L.A

Given the resilience and diversity of our local mosquito population and our warming climate, Los Angeles doesn’t really have an easily defined mosquito season.

That was one of my biggest takeaways — and bummers — from my conversation with Chris Barker, an epidemiology professor at UC Davis who has studied mosquitoes for almost 30 years, including at his lab.

“I hate to say it, but there are mosquitoes year-round,” Barker said, “and in Southern California in particular, many of your mosquitoes are active year-round, and they don’t go through a reproductive pause, so they’re really just waiting on conditions to be right for biting and for development. In that sense, the warmer [weather], the better for the mosquitoes, and the worse it is for us.”

For this week’s edition of The Wild, our weekly outdoors newsletter, I spoke to Barker about how hikers can best avoid nature’s rudest insect this summer. I wanted to understand what common misconceptions hikers have about mosquitoes, any behavioral changes we can make and what types of trails are most likely to have active mosquito populations. (Spoiler alert: It’s a lot of them.)

First, let’s quickly discuss the mosquitoes that you will find in Southern California, as Barker emphasized to me that we shouldn’t just imagine mosquitoes as one bloodthirsty monolith.

“There are many species of mosquitoes that exhibit a wide range of behaviors, and some species never bite people,” Barker said. “Knowing just a little bit of mosquito biology can help a hiker know when and” where to hike.

Types of mosquitoes found around L.A. hiking trails

In California, there are more than 50 species of mosquitoes, living from below sea level in the desert to above 10,000 feet in our mountains, according to the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Thankfully, our local population is smaller than that and includes:

• Three mosquitoes in the Aedes genus: Often dubbed “ankle biters,” the black-and-white-striped female aedes mosquitoes bite during the day, often around the legs, often multiple times; the most prevalent in Southern California, Aedes aegypti, generally lives where people are, as it depends heavily on manmade water sources to lay its eggs; different species are vectors for different diseases, including Aedes aegypti, which can carry dengue fever.
• Six mosquitoes in the Culex genus: Adults are most active from dusk to dawn; they prefer to bite birds but will bite humans; otherwise, they will rest in cool, shaded dense vegetation; the Southern house mosquito in this genus can transmit West Nile.

• Anopheles franciscanus: Living in warm sunny pools with algae; not known to carry disease in California; peak biting during dusk and dawn; included in this list to make us all feel a little better, just in case you worry as much as your local outdoors journalist about mosquito-borne diseases.
• Ochlerotatus sierrensis: Also known as “western treehole mosquitoes,” these little jerks lay their eggs in tree holes, especially oaks, laurels and eucalyptus, and emerge in spring, ready to unapologetically ruin your backpacking trip; these mosquitoes will bite in the day and evening, but are especially active at dusk.
• Ochlerotatus washinoi: Also known as “woodland pond mosquitoes,” which makes them sound more charming than they are, these aggressive daytime biters are typically found in floodwater habitats in early spring; not known to carry disease in California.

A quick 101 on West Nile virus

Outside of an itchy bite or, in rare cases, a severe allergic reaction, the most significant health threat that mosquitoes pose to hikers around L.A. is West Nile virus.

West Nile virus is typically contracted by humans through the bite of an infected mosquito. Most people infected with the virus, an estimated 80%, never know it, because they don’t get sick. About 20% of those infected experience flu-like symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Less than 1% develop serious illnesses that affect the central nervous system and usually require hospitalization.

Similar to the lack of clarity around who develops long COVID, scientists have yet to identify why certain people develop serious neurological conditions from West Nile. Advanced age, especially in people 65 and older, is thought to play a role, given that with age, the body’s immune system is slower to respond to threats, according to the National Library of Medicine. Other risk factors are thought to include being male; having diabetes, heart disease or chronic kidney disease; or being immunocompromised, according to research.

In recent years, reported West Nile human cases have typically peaked in early September, according to data analyzed by the L.A. County Department of Public Health. This year, West Nile has been detected in traps and in dead birds across L.A., but especially in Cerritos and Long Beach, according to the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District.

Given all that we know now about our local mosquito population and risks, let’s discuss Barker’s tips and tricks for how hikers can best avoid getting bit.

How L.A. hikers can best avoid getting bitten by mosquitoes

1. Consider what water source is near.

I personally love hiking along the Arroyo Seco or San Gabriel River, where it’s often shady and cooler than other parts of Angeles National Forest. Unfortunately, mosquitoes love those areas too.

Mosquitoes prefer standing water, but not permanent water, Barker said. For certain species, this could be a segment of the river where the water has stopped flowing, leaving a nice warm pool for mama mosquitoes to lay their eggs, or even a small puddle.

“When I go hiking … especially in the mountains, I always look in the rock homes next to the streams that have captured snow melt water as it recedes,” Barker said. “Those rock holes keep water through much of the summer, and if you look in those rock holes, you often see hundreds or thousands of mosquitoes in individual rock holes. They’re the immatures that are still developing and will come out and eventually bite people and other animals in the area.”

I was honestly happier before I knew that.

2. Consider the day’s forecast and its effect on mosquito behavior.

“Often these mosquitoes are biting from late afternoon into early evening — so all the times we love to be outdoors,” Barker said.

Like us, mosquitoes are most active when temperatures are warm but not extremely hot. “On our hot days in the summer, mosquitoes will wait until the late afternoon, evening or even morning periods to bite instead of the hottest part of the day,” Barker said.

That said, if there’s a light breeze or it is windy, you’re far less likely to get bitten, as mosquitoes are thought to only fly up to 1 to 1.5 mph.

3. Take extra precautions on morning and evening hikes.

Mosquitoes are often most active during these time periods — the ideal summer hiking time. As such, Barker advised hikers to wear baggy light-colored pants and hiking shirts, so that you will remain cool enough under the sun but your skin will be more protected.

You can also pre-spray your clothing with Permethrin, an insecticide that kills and repels mosquitoes.

4. Reapply mosquito repellent.

I generally set a timer for around 50 minutes when out hiking to remind myself to reapply sunscreen, but I rarely remember to reapply bug repellent.

“Most people do kind of a one-and-done application and happily go off and hike, and if you hike for hours, especially if you’re using repellent with either a lower DEET concentration or some other alternatives, you often have to reapply those at more frequent intervals,” Barker said.

DEET has long been found to be a highly effective mosquito repellent, but as I reported back in 2024, DEET has a perception problem. Unlike some repellents, it isn’t naturally occurring, which has caused some members of the public to take pause.

“They want something that’s natural. They forget that strychnine [and] ricin are all natural products,” said Walter S. Leal, a UC Davis distinguished professor in molecular and cellular biology, in a 2024 interview, referencing poisons derived from plants. “Being natural does not necessarily mean it is good, and being synthetic doesn’t necessarily mean it is bad.”

Additionally, people often incorrectly associate DEET with the banned insecticide DDT. “This is a big mistake,” Leal said. “There is no chemical similarity between the two.”

5. Try coastal hikes to avoid mosquitoes.

“Coastal environments sometimes have fewer mosquitoes,” Barker said. “In L.A., you have that strong temperature gradient as you move away from the ocean, and things get warmer in the inland areas. Cooler areas slow mosquito development, and you tend to have fewer mosquitoes right along the coast.”

This excludes areas near tidal marshes, like the Ballona and Los Cerritos wetlands, where certain mosquitoes can become “quite numerous” if not controlled by local vector agencies.

The coastal breeze also helps hikes along the ocean — like several routes you’ll find in the Santa Monica Mountains or Palos Verdes Peninsula — have fewer mosquitoes.

“And some of the coastal mosquitoes fly inland to find their blood meal hosts before they come back and lay eggs,” Barker said. “So right along the coast is not a bad place to be from a mosquito-biting perspective.”

Did somebody say Type-O Tuesday?

6. If weather allows, hike in the desert to avoid mosquitoes.

“There is no real escape from mosquitoes, I would say, except possibly in the deserts in areas with less water,” Barker said. “That’s your best escape in California.”

If you head out to Joshua Tree, this generally means hiking before 10 a.m. and after 5 p.m., as you will otherwise almost certainly get overheated.

7. Be mindful when taking breaks.

It’s harder for mosquitoes to bite you when you’re moving or when there’s a breeze. Keep an eye out when taking breaks, as this will more likely be the time you get bitten. And often where we like to take breaks is where mosquitoes also like to rest.

“Mosquitoes do tend to rest in areas with vegetation or other vertical structures that protect them from harsh conditions like direct sunlight or strong winds,” Barker said. “The female mosquitoes also search for their blood meal hosts in those areas, which include us.

“Unfortunately for us,” Barker added, “they like a lot of the same areas we do.”

3 things to do

1. Celebrate community in Malibu
Just Trek, a local hiking community, will host its seven-year anniversary party at 9:30 a.m. Sunday in Malibu. The group will take a two-mile hike and then hang out at a local beach near a seafood restaurant. Donations appreciated. Register at partiful.com.

2. Behold native botany in L.A.
The L.A. Parks Foundation will host From Trail to Seed, a botany-focused nature walk, from 8 to 10 a.m. Saturday at the Fern Canyon Trail in Griffith Park. Botanist Terry Huang and park ecologist Ryan Kinzel will lead the group as they take a moderately challenging route through the park. $20 donation requested. Register at los-angeles-parks-foundation.givecloud.co.

3. Use your nature skills in Baldwin Hills
The Nature Nexus Institute needs volunteers from 8 to 11 a.m. Saturday for a habitat restoration event in the Baldwin Hills. Volunteers must wear long pants and closed-toe shoes. The work site will include traversing uneven terrain. Learn more at the institute’s Instagram page.

The must-read

Jackie, arguably the world’s most famous bald eagle mama, died Monday morning after a mysterious illness that veterinarians at the Ojai Raptor Center worked hard to combat. She was 14. Jackie and her mate Shadow transformed into avian all-stars after Friends of Big Bear Valley installed live cameras of their nest. Millions of people across the world tuned in to witness the two eagles raise their young and live their lives in our local mountains. That included Anny Liu of Altadena, who started watching Jackie and Shadow and their little eaglets after losing her community to the Eaton fire in 2025. “Jackie and her family gave me hope and gave me giggles and smiles that I thought were lost with the fires,” Liu wrote to The Times via a reader callout. “My heart felt lighter when I watched her even to this day as we try to rebuild. Never in my life did I expect an eagle would help me so much emotionally and mentally.”

May we continue to allow ourselves to feel these deep connections with our animal neighbors, as it leads to us wanting to protect their homes and, in turn, protect our world.

Happy adventuring,

P.S.

Do you want to help repair damage from the devastating fire that burned across Santa Rosa Island? The California Institute of Environmental Studies needs volunteers to help implement emergency fire recovery work on the island, including rolling erosion control wattles on steep slopes to better protect the Torrey Pine forest from erosion caused by winter rains. To learn more, you can email Destinee Rabelo, the center’s restoration ecologist field lead, by using the email linked in the organization’s Instagram post. Have fun out there!

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.

Shaved ice might be the perfect summertime treat. Melt-on-your-tongue ice crystals and endless combinations of fruity syrups, condensed milk, red beans or even cereal flakes mean that you can customize them to your liking and never get bored.

In L.A., in addition to your typical American snow cones, there’s a global array of shaved ice at our fingertips, including Korean bingsu, a milk-based ice with an ultra-fine, powdery texture that’s topped with sweet red beans or rice cakes, and Japanese kakigori, with ice shaved into delicate, fluffy shards and flavored with sweet, poured-over syrups.

Then you have Hawaiian shave ice, with powdery ice topped with island flavors like guava, passion fruit and pineapple. It often features a hidden scoop of vanilla ice cream or dairy-free Dole Whip and toppings like sweet condensed milk, mochi balls or toasted coconut. All around town, you’ll find raspado vendors selling the Mexican treat, traditionally made by hand-scraping a block of ice and topping it with sweet syrups, condensed milk and savory chili-lime seasonings.

Mewame owner Ben Kang moved to L.A. from Korea six years ago and started out as an employee at a local shaved ice shop.

“When I used to work at my previous job, a lot of people asked if we have dairy-free options,” said Kang.

Kang, who is lactose intolerant, was inspired to open Mewame in West Hollywood last summer, serving bingsu-inspired treats that are completely dairy-free, swapping condensed milk for oat or coconut milks.

From late-night bingsu in Pasadena to matcha kakigori at an NYC-founded ramen shop, L.A.’s shaved ice shops are a refreshing escape from the unrelenting sun.

Los Angeles County election officials are examining steps ahead of the November midterms to respond to the rising popularity of election trading via prediction markets, including a possible ban on wagering for county election workers.

The discussions follow a fracas during the June ballot count, when a handful of influencers suggested fraud could be occurring in L.A.’s mayoral primary because the results began diverging from the market’s prediction.

That incident, the most prominent interaction of prediction markets and a U.S. election to date, revealed a new dynamic in the battle for public trust in elections. Now, election administrators around the country are considering the possible implications of the markets’ forecasts, including whether they have the power to affect voter confidence in election results.

“We’re … trying to find our way in this,” L.A. County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan said in an interview. “It’s opened up a lot of questions that we’re grappling with.”

Three months before the midterms, with much of the American public concerned about democracy and trust in elections dropping, officials are paying attention to anything that could create further uncertainty around how elections are run.

The midterm contests are high stakes for both parties, which are battling for control of Congress amid a difficult economy, the war in Iran and low approval ratings for President Trump. And many Americans are wagering on what might happen — users have traded nearly $200 million on the midterm elections so far, a July analysis by NBC News found.

Prediction market platforms and their proponents say trading contracts on the markets is not the same as betting, likening it instead to trading on the stock market. Critics say it amounts to gambling, regardless of how the markets are set up.

The timeline for election administrators to think through the issue before November is tight, and it poses challenges for offices that already are stretched thin preparing for other possible election-day scenarios. What happened during the L.A. mayoral primary, however, has prompted discussions around the country, said Carolina Lopez, executive director of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, or PLEJ, a nonpartisan organization that represents election administrators.

“The potential effect on confidence [in elections] is significant,” Lopez said.

A spokesperson for Kalshi, one of the leading trading platforms, said the platform bans insider trading and welcomes any policy measures doing the same. The company takes “seriously our responsibility to be a responsible actor in this space,” spokesperson Jacki McGavick said.

Los Angeles could become one of the first major election jurisdictions to implement guidance or policy related to prediction markets. Delaware County, Pa., in suburban Philadelphia, already has taken such a step — adding prediction markets to an oath poll workers already were required to sign affirming that they have not wagered on the election.

Last month, Maryland’s top election official asked the state prosecutor to open an investigation into the legality of prediction markets. In late July, Wisconsin’s election administrator warned voters that it is illegal under state law to both vote in and bet on an election. That drew swift attacks from executives at Kalshi, one of whom claimed the state would “disenfranchise voters who use Kalshi.”

In L.A. County, Logan said his office is in the research stage for an insider-trading policy for staff. His office also is creating public messaging to deploy in various scenarios and factoring the potential dynamics around prediction markets into security planning.

Any potential for unrest or protests related to people’s monitoring of market forecasts is likely to come in the days following the election, while ballots still are being counted, Logan said.

Elections staff also is preparing FAQ documents about prediction markets and discussing how to talk about the issue with reporters, gaming out different scenarios, he said.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page said he advised his office’s staff before the primary, and plans to do so again before November, that participating in election markets could create a conflict of interest prohibited by county code. Staff betting could been seen by the public “as improper,” Page said he told his staff, “ which would undermine trust in the integrity of the election.”

Thirty-nine percent of likely midterm voters in a recent survey commissioned by PLEJ said their confidence in an election outcome would be reduced if the official result differed from prediction market odds. Three-quarters of those surveyed said they believed prediction markets create confusion around elections.

A majority was unable to correctly identify what prediction market odds represent, according to the survey results, with more than a third believing they showed the current number of votes for each candidate or an official projection from election officials.

The rise of the exchanges, which allow users to stake money on the chance that a given event will happen in the future, has provided a way to create predictions that some experts say are more accurate than political polling.

Leaders of the platforms have suggested they can help combat election misinformation by providing predictive insights and help decision-makers understand public sentiment. Kalshi launched what it termed a “midterms hub” late last month, which it said would contain not only market forecasts but also news, polling and fundraising data.

“Election markets have been my dream since the start of Kalshi,” Luana Lopes Lara, a co-founder of the platform, said on social media upon the hub launch. “The holy grail of prediction markets, they shed light on some of the most consequential, decentralized and human processes in the world, where good data is crucial and hard to find.”

She added: “It’s changed the way I interacted with the electoral process and made me smarter — I hope it does the same to you.”

McGavick, the spokesperson, said about 75% of Kalshi visitors view the odds without buying anything in order to understand what “the crowd forecasts.”

“Kalshi has become a leading indicator of where elections are headed,” she said.

As users trade contracts — each one representing a bet for or against a given event, such as a certain candidate winning an election — the market generates odds. On Tuesday, for instance, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass had a 61% chance of winning in November on Kalshi, while City Council member Nithya Raman had a 39% chance.

Either Bass or Raman could win, but if the public’s understanding of the markets is murky, experts say, voters may confuse their speculation for certainty.

In June, the market odds appeared to drive some public belief about what the results would be, Logan told reporters at a briefing last month — in this case, that Republican Spencer Pratt would be one of the top-two vote-getters, which ultimately did not happen.

“That put us in a position as election officials of having to respond to a whole new layer of misinformation,” Logan said. “Not only were we being asked how were the polls wrong … but [people were saying], ‘We saw numbers’ or ‘We saw odds.’”

Experts worry it could become more common for market odds to be cited by people who are dissatisfied with an election result as a new way to attempt to discredit a ballot count, adding a new quiver in the bow of election deniers and potentially confusing the public.

The existence of prediction markets “provides one more source of information” that could be used by bad actors to stir up confusion or distrust in election results, said Mindy Romero, executive director of the California-based nonpartisan Center for Inclusive Democracy.

“People might think … prediction markets are a good thing or a bad thing,” Romero said, “but you can’t deny that it is one more thing that could potentially be manipulated.”

Separately, prediction markets have drawn the attention of lawmakers in Congress for various reasons, including fears of insider trading. Members of both parties have proposed guardrail legislation this year. Several states are locked in legal battles with the federal government over whether they can regulate the markets under state anti-gambling laws.

Last week, as destructive wildfires raged in Washington, Oregon, California and elsewhere, California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla joined with other Democratic senators from western states to urge the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to restrict the markets from offering betting on wildfires. They cited concerns that people could be tempted to influence fires or commit arson in order to “make sure their bets are successful.”

Schiff introduced a bill to prohibit such trading in March. Kalshi has a ban on markets tied directly to death and war. Kalshi and the other leading platform, Polymarket, also regularly report suspected insider trading to the federal government for investigation. Last month, federal investigators alleged that Trump’s teleprompter operator had used inside knowledge to win more than $100,000 after Kalshi spotted his activity.

In Los Angeles, Logan said his office may issue guidance by November, but the task will extend beyond the next election day.

“What we want to do is defend against anything that would devalue the elections process,” Logan said. “We don’t want voters to be discouraged from participating.”

Benjamin Bycel, a civil rights attorney, law school dean and university president who took on the task of cleaning up Los Angeles politics as the city’s first ethics officer, died Aug. 2 in Santa Barbara. He was 84.

His son, Josh Bycel, said the death was due to complications from Parkinson’s disease.

Born in Brooklyn in 1942, Bycel moved to Huntington Park when he was 5. The son of a boxing manager and a teacher, he spent much of his childhood accompanying his father to downtown boxing gyms and the Olympic Auditorium. After graduating from Huntington Park High School, he earned a master’s in history from San José State University.

Bycel served with the Peace Corps in Uganda, taught at Manual Arts High School in L.A. and reported for the Associated Press in New York. As a law student at UC Davis, he was a press aide for San Francisco Mayor George Moscone’s campaign for governor of California.

After earning his law degree, Bycel worked as an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union in Sacramento. As a civil rights lawyer in Santa Barbara, he successfully argued a landmark California Supreme Court case, which upheld the right of adults unrelated by blood, marriage or adoption to live together as a family. In 1986, Bycel took on the role of dean for the Santa Barbara and Ventura Colleges of Law, helping steer the ship after the former dean was accused of misappropriating funds.

Five years later, he took on his most high-profile role as founding director of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission.

The Times called it “a Herculean task.” The commission was created in 1990 after a wave of political corruption scandals engulfed Mayor Tom Bradley’s administration. When the City Council initially declined to pass tough anti-corruption laws, voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition H to create an independent watchdog tasked with enforcing a tough new set of regulations governing city officials’ conduct.

“The idea of getting paid to reform the system and make it better is a thrill,” Bycel told The Times when he was selected. He vowed not to “conduct any witch hunts.”

There was controversy from the get-go. In the commission’s first year, The Times reported, investigators raided the offices of City Attorney James K. Hahn after getting a tip that city workers were engaged in political activities. When the district attorney later dropped the investigation, citing lack of evidence, Hahn publicly condemned Bycel.

Zev Yaroslavsky, a former L.A. politician who served then as a City Council member representing district 5, said the new ethics role represented a “dramatic, profound cultural change in municipal government.” Bycel, he said, rose to the occasion.

“Institutionally, he was a new power, a new person with influence over the vitals of elected officialdom, and I thought he did an excellent job,” Yaroslavsky said, noting that Bycel did not go in with guns blazing. “He was very judicious and even-handed and he gave the new institutional credibility out of the starting gate.”

Still, some complained Bycel was a publicity hound, and he made powerful enemies. In 1995, Bycel told The Times that he feared for his job: Mayor Richard Riordan’s new appointee as the ethics commission president, UCLA law lecturer Raquelle de la Rocha, he said, had told him that she had decided he should be fired. De la Rocha denied his claim, but said that she had called a closed personnel hearing on Bycel’s status.

A few weeks later, the commission fired Bycel, taking a vote in closed session. They refused to say why.

“Though outspoken and at times overly aggressive, Bycel has made an important contribution to political reform here in Los Angeles,” The Times said in an editorial. “Under his tenure, the commission staff has worked rigorously to enforce the toughest local ethics laws in the nation, including a gift ban and restrictions on lobbyists.”

Josh Bycel said his father reveled in the challenge of cleaning up L.A. politics and was frustrated by his abrupt ouster.

“Even though he felt he made great progress and they were doing good things, I think he felt that the job was not done … There were forces that did not want him to do the job.”

In 1997, Bycel was appointed president of the University of West Los Angeles, and in 2001 he moved to Washington to serve as the vice president of Common Cause, the national advocacy group. Later, he served as the executive director of the Connecticut Office of State Ethics before moving back to Santa Barbara to practice law.

Bycel died at a memory center in Santa Barbara he had moved into just a few weeks earlier, Josh Bycel said. He was surrounded by his beloved longtime partner, children, grandchildren and dog, he said, in a room filled with photos and quotes of his longtime hero, boxing champion, Muhammad Ali.

“For good or for bad, my dad was a fighter and someone who would speak his mind,” Josh Bycel said, noting that was probably what got him in trouble at the ethics commission. “He always believed that you had to fight the righteous fight.”

The Lakers will see a familiar face for its annual Christmas Day game this season.

LeBron James, who signed with the Philadelphia 76ers last month, will be making his return to Los Angeles on Dec. 25 when the Lakers host Philadelphia at Crypto.com Arena, the NBA revealed Tuesday morning in what it called a “sneak peek” of the 2026-27 schedule. The game is scheduled to tip off at 2 p.m. on ESPN and ABC.

The full schedule will be revealed Thursday.

The league also unveiled its opening week slate, with the Lakers set to host the Golden State Warriors on Oct. 21 in a game scheduled for 7 p.m. on ESPN.

James, entering his 24th season in the NBA, will also figure prominently in the opening week broadcast schedule as the 76ers will take on the New York Knicks on Oct. 20 at Madison Square Garden on NBC and Peacock. The game will be James’ first with his new team and will feature the Knicks raising a banner to mark their first NBA championship since 1973.

Two days later, the 76ers will play their home opener against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team that drafted James in 2003, in game that will be broadcast on ESPN.

Someday, you might be able to ride a bike from the western San Fernando Valley to Long Beach along the Los Angeles River. But not yet.

The longest unfinished stretch is the eight miles from Elysian Park through downtown to Maywood. For decades, advocates of the path have tried to complete those eight miles along the concretized river.

Yet a decade later, the unrideable gap remains. The ambitious project remains mired in planning and bureaucratic complications, with groundbreaking still two years off and the cost nearly tripling to more than $1 billion — almost $24,000 per foot — documents reviewed by The Times show.

It looked like the prospects for the bike route to the sea were getting serious after Angelenos enthusiastically passed a half-cent tax for transit projects in 2016 that earmarked $365 million for the L.A. River Path.

At the time, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the lead on the project, priced out a simple path on one side of the river.

But by last year, the proposed designs were much wider and added seven pedestrian bridges. They also included sections where the path would be elevated above the ground, supported by beams. The changes responded to community input and comments from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and L.A. Department of Water and Power, among others. Estimated completion of the initial phase is not until 2031.

Navigating the web of nearby structures, like active rail lines and historic bridges, is part of what makes the construction so complex, Metro says. An original $75 million set aside for unforeseen expenses in 2016 swelled to $309 million last year, and the rising cost of construction also added to the high price tag.

Advocates for the path say this grander plan would be great, if there were a way to pay for it.

Yuval Bar-Zemer is a board member with Streets for All, a group that advocates for safer streets in L.A. He also is a downtown loft developer and commissioned studies that helped inform a far less expensive option that would run down near the flowing river, rather than up above. The path would be unusable during heavy rains, but Bar-Zemer and others say that would be less than 20 days each year.

This option was included in Metro’s initial scoping of the path in 2016 but has since been dropped, with the agency citing safety concerns. Bar-Zemer contends that safety features could be installed to make sure pedestrians have enough time to exit the pathway if water rises swiftly. He says he’s spent $350,000 of his own funds in engineering studies and advocacy to advance the path.

“The benefits are so obvious, it’s such a home run and such a low-hanging fruit that for me, it’s like criminal not to make it happen,” he said.

Currently, bikers headed southbound run out of path where Riverside Drive crosses the L.A. River at Egret Park. From there, they’re forced to weave through high-traffic streets in neighborhoods including Lincoln Heights, Chinatown, Downtown L.A. and Boyle Heights before they find the path again in Vernon.

“It’s a huge chasm,” said Michael Schneider, founder and chief executive of Streets for All. He called the gap in the L.A. River path “a shame because it’s an otherwise amazing resource.”

Some 76,000 residents live within walking distance of the proposed path, and a million within three miles of the L.A. River, according to Metro estimates from 2022. Around 17% of working-age people who live within a bikeable distance already walk, bike or take transit in their regular commute.

More recent numbers could be higher since high fuel prices have motivated many to use transit, bikes, e-bikes and scooters. The path also could provide recreational benefits to an area that has some of the most limited access to green space in Los Angeles.

Metro had the eight-mile gap on its list of 28 projects it wanted ready for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. As costs soared, it quietly was taken off the list.

Yet there are recent signs of progress for the L.A. River Path.

In late May, the Metro board voted to create a committee that brings together all the players needed to push it to toward completion.

Mayor Karen Bass chairs the Metro board. Despite the project’s stagnation, she continues to convey optimism.

“Angelenos voted in 2016 to make the L.A. River Path path a reality, and Mayor Bass is marshaling the resources necessary to eliminate further distraction that have threatened the project’s pace and cost,” her office said in statement.

Metro staffers are reviewing comments on the draft environmental impact statement, the agency said. They intend to recommend a path forward in the fall.

The waxy scent that drifts up the escalators at the Los Angeles Central Library is immediately familiar to anyone who remembers the Mold-A-Rama.

The novelty vending machines mold souvenir sculptures — a train car, a gorilla, a bust of Abraham Lincoln — in under a minute, filling a two-sided mold with hot plastic, then hollowing it out with compressed air.

Christina Rice, the senior librarian who oversees the Los Angeles Public Library’s photo collection, made it her personal quest to find and install one in the Central Library after a patron asked for pictures of machines at sites across the city, which disappeared in 2006 after their operator exited the market and sold them to private collectors.

At first, Rice wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but when it clicked, “it was such a strong visceral response,” she said. “I loved these machines when we would go to the zoo. It was a must-have every time.”

In fact, the last mold she purchased was a black panther from the Los Angeles Zoo, shortly after she graduated high school. Other L.A. souvenirs included a replica bandshell from the Hollywood Bowl and a tiny pagoda from the Chinese Theatre.

Rice saw an opportunity in the retro tech to get new people into the library or encourage existing patrons to explore other departments or collections.

It was a hunch that took her six years to see to fruition, but the library’s very own “Mold-a-Central” now sits in the alcove of the lower fourth floor. Visitors can trade $5 for a small black sphinx, a replica of sculptor Lee Lawrie’s Belgian black marble and bronze sphinxes that flank the north staircase on the library’s second floor. Pittsburgh sculptor Brian McGuire custom designed the mold and is also working on a replica of the 1926 Central Library building.

It’s been a hit. Visitors who’ve been drawn by nostalgia or curiosity to see it — and smell it — for themselves have molded over 3,000 sphinxes so far. During the library’s Centennial Festival in July, the machine had a consistent wait, churning out 255 figures in a single day. J.H. “Tike” Miller, the Illinois inventor of the Mold-A-Rama, was inspired by a broken figurine in his nativity scene. Department stores only sold them in sets, so he and his wife Shirley began making individual figures for sale in the late 1930s.

In the 1950s, Miller began making figurines — often of dinosaurs and space aliens — using plastic injection molding. When his company went bankrupt in 1959, Miller licensed the technology to Aramark, then known as Automatic Retailers of America Inc. It spun off a separate division for the venture and worked with Miller to produce the first Mold-A-Rama machines.

The concept debuted at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, with figures including the Space Needle and Alweg Monorail, then rolled out in several test markets, including Southern California. The Los Angeles Times described Mold-A-Ramas as “a diabolical cross between a jukebox and a pinball machine” that cost $3,600 apiece, or about $39,500 today.

After a bigger splash at the New York World’s Fair in 1964, Mold-A-Ramas proliferated across the U.S., popping up in zoos, museums and anywhere tourists might exchange a coin for a toy.

Though Mold-A-Rama President Ben A. O’Dorisio predicted a future in which they’d eventually sell household goods and even apparel, high maintenance costs led Aramark to dissolve its Mold-A-Rama division and sell its machines just a few years later.

Today, most operational machines are concentrated in the Midwest and the South, split between two companies that have amicably divided their territories: Illinois-based Mold-A-Rama Inc. and Unique Souvenirs Inc. in Florida, which operates machines branded Mold-a-Matic.

Unique Souvenirs owner Tim Striggow bought the family business from his grandfather, Eldin Irwin, who purchased several machines from Aramark and other operators starting in the late ‘60s and traveled with them to fairs and carnivals. It was Striggow’s uncle who operated — and removed — L.A.’s machines.

Striggow sold Jack White two machines for his Third Man Records stores in Nashville and Detroit, and supplied the library with its machine. It cost $32,000 and is expected to pay itself through souvenir revenues within a couple years. As Mold-A-Rama and Mold-a-Matic are both trademarks, the library’s machine is called Mold-a-Central for the Central Library and features new graphics by Studios Number One, Shepard and Amanda Fairey’s design studio.

Though new to the library, the Mold-a-Central is still a vintage machine, and Rice knew that before she could persuade the library to invest in one she’d have to find someone who could service it. She asked Gary Hall, general manager of Angels Flight, L.A.’s 124-year-old funicular, who suggested one of its mechanics, Hirschel Riley.

“Hirschel agreed immediately, and I think it’s safe to say he has fallen in love with our Mold-a-Central machine,” Rice said. “When we first got the machine and opened it up, my head nearly exploded and I wondered if I had bitten off more than I could chew, but for Hirschel, it’s been a piece of cake compared to [Angels Flight].”

Though the library offers 3D printing — a far more modern sculpting method — at its Octavia Lab, Rice finds even teenagers are interested in slide projectors and older technology during her photo collection tours, proving there’s still space for the analog in today’s digital world. She hopes Mold-a-Central will inspire a “whole slew” of similar vintage machines to return to L.A.

They are out there. Quentin Tarantino told Variety he had a production designer track one down for an opening shot of “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” at the Chinese Theatre before he rewrote the script. After changing course, he stored it in his garage.

Salzburg, Austria — “Optimism doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine,” the Belarusian flutist and political activist Maria Kalesnikava said in this year’s Salzburg Festival keynote address. “It means deciding to step up and act, even in the face of uncertainty.”

Picture-perfect, Mozart-drunk Salzburg can’t pretend everything is fine. Temperatures are rising and normally rainy Salzburg now worries about water shortage and the environmental ravage of over-tourism. The artistically and culturally exceptional six-week Salzburg Festival, which began mid-July with a two-week Ouverture Spirituelle this year titled “miserere” (mercy), is facing its own political and administrative turmoil and uncertainty.

Salzburg’s worries are our worries; its triumphs can be ours as well. Los Angeles and the Salzburg Festival have been cultural and political soulmates for close to a century, beginning when playwright, director and filmmaker Max Reinhardt, who co-founded the Salzburg Festival in 1920, found mercy in L.A. as refuge from the Nazis.

Reinhardt’s star-studded 1934 music-theater production of “Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Hollywood Bowl offered a template for spectacle in the young amphitheater, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s participation crucially reinforced a young orchestra’s early venturesome ambition following an avant-garde Bowl season the previous summer that nearly bankrupted the Bowl. Over the next decade this Salzburger’s influence on Hollywood dramaturgy would become legend.

L.A. has reciprocated by sending our visionaries to Salzburg, where director Peter Sellars and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, for instance, have been given the license and means to inspire a reinvention of musical and theatrical thinking. L.A. arts patrons Betty Freeman and Richard Colburn provided important support for Salzburg during their lifetimes that included commissioning new work.

Gustavo Dudamel, L.A. Phil’s optimist these 17 seasons, has long been a Salzburg regular as well, and he arrived last week just in time to take up Kalesnikava’s challenge. Her proclamation of optimism comes on the heels of her having been released in December from a brutal Belarusian prison for supporting an opposition candidate running against the country’s authoritarian leader.

In Dudamel’s case, his life has been turned around by the recent earthquakes that devastated Venezuela just two weeks after his last concerts in Walt Disney Concert Hall as L.A. Phil music and artistic director. His activities this summer now revolve around partnering with the United Nations Development Program to gather global support for Venezuela’s recovery, which is estimated at $6.7 billion.

Although little noted, Dudamel’s buoyant World Cup halftime appearance with 20 members of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and 20 from the New York Philharmonic was as a FIFA fundraiser supporting children affected by global crises, in this case earthquake relief in Venezuela. Dudamel has further turned his last Hollywood Bowl program as L.A. Phil music director into a benefit on Aug. 23.

Prophetically, Dudamel had months ago been invited to close this summer’s Ouverture Spirituelle by leading the Vienna Philharmonic in Mahler’s Second Symphony, known as the “Resurrection.” One way to think about Mahler’s extravagant 90-minute exercise in his search for life’s meaning is as an exercise in attaining optimism in the face of tragedy.

“Rise again, yes, you shall rise again,” Mahler extols in a final ecstatic climax, and it is with the “Resurrection,” which includes chorus and a pair of vocal soloists, that Dudamel began his “Gracias Gustavo” L.A. Phil season last fall. Raising roof, the message was clear: optimism is the native language of Walt Disney Concert Hall.

In Salzburg, where Dudamel’s two Vienna Philharmonic performances were dedicated to the people of Venezuela, those lines took on obvious new meaning. Earlier in the day, Dudamel gave a public talk with a lively German journalist, Marco Frei, in which he described himself as a “resurrectionist” in more ways than one.

The symphony has been a been a musical and spiritual guide for him since his boyhood. He became so excited about a new sense of freedom he feels in the second movement that he leaned back in his chair and kicked his white sneakers in the air.

After the talk, I walked with Dudamel back to his hotel as he displayed a different, more solemn passion describing the toll the earthquakes have taken on El Sistema, the Venezuelan youth program that has been behind his educational activism in L.A.

“At least 140 members of the El Sistema staff and educators were killed or are unaccounted for,” Dudamel said, and that’s not counting what may have happened to a great many children and their families. But remarkably, Dudamel noted, in places where few structures remain, the nucleos (the small El Sistema community schools) are surprisingly still standing. They have become centers for food, aid and shelter.

In Salzburg, Dudamel indulged the Vienna Philharmonic’s incomparable lushness, those plush strings, glowing winds, golden brass, voluminous timpani. The symphony received mixed reviews, with critics complaining of a lack of transparency, argument and depth. Had they been in Disney Hall, they would have had it all.

But here Dudamel became more simply an architect of awe, unfazed by Mahlerian uncertainty as he worked his way to an inevitable cosmic grandeur unfazed by uncertainty. An enthralled audience left opening its collective wallets. Ushers stood at all the exits of Great Festival Hall with baskets for donations for Venezuela. I did not see a single member of the audience leave without throwing in a bill or several.

Dudamel’s “Resurrection” might also be read as a message from L.A. to Salzburg. In the spring the festival board dismissed its artistic director of the past decade, Markus Hinterhäuser, saying there is a difference in vision. Hinterhäuser’s penetrating and uncompromising vision is what has made the modern festival matter. Hinterhäuser has implied political meddling.

It is a huge festival, with more than 200 performances. Last year’s audience exceeded 200,000, with visitors from 88 countries. The arts as a vehicle for coming together can be cliché. In Salzburg, sharing becomes essence, not the kind of narcissism that appears to be adopted by our upcoming LA28 cultural Olympiad, in which Angelenos are invited to submit entrees that show off our goods rather than a cultural exchange.

Over 100 artists have protested Hinterhäuser’s removal, including two Nobel Prize laureates. Hinterhäuser is also an insightful pianist, and he joined baritone Matthias Goerne in a chilling performance of Schubert’s existential song cycle, “Winterreise.” Hinterhäuser got thunderous ovations.

Salzburg’s future is anyone’s guess, but even with Hinterhäuser on the sidelines, this summer is still his festival, meaningful as ever.

A new production of “Carmen” could not be darker, nor more brilliant. It is the latest project of conductor Teodor Currentzis, who has worked extensively with Peter Sellars in Salzburg and elsewhere, and who brings electricity to every moment with his Utopia Orchestra and Choir. Argentine choreographer Gabriela Carrizo makes her debut directing opera and utilizes her alarmingly vibrant Belgian dance company, Peeping Tom. Performing in a vast empty space, two gripping singers — Asmik Grigorian plays an understated Carmen as a survivor in a hostile society, while Jonathan Teltelman’s Don José is unable to cope with that society — turn Bizet’s opera into revelatory existential theater in which survival is toleration.

Something similar happens in “Faust, Part 1,” in which the actors spend the entire four hours in a new production by German director Ulrich Rasche walking against the direction of of a revolving disc. To remain in front of the audience, they must remain in motion. They’re dressed in modern business attire, but as they bare their souls, they bare their torsos as they step against forces that prevent progress. The backdrop is brightly illumined screens that hurt your eyes.

This, however, can serve as a reminder of a “Faust” staged by Reinhardt at the Pilgrimage Theater (now John Anson Ford Theater) when it was designed to look like the gates of ancient Jerusalem in 1935. Practically all of Hollywood celebrity showed up for what was the theatrical event of the season.

I asked Lukas Crepaz, who directs the Salzburg Festival’s administrative and business operations, whether it would be possible and whether there still is time for the Salzburg and L.A. to collaboration on an opera production. He said yes, if funding could be found. In fact, the L.A. Phil will mount in February “One Morning Turns Into an Eternity,” a Salonen/Sellars essay in intensity from Salzburg last summer.

Another option: The Bregenz Festival, also in Austria, has just staged a new production by Yuval Sharon of Janacek’s little-known opera, “The Excursions of Mr. Broucek to the Moon and the 15th Century.”

Sharon — who was responsible for the fabulous excursions of his L.A. experimental company, the Industry — supplies his characteristic wit, imagination and insight into a hard-to-please opera about a beer-besotted philistine landlord, who comes to no good in his drunken dreams of going to the moon and back in history, as he does as an angry old man stumbling home from the bar or sitting watching TV (Sharon’s invention).

L.A. optimism may matter more to Austria this summer than it does to L.A. We have two years to step up and act, even in the face of uncertainty.

During the Los Angeles mayoral primary, Spencer Pratt put out a video saying he was living in a trailer on the burned-out lot where his Pacific Palisades home once stood — a claim that was soon debunked by TMZ, which reported that he was actually staying at the Hotel Bel-Air.

While Pratt’s mayoral bid has come to a close, his campaign’s final spending on luxury hotels — including the Hotel Bel-Air — is now coming to light.

Pratt spent just under $71,000 on hotels for himself, his campaign staff and his fundraising operation, mostly at the Hotel Bel-Air and the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, according to recently released campaign finance filings in the mayoral race.

The former reality TV star has a history of lavish spending on hotels, according to his memoir, “The Guy You Loved to Hate,” where he recounts staying at the Four Seasons in Costa Rica for a month in 2010. He said the hotel stay was “bleeding him dry.”

The tens of thousands of dollars Pratt’s campaign spent on hotels represent just a fraction of the more than $3 million Pratt’s campaign spent overall, including hundreds of thousands to campaign strategy firms and more than $200,000 to the company Black Llama Inc. for billboards. Pratt had AI-designed billboards placed across the city.

Pratt also spent more than $180,000 on private security firm Delta Special Operations Corp., almost entirely in the final month before the June 3 primary.

Delta Special Operations charges $650 per day to provide a single security officer in Los Angeles, but also offers a higher level of “executive protection.” Pratt has said he faced threats during his candidacy.

Pratt placed third in the primary, behind Councilmember Nithya Raman and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who will square off in the Nov. 3 general election. Raman’s campaign reported spending about $1,000 on security, while Bass has security provided by the city.

Building out her support

Raman secured what could be one of her most significant endorsements of the entire election cycle this week, pulling in the support of the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters.

The endorsement from the carpenters union marks a sharp turn for the labor group, which backed Bass in 2022. The union committed more than $2 million to independent expenditure groups supporting Bass’ candidacy in 2022, paying for television ads that ran in advance of the general election.

During the primary, Raman and independent group supporting her focused on ads on social media and streaming platforms, which are cheaper than traditional television ads.

“We will be matching the same energy and we’ll have same type of commitment as when we endorsed Bass. We don’t plan on holding back,” said Pete Rodriguez, the second general vice president of the international union.

Rodriguez said the union would spend significantly to support Raman, though he did not give a figure.

Bass has dominated labor endorsements throughout the campaign. She has secured more than two dozen endorsements from influential labor unions including the Police Protective League, which represents rank and file police officers in the LAPD, and SEIU 721, which represents public sector workers at the airport and in street services, among other departments. She also has the backing of the powerful Los Angeles Federation of Labor, a coalition of unions (Bass calls its leader, Yvonne Wheeler, “The Beyoncé of Labor”).

“Workers are overwhelmingly behind Karen Bass … because she delivers real results,” said the mayor’s campaign spokesperson, Alex Stack. “Results like building more affordable housing immediately to drive down rents, mortgages, and the cost of housing.”

Rodriguez said one major issue that caused the carpenters union to break with Bass was the mayor’s failure to include higher labor standards in the codified version of Executive Directive 1, which fast-tracked some affordable housing applications.

That law was passed by the council and Raman voted in favor of the law that codified the mayor’s directive.

Raman told The Times in a statement that she stood by her vote, but that she appreciated the union’s ability to work with legislators to enact legislation that “combines density with higher labor standards.”

The DSA endorsement …

Raman could get another key and much-discussed endorsement later this month.

The Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America is once again considering endorsing her for mayor. The endorsement would bring doorknockers for Raman and could bring more national attention to the race.

An internal petition shared with The Times is circulating in the group and needs just 50 signatures by Aug. 8 in order for the consideration of Raman to go to a vote. Raman would then need 60% of the vote at an Aug. 22 chapter meeting in order to win the endorsement.

“Nithya Raman is running an insurgent left-wing campaign for the mayor’s office against Karen Bass and L.A.’s unpopular status quo Democratic establishment,” the petition reads. “Will an insurgent Left seize control of our city government to build a Los Angeles for its working class? Or will the establishment fend off this insurgency and deepen its power?”

After jumping into the race on the last possible day in February, Raman was not endorsed by the left-wing organization in the primary. The group instead “recommended” her — a status that means the DSA wouldn’t actively campaign on her behalf but urged voters to cast their ballots for Raman.

Raman was endorsed by the group in both her council campaigns, but her late entry came after DSA had made its endorsements.

The group considered reopening its endorsement process for either Raman or Rae Huang — who like Raman is a member of the DSA — but ultimately decided to focus on other down ballot races in the primary.

DSA-LA declined to say whether the petition had gained the requisite number of signatures for a vote.

State of play

— LINEAGE LEGISLATION: Los Angeles city and county officials unveiled a slate of measures aimed at speeding recovery, increasing corporate accountability and expanding financial assistance for residents and businesses affected by the June fire at the Lineage cold food storage facility.

— PRICED OUT: Councilmember Curren Price’s motion to get his perjury and embezzlement case dropped was denied Friday by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. Price’s lawyers maintain that he did not knowingly vote on city contracts for real estate developers that contracted with his wife. The judge argued there was “ample evidence, albeit circumstantial, that this was a scheme and not just happenstance.” The outgoing council member’s next court date is set for October.

— E-BIKES UNDER FIRE: The council’s Rules Committee passed a motion Tuesday that asks the city’s Department of Transportation to come up with ways to regulate e-bikes, including who can ride them and how. The measure next goes to the ways to regulate e-bikesPublic Safety Committee, then the full City Council.

— A NEW ERA: For the first time since 1963, Council District 9 in South Los Angeles will soon have a non-Black representative in the City Council. Estuardo Mazariegos and Jose Ugarte, who are facing each other in the Nov. 3 election to represent parts of downtown and South Los Angeles, are both immigrants from Latin America who arrived undocumented as children.

— OFF THE RAILS: Homelessness on Metro’s rail and bus system has dropped by 57% since 2024, the agency said this week.

— A ROSE AND A THORN: The Rose Bowl Aquatics Center will close April 1, and not be returned to its regular users until the fall of 2028, after the conclusion of the Olympic Games. The announcement came after The Times reported on the impending shutdown.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program went to the intersection of Alameda Street and E. 223rd Street in City Councilmember Tim McOsker’s district where it brought 22 people indoors.
• On the docket next week: The City Council will vote on whether to execute the Enhanced City Resources Master Agreement for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

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.

Refreshing and laced with seaweed, aromatics and sauces, Hawaiian poke can be one of the most energizing and delicious meals to seek out, especially during the summer. Los Angeles was an early appreciator of poke, embracing the raw, seasoned cubed fish long before it went mainstream throughout the country in the 2010s.

Raised in Pepeʻekeo, Hawaii, Unreal Poke co-founder Jordan Maldonado credits this not only to California’s proximity to Hawaii, but also to L.A.’s understanding of poke as it pertains to Hawaiian culture and tradition. The latter, he said, is fueling a new wave of independent poke shops and pop-ups throughout L.A. and Orange County.

“It’s gone further than what happened in the big poke boom of 2008 to 2015,” Maldonado said. “Culture is just as important as food and flavor, and I think that people in L.A. are waking up to: This is a community, this is a culture, these are people that were displaced… They say, ‘Hey, not only do I want to eat here because the food’s good, but I feel like I’m supporting something bigger.’ That became kind of unexpected for me, like, ‘Whoa, my customers care.’”

Maldonado and others are educating customers not only on poke flavors and formats, but also about seafood sourcing and Hawaii’s fishing ecosystem. Some are also introducing guests to new products by stocking imported teas, pantry items, macadamia nuts and nori. Others are infusing traditional poke with their own heritage, incorporating Korean banchan or Laotian sauce blends.

As a result, L.A.’s poke landscape is more diverse and more thoughtful than ever before.

“I was proud that we had a poke shop doing pretty well in Hawaii,” said Ry’s Poke Shack co-owner Ryan Ching, who expanded his famous Oahu stand to Pasadena and Lomita earlier this year. “The next state that’s very competitive for the poke industry is California, so I figured if we start in the two hardest locations, then every other state should be a cakewalk.”

From stalwart South Bay spots to a new parking lot poke pickup in the San Fernando Valley, here are 13 of L.A.’s best poke spots. —Stephanie Breijo

When I moved into my Leimert Park apartment about two years ago, an older woman rushed downstairs to greet me.

“I’m so excited,” she said, introducing herself as Cassandra. She had lived in the tight-knit apartment building for more than 20 years and watched plenty of people come and go. “I was worried about getting a crazy neighbor, but you seem great,” she added, hugging me tightly and handing me a tray of sandwiches to share with my friends who were helping with the move.

Over the next few days, I met my other neighbors, including Miss Rosita and Mr. Art. After a few shared meals, long conversations and traded favors, all of them became more than just the people next door — they became family.

There’s a quiet comfort in knowing your neighbors, especially in a sprawling, sometimes lonely city like Los Angeles. That kind of connection is fading. A study by the Stanford Center on Longevity showed that the percentage of Americans who frequently interact with their neighbors — meaning they spend time with or talk to their neighbors more than once a week — declined among all age groups from 2017 to 2023.

We wanted to find people who are bucking the trend, so we asked readers to nominate the neighbors who make their corners of Southern California feel like home. The stories that folks shared are poignant, inspiring and might just make you want to walk over to the porch next door (or welcome mat across the hall) and introduce yourself immediately.

One of my favorite neighbors, Mr. Art, died last fall. He was a sweet retiree who’d tell me about his weekly fishing adventures and close my garage whenever I was in a hurry and would forget. Another neighbor called me the day he died, and we cried together, sharing our favorite memories of him. I’ll always be grateful to Mr. Art, who made my life better all because he once took the time to meet his new new neighbor.

Here are some of our favorite reader responses, edited for length and clarity. Each of the neighbors featured in this story will receive an L.A.’s Most Neighborly Neighbor certificate, illustrated by Cristina Spanó, whose art is shown above. Do you have a neighbor who goes above and beyond? Download and print your own certificate (PDF) and share it as a token of your appreciation.

He’s saved us from many, many parking tickets. She hosts the sweetest front porch chats.

Neighbor: Bill and Linda Melber

Nominated by: Corrinne Harol

When were you neighbors? 1994 to now

What neighborhood did you live in? Santa Monica

Corrinne, on how Bill and Linda show up as neighbors:

Linda and Bill are the most generous neighbors imaginable. Bill has taken out my trash bins for decades. It started when I was living in Canada for most of the year, but he still insists on doing it. He makes it his personal mission that no one gets a parking ticket for street cleaning on our block, going up and down the block twice a week to remind anyone who forgot. One time he called me about my car, but I was too far away to get back to move it. Bill had a key to my house, but the gate was locked. He climbed over the fence, got my car keys and moved my car for me! He also makes children’s toys that he distributes to any children on the block or that he encounters out and about.

His wife, Linda, is equally neighborly, hosting regular chat sessions on their lovely front porch and checking in on me whenever I have been ill, as she does to anyone in her orbit. They are truly a gift to the neighborhood.

He made me feel welcome when I was in culture shock

Neighbor: Hector Chavez

Nominated by: Tommy Bui

When were you neighbors? 1996 to 2022

What neighborhood did you live in? Pacoima

Tommy, on how Hector has shown up as a neighbor:
The greatest neighbor I ever had was my childhood friend, Hector. I’m the child of Vietnamese refugees, and when they claimed asylum in Los Angeles, we were plonked into the cultural collision that was Spanish-speaking Pacoima. I was seemingly the only Asian child in a five-mile radius. I certainly stood out among the perfectly creased khaki pants and palm combs and top-buttoned flannels contrasted with my clueless bowl haircut and Ninja Turtle suspenders.

Confounding the astronomical unlikeliness, we got along like two peas in a pod. I got a crash course on Angeleno aesthetics and the ins and outs of the rough and tumble San Fernando Valley hurly-burly. I was a regular staple at his welcoming household. Simpatico and simply siblings by circumstance. Sunday dinners and holidays and “Sandlot”-like weekend street shenanigans. My youth was alarmingly idyllic with the hopped fences, bicycle slaloms through traffic and occasional near-misdemeanor mischief. Shoulder to shoulder alongside Hector, I wouldn’t trade a single moment of it.

Though no longer neighbors, we’re still navigating life’s milestones in our own corners of Los Angeles. We’re both new fathers and hurtling toward middle age completely agog at how quickly the time gallops by.

She gave me a gold turtle to make me feel better after my breakup

Neighbor: Raynette Syfu

Nominated by: Fatine Ait-Haddou

When were you neighbors? Since 2021

What neighborhood did you live in? Historic Filipinotown

Fatine, on how Raynette has shown up as a neighbor:

I had just moved into my new apartment after breaking up with a long-term ex. I was sobbing every single day. During my first intro with Raynette, she gave me a little gold turtle and said it would bring me safety, luck and calmness. I named it Lucky and I still have it. Raynette brings me meals all the time and checks on me whenever she hasn’t seen me for a few days. She even gave me a huge bag of her vintage clothes. One of the most insane things she’s done for me is give me a fake baby, one that was heavy and realistic. She said that because I lived alone and didn’t live near family, it could be nice to have additional family. [Laughs] Honestly, it was a very “her” move. She’s truly amazing and looks out for me. I couldn’t be more grateful.

He taught me new chess strategies — and life lessons

Neighbor: Ali Ras (born Fitz Albert Thomas)

Nominated by: Jemimah Yamamoto

When were you neighbors? From 2021 until his death in 2025

What neighborhood did you live in? Arlington Heights

Jemimah, on how Ali showed up as a neighbor:
I moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 2021. I was in my late 20s, and I was a bit unsure of my move. Even more so, I was unsure of the neighborhood I ended up in thanks to Facebook Marketplace. But as fate would have it, it revealed to me that I was destined to be there. I’d see an old man with his gray dreads and sing-songy voice as I would walk from parking my car on the street. One day, he introduced himself and over time we developed a relationship. Him, as my chess teacher, and me as his eager student. I’d bring over my chessboard and we’d play for hours on his porch. He’d always say I was too aggressive with my pawns and that I wasn’t afraid to lose them. He’d play slowly and deliberately. I never won a single game against him. I’d like to think that that itself was a lesson.

During my Saturn return, I was depressed and felt a bit lost. On days that felt the darkest, he would call. He would ask me how I was doing, and it would cut through all the facade of “I’m good.” It was the tone of his voice that made you want to be honest. His way of caring felt like a miracle because you don’t even have to explain anything to him, he would just know. At the time, his presence was exactly what I needed.

He was the only person I gladly let walk into my house unannounced

Neighbor: Eric Pendleton

Nominated by: Kim Quitzon

How long were you neighbors? More than 20 years

What neighborhood did you live in? San Fernando

Kim, on how Eric showed up as a neighbor:
“Uncle Eric” was more than just a neighbor; he was family. Walking through the door unannounced yelling “Hi, family!” across the living room. “I came to check on the backyard.” Every week he would mow the yards after he lost his job and took pride in landscaping the grass, but that was just the surface of what he meant to us. On the popular street of Orange Grove in San Fernando where crowds line up during Halloween, Uncle Eric was our honorary neighborhood watch. Rolling up and down the street on a new bike every day, checking in on every neighbor that would give him the time of day.

From watching the dogs when we were away to helping set up family parties, he was one of us. He just happened to live three doors down. Unfortunately, Eric passed away from cancer last year. The whole block was devastated, and we all held a potluck in his honor. We will miss him, and he truly is the epitome of an amazing neighbor.

She sat with me after my mom died while I cried

Neighbor: Hilah Johnson

Nominated by: Pamela Yeh

When were you neighbors? From 2017 until mid-2020 when she and her family moved to Austin, Texas. Over the years, we’d become close friends, so I was gutted by their move. The most amazing thing happened, though. In 2022, they moved back to L.A., just a few blocks away from us. They live about 10 minutes away from us now, but we still see each other all the time.

What neighborhood did you live in? West L.A.

Pamela, on how Hilah has shown up as a neighbor:
Hilah has shown up for me and my family in hundreds of ways over the years, but I want to tell you this one story. In September 2025, my mom, who had been living in an ADU we built in our backyard, died. She was my heart, and I was utterly crushed. I lived in a fog of grief and shock. Hilah came over and just sat with me while I cried and cried. She made the video montage of my mom for her memorial, which was extra difficult because a family member had all sorts of unreasonable demands. Eventually, she got me to go to a dance class, and we’re still dancing, one step at a time, at the wonderful local Flow Motion.

He’s the beloved ‘Fairy-Car-Father’ on our street

Neighbor: Rodrigo Mangrobang

Nominated by: Leigh-Ann Jackson

How long have you been neighbors? Since I moved to Northeast L.A. 15 years ago

What neighborhood did you live in? Northeast L.A.

Leigh-Ann, on how Rodrigo has shown up as a neighbor:
Rod, as most of the block calls him, is a retiree who lives with his wife across the street from me. He spends a lot of time outside gardening and working on his cars and can seemingly sense whenever a neighbor is having car trouble. He’ll stop what he’s doing, bring over his tools and get to work, no questions asked. He’s not very chatty, but he speaks auto fluently! He saw me pull out of my driveway once and flagged me down to tell me I was headed for a blowout soon. He then instructed me to pull back into the driveway and patched the tire for me on the spot. I even watched him go outside to help a stranger whose car had broken down in the middle of the road. He’s our street’s Fairy-Car-Father.

She had the best local recs. Yelp couldn’t come close.

Neighbor: Eileen Ogle

Nominated by: Sofie Ringold

When were you neighbors? From 2020 to 2025

What neighborhood did you live in? Sherman Oaks

Sofie, on how Eileen showed up as a neighbor:
When my husband and I bought our first home, the COVID vaccine hadn’t been released yet, and we didn’t meet any of our neighbors. A few days later, an older woman wearing a mask knocked at our door. She said that a package had been delivered and she didn’t want it to get stolen. The package had arrived only minutes earlier, so it was pretty clear she wanted to scope out her new neighbors, and during a time of social distancing, this was the perfect excuse. She introduced herself as Eileen. She lived next door with her partner, Judith. We exchanged numbers and said a friendly goodbye.

As the world slowly became more comfortable with social interaction, Eileen began introducing us to everyone on the block. Soon, while we were walking our dog around the neighborhood, people would stop us and ask if we were new. When we told them we lived next to Eileen and Judith, their eyes lit up. It was clear they were local legends. Like all first-time homeowners, we quickly ran into our share of problems. But who needs Yelp when you have neighbors who have already vetted every home service you could possibly need? Need a gardener? Call Eileen. HVAC needs maintenance? Call Eileen. Going away for the weekend and need someone to check on your cats? Call Eileen.

Sadly, Eileen passed away in December. A cloud hung over our street for weeks. Then on Christmas morning, the sun broke through and a rainbow appeared. My husband took it as a sign from Eileen.

He went from my flirty neighbor to my husband of 16 years

Neighbor: Bretton Boyd

Nominated by: Sara Mortimer-Boyd

When were you neighbors? We became neighbors in 1996 until 1997, when we moved in together

What neighborhood did you live in? Silver Lake

Sara, on how Bretton has shown up as a neighbor:
Bretton would come to my door asking for things (cigarettes, food, etc.) while trying to flirt. I was very intrigued by him, but I didn’t think he was “my type” at the time. It was confusing at first. One day, he invited me upstairs to his apartment for coffee and breakfast, which became a regular thing. He got me addicted to coffee and to his amazing cooking. He started coming over to my apartment more and we became really close friends before becoming romantic. I remember one time he left for a few weeks to visit his parents, and I realized in his absence that I loved him and wanted to spend every day with him. We moved in together in 1997, got engaged in 2002 and have been happily married with children for the last 16 years. He still cooks dinner for our family every night at our home in Highland Park.

He helped organize a food train when my son was diagnosed with leukemia

Neighbor: Scott Marshall-Miller

Nominated by: Mev Blount

When were you neighbors? From 2006 to 2017

What neighborhood did you live in? Studio City

Mev, on how Scott has shown up as a neighbor:
My husband and I moved next to Scott and his husband when I was pregnant with our first child. Scott welcomed home his daughter nine months after mine was born, so we were new stay-at-home parents together. His husband is an incredible baker, and he and Scott were always bringing over plates of deliciousness. The chocolate croissant bread pudding is legendary! I was raised that you never return a plate empty so I’d bake something or add some homegrown veggies to the plate. That plate went back and forth through the hedges between our houses for years.

Both of our husbands traveled for work a lot, so Scott and I spent hours together, especially before bedtime and during the “witching hour” with our little ones. We’d sit on my front lawn, nursing half-glasses of Trader Joe’s finest Two Buck Chuck wine while his daughter and my two kiddos rolled around, wearing themselves out. Scott and I would knock on each other’s doors when the parenting was too much. He and I would always answer the door with an “Oh, it’s you. Come in. No one else can see me as a hot mess.”

When my youngest got leukemia at 7, Scott was part of my core group who ignored me when I said we didn’t need help. They organized a food train, and Scott was the one who set up a cooler on my front porch and insisted people drop food without knocking, knowing we were overwhelmed. He was always there when I needed to laugh or cry, and he made our L.A. suburb feel like the small Ohio town where I grew up. I still find glitter ground into our kitchen tiles from the Halloween when he made his daughter a purple witch costume. Sadly, Scott died suddenly in his sleep a few years ago. Tiny bits of glitter are embedded in our tiles, a bright reminder of Scott and the beauty and joy he brought to even the most mundane tasks. He made L.A. feel like home.

Independent filmmaker Sylvia Ray always wanted to shoot her first feature film, “The Middle,” in California — as it’s set in Barstow, where she grew up.

Instead, she shot it in Mexico.

The math made the decision for her. Grants and incentives from the municipality of Torreón and the state of Coahuila covered 30-40% of her production budget, which came in under a million dollars. She didn’t pay for filming permits. On-site security was provided. Local hotels came in as sponsors. Over 21 days in March and April, the production hired 75 local crew members and college students.

“All I needed was a desert landscape and American homes. I could have definitely shot it in L.A. comfortably. Had I gotten more support and made it make sense for us financially,” Ray said. “But it just didn’t.”

Her budget was too small to qualify for any California film incentive at the time, as the state’s program doesn’t reach projects costing under $1 million. Filmmakers and producers say that gap is the whole problem. California’s incentives, even after the recent expansion, are built for productions several rungs above them.

Los Angeles County has plans to change that. Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Kathryn Barger are developing an Entertainment Evergreen Fund, first introduced last July, which would channel money to productions the state’s tax credit doesn’t reach. It isn’t a tax credit, rather a grant program.

No dollar amount has been attached and the county has not committed funding. The board intends to explore a public-private model, with funding sources, amounts and any cost sharing determined only after an outside consultant completes an analysis and presents recommendations. Any final proposal returns to the board for public discussion and a vote.

“Like every County initiative, this work must be balanced with our current fiscal realities,” Barger said in a statement, adding that she hopes to build “a sustainable … partnership that helps keep film, television, and digital media production” and keeps L.A. “the global leader in entertainment production.”

Horvath said in a statement that direct investment in productions, like with this fund, “is the best way to keep the work here in LA. “

“State tax credits have been the most instrumental tool to keep production local, and we want to amplify their success to make clear to the industry: LA County wants you here,” she added.

Why L.A. got expensive for small films

The trouble small-budget indies run into in L.A. is location and permitting costs, said Philip Sokoloski, vice president of communications at FilmLA, the nonprofit that coordinates permits and tracks local production.

“Many property owners inclined to rent out their homes or places of business for filming are used to an era where there was a lot of money to go around … It’s not true anymore,” Sokoloski said. “Until that message is widely understood, there’s a certain priced-out-of-the-market feeling that many indies are experiencing.”

A fund, he said, could help offset those costs.

The broader production picture hasn’t recovered. Between April and June, the greater L.A. area logged 4,711 shoot days, down nearly 13% from the same period a year earlier, according to FilmLA’s second-quarter data. Feature film shoots fell 20% year over year.

Incentivized work is one of the few bright spots. FilmLA said 170 projects between July 2025 and July 2026 have benefited from the California Film & TV Tax Credit Program while 33% of the 443 feature film shoot days in 2026’s second quarter came from productions receiving tax credits.

Making an indie movie is harder than it has ever been, said Steven Wolfe, a producer whose credits include “(500) Days of Summer” and more than 45 other films. Companies are less willing to finance independent projects, buyers are spending less and the exhibition market is harder to navigate. Yet “there’s an audience that’s very hungry for them,” he said.

Wolfe is developing what he calls a passion project with a first-time feature director, set to shoot in Los Angeles. Whether it gets made, he said, depends on whether the fund materializes. “All of us recognize the need to take extreme action and soon on trying to rebuild Los Angeles as the film capital of the world,” he said.

What’s being proposed

The fund is being shaped with input from the Indie Film Task Force, a group of industry voices led by the nonprofit NewFilmmakers Los Angeles. The task force pushed for grants rather than a tax credit, arguing that budgets this small don’t generate enough tax liability for a credit to be worth much.

“We see this as a foundational level investment. It is a trickle-up incentive that’s going to feed into the studios,” said NFMLA Executive Director Larry Laboe. “This is a way to invest very little money in a lot of different productions and hope for some big wins from those productions that can trickle up.”

Laboe points out Curry Barker’s box office underdog “Obsession” as the latest example of a major low-budget indie success. The horror flick, which hit theaters in May, was made in Los Angeles for a budget of $750,000 and has since grossed nearly $475 million worldwide.

Laboe, one of the proposal’s leading advocates, has projected the fund’s ceiling could reach $100 million depending on fundraising. NFMLA isn’t positioned to administer it, though he’s open to a role.

Barger said her conversations with filmmakers, labor representatives and production companies have surfaced “several promising ways an Evergreen Fund could strengthen our local industry,” including “grant incentives that encourage productions of all sizes — including independent filmmakers — to choose Los Angeles County.”

The case against

Film and TV production incentives rarely deliver the economic benefit that justifies them and only occasionally change where a project shoots, said Patrick Button, an associate professor of economics at Tulane University who studies the programs. He sees a particular problem with targeting small productions: Indie filmmakers, already working on thin budgets, are the least likely to relocate in pursuit of a subsidy. Chasing incentives across jurisdictions is largely the province of major studios.

“Despite the goal with these incentives being to attract filmmaking and lead to economic stimulus, that’s not materialized in the data,” Button said. “In general, these incentives don’t have a good return on investment for the states and their counties.” Low-budget producers, he added, aren’t the ones moving around, “which creates even less rationale.”

He also noted “a lot of stress on the LA County budget right now, and a lot of other things that the money could be spent on,” and expects the fund’s effect to be “very small.”

Laboe countered that covering even 10% of an indie production budget would help keep work local, and said filmmakers may be able to layer a county grant with the state credit where it applies.

Who it would reach

Independent productions are a meaningful share of SAG-AFTRA members’ income, particularly as major studios chase incentives abroad. More small films shot locally would mean more roles, said SAG-AFTRA Secretary-Treasurer Joely Fisher.

“People are rolling up their sleeves, raising money and going to make a movie for under a million bucks,” Fisher said. “But also they’re able to take more chances. People are being discovered in these indie movies, and I think that that’s a great thing for our newer members, who can cut their teeth on something indie.”

Making the film is only half of it. The fund should address marketing costs, or the films won’t get seen, said Jackie Brenneman, president of the Independent Film & Television Alliance. Those budgets traditionally come from distributors, but more independent films now go directly to theaters without one.

“You have to be able to exploit the thing you make,” Brenneman said. “If we want to be able to access theaters, the theater’s first question is going to be, what’s your marketing plan? What’s your marketing budget? And if you don’t have one, then you’re more likely to get four-walled” — renting the screen themselves and absorbing the risk.

Ray is still editing “The Middle.” Whatever happens with the fund, it won’t reach her first feature. But she’s already thinking about her next one.

“After this film is done, I’ll have my next one to worry about,” she said. “As a filmmaker here, there are so many hurdles, and it would just be nicer to have a clear pipeline, a scaling budget for all of these things and [provide] access to people who want to support emerging talent and artists, not just the studio system.”

The manager of the team that most needed Tarik Skubal sat in his office Sunday at Angel Stadium. The Milwaukee Brewers, the team that opened play Sunday with the best record in the major leagues, did not get Skubal.

The Dodgers did. Of course they did.

“L.A. is America’s team,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.

Not based on the cries from across America, from fans outraged that the Dodgers helped themselves to the best available talent yet again to baseball insiders mystified that the Detroit Tigers could not land a better return for Skubal than the three prospects the Dodgers swapped, or at least taken a couple more days to pursue a better return.

“Was I rooting for the Dodgers to get Skubal? Personally, no,” Angels pitcher Brent Suter said. “I was hoping another team that hadn’t won the World Series the past couple of years was going to get him.”

Suter pitched for the Brewers for seven years.

“They have a loaded farm system,” he said. “I thought they were going to get him.”

The road to the World Series runs through Los Angeles. The Brewers also posted the best record in the majors last year, then the Dodgers swept them in the National League Championship Series.

In last year’s NLCS, the Brewers started an opener twice, Freddy Peralta once and José Quintana once. In a five- or seven-game series this October, the Brewers could have started Jacob Misiorowski twice and Skubal twice.

That could have mitigated the Dodgers’ huge advantage in slugging. The Dodgers have seven players in double digits in home runs. The Brewers have four.

But any and all statistics obscure the larger point: If you’re a Brewers fan, when is your year?

The Brewers never have won a World Series. They are in line for their eighth playoff appearance in nine years.

Sustainable success is nice, and difficult to achieve. Much credit to the Brewers, who play in baseball’s smallest market.

But the point of the game is to win the World Series. If you’re not going all in when you have the best record in the majors for the second consecutive year, when are you going all in?

If not now, when?

“I know we made our efforts, too,” Murphy said. “I trust the way we operate. I understand the way we operate.”

This is all the more maddening in Milwaukee because, in 2008, the Brewers tried their best. That July, they traded four prospects for Hall of Fame pitcher CC Sabathia. Only one, outfielder Michael Brantley, developed into a productive major leaguer. That’s the norm, not the exception, in multiprospect trade packages.

As it turned out, the Brewers lost in the first round of the playoffs, and Sabathia did not survive the fourth inning of his lone postseason start. Then he signed with the New York Yankees. So what? The Brewers went for it, and their fans believed.

After the trade for Skubal, Fangraphs increased the Dodgers’ chance to win the World Series from 25% to 31%. That still means a two out of three chance the Dodgers do not win.

“He’s an amazing player,” Suter said, “but it doesn’t mean a guaranteed World Series. It doesn’t guarantee anything.”

I could not believe the number of fans that reached out to say small-market teams could not match the Dodgers’ proposal because they had little chance to re-sign Skubal as a free agent.

Again, so what? We’re playing to win the World Series, not the Baseball America prospect rankings.

The Brewers, with small-market resources, touted former Angels infielder Luis Rengifo as a significant winter free-agent signing. The Dodgers countered with Edwin Díaz and Kyle Tucker.

“L.A. is America’s team and has all the big names,” Murphy said. “Now they just added to that, with maybe the best pitcher in the game, certainly one of the greats in this era.”

If the Brewers and Dodgers meet again in October, Murphy will only be too happy to tell us who the underdog is.

“It’s going to be David and Goliath,” Murphy said. “We haven’t earned that right yet. We haven’t got there yet.

“If we get there, I’m sure the narrative will be pretty similar: the haves and the have-nots.”

Murphy wanted to make one thing perfectly clear: Fans across America might despise the Dodgers, but he does not.

“They’ve got a bunch of great dudes,” he said. “Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Teoscar [Hernández]. I don’t know [Shohei] Ohtani. He doesn’t even know who I am. But I feel like Ohtani is a great dude. I can just tell by his presence.

“How can you not love [Max] Muncy? Doc [manager Dave Roberts] is my good friend. [Coach Dino] Ebel, we’ve got his whole family playing for the Brewers.”

The Brewers made first-round picks of Ebel’s sons Brady and Trey over the past two years, paying $5.55 million in signing bonuses. The Ebel boys are top prospects. They can look forward to a long stay in Milwaukee.

Like most good stories, this one requires planning. Organizers with the L.A. Sports and Entertainment Commission spent nearly nine years preparing to bring the FIFA World Cup to L.A. The most popular sporting event in the world was just the start of a mega-event trilogy that turns the page to Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium and will culminate with the largest Olympics ever in 2028.

“We are on the international stage for three years,” said Kathryn Schloessman, president and chief executive officer of L.A. Sports and Entertainment Commission, or LASEC, said. “What story are we telling and how are we doing that?”

The World Cup was a riveting first chapter. The 39-day tournament brought more than 560,000 fans to SoFi Stadium for eight matches, 250,000 fans to 10 official fan zones and a projected $892 million in economic impact across L.A. County, according to LASEC.

The expanded World Cup, with 48 teams and 104 matches over 16 venues in three countries, is only a logistical qualifying match compared to the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The first Olympics in L.A. in 44 years will welcome 11,198 athletes across 51 sports from more than 200 countries competing over 20 days. The 2028 Paralympics will come to L.A. for the first time with a 23-para sport schedule that will begin competition before the opening ceremony for the first time.

Despite the difference in scale, John Harper, chief operating officer of LA28, called the successful World Cup’s local matches “an immense learning opportunity for us in a lot of ways.”

Attending World Cup matches as a fan and behind-the-scenes observer, Harper was impressed by the transportation services provided by L.A. Metro. The agency said it provided more than 212,000 rides directly to and from SoFi Stadium and 15 parking and transit hubs in L.A. and Orange counties through an enhanced service. Harper was encouraged by the interagency work between different public partners that helped the eight matches go off without a major hitch.

But the biggest lesson was in the spirit of the fans who packed watch parties, streets and bars.

“It really demonstrated the power of sport,” Harper said. “Not only the energy in the stadium, but the energy in the city and L.A. being such a diverse city, you really saw the world come to life on the streets of L.A.”

The World Cup exceeded expectations, Schloessman said, delivering economic effects, local supplier opportunity and community engagement. LASEC hosted fan areas at 10 different locations, highlighted by the tournament-opening festival at the Coliseum. The City of L.A. hosted seven free “Kick It In the Park” watch parties. Sports bars and restaurants overflowed with customers who drank beer taps dry.

“It was just this six-week interlude of time when people liked each other and people were having fun together,” Schloessman said.

LA28 hopes to create a similar, harmonious energy during the Games with sports parks at major sports zones. Areas where multiple venues are clustered together, such as L.A. Live, Exposition Park, Long Beach, Inglewood and Carson, will have dedicated areas for pin trading, sport trials, entertainment zones and sponsorship activations.

While LA28 will be responsible for hosting official live sites for the Games, local communities can organize their own Games-time activities. LASEC worked with local organizations and businesses leading up to the World Cup to promote opportunities, including watch parties, meetups or themed decorations while still adhering to strict rules regarding FIFA broadcasts and logos. LA28 will provide similar guidance leading up to the Olympic and Paralympics Games.

“It is our responsibility, with the organizers, with the authorities, to create an Olympic experience for as many people as possible,” said Pierre Ducrey, International Olympic Committee sports director, who was impressed by the atmosphere of a FIFA fan event in Kansas City where he attended a match featuring his native Switzerland facing off against Argentina. “Whether they have a ticket to be in the stadium or they don’t, we want to create special moments for them that they can remember.”

LA28 sold more than 4 million tickets in its first ticket drop, and after last week’s presale, the second drop will resume Aug. 10. With 14 million tickets available, the 2028 Games could break the sales record set by Paris 2024, which sold 12 million tickets between the Olympics and Paralympics.

The biggest World Cup ever also boasted the highest attendance, but some of the tournament’s best parties came outside of stadiums.

Santa Monica put screens on every block of the Third Street Promenade for World Cup watch parties where patrons were allowed to carry alcoholic beverages within a specific area of the open-air mall. More than 40,000 people walked through a fan hub on the Santa Monica Pier. The city closed down more than a mile of downtown Santa Monica during the World Cup final for a block party that attracted 20,000 people.

And, Santa Monica Mayor Caroline Torosis proudly emphasized, it was free.

“I think major global events have an extractive history,” Torosis said. “We are trying to change that. We are also trying to use it as an opportunity to showcase the city itself. So how do we benefit our local community but also reintroduce Santa Monica to the region?”

Santa Monica balked at the chance to host competitions for the 2028 Games. Talks to host beach volleyball near the iconic pier broke down in 2025, six months after a study indicated that being a venue city could result in a net loss of $1.45 million, while not hosting the competition could still generate $10.65 million in profit because of the city’s status as a popular tourist destination.

Santa Monica already has deals in place to host hospitality houses for several countries in 2028, including France and Switzerland. Broadcast partners will set up studios on the city’s iconic pier. With plans for watch parties and other accessible celebrations for fans, Torosis envisions Santa Monica being “the place to be” during the Games.

“We are prepared for the influx of people that are going to be in the city,” Torosis said. “I think that FIFA was a great dry run.”

Inglewood was at the center of the World Cup with eight matches at SoFi Stadium. The city got an economic boost from an estimated 625,000 fans, including thousands who traveled to support their national teams without a match ticket, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. said.

Fans from all over the world, sporting their country’s colors, flooded Market Street for the city-hosted Wood Cup festival to begin the tournament. Packed prematch marches stunned organizers who were unfamiliar with the tradition. While SoFi Stadium’s name was changed to “Los Angeles Stadium” per FIFA’s sponsorship rules, broadcasters still emphasized they were in Inglewood.

“It really gave a boost to community pride that Inglewood is now an international city,” Butts said.

Inglewood will remain the setting for the mega-event story. SoFi Stadium, in addition to hosting a second Super Bowl in five years, is the scene for the 2028 Olympic opening ceremony — which will be shared with the Coliseum — as well as Olympic swimming and the Paralympic opening ceremony. Neighboring Intuit Dome will host the Olympic basketball tournament.

The consistent stream of global events doesn’t faze Butts. In a city that will have hosted an NBA All-Star Game, eight World Cup matches and another Super Bowl in less than a calendar year, the Olympic chapter is already written.

“We do it time and time again,” Butts said. “This is what we do.”

You can’t keep a beloved news team down, even after more than a decade since being yanked off the air in a move that stunned fans and local TV newsrooms.

For almost 20 years, KTTV Fox 11’s “Good Day L.A.” was hosted by Steve Edwards, Dorothy Lucey and Jillian Barberie, becoming a dominant fixture in the fiercely competitive morning show arena. The show’s popularity for a time outdistanced network morning shows and crosstown rivals “The KTLA Morning News.”

The trio’s freewheeling banter spiced with humorous mayhem and mischief enchanted legions of viewers while bringing freshness to the familiar formula of news, weather and sports. The distinct personalities meshed effortlessly — veteran newsman Edwards, relentlessly upbeat co-host Lucey and fiery weather reporter Barberie, who injected the proceedings with outrageous, at times crass comments along with declarations that “my breasts are real.”

An undercurrent of friction brought an edge to the breezy vibe, with Edwards often acting as the awkward buffer between Lucey and Barberie, who did little to disguise their dislike of each other. Barberie would go on to bash Lucey on Howard Stern’s radio show, calling her “very Christian and Bible-thumpy.” Lucey was frequently distraught by Barberie’s “mean.”

But that winning combination was broken up starting in May 2012, when Lucey was fired as part of a show revamp. Barberie was let go four months later after declining a demotion. And after continuing with other co-hosts, Edwards vanished from the show in December 2017 after allegations of sexual harassment, but there was never an official explanation from him or management about the reason for his departure. The exits sparked a wave of protests from viewers and celebrities, including Suzanne Somers, Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell of “American Idol.”

But good days have returned for the former “Good Day L.A.” hosts. More than a decade after being let go, Edwards, Lucey and Barberie are fired up about their new venture.

The trio has reunited for “So Unanchored,” a weekly podcast fueled by spontaneous riffs on their years together, pop culture and their deep friendship. As they did on “Good Day L.A.,” they consistently interrupt one another and the chatter careens from one topic to the next without a breath. Complete sentences are rare.

“We have not missed a beat,” Edwards said as he, Lucey and Barberie relaxed in an office lounge after a recent taping. “It’s the most effortless thing. It makes us very happy when we get together. There’s an endorphin thing going on.”

“And we like each other more,” added Lucey.

They will tape a special live episode Wednesday at 11 a.m.. New episodes usually appear on Fridays.

The shattering of the “Good Day L.A.” team was particularly traumatic for Barberie, the breakout star of the trio. In addition to getting divorced after the Fox 11 job, she was later sideswiped by financial woes and a devastating health scare.

“I lost my job, got divorced and got cancer all at the same time,” said Barberie, her voice cracking as she sat near Edwards and Lucey in the lounge. “The fact that these two were a constant in my life during those 12 years when I was going through all those things is everything. I’m so grateful.”

Of course, there are major differences from their previous collaboration. While “Good Day L.A.” was broadcast at Fox 11’s massive West Los Angeles studio, “So Unanchored” is a no-frills affair staged at a Canoga Park office park.

The hosts sit in a small office, backed by nondescript office furniture and a framed poster of the vintage “Please Stand By” image broadcast by stations when there were technical difficulties.

On their initial podcast, Barberie made it clear that there is no love lost when it comes to her former employer.

“I don’t want anything associated with that show,” she said. “Let’s start fresh, man. They used us and they treated us like s— at the end. Who needs them? Goodbye!”

The other major shift is the relationship between Lucey and Barberie.

“Dorothy and I love each other now,” Barberie said on one episode.

Lucey: “We do. Because the last time you saw us, we really didn’t like each other.”

Barberie: “And Steve has never been happier.”

Edwards: “You two are like sisters. You used to be like brothers — Cain and Abel.”

Barberie: “And then something happened between the three of us that got her and I close, and then I got cancer. She took me to all of my surgeries and took care of me. I’m telling you, it’s a beautiful thing.”

Lucey: “We still hate Steve, though.”

Barberie: “We have that in common.”

The burying of the hatchet is a great relief for Edwards, who was troubled by the tension between his colleagues during their time on “Good Day L.A.”

Barberie pressed Edwards on their first podcast: “Be honest, Steve. Did you like it when we didn’t get along?”

Edwards: “Sometimes it would get ugly and my stomach would turn.”

On “So Unanchored,” Barberie has revived her loose cannon role in their dynamic, raw and unfiltered. She will tear up, and moments later throw her head back with an explosive laugh that bounces off the studio walls.

She detailed her wild lifestyle during her TV days: “From 34 to 40, I was single, had five TV jobs, partied like a rock star, dated anyone I wanted and made a s—load of money.”

Though she eventually landed a talk show on KABC-AM 790 after leaving Fox 11, hard times hit in 2019 as she tried to make ends meet while raising two children as a divorced mom battling cancer.

“When I lost everything, I literally collapsed on my money manager’s table. I was bald and I started crying,” she said.

She listed her ranch-style Tarzana home, which was featured in “MTV Cribs,” for $2.5 million in 2021. She currently rents “a beautiful little apartment way out in Thousand Oaks. I love it and my life is quieter.”

Barberie was more explicit on the podcast: “I haven’t dated in 10 years. I have no tinglies down there. I’m dead from the waist down. I don’t want to date. I don’t want a man, an ape beside me at night if I’m having a hot flash. I have no nipples. I have no desire to cook, sit and talk with you. I don’t care.”

Edwards: “So you’re saying there’s a chance.”

Scott Sternberg, whose production company produces “So Unanchored,” said “Good Day L.A.” was a clear standout on the morning show spectrum.

“There was something different about ‘Good Day L.A.’ from the other shows,” Sternberg said in a phone interview. “Their personalities were all different, but they could finish each other’s sentences and were not afraid to say what they wanted to say. I felt if I could bring them back together, there would be a huge audience who remembered them fondly.”

Asked to define the magic of their chemistry, Edwards said it was not instantaneous.

“At the time, there were five morning shows, including the network,” he said. “It took years for our thing to happen, but when it did, it happened big. We could do no wrong for 10 years. The ratings were crazy good. There was a run for many years when we were No. 1. We made them a lot of money.”

He continued: “Success is based on the relationship between the people on the show and the audience. Once that is established, it doesn’t matter if the show is good or bad that day. I was going through a lot with these two [Lucey and Barberie], and the audience was doing it with us. But the suits don’t care about that.”

The first indication that the show was in trouble came in 2017, when a new management team initiated a revamp of the morning show.

Lucey wrote at the time in her blog “God and Gossip” that her new boss told her that her voice, which has a trace of raspiness, “made his eyes bleed. Not the crusty yucky pink eye. New guy was saying when I spoke I made his eyes bleed. I have read that can happen after you vomit. Now I could almost see my husband saying something like that to me … But from a new boss…”

But station executives did not express regrets about dismissing Lucey, saying in a statement after her ouster: “The revitalization of ‘Good Day L.A.’ has been refreshing.”

Months later, Barberie was approached about taking a reduced role as a field reporter. She turned it down. Edwards’ departure caused a bigger stir because it was so abrupt. KTTV would say only that he was no longer employed by the station.

“Fox never issued a statement, and I never issued a statement,” Edwards said. “Obviously there was not agreement on what happened.”

As they prepared to leave the lounge, the three hugged each other warmly and said they were looking forward to getting together the following week.

“There is one word for us being back together,” Barberie said. “Home.”

It’s a few minutes after 10 a.m. on a recent morning and the thermometer is closing in on 95 degrees, but Marc Papas isn’t fazed. “The heat doesn’t bother me much,” he said, unloading his bicycle — a blue and yellow 1989 Trek 400 — from the trunk of his car on a side street in Reseda. “I just keep going.”

Papas adjusted the heart monitor underneath his T-shirt, checked the bike computer attached to his handlebars, then set off on the day’s ride; he’s taken it upon himself to bike every public street in Los Angeles. The Phoenix native has completed over 78% (about 5,840 miles) after two years. He calls it “The Project,” and says there’s about 7,516.07 miles in total, when you include various enclaves and adjacent cities like Beverly Hills or Burbank. Today he’s headed toward the longest continuous bike lane in Southern California — a stretch of Reseda Boulevard. It’s an unexpected amenity in a part of the city that seems otherwise hostile to pedestrians and cyclists, but one Papas wants incorporated around more of Los Angeles.

“Somebody once asked me on a Reddit Ask Me Anything what is one street you think needs a bike lane,” he said. “I wrote him a whole essay in response, because I can’t just say one street.”

After a few blocks on Reseda, Papas turned back into the neighborhood centered around Etiwanda and started tracing loops across the blocks. It’s his standard pattern for covering any area he rides for the Project. “I base my routes on a math theory called the Eulerian Path,” said Papas, a mechanical engineer by training. Each new segment of the city he rides is generally a rectangle bound by major streets. “Then, I start with loops around the edges and work my way in,” he continued. “It’s the most efficient way to cover an area without overlapping.”

Today’s ride would yield eight new miles for Papas. “So, I’ll be about 12 miles away from 80%,” he calculated.

Papas started his biking project almost by accident. He moved to Los Angeles in late 2020 after finishing his PhD at Georgia Tech. He had taken up biking around Atlanta as part of triathlon training and worried he wouldn’t be able to continue once arriving in L.A.

“I remember having a sort of fear around it,” said Papas. “I’d heard it’s just so car-filled and dangerous to be on the roads.” But riding along the beach and around much of the Westside quickly changed his mind. With perfect weather year-round and a mostly flat topography, why wasn’t everyone in L.A. riding bikes?

He was soon cycling to work in Monrovia from his apartment in Pasadena, and biking more than he ever had in his life. “Sometimes friends would be surprised to learn I have a car,” he said. “They thought I bike everywhere because I don’t drive.”

Then, on Dec. 31, 2023, Papas decided to get in one last bike ride for the year. He rode a section of San Marino that he and friends refer to as “The Mitochondria” for the shape the streets make when viewed in the tracking app Strava. After riding the Mitochondria, he decided to keep going — making a path up each street and block — until he was satisfied. It gave him the idea to ride every mile of street in San Marino. “It’s only 60 miles total,” said Papas. “That seemed doable.”

Finishing the 60 miles of San Marino led to completing the 400 miles of Pasadena. He next found himself taking detours to cover new streets in Northeast Los Angeles as he’d ride to and from Koreatown Run Club meet-ups at Los Angeles Community College. But it wasn’t clear to himself, or anyone else, what he was doing. “Friends were seeing my Strava activities and texting me like, ‘What the heck are you doing, man?,’” Papas recalled. One friend jokingly asked if he was drawing the Nazca lines across the city, but Papas wrote it off as just trying to clock extra mileage. “There’s a level of self-deception, because riding the whole city of Los Angeles seemed impossible to do,” he said. Still, his treks around Northeast L.A., East Hollywood and Los Feliz were starting to build up mileage — he had completed about 18% of the city.

When Papas drove out to North Hollywood in November 2024 specifically to track new mileage, he realized he had crossed the Rubicon. “At that point, I can’t lie to myself anymore about what I’m doing,” he said. “I’m driving out to these places to get miles more efficiently. When that happened, I was like, all right, I’m in it for the long haul.”

As Papas covered more and more of the city, he began growing an appreciation for various architecturally-significant neighborhoods as well as the many murals across large swaths of South and East L.A. “There are beautiful pieces of art on the walls that you wouldn’t imagine,” he said. “I want to take people to these places and do a mural tour.” He was especially moved when he was riding in Pacoima and saw a Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens mural that memorializes the tragic plane crash that killed both Holly and Valens. “So many of these murals are commemorating people and events that are culturally important to those specific areas,” he added.

The bike rides were connecting him to his city in ways he never expected. “I’m not necessarily saying that everybody needs to go out and ride their bikes,” said Papas, though he’d certainly love it if more Angelenos did. Instead, he hopes his biking project is showing people what’s possible — in the most extreme way. Yes, you can bike in Los Angeles, as many Angelenos often do out of necessity. It’s even enjoyable. And yes, you can do it across every single mile of the city, even if the cycling infrastructure isn’t perfect yet. “I think to me, success would be if people just go out and explore their own neighborhood,” he said. He views cycling as a form of civic engagement and a way to see things otherwise invisible when speeding by in a car. For beginners, Papas recommends sticking to bike paths and joining cycling groups. More experienced riders should venture out into new areas, said Papas. “Biking is like a superpower to gain familiarity with your neighborhood, but it just needs to be unleashed.”

Last September, Papas passed the 50% mark of his project and estimates he’s been covering an additional 1% (or about 75 new, unique miles) every week since. That puts him on pace to finish sometime around mid-December — should everything go smoothly — nearly three years after he first began. Does he know what his final mile will be? “Eldred Street in Mount Washington,” he said. He notes it’s one of the steepest streets in the entire country.

“It’’s a fitting end, like a final boss [in a video game], just one last all-out hard effort to completely finish things off,” Papas said. “It gives me goosebumps to think that would be the time and place that this years-long project would be done.” Of course, there’s always the rest of Los Angeles County to conquer.

WASHINGTON — President Trump will travel to Los Angeles on Tuesday and Las Vegas on Wednesday as part of a two-day West Coast trip aimed at highlighting his administration’s economic record ahead of the midterm elections, a White House official confirmed.

In Los Angeles, Trump is scheduled to attend a Republican National Committee dinner at Trump National Golf Club. The visit comes as the administration seeks to draw attention to his economic policies as time runs out for his administration to ease economic pressures ahead of the November election.

“The president will draw a sharp contrast between his commonsense agenda and the radical policies of Democrats like Gavin Newsom, who keep raising taxes, inviting rampant fraud in taxpayer-funded programs, and protecting illegal immigrant drug dealers, rapists, and murderers,” White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said in a statement Monday.

Trump is expected to “tout his wins for the people of the Golden State despite failed Democrat leadership,” Wales said, citing what she described as the “largest middle-class tax cut ever, the most secure border in American history, and a plummeting crime rate.”

Newsom has not yet publicly commented on Trump’s pit stop in California, but the Democratic governor in recent social media posts has criticized Trump’s handling of the economy.

In one post on X, Newsom pointed out that California is raising the minimum wage to $17.40 an hour next year as a way to attack Trump and the GOP for “defending a $7.25 minimum wage while workers scrape by.”

“Pitiful,” the governor wrote.

In a second post, Newsom amplified a post on X that shows how the prices of items like rice, cotton and wheat have increased since the start of the year.

“Great work, @realdonaldtrump,” he wrote.

Trump’s visit to Los Angeles will be his second since returning to office. He toured Pacific Palisades in January 2025 after the L.A. neighborhood and Altadena were ravaged by wildfires. During the visit, Trump signed an executive order intended to expedite rebuilding efforts.

Since Trump last visited the city, there has been a standoff between California leaders and the Trump administration over federal disaster aid.

In April, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and county Supervisor Kathryn Barger met with Trump in the Oval Office to talk about their request for funding to help with the wildfire recovery efforts, an ask that Trump signaled support for but has yet to formalize.

Following his visit in California, Trump will travel to Nevada, where he will deliver remarks on the economy at Red Rock Casino.

“The Exorcist” star Linda Blair had her property searched by law enforcement officers who were investigating and inspecting her kennel operation with more than 100 dogs.

Friday’s operation was carried out by the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control and the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning, according to a statement shared with People.

“The goal is to inspect this property for buildings and structures associated with a kennel operation reported to have more than 100 dogs,” the department said in the statement.

Blair, whose IMDb site lists dozens of movies and television shows dating back to 1968, founded the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation in 2003 to rehabilitate and rescue abandoned and abused animals.

Blair’s kennel facility’s permits expired in 2023, and she allegedly didn’t respond to attempts by the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control to contact her, People reported.

“The warrant allows us to lawfully access the property and verify compliance with County codes,” the department said. The operation is intended to evaluate “animal care, safety conditions, and overall welfare of the dogs housed on the property.”

County officials could not immediately be reached to comment about the findings of the inspection.

“Our priority is the safety and well-being of both the animals on the property and the people who may be working or residing here,” the department said in the statement. “This inspection will help us determine whether conditions meet required standards.”

Blair wrote about the incident in an July 31 Instagram post, saying that the animals were “good in lieu of our surprise visit in 105° heat.”

“Turns out we just have some paperwork to do and some diagrams but as everybody knows, I’m looking to move so I can be more educational and help more animals,” Blair wrote. “I’d rather move forward.”

A Bangkok-raised chef is now serving vibrant Thai street food such as pan-fried noodles, grilled Isan sausage, Wagyu short rib with herbs and sticky rice, and flame-kissed pork jowl in Old Pasadena. To drink, there’s local ube beer and natural wine.

“I love to eat street food so much,” said Thaim chef-owner Ruethai Boonlieng. “I go back to Thailand all the time, and I always ask my friends, “Hey, don’t take me to the mall — take me to street food. It’s a true food for my soul, and people make the street food with care.”

Boonlieng’s Thaim is a portmanteau of “Thai” and “I am.” While some of her recipes are traditional — such as her mom’s preparation of Sukhothai pad Thai — others are modern spins, like brightening her sweet-spicy mango salad with fresh dill or turning her childhood favorite, egg tofu, into a deep-fried egg custard.

The chef grew up in Bangkok and learned to cook by watching her mother prepare home meals, then took pastry courses in Thailand as an adult. Boonlieng studied finance but entered the restaurant industry to help an aunt and a friend open a Thai restaurant — then discovered she loved it. She opened multiple restaurants in the Bay Area, then moved to Los Angeles to help open another and never wanted to leave.

As an owner of sweets-focused cafe U Dessert Story, with two locations in the Bay Area, Boonlieng wanted to incorporate some of her signature desserts at Thaim, too. Look for Thai tea panna cotta, matcha lava cakes and more.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Gavin J. Quinton, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy did big numbers in the June 2 primary election, coming in first place in the race for city attorney and knocking City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto out of the running entirely.

Roy secured 43% of the vote in round one. Now that she’s in a head-to-head contest against Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, she’s well ahead in fundraising as well.

Campaign spending reports for the Nov. 3 runoff, filed over the last few days, show that Roy’s campaign collected nearly $74,000 during the fundraising period that ended June 30. By comparison, McKinney collected just $3,000, according to his own contribution report.

“I plan to be a City Attorney for the people, and I’m proud to have a campaign supported by the people. If your campaign isn’t, then I think it’s fair to ask who it is for,” Roy said in a statement.

The race is one of three downballot contests where the candidate who came in first on June 2 is also well ahead in the scramble for campaign contributions. Things were similarly lopsided in council races in South L.A. and the San Fernando Valley.

McKinney, who received nearly 29% of the vote in the primary, said his campaign will have plenty of resources to “educate voters that Marissa Roy is a bad fit for Los Angeles.”

“The recent financial disclosure reflects just one week of activity,” he said in a statement. “Since the June 30th [fundraising] deadline, we’ve raised more than $65,000 from more than 80 individual donors and have nearly 15 fundraising events scheduled.”

Several of the donors who gave to Roy occupy the left end of the political spectrum, such as Loraine Lundquist, who ran for City Council twice in the San Fernando Valley, losing both times to Councilmember John Lee. Roy also picked up a donation from airport commissioner Victor Narro, project director for the UCLA Labor Center.

Roy received $1,800 from attorney Carol Sobel, who has sued the city many times on behalf of various clients over policing and its treatment of the homeless population. Another $1,800 came from Genie Harrison, who is representing former fire chief Kristin Crowley in her lawsuit over her ouster.

McKinney, who works for Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, is likely to have his own big-money support in the coming weeks. During the primary, an array of well-financed allies, including Airbnb, spent a combined $3.2 million on efforts to elect him.

In South L.A., Ugarte ramps up his fundraising

The fundraising was also lopsided in the race to replace City Councilmember Curren Price, a veteran lawmaker who is stepping down after 13 years in a district stretching from the Convention Center south to 95th Street.

Former Price aide Jose Ugarte collected about $35,000 for the runoff, much of it from other city workers, particularly council aides, records show.

Community organizer Estuardo Mazariegos took in about $5,400, pulling in donations from the progressive L.A. Forward Action Fund and from Lundquist, the former council candidate.

A number of elected officials have lined up behind Ugarte, who garnered 39% of the vote in the primary. He received $1,000 apiece from State Assemblymembers Mark Gonzalez (D-Los Angeles), Mike Fong (D-Alhambra) and José Luis Solache (D-Lynwood), according to his filing. Ugarte also received $1,000 each from former Councilmember David Ryu and from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Records show that Ugarte received $1,000 from the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file police officers, but then returned the contribution. Ugarte does not accept donations from the police union, his campaign strategist said.

“I support Mayor Bass’s efforts to increase staffing, strengthen community policing, and improve transparency and accountability. I also want to see more officers on foot patrols and bike patrols in our neighborhoods,” Ugarte said in a statement. “Returning this contribution does not change or influence my views on these priorities.”

In the Valley, Gaspar pulls in a big haul

In the race to replace Councilmember Bob Blumenfield in the west San Fernando Valley, businessman Tim Gaspar is proving to be a fundraising powerhouse.

Gaspar reported more than $180,000 in donations to his runoff campaign through June 30, compared with about $31,000 for Barri Worth Girvan, an aide to County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, according to her filing.

“After finishing with the most votes in the primary, our campaign is grateful for the outpouring of support from business owners, neighbors, and friends across the West Valley,” Gaspar said in a statement.

Gaspar received 46% of the vote in the primary, compared with more than 42% for Worth Girvan.

In an interview, Worth Girvan said she’s not troubled by the fundraising gap. During the primary, backers of Gaspar spent about $1.4 million on independent expenditures supporting his election bid.

“We still came within 4 percentage points,” she said. “To me, it’s always been about the voters, so that’s what I’m focused on.”

Worth Girvan picked up donations from longtime Democrats, including Gonzlaez, the state Assembly member, former state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Ryu, the former City Council member. She told The Times her fundraising picked up significantly after the June 30 fundraising deadline, bringing her total haul to more than $100,000.

Gaspar picked up donations from several public safety unions, including $1,000 from the Police Protective League and $500 from a political action committee set up by the city’s port police. He received $1,000 from real estate developer Rick Caruso, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2022.

State of play

— WINDS OF CHANGE: For the first time since 1963, L.A.’s 9th Council District will not have a Black representative. The race to represent that South L.A. district features two Latino candidates who immigrated to the U.S. as children, both of them undocumented at the time. Ugarte, the former council aide, was born in Oaxaca and is Mazateco, an Indigenous group native to the Mexican state. Mazariegos, a community organizer, was born in Guatemala.

— DISAPPEARING ACT: Records dealing with the activities of the Los Angeles Police Department — emails, text messages, audio recordings — have vanished from a city website devoted to the release of public information. Although the removal of such records does not violate any laws, “it’s certainly not a best practice,” one expert said.

— PERMIT PROBLEMS: A representative of Lineage, whose massive cold storage facility burned down in Boyle Heights two months ago, filed a permit this week to rebuild the company’s 491,000-square-foot warehouse to its original pre-fire condition. Bass called the filing a “slap in the face” to families in Boyle Heights and ordered her department heads to put the application on hold until the site receives extensive study.

— SCHOOLS AND SAFETY: Meanwhile, with less than two weeks left before the start of school, families in Boyle Heights and East L.A. are worried about health and safety at eight campuses located within a mile of the Lineage site, which has been beset with the stench of rotting food, rats and swarms of flies.

— ZOO COUP: Feldstein Soto may have lost her bid for a second term, but she did rack up a key court victory in the city’s battle over money for the Los Angeles Zoo. The city has been trying to claw back about $50 million raised for the facility by the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn., the nonprofit that helped run it until recently. GLAZA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June, citing “incessant litigation” from the city. This week, at the city’s request, a judge dismissed the bankruptcy filing.

— TAKING IT TO THE STREETS: L.A. is on track to repeal a city law prohibiting kids from playing baseball, basketball, soccer or other ball games out in the street. The law was passed in 1936 out of a fear that children would be struck by cars. Councilmember Bob Blumenfield says it’s time the ordinance was erased from the books.

— FIXING THEIR MISTAKE: L.A. County’s Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to send voters a charter amendment that would reverse the repeal of Measure J, which was approved six years ago and sets aside money for alternatives to incarceration. Measure J, through a series of errors, was supplanted in 2024 by Measure G, which will increase the number of supervisors. The new measure would restore Measure J to the county charter.

— SPEAKING OF ERRORS: Last week, we mentioned a proposal to reduce the number of required council meetings from three per week down to one, saying that the idea failed to make the ballot. That was wrong! The measure will in fact go before voters in the Nov. 3 election as part of Charter Amendment EE.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to bring homeless people indoors went to Skid Row, bringing 23 people inside, according to the mayor’s team. The area is represented by Councilmember Ysabel Jurado.
• On the docket next week: After a month off, the City Council resumes its business on Tuesday.

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.

If you are over the age of, say, 14, you might not be familiar with daughter-father duo Salish and Jordan Matter. But if you are a parent of a Gen Alpha kid, it can feel like you hear about nothing but Salish and Jordan Matter. Their YouTube videos — a high-octane mix of zany challenges, games and hijinks — are admittedly hard to resist, which may be why they rake in millions of views as soon as they blast into the social media universe.

Sixteen-year-old Salish was in elementary school when she started appearing in her father’s YouTube videos and the channel is like a time capsule of her childhood — or, well, the most public, heavily produced version of it. There’s the day Salish turned her house into a waterpark (73 million views) or the night she had a secret sleepover in a mall (31 million views) or the time she survived 100 babysitters in 24 hours (61 million views). “A blessing and a curse for me is that we’ve documented it all,” says Jordan, whose background is in photography. “I have these beautiful videos of her when she was 10. I was just watching them 30 minutes ago and was like, oh wow, it feels like yesterday.”

Now their creator journey is taking a new turn. Salish and Jordan recently signed a deal with Netflix to develop, produce and star in original projects — it’s the largest such creator partnership for the streaming giant. Their show, “Salish & Jordan Matter,” reached Netflix’s Top 10 this month. Beyond the screen, the duo co-founded the popular teen skincare brand Sincerely Yours. (The launch of one glossy lip balm brought 2,000 fans to the Santa Monica Pier earlier this summer.)

It’s been a wild ride for the pair, but despite their snowballing fame, they swear they’re like any other dad and daughter who bicker, joke around and simply enjoy each other’s company.

“I think we’re pretty chill, right?” Jordan says.

“Yeah, we’re pretty chill,” Salish agrees.

Here they share what they’d do together on a Sunday Funday around their South Bay home, noting that a perfect day would involve the whole family, including mom Lauren Matter and Salish’s 20-year-old brother, Hudson Matter.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

10 a.m.: Wake up and debate the day’s options

Jordan: Salish, what time would you actually wake up?

Salish: Probably like 10.

Jordan: OK, so we’re sleeping in until 10. Then why don’t we go get breakfast? We’ll go to Ocean Diner in Hermosa Beach. We’ll both get huevos rancheros and fresh orange juice. And then I would love to go get coffee at Boy and the Bear in Redondo Beach.

Salish: Or Two Guns!

Jordan: No, I prefer Boy and the Bear.

Salish: Oh, I prefer Two Guns.

Jordan: Well, if we go to Two Guns, Salish would get the avocado toast.

Salish: No, the chai! It’s so good!

Jordan: OK, well, if Salish has an opinion, that’s what we’re doing. But later today, one thing I would love is a bike ride on the beach. Are you still down?

Salish: [High-pitched voice] Yeah.

Jordan: Did you hear that voice?! That tone is like, “Yeah, but not for much longer.”

Salish: [Laughs] No, I like doing bike rides with you! It’s just that I don’t know how much of a “biker” I am.

Jordan: You’re not one.

Salish: I’m not.

Jordan: But you have an electric bike! You just have to go like [makes e-bike revving motion] vvrrrrrruurr.

11:15 a.m.: Shopping and soup dumplings

Jordan: The next thing we’re going to do is …

Salish: Go to the mall! I like picking out new outfits for him because every day he just wears a black T-shirt.

Jordan: OK, and if we’re going to go to Del Amo mall, we’ll have lunch at …

Salish: Oh, Din Tai Fung.

Jordan: Which means we’ll have to put our name on the waiting list.

Salish: It’s like a two-hour wait.

Jordan: So we’ll put our name down right after breakfast. And then we’ll shop for clothes before our reservation.

Salish: I’ll go to Aritzia and probably Garage. And then you’ll go to Express and Levi’s. I go to PacSun a lot too but normally I don’t find anything there. I always wear sweats and hoodies — literally just sweats and hoodies.

Jordan: Also tank tops. Salish doesn’t like to repeat outfits on videos, so she does need at least one new outfit a week.

And I’ll just follow her around. I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that looks good.’ And she’ll be like, ‘No, it doesn’t.’ And I’ll be like, ‘No, it looks really good.’ And she’ll be like, ‘You’re just saying that.’ And then she’ll ask, ‘Which color?’ I’ll say the blue, and then she’ll get the pink. And I’m like, ‘I’m glad I could be helpful.’ So that’s how shopping with Salish goes. Then finally, there’s Din Tai Fung.

3 p.m.: An afternoon by the ocean

Jordan: Then we would leave the mall because I’m not gonna be there all day. We’re gonna go paddleboarding in Long Beach, in the Naples Canals area. We love anything with water, right? We love vacationing in Lake Tahoe, swimming and boating.

Then we would probably go for a bike ride along the Strand. I would vote for pulling over and having dinner. There’s a really good taco place right near the Hermosa Beach Pier called Palmilla Cocina Y Tequila.

Salish: [Winces slightly] I’m not gonna lie. I don’t really like tacos.

Jordan: Salish is an absolutely impossible eater. All she eats is Chipotle. She’s a vegetarian but she’s a picky vegetarian, so that combo makes it almost impossible for her to find food anywhere. But she’d get the black beans and rice and tortillas and cheese and mix it all together.

Salish: Yeah.

Jordan: See, I basically know everything about you.

Salish: And you would get the chicken!

Jordan: Yes.

Salish: I knew it. But you have to make sure it’s white meat.

Jordan: White meat chicken, mole, enchiladas — yum!

8 p.m.: Family hang time

Jordan: Now if there’s a good horror or suspense movie out, I might convince Salish to go. But that would be a tough sell. So maybe we’ll go back home. We just got a pool, so that’s exciting. And late nights in the pool has become a thing. We might play ping pong or a board game.

Salish: Then my brother and I would probably just chill and talk in one of our rooms. He doesn’t live here so we try to talk as much as we can while he’s home.

Jordan: Our family isn’t looking for big things to have fun — just time together. We just talk and hang out. With Salish, we talk about work but I’m also super interested in what her everyday life is like. You know, from the time she was young, I feel like I treated her like an adult in a way and we’ve always had real conversations. That’s made it easier as she’s grown up. It feels comfortable having these types of conversations.

Salish: Also, I’m a great kid, so like …

Jordan: Of course, of course. You are such a great kid. But you were a spitfire when you were little, I’ll say!

Salish: [Laughs]

Jordan: It’s a joy. It’s a joy to be with her every day.

This is the people pleaser. Phoenix Bakery’s now-iconic strawberry-and-whipped-cream cake has been called “L.A.’s most popular cake” for good reason. It’s light, not too sweet, packed with fresh berries and surrounded by a cloud of airy whipped-cream frosting with a border of sliced almonds for crunch. For generations of L.A. kids, including my own, this is the birthday cake. Dreamed up by the late Lun F. Chan as an extravagant expansion of strawberry shortcake, it has a double-layer base of chiffon cake (another L.A. invention). You can order tres leches and other types of cakes at the bakery, founded in 1938 by Chan’s brother, Fung Chow Chan, but nearly everyone comes in for the strawberry cake, which except for holidays is almost always available for walk-ins. And with prices starting at $29.95 for a 6-inch cake that serves five to six people, it’s also one of this city’s most affordable ways to make a birthday special.