in the past. It was a chilling read.” Equally chilling is that the book often shows up on banned books lists — not unlike in its narrative.
“You missed ‘Homegoing’ by Yaa Gyasi!” reader Melanie H. writes of the critically acclaimed Ghanian historical fiction novel. “My book club read it and I was enthralled. I can’t stop thinking about it ever since. The amount of research and empathy into every single character and era Gyasi put into this story is incredible. It altered my brain and to this day I tell everyone about this book.”
Reader Roxanne Yahner writes, “It is beautifully written, elegant and eloquent, and there is no preparing anyone for the sheer inexorable force of Baldwin’s language. This novel expresses the personal — and historical — grief of two gay, perhaps bisexual, men as they explore their sexuality at a time and place where such behavior was dangerous. The reader aches for these men and feels their grief. Some in our book club were disturbed by this novel, but all agreed they were deeply moved by it.”
Several readers wrote to us recommending Rushdie’s magical realist epic. “It’s such a complex, yet entertaining novel. We learned a lot about the tenets of Islam as woven into the story,” Ellyn Moscowitz shares about their book club pick. “It provoked great discussions about death, afterlife, religion in general and great character studies.”
Reader Francesca Smithwick-Driver chose this as a book club pick in the ‘90s for her group and the 1989 National Book Award fiction finalist remains a favorite.
“[It’s] about a family who runs a carnival of ‘freaks.’ The story is told by an albino dwarf. There are strong themes about what it is to be normal, falling in and out of love with yourself — your family — and the world around you. Wonderfully written scenes about horrible things and beautiful things. I still remember the discussion of my book club — from ‘why in the world did you recommend this disgusting book’ to ‘what a book’ … I couldn’t wait to get back to it each time I put it down.”
Reader Kate Karp, who has a cat who resembles a key character in this Russian classic, writes: “[It] turned out, no surprise, to have been the inspiration for the Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’” She notes it also requires multiple readings to grasp all the subplots — but it’s worth it.
“I am terrible at book clubs because I have found that I am a very picky reader who simply will not read a book that I do not enjoy,” reader Mike Gascoigne writes. “That said, in a book club I did very much enjoy Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Klara and the Sun’ and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s ‘Chain Gang All-Stars.’ There was a lot to discuss about both titles including AI/robots, intellectual enhancements, climate change, reality television, prison reform/abolition and human nature.”
“‘All the King’s Men’ is a powerful summer read — a Pulitzer-winning novel that feels strikingly current,” reader Ken Muche writes. “Set in the 1930s South, Willie Stark’s political rise echoes modern demagogues, reminding us how easily power can blur truth. Even more important, the novel invites reflection on our own bad life choices — showing that taking accountability for one’s actions is the first step toward forgiveness, peace, and ultimately, a more grounded kind of happiness.”
Reader Seth Kivnick’s pick is this work of fiction that co-won the Booker Prize in 2019, he notes that the compelling book describes the Black women in the British Isles who came from all walks of life and different countries. “[It] appealed to male and female club members.”
“It’s good-humored without being comedy or satire but opens serious friendly discussions about contemporary problems,” reader Christine Almeida writes of the novel that won the 2021 National Book Award for fiction. “Our library-based book club talked about it for a solid 90 minutes without straying from what the book itself had to offer its readers.”
When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass amplified the results last week of a favorable political poll that turned out to be fake, she was inadvertently following in the footsteps of conservative Detroit singer Kid Rock.
In 2017, as Rock — real name Robert Ritchie — publicly contemplated a run for U.S. Senate is his home state of Michigan, he posted on social media the results of a poll conducted by a firm calling itself Delphi Analytica that showed him leading Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow.
But those results were bogus. The people behind Delphi Analytica took down their website and refused to be identified, telling a local reporter: “Thanks again and go kid rock.”
Little is known about who was responsible for a poll supposedly conducted by an outfit calling itself Median Strategies showing Bass with a wide lead in the L.A. mayoral race over Councilmember Nithya Raman.
The group told The Times on Monday that its results were also fake.
But the episode has revived questions about whether political polling can be trusted, particularly in light of several recent high-profile primary races in which the polls seemed to have gotten the results wrong.
In the Michigan Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, a number of preelection polls showed progressive Abdul El-Sayed holding a commanding, double-digit lead over Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), but on election night, El-Sayed eked out a one-point victory.
In Wisconsin, numerous polls showed progressive state Rep. Francesca Hong leading Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in the Democratic primary for governor. Crowley narrowly defeated Hong in the primary.
Median Strategies — the entity behind the fake Los Angeles poll — claimed on social media that it had also conducted polling in the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial race and that it had also gotten it wrong about Hong.
Polling in primary elections can be particularly difficult, because it can be hard to know who will actually show up on election day, said Christian Grose, a USC political science professor. Both Michigan and Wisconsin also hold open primaries, meaning that any voter can cast a ballot in a race, regardless of party affiliation, making it harder for pollsters to predict exactly who will cast a ballot on election day.
Experts say fake polls are exceedingly rare but that these recent election results highlight the differences between high- and low-quality polls and how much easier it has become to conduct less rigorous polling.
“The barriers to entry are a lot lower now than they were 20 to 30 years ago,” said Charles Franklin, a professor of law and public policy at Marquette Law School who conducts the Marquette Law School Poll.
Put simply, a poll is a series of questions asked of a sample of people in a given locality, state or country whose opinions are supposed to represent the attitudes of everyone in the coverage area of the poll. Pollsters typically weigh the responses they receive — sometimes amplifying the voices of respondents from a particular ethnic group, for example — to ensure that the results are representative of the population they are surveying.
For decades, survey respondents were typically contacted by phone.
That work was expensive, Franklin said.
“You needed a call center, you needed to hire interviewers and you needed some sort of data processing,” he said.
But now as modes of communication have changed — many people have ditched landlines and are hesitant to answer calls from unknown numbers on their cellphone — polling operations have adopted a wide variety of methods to try to contact survey respondents, including e-mail, text-messages and online surveys, which sometimes offer incentives to encourage participation.
Online polls can be conducted much more cheaply than polling using other modes of communication, but the quality can also vary widely.
Historically, most polls randomly contacted survey respondents, backed by research showing that a random sample of the population — adjusted appropriately by demographics and other factors — would give a more accurate picture of the public’s attitude on a particular question.
But not all online polling relies on a randomly selected group of respondents, and when respondents are offered an incentive — such as cash — to complete an online survey, it can lead to inaccurate results.
The Pew Research Center released a report in 2024 showing that these so-called opt-in surveys did a particularly bad job of capturing the attitudes of adults under 30 and Latino adults. Researchers at Pew, for example, asked respondents in one survey if they were licensed to operate a type of nuclear submarine. In the survey, 12% of respondents under 30 said yes. In reality, the share of people under 30 holding such a license “rounds to zero,” the report said.
While even legitimate pollsters can get election results wrong — a poll represents public opinion at the time it was taken, and that can change — experts say there are a few key things to look out for when vetting the quality of a survey.
“The more transparent a poll is — in terms of its data and methods — the more you should believe it,” said Grose, who also conducts the California Elections and Policy Poll.
Franklin said that pollsters with a track record are typically more trustworthy, as their future business and reputation relies on their accuracy.
He said that polling conducted by upstart organizations is not necessarily bad, but that the people conducting it don’t necessarily have the training or expertise of more established outfits.
Inaccurate polling can misinform voters and lead to election night surprises, but it can also have a corrosive effect on elections themselves.
“Polling can drive outcomes,” Grose said. “Favorable polls lead to more fundraising. There’s a bandwagon effect.”
Welcome back to this week’s Lakers newsletter, where we’ve apparently never heard of an offseason.
During an allegedly sleepy period on the NBA schedule, the Lakers shook everyone awake with a blaring alarm. Twice.
Mark Walter, 14 months after agreeing to buy the NBA’s premier franchise, is selling his controlling stake in the Lakers to Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger at a staggering $12.5 billion valuation that would be the highest in sports history. When Kushner and Iger seemed poised to cash in even more after a reported Buss family vote to sell remaining shares of the team, team governor Jeanie Buss said emphatically, “Not today.”
Buss is contesting her family’s reported plan to sell its remaining 17.8% of the team to Iger and Kushner. Her lawyers issued a scathing letter saying her younger brothers are “doing harm to the Los Angeles Lakers,” and that she should remain the controlling governor of the Lakers, as described in the family trust.
One 47-year reign in the NBA hangs in the balance this week. Quietly, another 18-year run has already concluded.
All things Lakers, all the time.
Get all the Lakers news you need in Thuc Nhi Nguyen’s weekly newsletter.
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‘Just a kid from inner city L.A.’
Russell Westbrook with the Clippers in 2023.
(Matt York / Associated Press)
Reggie Morris Jr. won’t just remember the way Russell Westbrook changed basketball. Even after Westbrook’s retirement, his former high school coach chooses to see the way the former Lawndale Leuzinger star is changing the city that raised him. That’s even more important than the NBA record 209 triple-doubles.
“I believe that his impact on this community,” Morris said, “is far greater than his basketball impact.”
Westbrook was once just a short kid with size 14 shoes and an even bigger chip on his shoulder. He grew into an electrifying guard at UCLA, where he went to two Final Fours. He blossomed into one of the most productive, yet polarizing, players in NBA history. Through it all, he remained dedicated to the community that would later fail to fully embrace his no-holds-barred playing style.
The L.A. native was named NBA most valuable player in 2017. The same season, when Morris was coaching at Loyola Marymount, Westbrook reached out about starting an Elite Youth Basketball League team for young players.
Westbrook set the NBA record for triple-doubles and averaged a season-long triple-double four times. Between the stat-stuffing performances, he launched Why Not Premier, an EYBL girls team with the same resources and investment as the boys.
The 2012 Olympic gold medalist was named to the NBA’s 75th anniversary team in 2021 after snarling, dunking and driving with full force every play, every night. On the way, he regularly returned to his hometown.
“Before he was a walking headline,” actor Michael B. Jordan said in a video Westbrook posted on social media last Wednesday for his retirement announcement, “he was just a kid from inner city L.A. who could jump higher than anybody had a right to.”
The video shows Westbrook walking through a museum of his basketball career then into an unfinished wing that represents “the mentorship, the foundation, the kids who are going to grow up wanting to move just like he did … [that] hasn’t been built yet either.”
Tributes to Westbrook flooded in. Fifteen-year-old highlight reels showing baggy shorts, jaw-dropping athleticism and a crossover that nearly shook defenders out of their shoes popped up on social media again. Even his own high school coach had forgotten just how dynamic Westbrook was in his prime.
“He didn’t back down from anybody,” said Morris, now the director of Westbrook’s Team Why Not EYBL team and the boys’ basketball head coach at Redondo Union. “He was fearless. He was relentless. There’s never really been a player quite like him. I would say he kind of has, like, a Charles Barkley, a young Charles Barkley spirit, where he was just passionate and fiery. He wasn’t PC. He wore his emotions on his sleeves, and he didn’t really apologize to anyone for how he felt or what he was there to do.”
Westbrook’s unapologetic attitude became a defining characteristic of his game. He was defiant. He was dynamic. He was exciting and explosive, but exhausting.
After 11 seasons with the Oklahoma City Thunder, where the Thunder went to the playoffs nine times with one NBA Finals appearance, Westbrook was traded to the Houston Rockets. When he got to the Lakers in 2021, it was his fourth team in as many seasons.
Russell Westbrook brings the ball upcourt for the Lakers.
(Michael Conroy / Associated Press)
Westbrook’s two-year run with the Lakers was “bittersweet” for Westbrook, Morris said. Returning to the community that raised him was expected to be a triumphant homecoming. But the team struggled, his efficiency waned and fans turned on him. He became a punch line and a negative example of LeBron James’ potential influence after the superstar lobbied for the trade that brought Westbrook to L.A. He sparred with reporters.
The public feuds started to overshadow what those close to Westbrook know him to be in private: a maniacal hard worker with a competitive streak that demands respect.
“A lot of people looked at the emotions on the court and thought Russ was loud,” Durant wrote in a poignant note on X. “Nah to me, he was quiet and methodical. He [led] by example and once the lights were bright, he let everything out and experienced pure freedom. It was inspiring as his teammate and everywhere I went, I seen it inspire people from all walks of life.”
Westbrook will now inspire away from the court. When Nike reached out to Westbrook about starting an EYBL team, he knew where to go with the idea. He hadn’t been part of the regular travel ball circuit growing up and instead stuck closely with his local coaches, including Morris. He wanted that same loyal experience for his youth team.
Westbrook’s Team Why Not expanded to include a girls program Why Not Premier in 2022. His wife, Nina, also played basketball at UCLA, and the couple has been a strong supporter of the UCLA women’s basketball program.
Westbrook, who often trained at UCLA’s basketball facility that the men’s and women’s programs share, would readily share knowledge with UCLA’s women’s players, UCLA women’s basketball coach Cori Close said. He welcomed them in workouts, showed them what food he had packed in Tupperware containers to stay on a healthy diet and encouraged them to train for long, productive careers.
“There’s so much bad press about, ‘Oh, college athletes or pro athletes are just a bunch of takers, they all are about money first,” Close said, “and the Westbrooks, and specifically Russ and Nina, they’re about giving back and they’re about making a difference.”
Even during the season, Westbrook made himself available to players on his EYBL teams as often as possible, visiting between playoff runs or at least supporting them through social media.
“They feel his presence when he’s there, and he’s hands-on in the situation,” Morris said. “He’s not just giving money; he’s trying to help the kids, give them a different aspect or a different take on what he knows and give it back to them.”
Jared McCain is one of Team Why Not’s most prominent alumni. The 22-year-old Oklahoma City guard posted a picture from his EYBL days to his Instagram story last week showing Westbrook with his arm wrapped around McCain’s waist.
“Legend!!” wrote McCain, who graduated from Corona Centennial. “Thank you for everything.”
Morris and Westbrook had talked about the end more often lately. They knew if not this year, it would have probably been next year. Morris could never have envisioned the career was going to be this decorated, but the longtime coach knew it was going to be successful. If he hadn’t become a future Hall of Famer, Westbrook would have easily become a president of a successful company, Morris said.
Don’t rule it out for his second act.
“When you have a work ethic like his, it’s just part of who he is,” Morris said. “It’s not gonna go anywhere.”
Best thing I ate this week
Signature beef udon at Azuki in Seattle.
(Thuc Nhi Nguyen / Los Angeles Times)
This technically isn’t the best thing from this week, but I needed to share this extra food gem from my hometown. Azuki’s unassuming storefront in Seattle’s Capital Hill neighborhood is easy to miss but the homemade udon noodles should not be overlooked. The signature beef udon noodles had a simple, light broth that leaves the perfect amount of salty coating on your tongue. The thin slices of beef are perfect with the chewy udon noodles. The only way the meal would have been better was if it was on a cold winter day.
In a nondescript black building in downtown L.A.’s Arts District, rich sounds of sax and bass filled the air for hours. Inside, surrounded by the paintings and posters of iconic musicians, albums and films, dozens of people gathered for a night designed to prove a simple point: You can’t “cancel” jazz.
On Thursday night, eight jazz artists and groups performed a pop-up show, including Okay Coleman!, the Don Brown Collective, Joy Guerilla, and Genghis Don, who also organized the event. All of these artists had one thing in common: They were billed to perform on the now-canceled inaugural L.A. Jazz Festival.
The planned 17-day event was supposed to kick off on Aug. 7 and feature dozens of performances spread throughout every City Council district. Organizers hoped the shows would draw 250,000 attendees and inaugurate the city as a home for jazz events on par with New Orleans and Montreal. The festival was to include a final show headlined by Janelle Monáe, John Legend, Charlie Wilson, Parliament Funkadelic and Raphael Saadiq at Dockweiler State Beach.
“When I got booked for it, I was really excited,” Genghis Don said. “It was one of the bigger festivals I’ve done so far in my career.”
Glen Turner of Joy Guerilla performs at the “Can’t Cancel Jazz” event Thursday.
(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)
Then, the festival was abruptly canceled due to “last-minute public safety and municipal costs.”
But Don was determined for the show to go on. He partnered with Tída Norasingh of JIJI’s Jazz Club to host the “Can’t Cancel Jazz” pop-up show at Slow Jamz Gallery — a musical experience that was curated in less than 72 hours, according to Don.
“It all came together thanks to so many people who were involved in this,” Don said. “I really couldn’t have done any of this without them.”
The crowd, which leaned younger in part because the event allowed attendees 18 and older, trickled in around 7 p.m., and by 9 p.m., the party was in full swing. It was easy to see how audience members connected with the music by the way they cheered, danced and sang along through the night.
The pop-up show struck a balance between creating an accessible, music-forward environment for fans and providing support for the musicians who had been affected by the cancellation. The event’s entry fee was $20, while the nonalcoholic bar accepted additional donations. Some artists also had merch available for sale on site.
While “Can’t Cancel Jazz” may have been a response to the L.A. Jazz Festival being called off, it wasn’t aiming to replace it. Instead, the pop-up offered something more intimate. At times, the music overtook the gallery, completely captivating the attention of the room. At other moments, conversation and connection were happening right outside on the balcony between attendees, some of whom were meeting each other for the first time.
The result was something distinctly authentic with an underground quality that would have been hard to replicate at a sprawling, weeks-long festival.
“This was more so a test of L.A.’s community,” Don said. “They showed out, people came, the artists came together, and you know that’s the true definition of community.”
When David Lynch moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles in the summer of 1970, he was stunned by the sunshine that radiated onto the city — the “most beautiful light I’d ever seen in my life,” he wrote with Kristine McKenna in his 2018 memoir “Room to Dream.” In that book, he described his first morning walking out of an apartment on San Vicente Boulevard.
David Lynch in 2016.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
“I kept kind of moving around with my arms outstretched and I almost got hit by a car wandering into the street,” he wrote.
That light — and Los Angeles itself — continued to inspire and energize the filmmaker and artist throughout his five-plus decades of calling L.A. home, until his death last year at the age of 78. In “Room to Dream,” he wrote about the “magical street” of Mulholland Drive and all its twists and turns: “It’s really got a history, and if you’re in Los Angeles long enough you start hearing stories about things that have happened on it that get your mind going.” In an interview with the Filmographers, he told the story of how his character in “Twin Peaks” was a name plucked from Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard,” which very well may have been inspired by Wilder’s commute to Paramount that passed the Hollywood streets Gordon and Cole. And the dissolve from Naomi Watts’ face in “Mulholland Drive” to rows of palm trees has become a classic shot for representing his work and his love for the city, hopeful and drenched in his beloved sunlight.
Much like L.A., the artistic legacy of Lynch is difficult to encapsulate — trying to describe his work is like attempting to explain a dream. His films so strongly defied categorization that they necessitated an eponymous term: Lynchian.
The Hollywood Sign, as seen from Beachwood Drive. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Palm trees, which Lynch often used as a symbol in his films, tower above the city. (David McNew / Getty Images)
Unsettling to many, beloved by more, he refused to explain his work, allowing and challenging his audience to parse through it and imbue their own meanings and discoveries. The reward, for him, was in the doing, in taking a daydream and forming it into an idea that he could shape into something real in the world, blending the mundane and the macabre.
Here are some places around L.A. that offer a glimpse into Lynch’s world.
Note: the Lynch compound and all other residential locations mentioned are all private residences, and not to be disturbed.
Classic diners, especially Bob’s Big Boy Burbank
Lynch would often to go to Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank to meet with creative collaborators, or simply sit and think
(Jill Connelly / For The Times)
Lynch was fond of the straightforwardness of a diner, and he considered them to be ideal for creative thinking and work meetings. In his book “Catching the Big Fish,” he said: “I’d have a milkshake and sit and think. There’s a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milkshake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner.”
One of the most viscerally terrifying scenes of “Mulholland Drive” takes place behind the dumpster at the abandoned Caesar’s diner in Gardena. And he liked having meals with his family at what is now the Denny’s in Gower Gulch, a place where aspiring cowboy actors once congregated. But the most significant diner in Lynch’s legacy is Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank. He spoke of going to Bob’s almost every day from the mid-’70s until the early ’80s. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Lynch claimed he saw a man at the counter who inspired the Frank Booth character in “Blue Velvet.”
Signs of Lynch at Bob’s Big Boy: His headshot displayed alongside actors Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern; a milkshake at the counter.(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Lynch’s order included a chocolate milkshake and coffee, the cold sugar and caffeine fueling his ideas. He believed 2:30 p.m. was the perfect time to order the milkshake, specifically ”after the lunch rush when the machine had enough time to chill, the silver goblet would be frosted when it arrives at the table, and the ice cream is almost like butter, like cold butter, it’s almost solid, and it has specks of chocolate in it, and it almost gets a frost on it when it arrives,” he said in a conversation with the Filmosophers.
Today there is a framed photo of Lynch over the door of the Burbank location, indicating that his love for the restaurant was mutual. After his death, Bob’s became the de facto location for fans needing to pay homage to the beloved director, piled high with tributes of cigarettes, cans of Coke, donuts, slices of pie and tear-stained letters of gratitude.
Franklin Canyon Park
Leaves illuminated by sunlight under a canopy of trees in Franklin Canyon.
(Blake Fagan / For The Times)
Franklin Canyon Park was once a summer retreat for the Doheny family, who built a Spanish-style home at the base of the canyon in the 1930s. The 605 acres were purchased by the National Park Service in 1981.
A frame overlooks the water in Franklin Canyon, which stood in for many interstitial woodsy scenes in “Twin Peaks.”
(Blake Fagan / For The Times)
The mysterious woods are an essential element in Lynch’s world of “Twin Peaks.” While the pilot for the TV drama and the film prequel “Fire Walk With Me” were filmed in Washington (and there’s lots of scenic footage from the Pacific Northwest throughout the series), much of the show was filmed on Southern California soundstages. And for the many interstitial scenes in the woods, Franklin Canyon and its lush forest stood in. Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost opened an esoteric window to prime-time viewers with the concept of the Black Lodge. The filming location of its entrance, known as Glastonbury Grove in the show, is in Franklin Canyon Park.
Doheny landmarks
In an interview with Charlie Rose, Lynch stated that “everybody is a detective and the unknown is a magnet.” He invited his audiences to look at a door and investigate what lurks behind it. This philosophy ties to his connections with an L.A. legacy, one that contains its own mysteries and contrasts: the Doheny family and its historic properties:
The Doheny Mansion
Glimpses of the Doheny Mansion, clockwise from left: the music room; a stained glass sky light; a sculpture adorns a table in the Pompeian Room.(Blake Fagan / For The Times)
The sprawling and opulent Doheny Mansion, now part of the Mt. St. Mary’s campus, was built in 1899 by architects Theodore Eisen and Sumner Hunt. Patriarch and oil baron Ed Doheny and wife Estelle acquired the home in 1901 and the Doheny family made it their home for nearly 60 years. Lynch used the mansion as the home for Laura Dern’s character in his 2006 film “Inland Empire,” and also filmed an Armani commercial there in the 1990s.
Greystone Mansion
The central courtyard at the Greystone Mansion.
(Blake Fagan / For The Times)
In the 1970s, Lynch was a fellow at the newly founded American Film Institute, based at Greystone Mansion at the time. He eventually took over the mansion’s stables, converting them into a production studio and occasionally (and illegally) living there while he filmed his debut feature, “Eraserhead.” He slept in the room that became the bedroom for the character Henry. “I’d lock myself in there in such a way that from the outside it looked as if no one could possibly be inside,” Lynch said in Mark Altman’s 1990 book “Twin Peaks: Behind The Scenes.” “We’d put these special blankets up on the walls to deaden the sound for shooting and it was quiet.”
Scenes from the Greystone Mansion.(Blake Fagan / For The Times)
Greystone Mansion carried an air of secrecy in itself. Built in 1928 by Gordon Kaufmann, and a gift from Edward Doheny to his son Ned and his family, the stately Tudor Revival was home to a horrific tragedy. Months after moving in, Ned and his lifelong friend and personal secretary, Hugh Plunkett, were found in a guest bedroom, victims of a murder-suicide. While their motives were never defined for certain, the accepted belief was the tragedy was tied to their involvement in the Teapot Dome political corruption scandal and Plunkett’s looming testimony that could’ve implicated the Dohenys.
The city of Beverly Hills purchased the grand manor in 1965 and installed an underground reservoir, and leased the property to the newly formed American Film Institute in 1969 for $1 a year, with the agreement that the school would maintain the property. Greystone was dedicated as a public park in 1971 and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
L.A.’s Transcendental Meditation centers
After moving to Los Angeles, Lynch started visiting the Spiritual Regeneration Movement Center in Santa Monica and it altered his life. Here he learned the methods of Transcendental Meditation, developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, with the focus of seeking enlightenment. His first meditation session was July 1, 1973, and from there, he practiced twice a day, every single day.
“Before I started meditating I worried that doing it would make me lose my edge, and I didn’t want to lose the fire to make stuff,” Lynch wrote in “Room to Dream.” “I found out it gives you more fire to make stuff and more happiness in the doing and way more of an edge. People think anger is an edge, but anger is a weakness that poisons you and the environment around you.”
Lynch became a staunch devotee of Transcendental Meditation and spoke about the positive effects he believed it could have for everyone, particularly veterans, those suffering from PTSD and women who have survived violence. He started the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace in 2005 to offer children throughout the world the opportunity to learn to meditate. The foundation recommends several Transcendental Meditation centers in Los Angeles, including the center on Hillhurst Avenue in Los Feliz.
The Pink House, David Lynch’s compound in Hollywood Hills and his final resting place at Hollywood Forever
The historic Tower Theater, built in 1927, was converted into the Apple Tower Theatre.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
On screen, Lynch loved the old glamour of Los Angeles — the majestic Tower Theater in downtown Los Angeles was used in “Mulholland Drive,” “Inland Empire” and “Twin Peaks: The Return.” His characters lived in equally memorable spaces, with the women of “Mulholland Drive” going from the grandeur of the Il Borghese apartments (architect Charles Gault, 1929) to meet tragic endings in the fairy-tale-esque “Snow White” apartments (architect Ben Sherwood, 1931) that are believed to have also inspired Walt Disney. (It’s worth noting that this theater has been refurbished into an Apple store. A beautiful achievement of preservation work, but it’s hard not to see the consumer-driven sleekness and think about a theme in Lynch’s work: the terrors lurking inside a changing America.)
Personally, Lynch loved modern architecture, and experienced love at first sight with the home he purchased in the mid-’80s in the Hollywood Hills. The Pink House, as Lynch referred to it, was designed by Lloyd Wright Jr. for writer Beverly Johnson in 1963. Lynch commissioned Eric Wright (Lloyd’s son and Frank Lloyd Wright’s grandson) to add a pool and pool house in 1991. He told the Wall Street Journal that he preferred Lloyd Wright’s work over his father’s, explaining, “Lloyd Wright is more minimal. More pure. But just as beautiful.”
The house is semi-secluded against a lush hill, beneath the actual Mulholland Drive, and has a subtle chevron pattern detail that runs throughout the house, similar to the floor of the “Twin Peaks” red room. Lynch loved this house and spent much of his time in Los Angeles here, particularly in his later years. He gradually added two neighboring properties to form what would become the Lynch compound.
A “Twin Peaks” coffee cup that was gifted to David Lynch by a fan.
(Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP)
When filming began on “Lost Highway,” he struggled to find the right location for the home of the lead characters, Fred and Renee Madison. This set piece would be crucial to building their sense of dread. Lynch then had an idea: He would use the Brutalist structure in his compound. He transformed the interior and altered the exterior windows, making it difficult for the characters to see the dangers circling outside. “Some people open windows of houses, but I like interiors and don’t care about windows,” Lynch wrote in “Room to Dream.” “I like to go deeper into a house and find things underneath things.”
For the next two decades, the compound was Lynch’s dream space where he could create anything he imagined, including his 2000s-era daily weather reports for local radio stations and his website, a hobby he revived during 2020. Homebound the last few years because of emphysema, he was forced to relocate during the Sunset fire in January 2025, and died shortly after. David Lynch’s final resting place is at Hollywood Forever, across from the Fairbanks Lawn where movies are shown, under the stars.
The U.S. track and field Olympic trials will return to Eugene, Ore., leaving Los Angeles on the sideline weeks before it hosts the 2028 Summer Games.
The trials, set for June 17-22, 2028, will be the sixth straight held at Hayward Field on the University of Oregon campus, which has adopted the nickname “TrackTown USA.” It has proven over decades to be America’s only consistently viable host for big-time track events.
The six-day schedule will be different from past trials, which usually spanned two weekends, with a couple of off days in the middle. Those six days will not include selection for the decathlon, heptathlon or the 10,000 meters, all of which will be held earlier in the spring — at locations still to be determined — to allow for additional recovery.
The Olympics begin July 14, with the track meet starting the next day; this marks the first time track will cover the opening days of the Games since 1968.
Some athletes complain about the cost of traveling to and staying in a metro area of around 400,000, but USA Track and Field Chief Executive Max Siegel said Eugene’s “record of success in selecting America’s best track and field athletes speaks for itself.”
He said U.S. athletes have won 52 gold medals in athletics since 2008, when Eugene’s streak of hosting trials began.
The decision to keep the string going comes as something of a surprise, however. There was a thought that the Coliseum, which will host the Olympic track meet, would make for a perfect host for the trials, though there were problems involved with holding two major events in such a short period.
Other L.A. venues include UCLA’s Drake Stadium, which is serving as an Olympic training site; and what was known as the Mt. SAC Stadium in nearby Walnut. That stadium was awarded the 2020 trials, but they were moved to Eugene after problems arose over renovations of the venue. Those trials were ultimately held in 2021 at Hayward.
Hayward Field also hosted world championships in 2022 and the U.S. track nationals 10 times, including last year, and will do so again in 2027.
The next Los Angeles City Councilmember to represent the West San Fernando Valley will either be a former small business owner backed by the Police Protective League or a career public-sector staffer who has racked up a long list of endorsements from unions and Democratic lawmakers.
Tim Gaspar, 44, founded an eponymous insurance agency in the Valley, which he sold in 2021and is now campaigning full time to win the Third District council seat, according to campaign spokesperson Haley Townes. He was the top vote-getter in the June 2 primary, garnering 46.1% of the vote.
Barri Worth Girvan, 43, was a close second with 42.5% of the vote. She is the director of community affairs for Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath and previously held staff positions with former L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Democratic state senator Bob Hertzberg.
The winner of the Nov. 3 runoff will replace termed-out council member Bob Blumenfield, who recently endorsed Gaspar, as did Christopher Celona, the third-place finisher in the primary.
“We feel like those are the endorsements that resonate with voters here,” Gaspar told a group of voters at a recent campaign event.
L.A. City Council Candidate Tim Gaspar speaks with Dr. Lawrence Kaplan during a Kids on the Spectrum Bowling League event at Lucky Strike Bowling Alley this month.
(Arwen Clemans/Los Angeles Times)
In an interview, Gaspar said the City Council could benefit from his business experience to counter members whose backgrounds are mostly in public policy or community organizing.
“They’re missing the business perspective,” he said. “Sometimes you need to do things that might be unpopular if it’s going to be something that benefits the greater good. A healthy economy is the tide that raises all ships.”
L.A. City Council Barri Worth Girvan chats wth LAPD Capt. Rudy Lopez while greeting voters during a recent neighborhood National Night Out event in Canoga Park’s Lanark Park.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Worth Girvan, by contrast, says her years of experience in the public sector will ensure that she can best navigate City Hall to advocate for the district’s interests.
“Delivering core city services is my bread and butter,” she said in an interview. “If your trash isn’t picked up, if your trees aren’t trimmed, if your street lights aren’t working, if you pick up the phone to call 911 and nobody responds, then not only is your neighborhood not safe, but your city is not working for you.”
Gaspar has a huge lead in fund-raising, reporting more than $180,000 in donations to his runoff campaign through June 30, compared with about $31,000 for Worth Girvan.
In addition, companies and special interests including Airbnb, Uber, the California Apartment Association, the L.A. Police Protective League and IBEW Local 18 spent $1.39 million through independent expenditure committees in the primary race.
Airbnb spokeswoman Nicolette Velasquez said the candidates it backs, including Gaspar, are in favor of expanding short-term rental policies to allow homeowners to supplement their income by renting out their homes. Hotel companies and the unions representing hotel workers oppose such expanding the short-term rental market out of existing housing stock.
Worth Girvan asserts that her second-place finish in June was effectively “a virtual tie” given all the money companies and others spent to back Gaspar.
“We were massively outspent with that kind of money, but the voters clearly spoke, and we’re expecting an even broader electorate in the general,” she said.
Tim Gaspar outside the Lucky Strike Bowling Alley.
(Arwen Clemans/Los Angeles Times)
Gaspar’s contributors in the runoff include billionaire developer Rick Caruso and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
Worth Girvan has picked up donations from state Assemblyman Mark Gonzalez (D-Boyle Heights), former Democratic state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and former Los Angeles City Council member David Ryu,according to her filing.
She also touts endorsements from a long list of Democratic lawmakers, including state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) and Rep. Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood)., and has strong backing from labor including the local chapters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Service Employees International Union and the including the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.
“Barri was a clear choice for us,” said Devin Osiri, Chief of Staff at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “Our unions have actually worked with her at all three levels of government. Her reputation, her professional resume from the Valley and her personal story are just more reflective of the LA Federation of Labor.”
The two candidates differ on housing policy.
Barri Worth Girvan meets voters at the National Night Out event in Canoga Park’s Lanark Park.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Worth Girvan said she supports more housing development, particularly near transit lines, saying the West Valley “needs to do our part” to scale up construction and bring housing prices down.
Gaspar said District 3 is already doing its part to bring in new housing development in areas like Warner Center, and remains skeptical of increasing density in single-family home neighborhoods.
He opposes rent control and some of the city’s current tenant protections, and said at the campaign event that he has a “zero tolerance policy” for homeless encampments.
Both candidates say public safety is their top priority, and they support expanding the Los Angeles Police Department.
It’s no secret that Hollywood has dealt with a significant production downturn since the end of the streaming content boom three years ago. But the programs that have stuck to the Southland have reaped the benefits. And that goes for a slew of major-category Emmy nominees such as “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which has filmed on stages all over L.A. County since its inception.
“First and foremost, it’s the people. I love the local people, but the people that come to Hollywood with a dream, with a drive, and their dreams sometimes get all twisted and turned, but they still have that ambition,” “RuPaul’s Drag Race” executive producer Tom Campbell says. “That’s why I love working with L.A. crews, and I love L.A. We’ve got 19 seasons in the can right now, and we’re about to start our 20th in not too long. To be with people that get to go home to their pets, or wives, or husbands, or children, makes for a different vibe on set. That’s kind of an incredible [bonus]. It’s a quality-of-life thing.”
Other iterations of the franchise have filmed all over the globe, from Colombia to Portugal to the Philippines, but Campbell doesn’t see how a hub in South America would allow guest judges such as Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Teyana Taylor or Cardi B to appear in person. He notes, “The celebrities don’t make or break the show, but the stars have to align that they have a day off when we’re shooting. And I think that kind of access and availability could only happen in L.A. I don’t think we’d get Cardi B for a day if she had to leave L.A.”
For “Drag Race” production designer Jen Chu, the ability to acquire raw materials in a short period of time is game-changing. She bluntly observes, “Sometimes you just need the assurance that you can go down the street and get that unusual prop or get that super-specific acrylic Plexi or anything that we could possibly need. It is somewhere in the city.”
Michelle Visage, left, RuPaul, Jamal Sims and Carson Kressley in “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
(Jordin Althaus / World of Wonder)
Chu’s 15-person team also has an encyclopedic knowledge about where to get what they need and whom to ask at a moment’s notice. “It’s very, very common for somebody to be like, ‘Can you make a giant six-foot-tall pill bottle by tomorrow?’” she adds. “I think in those situations, we’re definitely calling on our resources and our friends and colleagues that we’ve known for so long. So, it could be anything from calling your laminate dealer that you’ve had in your phone for 20 years, or it’s literally like calling another dresser because you know that they have a life-size teapot in their backyard for some weird reason. It’s not uncommon for somebody to be like, ‘I know a guy that has a giant pickle or a huge frying pan’ or something like that.”
Veteran “Abbott Elementary” producer Patrick Schumacker is about to shoot a new Netflix series in L.A. and says it’s where to find the “most skilled, most experienced and best of the best” in all aspects of production. A lot of the onscreen talent happen to be pretty darn funny too.
“Honestly, so many hysterical actors are based out of here, and it makes it so much easier with regard to guest cast in a comedy,” Schumacker admits. “Casting becomes infinitely easier versus trying to get people to fly in from L.A. to a production elsewhere.”
Quinta Brunson’s landmark series is set in Philadelphia, but Schumacker credits location manager David Lyons for finding “outstanding places” that double for the city. He recalls, “We had a whole mall arc when the school had to relocate, and that was based on Franklin Mills, which is a real mall in Philadelphia that has the giant Ben Franklin head in it. The other part of the two-pronged attack is Michael Whetstone, Suzan Wexler and our entire art department, who have transformed the back lot at Warner Brothers into West Philly. They keep building out more and more of it every year.”
Sheryl Lee Ralph, right, in “Abbott Elementary.”
(Gilles Mingasson / Disney)
It’s also incredibly difficult to fake another city for Los Angeles. Can you imagine the L.A. romance “Nobody Wants This” trying to duplicate Silver Lake, Los Feliz or Koreatown in Atlanta?
“A real location helps the dialogue sound better. It looks better. It helps the actors know they’re in a real place. It helps the audience feel like they’re watching a real scene,” series creator and executive producer Erin Foster says. “When you think about ‘Sex and the City’ in its heyday, you would recognize the places that they’re at. You would recognize that they are actually authentic, real places that are cool. And it mattered. It made you take the characters seriously.”
Executive producer Jenni Konner adds, “And it sometimes informs story. We shot at Max & Helen’s, a notoriously difficult-to-get-into restaurant, and we had a story point where they weren’t able to get in because they didn’t realize how competitive it was. That was really fun to be able to highlight that truth of L.A.”
And not to take shots at Hollywood’s East Coast rival, but after the Netflix show recently shot scenes in New York for its upcoming third season, executive producer Bruce Eric Kaplan observed that the Big Apple presents drawbacks L.A. doesn’t. “It feels like the Los Angeles crew is a lot more concerned about our safety,” says the onetime “Girls” producer, lightheartedly. “I don’t remember ever having this many safety conversations, but you could shoot in the middle of anything in New York, and no one’s telling you to be safe.”
“Might be a sign of the times,” Foster wonders.
“Erin, I think you’re right,” Konner replies. “At first, I was like, ‘Oh, but it’s 10 or 15 years later, so safety rules have changed.’ But the truth is we shot in New York, and it did feel scary again. We were in the middle of the street in SoHo …”
Foster adds, laughing, “And they were just like, ‘We’ll just figure it out.’”
On a Saturday morning in July, a swimsuit-clad crowd of athletic mostly 20- and 30-somethings jumped in and out of ice baths. A DJ performed from a podium adorned with pink disco balls, brands gave away protein drinks and powders and people competed in a pull-up-bar-hanging competition. With matcha lattes in hand, attendees walked around the synthetic turf filming content. It was all very Santa Monica.
Except this wasn’t Santa Monica, or even Venice, where the event organizer, Coffee & Chill, started. It wasn’t Los Angeles at all. It was a rooftop in Queens. Day parties like this are less common in New York City, but people were into it. “This is so fun,” April Zhang-Autio, who often attends art happenings around the city, said while wandering from a cabana area to a merch booth. “You feel like we’re in Miami or L.A.”
L.A. wellness and social events, especially from the Westside, are making inroads in New York City. Besides Coffee & Chill, RummiKlub LA, which started in West Hollywood and throws Rummikub game nights in stylish settings, hosted an event last month at the West Village outpost of San Vicente Clubs, the elite members club operator that is another L.A. transplant. Also last month, SOSO Club, a singles meetup group from Santa Monica, popped up in New York City and returned Sunday.
Coffee & Chill started in Venice as a way to hang out without alcohol.
(Coffee & Chill)
Coffee & Chill attracts L.A. participants who look like they could appear on the upcoming “Baywatch” reboot. But the formula, which includes coffee and cold plunges in what resemble very high-end kiddie pools, has worked elsewhere. Blake Waller, who co-founded the event in 2023 as a way for his friends to gather without alcohol, said they decided to expand as requests came in from people in other cities. First came Miami, followed by New York City in 2025. They also host events in Austin and San Diego.
“We didn’t really feel that there’s anything like it in this space,” Waller said, referring to the New York City scene. He cited Bathhouse and Othership, but those hip wellness places are brick-and-mortar establishments, not pop-up events. (In a reversal of the trend, New York City-based Bathhouse is opening a Hollywood location, in the old Amoeba Music space.)
Whereas L.A. events are often in parking lots, and Miami ones are by the beach or a pool, Coffee & Chill’s New York City organizers have relied on rooftops. At one early event, they had to rig a hose to a bar faucet to fill the ice baths. “Maybe the reality is that Coffee & Chill could have only been born somewhere like L.A. or Miami,” Waller said. “Who would think to fill up an ice bath from a water faucet on a rooftop in Chelsea?”
The gatherings in each city have their own character, Waller said. “The L.A. events feel different than the Miami events, that feel different than Austin, that feel different than New York,” he said. Each city has local organizers. “That’s a space that they want to create, rather than us being transplants,” he said.
Still, local flavor only goes so far. Looking at photos from each of the cities, it can sometimes be hard to tell where they are. “When it comes to the actual event experience, I would say that there is a decent amount of consistency, in terms of what the tubs look like, the merch, what that looks like, even the touch points of what brands we’re working with,” Waller said.
To be sure, L.A. winds up with events from New York City too. Endorphins Running, which I run with, started in 2022 in New York City before expanding to other cities, including Los Angeles, where it hosts runs twice a week in Santa Monica. The Dinner Table Club, where strangers eat together, also launched in New York City and expanded to L.A. But the L.A. to New York City pipeline seems to be a newer trend.
RummiKlub LA, both in Los Angeles, as seen here, and in New York, below is meant to be as much about the mingling as it is about the game play.
(Ashley Gallerani)
Another series, RummiKlub LA, launched in early 2025 and has hosted three events in New York City. The city has plenty of board game gatherings, but founders Marnie Wekselblatt and Laura Galvan, both L.A. residents originally from New York, intend for this one to feel more chic, with RummiKlub-branded game sets and post-game cocktails.
“It’s not just bringing your board to a cafe or a park. It’s really like a night out, where you can get dressed up, have cocktails, mingle, meet friends, and there’s a whole night after the game play is done,” Galvan said. Past L.A. locations have included buzzy restaurant Craig’s and the West Hollywood Edition hotel on the Sunset Strip.
New York City actually came to them. Wekselblatt and Galvan said Tao Group Hospitality approached them about hosting events, resulting in back-to-back game nights at Moxy Lower East Side in July 2025. The people who attended, some of them visiting from L.A., were dressed for a nightclub, not a board game night.
The New York and L.A. crowds are similar. “Both cities are really interested in these gaming experiences,” Wekselblatt said. “Everyone has the same end goal and wants to be part of RummiKlub because it’s this curated event and night out that’s different from the traditional going for drinks and standing at a bar.”
RummiKlub NYC events attract a similar crowd as in Los Angeles: young folks who want to socialize in a non-traditional setting.
(Ashley Gallerani)
The events are similar too. “It almost feels like we’re copy-and-pasting on different coasts,” Galvan said. “I wouldn’t say that we necessarily have an intention to bring L.A. to New York … but from a logistics standpoint, I would say that the flow of the event is pretty much standard throughout.”
Meanwhile, SOSO founders Stephanie Scheele and Mackenzie Zoppi heard the demand from New York after launching their dating event in Santa Monica in 2023. SOSO, or Singles Only Social Club, was born out of a growing desire among young professionals for in-person connections following the pandemic and years of dating app fatigue. New York was just as full of fed-up daters as Los Angeles, so they brought SOSO east.
“We have friends in New York and we know it’s difficult to date in those places,” Zoppi said. “We had people messaging us constantly asking us, ‘When are you coming to New York?’”
They’ve had around seven events in New York City and Brooklyn. Sometimes the founders fly in to host, while other times they enlist what they called a small “boots on the ground” team.
“Whether you’re in L.A. or New York, people want the same exact thing: an excuse to get off their phones and get out of the house and meet people face to face,” Zoppi said. Still, the organizers don’t want their New York City events to feel like L.A. ones. Zoppi added, “We want people to date the New York way.”
A version of this story originally appeared on Max Kutner’s Zephyr Letter substack.
NEW YORK — It was 2023 when Laufey, the Icelandic singer-songwriter known for her neoclassical jazz-pop, decided to create a global fan event. Her second album, “Bewitched,” was soon to be released and she wanted to do something big to celebrate it. But more than that, she says, she “wanted to find a way to get my fans out of their homes, and to really follow an itinerary of my perfect idea of a day and have the music from ‘Bewitched’ follow it.”
And thus, “A Very Laufey Day” was born. Each year, the Grammy-winning singer curates itineraries for different locations across the globe for her listeners to follow. It’s “anywhere I have been and loved,” she says. It allows them to live what she refers to as “a perfect day,” but also to connect with their community offline and in person. And as she approaches its fourth edition, it has only grown larger.
“It became much bigger than I anticipated, really,” she says. She sought to inspire her audience to find “third spaces,” and explore some of her favorite locales: museums, bookstores, cafes, concerts and the like, and foster community in the process. And each year, it has only grown bigger, with fans dressing up in their favorite Laufey-themed vintage fashions to celebrate the unofficial holiday.
And Aug. 23 will mark the fourth annual “A Very Laufey Day.”
“It is a fun puzzle every year,” she says.
‘A Very Laufey Day’ 2026
This year, “A Very Laufey Day” will include experiences in 75 cities across 25 countries, centering on the theme of “A Celebration of the Arts.”
“Wherever in the world you’re spending your day, I hope you feel inspired and invigorated,” Laufey wrote in a note on her “A Very Laufey Day” website.
Fans can expect performances spanning symphony orchestras, ballet, jazz, opera and theater as well as events with libraries, bookstores, coffee shops, yogurt/ice cream shops and more. Her concert film, “A Night at the Symphony: Hollywood Bowl,” will be screened at select theaters. And she’s partnered with many museums around the world, including New York City’s Guggenheim, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, London’s Tate Modern and National Gallery, Chile’s Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Seoul’s Daelim Museum and more. At some participating businesses, fans will be able to acquire limited-edition merchandise and Laufey-themed specialty drinks.
LACMA is offering a discount code, AVLD, for museum visitors on Aug. 23. As of Aug. 16, the code took $2 off tickets. “Come spend the day enjoying something beautiful,” LACMA wrote on Instagram.
“This year it was really about focusing on the arts and culture and finding ways to bring this barrier of entry down between my audience — which is mostly Gen Z and Gen A — and these kind of so-called high cultural experiences,” she says. “Whether it’s going to see an orchestra show … museums or galleries, we really want to find ways to connect with those institutions.”
Some of these spaces can be intimidating for younger fans, and Laufey says this year was all about making these rooms, some of her favorites, inviting to her audience.
“It doesn’t have to be this scary thing. And so, I’ve kind of made it my life’s mission to make spaces like that fun and accessible,” she says.
LA28 hopes to raise the bar for the Paralympic movement when the Paralympic Games open in SoFi Stadium on Aug. 15, 2028. The city that already changed the Olympic movement by hosting the most commercially successful Games ever in 1984 could leave an equally indelible mark on the Paralympic movement.
“In the opening ceremony in two years’ time, we will be about to witness the Paralympic Games that can really put our movement in a higher step,” International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons said, “in a higher position as a sport movement.”
While the Olympics were blossoming in L.A. in 1984, the Paralympics that year were hosted in New York and Stoke Mandeville, England in a patchwork plan that came to be known as the “Last-Minute Games” because a U.S.-based organizing committee failed to secure funding to host the Paralympic Games at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The LA28 Olympics and Paralympics logos are featured on a sign outside an event in 2024.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Forty years later, the Paris Paralympics solidified the movement’s position as one of the largest sporting events in the world. The 2024 Paralympics sold 2.5 million tickets, the most for a Paralympic Games, and had a record 12,941 global broadcast hours. The overall live audience for the Paris Paralympics grew by 40% compared to 2021 and 117% from 2016.
Seeing the Paralympics leaves a lasting impression on fans. A Nielsen Sports study commissioned by the IPC found that 73% of people thought the Paris Paralympic Games positively changed their attitudes toward people with disabilities.
LA28 wants to build on that momentum.
“I really would love to see the change of perception of what people with disabilities can do, but also most importantly see the athletes perform,” said Ileana Rodriguez, the LA28 vice president of Paralympic strategy and relations and a 2012 Paralympic swimmer. “Because oftentimes we forget the sport side of the athletes and put the disability in front, and I really hope that this is reversed in our Games.”
American Alexandra Truwit competes during the women’s 400-meter freestyle during the Paralympics on Sept. 5, 2024, in Nanterre, France.
(Adam Pretty / Getty Images)
It didn’t take long for Ali Truwit to see the Paralympic standard. The former Yale swimmer had always respected Paralympians for their grit, courage and strength, but after she lost the lower part of her left leg in a shark attack in 2023, Truwit had her own Paralympic awakening.
She realized that to even make the U.S. team for Paris, she needed to swim faster with one leg than she did with two.
“A lot of people would come up and say, like, “Oh well you could do the Paralympics,’” said Truwit, who had 15 months between having her leg amputated on her 23rd birthday and the opening ceremony of the Paris Paralympics. “I’m like, ‘Well, you can’t just do the Paralympics actually!’ It’s elite and it’s fast.”
Her American record time of 1 minute, 8.98 seconds seconds in the S10 100-meter backstroke at the 2024 U.S. Paralympic swimming trials was faster than the times she was putting up to be recruited for Division I schools. Also the U.S. record holder in the S10 400-meter freestyle (4:31.39), Truwit won silver medals in both races in her first Paralympic Games.
But as she starts training for 2028, Truwit knows even her national record times might not be enough to get on the podium in L.A.
In Paris, 175 world and 218 Paralympic records were broken across 22 sports. The quality of the performances are better than ever, Parsons, the Paralympic president, pointed out. Athletes have become more refined with their training techniques.
“If you raise the expectations for what high performance is, for what an athlete is, then gosh, that’s just going to open up so many more opportunities,” said Brent Hardin, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Alabama and director of Alabama Adapted Athletics. “The Paralympics has the ability to do that like no other sporting event in the world for athletes with disabilities.”
The last time the Summer Paralympics were in the United States, in 1996, the event was run by a separate committee from the Olympic organizers. Disorganized and under-publicized, the event was underwhelming, Hardin said. Since 2002, organizing committees have been required to put together joint bids to host both the Olympic and Paralympic Games, using the same venues, facilities and infrastructure.
LA28 will rely on mostly existing venues for both the Olympics and Paralympics, relieving many of the biggest headaches that have plagued previous organizing committees. But hosting 4,480 Paralympians in one village is an especially unique challenge.
UCLA students walk up and down stairs on a campus that features many hills. The school is scheduled to host the athletes’ village for the 2028 Paralympics.
(Al Seib/For The Times)
LA28 will host the Olympic and Paralympic villages at UCLA. While renowned for its red brick buildings and lush green lawns, UCLA’s campus is also notorious for its steep hills. In 2025, two students who used wheelchairs sued the university and the UC Board of Regents for discrimination, citing, in part, elevators that are often out of service, insufficient signage and dangerous conditions in pedestrian paths of travel.
Rodriquez recognized the campus’ geographical challenges that organizers can’t change. LA28 said in a statement it is focused on building upon UCLA’s existing accessibility foundation while exploring additional modifications and services to support Paralympic athletes and team officials, such as temporary ramps and modified restrooms. Construction is expected to begin this year, trying to minimize impact on normal campus activities.
“One solution is not going to solve it for everyone, but a system of different ones hopefully will for most of them,” said Rodriguez, an architect consulted on previous Games before working with LA28. “We’re aiming, of course, for 100% of the users, but it doesn’t mean that there might be challenges in some points.”
The Games will also need to accommodate millions of fans traveling around Southern California. The FIFA World Cup tested the transportation system and it was largely a success, but it presented problems for some fans.
Kate Scott, founder of Only Everywhere, a directory providing accessibility information about more than 400 venues in California, heard from fans who paid hundreds of extra dollars for accessible parking and a shuttle to the stadium only to learn later that a free shuttle option was available. Fans struggled to secure wheelchair accessible seats, especially after they were sold at astronomical resale values, and couldn’t get clear answers about what accommodations would be available in the stadium.
Fans pack SoFi Stadium during a World Cup match between the United States and Paraguay on June 12.
(Kelvin Kuo/Los Angeles Times)
SoFi Stadium aced the physical infrastructure with working elevators, wheelchair escorts and accessible seating with clear sightlines on every level. It was mostly an information gap that left fans wanting.
“It’s not a problem if you say there’s no way to get to the cafe on the second floor. It is a problem if they find that out at the bottom of the stairs,” Scott said. “They can plan ahead if you just give them the information. It’s not about perfection. It’s about telling people what to expect.”
Of the 400 California venues Scott has added to Only Everywhere’s directory, more than half don’t publish anything online about accessibility. Only 7% cover accommodations for mobility limitation, hearing disability, vision impairment and sensory disabilities.
Disability advocates hope the Paralympics can lead to improved access to social services and structures for people with disabilities during and after the Games.
“Not just a one-in-every-four-years kind of event,” said Juliann Anesi, an associate professor of gender studies at UCLA and an affiliate faculty member with the disabilities studies department.
After the 1984 Olympics helped fund youth sports in L.A. for decades with a $230-million surplus, the 2028 Games have already jump-started adaptive sports opportunities as part of the PlayLA program.
Hunter Woodhall from the U.S. wins the men’s 400-meter T62 final at the 2024 Paralympics on Sept. 6, 2024, in Paris.
(Thibault Camus / Associated Press)
The program is run by L.A. Department of Recreation and Parks and will have 12 adaptive sports (adaptive archery, athletics, kayaking, skateboarding, lacrosse, pickleball, para swimming, blind soccer, goalball, para surfing, wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis) for the 2026-27 season. The program is on track to reach 5,000 total adaptive sports program enrollments in 2027, LA28 said.
“LA28 is an opportunity not only to think about people with disabilities as part of [society], but instead to really reshape the conversation around disability, especially in sport,” Truwit said. “… We don’t look at Paralympians as an inspiration or as something where they’re overcoming a limitation, but rather as just part of human diversity and potential.”
At the halfway mark of the Olympic quadrennial, Truwit is already dreaming about L.A. The Connecticut native can picture the opening ceremony in SoFi Stadium, where she will be flanked by her fellow American Paralympians. That group could even include several athletes who received grants from her nonprofit Stronger Than You Think, which helps provide prosthetics to girls and women experiencing limb loss. Being at the Paralympics together would be a dream, Truwit said.
Parsons will open what will be the final Paralympic Games of his IPC presidency. He envisions going out on a high note.
“The best Paralympic Games,” Parsons said of his 2028 expectations, “ever.”
When the doors to the emergency room in “The Pitt” swing open and a new patient arrives, we, like the doctors, are on high alert, wondering what the acclaimed medical drama is about to throw at us.
We know two things: The actors will be superb. And it’s best not to become too attached to the characters they’re playing.
Even better: Two of the five “Pitt” nominees self-submitted their performances after HBO Max, looking to streamline its submissions in the guest categories, did not put them forward.
If you watched the second season of the show, you could probably name the actors who made the Emmys’ guest list: Tina Ivlev, heartbreaking as the sexual assault survivor; Brittany Allen, poignant as the dying mom; Tal Anderson, combative and funny as Dr. King’s neurodivergent sister, who craves independence from her protective sibling; Ernest Harden Jr., devastating as the doomed Louie; and Jeff Kober, who, playing Dr. Robby’s motorcycle mechanic, has some of the most affecting scenes in the season.
HBO Max entered Ivlev, Harden and Anderson, leaving Allen and Kober to pony up the $225 to submit themselves, joining the ranks of 84 entrants for guest actor and 51 for guest actress. (To be eligible to compete in guest, actors must appear in less than 50% of a show’s eligible episodes.) Eight other actors appearing on “The Pitt” also self-submitted.
“The three actors that HBO put forward delivered beautiful, human work that resonated deeply with audiences, and they were in a tough position having so many actors who had all delivered great performances,” Allen told me over a call from her Pasadena home.
“Though at first there was a moment of disappointment, I quickly moved on from that,” Allen continues. “I didn’t take it personally because as an actor, you get good at not taking things personally.”
Kober, calling from the Valley, signs off on that sentiment. He won a daytime Emmy in 2022 for “General Hospital” after he submitted himself.
“I guess that’s how the Emmys work for me,” he says, laughing. “I don’t know any other way.”
There is precedent for self-submission success at the Emmys. Three “Game of Thrones” cast members — Gwendoline Christie, Alfie Allen and Carice van Houten — entered themselves in 2019 and were nominated. Kelly Jenrette did the same in 2018 for “The Handmaid’s Tale” and earned a nod.
For Allen, it came down to believing in herself and the work she did on “The Pitt.” As her seven-episode arc aired, strangers often stopped her at her local Trader Joe’s and at the park with her 3-year-old son to tell her how moved they were by her performance and her character Roxie’s decision to accept that her life was coming to an end and say goodbye.
But, good as it was and seen as it was, that work didn’t translate into landing an agent. Having recently turned 40, Allen figured she had nothing to lose, having reached an age where she wasn’t “as worried about being perceived as the quiet little girl who doesn’t ruffle any feathers.”
In a challenging industry, that approach has resonated deeply with her peers.
“I’ve had similar moments in the past where I’ve had a memorable role on a high-profile show and I’ve thought, ‘Maybe this will make it a little easier moving forward’ and it hasn’t,” Allen says. “So if ever there was a time to go, ‘I’m going to try to put my name out there in a way that might make me a little more bankable,’ this is it.”
Kober, 72, has had ups and downs over the course of his 40-year acting career and like Duke, the grounded mentor he played on “The Pitt,” he possesses a calm acuity when talking about the profession.
“Acting is the most profoundly spiritual career a person could have because you don’t get into it unless you need approval, and then when you get that approval, you find it doesn’t do a thing for you,” Kober says. “Then you’ve got to find a way to do something with this thing you love that isn’t about getting approval. It’s only when you’re not working for that when you know the work matters.”
With his shoulder-length hair, goatee and go-with-the-flow manner, Kober gives off distinct vibes of another Jeff — Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski.
“I have heard that comparison made,” Kober says, smiling.
Both Kober and Allen express deep appreciation for “The Pitt” as a workplace where actors can come in and do the kind of work that they aspire to do, work that resonates with audiences and reminds them why they entered the profession in the first place.
“I love being on set,” Allen says, “so going to Warner Bros. every morning as the sun rose and watching that miniature city come to life and having the privilege of working in an environment that is so ripe for accessing truth and play and shared humanity was a gift. When Roxie came along, I saw it as the epitome of what I want to offer as an actor and as a person in this life.”
Because of her character’s fate, Allen will not be returning to “The Pitt.” The fate of Duke, diagnosed with a life-threatening ascending aortic aneurysm, is ambiguous. Dr. Robby encourages him to follow up with further tests, which Duke agrees to do if Robby promises to return from his sabbatical and let him take his Triumph Bonneville for a ride.
So … Duke’s coming back, right?
“One would think,” Kober says, hopeful. But then, he jokes that maybe there will be a line next season where someone in the ER says, “Did you hear about Duke? What a shame.”
“Or he could come back in Season 4, who knows,” Kober adds, noting he has heard nothing from the show’s producers. “One thing I’ve learned over the years as an actor is the importance of letting go. That’s the life of an actor.”
Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government.
It was a move this week that drew immediate blowback: Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson pulled Councilmember Nithya Raman off of her position as chair of the city’s housing and homelessness committee, just as Raman enters the homestretch in her campaign to unseat Mayor Karen Bass.
Raman quickly suggested that she was being punished for challenging Bass, a Harris-Dawson ally. On a video titled “Bass’ Ally Removed Me as Chair,” she portrayed the move as retribution for saying City Controller Kenneth Mejia should audit the mayor’s homeless programs.
“Mayor Bass and her allies are protecting what we all know is a deeply broken status quo, one that is not serving any person here in the city of Los Angeles,” she said.
For months, many at City Hall had expected Raman to make a stink if she was yanked from her post, transforming herself into a martyr. So what exactly was Harris-Dawson thinking?
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In an interview Friday, Harris-Dawson said the removal of Raman as committee chair was simply one piece in a larger effort to make the council’s committees work better — and not punishment at all.
“If I were trying to punish her, I would have moved her off [her post] the day after she filed to run for mayor” back in February, he said.
Harris-Dawson said he split Raman’s committee into two — one focused on housing, the other on homelessness — because the two subjects were simply too big for a single committee to handle effectively. He said he and Raman had talked extensively about that idea, disagreeing on whether the two topics should have been combined.
The homelessness committee needs someone who can focus their undivided attention on the ongoing crises surrounding homeless services — including the Trump administration’s effort to strip hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, Harris-Dawson said.
“We’ve got to be able to move, and move in the most efficient manner possible,” he said.
Councilmember Nithya Raman attends a city council meeting at City Hall in downtown Los Angeles on August 14, 2026.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
As part of the reshuffling, Harris-Dawson picked Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Skid Row, to lead the now renamed homelessness and health committee. Jurado will also sit on the new three-member housing committee, which will be chaired by Councilmember Imelda Padilla.
Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, fresh off his reelection victory, will head up the council’s economic development committee, replacing Councilmember Curren Price, who leaves at the end of the year.
Even Councilmember Monica Rodriguez landed a spot in charge of the committee that deals with parks, a pet issue of hers. Harris-Dawson stripped Rodriguez of her committee seats last year, after she criticized his leadership.
The new assignments could give Harris-Dawson a base of support the next time there’s a vote on his presidency. Harris-Dawson dismissed the idea that there was any connection, calling such speculation “completely inaccurate.”
The committee assignments take effect next month.
Raman will continue serving on the five-member homelessness committee, just not as its chair. She will head the council committee dealing with immigration and civil rights. She even broadened her portfolio in some ways, securing a seat on the public safety committee, which deals with police and fire responses.
“If you’re on a committee, you definitely can get things done, and you don’t have to be the chair,” Harris-Dawson said.
Raman offered a different take, telling reporters on Friday that a committee chair simply has more authority, setting the agenda.
“You also have some more power in trying to get the departments to reply — although even my best efforts to get the departments to reply to report-backs didn’t work,” she said.
Not happy with the homeless count
The hot potato that is homelessness now heads to Jurado, at a critical time for the city and her district.
Jurado’s district, which takes in downtown and parts of the Eastside, saw a 23% increase in unsheltered homelessness, according to this year’s homeless count. On top of that, The Times recently reported that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which runs the count, failed to tally hundreds of residents at a Skid Row shelter in 2024 and 2025, skewing this year’s citywide numbers.
Jurado voiced frustration over those issues, saying city officials shouldn’t have to spend time and money verifying data that “should have been accurate from the start.”
She isn’t the only one voicing displeasure.
Harris-Dawson questioned the accuracy of the count in his own South L.A. district, where LAHSA reported a 127% increase in unsheltered homelessness.
Harris-Dawson thinks the big increase may stem from a single census tract south of Manchester Avenue between Normandie and Van Ness avenues. In that area, LAHSA said it found 277 unsheltered homeless people.
Last year, the agency counted 19, Harris-Dawson said.
“A jump of this magnitude in a single corridor strongly suggests a data collection or processing error rather than an actual change on the ground,” according to a motion signed this week by Harris-Dawson that calls for an explanation.
LAHSA officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Sherman Oaks Smackdown, Part II
It was the most personal of the mayoral debates staged last spring: Bass and Raman going mano a mano in front of an audience at the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.
During that 90-minute back-and-forth, the two took shots at each other over homelessness, police hiring and their respective leadership styles, among other things.
Now, with the Nov. 3 runoff approaching, Bass and Raman are set for a Valley rematch on Wednesday, which will again feature Fox11’s Phil Shuman, as well as a panel of representatives from Sherman Oaks community groups.
Reservations have been filling up for in-person attendance. The event will also be live streamed on www.soha914.com and aired on LAist 89.3, organizers said.
State of play
— HITTING HUD: In a scathing order, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from taking control of federal funding for homelessness programs across L.A. County. In his preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said the Department of Housing and Urban Development acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it suspended LAHSA from managing federal funds.
— LOATHING LAHSA: Federal officials also denounced LAHSA as corrupt and incompetent during an appearance at the Dream Center, a faith-based residential treatment center. LAHSA pushed back, saying the federal government has failed to provide evidence of graft or abuse.
— RETURN ENGAGEMENT: The mayor’s Inside Safe homelessness program is spending more and more time going back to the same locations. Data reviewed by The Times showed that, in the fourth quarter of 2025, four out of every five Inside Safe operations were carried out in places already visited by its outreach teams. The repopulation problem has been especially pronounced along the 110 Freeway in South L.A.
— WAREHOUSE WOES: City leaders have accused Lineage, whose warehouse in Boyle Heights was destroyed by fire, of blowing past the city’s 45-day deadline for removing millions of pounds of rotting food from its property. Lineage reported Friday that the task was 94% done. Bass wants the city’s lawyers to take Lineage to court and impose penalties.
— RISKY BUSINESS: A divided City Council finalized an agreement aimed at controlling the city’s costs during the 2028 Summer Olympic Games, amid complaints that the event poses a major financial risk.
— TRAIN IN VAIN: Despite months of test runs, the Automated People Mover train is facing new uncertainty, with a bond rating downgrade and a legal battle between the city and the contractor.
— ZEROING IN: City Controller Kenneth Mejia told The Times he’s planning to use his auditing authority to examine spending by LA28, the privately run committee that is staging the Games.
— BUMMER NUMBERS: Euthanasia rates for cats and kittens are up in a big way in L.A. this year, according to the city’s latest stats.
— LICENSE TO CARRY: The federal government and the county’s Sheriff’s Department have reached a settlement over what prosecutors alleged was a pattern of delaying applications for permits to carry concealed firearms. The Sheriff’s Department has cut its waiting times and now complies with statutory deadlines, officials said.
— END OF THE PARTY: A mansion in Encino, located in the western end of Raman’s district, has become a massive party house, drawing a neighborhood outcry.
QUICK HITS
Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature homeless program went to the area around Bessemer Street and Cedros Avenue in Van Nuys, an area represented by Padilla.
On the docket next week: As we mentioned earlier, Bass and Raman go head to head in Sherman Oaks on Wednesday. Tune in!
Stay in touch
That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
Bill Plaschke should have consulted with his colleague Laurence Darmiento before writing his ill-informed column on the sale of the Lakers. Had he done so he would’ve realized that Joshua Kushner, who is co-buying the Lakers, is a lifelong Democrat, and therefore President Trump‘s showing up for a Lakers’ tip-off as suggested by Plaschke is off the table.
Jack Wishard Los Angeles
In 2025, when Mark Walter acquired his majority stake in the Lakers, he said, “It’s a privilege to work alongside Jeanie Buss as we maintain that excellence and set the standard for success in this new era, both on and off the court.”
That era concluded quickly, undone by his hubris and deceit. Did he mean to say “error” both on and off the court? That he did quite well.
David Griffin Westwood
Like in real estate, the Lakers were flipped by Dodgers majority owner Mark Walter after only 10 months of ownership. One person took a “flip in his grave,” previous owner Jerry Buss, who died in 2013. The Lakers as an organization have never been the same since his passing.
Wayne Muramatsu Cerritos
Former Disney head honcho Bob Iger, et al., owning the Lakers? Can’t wait to see Goofy and Mr. Toad as ushers at the Crypt!
Jack Wolf Westwood
Lakers previous owner Mark Walter is under federal investigation for possible loan fraud, and new Lakers owner Joshua Kushner’s company, Thrive Eternal, participated in the recent FIFA private equity scandal. Why can’t NBA owners avoid financial shenanigans? Thank God for Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. … Oh, wait.
Morning meals in Southern California restaurants link us to so many cultures and flavors: Taiwanese sticky rice fan tuan, Salvadoran huevos picados con loroco, fatteh hummus in Van Nuys, catfish and grits in Inglewood, blueberry pancakes with extra butter in Hollywood.
But to narrow L.A.’s essential daybreak dishes down to one icon? It is, without question, the breakfast burrito.
The origins of burritos, meals wrapped in flour tortillas for breakfast or otherwise, trace most reliably to Sonora, Mexico’s northwestern state where wheat has been cultivated since the 1500s. California’s Mexican foundations made the burrito’s presence in L.A. inevitable, though its omnipresence was surely sped along by California entrepreneur Duane Roberts, who introduced the frozen burrito for fast-food chains to heat and sell in 1956 — after he’d already found success supplying the original McDonald’s in San Bernardino with burger patties.
Discussions of the mid-20th-century industrial food complex are relevant here. If any one ingredient, beyond the all-important egg, defines our modern tastes in breakfast burritos, it is the inclusion of the Tater Tot, capitalized after Ore-Ida (now owned by Kraft Heinz) engineered the fried puffs from potato scraps in 1953 and trademarked the term.
Our tastes for breakfast burritos have only increased since the pandemic. Many newer businesses spun out of 2020-era pop-ups or at-home tinkering — and nearly all of them crunch with a telltale fluffy-crispness. Tater tots are now to the L.A. breakfast burrito what rice is to the Bay Area Mission-style burrito.
Still, many styles express themselves in our foil-wrapped torpedoes: Some are canvases for individual creative expression, some innovations that graft global cuisines, some basic energy bombs to fuel the day.
And yes, rising prices led to a viral argument about a $20 burrito in the summer 2026 political discourse. Among the following suggestions, you can find a $3.99 egg, potato and cheese burrito served from a takeout window in Atwater Village and a $26 knife-and-fork burrito stuffed with short-rib meat in Hancock Park; a majority is in the mid-range between $12 and $17.
To build your own best-of breakfast burrito list, you can always start with stalwarts like Cottage Corner in Burbank and Lucky Boy in Pasadena. These 16 favorites span businesses that have been open for six months to several decades. The regional options are overwhelming, and the mix is always fluctuating. (A Pasadena standout, BBAD, recently changed ownership and the quality plummeted, hopefully temporarily.) It’s hard to consider this roundup anything more than a continual work in progress.
Fresh off a two-month stint filming the eighth season of Peacock’s “Love Island USA” in Fiji, Ariana Madix is happy to be back in her own space.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
“I’ve been back and forth and all over the place so much lately,” says Madix from her Los Angeles home. “I’m very excited about all the things that I’m doing with my house. Just little things like I got a new front door. I’m in a nesting phase, I guess, because I’ve been gone for so long.”
The television personality and actor, who made her Broadway debut in “Chicago” in 2024 after capturing attention on Bravo’s “Vanderpump Rules,” recently scored her first Emmy for hosting the wildly popular dating competition show “Love Island USA.” She finds that her summers in Fiji, the show’s filming location, always leave her with a fresh perspective.
“Going back multiple seasons, I see people who are so much younger than me be able to be so honest and forthright with how they feel and what they want,” says Madix. “I just think about back when I was their age, how scared I was all the time to make people mad. I admire them so much for that because it’s hard. I think that they are really brave and it inspires me to be brave.”
With the “Love Island USA” reunion set to air Aug. 31 on Peacock, Madix is enjoying every minute of her downtime. Back in Los Angeles where she’s lived for nearly two decades, her perfect Sunday involves a trip to the barn to ride horses, strolling through the neighborhood she first called home and hitting a club where people actually dance.
10 a.m.: Make a quick breakfast at home
I’m a sleepy person. I can sleep forever, so I have to set a time and be like, we’re going to do something. So I’m getting up at 10 a.m. I feel like that still gives me time to sleep in and feel like I’m still having a relaxing day, but it’s still early enough to do stuff. My breakfast is pretty boring. I just make egg whites at the house. I enjoy breakfast food a lot, but if I want to have an eventful fun day, I need to just get the breakfast out of the way and get some caffeine in me. Because if I dillydally for too long, I’m here all day. I’ll either make an iced Americano with a little bit of almond milk or a cold brew. I don’t do anything hot. It’s against my religion that I made up [laughs].
11 a.m.: Head to the barn to ride horses
I’d get out to the barn in Burbank to go horseback riding. Doing something outdoors, whether it’s riding, going on a hike or literally just touching grass, is a good way to start your day, I feel. Especially in L.A. where we’re spoiled with beautiful weather all the time. I’ve been riding since I was 6 years old. When I lived in New York, it wasn’t something that I really had access to or the funds for, so there was a period of time where I wasn’t riding and I felt like I was really missing that part of myself.
We’re really blessed to have access to riding in L.A. I had my own horse, but he recently retired so he lives in the mountains now, living his best life. So if my trainer has horses that need to be ridden for their own exercise, they’ll put me on one of those.
1 p.m.: Visit my old stomping grounds in Los Feliz
After that, I gotta go home, shower, change and then I gotta eat. I’d go to Los Feliz for some tacos and go for a walk. This is going to sound corny, but I recently tried Guac Daddy with my boyfriend, Dan. We each got like two or three tacos, so we could try a bunch and it was good. Afterward, we’re definitely going to Skylight [Books]. I love the section of the store that has all of the big photography books. I could flip through so many of them, so that’s where I’m going to post up for a little bit, hopefully with an iced coffee in hand. I saw something on TikTok where someone said our need for a walk-around beverage is emotionally regulating, so I think that’s a key part of this whole experience.
5 p.m.: Take a power nap before grabbing drinks at a rooftop
I think this is about the time where I need a nap, especially if I’m going to continue doing other things. If I can get a good power nap in, I’m ready to transition into more nighttime vibes. I want to try to be out of the house having a little sunset drink and I want to be somewhere with a good view of the sunset. There are some really cute rooftop spots in the Beverly Hills area. Gemma at the Waldorf Astoriahas a really cute rooftop. That’s a good place to have a nice mezcal margarita and watch the sunset. My best friend, Logan, and I like to go somewhere where we say we’re gonna “eat with a fork.” There’s different levels to this. We might get an order of Parmesan fries or have a fish moment like crudo or a fish taco. Something that feels fresh that goes along with the vibe. I’d be here for a couple of hours with Dan and my friends Logan [Cochran], Dayna [Kathan] and Katie [Maloney].
7:30 p.m.: Play old-school games at the Neon Retro Arcade
Dan and I recently had a Sunday Funday in Pasadena. We went to this arcade bar called Neon Retro. I love a good pinball machine. They have all these old-school games like the old NBA game and old shooting games. Now that we’re adults and we can get unlimited [tokens], you actually can play long enough to beat some of these games. [Laughs] It’s a lot more satisfying than when we were kids and you’d play once, you’d die and then that’s it. We might get some candy to really feel the arcade vibes. It’s definitely a beer moment though.
10 p.m.: Dance at Club Tee Gee ‘til they kick us out
This is where things diverge because I’d maybe go catch a movie at CityWalk. Or if we’re feeling freaky, we could go to Club Tee Gee in Atwater for some dancing, to really have fun and feel like tomorrow’s not Monday. They always have really good music. I actually celebrated my birthday there a few years ago, which was really fun. They have glitter on the ceiling, which sets the tone immediately, and a lot of big-name DJs who will do secret sets there. It’s a place where people actually go to dance, which I enjoy. It’s not just standing around and looking at people.
2:30 a.m.: Order food off Postmates, then pass out
We’re staying at Club Tee Gee till close, till they kick us out. Then we’re catching a Lyft home and potentially ordering some food off Postmates. I’ve said tacos throughout the day, but I still want them [again] regardless. I think we’re spoiled in L.A. and there’s so many good ones, so I don’t have a favorite. I kind of just go everywhere. If not tacos, I’ll maybe be craving some Thai food. Then I’m passing out right afterward.
The U.S. Department of Justice and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have agreed to settle a lawsuit over what federal prosecutors alleged last year was a pattern of delaying applications for permits to carry concealed firearms for “unreasonable” lengths of time.
The Sheriff’s Department will “bring its procedures in line with the Supreme Court’s landmark Bruen decision,” the DOJ said in a statement Thursday, referring to a 2022 high court decision affirming a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.
Excessively delaying applications for concealed carry permits, the DOJ had alleged, effectively violated the applicants’ constitutional rights.
In response to its lawsuit, the DOJ’s statement said, the Sheriff’s Department “drastically cut those waiting times and is now in compliance with statutory deadlines.” The development is “a huge win for the residents of Los Angeles County and for the Second Amendment,” the federal agency added.
“The Justice Department supports our law enforcement partners.” Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in the statement. “The sheriff acknowledged the problem and devoted substantial additional resources, including new processing software and additional personnel, to cutting waiting times dramatically.”
The Sheriff’s Department did not immediately provide comment on the settlement.
In its complaint filed in federal district court in L.A. in September, the DOJ claimed that the Sheriff’s Department had “systematically denied thousands of law-abiding Californians their fundamental Second Amendment right to bear arms outside the home — not through outright refusal, but through a deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay.”
The complaint stated that between Jan. 2, 2024, and March 31, 2025, the Sheriff’s Department received almost 4,000 applications for new concealed carry licenses, but issued only two. Two others were denied and the rest were either withdrawn or were still pending, according to the DOJ.
The DOJ complaint also cited Sheriff’s Department data that showed that over those 15 months, it took an average of nearly 300 days for the department to advance the more than 8,000 new permit applications and renewals it received.
The Sheriff’s Department said in September that Sheriff Robert Luna, who was also listed by name as a defendant in the original federal complaint, “inherited a dysfunctional system” when he took office in 2022, and that he had only 13 people to manage the avalanche of applications for concealed carry permits filed each year in L.A. County.
The department also said in September that since December 2022, it had reduced “the backlog” of applications for concealed carry licenses from about 10,000 to about 3,200, and that more than 19,000 such applications had been “successfully approved” since 2020.
