L.A

Los Angeles officials are expressing growing fears that taxpayers and the city treasury could be hit with a round of crippling costs to support the 2028 Olympic Games if the city doesn’t ink a rigorous deal to assure a “zero–cost” Games.

Some city officials have long been concerned that taxpayers could be left with massive bills if the Olympics don’t generate the income organizers have promised. Delays in finalizing a deal between City Hall and the Olympics committee have heightened those tensions.

The exact costs to L.A. and other local governments remain unknown, as officials wait to hear from LA28 and federal security agencies about exactly what services they will need. Recent controversy over the ties between Casey Wasserman, the head of the L.A. Olympics, and Jeffrey Epstein have added to the uncertainty over the finances in the minds of some city leaders.

City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto and Councilmember Monica Rodriguez both issued letters demanding a contract pledging that LA28 cover any of the city’s future costs that arise as the city plays host to hundreds of thousands of athletes and fans.

The contract, more than six months overdue, is needed “to foreclose any scenario in which funds might go back to the wealthy backers and investors of the LA 28 organization without reimbursing taxpayer funded extraordinary costs,” the city attorney wrote to council members.

Rodriguez agreed in a separate letter this week that the city needs a contract that assures that the Olympics organization will pay any excess costs for policing, transportation, trash pickup and more, so that taxpayers are not burdened or “core city services” slashed.

That should take priority over the private nonprofit LA28 building a “Legacy Fund” to bankroll future youth sports programs, public sports facilities and the like, argued the city officials, who are both up for reelection this year.

“Bankruptcy cannot be the legacy of these Games,” Rodriguez wrote, without elaborating on what she meant, though L.A.’s top budget official recently projected a deficit, unconnected to the Olympics, of “several hundred million” dollars.

LA28 officials responded with a statement they issued previously, saying, in part, that “LA28 remains committed to delivering the safest, most secure, and fiscally responsible Games that will benefit Angelenos for decades to come,” adding, “We remain engaged in good faith negotiations and look forward to our continued partnership with the City of Los Angeles.”

LA28 Chief Executive Reynold Hoover said at a press event Wednesday that ticket sales were one vehicle for the host committee to assure that taxpayers didn’t get stuck with a big bill down the road.

The stakes remain high for both sides. The private LA28 group needs the city’s police, fire, sanitation, streets and transportation services to deliver a successful event. The city wants the sports extravaganza to succeed, not only to burnish its image on an international stage, but also to assure there is enough money to pay for all the extra tasks city workers will perform.

The LA28 leaders project the Games will cost more than $7.1 billion. They say that money will come from a variety of sources: nearly $1 billion from the International Olympic Committee, $437 million from international marketing rights, $2.5 billion from corporate sponsors in the U.S., $2.5 billion from ticket sales and hospitality packages, $344 million from licensing and merchandise and $405 million in other revenue.

LA28 reports being ahead of schedule on the revenue front. But city officials worry that unforeseen events — including an economic downturn or natural disaster — could blow up the income model, with one of many wild cards being the willingness of President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to follow through with a funding pledge to the Democratic-controlled city.

L.A. officials have long expressed concern that Trump and Congress might belatedly yank away $1 billion already set aside to reimburse state and local governments for security, planning and other Olympics-related costs.

While the two elected officials and some others, including an attorney representing city employees, raised alarms, an individual with knowledge of the talks between the city and LA28 said that a tentative agreement would likely be before the City Council “within two or three weeks.”

The knowledgeable individual, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the discussion, said negotiators on both sides must bear in mind how a third party, the federal government under Trump, is integral to the financing model.

The source tracking the negotiations said that both sides needed to make sure the pact creates a path to “maximize federal resources, which were dedicated by Congress for the Games,” adding: “The contract needs to avoid saying that LA28 is going to pay, for example, for all of the LAPD’s extra costs in such a way that the federal government says, ‘Fine, then you don’t get any of the federal money.’ We can’t afford to leave a billion dollars on the table.“

City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, one of those bargaining for the city, struck a positive note.

“We are invested in a successful Olympics. The organizing committee knows that it needs the city and city services to have a successful Games,” said Szabo. “It’s in both the city’s and the organizing committee’s best interest to have a successful Games. We’re joined at the hip and we’ll succeed together, or not.”

The 2028 Games have been designated a National Special Security Event, placing it in the same category as major party political conventions and Super Bowls. The U.S. Secret Service sets the security plan for those events.

Officials in L.A. have said they are still waiting to learn from the Secret Service how broad the security “blast area” should be around each athletic venue. The federal agency will then dictate how many police and federal agents will flood those zones, which include the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Exposition Park and Crypto.com Arena.

Attorney Connie Rice, who represents L.A. city employees concerned about how the city will pay for the Games, said that her clients still had questions. Rice, whose past litigation helped force LAPD reforms, said that employees helping to plan for security said they had estimated that the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, alone, would need at least $1 billion to pay for extra security during the Games.

The current federal allocation would not get the city and county of Los Angeles $1 billion since many other jurisdictions, including Long Beach, Oklahoma City and the state of California also will be competing for U.S. funding. And the federal government has not yet released its “notice of funding opportunity” — laying out the parameters for claiming a part of the $1 billion.

Rice argued that the city gave up its best leverage when it signed an earlier agreement to host the Games. “Who is going to pay the bill, or who are they even going to send the invoices to, when the Games are over and LA28 is dissolved?” Rice asked. “LA28 has no obligation to raise money once the event is over.”

Los Angeles city officials expect to have requests by October from LA28 for the services the Games organization needs at each venue. The Games organizing group has agreed to pay any costs that exceed the city’s typical expenditures. But there is not a clear understanding of what constitutes a customary level of service. The massive event is expected to require an array of services, including trash pickup, bus service, street closures, park maintenance, drinking water stations and building inspections of temporary Olympic structures.

In her letter late last month to City Council members, the city attorney raised a slew of questions about the fiscal contract with LA28. Feldstein Soto contended the Games had a “heightened risk exposure … given the recent claims against LA 28 Chairman Casey Wasserman.”

Wasserman’s name appeared in the files about convicted sexual predator Epstein, with records showing the then-28-year-old sports marketer had gone on a two-week tour of Africa sponsored by Epstein and later exchanged risque emails with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. Though some activists demanded Wasserman leave his post as LA28 chair and called for a Games boycott, there has been no apparent reduction in sponsorships or ticket sales because of the furor.

As city attorney, Feldstein Soto is advising the city officials negotiating the Olympic contract. Her letter says she will insist that “transparent audit rights and procedures” be put into place to assure the city treasury does not take a hit in supporting the Games.

The letter raises the possibility that natural disasters or other emergencies could cut into LA28’s bottom line. It also asks: “What happens if the federal government does not pay the assume $1 billion [or] … [w]hat happens if the city’s actual expenses exceed $1 billion?” Feldstein Soto’s answer: “In either situation, this office believes that all surplus funds must reimburse the city and its taxpayers first, as promised, before any surplus funds are available for a [LA28] legacy or tribute fund.”

A trove of sensitive Los Angeles police records, including officer personnel files and documents from Internal Affairs investigations, are among the materials seized by hackers in a breach last month involving the L.A. city attorney’s office.

The leak involves 337,000 files, including some of the LAPD’s most closely guarded records. The documents posted online include the disciplinary histories of officers and investigations into complaints against them, materials that are typically sealed from public view under state law.

The massive hack sent shudders through the department. Officials have sought to downplay the extent of the disclosure, but activists who have long pushed for more transparency around acts of officer misconduct quickly put a spotlight on sensitive files they were able to access.

After The Times published a story Tuesday about the hack, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement that said “unauthorized individuals had gained access to a digital storage system,” enabling them to obtain “discovery documents from previously adjudicated or settled LAPD civil litigation cases.”

The department noted that it was a compromise of the Los Angeles city attorney’s office computers and that the “breach does not involve any LAPD systems or networks.”

“We take this incident very seriously and are working with the L.A. City Attorney’s Office to gain access to the impacted files to understand the full scope of the data breach,” the department’s statement said.

Ivor Pine, a spokesperson for the city attorney’s office, said in a statement that the office first became aware March 20 of “unauthorized access to a third-party tool used by the City Attorney’s Office to transfer discovery to opposing counsel and litigants.”

Pine said the office “took immediate steps to secure the tool and investigate what information was accessed,” including contacting law enforcement.

“The City Attorney’s Office has confirmed that no other City applications or systems were involved in this incident,” Pine said. “The information was self contained in this application without any links or access to any department records or systems. Our investigation is continuing to determine what information was present in the tool and we will take appropriate action to notify any affected parties based on the results of this review.”

The Los Angeles Police Protective League — the union that represents the department’s rank-and-file officers — issued a statement Wednesday afternoon that criticized the city attorney’s office for its handling of the breach.

The union’s board of directors said City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto “should have picked up the phone and informed us about this egregious data breach when she claims she learned of it several weeks ago.”

“We first learned of the breach by reading the Times and the City Attorney has still not provided the union with an honest assessment of the breach’s magnitude, who was impacted, what was disclosed and how this could have happened,” the union’s statement said. “To say we are disappointed by the lack of urgency and forthrightness from the City Attorney’s office is an understatement. We will keep asking the tough questions and once we receive answers we will take appropriate action.”

Within the Police Department, there has been virtually no acknowledgment from senior leaders about the breach or its implications, according to LAPD sources who requested anonymity in order to discuss the confidential matter.

According to one of the department sources, there was a vague reference to LAPD employees needing to change their passwords more frequently at a regular meeting Monday of command staff — but no mention of the breach itself or what files had become public.

The data were obtained by a well-known hacking group known for conducting ransomware attacks on large entities and demanding payment, threatening to make the confidential data public on the web. City and LAPD officials did not comment on whether the hackers requested a ransom in return for not releasing the information and whether the city paid one.

A spokesperson for the FBI’s office in Los Angeles said the agency “is aware of the incident, is actively assisting the City’s Attorney’s Office, and is coordinating with partners.”

At least one hacking group on March 20 claimed to have access to the city of Los Angeles files. Cybercrime investigators from both the federal government and the LAPD have been pursuing the hack since last month, according to police sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the open case.

Some of the records have surfaced on social media platforms, including X. Among the first to share a file from the hack was the account @WhosThatCop, which regularly posts about information related to police accountability.

The account’s administrator said a security researcher first disclosed the breach. A link to the files apparently had been taken down by Tuesday afternoon.

The disclosure represents a stunning breach of police data. Some files circulating from the hack included personal health information of officers, witness interviews from criminal investigations and internal probes conducted by the department. Only rarely do Internal Affairs documents surface in civil lawsuits and criminal cases, and even then they are often heavily redacted.

In all, according to posts about the data breach, 7.7 terabytes of information was available for download.

The disclosure of confidential LAPD records could unleash a new round of costly lawsuits by officers. About 900 officers are currently suing the department related to a 2023 release of mugshot-style images — along with names, races and other demographic details of police officers — in response to a public records request.

The LAPD statement described the files in the recent hack as coming from closed cases. But the X account @WhosThatCop published a redacted internal affairs report from an apparently ongoing case. The case involves a lawsuit by a woman who alleges that she was sexually assaulted by an LAPD officer days after the officer took her into custody in 2022.

In a statement to The Times, the account’s anonymous operator applauded the hack.

“Sadly, having the public resort to transparency by relying on 340,000 City Attorney files being published at the hands of criminals is emblematic of the stonewalling and incompetence by City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto, Mayor Bass, and LAPD Chief McDonnell,” the operator said.

According to court filings, the city reached a conditional settlement with the woman on March 20 — the same day the data theft was revealed by hackers. The matter had been set to go to trial next week.

The lawsuit alleged that the officer, Gabriel Anthony Espadas, detained the woman on a mental health hold after responding to a call for service in the San Fernando Valley. The woman’s lawsuit contends that the officer “engaged in nonconsensual sexual activity” with her after her release.

The city defended itself in the lawsuit, saying the “two sexual encounters” involved an “off-duty, probationary officer” who was “not acting within the course and scope of his employment.”

The disclosure is the latest of several cybersecurity incursions targeting public agencies in Los Angeles. Last month, the city’s metro system shut down parts of its network after its security team detected hacking activity. Law enforcement and cybersecurity specialists are continuing to investigate who was behind the attack, authorities said.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court was hit by a ransomware attack in 2024 that infected its computer system with damaging software, forcing it to shut down for two days.

Times staff writers Clara Harter and Gavin J. Quinton contributed to this report.

To laugh or to cry? It’s a question that feels a little too familiar of late — one confronted often while watching “Maddie’s Secret,” the debut as writer-director from comedian and performer John Early.

Playing the title role with an unnerving sincerity and startling sense of vulnerability, Early stars as Maddie Ralph, a young woman climbing the ranks as a Los Angeles food influencer while secretly hiding her struggle with bulimia.

Early’s performance is a truly remarkable highwire act, all the more so for the wig, padding and prosthetics he wears to play the character. Made in the earnest style of a disease-of-the-week television movie without ever tipping over into winking irony, the film is both funny and tender.

“That, to me, is Maddie’s true secret,” says Early, 38, on a recent video interview from the apartment he is renting in New York City while appearing onstage in Wallace Shawn’s new off-Broadway play “What We Did Before Our Moth Days.”

“The secret of the movie — the real twist of the movie — is not any kind of trope-y reveal,” Early says. “The twist is actually a tonal twist. What I hope is then that becomes funny: the sheer commitment to the stakes of it.

“At any given moment, you can experience it as totally sincere, you can absorb it genuinely and be moved by it,” Early continues, “or you can take a little break and step out of it and find it uproariously funny that we’re even doing this to begin with.”

John Early, front, and Eric Rahill in the movie “Maddie’s Secret.”

(Magnolia Pictures)

Early’s skillfully wrought psychodrama, which had its world premiere at last fall’s Toronto International Film Festival, is now the opening-night selection for this year’s Los Angeles Festival of Movies, playing Thursday at Eagle Rock’s Vidiots with members of the cast present for a Q&A, and then again on Friday at 2220 Arts + Archives in Historic Filipinotown.

“Maddie’s Secret,” which opens in theaters June 12, makes for a fitting kickoff for this year’s event. Though the programming includes movies from all over the world, organizers ended up leaning heavily into films made in Los Angeles.

“This year it really does feel like a homegrown festival,” said Sarah Winshall, LAFM’s co-founder and festival director. “What it ended up doing is making us think about L.A. as a small town as a result.”

“I think the movie is an incredible accomplishment,” said Micah Gottlieb, LAFM co-founder and artistic director. “It’s made by somebody who’s not just a great comedian but also is a cinephile, knows the history of cinema, is trying to make something that fits within that lineage, while also just making an all-out entertaining movie.”

“Maddie’s Secret” was shot in the same workaday, creative-class neighborhoods where LAFM unspools. (Maddie’s house in the movie is Early’s own home.) The actor and filmmaker describes it as a “very Echo Park, Silver Lake, Eagle Rock, Frogtown, Glassell Park, Highland Park, Los Feliz movie.”

The story is also rooted in Early’s own complicated feelings about the L.A. food scene.

“It’s completely born out of my time in L.A. and my initial shock when I was confronted with a burgeoning restaurant scene,” says Early, who grew up in Nashville and moved to L.A. from New York in 2016.

“Not to always be talking about millennials, but it seemed very much of my generation,” he says, “specifically these kinds of restaurants where the food is really expensive but you’re sitting on a milk crate, eating lots of Middle Eastern food made by white people. There was just something very funny about all of it to me, even though I completely also sincerely loved it and still do.”

The film’s supporting cast is drawn largely from Early’s own circle of friends, including his most frequent collaborator, the comedian and writer Kate Berlant, along with Conner O’Malley, Claudia O’Doherty, Eric Rahill and Vanessa Bayer. The film’s production designer Gordon Landenberger is his ex-boyfriend and Early is excited that a number of other key collaborators, including costume designers Kimme Aaberg and Izzy Heller and cinematographer Max Lakner, are working on a feature for the first time, just as he is as writer-director.

“I think I wanted to force myself at gunpoint into a place of innocence and naivete,” says Early. “I think this movie is a strange mutation of the camp tradition.”

(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)

Berlant plays Maddie’s best friend in the film. She and Early have worked together on shorts, live performances and their 2022 Peacock special “Would It Kill You to Laugh?” The two always share what they are developing and so Berlant first heard about “Maddie’s Secret” when it was just percolating as an idea.

“It was a very wild proposition,” she recalls with a laugh while driving down L.A.’s Beverly Boulevard. “He’s like, ‘I’m going to play a woman who’s struggling with bulimia.’ I was like, ‘Good luck.’ I was astonished that he totally pulled it off and he’s such a true filmmaker. It was kind of miraculous.”

Berlant describes their shared sensibility, the ability to simultaneously play comedy and pathos, as a kind of freedom. “Just the underlying absurdity or joke really gives you the ability to go to these really intense emotional places,” she says. “It gives you the permission to go to places that otherwise would be too unbearably saccharin.”

For Early it was also a chance to fulfill his longtime desire to play an old-school ingénue.

“I think I wanted to force myself at gunpoint into a place of innocence and naivete,” says Early. “I think this movie is a strange mutation of the camp tradition.”

“I was astonished that he totally pulled it off and he’s such a true filmmaker,” says Kate Berlant, Early’s longtime collaborator. “It was kind of miraculous.”

(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)

He references Susan Sontag’s famous essay “Notes on Camp” to say there are two kinds of camp humor, one that is unknowing and another that is knowing. It is near impossible now to genuinely create the first kind, but the process of making “Maddie’s Secret” was in a sense about being the second and striving for the first.

“In the age of the internet and in the kind of crumbling, depressing world we live in, it’s almost impossible to be the first kind of camp,” says Early, “to feel innocent and naive and to twirl. But obviously there is a part of me, there’s a part of all of us, that is very childlike and innocent and has hope. So I think this movie, it knows itself to be camp but it’s aching to be more like the first kind of camp. It’s aching to be pure and naive.”

Though it may be easy to place what Early is doing in the tradition of drag performers such as Divine’s work with filmmaker John Waters, to Early his performance in “Maddie’s Secret” sits outside of it.

“Drag is often obviously about a certain kind of extravagance and fabulousness and Maddie is very humble,” he says. “And so I don’t really see it as drag. It didn’t feel like drag doing it, whatever that means. It honestly just felt like acting to me.”

In dealing with the serious topic of bulimia, Early was careful never to make the eating disorder the joke. He points to a trio of TV movies — 1986’s “Kate’s Secret,” starring Meredith Baxter Birney; 1997’s “Perfect Body,” starring Amy Jo Johnson; and 1981’s “The Best Little Girl in the World,” starring Jennifer Jason Leigh — along with Lauren Greenfield’s 2006 documentary “Thin” as key influences on how he approached the film’s depiction of the illness. (Other non-bulimia influences include Alfred Hitchcock’s “Marnie,” Paul Verhoeven’s trashy “Showgirls” and Adrian Lyne’s “Flashdance.”)

“I don’t find bulimia itself funny,” says Early. “The genre of these movies — that’s what’s funny. It’s the emotional pitch of those movies and the way that they’re made and the acting style and the kind of moralistic quality while being totally pervy. All that was funny to me. And then also putting contemporary life — young, gentrified L.A. food-content influencer culture — putting all that through a melodrama-style filter, that was funny to me.”

While writing the screenplay, Early says he often found himself weeping, overtaken by the emotions of what he was creating. “I guess I’m not above the genre at all,” he admits.

But playing the part was another matter, having sold everyone involved in the production on a very specific tone and conception of what they would do together.

“I was like, ‘I am so stupid, I can’t believe I have put myself in this position,’” Early says, laughing at the memory. “I had set myself up to do the thing that I really had no proof that I could do, which is to play an almost Juliet kind of character who’s going through these extreme things. And I was the one that promised everyone that we would take it seriously. And then suddenly I was like ‘OK, well you have to do it. You actually have to do it.’”

Even if Early was uncertain in the moment, the result is undeniable: a dizzying, disarming blend of humor and emotion — and one of the year’s boldest performances.

House Democrats and a panel of elections experts expressed unwavering confidence in state voting systems and dismissed Trump administration claims of widespread fraud and other vulnerabilities during a special “shadow hearing” in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

They accused President Trump and his Republican allies of pushing sweeping federal reforms — including stricter voter ID laws and new restrictions on voting by mail — that would disenfranchise millions of eligible Americans, especially low-income, rural and elderly voters, as well as voters of color and those with disabilities.

“They are taking us backward, and not to a good place,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who helped lead the hearing at the Daniel K. Inouye National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in Little Tokyo.

They also stressed that they and their allies were working hard to prevent such backsliding.

“While Republicans are expecting Democrats to just sit idly by as they attempt to steal yet another election, Democrats are getting out in the community, raising the alarm bells about the GOP’s efforts to rig these elections and fighting back in the courts, in Congress and in our communities,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands), chair of the Democratic Caucus. “We won’t let Republicans get away with their anti-democratic and un-American schemes.”

Such “shadow hearings” allow Democrats to highlight issues their majority-Republican counterparts won’t schedule for formal hearings in Washington. This week’s discussions — a second is scheduled Thursday in San Francisco — follow others in California in recent months, including on Trump’s immigration raids.

Pelosi, the former House speaker, led the hearing alongside Aguilar and Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, which has oversight of elections. Joining them were fellow Democratic Reps. Nanette Barragán of San Pedro, Judy Chu of Monterey Park, Gil Cisneros of Covina, Laura Friedman of Glendale, Luz Rivas of North Hollywood, Linda Sánchez of Whittier, Norma Torres of Pomona and Maxine Waters of L.A.

Pelosi noted the setting on the grounds of the Japanese American National Museum, where Japanese Americans were detained before being unconstitutionally stripped of their belongings and taken to internment camps during World War II.

“To be here on a day when the president of the United States has talked about destroying the civilization of a country is so appalling. It’s so appalling, and I don’t think we can ignore comments like that, especially in a setting like this,” Pelosi said.

She also said that securing the nation’s elections against Trump’s threats and getting out the Democratic vote was the surest way of restoring order to U.S. relations abroad — and far more likely than getting Trump’s Cabinet to remove him from office by invoking the 25th Amendment.

“We have to make sure that the mentality that would obliterate a civilization, undermine a democracy by fighting free and fair elections, just cannot prevail,” she said.

The hearings were designed to challenge a narrative Trump has pushed for years — that U.S. elections are badly compromised by widespread fraud, that mail ballots such as those used in California are a particularly large source of abuse, and that noncitizens are voting in large numbers — none of which he has supported with evidence.

Trump tried unsuccessfully to challenge his 2020 loss to Joe Biden using similar arguments. When he returned to the White House, he immediately directed his administration to pursue the claims anew, including under executive orders he issued asserting new and sweeping federal authority over elections, which by law are controlled by the states.

The Justice Department in September sued California and other states for their voter rolls, which courts rejected. The FBI in January raided and seized 2020 election records from an elections office in Fulton County, Ga., where Trump rejected 2020 results. Trump in February said Republicans “ought to nationalize the voting.” Last week, he issued an executive order purporting to give federal agencies control over ballot processing by the U.S. Postal Service, which followed a previous order seeking to place new federal requirements on voter identification and proof of citizenship.

Trump has said his efforts are “common sense” steps average Americans support to secure elections against noncitizens voting and other threats.

Experts who provided testimony at Tuesday’s hearing roundly rejected that argument, saying the measures address problems that don’t existand are more geared toward securing wins for Republicans than ensuring election safety.

Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, said that Americans are “more likely to be struck by lightning” than to commit voter fraud, and that many recent proposals framed around election integrity are really designed to narrow access to voting for certain groups. She also said California’s elections are particularly strong.

“We’re like the Dodgers of elections,” she said.

Darius Kemp, executive director of Common Cause California, said the state’s elections “are safe and secure,” and the Trump administration is threatening democratic participation in novel and alarming ways that his organization is watching carefully.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor, said Trump is trying to project power over elections “that he simply does not have,” and if local and state officials, the courts and pro-democracy groups stand their ground, he will fail.

“If we keep calm and carry on, we can make our voices heard loud and clear,” he said.

Hector Villagra, vice president of policy advocacy and community education at MALDEF, or the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said “the evidence could not be more clear — noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare,” and Trump’s proposals would simply “raise the cost of lawful voting” for groups already underrepresented at the polls.

“The question is not whether we can verify eligibility. We already do that,” he said. “The question is whether we will impose new barriers that will prevent eligible citizens from participating at all.”

Sonni Waknin, senior staff attorney at the UCLA Voting Rights Project, said “democracy is under attack” across the nation, and that the photo identification requirement Trump and other Republicans are pushing would disenfranchise a million eligible voters in California alone.

When Cisneros asked about what could be done to prepare for the inevitable claims of fraud from Trump and other Republicans after the midterms, Levitt said that such claims must be called out for what they are.

“We call those lies, because they are lies,” he said.

When Waters asked the experts about the effect of federal immigration agents being deployed to polling places, as some in Trump’s orbit have suggested, Villagra said damage was already being done just from the rumors of such action — whether agents show up or not.

“It’s the threat that’s really what’s powerful here,” he said, as people — especially Latino voters — are already intimidated, and leaders should do more to reassure voters and offer alternatives to showing up to polls, such as voting by mail.

More than a year after California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced indictments against 30 probation officers accused of coordinating or allowing so-called “gladiator fights” between youths inside L.A. County juvenile halls, almost half of the criminal cases are falling apart.

In recent weeks, state prosecutors dismissed charges against at least 10 of the 30 officers from the initial indictment, according to court documents and interviews with defense attorneys. An additional four officers entered into plea deals Tuesday that will end with their cases dropped after completing community service.

Attorneys for the officers and probation union officials said the prosecutions were an overreaction to a video — first published by The Times in 2024 — that showed officers standing by as several youths pummeled a fellow inmate at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey.

“I believe the case was a reactionary case that was overcharged,” said attorney Adam Koppekin, who represents an officer whose case was dismissed. “They swept in a bunch of truly innocent probation officers who were following directives and doing their jobs.”

Two officers at the center of the Los Padrinos fight video — identified in court filings as Taneha Brooks and Shawn Smyles — remain charged with multiple counts of child abuse and conspiracy to commit willful cruelty against children. In the security video, the two officers can be seen laughing and shaking hands with the assailants. The 17-year-old who was attacked in the video suffered a broken nose and a concussion, according to a summary of his grand jury testimony contained in a motion filed in the case.

Brooks has repeatedly declined to speak to Times reporters. She showed up in court Tuesday in support of the other officers. E-mails to her attorney and a lawyer representing Smyles were not immediately returned.

Taneha Brooks, an L.A. County probation officer listed as the top defendant in the “Gladiator Fight” case, leaves the Clara Foltzridge Criminal Justice Center on Tuesday, April 7, 2026 in Los Angeles, CA. Brooks has been accused of orchestrating and allowing many of the fights between juveniles in L.A. County detention centers that sparked the California Department of Justice’s investigation. Her case will be heard in May.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Bonta said when announcing charges last year that his office had identified 69 other fight incidents involving nearly 150 youths between the ages of 12 and 18. The 30 officers were indicted on 71 counts of conspiracy, battery and child abuse.

But many of those other fights were different from the 2023 video in that they lasted only seconds, involved minimal injuries and ended after probation officers intervened, according to defense motions and video reviewed by The Times.

The Times confirmed that state prosecutors dismissed charges against 10 officers in recent weeks through interviews with attorneys and two law enforcement sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Court documents reviewed by The Times showed that some of the cases were dismissed “in the interest of justice” after motions filed by the state attorney general’s office. Records of those officers’ arrests were then ordered sealed, the documents show.

In a statement Tuesday, the attorney general’s office said it adjusts its treatment of defendants “based on our continued consideration of all evidence developed before, during and after criminal charges were initiated.”

“Some defendants were appropriately dismissed from the case based on the law as applied to their factual circumstances,” the statement said.

Amid the dismissals and plea deals, Bonta’s critics questioned his fitness to take over the probation department to enforce needed reforms, a move the attorney general has been seeking court permission to make since last year.

“What we are seeing raises real questions about a rush to judgment, one that has already had the effect of maligning an entire profession without the facts being fully vetted,” Curtis Chambers, president of the union that represents rank-and-file probation officers, said in a statement. “When cases begin to fall apart after being advanced so publicly, it is fair to ask whether the process itself was flawed from the outset.”

Motions to dismiss charges in the case paint some of the officers as rookies deferring to their superiors. Defense attorneys for others questioned why state prosecutors charged officers who failed to intervene in fights that were in effect over before they began.

The Times reviewed video of one incident that showed a fistfight between two youths that lasted 20 seconds. In the brief dust-up, the teens throw a series of wild hooks at each other with few of the punches actually making contact. The officer charged in that incident briefly paused before joining a crowd of other officers who pulled the two apart. That officer, whose case has since been dismissed, was charged with two counts of willful cruelty to a child.

The indictments — along with a civil lawsuit and grand jury testimony referenced in motions to dismiss the charges — portray Brooks and Smyles as the main drivers of the fights.

They told other officers who were present, all of them rookies in the juvenile halls, “not to say anything, write down anything, and just watch when youth fights occurred,” according to the charges.

One juvenile told grand jurors he was “incentivized to fight” by Brooks and claimed both officers “rewarded him for fighting by giving him extra snacks,” according to a motion to dismiss filed on behalf of one officer.

According to the court filing, the juvenile told the grand jury that Brooks awarded special jobs to kids she favored.

“He testified Ms. Brooks would pick the ‘KP’ or kitchen patrol person based upon that person’s fighting prowess,” the motion said.

A Times investigation last year found the practice of probation officers rewarding teens who beat up other youths in custody was a problem that predated the “Gladiator Fight” scandal, with one attorney calling it an “open secret.”

Jonathan Evans, who represents Officer Isaiah Goodie, said his client was specifically told by Brooks and Smyles not to break up fights.

“They were seeing that these kids from different neighborhoods were going to fight anyway and they were finding a way to get it out of their system,” Evans said of the senior officers’ training of his client.

Two law enforcement officials told The Times that Brooks and Smyles had been investigated for allowing fights to happen years earlier while assigned to Central Juvenile Hall. It was unclear what, if any, discipline they faced.

One of the cases that will be dismissed after a plea agreement involved a high-ranking officer, 54-year-old Ramses Patron. He was charged with child abuse for failing to stop a fight that lasted less than 10 seconds, according to a motion to dismiss. His attorney, Tom Yu, argued that the state had wrongly accused many officers of planning fights that either occurred spontaneously or were arranged by Brooks and Smyles.

Patron must serve 40 hours of community service and then his case will be dismissed. Yu said his client has served the Probation Department for 30 years with a “spotless record” and the indictment upended his life.

“There’s no words to describe what my client and his family went through,” Yu said.

Indicted probation officer Ramses Patron, center, stands with his attorney Tom Yu, right, pleading no contest in the “Gladiator Fights” case.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Advocates for the officers whose cases were dismissed said they had suffered serious harm to their finances and reputations, with each placed on leave without pay for more than a year.

“County employees are entitled to due process. To the extent that charges are reduced or dismissed, employees may have the right to seek reinstatement or back pay,” said Vicky Waters, communications director for the Probation Department.

Several defense attorneys credited the state prosecutors for scrutinizing the charges more thoroughly and ultimately deciding that some of the cases did not pass the smell test.

“Everybody would love an apology letter,” said defense attorney Bart Kasperowicz. “They did this giant witch hunt sweep and effectively changed the lives of 30 people and all the people that depend on them.”

Sorry, Orlando. Southern California is the theme park capital of the world. Yes, I believe that.

A brief history: Knott’s Berry Farm created a framework that allowed Disneyland to invent the theme park, which Universal Studios tweaked. SoCal innovations, all of them — and the industry remains centered here.

Theme parks are integral to SoCal life. They’re institutions, as familiar as Dodger Stadium, Griffith Park or the Getty. Many of us grew up going to the parks and have archives of fading photos to prove it.

That’s why The Times is launching its first-ever theme park newsletter, a weekly guide to what matters and how to best experience these themed wonderlands. Welcome to Mr. Todd’s Wild Ride, where I’ll take you on my adventures in make-believe, share news and tips, and go deep on the hidden artistry behind SoCal’s most beloved attractions. (Sign up, and we’ll be in your inbox soon.)

Why theme parks are magical

Maybe you haven’t been to a theme park in a while. And maybe that’s intentional. Yes, ticket prices increase every year, crowds frustrate and your ankle will probably be struck by a stroller. But theme parks are art. They’re meticulously designed, as real as our ability to pretend. Few spaces exist in which so many artistic endeavors collide: architecture, costuming, landscaping, animation, engineering, urban design and more. The delight is in the details.

Theme parks are more than an escape — they reflect and respond to culture. Maybe these are simply the ramblings of a Disney adult and fan of all theme parks, but I won’t apologize for seeking joy, wonder and play. It’s what’s needed right now.

I visit theme parks regularly — probably too often by some people’s standards — but I’m excited every time. The key is to stop viewing them as a checklist of activities. So as we enter the busy spring break and summer seasons, here are some ways to develop a deeper appreciation (and simply have more fun) at our most iconic parks.

Embrace the Disneyland classics

I received pushback when I declared It’s a Small World the best attraction at the Anaheim resort, but hear me out. The ride is designed in the look of animator turned theme park artist Mary Blair, reflective of her color clashes and childlike whimsy. It’s akin to a boat trip through an art gallery. No other attraction is so reflective of a singular art style. The facade, designed by renown Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump and inspired by Blair, mixes glistening white metals and fiberglass with gold leaf accents that nod to the Eiffel Tower, Tower of Pisa, a Dutch windmill and more. How many more landmarks can you spot amid the jagged edges and byzantine shapes?

Fun fact: Legend tells that Disneyland used the entire U.S. supply of gold leaf to make the facade. Germany, apparently, came to the rescue.

Don’t skip a ride on the greatest tram tour ever built

Visitors enter the set of Jupiter’s Claim from the movie “Nope” while taking the Universal Studios tram tour in May 2023.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Universal Studios’ World-Famous Tram Tour, as it is officially designated, is the most important modern theme park attraction in America. The slow-moving backlot trek existed long before Universal Studios had a theme park, but it changed the industry.

In 1976, one year after Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” opened, the studio put guests face-to-face with a 24-foot shark. Never before had a cultural phenomenon like “Jaws” been so quickly replicated in a theme park. “Ride the movies” is a phrase coined by Spielberg, and it’s an industrywide trend that hasn’t stopped.

Fun fact: Universal consulted submarine builders General Dynamics to construct a shark that could survive long term under water.

Spend an afternoon in America’s first theme park

Knott’s Berry Farm’s entrance as parkgoers ride the Silver Bullet roller coaster behind it in May 2021.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

There are times I go to Knott’s Berry Farm and never leave its Ghost Town area, which predates Disneyland and is filled with oddities. A toy shop, for instance, sells actual puppets, and a train ride still features a staged robbery. The park also just remodeled its 72-year-old Bird Cage Theatre, home to outrageous vaudeville-style shows, where a young Steve Martin once performed. It’s a rarity these days to have live theater at a theme park.

Fun fact: The theater’s facade is a replica of the original Bird Cage in Tombstone, Ariz., which has long had a bawdy reputation.

So I hope you’ll sign up for Mr. Todd’s Wild Ride, where we’ll geek out on the history, the artistry and the future of these spaces. Have a theme park question? Email me, and I hope to answer it in an upcoming edition of the newsletter. Life is tough. We can all use more fun.

Today’s top stories

Billionaire Tom Steyer speaks during Jewish California: Governor 2026 Candidate Forum at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on Feb. 26.

(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

Billionaire candidate for California governor faces criticism

• Tom Steyer, a Democratic candidate for California governor, faces mounting criticism over his former hedge fund’s prior investments in private prisons now housing undocumented immigrants.
• Steyer says he deeply regrets the investment and left his hedge fund 14 years ago and has since spent hundreds of millions on Democratic causes, particularly efforts to fight climate change.

Artemis II crew flies past the moon

• NASA’s Artemis II crew flew past the moon Monday, traveling farther from Earth than any humans in history and becoming the first to see some sections of the moon’s far side in the sunlight with the naked eye.
• The four astronauts described the far side in eloquent detail: Geometric patterns of browns, blues and greens amid the moon’s typical shades of gray.

L.A.-based relatives of a deceased Iranian leader were arrested

• The niece and grand-niece of an Iranian general have been arrested by immigration agents after the niece celebrated the Iranian leadership and denigrated the U.S.
• The general’s daughter has disputed the family connection, according to Iranian media, which has quoted a statement attributed to her saying that the two women bear no relation to the general.

What else is going on

Commentary and opinions

This morning’s must read

For your downtime

State Route 78.

(Josh Jackson)

Going out

Staying in

And finally … your photo of the day

The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne travels over the Coachella 2004 crowd in an inflated plastic bubble.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Robert Gauthier during 2004 Coachella. Here’s a look at The Times’ photos from every year of the festival, including its origins in 1999, legendary performances from Daft Punk, Prince and Beyoncé, and the iconic art installations the festival has hosted over the years.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

When Tina LaMonica and Warren Wellen purchased their South Pasadena Craftsman home in 2001, the one-car garage dated back to 1917, a time when people parked their narrow Ford Model T cars inside garages like this one.

“We bought it for $650,000,” LaMonica says of the house. “Of course, we could never afford to buy it now.”

The couple moved in when their daughters, Sophie and Ruby Wellen, were little, and their tree-lined street was full of families with young kids who rode their scooters throughout the neighborhood.

“We all grew up together and had block parties,” says Sophie, 30. Now, she adds, “There are no new families moving in. No one left. Why would they?”

Tina LaMonica and Warren Wellen sit on the patio with their daughter, Sophie Wellen, and their dog, Hazelnut, next to the 230-square-foot ADU where Sophie lived for two years. Her younger sister is now living in the ADU.

Music was always a part of their home, Sophie says, thanks to her father, Warren, 65, who is both an attorney and a musician in the alternative rock band Brahms’ Third Racket.

“He plays everything,” Sophie says. “Throughout my entire childhood, he was always making music.”

LaMonica adds, “It can be disruptive.”

So in 2021, the couple pulled together money from different sources, including a line of credit, and turned the garage into a tiny 230-square-foot accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, for Warren to use as a music studio.

“It was intended to be a creative space, not a home,” says LaMonica, 64, who is a commercial real estate broker. “The total cost was around $125,000, including permits, construction and all systems — a significant investment, but one that ended up serving our family in unexpected ways.”

The garage before, left, during, right, and after, below, construction. (Tina LaMonica)

A few months after using his new music studio, Sophie, who had been in law school at the University of Michigan, moved back to Los Angeles after being away for 10 years.

“She wasn’t working right away, and like many new grads, she had student debt and credit card debt from getting through school,” says LaMonica. “Market rent in the Los Angeles area wasn’t realistic, even with a job offer lined up. So, the studio became her first home. It gave her stability and independence during a major transition.”

Sophie, who describes her relationship with her parents as close, says the ADU was always meant to be temporary and she’s grateful for it.

“At 28, I didn’t know where I wanted to live in L.A.,” she says. “I had only grown up in Pasadena, which is a small community. I felt lucky to be able to live in this little house in the back and explore the city to find the right place for me, instead of rushing to grab the first place I could, like so many of my associates had to do. It was right after the bar exam, and I was really stressed.”

The ADU features a Murphy bed and and a nice-sized kitchenette.

The kitchenette has a compact air fryer-toaster oven from Our Place, and a slim, Classic retro-style refrigerator.

After clerking for a judge in Washington, D.C., Sophie’s boyfriend William Lang moved to Los Angeles and joined her and her dog in the ADU, bringing his two cats with him.

“It was a full house,” Sophie says, laughing. “And yes, they were indoor cats! But we made it work. Finding a rental was hard. I couldn’t really afford a nice apartment in L.A. I had to save up and wait until my boyfriend got here so we had two incomes.”

It’s no surprise they felt at home. Although it’s small, the unit is sunny and bright, with a pitched roof and a big picture window overlooking the lush backyard and swimming pool. (The blinds can be closed for privacy.)

There’s a Murphy bed that turns into a love seat when pulled down, which saves space, and classic black-and-white checkerboard porcelain tile from Mission Tile in South Pasadena that gives the living spaces a surprising sense of fun. The unit also has a bathroom with a shower, a closet and a storage nook above the bathroom.

The ADU has room for a desk, flat-screen TV and comfy chair.

There’s also room for a desk, a flat-screen TV on the wall and a comfortable chair. Not having a dining room isn’t a problem because there’s a welcoming patio just outside the French doors, with two chairs, a couch and a coffee table.

“The backyard was our saving grace,” says Sophie. “Most of the time, William sat at the little table. It was cozy and nice. I got to be near my parents, and they got to know my partner better.”

The ADU has a roomy kitchenette with white cabinets and countertops, a compact air fryer-toaster oven from Our Place, and a slim retro-style refrigerator from Unique. “You can bake, broil and fry with the small Wonder Oven,” LaMonica says. “Ruby uses it all the time.” There’s also a mini-split system for heating and cooling, and if needed, a stackable washer and dryer can be added later.

A patio area provides another living space steps outside the ADU.

Soon after Sophie moved out, having lived in the back house for two years, her 27-year-old sister Ruby moved in. “She works in Torrance and can’t afford to rent an apartment close to her job,” her mother says. “The ADU gives her a chance to live affordably, stay safe and be near family, while building financial footing on her own terms.”

LaMonica is happy with the ADU, though she wishes they could have added a second floor, which the city of South Pasadena didn’t allow at the time.

She imagines a future in which one of her daughters lives in the main house, and she and her husband live in the ADU. “I think an ADU is a great long-term solution,” she says. “It keeps people from moving out of California. With an ADU, at least you can keep your family on site.”

In some ways, the small ADU is more than just a solution for young people who can’t afford to live in Los Angeles. A 2025 study found that Los Angeles ranked second among the 50 largest U.S. metros for its share of working adults (ages 25 to 40) living with parents.

Backyard homes can also help people connect with their community.

“The nice thing about the ADU is that it can give you a sense of community that’s hard to find right now because people are so isolated,” says Sophie, who now rents a two-bedroom duplex in Hancock Park with Lang for $4,500 a month. “We’re both lawyers at private law firms and doing well, but I still don’t feel like I could have a child right now and give them the life I want. It’s hard to make big life decisions in L.A., especially if you have student debt. It was really nice to have dinner with my parents every once in a while. They didn’t want William and I to leave.”

The bathroom inside the ADU.

As Southern California gets more crowded and housing costs rise, young people have to look for options different from those their parents had when they were growing up.

LaMonica says she and her husband never thought they would house both daughters in a converted garage. “But in a place like Los Angeles,” she says, “the tiny ADU turned into a flexible and essential lifeline for our family, not just once but twice.”

And maybe one day, Warren will finally get his music studio.

Mayor Karen Bass has had a lengthy political career, spending six years in the state Legislature, 12 years in Congress and the last three in the top elected office at Los Angeles City Hall.

Now, facing the toughest reelection battle of her career, Bass is marketing herself in a way that might surprise some Angelenos: She’s running as a champion of change.

And she’s not alone.

City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who has represented a Hollywood Hills district since 2020, says her last-minute decision to enter the race was fueled by “a sense of urgency that things needed to change.”

Three other major candidates, all political newcomers, argue that an outsider is needed to shake up the status quo.

“We can no longer keep our city together with duct tape and slurry,” said Rae Huang, a leftist community organizer, at a recent candidate forum on housing and transportation.

The race to embrace the mantle of change in the June 2 primary election comes at a moment of political peril for Bass, a veteran Democrat who has racked up high disapproval numbers in several voter surveys.

In recent months, Bass has revamped her messaging, saying she’s been tackling problems that have “been around for multiple decades,” such as homelessness, sluggish police hiring and trash-strewn streets.

Last week, speaking to the Pacific Palisades Democratic Club, Bass said she wants another four years to finish that work. She also implied that, in her zeal to fix the city’s problems, she quietly pushed out a dozen high-level bureaucrats, including those who dealt with trash pickup and police recruitment.

“Let me just tell you that in three years and three months, it is difficult to change what has been a practice for over four decades,” Bass told the group. “I am very clear that there needs to be massive change, and I’ve done a lot of change.”

Raman has portrayed herself as someone who shook up the system while in office, securing a 4% cap on rent increases for more than 600,000 apartments and opposing initiatives she viewed as “disastrous” for the city’s budget. She said the city is falling short on an array of issues, including traffic deaths and housing affordability.

“So much of what’s happening in L.A., our inability to address our biggest crises — our housing crisis, our homelessness crisis, but also essential services like lights and potholes — so much of this has resulted from a lack of clear urgency in decision-making at City Hall,” said Raman, the first L.A. council member to win office with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Those types of arguments have elicited salty responses from Huang, tech entrepreneur Adam Miller and conservative reality TV personality Spencer Pratt.

Miller, who described himself as a lifelong Democrat, pointed out that Raman runs the powerful five-member council committee on housing and homelessness. He argued that both she and Bass have failed on those issues, as well as on public safety and much needed infrastructure repairs.

“These are the people who have been running the government,” said Miller, who made a fortune developing education software. “So I don’t understand how they could describe themselves as change-makers. They’re the ones who have been the problem.”

Pratt offered a similar take on social media, calling Raman and Bass “two peas in a pod,” while portraying himself as a change agent.

“I’m a wrecking ball to the status quo,” he said in one post.

Neither Pratt nor his representative responded to an interview request.

In one recent high-profile poll, about 56% of respondents said they had an unfavorable view of Bass. In another, about 40% of those surveyed said they had not yet made up their minds about who should lead the city.

“It’s clear that there are concerns among voters about the direction of the city — and the state, quite frankly,” said Pomona College politics professor Sara Sadhwani, referring to the race for governor. “In both instances, there are lackluster candidates, and so we see voters being very much undecided in both of these incredibly consequential races.”

The election season got underway a little more than a year after the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead.

Bass, who was out of the country when the fire broke out, was unsteady in her early public appearances and, since then, has faced sharp criticism over the pace of the rebuilding. She has defended her record on the recovery, saying she cut red tape and suspended city permit fees, while also pressing the Trump administration to crack down on insurance companies that fail to compensate wildfire survivors.

The back-and-forth over change and the status quo broke to the surface during last month’s housing forum in downtown L.A.

At one point, Raman voiced alarm over the city’s elevated “people mover” being built at Los Angeles International Airport, saying it is so far behind schedule that it won’t be ready before the World Cup, which starts in June.

Raman said that as mayor, she would ensure that such projects are finished on time — and replace airport leadership if it fails to happen.

“Nithya, you’ve been on City Council for six years, though,” Huang shot back. “Why have you not moved this forward?”

(At five years and four months, Raman’s tenure is slightly less than that.)

Raman countered that, as a council member, she only has control over certain issues.

“So much of what’s going wrong in Los Angeles requires the mayor to get involved,” she said.

Bass did not attend the forum, traveling instead to New Orleans for a reelection fundraiser. Pratt also skipped. In their absence, the three remaining candidates pounded on a wide array of municipal ills, including broken sidewalks, high rents and sluggish housing production.

Raman, at that event and elsewhere, has sought to differentiate herself from Bass, and City Hall more broadly, by highlighting her dissenting votes.

In 2023, Raman opposed a package of police pay increases negotiated by Bass, saying they were too expensive and would deprive other city departments of funding. Last year, she voted against a $2.6-billion upgrade of the Convention Center, citing similar long-term cost concerns.

Bass, for her part, said she’s been shifting the direction of the city in critical ways. Previous city leaders were too hesitant to build temporary housing for homeless people, she said, leaving them to languish on sidewalks while waiting for government-funded apartments to be built.

After taking office in 2022, Bass declared a local emergency on homelessness and launched her Inside Safe initiative, which has put thousands of people into hotels and motels. Raman signed off on the emergency and the funding for Inside Safe but now says the program is too expensive.

The mayor said she also pushed for changes in LAPD hiring, not just by making officers’ salaries more competitive, but by hacking away at a slow and bureaucratic recruitment process. Speaking to the Palisades Democrats, Bass said she got that done, in part, by changing the leadership and staff at the city’s personnel department.

Bass told the group she’s preparing to launch an initiative to clean up the city’s streets — and that she made a personnel move in that regard as well.

“In terms of cleanliness, I’ve had to change the leadership of the Department of Sanitation, because I couldn’t get the job done,” she said.

Sadhwani, the Pomona College professor, said she doubts that voters will view Bass as a reform candidate. Raman, she argued, is also part of the establishment.

“They cannot run from the fact that they have been in power,” she said.

I’m looking for something that’s open early on the weekends (9 a.m.?) where we can take our 2-year-old daughter. We don’t want it to be an indoor play place or something that is solely designed for kids. Ideally, it would be something that adults enjoy too. Maybe something outdoors or with a restaurant/cafe where we can give ourselves a little treat. We are in Manhattan Beach and have to be back home by 12:30 p.m. for nap time. We’ve been able to make drives to Pasadena and Orange County and make it back in time (bonus of leaving on a Saturday or Sunday because there’s no traffic!) — Brittany Newell

Here’s what we suggest:

Finding places that will keep both you and your toddler entertained can be tricky. But don’t fret, Brittany! I’ve enlisted the help of some of my colleagues who are also parents that understand the need to flee the house before nap time. I’ve compiled a list of fun mini adventures that you can start early-ish.

For an activity close to home, Michelle Woo, The Times’ West Coast experiences editor, suggests renting a toddler bike trailer or bike seat from one of the local shops and taking a ride along the Strand from Manhattan to Redondo and back to Hermosa for a stop at Good Stuff, a beachside restaurant where you can enjoy a refreshing smoothie, mimosa or Woo’s go-to order, “the Good Stuff Breakfast with a pork sausage patty — simple yet comforting.” Then let your daughter play in the sand for a while. And if you haven’t been to the Roundhouse Aquarium before, it’s definitely worth a visit. The free, donation-based marine educational center is home to swell sharks, sea urchins, jellyfish and more that will leave visitors of any age in awe.

About 12 miles up the coast in Venice Beach is the newly renovated Windward Plaza Playground, a nautical-themed fun zone equipped with slides, swings, climbers and more. The best part is that it’s located on the sand at the beach just steps away from the famous boardwalk. Before you get to the park, my colleague Amy King suggests stopping by Breakaway Cafe for yummy breakfast burritos or Menotti’s for coffee.

For an early morning adventure, Times entertainment and features editor Brittany Levine Beckman recommends visiting the Riverside bike path in Frogtown, which opens at 6 a.m., so you can start as early as you’d like. She and her husband usually take turns pushing their 18-month-old daughter in a tricycle along the pathway and get their steps in. Afterward, she suggests going to Lingua Franca, a restaurant situated along the river. “We’ve arrived a few times as soon as the restaurant opens at 10 a.m. on the weekend and been the only early-bird brunchers,” she tells me. “We grab a table outside in the back and our daughter meanders without us feeling annoying.” The restaurant also serves a toddler-approved Dutch baby and a parent-approved bloody Mary, she adds. If you prefer to just grab a coffee, go to Tadaa.Coffee, which has a sand pit that your daughter can play in.

Another fun option is the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park, where you can wander through the awe-inspiring Dinosaur Hall, learn about the evolution of mammals, roam through the enchanting nature gardens and admire more than 2,000 gems and minerals from across the globe. The museum opens at 9:30 a.m., but there’s still plenty of time to explore before nap time. Levine Beckman also enjoys taking her daughter to the museum. “Our toddler loves the animal dioramas,” she tells me. “She likes staring up at the dinosaur bones too (and can say “roar” now), but the big stuffed animals are her favorite.” For food, my colleague Sophia Kercher recommends South LA Cafe, which is located at the museum.

Now for some rapid-fire ideas: Kercher suggests the Stoneview Nature Center, which is a plant-filled city sanctuary nestled in Culver City’s Blair Hills. Here you can chase hummingbirds, roam through the never-crowded garden and “visit Stoneview’s resident quails, which have their own fenced-in compound called, ‘Quallywood,’” she says. Times contributor Rachel Kraus, who recently wrote about the rise of mall parks in Southern California (and why parents are loving them), suggests the Proud Bird near LAX, which she calls “a one stop shop parent and kid utopia.” She adds, “You can order food and drinks (including from a full bar) and let your kids run around on the outdoor play structure, kick a ball on the turf or explore the vintage airplanes.” Also, be sure to check out our list of L.A. playgrounds that are close to coffee shops where you can get a jolt of energy if needed.

I hope these suggestions are helpful with planning your next morning adventure with your toddler and that you are able to create some fun new memories together. Happy exploring!

It was a risky move and Jonathan Torres knew it, but he did it anyway. He let an out-of-town guest stay with him in his room.

Torres, 40, had been living at the Highland Park Motel as part of Inside Safe, Mayor Karen Bass’ flagship program to combat homelessness. He and his neighbors, many of them from a downtown encampment, were told that visitors were not allowed.

Still, Torres kept having people over. After the third violation, he said, the facility kicked him out.

Jonathan Torres spent about two years in a city-leased motel in Highland Park. He told The Times he was kicked out of the facility in December.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s nobody’s fault but my own, but I just feel it’s unfair,” said Torres, who now lives in a tent in Chinatown. “In the real world, you’re allowed to have people come over. You have visitors. That’s part of keeping your sanity, you know?”

Los Angeles has spent more than $300 million on Inside Safe since Bass launched the program in December 2022, clearing scores of homeless encampments and moving about 5,800 people into interim housing — mostly hotels and motels. The goal was to get each of those people into permanent housing, typically taxpayer-funded apartments.

But even as the mayor’s initiative brings more people indoors, a growing number are winding up back on the street.

The longer the program exists, the greater the share of participants who have returned to “unsheltered” homelessness, according to monthly dashboards which were posted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA, and analyzed by The Times.

Jeremiah Flores, center, packs up his belongings during an Inside Safe operation in North Hollywood last month.

In 2023, at the program’s one-year mark, nearly 20% had returned to the street, according to numbers posted by LAHSA at the time.

Halfway into Bass’ four-year term, the figure had climbed above 30%.

In December, as the program finished its third year, about 40% of the people who had gone indoors — 2,300 of the 5,800 — were back on the street, according to LAHSA’s dashboard. That includes people who were kicked out of their housing or disappeared from the system altogether.

The growing exodus reflects the challenges Bass faces while trying to help some of the city’s neediest residents, many of whom struggle with mental health conditions, substance use issues or major physical ailments.

Workers with Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program clean up a homeless encampment along Hollywood Boulevard in 2024.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Bass, asked about the worrisome trend, said she believes that Inside Safe participants need more services to address those issues. She also said she suspects that the longer people stay, the more likely they are to violate the rules and face expulsion.

The goal of Inside Safe is to find permanent homes within 90 days, with a maximum stay of six months, according to the written agreement issued by the city to each participant.

At this point, the average stay is 362 days — just shy of a year, according to recent LAHSA figures.

Bass did not offer any definitive conclusions, saying the city now has outside researchers assessing the problem.

“It’s critically important that we look at the people who left, why they left [and] what do we need to do strengthen the interim housing that we have,” she said. “I have my opinions about it, but the opinions have to be based in science.”

Bass has staked much of her reelection campaign on her handling of the homelessness crisis, which she made a top priority as soon as she took office. She credits Inside Safe with producing a 17.5% drop in “unsheltered homelessness” — people living outdoors or in their vehicles — over a two-year span. That number fell from about 33,000 to nearly 27,000, according to the most recent homeless count.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass prepares to leave a homeless encampment along the San Diego (405) Freeway in Van Nuys targeted by Inside Safe in July. “The homeless should never be living in these conditions,” she said.

By clearing encampments, Inside Safe also benefits the surrounding community, making sidewalks more accessible and reducing the number of encampment fires, Bass said.

UCLA Law School professor emeritus Gary Blasi, an expert on homelessness, said the program has become too expensive to justify the results — and is in need of “a thorough re-engineering.”

Blasi said there were never enough vouchers and low-cost apartments to provide permanent housing to Inside Safe participants in a timely way. As a result, the city has been paying for them to live in expensive motel rooms for long stretches, he said.

“Once they started having people in interim housing for nine months or a year, that should have rang some alarm bells, because that’s just not sustainable,” he said.

Last summer, the Inside Safe program cleared away a large homeless encampment next to the San Diego Freeway in Van Nuys. Some residents went to the Budget Inn in North Hills.

Inside Safe participants also face a wide array of rules. They are barred from leaving the premises for three consecutive days without prior approval. Alcohol and illegal drugs are prohibited in their rooms, which are inspected multiple times a day.

Participants also are frequently barred from bringing in outside food, to keep from attracting roaches, mice and other pests.

“The rules are dumb. They treat houseless people like children. They don’t give people agency,” said Paisley Mares, who lives in an RV in the San Fernando Valley and has several friends who took part in the program.

Executives with the nonprofit groups that run the Inside Safe facilities said the restrictions are needed to protect residents, keeping them on track to find permanent housing.

Violence, threats of violence and property damage are prohibited, and can result in immediate removal from the program. The ban on guests is designed to prevent people from being physically attacked, sexually assaulted or engaging in high-risk behavior, such as drug use, behind closed doors, those nonprofit leaders said.

“We are bringing people indoors, mostly from encampments, where drugs are often the trade of the street. There is also often physical violence. That’s the way people survive on the streets,” said John Maceri, chief executive officer of the nonprofit the People Concern, which runs two Inside Safe motels in Hollywood. “All of those behaviors don’t stop when people come into an Inside Safe setting.”

Executives at the People Concern estimate that 50% to 65% of the shelter clients they work with — not just for Inside Safe, but other homeless housing programs — have serious issues with drugs or alcohol. The number with serious mental health issues, particularly trauma, is also “very high,” they said.

Inside Safe providers acknowledged that motel rooms can be a huge adjustment, leaving people feeling lonely and isolated. They said they work closely with participants to improve their behavior — and turn to expulsion only as a last resort.

“My goal is never to exit anyone to the streets,” said Joseph Bradford III, chief executive officer of BARE Truth, which runs two Inside Safe motels on the Eastside. “I want to keep people inside until they find permanent housing.”

By now, Inside Safe operations are a well-oiled machine. Sanitation trucks roll up to encampments. Traffic officers cordon off the sidewalk with yellow tape. Encampment residents lug their bags onto a bus and head to their destinations.

Robert Martinez, 40, moved to a Budget Inn in North Hills last summer from an encampment near the 405 Freeway. He had been homeless for about five years and jobless even longer, he said.

Martinez, who used to work at a water filtration company, said the Inside Safe motel was better than the street. Still, he chafed at the rules. He wanted his children to visit, which was not permitted.

In November, after learning that a beloved uncle had died, Martinez left the motel for several days — and didn’t “want to be around anybody.”

When he returned, he said, program staffers informed him he’d been away more than 72 hours and would have to leave.

“I had 30 minutes to get my stuff,” said Martinez, who has been living on a sidewalk in Van Nuys.

Erica Y. Pena, left, and Jose Monteon at a homeless encampment in Van Nuys. Monteon told The Times he spent about two months in an Inside Safe motel last year.

(David Butow / For The Times)

Jose Monteon, 29, moved into the same motel as part of the same Inside Safe operation. He said he was kicked out two months later, after program managers accused him of fighting and making threats.

Monteon, who has spent some nights sleeping his car, denied getting physical. But he admitted expressing frustration over the theft of his bicycle and other possessions.

“Yes, I said some s—. But I never said it to a specific person,” he said. “I said ‘Whoever I find out is taking my s—, I’m going to stab their b— ass.’”

Monteon corrected himself. “My bad — poke. I didn’t say stab, I said poke.”

Ken Craft, whose nonprofit supervises the Budget Inn, declined to discuss specific cases. But he said his staff gives Inside Safe participants three chances — unless they have engaged in threats or violence — and tries to find another place for them to go.

“We’re trying to end homelessness, not have people recycle back to homelessness,” he said.

Even with its challenges, Inside Safe has been gradually moving a greater percentage of its residents into permanent housing, where they are no longer governed by such a wide array of rules.

In December, about one out of every four people who participated in Inside Safe since its inception was in permanent housing, according to that month’s LAHSA dashboard. Two years earlier, that figure was about 15%.

Once the program’s hotels, motels and other temporary lodging are factored in, about 55% were in some form of housing.

Bass said those facilities are a vast improvement over the street, providing bathrooms, heating, air conditioning, hot showers, three meals a day and doors that lock. The program is one of several reasons why Los Angeles County officials reported a double-digit reduction in the homeless mortality rate in 2024, she said.

“The value of the interim housing, number one, is to save lives,” Bass said.

Torres, the Inside Safe participant now in a tent in Chinatown, experienced the difference. He entered the program with a history of gastrointestinal issues and abdominal surgeries.

Jonathan Torres walks his dog in November. At the time, he was living in an Inside Safe motel in Highland Park.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

“The whole time I had my housing, not once did I get sick or have to be hospitalized,” said Torres, who grew up in Redlands and Baldwin Park.

Torres said he was in the program for nearly two years. The longer he stayed, the more frustrated he grew over the wait for permanent housing.

In November, Torres told The Times he had received a notice stating that he had violated the motel’s prohibition on guests and was in danger of being expelled.

By then, he was worried about his health and his dog Waku, a Belgian Malinois/Akita mix. (The program allows “emotional support” animals.)

First To Serve, the nonprofit that supervises the hotel, did not respond to inquiries from The Times.

Even after the written notice, Torres struggled to comply with the rules. He said he allowed a woman from out of state to stay in his room for more than a week during last year’s rains.

The day after Christmas, he was back on the street.

In February, his dog was struck and killed by a car. Days later, sanitation workers cleared the encampment where he’d been living. Soon afterward, he was in the hospital, receiving treatment for a blockage in his bowels.

He eventually returned to Chinatown, setting up another tent. He’s been using meth, saying it helps with his medical issues.

For now, Torres has found some of the companionship he craved. In recent days, he’s been sharing his tent with his new girlfriend.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg and David Zahniser, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Los Angeles City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto and challenger Marissa Roy have sharply different views on how the office should be run.

Literally, the office.

Feldstein Soto said it’s important for attorneys to be in the office, and adopted a policy last year requiring most staff attorneys to be there at least three days a week, with supervisors required to be in four days weekly. Previously, the rule was up to three days of remote work per week.

“It builds teamwork. It ensures cohesion. It ensures that you have the opportunity to review and evaluate the work of new employees while they are still on probation,” she said in an interview.

That policy, however, has put Feldstein Soto at odds with the Los Angeles City Attorneys Assn., which endorsed Feldstein Soto in 2022 but has yet to weigh in this year.

Roy, the deputy state attorney general and the most well-funded of three challengers in the June 2 city primary election, recently told the city attorney’s union that the city’s lawyers should only have to show up at the office two days a month, not counting court appearances. That’s the policy at the state attorney general’s office, where Roy works for Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.

“There’s no reason why the city attorney’s office can’t have that same policy,” Roy told The Times.

Many companies and public agencies adopted liberal work-from-home policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, although those policies have been largely rescinded to one degree or another. Still, Roy contends that the two days a month is reasonable given the sacrifices lawyers make to work for the government.

“You’re taking a pay cut from the private sector. You’re doing it because you care. You’re doing it for work-life balance and we have to respect that,” said Roy, who has been endorsed by the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America as well as the county Democratic Party.

Feldstein Soto said Roy’s two-days-per-month proposal creates logistical issues since the city’s lawyers are required to appear in court and be present for legal questions that arise at city meetings. She also said liberal work-from-home policies make it too easy for lawyers to take on outside work.

Roy is Feldstein Soto’s most significant opponent, racking up endorsements and more than $450,000 in campaign contributions through the end of December. Feldstein Soto raised more than $685,000 through the end of last year.

Challenger Aida Ashouri, a lawyer and activist, said she supports the current policy, saying it provides flexibility to employees while also ensuring they confer in person.

“We want to continue to make sure that people see their co-workers, that we have meetings in person,” Ashouri said. “I think meetings in person can be very effective and better for communication purposes.”

The fourth candidate, Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, said remote work is a “valuable tool for work-life balance.”

He said he would build on Feldstein Soto’s existing remote work rules, though he did not outline exactly what his policy would be.

The Los Angeles City Attorneys Assn. filed an unfair employee relations claim against the city last year when Feldstein Soto toughened the rules. The attorneys claim that the changes should have been bargained with the union.

The Los Angeles City Attorneys Assn. endorsed Feldstein Soto when she first ran four years ago, but hasn’t yet made an endorsement in the city’s June 2 election. The endorsement is expected to be discussed by union officials next week, said union president Ann Rosenthal, who said the city policy makes it hard to recruit new attorneys.
Citywide, departments make their own determinations on RTO, said Matt Szabo, the city administrative officer.

Szabo said the city is discussing a draft citywide policy on remote work with city employee unions.

State of play

— DOCUMENT DROP: The Charter Reform Commission sent the City Council its written recommendations for changing the city’s government. Among the ideas: a larger City Council, a two-year budgeting cycle and greater authority for the council over policing policies. The council will decide how many of the proposals should appear on the Nov. 3 city ballot.

— A NEW FRONT-RUNNER? City Councilmember Nithya Raman came out ahead of incumbent Karen Bass in a new poll on the Los Angeles mayor’s race, though the poll’s director cautioned that it did not give the whole picture. Raman had a commanding lead, with 33% of voters supporting her, while Bass trailed at 17%, according to the poll by Loyola Marymount University’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles.

— OR MAYBE NOT: Meanwhile, a survey released by UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs found Bass in the lead, with reality TV star Spencer Pratt coming in second and Raman a close third. With 40% undecided, the race remains “wide open,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, a former L.A. council member and county supervisor. The poll’s margin for error is 4%.

— NEED FOR SPEED (CAMERAS): By the end of the summer, 125 speed cameras will be installed on dozens of streets throughout Los Angeles, specifically on roads that are in school zones, are known street-racing corridors or where speeding has resulted in a high rate of traffic accidents.

— EATON FIRE RECOVERY: At the end of March, just under 3,400 applications to rebuild residences destroyed in the January 2025 Eaton fire had been filed. That’s about 56% of the roughly 6,000 residential structures in Altadena that CalFire designated as destroyed, a Times review found.

— CAL-EXODUS: A new UC Berkeley study found that people who moved out of California dramatically improved their financial conditions. A surprising finding from the California Policy Lab: Those leaving the state are increasingly moving out of its wealthiest areas.

— PACK YOUR TRUNK: Nearly a year after the Los Angeles Zoo shipped Billy and Tina the elephants off to a zoo in Tulsa, Okla., animal rights activists have kept up the call to relocate them to a sanctuary. Actor Samuel L. Jackson is among those weighing in.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature homeless relocation program was in North Hollywood and brought more than 40 people indoors in Councilmember Imelda Padilla‘s district.
• On the docket next week: The City Council will remain in recess next week.

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.

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

This is another strong week for new releases. By now you have likely heard something about “The Drama,” which has become inescapable thanks to the tireless promotion of its two stars, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.

In a movie written and directed by Norwegian provocateur Kristoffer Borgli (“Dream Scenario”), the pair play Emma and Charlie, an engaged couple who find their wedding week thrown into disarray by the revelation of a deep secret from the bride-to-be.

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya in the movie “The Drama.”

(A24)

As Amy Nicholson put it in her review, “To another screenwriter, ‘The Drama’ would be an intimate study and a more emotionally wrenching film. But Borgli forces us to parse the mushy stuff from the mess and analyze the pending nuptials as an impersonal problem: What comes after a public shaming for the guilty and the inquisitors? That’s one of the most important (and unresolved) questions of the modern era, so I’ll forgive the filmmaker for being no more interested in writing Emma and Charlie as complex human beings than if they were character names in a math quiz about two people on two trains speeding toward a crash.”

Meanwhile, Tim Grierson spoke to Shira Small, the folk artist whose sole 1974 album features a song heard in an early scene of “The Drama.” Small, a delightful interview, goes into the music career she left behind a long time ago — one which may be reigniting now thanks to the movie.

Also opening in Los Angeles this week is Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s “Yes,” a guaranteed conversation-starter. Ariel Bronz stars as a musician who, in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, decides to say yes to composing a vicious new political anthem..

Reviewing the film, Joshua Rothkopf said, “It’s a movie about a citizenry at war with itself, hoping to keep the plates spinning for one more night. You watch it and think how easy it would be to envision an American remake — and wonder, too, if a filmmaker like Lapid even exists here.”

One of my favorite films from SXSW 2025, “Fantasy Life,” is finally coming to theaters. Written and directed Matthew Shear, the movie is an affectionate nod to the chatty dramedies of Noah Baumbach (some of which Shear has acted in). Here he plays Sam, a troubled law school dropout who takes a job looking after the children of a Brooklyn couple (Amanda Peet and Alessandro Nivola) and finds himself in an emotional affair with the wife.

“Fantasy Life” actor-writer-director Matthew Shear and star Amanda Peet bond in New York.

(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)

I recently spoke to Shear and Peet about their collaboration on the film. Peet’s character in the film is also an actor and, though much of the film’s anxieties felt familiar to her, one scene in particular is drawn from Peet’s own experience: She is often mistaken in public for Lake Bell, including once on a red carpet.

“It’s a weird thing because you’re like, what do I do here?” said Peet with a laugh. “What’s the least douchey way to get out of this?”

The Black Pack’s resistance humor

Robert Townsend in the 1987 movie “Hollywood Shuffle.”

(Samuel Goldwyn Company / Photofest)

Curated around a new book by Artel Great, the UCLA Film and Television Archive is launching the series “The Black Pack: Rewriting American Comedy,” to spotlight a moment in the 1980s and ’90s when a small group of Black creators reached the very heights of Hollywood.

Eddie Murphy, Paul Mooney, Robert Townsend, Keenan Ivory Wayans and Arsenio Hall were friends and collaborators who, from 1987 to 1994, created the work showcased in the series. The Black Pack is a name they gave to themselves, partly in response to the John Hughes-affiliated Brat Pack.

Things begin tonight with a 35mm screening of Townsend’s essential 1987 satire “Hollywood Shuffle.” Great will be there for an introduction and a Q&A with cast member Anne-Marie Johnson and Spring Mooney, daughter of late actor Paul Mooney, who also appeared in the movie.

The cast of “In Living Color,” to be celebrated as part of the UCLA screening series “The Black Pack.”

(Fox / Photofest)

Other events include an evening of episodes of Wayans’ sketch comedy series “In Living Color,” 1988’s “Coming to America,” starring Murphy and Hall, a 35mm screening of Townsend’s 1991 “The Five Heartbeats” and a 35mm screening of 1989’s “Harlem Nights,” the only movie starring, directed, written and produced by Murphy, then at the height of his cultural capital.

This series is a terrific example of why smart programming matters. Here is a group of films (and a TV show) that might seem only related in a vague way, but when put together under a specific theme or idea, they are suddenly transformed into something revelatory.

Each evening of the series is designed to make the case for a different aspect of the Black Pack’s work and influence. The series as a whole puts forward a larger concept Great has coined a term for.

“I’m arguing through the series that the Black Pack’s cultural material is connected to a longstanding tradition that I call Black resistance humor,” says Great, now an associate professor at San Francisco State University, in an interview this week. “This idea of Black resistance humor is really a cultural practice where Black cultural workers are using political wit, irony, satire, parody, absurdity to challenge corrupt authority, to give voice to racial trauma and also attach themselves to re-imagining what freedom can really look like.”

From left, Arsenio Hall, Eddie Murphy, James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair in the movie “Coming to America.”

(Paramount / Photofest)

There are plans for Black Pack programs in other cities, including Atlanta, San Francisco and Chicago, bringing this fresh look at their specific moment to venues around the country.

“I’m hopeful that the series will allow communities and audiences to see the Black Pack as cultural strategists who are using this idea of Black resistance humor to address very serious issues of power, identity and race,” says Great. “But also as a way of thinking, as a way of seeing and as a way of building alternative systems. Because that’s what they were able to do.”

Points of interest

‘The Birthday Party’ in 35mm

Actor Robert Shaw, left, with director William Friedkin on the set of “The Birthday Party” in 1968.

(Larry Ellis / Getty Images)

As part of its series celebrating the legacy of actor Robert Shaw, the Academy Museum will screen 1968’s “The Birthday Party” in 35mm on Sunday. One of the earliest features directed by William Friedkin (who would go on to such classics as “The Exorcist” and “To Live and Die in L.A.”), the film’s screenplay was written by Harold Pinter, adapting his own play. Shaw, Friedkin and Pinter make for a combustible intensity.

Shaw plays Stanley, the lone boarder at a seaside inn. When two mysterious men (Dandy Nichols and Sydney Tafler) arrive, they engineer a party for Stanley that becomes increasingly ominous.

In his original review, Charles Champlin lauded Shaw, saying he gives “one of the total and totally engrossing movie performances,” adding that Friedkin “as a director is everything a dramatist, and an audience, could want. The sense of loving care and artistic sureness which characterizes every aspect of the movie is extremely tonic. Pinter may be an acquired taste, but it is easy to acquire.”

‘He Got Game’ in 35mm

Denzel Washington in 1998’s “He Got Game.”

(David Lee / Touchstone Pictures)

Spike Lee’s prolific career is now studded with movies that maybe didn’t quite get their due in their day but deserve renewed attention. Screening in 35mm on Sunday at Brain Dead Studios is Lee’s 1998 “He Got Game,” which is just that kind of movie: stuffed with ideas and ambitions even if it doesn’t totally all come together for everyone. I particularly like his use of composer Aaron Copland’s music, which gives many of the images an epic quality they might not otherwise fully achieve, challenging preconceived notions of what can be thought of as Americana.

The movie stars a particularly electric Denzel Washington as Jake Shuttlesworth, a once-promising basketball player whose life took a turn. Now he’s in prison. His son, Jesus (played by NBA star Ray Allen), is a promising prospect and Jake is given an offer of a reduced sentence if he can convince his son to attend a certain college. The mixture of two of Lee’s own personal preoccupations, basketball and family, makes for a potent combination.

Reviewing the movie when it was released, Kenneth Turan wrote, “Given that writer-director Lee is one of the most visible of the New York Knicks’ celebrity fans, what’s surprising is not that he made a film about the sport he cares so much about but that he waited so long. … Though ‘He Got Game’ is periodically awkward and unruly, it benefits, as many of Lee’s films do, from the director’s determination to connect with the troublesome issues of the real world. Too few American directors work with Lee’s kind of social immediacy, and that makes his films, flawed and didactic though they sometimes are, essential viewing.”

Harmony Korine’s ‘Gummo’

Jacob Reynold, left, and Nick Sutton in Harmony Korine’s ‘Gummo’

(Criterion Collection)

Harmony Korine’s first feature as director, 1997’s “Gummo,” will screen at Vidiots on Monday. The event is co-presented by the Cinegogue, a group perhaps best known for their limited-edition movie-themed clothing drops, but who describe their mission thusly: “Our goal: make movies cool again through concert-like experiences and fanfare. … Because even though a movie might end, cinema is forever.” (And that’s a sentiment we here can get behind.)

The film finds Korine attempting to bring elements of experimental film and video to a nominally more mainstream context. It’s both confrontational and playful. Using a collage-like structure, the film follows a few kids as they make their way around their small town in Ohio after a tornado. Mostly featuring non-actors, the cast also includes Linda Manz and Chloë Sevigny, who is also credited as the film’s costume designer.

Writing about “Gummo” and Korine’s subsequent “julien donkey-boy,” Kevin Thomas made special note of “the intensity of Korine’s compassion for individuals who have so little going for them and so much going against them, yet at times are capable of experiencing an exhilarating freedom of spirit.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump is singling out the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority as a cautionary tale about Democratic mismanagement of publicly funded programs, using it to justify proposed cuts to homeless assistance services across the country.

Trump’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year, released Friday, asks Congress to eliminate the Continuum of Care — a federal program that funds housing and services for homeless Americans — citing concerns about “fraud and corruption” among local agencies that administer it.

The White House points to LAHSA, which manages many homeless services for the city and county, as the example of why the program needs to go.

The agency has faced criticism locally for years for lack of proper oversight and the county is in the process of transitioning programs to an internal department.

“LAHSA has an abysmal record of reducing what is the highest number of street homeless individuals in the United States, and an independent audit issued in March 2025 found that the authority failed to accurately track billions of Federal and local dollars,” the budget says.

The local agency pushed back in a statement after the budget was released.

“Cutting this funding or destabilizing the Continuum of Care program would directly result in more tents on our streets, not fewer,” said Gita O’Neill, the agency’s interim chief executive, adding that under its leadership unsheltered homelessness in Los Angeles has fallen 15% and that 90% of the program’s funding goes “directly to rental assistance.”

Local officials are already grappling with homeless service cuts at the state and county level given budget constraints and LAHSA warned Trump’s proposal would make matters worse.

“If anything, we need additional funding to cover rising costs, not fewer, to maintain our current momentum,” the agency said Friday.

The funding dispute over homelessness services is one front in a broader budget assault on California programs by the Trump administration.

Trump’s proposal also asks Congress to eliminate millions in funding from state initiatives the White House is characterizing as wasteful, ineffective or “woke.”

The cuts, if enacted, would cancel $4 billion in unspent funding for the state’s high-speed rail project, which the White house called a “boondoggle,” and strip grants from the Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, which the budget criticized for “actively working to dismantle systems of power and privilege that favor whiteness.”

Smaller items are also targeted on the White House’s chopping block: a Los Angeles gelato festival, a dance building in Santa Cruz — which the White House dubs “one of the richest cities in the nation” — and a $3-million grant for a playground tied to an unspecified performing arts center in California.

Trump’s proposed cuts to California projects are part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to reshape federal spending priorities, largely by trading social programs for a massive military buildup.

The president is asking Congress to approve $1.5 trillion for defense and to slash $73 billion from domestic programs, a massive restructuring that would leave states, including California, to absorb costs Washington no longer wants to carry.

Trump made that vision explicit at a private Easter lunch at the White House on Wednesday, telling guests that the federal government should no longer be responsible for funding social programs that many Americans rely on.

“We can’t take care of daycare. We are a big country,” Trump said. “We are fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare.”

If states want to offer those services, Trump said, they should raise taxes to pay for them.

“Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, they can do it on a state basis,” he said. “We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”

His proposed budget reflects that priority, which lawmakers will need to contend with as they grapple with the mounting costs of the Iran war and an economic fallout from a military operation that has left Americans paying more items, including gas pump.

Under the proposed budget, Trump is also seeking to make some investments in California projects.

The White House, for example, is seeking $152 million from Congress to turn Alcatraz back into a maximum-security prison, an idea the president has talked about for several years.

He also called on Congress to establish a National Center for Warrior Independence at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center.

Times staff writer Andrew Khouri, in Los Angeles, contributed to this report.

You know the political silly season is upon us when campaigns start to make fools of themselves trying to court Latino voters.

In the Los Angeles mayoral race, that moment kicked off last week.

On Friday, a social media account called Latinos Por Pratt released an AI-animated music video praising the mayoral candidate and former reality television star Spencer Pratt. It starts with a fit, sunglasses-wearing Pratt rolling a trash bin brimming with detritus and Mayor Karen Bass past a crowd of cheering Angelenos. The Hollywood sign looms in the background as the title “Spencer, Saca La Bassura” flashes on the screen — Spencer, Take Out Trashy Karen, with “Bassura” a play on the mayor’s last name and the Spanish word for “trash.”

Cut to scenes of Bass playing tourist on her infamous trip to Ghana while the Palisades burn. Splice in Pratt dancing with his wife, Heidi Montag, onstage at a street party where onlookers wave a Mexican and a U.S. flag. And because L.A.’s Latino majority is overwhelmingly of Mexican descent, the thing was anchored by a peppy accordion, dramatic guitar plucks and a bold tuba, right? Right?

Uh, no.

Lyrics such as “Latinos for Pratt we’re singing / Because we’re tired of this dirty beat” play over brassy salsa rhythms that are more Miami and Cuban than L.A., where Latinos are mostly of Mexican and Central American heritage and the soundtrack of the city — corridos tumbados, cumbias, Latin rock and pop — reflect that.

That didn’t stop clueless, mostly non-Latino Pratt fanboys and fangirls from going gaga over it online. Nor did it stop Bass from joining in the we-need-Latino-voters fiesta.

Soon after the video was released, a group called Latinos Con Bass brought out big-name speakers to Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Heights — state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles), Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights head Angélica Salas, Service Employees International Union California President David Huerta — so they could pledge support for the incumbent with all the dutifulness of doctors reminding people to take their flu shot. Bass greeted the crowd with a peppy “¡Sí se puede!” — the standard Latino politico rallying cry for decades but one that’s not so kosher right now given its association with César Chávez, the legendary labor leader whom a New York Times investigation recently revealed to have sexually assaulted teenage girls.

Latinos Con Bass came off as a bunch of establishment types sticking up for one of their own instead of anything organic. But at least we know the track record of those involved. Latinos Por Pratt seems to be just one guy: Adrian E. Alvarez, a Cuban American whose online profile says he splits his time between the Miami area and L.A. If the lawyer by trade — who didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment — was really serious about winning Latino votes for his guy, he would’ve commissioned a corrido instead of a salsa tune. The Mexican ballad form has been trotted out by Angelenos for decades for everything from the tragic deaths of Robert F. Kennedy and Kobe Bryant and his daughter to the capture of sundry narco lords.

Those songwriters got it. Alvarez’s diss track doesn’t. And his use of Cuban Spanish on social media to promote it — carajo, fajame, mi gente — in place of Mexican Spanish equivalents such as güey, éntrale and raza sounds like a guy who doesn’t know South L.A. from South Beach.

But to dismiss “Spencer, Saca La Bassura” as an inauthentic joke is to miss what it says about this political moment. In a year when Latinos nationwide will make or break the Democrats’ effort to win back Congress, they’ll play an even more crucial role in L.A.’s mayoral race.

And it’s the Bass campaign that needs Latinos more than any of her opponents — because there’s no guarantee she’ll get them.

Then-L.A. mayoral candidate Karen Bass, center, is flanked by pioneering farm labor leader Dolores Huerta, left, and former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, right, during a 2022 campaign event in Mariachi Plaza.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

A UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll released last month and co-sponsored by The Times revealed that 56% of likely voters view the mayor unfavorably, the only candidate to have a majority of those surveyed look negatively on her. She’s the top choice among Latinos — 29%, compared with Pratt’s 16%. But 27% of Latinos remain undecided about whom they want as mayor, the highest percentage of any ethnic group.

Pratt has some name recognition among Latinos as a C-list celebrity, but he’s also a registered Republican who thinks L.A. should coordinate with the Trump administration’s deportation leviathan, a position that’s as popular among Angelenos as rooting for the San Diego Padres. That obviously presents an opportunity for Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who’s running for mayor to the left of Bass — if she can smartly seize it. But Raman represents a district with one of the lowest Latino populations in the city and has yet to make a name for herself across town — no wonder the Berkeley poll found just 9% of Latinos favored her, trailing even Presbyterian pastor Rae Huang.

Those shortcomings should give Bass — whose children are Mexican American and who has worked alongside Latino L.A.’s political establishment for nearly her entire political career — an advantage among Latinos. But all that star wattage didn’t win her the Latino vote four years ago against Rick Caruso. And L.A.’s biggest problems during the mayor’s first term — homelessness, beat-up streets, busted streetlights, President Trump’s immigration deluge — unduly affected the Latino areas of L.A. Even the inferno that engulfed the Palisades led to the loss of thousands of jobs for the nannies, house cleaners and gardeners that kept the neighborhood as pristine as it was.

Bass’ campaign will trumpet all of her supposed accomplishments and trot out endorsements as it did at the Plaza de la Raza event, but she lost the narrative of a healthy L.A. a long time ago.

Pratt — who doesn’t seem to know Los Angeles besides the Westside and television studios — will have to do far more than Bass and Raman to attract Latinos. But by repeatedly referring to the mayor as “Karen Bassura” — a juvenile, obvious insult that nevertheless sticks once you hear it — he’s at least making Spanish a far more constant part of his campaign than his rivals. And Alvarez’s music video, as silly and un-L.A. as it is, speaks to an enthusiasm among at least one Latino Pratt supporter that will most likely remain catchier and more inspired than anything the Bass and Raman campaigns come up with.

That reality seems to have already made Bass blink. She responded to “Spencer, Saca La Bassura” on social media a few days later with a photo of people at her Plaza de la Raza rally holding “Latinos Con Bass” signs with the caption “Latinos Con Bass > Ai Latinos.” It was meant as a political flex but came off as insecure posturing. Meanwhile, Latinos Por Pratt just released a teaser for another video, this time featuring Pratt as Batman carting out a clown-faced Bass and Raman as the villainous Two-Face.

Playing, again, to salsa. That’s weak sauce. Can someone try to really get Latino L.A.?

I promise: Sí se puede.

I went to the Santa Monica Mountains on the hunt for wildflowers.

I was nervous. What if I found absolutely nothing? I’d used data collected by plant lovers during previous blooms and checked on iNaturalist, a citizen science app, about where wildflowers had recently been noticed to discern where I’d be most likely to find blooms.

But, even then, I knew the unusual spring heat wave that prompted some wildflowers to bloom early could have also killed them. I knew the heat had already zapped the bright orange beauties at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. What if I’d already missed this annual springtime magic?

It was with this level of eagerness and anxiety I recently entered the Santa Monica Mountains. I feel more than lucky to have discovered a resplendent rainbow of native plant blooms.

I hope you also witness this abundance on the three trails below. L.A. is forecast to have more springtime rain, and you know what they say about April showers!

If not, though, I want to underscore that regardless of their foliage, each hike offers its own unique adventure, one I’d take in any season.

Chaparral bird’s-foot trefoil blooms in thick patches throughout the Saddle Peak Trail.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

1. Saddle Peak via Backbone Trail

Distance: 3.3 miles out and back
Elevation gained: About 860 feet
Difficulty: Moderate
Dogs allowed? No
Accessible alternative: Inspiration Loop Loop ADA Trail at Will Rogers State Historic Park

This 3.3-mile route to Saddle Peak takes hikers up a lush hillside with sweeping views of the nearby Calabasas Peak, the San Fernando Valley and, toward the top, the Pacific Ocean. Visitors will observe a landscape that features not only a diversity of wildflower species but also ancient sandstone formations.

You’ll start your hike by parking on the side of Stunt Road, a winding paved street with sharp turns popular among cyclists and drivers of very fast sports cars. There is limited parking here, so it’s good to either arrive early or hike this trail on a weekday. Additionally, the parking area on the side opposite the trailhead is near a steep drop-off so take good care if parking there.

The Saddle Peak Trail features multiple stretches where wildflowers grow close to the trail.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

The trailhead sits just south of the road and is well-marked with large signs, including one that warns you that smoking, bicycles and dogs are prohibited on the trail. (Apologies to your cigar-loving circus canine.)

You will first take the short Stunt Road connector trail about 0.2 miles before bearing left, or east, onto the Backbone Trail to Saddle Peak. You’ll immediately start noticing wildflowers.

Chaparral bird’s-foot trefoil, clockwise, mini lupine, purple nightshade, showy penstemon, golden yarrow and large-flowered phacelia.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

I have dubbed myself a “lupine freak” because of my obsession with this genus of plants — not because I enjoy howling at the moon once a month — and I paused just a third of a mile into this trail. “You look like a tiny little lupine,” I said to the short plant with purplish blue petals near my right foot. Turns out it was indeed a miniature lupine!

This would be the first of many delights. Within a half mile on the trail, I’d already spotted golden yarrow, bush poppy, purple nightshade and black sage abundant with purple blooms. And canyon sunflower covers substantial portions of this trail. This suggests the trail burned in recent years, as canyon sunflower is a fire follower.

There’s also a fair amount of California sagebrush, which you can run your fingers along and smell its delicious aroma (which I think smells like spicy Italian salad dressing).

The view from a bench at a lookout point near the Saddle Peak Trail in the Santa Monica Mountains.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

As I hiked onward, I started to feel like Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music” because the hills really were alive! I squinted at one plant I had no memory of seeing, a pink and green plant with bright pink and lemon chiffon-colored petals. Had I finally stumbled upon one of California’s rare, threatened or endangered plants?

I was so eager to Google this floral mystery. Later, I learned it’s a not-so-rare (but oh-so-beautiful) chaparral birdsfoot trefoil. It grew thick throughout the second leg of this trail, a real visual feast!

I briefly hiked through a lull where the trail was beautiful but not bursting with colors outside green and brown. Then, I came around another corner to find more trefoil, large-leaf phacelia and showy penstemon, which would be a great native plants-inspired drag performer name.

A massive sandstone rock wall along the Saddle Peak trail.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

Very suddenly, after staring at plants for more than an hour, I looked up and realized I’d reached the massive ancient boulders. I watched as white-throated swifts dived in and out of the rock’s pockets where it might be considered tafoni (maybe!). Fun fact: These birds use “their saliva to glue a little cup of twigs and moss to the vertical wall” to build their nests, according to Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

You’ll take a few well-maintained sets of rock steps up, also navigating some rocky and, at times, somewhat washed-out portions of the trail. Take good care to look before you reach toward a rock for leverage so you don’t end up grabbing a danger noodle (read: snake).

About 1.3 miles in, you will crest a hill and be greeted with gorgeous views of the deep-blue ocean. From here, you can continue up to Saddle Peak, which features more massive rock formations.

I hiked over to a bench at an overlook point just past a few (invasive but pretty) Spanish broom plants. Here, I took stock of the day, savoring both the burrito I packed and the good day I’d had. I don’t know whether anyone would label it “super,” but I found myself chuckling over simply calling it a superb bloom.

The Musch Trail in Topanga State Park.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

2. Backbone Trail to Musch Trail Camp

Distance: 2 miles out and back (with option to extend via a loop back)
Elevation gained: About 200 feet
Difficulty: Easier end of moderate
Dogs allowed? No
Accessible alternative: Musch Trail road, a 0.6-mile out-and-back trek on a paved path from the parking lot

This two-mile, out-and-back jaunt through Topanga State Park takes you through lush meadows and chaparral where you’ll be near destined to spot wildflowers and wildlife.

To begin your hike, you’ll park at Trippet Ranch and pay to park before heading out. The Musch Trail starts in the northeast corner of the lot. You’ll take the paved path just 1/10 of a mile before turning east onto the dirt path, the Backbone Trail.

Caterpillar scorpionweed with southern bush monkeyflower nearby, clockwise, purple owl’s clover, canyon sunflower, dodder over black sage, California poppy and western blue-eyed grass.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

The ranch was originally called Rancho Las Lomas Celestiales by its owner Cora Larimore Trippet, which translates to “Ranch of Heavenly Hills.” You’ll find, as you hike through those hills covered in oak trees, black sage, ceanothus and more, that the name still rings true today.

I also spied significant blooms of orange-yellow southern bush monkeyflower, canyon sunflower, golden yarrow, a species of Clarkia, light purple caterpillar scorpionweed and exactly one blooming California poppy plant (just past the pond).

A mile in, you’ll arrive at Musch Trail Camp, a small campground with picnic tables and log benches. As you pause, listen to the songs of the birds. California quail, Anna’s hummingbird and yellow-rumped warbler are commonly spotted. Stay quiet enough, and you might just spot a mule deer, desert cottontail or gray fox. On a recent visit, I went to refill my water bottle at a spigot next to the camp, only to discover a Southern alligator lizard lounging in the path.

From the trail camp, you can either turn around or continue northeast to Eagle Rock, which will provide panoramic views of the park. From Eagle Rock, many hikers take Eagle Springs Fire Road to turn this trek into a loop. Regardless of which path you take, please make sure to download a map beforehand.

As the sun sets, golden light blankets the hillsides in Leo Carrillo State Park.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

3. The Willow Creek and Nicholas Flats Trails

Distance: 1.9 miles with an option to extend
Elevation gained: About 630 feet (excluding extension)
Difficulty: Moderate
Dogs allowed? No
Accessible alternative: Sycamore Canyon Road

This 1.9-mile loop is a mostly moderate jaunt connecting two popular routes in Leo Carrillo State Park. As a bonus, you can head over to the beach after your hike, either to cool down, explore the tide pools or both!

To begin, you’ll park at Leo Carrillo State Park. An all-day pass is $12, payable to the ranger at the gate or via the machine in the parking lot. Once parked, you’ll head northeast to the trailhead. You’ll quickly come to a crossroads. Take the Willow Creek Trail east to officially start your hike.

You’ll gain about 575 feet in a mile as you traverse the Willow Creek Trail. I took breaks along the way to gaze at the ocean, watching surfers bobbing on their boards and a kite surfer trying to gain traction. You might spot coast paintbrush and California brittlebush, a flowering shrub that features yellow daisy-like flowers, on the path, along with several lizards.

California poppies growing amid invasive weeds, left, Coulter’s lupine and longleaf bush lupine observed in Leo Carrillo State Park last May.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

A mile in, you’ll come to a junction in the trail where you have three-ish options. You can continue west to a branch of the Nicholas Flat Trail that will take you a mile back down to the parking lot. You can head south onto an ocean vista lookout point (which, though steep, I highly recommend). Or you can turn north onto another branch of the Nicholas Flat Trail.

I did a combination, hiking 235 feet up the lookout path, where I had one of those “Wow, I get to live here” moments. The ocean was varying shades of blue, from turquoise to cerulean to cobalt. I could clearly see in all directions, including about eight miles to the east to Point Dume. I was, once again, amazed to be alone in a beautiful place in a county of 10 million people.

Once I finished at this awe-inspiring point, I headed north onto the Nicholas Flat Trail, taking it about 2.3 miles — and about 1,100 feet up 🥵 — through laurel sumac and other coast sage scrub vegetation into the Nicholas Flat Natural Preserve. Along the way, keep an eye out for deerweed covered in its orange and yellow flowers along with scarlet bugler (which hummingbirds love). Other common sights here include Coulter’s lupine and small patches of California poppies.

If you start this hike early enough in the day, you can simply trek back to your car and change into your swimsuit for an afternoon at the beach. And if the tide is out, you might also be able to walk around the tide pools. You could hang out in the same day with both lizards and starfish, and even spy an endangered bumblebee on the trail and an octopus at the beach.

Please, go have yourself a remarkable Southern California day!

3 things to do

A person takes in the sunset on the beach in Venice.

(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)

1. Watch the sunset with new friends in Venice
Sunset Club L.A. will host a free community gathering at 6:15 p.m. Thursday at Venice Beach. Guests will meet in front of Fig Tree (431 Ocean Front Walk #2402) before setting up camp on the nearby beach to watch the sunset together. Learn more at the club’s Instagram page.

2. Take a peaceful jaunt in L.A.
L.A. for the Culture Hiking Club will host an adventure at 10:30 a.m. Saturday through Griffith Park. The group will take a 2.6-mile hike that includes the Ferndell Nature Trail. Afterward, guests will hang out at the Trails Cafe near the trailhead. Register at eventbrite.com.

3. Find a new kind of ‘dume’ scrolling in Malibu
California State Parks needs volunteers to help remove invasive plants from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at Point Dume. Park workers will guide participants on removing weeds while cultural resource staff will teach volunteers about the ecological and cultural importance of the site. Register at eventbrite.com.

The must-read

The Griffith Park Pool has remained fenced in and closed for six years, but there are plans now to renovate and reopen the pool.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Who is ready to take a dip at the Griffith Park historic swimming pool? That might become a reality by July 2029. Times staff writer Christopher Reynolds wrote that city officials aim to give the facility at Riverside Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard, which dates to 1927, a three-year, $40-million facelift. The new design will feature two new pools and rehabilitate the site’s pool house. Officials closed the pool in early 2020 amid COVID-19 shutdowns and later discovered when they tried to refill it that the pool wouldn’t hold water.

I cannot wait to take a hike and then a swim at the same public park!

Happy adventuring,

P.S.

Are you ready to transition from hiking around native wildflowers to planting them? Come meet experts from the Theodore Payne Foundation and the California Native Plant Society at the L.A. Times Plants Booth during The Times’ Festival of Books at USC on April 18 and 19. If you sign up for the L.A. Times Plants newsletter, you’ll receive Jeanette’s Mix, a special packet of sunflower and California poppy seeds named for our beloved L.A. Times plants writer Jeanette Marantos, who died in February. I am volunteering at the booth on April 18 and would love to meet you!

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.

If you grew up in the ‘70s or ‘80s, your vision of suburban America probably looks a lot like South Pasadena. There’s good reason. The picturesque town on the western edge of the San Gabriel Valley was often used as a backdrop in films like “Halloween,” “Pretty in Pink” and “Back to the Future” (the street where George McFly, Lorraine and Biff lived is actually Bushnell Avenue).

Today in South Pasadena, you’ll still find this idyllic Anytown USA landscape — but with a twist: Along with verdant parks, Craftsman bungalows and tree-lined streets, the city gleams with cool new developments like the recently opened Sid the Cat Auditorium, an all-ages live music venue in a converted 1930s elementary school; the always-packed Cannonball from chef Matt Molina; L.A.’s first nonalcoholic bottle shop Burden of Proof and a high-tech head spa imported from Japan. Add on a walkable downtown and a bustling Thursday night farmers market and it’s easy to see why so many Angelenos are drawn to this increasingly hip community.

Get to know Los Angeles through the places that bring it to life. From restaurants to shops to outdoor spaces, here’s what to discover now.

“So few pockets of L.A. County are actually great for families and that’s what makes South Pas so compelling,” said my friend Tom, who moved to the area after having a baby two years ago. “Plus, it has light-rail.”

Located six miles from downtown L.A., South Pasadena was marketed as a “garden community” when it was founded in the late 19th century. New residents were promised homes with flowering vines and sweet-smelling gardens, all just a short cable car ride away from a bustling metropolis.

“It was that early promise of suburbia,” said Becky Nicolaides, a historian and author of the book “The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945.” “When it was incorporated, there weren’t cars, so the town was built to be walkable.”

But that peaceful facade hid an ugly truth. Like many suburbs in the L.A. area, the town’s officials put race restrictive covenants into place soon after its founding, making it illegal for residents to sell property to people of color.

Those covenants became illegal in 1948, but the town continued to discourage people of color from living within its boundaries for several more decades. That began to change in the 1960s and South Pasadena has diversified, particularly over the past decade. In recent years, town leadership has taken steps to acknowledge its racist past.

Now, even as a new energy permeates, the city continues to lean into its early suburban history. The town is just 3.4 square miles, but it encompasses 100 acres of parks and playgrounds as well as 21,000 trees. There’s an old-fashioned pharmacy where parents have taken their kids for a phosphate soda (or just a regular old milkshake) for over 100 years and volunteers from the community still decorate a float for the Tournament of Roses each year, just as they have since 1911.

And though its historic Red Car trolleys have been discontinued for decades, today it’s still a comfort to take the Metro home from work at the end of a long day and enjoy the peace and quiet of this pastoral suburb, just like its founders did more than a century ago.

Covered marquees. Downed statues. Painted-over murals. A canceled holiday.

California has effectively exorcised César Chávez from the public sphere just weeks after a New York Times investigation found two women who said the legendary labor leader sexually assaulted them when they were teenage girls in the 1970s. Just as explosive was the revelation by his longtime lieutenant, Dolores Huerta, that he raped her in the 1960s.

My prediction for the next place we’ll see a Chávez purge: books about him, which number into the dozens and span from academic treatises to children’s tales. But before critics relegate those texts to the banned section, folks should read some of them to see how writers helped establish the Chávez myth and propagated it for decades.

The books that created the Chávez legend

The tendency to elevate him above other activists was there from the start. In 1967, John Gregory Dunne published “Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike,” which saw the author (and husband to Joan Didion) capture the essence of el movimiento in its earliest days through on-the-ground reporting and interviews with Chávez, whom Dunne described in the introduction as “the right man at the right place at what was, sadly, both the right and the wrong time.”

Famed writer Peter Matthiessen cemented Chávez’s image as a humble hero fighting a lone, brave battle against philistine farmers with a two-part New Yorker profile that became the basis for 1969s “Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution.” That narrative continued with Jacques Levy’s 1975 release “Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa.” Talk about getting too close to the subject: The author’s archived papers disclosed he served as Chávez’s literal notetaker during the 1970 negotiations that ended the grape strike and led to the UFW’s first union contracts.

Chávez came under strong scrutiny

Rose-tinted biographies tellingly stopped around the time Chávez created a commune in what’s now currently the César E. Chávez National Monument in Keene and began to target perceived enemies within the UFW. Critics instead appeared in the media — one of the first was a 1979 Reason article that alleged he was misusing federal funds and contained the prescient line, “Many people will be reluctant to believe anything that could cast a shadow over this man.”

Other critical dispatches included pieces in the L.A. Times, Village Voice and one in the Sacramento Bee so damning in its indictment of how Chávez had, on his own, sabotaged the movement so many associated with him that its author, Marcos Breton, recently wrote how Chávez was left “hostile and angry” by his simple questions.

In the wake of Chávez’s decline and eventual death in 1993, authors created a new genre: Saint César. Titles like “Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence,” “Conquering Goliath: Cesar Chavez at the Beginning” (by his mentor, Fred Ross Sr., the most important California organizer you’ve never heard of) and “The Rhetorical Career of César Chávez” pushed forth the gospel of their subject as a plainspoken prophet out of the Good Book.

Chávez inspired millions — but those books will now forever read as hollow and sadly myopic.

Rethinking the Chávez myth

True reappraisals of Chávez and his work wouldn’t start until after former Times editor and reporter Miriam Pawel published a 2006 series for this paper that showed the ugly, domineering side of Chávez and the UFW’s decline. Six years later, longtime activist Frank Bardacke simultaneously praised and damned Chávez in his “Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers.” Though a good read, it pales in importance and poignant lyricism to two double whammies that dropped in 2014: “From the Jaws of Victory The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement” by Dartmouth College professor (and my distant cousin!) Matthew Garcia and Pawel’s own “The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography.”

Garcia and Pawel are now making media appearances and writing essays to opine on where they think Chávez went wrong. Expect updates to all of these books and so many others in the months and years to come — if they’re ever published again.

Today’s top stories

Red diamond rattlesnakes are among species in the Golden State. One reptile expert who relocates snakes says her phone has been “ringing off the hook.”

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Weird rattlesnake season

• Unseasonably warm March weather triggered an unusually active rattlesnake season in California, with experts fielding record calls about sightings statewide.
• Two fatal bites in Southern California in March and 77 Poison Control calls in three months far exceed typical annual patterns.

Life after California

• A new UC Berkeley study found that people who moved out of California dramatically improved their financial conditions.
• Those former Californians said the move saved them almost $700 in monthly housing costs, and they became 48% more likely to own a home in their new state.

Minimal snow in California mountains

More big stories

Commentary and opinions

This morning’s must read

Other great reads

For your downtime

(Stella Kalinina / For The Times; Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times; Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times; Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Going out

Staying in

A question for you: How are you celebrating Easter this year?

Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.

And finally … the photo of the day

Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani delivers during the second inning of a 4-1 win over the Cleveland Guardians at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday night.

(Ronaldo Bolaños/Los Angeles Times)

Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Ronaldo Bolaños at Tuesday night’s Dodgers’ game. Shohei Ohtani battled through the rain to throw a one-hit gem in the Dodgers’ 4-1 win over the Cleveland Guardians.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, weekend reporter
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.

City Councilmember Nithya Raman came out ahead of incumbent Karen Bass in a new poll on the Los Angeles mayor’s race, though the poll’s director cautioned that it did not give the whole picture.

Raman had a commanding lead in a field of five major candidates, with 33% of voters supporting her, while Bass trailed at 17%, according to the poll by the Loyola Marymount University Center for the Study of Los Angeles.

Leftist Rae Huang came in just behind Bass at nearly 17%, while tech executive Adam Miller had 13% and conservative reality TV star Spencer Pratt had 12%.

Other polls have shown Bass in first place.

She was at 20% in an Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics poll, with Raman at just over 9%. In a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Times, Bass was at 25% and Raman at 17%.

In the Loyola Marymount poll, unlike the other polls, respondents were given brief descriptions of the candidates, including their occupations and political priorities.

Raman was labeled a “progressive LA City Councilmember focused on housing affordability, homelessness and systemic reform,” while Bass was “incumbent mayor of Los Angeles, veteran legislator, focused on homelessness.”

One of Raman’s challenges, as a councilmember representing Los Feliz and Silver Lake as well as parts of the San Fernando Valley, is to spread her name recognition citywide, with the June 2 primary election about two months away. She entered the race to challenge Bass, her one-time ally, at the last minute, hours before the early February filing deadline.

The Loyola Marymount poll of 370 registered Los Angeles voters was conducted from Feb. 11 to March 16. It did not include a choice for “undecided,” while the other two polls showed that significant percentages of voters hadn’t made up their minds.

“This poll shows if only positive descriptors are used and context is provided, Raman is ahead,” said Fernando Guerra, director of Loyola Marymount’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles, who directed the poll.

Guerra said he believes Bass is the front-runner, taking the previous polls into account.

Bass’ campaign took issue with the Loyola Marymount poll.

“In 2022, this same LMU poll had Karen Bass at 16% — she ended up winning the primary with 43%. The only thing more ridiculous than this poll is Spencer Pratt’s performance on The Hills,” said Alex Stack, a spokesperson for the Bass campaign, referencing Pratt’s reality show.

Raman’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a post on X citing the poll, Raman wrote, “OUR CAMPAIGN IS SURGING … Angelenos are ready for a city that actually works.”

Paul Mitchell, vice president of the bipartisan voter data firm Political Data Inc., said the poll’s sample size was too small to draw conclusions and that the poll was less reliable because it was conducted over the course of more than a month.

He also noted that with many of the candidates relatively unknown, including the descriptors could have a major effect.

“I’m sure Nithya Raman doesn’t have citywide name recognition, but that description is really great,” Mitchell said.

Guerra said he didn’t include an “undecided” option because he wanted to “force” respondents to give an answer, similar to when they actually vote.

In the Emerson poll, more than 50% of voters were undecided on who to support for mayor. The Berkeley IGS poll showed about a quarter of voters were undecided.

In LMU’s mayoral poll from 2022, released in early March of that year, 42% of respondents chose “undecided/someone else” for mayor.

After Bass, who had 16% support, then-City Councilmember Kevin de Léon was second at 12% in the 2022 poll. Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer, who ended up making the runoff election against Bass, received 6% support.

In that year’s June primary, Bass got 43% of the vote, Caruso nearly 36% and De Léon about 8%.

This year’s LMU poll also asked L.A. voters what kind of candidate they would prefer for mayor.

Nearly 50% said they prefer a Democratic Socialist, while 25% said they want a moderate Democrat, 19% said a conservative and just 8% said an establishment Democrat.

“Los Angeles is much more progressive than its elected leadership. This poll captures that,” Guerra said.

Some disagreed.

Mike Trujillo, a consultant for moderate Democrats who is not representing anyone in the mayoral race, said polling he has done across the city shows that the Democratic Socialists of America’s popularity is much lower.

Raman is a dues-paying member of the Los Angeles chapter of DSA, which endorsed her in her two successful City Council campaigns.

“If you believe this poll, I have bridges to sell you on 1st Street, 6th Street, and Alameda Street — and there’s no bridge on Alameda,” he said. “The poll was basically A to Z in Nithya Raman’s contact list.”

This year’s LMU poll also asked L.A. County voters about the governor’s race. Former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter led at about 16%, followed by Republican Steve Hilton at 13% and billionaire Tom Steyer at 12%.

The Berkeley IGS poll showed two Republicans — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and Hilton — leading the crowded field of gubernatorial candidates by slim margins among voters statewide, with Democratic support split among multiple candidates in a left-leaning state.

The bass genius Thundercat has, to his regret, been spending way too much time absorbing bad news on his phone.

“We are cellphones at this point, basically,” he said. “That’s what life feels like. It’s a weird one we’re living through right now, to say the least. You have to try to stay inspired, to keep moving forward. But like, you’re processing absolute hell and war in the background, and you’re still supposed to look cute.”

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

That whipsaw feeling — processing grief and destruction, while doing your song-and-dance to survive, all via the same rectangle — is the backdrop of Thundercat’s new album, “Distracted,” his fifth LP and first in six years. The album is a typically dense and playful showcase for his extravagant musicality, and packed with guests like ASAP Rocky, Tame Impala and Lil Yachty.

But it’s poignantly introspective on tracks like “What Is Left to Say” and “I Wish I Didn’t Waste Your Time.” “She Knows Too Much” has a touching cameo from his late friend and frequent collaborator Mac Miller.

“After [Miller’s] death, there were a lot of questions, a lot of stones left unturned,” Thundercat said. “But this song came to be from the simplicity of making music between friends. It’s a language, a snapshot. It was a beautiful moment between us.”

Thundercat, born Stephen Bruner, grew up in L.A. immersed in the city’s progressive jazz scene, playing with everyone from Kendrick Lamar to Suicidal Tendencies. These are some of the places around Los Angeles that still keep his inner comics-nerd satiated and musical curiosity fed — no matter what bleak news is blowing up his phone.

9 a.m. Find some coffee that slaps

If I notice that I’m doomscrolling, if stuff is getting a little bit too dark and weird and twisted, I’ll put my phone down and go drink some coffee and get way too much energy. I’ll go to the good old boys at Commissary. That’s good coffee.

My day doesn’t always consist of me picking my instrument up, but it’s more like as it feels right. If I’m not intentionally writing or working on somebody’s music, a lot of the time it’s just me. The time between is just as important as the time spent with music, so it’s learning to be OK without my bass in my hands for a second.

But there’s still so much to learn about harmony and melody from that instrument, you know? Nothing makes up for spending time with an instrument and learning it in a different manner. That’s how Larry Graham came up with slap bass. It has no bounds for what you want to create. It’s just about how far your mind can go with it.

Noon. Pick up a comic book

I find myself to be very much like a Lebowski-like character. The things that I enjoy bring me peace, like fashion and comics. The family at Golden Apple on Melrose have been my family since I was a child. The family there has always looked out for me and been avid supporters of my career. They remember my dad bringing me in — I remember the day that Image Comics premiered at Golden Apple. It’s nothing but love and artistry and great people to meet in Golden Apple — they’ve been one of the through lines in my life that has just been consistent. L.A.’s landscape keeps changing, but Golden Apple has been a beacon of nerdisms.

5 p.m. Fun at the movies

I have always been a fan of Universal CityWalk’s AMC theaters, even though they charge ridiculous prices. Everybody’s trying to keep their industry alive in this moment; it’s of one of those grit-and-bear kind of things. But at the same time, the experience that you have there is absolutely golden.

I love seeing movies there, because there’s so much to do around there. There’s a comic store, Halloween Horror Nights, Nintendo Land. There’s a Hot Topic, because I am a goth hoochie daddy. I’ve been going my whole life. I just enjoy going to the movies there by myself or with friends. Sometimes they get bored, because I will keep choosing to do this, but I don’t care, because it is a movie theater that I love. It’s always a joy to have AMC at Universal City Walk.

8 p.m. Sushi that’s a cut above

One of my favorite restaurants in L.A. is a restaurant by the name of Asanebo. It’s a sushi restaurant that is of very high prestige. The chefs there are very loving and caring. They make the most amazing food on the planet. It’s a beautiful environment — one of the best sushi restaurants, I would say, in the world. But it’s about the history for me, and the family that is built there, from the waitresses to the hosts. They treat you like royalty there.

10 p.m. Fun with friends and all that L.A. jazz

Most of the time, I don’t know what the hell is going on. A lot of the time, I would rather just sit on the couch and watch “Star Trek.” I’m not always wanting to immediately get up and just go sacrifice myself to the nightlife.

I really enjoyed growing up playing gigs all over L.A., but a lot of those places don’t even exist anymore. We could play outside the Hollywood Bowl. We’d play at a dive bar or play at a wedding, but my childhood friendships were linked to to the functionality of music in my life. If we were playing at a musty bar or some weird coffee house, it was like, “I get to play with Kamasi [Washington], and they’re going to pay us in sandwiches.”

I enjoyed The World Stage in Leimert Park. Low End Theory at the Airliner — I’d be hanging out with Flying Lotus or Tyler would drop an album and come up to perform. It was about my friends and hanging with the people that I love.

I think as time progresses, I enjoy spending time with my friends — whatever that entails. If it’s going out to a club and all that, seeing a friend perform, my friend Anderson has a beautiful club called Andy’s. There’s a restaurant called Verse, that’s owned by my friend Manny, that serves absolutely amazing food and has live music. It’s just fantastic. They just erected a Blue Note here in Los Angeles, which is awesome.

Where would you go to listen to a song by me and Channel Tres where you can dance on somebody’s butt? I’m still gonna say Andy’s, but I can finish off the night at Living Room. That’s a good place to listen and enjoy the nightlife, just a great club.

On March 29, Taix as we know it closes forever. The iconic French restaurant originally opened downtown in 1927 and relocated to its current chalet on Sunset Boulevard in 1962. It’s a grim reminder of L.A.’s insatiable appetite to destroy its own heritage and especially devastating to a certain milieu of writers and artists, myself very much included. Since it announced its closure, I’ve been visiting as often as I can to say farewell, not only to the charmingly shabby faux-1920s interiors, but to the many lives I’ve lived at its tables. First as a young guitarist when a bandmate worked the bar’s soundboard, next with the Chinatown artist scene, then with Semiotext(e)’s avant-garde lit circle, later through firecracker romances and heartbreaks during the art party Social Club, recently floating through the louche carnival of Gay Guy Night and now with the circus of beatniks from my reading series Casual Encountersz.

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It’s difficult to explain why this cavernous and windowless restaurant means so much, so I’ve tried to list everything I love about Taix.

I love that they don’t play music. I love the 1960s bathrooms. I love the bottomless tureens of soup. I love the complimentary crudité from the pre-pandemic era. I love the cold pats of butter. I love that you can always get a table, no matter how many people roll in. I love the free refills on Diet Cokes. I love the 80-year-old couples on dates. I love how the dim lighting makes everyone seem chic. I love the frayed carpeting. I love the fake votive candles. I love the icy martinis. I love the corner booth beside the fireplace. I love the smoked mirrors and tin-plate ceilings in the elegant back dining rooms. I love the small fortune I’ve spent there picking up the check for many strippers, poets and bohemians. I love its rundown glamour, which miraculously evokes Old Hollywood, Belle Époque and trashy Americana all at once. I unironically love the food, which isn’t spectacular, but is very comforting. I love how a waitress once ran off with a friend of mine and slept on my couch for a week. I love how my wife generally hates eating at restaurants but loves eating at Taix. I love how every L.A. artist I know has their own singular version of this list.

The only thing I don’t love about Taix is that its owners are tearing it down to erect soulless condos. I know the city needs housing, but not like this. I hope we’ll all find a new place to call home again soon.

Taix shaped me as a writer and artist, along with so many others, which is why before the new owners demolish this cultural institution, I asked other creatives what the Echo Park landmark means to them.

Chris Kraus.

(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)

Chris Kraus, writer, artist and co-editor of the independent press Semiotext(e): When I moved to L.A. in 1995, Taix was the go-to place, with its deep banquettes, cuisine bonne-femme and its nightly prix-fixe specials. Mostly it was police officers and their wives who went there. Sylvère Lotringer and I went often, for him it was a little reprieve from the non-Frenchness of L.A. He could order in French and exchange pleasantries with an elderly French waiter who seemed to live there. Years later, when Sylvère moved to Ensenada and was less active with Semiotext(e), Taix was the site of our “Annual General Meetings” — Hedi El Kholti, Sylvère and I would have dinner together and Hedi would catch Sylvère up on all the forthcoming publications and projects. Taix was a place to run into people unexpectedly. About a decade ago, when the bar was refreshed, it changed again and I kind of lost track of it.

Rachel Kushner, novelist: I dined at Taix probably once per week for 23 years. It hurts so much that it is closing. I simply stopped going, so that I could begin to grieve, and also to avoid every last random tourist standing by the host station, on their phone, and the glum possibility of being seated in the second dining room, a.k.a “the Morgue” as my friend Benjamin Weissman put it. I want to protect my memories of the special occasions I enjoyed in this perennial special occasion establishment … I want to remember Bernard, a cheerful Basque from Biarritz who worked there 60 years, got progressively trashed over the course of his shift, went to Bakersfield on Sundays to party with his sheep-herding countrymen, came back Wednesdays sunburned and happy. The old valets who were let go during the pandemic. I used to give them a Christmas bonus every year, as a thanks for letting me park my classic out front. Look, I was born in Taix. I mean, in a way. I nursed my newborn in Taix. He grew up there. People who criticize the food are losers, and will never understand. The steak frites are great. The panna cotta, discontinued after the pandemic, was my favorite. The Louis Martini Cabernet was reliable. (Bernard told me the wine cellar downstairs took up the entire footprint of the main restaurant. Don’t know if that’s true.) Meanwhile, I can’t put my arm around a memory. All the smart girls know why. It doesn’t mean I didn’t try.

Cord Jefferson, writer and director: When I started going to Taix, in 2004, you could still gamble at the bar. They sold keno slips and lottery tickets, and whenever Powerball got over $100 million, I’d buy a ticket with my pint. Where else can you do all that while simultaneously watching a game and eating a tourte de volaille? Taix was where I watched the heroic Zinedine Zidane headbutt the gutless Marco Materazzi in the saddest World Cup final ever. When France lost that afternoon, my favorite server, Phillipe, cried. Phillipe’s teeth were often as wine-stained as his customers’. He’d bum me cigarettes in the parking lot and speak abusively about the ways the neighborhood was changing. I’m happy Phillipe is not around to see the digital renderings of what they plan to erect once they demolish the Taix chateau: another condo building with all the charm of a college dorm. It’s a damn shame what’s happening to Taix. I wish I had more money so I could buy it and keep it around, but I never won the Powerball.

John Tottenham, novelist and poet: It’s a shame that Taix is closing, not only because other plans will now have to be made for my funeral reception, but because it was the last civilized watering hole in the neighborhood. There isn’t anywhere else that one can walk into and immediately satisfy the social instinct among a convivial and refreshingly diverse clientele in what is becoming an increasingly homogenized locality. It has been the nexus of my social life for over 20 years, and is simply irreplaceable.

Jade Chang.

(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)

Jade Chang, novelist: I’d only known Taix as a raucous bardo of a French restaurant, then there was a memorial service for Alex Maslansky, my beloved friend Max’s brother, owner of Echo Park’s best bookstore, Stories. Alex was a beautiful and beleaguered soul, born worried, born romantic, difficult and hopeful and apparently a shockingly good poker player. The room was packed with music people and book people, sober friends and poker friends, packed with the gorgeous girls who’d always loved him, our collective sorrow potent and sweet enough to pull the walls in around us tight as we said goodbye and goodbye.

Alexis Okeowo, New Yorker staff writer: I was a late discoverer of Taix, stumbling upon it when I moved to a bungalow just above Sunset during the pandemic from New York. I seemed to only see writer friends there. I met up with a journalist for drinks and then ran into a new writer friend at the bar. I later had a big, spontaneous dinner with TV writer friends and then a birthday celebration in the dining rooms that ended in two friends escorting me home, sick and happy off a mostly-martini meal and the selfies I took in the bathroom with the iconic pink and gold wallpaper. Every time, there was talk about ideas and gossip and so, so much laughter.

Alberto Cuadros, writer/curator and co-founder of the Social Club: About 10 years ago, Max Martin and I started Social Club as a weekly social salon at Taix. We thought of it as a kind of Beuysian social sculpture, it was a weekly ritual, and over time it became something of an institution in the L.A. art world. Everyone knew where to go in L.A. on a Wednesday if they wanted to meet interesting people or find friends. I even met my wife there who was visiting from Montreal.

Siena Foster-Soltis, playwright: Taix felt like one of the few remnants of the L.A. I grew up in and love so dearly.

Ruby Zuckerman.

(Ariana Drehsler/For The Times)

Ruby Zuckerman, writer and co-founder of the reading series This Friday: Taix is the only restaurant in L.A. that doesn’t lose its mind if new friends drop in halfway through dinner or if you stay at your table for hours after you stopped ordering. That kind of flexibility leads to spontaneous nights where what started off as an intimate hang expands into an all-out party. As a writer, that flexibility has allowed me to meet editors, collaborators and readers, drawn together by pure fun rather than networking. One of my favorite nights involved getting in a physical altercation with novelist John Tottenham after he stole my phone to send prank texts to my boyfriend. I’ll miss taking selfies in the bathroom.

Blaine O’Neill, DJ and events organizer: I always say Taix is the “People’s Country Club.” It is exceptional because of the staff who understand the importance of hospitality, and the scale of the space is humane. You’re able to evade feeling pinched by the noose of transactional cosmopolitanism.

Tif Sigfrids, gallerist and publisher Umm…: Taix was a cultural nexus. A space with broad range. It went from being the dark bar I read books and day-drank at in my 20s to the place where I rented a private room to host my son’s first birthday party. It’s where I watched Barack Obama get elected twice, the Lakers win back-to-back championships, and where I indulged in countless night caps and an unreasonable amount of all-you-can-eat split pea soup. You never knew what kind of hot jock, wasted poet or other type of intrigue you might run into there. You can’t make a place like Taix up. It’s a place that just miraculously happens.

Kate Wolf, writer and editor: Though I have been going to Taix for nearly 20 years, embarrassingly, it was only in the last year that I realized the building wasn’t from the 1920s. Those smoke-stained mirrors, that tin ceiling, the drapery and light fixtures are in fact set-dressed — ersatz! Which of course only makes me love the place more. Taix’s history, and its spot in the city’s cultural firmament, cannot be denied. But what really makes it so special are the people who work there and the clientele, not its past. This point is perhaps my only hope in losing what is my favorite restaurant in Los Angeles. That by some divine grace, we will all find each other again in another spot, designed to a different decade than the horror-filled present, and fill it with the same warmth, the same bottomless soup bowl, the same cheer.

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Hedi El Kholti, the co-editor of Semiotext(e).   (Ariana Drehsler/For The Times)

2/4

Writers Lily Lady and Siena Soltis-Foster.  (Ariana Drehsler/For The Times)

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Poet Meat Stevens (Steven Lesser).   (Ariana Drehsler/For The Times)

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Sammy Loren, writer and curator of Casual Encountersz.  (Ariana Drehsler/For The Times)

Hedi El Kholti, artist and co-editor Semiotext(e): Taix is where we would end up after every reading since 2004 when I started working at Semiotext(e). I have memories of being there with Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, Gary Indiana, Michael Silverblatt, Colm Tóibín, Rachel Kushner and Constance Debré among others … Taix has that particular anachronistic vibe that made L.A. so charming when I moved here in 1992, one of these places that time forgot. It was odd when it became really hip in the last 10 years. It made me think of what Warhol wrote about Schrafft’s restaurant when it had been redesigned to keep up with the fashion of the moment and had consequently lost its appeal. “If they could have kept their same look and style, and held on through the lean years when they weren’t in style, today they’d be the best thing around.”

Loren is the founding editor of the art and literary conceptual “tabloid” On the Rag and curator of the reading series Casual Encountersz.

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

Adam Miller is running for mayor.

You might not know that, and you might not even know who he is — and his campaign team wouldn’t blame you.

In fact, the Miller team’s own internal poll of 800 likely voters shows the tech entrepreneur with just 6% support, behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, City Councilmember Nithya Raman, conservative reality TV star Spencer Pratt and leftist Rae Huang. Only 13% of Angelenos even have an opinion of Miller, with 7% coming down on the positive side and 6% negative.

Miller’s pollster, Jefrey Pollock, admits it’s not often that a campaign brags about a humble 6% backing their candidate.

But during a video conference with reporters, Pollock argued that Miller’s support rises along with his name recognition. When likely voters were given more information about the candidates, he shot up to 20%, according to the poll. When provided with additional positive information about the candidates, Miller finished first, with 27%.

“Adam is the one who jumps up,” said Pollock, who runs Global Strategy Group.

After voters got the first dose of information, 22% supported Bass, down from 26%; 21% went with Pratt, up from 14%; 14% backed Raman, up from 12%; and 8% chose Huang, down from 9%.

In a poll earlier this month by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, Miller also came out with 6% support. Bass was supported by 25% of voters, while Raman drew 17% and conservative reality TV star Spencer Pratt came in third at 14%. About a quarter of voters were undecided.

Paul Mitchell, vice president of the bipartisan voter data firm Political Data Inc., said the Miller campaign poll was compelling.

“What I see is a good argument that he can make the runoff,” Mitchell said. “This is a real deal.”

The question for Miller and his team then becomes, how can he introduce himself to more voters before the June 2 primary?

Miller is the former CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand, a global training and development company he built over the course of more than 20 years. The publicly traded company was eventually sold to a private equity firm for $5.2 billion. He is also a co-founder of Better Angels, a nonprofit focused on preventing homelessness and building affordable housing.

Among everyday Angelenos, he’s a no-name.

A television, social media and outdoor billboard advertising campaign launched this week should help change that, Miller’s team said. They said the “omnichannel” blitz cost seven figures but did not provide an exact amount.

The first billboard went up this week at Bundy Drive and Wilshire Boulevard, not far from Miller’s Brentwood home. More are expected next week in the San Fernando Valley.

Miller said he personally loaned his campaign a “majority” of the money for the ad blitz.

How much Miller is willing to spend on his mayoral ambitions?

In 2022, billionaire developer Rick Caruso threw more than $100 million of his own money into his campaign against Bass during the primary and runoff elections. He still lost by more than 10 percentage points.

“Obviously, we have the benefit of hindsight that that strategy did not work,” Miller said of the Caruso campaign. “There’s reasons my candidacy is different.”

For one thing, as opposed to Caruso, who was a Republican before registering as a Democrat to run for mayor, Miller is a lifelong Democrat. (That said, Miller voted for Caruso in 2022, said his spokesperson, Jaime Sarachit).

Miller is a moderate who sees himself as leader who gets things done. He believes the LAPD needs a minimum of 10,000 officers, up from about 8,700. He thinks the city should use anti-encampment laws to move homeless people away from sensitive areas like schools and day cares.

Miller would not directly answer a question about how much of his own money he will spend on his campaign. He has so far loaned it $2 million, “to get it up and running,” Sarachit said.

“That’s a significant sum, obviously,” said longtime L.A. political consultant Bill Carrick. “It’s a lot more efficient to write a check from your personal account than it is to go raise $2 million.”

But Miller said his campaign will largely be “traditionally financed,” meaning he plans to fundraise.

State of play

— AO-K’ed: Metro’s board on Thursday unanimously approved a new route for a rail line that would extend from South L.A. into West Hollywood — a milestone deal struck after last-minute negotiations between Bass and local leaders. The K Line northern extension would link with four major rail lines and increase the number of riders to 100,000 a day.

— SOCIALIST SNUB: The Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America will not endorse a candidate for mayor. Last weekend, the group voted on whether to reopen its endorsement process and consider backing Huang or Raman but ultimately decided to stay out of the fray for the June primary.

— GUNNING FOR COUNCIL: Leftist City Council candidate Estuardo Mazariegos was convicted of misdemeanor gun possession in 2009. He thinks the conviction is a strength, not a weakness.

— SMALLER BIGGER: On Tuesday, the City Council adopted a strategy that would delay the effects of SB 79 citywide by upzoning 55 single-family and low-density areas, allowing for buildings of four to 16 units that are up to four stories tall. Under SB 79, buildings adjacent to certain transit stops can be up to nine stories.

— NOT UP FOR DEBATE: USC canceled its Tuesday gubernatorial debate, a stunning about-face after days of fiery criticism that every prominent candidate of color was excluded. Although the university defended the methodology used to determine who was invited, it ended up calling off the event with less than 24 hours’ notice.

— PHANTOM SUIT: A man said he has no idea how he became a plaintiff in the county’s $4-billion payout for sex abuse in juvenile halls and foster homes. His lawsuit, which he says was filed without his consent by Downtown LA Law Group, deepens questions around possible fraud in the nation’s largest sex abuse settlement.

— TAX TAKEAWAY: The proposal from a group of business leaders to repeal the city’s business tax has qualified for the November ballot. Organizers said their success — gathering twice as many signatures as needed — shows that voters “want affordability and fairness to be addressed immediately.” Labor unions have vowed to fight the proposal, which would rip an $800-million hole in the city budget.

— HOUSING HUDDLE: Three of the mayoral candidates — Miller, Huang and Raman — took the stage Monday for a downtown forum. The trio went back and forth on housing, transportation and other issues, particularly the future of Measure ULA, the so-called mansion tax. Bass did not attend, citing a previous engagement in New Orleans, where she held a campaign fundraiser with U.S. Rep. Troy Carter (D-La.) and the city’s mayor, Helena Moreno. Pratt also did not show.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program visited Skid Row in Councilmember Ysabel Jurado‘s district, moving 25 people indoors.
• On the docket next week: The City Council is on recess next week.

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.

Gerald Barry is today’s rare opera composer with a draught-dry wit. Is there such a thing as a soaking wet wit, the opposite of the parched variety, because he has that, too. He is Irish. He has some Beckett in him. And a helping of Oscar Wilde.

At the behest of British composer Thomas Adès, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has given, over the past 20 years, the U.S. or world premieres of four Barry operas in its Green Umbrella new music series, all conducted by Adès. The first, “The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit,” seemed to take zaniness to outlandish operatic extremes, which led to the orchestra commissioning the next three. “The Importance of Being Ernest” and “Alice’s Adventures Underground,” in 2011 and 2016 respectively, proved each funnier and more outrageous musical spectacle than the last.

On Tuesday night, the L.A. Phil New Music Group and a cast of extraordinary singers gave the U.S. premiere of “Salome” at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Here we go again.

The description by the composer (who is also his librettist) can hardly be bettered. He has cut Wilde’s play by about half. And, in that half, explored another less knowable side of the moon represented by Richard Strauss’ well-known “Salome,” which helped usher in 20th-century operatic modernism. Barry says his “Salome” is “an opera of voyeurism, the moon, French, God, punishment of sin, misunderstanding, sex, the metronome, suicide, hysteria, hunger, blood, typing, speaking correctly, sterility, ‘The Blue Danube,’ fever, art, Wilde, dreaming, beheading, Frankenstein, kissing.”

No nudity, though, and no dance. Salome is a typist. Her dance of the seven veils is sexy typing.

Barry begins where Wilde begins and Strauss (who follows the original play closely) with a pair of soldiers in Herod’s court peering at the moon, one moonstruck by the beauty of Herod’s daughter Salome. Salome has other ideas. She’s taken, perversely, with John the Baptist, imprisoned in a cistern and prophesying doom for the decadent, Godless heathens, Salome in particular. All of this readily registers on Barry’s Dada-absurdity meter.

Even so, Barry has an oracular outlook. He goes in for proclamatory melody, each note an event, when punched out by brass and lower string like hammering spikes in the ground. Harmonies can be raw. There is a Stravinskyan quality, but nothing is ever predictable.

The orchestral introduction to “Salome” is like that. But it gets screwy fast. Other than Salome, the characters are not named, rather treated as types. John the Baptist is The Prisoner. Herod and Herodias are The King and The Queen. All have some Alice in a different wonderland about them.

The Prisoner could be straight out of a Godard film. He speaks only French (Wilde’s play was first published in French in 1893). He speaks more than he sings and finds outrage everywhere he looks. The surtitles intentionally refrain from translating much of what he says, leaving the audience to rely on his loony spoken tone and loony tunes to carry meaning. His way of impatiently rebuffing Salome’s inappropriate advances is to give her singing lessons.

That’s the last thing she needs. Her part, like that of Alice in Barry’s previous opera, is enlivened by delightfully squeaky high notes in unexpected places. She’s Barbie with exceptional smarts and grotesque sexual fantasies. Soprano Alison Scherzer, who has starred in Barry’s other operas and in Adès’ “Powder Her Face,” is spectacular.

Everyone is odd. The half-crazed King, magnificently sung by the ever-disruptive Timur, lusts after Salome by speaking and singing at different speeds he selects on a metronome, as he entices her to type for him. When she first refuses, the King has everyone sing “The Blue Danube,” because that’s what you do when Salome won’t sexy type for you.

Sara Hershkowitz’s wildly contemptuous Queen adds further soprano glory. The baritone, Vincent Casagrande, a marvelously cantankerous Prisoner, tells us only sick people dream, and of course everyone on stage automatically enters a dream state.

The shock of Wilde’s play, amplified in Strauss’ opera, is the sheer horror of Salome demanding as a reward for her striptease the decapitated head of the prophet, whose bloody lips she desires to kiss. In this case, her typing, which is accompanied by the two soldiers (Justin Hopkins and Karl Huml) on their own typewriters, leads to a dismemberment Frankenstein-style. The ghoulish ending is not unhappy.

Barry’s score remains as uncanny as his sense of drama. He plays with our senses of normality. He frequently uses the instrumentalists in the chamber orchestra like theatrical characters. The ensemble contradicts the singers but also eggs them on. Adès, who has his own unpredictably whimsical side, conducts as though he had written the score himself and shares his pleasure with every delightful effect.

The premiere of “Salome,” intended for 2021 in Disney, was disrupted by the pandemic. The first performance, then, became a staging in Magdeburg, Germany, last year. Barry said Tuesday in the pre-concert Upbeat Live that he is often happier with concert performances, like at this Green Umbrella. He has good reason.

The magic of this “Salome” is its transcendence of silliness into acceptance. When presented without theatrical aspect but as a private process of the imagination, it becomes a lavishly lovable antidote to our too often accepting the world’s absurdity only as dooms-scrollable tragedy.