When I recall the great restaurants, culture and art found in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, one story that comes to mind is the tranquility and resilience of Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple.
The roughly 1½-acre parcel at the corner of 3rd Street and Central Avenue offers peace amid the noise and bustle of downtown. It’s an oasis I first learned about five years ago when an unknown vandal broke into the sanctuary and stole some lanterns while burning others and vandalizing the facility.
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Hallock jumps into the history of one of L.A.’s most vibrant neighborhoods and picks a few of the many places and experiences that make Little Tokyo unique. Let’s jump into a few of them.
(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)
Japanese breakfast at Azay
Azay, a restaurant founded by the late chef Akira Hirose and run by his son Philip and wife, JoAnn, is one of the few places in Los Angeles serving traditional Japanese breakfast, and this one is stellar.
Composed of several small dishes, it feels like a celebration and draws a weekend crowd (reservations recommended). A wooden tray arrives at the table laden with jewel-like dishes such as grilled black cod and rolled omelet. Or order the daily bento or à la carte items, including custardy, savory chawanmushi or curry potato croquettes with shiso aioli.
Visit the family’s legacy shop next door, Anzen Hardware, for Japanese kitchen goods, knives and housewares. Philip Hirose also regularly programs community workshops and pop-ups.
Pro tip: Park all day in the Aiso Parking Garage across the street at 101 N. Judge John Aiso St., named after the first Japanese American to hold a judicial position in the continental U.S.
(Gary Coronado/For The Times)
Mexican American muralist Robert Vargas, who was born near Little Tokyo in Boyle Heights, painted a 150-foot image of baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani on the side of the 11-story Miyako Hotel, unveiled in the spring of 2024.
The painting, titled “L.A. Rising,” is meant to promote a cultural bridge between communities celebrating Dodgers pride. Vargas painted two versions of Ohtani, the best two-way player in Major League Baseball history (he’s the first to hit at least 50 home runs and steal at least 50 bases in a single season).
The mural shows Ohtani both pitching and hitting, and you can see him come to life by using an augmented reality feature. Scan a QR code located beneath the mural and point your phone camera at the image to see Ohtani swing the bat and pitch.
(Jeni Afuso/For The Times)
Shop for souvenirs at Bunkado, where Little Tokyo began
Gift shop Bunkado stands at the location of Little Tokyo’s beginning, where Hamanosuke Sugita opened a restaurant called Kame (which means “turtle,” a symbol of longevity) in 1884, the first Japanese-owned business in Los Angeles.
In 2022, the L.A. City Council commemorated the site and “the birth of Little Tokyo” with a plaque and street sign. Bunkado was founded in the same location in the mid-1940s by renowned Japanese American oil painter Tokio Ueyama and his wife, Suye, after they returned from incarceration in the World World II internment camps.
The name means “house of culture,” and the Ueyamas built an artists’ hub and eventually became important sellers and importers of recorded Japanese music. The store is now owned by their niece, Irene Tsukada Simonian, and sells Japanese ceramics, art tools, incense, toys, T-shirts and postcards.
(Illustrations by Lindsey Made This; photograph by Monica Schipper / Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
Today’s recipe
(Katrina Frederick / For The Times)
Los Angeles food writer Carolynn Carreño believes the shift in the season marks an opportunity to embrace pumpkins this fall. Carreño’s twist, however, is telling her readers, who love fresh and organic ingredients, that it’s OK to use canned pumpkins. In fact, the canned product beats fresh when baking loaves, cookies and pancakes. She included several recipes here. Take a deep breath and try it out.
Photo of the day
Construction platforms are visible beneath and on the sides of the Vincent Thomas Bridge as vehicles travel across the span above the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro. Caltrans is preparing for a 16-month closure of the bridge.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Jack Dolan, investigative reporter Hugo Martín, assistant editor, Fast Break desk Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor Andrew J. Campa, weekend writer Karim Doumar, head of Newsletters
The first volunteers gathered in the back house of Nithya Raman’s Silver Lake home with little besides a whiteboard counting down the number of days until the June 2 primary election.
Raman had jumped into the Los Angeles mayor’s race the day before, right at the Feb. 7 filing deadline. Her campaign didn’t have an office, a bank account, a campaign treasurer, or even a proper website.
It lacked, put simply, “the most basic things,” said Ian Manheimer, Raman’s campaign manager, who joined the team after a 10 p.m. call from Raman the night before the filing deadline. There would be a meeting the next day in Raman’s backyard accessory dwelling unit to get things rolling.
“For anyone who suspected Nithya had designs on this for a long time, you could just come to the ADU and that would dispel those notions,” Manheimer said.
Those unassuming beginnings in Raman’s backyard, with her parents and her husband’s parents taking turns cooking vegetarian Indian lunches for the small staff, evolved into a disciplined campaign that overcame initial struggles to unseat incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, a veteran politician who had racked up endorsements from most of L.A.’s traditional power brokers.
Nithya Raman speaks at a campaign phone bank event at UCLA on May 31.
(Jonathan Alcorn/For The Times)
Raman did it on a hyper-abbreviated timeline by turning out and expanding her base of younger renters, pitching herself successfully to Latino voters, securing late but key endorsements from groups and officials that gave massive support to her campaign’s ground game and by running on a hopeful message about restoring city services against a deeply unpopular mayor.
From the moment she got into the race, there was an evident, yet narrow lane for the progressive, second-term council member to rise to the city’s highest office, but it was far from clear that she would be able to make it through.
For much of the primary, Raman and her campaign were all alone. She had few endorsements, and almost none from elected officials.
Because of her late entry into the race and some past disagreements, she failed to secure the backing of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America for the June 2 primary, even though the left-wing organization endorsed her in both of her council campaigns. Raman got almost no supportive outside spending in the primary, while millions of dollars were spent opposing her.
But Raman had made a name for herself on the City Council as an advocate for tenant rights, and her campaign focused on turning out L.A.’s legions of renters to secure enough of the vote to make the runoff.
She was still a largely unknown entity early on in the race, with 51% of likely voters in a March poll saying they didn’t know enough about Raman to form an opinion of her.
On top of that, Raman was quickly upstaged by Spencer Pratt, the Republican former reality television personality, whose slash-and-burn campaign on social media attacking L.A.’s liberal political establishment dominated news coverage.
While Raman’s camp hadn’t initially worried too much about Pratt, thinking he and entrepreneur Adam Miller would split the more conservative vote in the city, it became clear as the primary went on that Pratt could emerge over Raman as the second candidate in the runoff.
Spencer Pratt, from left, Karen Bass and Nithya Raman take part in a televised debate at the Skirball Cultural Center May 6 during the primary race.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
To dent Pratt’s appeal, the Raman campaign worked to brand him as the MAGA Republican in the nonpartisan race, knowing it would hurt his chances in a deep-blue city like Los Angeles. They chose to try out the line at the only televised mayoral debate.
Raman didn’t miss her chance.
“This is a MAGA Republican’s idea of what Los Angeles looks like,” she said during the NBC4 debate on May 6, referring to Pratt’s sometimes dystopian depiction of L.A. “This is really not the city that I love so much.”
Though Raman’s debate performance was widely panned — and Pratt’s was praised — her team felt she had gotten the point across to Angelenos: With the unpopular Bass almost certain not to win the primary outright, the runoff could either be a contest between two progressive Democrats, or Bass versus a candidate whose views echoed those of President Trump.
That debate was a learning moment for Raman and her campaign.
“She’s up against an extremely seasoned politician and a television star. She’s just a normal person who hasn’t been on stage like that,” Manheimer said.
But defining Pratt as MAGA, the campaign believed, would pull some voters to Raman from lower-performing candidates on the left and in the middle with the hopes of keeping Pratt out of the runoff.
Raman was able to eke out a win against Pratt in the primary, getting 29% of the vote compared to his 26%, with Bass taking first place at 34%.
The sole goal of the primary for Raman’s campaign was, self-evidently, to make it out of the primary.
If her team could move on to the runoff, it would be able to reset — fundraising would restart, it could build a bigger team and it would have a longer runway to increase Raman’s name recognition and build out her base.
While Bass dominated labor and elected official endorsements throughout the race, Raman began to pick up key supporters in the runoff.
In August, the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters endorsed her, sponsoring an independent expenditure group for her called Estamos con Nithya for Mayor 2026.
That was followed by the endorsement from the union Unite Here Local 11, a major player in city politics, which represents hospitality workers at airports and in hotels.
Raman also got major endorsements in the runoff from City Controller Kenneth Mejia and L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath.
Mejia especially became a pit bull for Raman at events and on social media.
“Kenneth would call every day and say, ‘Let me know what myths I can bust today,’ ” said Tessa Wick, the communications director for Raman’s campaign.
“We didn’t have time to feel particularly lonely in the primary, but once we saw what it felt like to have all these groups and people behind us, each press conference we would do was injecting more force into this movement we were building,” Wick said.
Raman’s bid also got a serious infusion of cash from Aaron Sosnick, a hedge fund manager and bike lane advocate who poured $8 million into two independent expenditure groups to support Raman, making him the single biggest spender in the mayoral campaign.
“He is a cyclist. He just wants to not die riding the streets in L.A.,” said Michael Schneider, who runs Streets for All, a transportation advocacy group that ran one of the independent expenditure groups that Sosnick funded.
Nithya Raman, right, reviews notes in Spanish with Lauren Perez-Rangel before an interview at Univision on Oct. 22.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
“Many Latinos saw themselves in the Boyle Heights residents,” said Lauren Perez-Rangel, senior director of Latino outreach for the Raman campaign.
Bass had prevailed in more Latino neighborhoods than any other candidate in the primary. The Raman campaign worked to change that in the runoff, Perez-Rangel said, focusing especially on Latino voters. Raman brushed up on her Spanish and used it frequently at events.
The campaign also teamed up with Latino and Spanish-language content creators to spread Raman’s message of affordability, building more housing and solving the homeless crisis. The result: Raman led Bass among Latino likely voters throughout the runoff campaign, according to polls by UC Berkeley IGS and the L.A. Times.
Despite that growing support, Bass and her allies’ negative portrayal of Raman in attack ads had an effect, as Raman’s unfavorable ratings rose month by month. They framed the council member as too far left, allowing homeless encampments in front of schools and failing to show up for thousands of City Council votes.
“It was a race to define Nithya,” said Jeff Millman, an advisor and spokesperson for Raman’s campaign. “Their strategy was to tear down Nithya. Our job was to make sure that people knew Nithya’s strengths and record of success as a council member.”
As the campaign drew to a climax, Raman improved as a candidate and came off as more confident during the two runoff debates. Her team said she spent many hours improving her debate skills.
“There was no secret weapon, just a person really committed to practicing,” said Wick.
Still, she opened herself up to attacks from Bass’ side during the final debate Oct. 13, after she said the city used to be the “gold standard” of noncooperation with immigration authorities under controversial former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates. Bass hammered Raman over the remark, accusing the council member of romanticizing Gates’ tenure.
Despite that and othermissteps during the closing days of the campaign, her team said it was Raman’s insistence on running a largely positive campaign about an optimistic vision of L.A.’s future that pushed her over the finish line.
“She was really dogged that it was a campaign that was hopeful, not nasty and cynical. She wanted the campaign to be a love letter to L.A.,” said Wick.
Nithya Raman embraces her husband, TV writer Vali Chandrasekaran, left, on election night at the Greek Theatre plaza.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
In her election night speech, still trailing Bass by a few percentage points that she would quickly make up, Raman spoke to that vision.
She called it a vision where the people who made L.A. extraordinary could afford to live in the city and where government is responsive and takes responsibility.
“We believed that Angelenos were hungry for that city,” she said. “And it turns out that we were right.”
Twenty years after its world premiere in Northern California — and subsequent success on Broadway and in London — “Passing Strange,” the quintessential L.A. coming-of-age musical, is finally arriving in Southern California, staging its long-awaited area premiere at Pasadena Playhouse on Sunday.
Exactly why it has taken so long for this acclaimed, Tony Award-winning show — much of it set in the heart of Los Angeles — to come here is something its creators, the artist and singer-songwriter, Stew, and Heidi Rodewald (along with this writer) have been scrutinizing since 2009, the year after it opened to critical acclaim on Broadway.
“Passing Strange” tells the story of a young, artistic “Youth” (that’s actually his name in the show) who rejects his single mother and the “Black, middle class dream” of 1970s Los Angeles in favor of leaving home to find “The Real,” an elusive state of mind and authenticity he craves.
The reasons “The Real” took so long to land in its hometown began to make sense during a recent group Zoom with the “Passing Strange” brain trust, including Stew, Rodewald and its new director Zhailon Levingston.
“At my age, at this point, I think it is absolute poetry that this gentleman [Levingston] is the one who brings it to our hometown,” said Stew, pointing to a serendipity of timing.
Director Zhailon Levingston sits outside before a rehearsal of “Passing Strange” at the Pasadena Playhouse. Levingston recently won a Tony Award for directing, “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.”
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Levingston is the 32-year-old theatrical wunderkind who won this year’s Tony Award for best director, for the groundbreaking revival of “Cats” on Broadway by re-imagining the long-running ‘80s smash as a ballroom drag competition.
Getting Levingston to do this revival of “Passing Strange” as his immediate follow-up to “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” is a coup for Pasadena Playhouse’s Artistic Director Danny Feldman. Feldman calls Levingston a rare talent, who’s “generous and fearless.” Or as Stew says more bluntly: “Zhailon’s got the receipts. … it’s the right time because it’s him. We made this play for him — literally, I don’t mean figuratively — because me and Heidi don’t make work necessarily for the contemporary time, we make it for the future.”
One of the main themes of “Passing Strange” is how knowledge is awkwardly handed down from one generation to another. In a key scene, the narrator describes a mentor, Franklin, whose words and wisdom wash over Youth “like a Bach fugue creeping out of a cheap car stereo.” In conversation together, Stew and Levingston (the former is twice the latter’s age) seem entirely in sync, having both clearly absorbed the show’s mantra: “Just ask the song.”
Actors rehearse “Passing Strange,” which is based in downtown L.A. but has never been produced in Southern California until now.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Stew says he learned the virtues of “asking the song” while casting the original production at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2006. The show would go on to play 165 performances on Broadway, but it wasn’t a traditional book musical — it played more like a cabaret or rock experience. “When we had everybody audition, they had to sing a punk rock song,” Stew recounts. “That was the fast track to figure out if they could do what we needed, or not.”
That original Berkeley cast, including Eisa Davis, Daniel Breaker, Rebecca Naomi Jones and Coleman Domingo, won the 2008 Obie Award for ensemble at New York’s Public Theater before transferring to Broadway. That cast was a big part of the show’s success, so much so that Levingston calls them “the Avengers of Black talent.”
Spike Lee filmed the show’s penultimate night at the Belasco Theater. In 2010, PBS broadcast it as part of “Great Performances,” which is how a then 15-year-old Levingston learned about “The Real.”
“My grandmother’s bedroom had a TV and that was kind of my refuge as a kid. I happened to turn on PBS,” Levingston recalls, “and it just so happens that was the night that they were airing ‘Passing Strange.’ I wasn’t looking for it. I just clicked on the television, and the opening credits were happening. I stayed glued. I didn’t leave. I didn’t pee. I just watched it.”
Levingston was hooked. “It became my favorite show ever,” he says, “I had two birthday parties designated to my friends watching it.”
Composer Heidi Rodewald and writer Stew attend the premiere and panel discussion of “Passing Strange” during the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival at Directors Guild Theater on May 2, 2009, in New York City.
(Amy Sussman / Getty Images)
But more importantly, it made him ask questions. “I then went to school the next day. … I got a dictionary and I looked up every word I didn’t know. I looked up every reference I didn’t know,” Levingston says. “I didn’t know who James Baldwin was. I didn’t know who Josephine Baker was. I didn’t know the significance of the Berlin Wall. I had never been out of the country, let alone Louisiana.”
None of the creators of “Passing Strange” would wince at the musical being described as a “bildungsroman,” or a classic coming-of-age story. Its title is derived from Shakespeare’s “Othello,” and the show earned Joycean comparisons, including to “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Black Man,” from critics.
“Passing Strange” pokes fun at the pretensions of youth, how a young person can know every indie rock album or French New Wave film and still be clueless about their own emotions and need for family. The truth and timelessness of Stew’s story — about a boy in the 1970s wanting to escape what he sees as L.A.’s “fishbowl of philistines” resonated so much for Levingston that he was inspired to escape his own fishbowl (Louisiana) for a life in Los Angeles, where he enrolled in AMDA College of the Performing Arts in Hollywood.
He lived in L.A. for four years, before making his name in theater back east. He had never dreamed of directing “Passing Strange,” saying, “it felt like too ‘full circle’ to actively pitch myself as the director.” But when he took a meeting with Pasadena’s Feldman: “I mentioned ‘Passing Strange,’ kind of as a secret menu option.”
Britton Smith, left, and Tanerélle in a rehearsal for “Passing Strange” at the Pasadena Playhouse.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Feldman loved the idea, and now “Passing Strange” is here. Asked during a recent rehearsal whether he’s deconstructing or re-inventing the show as he did “Cats,” Levingston replied with an emphatic no.
“I didn’t want to put it on the moon … or create some kind of other, concept approach to ‘Passing Strange,’ that would make it too corny. The concept has to be the people,” he said.
Inspired by Stew, Levingston looked for actors with a punk vibe, because he “wanted a company that understood what it meant to lead a band, even if you’re not the Narrator or Stew, I wanted the authenticity of that kind of swagger.”
Ty Taylor plays Stew in the revival, along with a whole new cast. During a recent rehearsal, it was uncanny how these performers look and sound so different — yet still carry the same fiery sense of invention as the actors who created the roles. It was also moving to see that Stew and Rodewald’s Tony Award-winning book still delivers laughs and pathos two decades on. Their show about passing the torch of cultural enlightenment hasn’t lost its edge — even as it is being handed off to another generation.
Actors rehearse “Passing Strange” at the Pasadena Playhouse. The rock musical has played on Broadway and is staging it’s Southern California premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
During the Zoom interview, Rodewald noted that the show’s original director, Annie Dorsen, gave them the confidence “to not try to please everyone,” to just make something they thought was cool.
“And then we went, and we did it,” Stew adds, “and now it’s perfect that it’s happening here. It’s the right director. It’s the perfect cast.”
In this way, the show has not only come home to Los Angeles, but it has also come full circle.
“I was talking to a cast member the other day, and I was like, ‘I just try to make theater that my friends like.’ But now I feel like I’m trying to make this show as a thank you letter to Heidi and Stew,” Levingston said, as he sat in the house seats at the Playhouse during rehearsal.
Indeed, rather than re-imagining “Passing Strange,” Levingston dug down to the show’s roots, when Stew and Rodewald traveled from gig to gig as musicians. “One of my earliest images thinking about the show,” Levingston says, “is that I wanted it to feel for the audience as if a bus tour of artists from a band backed up here and just dumped everything from the road onto the stage because the tour schedule said we had to be in Pasadena tonight.”
Will L.A. at long last embrace “The Real” or is this revival of “Passing Strange” looking to move to New York or elsewhere?
“Just ask the song,” Levingston says with a smile.
“I did not do this show because I had some long runway vision of how to take it from Pasadena to Broadway or Chicago,” he says, “but obviously, I want everyone in the world to see it.”
Levingston then mentions the number “Arlington Hill,” which is about being torn between where you come from and where you want to be.
Levingston quotes from the scene, “The Narrator looks back and says to Franklin, ‘Thank you, Brother’…’I want to say thank you for giving me this fugue.’ ”
He then gestures to the theater around us, “That’s the intention here.”
‘Passing Strange’
Where: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 29.
President Trump’s appointment of Stephen Miller — the architect of the administration’s extreme crackdown on immigration — to White House chief of staff is sparking alarm among immigrant advocates and politicians across California.
But this week’s sweeping Democratic victories are giving immigrant communities hope that control of Congress will give them more tools to fight Miller’s policies.
Miller grew up in Santa Monica but has become a relentless critic of California, specifically its immigration policies, protections and, in many ways, identity. Southern California was the first city targeted by widespread immigration raids last year, upending the region in ways that continue to reverberate, particularly for immigrant communities.
Miller’s promotion, announced Friday, is seen by many as an indication that the president has no intention of backing away from some of his most polarizing policies during his last two years in office, despite devastating midterm losses for Republicans across the country. Many viewed the nationwide Democratic swing — in South Carolina, Texas, California’s Central Valley and across the Midwest — as a rebuke of the administration’s first two years, particularly the major immigration crackdown that went far beyond Trump’s promise to focus on the “worst of the worst,” instead arresting thousands without criminal convictions, many of whom had lived in the country for decades.
“We’re concerned that this means the president may be doubling down on his domestic agenda of ICE crackdowns and on deportations if Stephen Miller is at the helm,” said Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council. “He thinks that every problem starts with the immigrant community — and that getting rid of them is the solution.”
Abdi worries that Miller’s latest promotion will further anti-immigrant policies, which have long painted Iranians and other immigrant communities as threats. He is hopeful Miller will help end the military’s war in Iran but fears that may mean more focus domestically on immigrants, especially Iranians, who have been demonized amid hostilities. The diaspora is highly concentrated in Los Angeles, which is home to the largest group of people of Iranian descent outside of Iran.
“We are definitely not out of the woods, and it seems like maybe the president might do less damage abroad but will really focus energy domestically,” Abdi said.
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, said seeing more power in the hands of Miller — who she said was behind the Trump administration’s strategies that included “warrantless arrest, racial profiling, excessive use of force, medical neglect in detention centers, people deported illegally” — is threatening.
“Now he’s the chief of staff, and so that means that he has access to every single Cabinet secretary to unleash his reign of terror on our people,” Salas said. During the midterm elections, she said her team was aware of an influx of Department of Homeland Security sightings and activity in the Southland.
“We saw people arrested the day after the election in a massive way and it almost feels very vengeful,” she said. “Almost [like saying], ‘You know you can’t stop us.’”
Now, she and other immigration advocates are preparing themselves for “even more abuse from this administration,” Salas said.
But Ahilan Arulanantham, faculty co-director of UCLA’s Miñana Family Center for Immigration Law and Policy, said Miller’s promotion doesn’t change anything for him.
“He’s been adopting the most extreme authoritarian and racist views and espousing it publicly … for the entire two years of this administration,” Arulanantham said. “Whether he does it as the deputy chief of staff or chief of staff … I don’t have a view of the difference.”
Despite widespread backlash to the immigration raids last year, particularly after federal agents killed two civilians in Minnesota, the administration did pull back some of its most aggressive tactics. But Miller has remained intensely focused on his goal to limit immigration dramatically and deport undocumented migrants.
Miller’s new role will come as the administration prepares to face a Democratic-led House of Representatives and Senate, which could provide the strongest check yet on the executive branch since Trump began his second term.
“Congress has tremendous opportunity to constrain what the federal government can do in the form of abusive immigration practices,” Arulanantham said. “Congress has a huge amount of leverage that it could choose to use to force the administration to change its conduct — in the way that voters have clearly demanded.”
He hopes Congress will pass laws that limit how the Department of Homeland Security enforces immigration laws, including how agents use warrants — or don’t, what they wear while on duty and what factors they can consider when stopping someone.
Members of Congress appeared to agree with that approach.
“Stephen Miller should lawyer up,” U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), who is set to lead the House Oversight Committee once the next Congress is sworn in, wrote in a statement Friday. He and his colleagues are committed to fighting “against his hateful policies in Congress and the courts.”
“Just days after the American people rejected his corrupt and lawless presidency, Donald Trump is doubling down,” Garcia said. “Stephen Miller is the architect of the unconstitutional ICE raids that have terrorized our communities and kidnapped and killed American citizens and immigrant families.”
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) characterized Miller as the man most responsible for “the cruelest immigration policies this country has seen in modern times: family separations, detainment of babies and children, militarized raids, arbitrary arrest quotas, and the horror unleashed in communities across the country,” Padilla said.
“We will use every tool at our disposal — oversight, investigations, subpoenas, and our leverage over federal funding — to expose this Administration’s abuse of power and hold those responsible accountable.”
Standing up to the administration was a similar response for lawmakers in Los Angeles. City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, whose district was targeted by some of the most extreme immigration sweeps last year, called Miller’s appointment an act of desperation by Trump.
The councilmember said it won’t deter her office or the community from resisting harsh immigration policies and continued activity in L.A.
“We’re going to fight back,” Hernandez said. “Even when we were on the losing side, when we didn’t have the majority in the Senate or the House, many of us were still fighting against those raids, fighting for our communities, fighting to make sure people are fed and housed.”
As a Los Angeles City Council candidate six years ago, Nithya Raman gave a firm “No” when asked if she supported the Olympics coming to Los Angeles.
Responding to a questionnaire from the Democratic Socialists of America, Raman added: “There was no vetting of this process, extremely rushed budgeting outreach, and the residents of our city had no say in any of it.”
Once in office, she joined just one other council member in voting against the prime city contract outlining the city’s partnership with the LA28, the private nonprofit hosting the event. And in August she voted against a deal outlining how LA28 would reimburse the city for the extra trash collection, policing and other services that will be expanded during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
My, how time, fortune and politics can change things.
With her election this week as mayor of Los Angeles, Raman won herself a ticket to sit among the dignitaries for the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics on July 14, 2028. And she will be asked to take center stage at the closing ceremony — handing the Olympic flag to the mayor of Brisbane, Australia, host city for the 2032 Summer Games.
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In the little more than 600 days before the Games begin, Raman will oversee the city’s preparations.
Those looking for signs of friction might note that the mayor-elect has closely allied herself with City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who has been locked in a battle with LA28 over its failure to publicly report some of the details of its finances.
It’s unclear what position Raman will stake out in that conflict and another one dear to several members of the City Council — getting LA28 to agree to set aside a certain percentage of as much as $4 billion in contracts to businesses based in the city of L.A.
During her run for mayor, Raman did what she has done on many other issues — project a more moderate, conciliatory stance on the Olympics.
“Nithya supports a successful Olympics that showcases the best of Los Angeles and delivers the economic boost Angelenos deserve: more customers for local businesses, opportunities for workers, and lasting improvements in our neighborhoods,” a spokesperson for the mayor-elect said in a recent statement. “She wants residents to share in the excitement and the benefits long after the closing ceremony, but not left to cover the bill unfairly.”
Raman’s rep said she also will “enforce the city’s agreements with Olympic organizers, put strict financial safeguards in place, and make taxpayer obligations public before commitments are made.”
She also pledged that the security around the Olympics will “respect every Angeleno’s dignity and rights, especially immigrants and our most vulnerable neighbors.”
Raman also signaled over the summer that she is ready to be a fan. In an Instagram video, she touted the opening of a new cricket grounds in Pomona, practiced her bowling (like pitching in baseball) and enthused: “The second most popular sport in the world coming back to the Olympics, and coming back, right here in L.A., is really exciting.”
LA28 Chairman Casey Wasserman congratulated the new mayor.
“We look forward to working closely with the mayor-elect, her team, and leaders at every level of government to deliver a safe, secure and fiscally responsible Olympic Games,” Wasserman said in a statement. “With less than two years until the LA28 Opening Ceremony, there is much work to be done. We’re confident that, together, we’ll be ready to welcome the world to Los Angeles and showcase the magic of our city.”
Harris-Dawson is running
It’s still a month away, but the City Council is going to have to cast a pivotal vote: Who should serve as its president under a Raman administration.
City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, in a quick interview Friday, said he will seek the council’s top leadership job for another two years. Harris-Dawson, who supported Mayor Karen Bass in Tuesday’s election, said he was unaware of anyone else angling for the job.
“I intend to be president,” said Harris-Dawson, who faces term limits in 2028.
Meanwhile, council members are still processing the Raman victory and what that will mean for the city. Harris-Dawson said the election revealed a divided city, with newer arrivals to L.A. backing Raman and “people who have been here for generations” lining up behind Bass.
“This race, I think, exacerbated the divisions of the city,” he said. “That showed up a lot more than I was expecting, and the divisions were a lot deeper than I expected.”
Raman’s young progressives
Gen Zers crisscrossed the dance floor, Modelos and seltzers in hand, as the DJ bumped her head to the beat.
But this was no Friday night at Zebulon. This was election night in L.A., and Nithya Raman’s campaign had taken over the plaza outside the Greek Theatre in Griffith Park for the occasion.
“We’ve had a mayor that’s failed young people,” Rutik Shinglot, a 26-year-old working in public affairs, shouted over the noise. “I think L.A. is ready for a change.”
Many of the young progressives at Raman’s election night party at the Greek Theatre had knocked on doors or made phone calls for the now mayor-elect. Unionized UCLA and USC student workers sported bright-pink United Auto Workers shirts. Others wore a red pin brandishing the Democratic Socialists of America’s logo.
Their excitement seems to have made it to the ballot box: Partial returns showed young people ages 18-34 had increased their share of the vote compared with the same early returns in 2022.
She garnered the support of niche progressive celebrities young folks trust, including comedians Brennan Lee Mulligan and Rekha Shankar of Dropout (formerly known as CollegeHumor) who emceed Raman’s election night party.
By clinching the endorsements of both DSA-LA and the regional UAW, she unlocked two major pools of young L.A. progressives — eager to build on national momentum — to campaign on her behalf. Rafael Jaime, president of UAW 4811, said the region’s members had contacted 116,000 voters in support of Raman. DSA-LA knocked on more than 110,000 doors with the help of more than 1,600 volunteers.
At DSA-LA, the endorsement created “a mechanism to build up our canvassing infrastructure citywide,” said Keshav Kundassery, 27, a member of both DSA-LA and UAW 4811. “We need to exercise those muscles right now to be ready for the fight that’s waiting for us in 2028.”
State of play
— THE ROAD TO RAMAN: Bass started election night ahead of Raman but the tide quickly changed. By Thursday, the mayor had conceded and Raman was giving her first press briefing at the Original Farmers Market.
— THE NEW AGENDA: What initiatives will Raman pursue once she’s in office? Bike lanes, housing voucher, new apartments, a new police chief and lots of data crunching. “L.A. has been flying blind when it comes to measuring the impacts of the dollars spent. That is going to change,” said former deputy mayor Rick Cole, a Raman advisor.
— WHERE WERE THE VOTES? We’ve got a preliminary map showing how different parts of the city voted in the mayoral election.
— ROY REIGNS: Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy romped to victory in her race against Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney. Council aide Jose Ugartehad a lead that’s been steadily shrinking over community organizer Estuardo Mazariegos in a South L.A. council race. Meanwhile, political aide Barri Worth Girvan was leading business owner Tim Gaspar in the west San Fernando Valley.
— SIGNS OF THE TIMES: On election day, Ugarte’s camp released video that appeared to show Mazariegos supporters stealing an Ugarte lawn sign and replacing it with one for Mazariegos.
— CH-CH-CH-CHANGES: L.A. voters approved all eight of the ballot measures that were on their ballot, hiking taxes to pay for the fire department, sending more city money to public parks and giving the council the power to cut the number of weekly meetings from three down to one.
— SECOND TIME AROUND: In a case of ballot deja vu, Los Angeles County voters reelected Sheriff Robert Luna, rejecting former Sheriff Alex Villanueva by a wide margin once again.
QUICK HITS
Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to Venice, a neighborhood represented by Councilmember Traci Park, and to Sylmar, which is represented by Councilmember Monica Rodriguez.
On the docket next week: The L.A. County Board of Supervisors will take up a motion Tuesday to lay out steps to fix the county’s restraining order system, in response to reporting by The Times on ways the system fails survivors.
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.
From the time I met a guy playing a violin near Pershing Square in 2005, and followed him to the Skid Row slab of pavement where he spent his nights, I’ve listened closely to what mayors promised to do about homelessness in Los Angeles.
All of them were going to fix the problem.
Antonio Villaraigosa.
Eric Garcetti.
Karen Bass.
None of them came close.
Each of those mayors invested vast sums of money and manpower and each of them made inroads. To be fair, they collectively helped thousands of people turn their lives around. But the problem is not finite, the waves keep coming, and more than 40,000 people are currently homeless in the city.
That’s one of the primary reasons Mayor-elect Nithya Raman will get a chance to do what her predecessors could not. In the most recent year of accounting, homelessness increased slightly in the city but declined significantly in Raman’s council district.
So Bass is out, and Raman is in after a contentious campaign in which Raman attacked the Bass strategy (which she helped implement) as too costly and ineffective.
“Here’s my promise,” Raman said in a video on her campaign website. “When I’m mayor, we’ll cut tents and encampments in half by the Olympics, and bring everyone in tents and encampments indoors by the end of my first term.”
Really?
Bear with me, because I’m about to explain why I have some hope that Raman might do a better job on homelessness than her predecessors. But I cringe when I hear such grandiose proclamations.
Why?
In 2006, I attended a Skid Row news conference where a gaggle of politicians including Villaraigosa touted a 10-year plan to end homelessness in L.A. County.
In 2013, Garcetti vowed to end chronic homeless, and in 2018, he said: “We can cut this problem in half in five years. And in 10 years … we can end life on the street.”
In 2023, Bass told a CNN audience that by the end of her term as mayor: “My goal would be, really, to end street homelessness. … There’ll still be people in shelters and interim housing, but to at least not have people dying on our streets.”
Have you noticed how these kinds of amped-up promises have played out?
I don’t mean to discourage lofty goals, but we’ve been let down time after time, feeding cynicism. We’re just looking for significant progress, not a miracle.
The hard truth is that homelessness is the result of a raft of problems beyond any mayor’s full control. It begins with an economy built for stark disparity, with the crippling cost of housing, and with untreated mental illness and drug addiction. A mayor can’t magically clear the decks without help from federal, state and county allies, and from strong partnerships on the City Council.
But none of that excuses the paltry returns on big investments. Mayor Bass’ Inside Safe program moved about 6,000 people into motels and other forms of interim housing as of this past spring at a cost of $300 million, and 41% of them had returned to homelessness by the end of May.
Raman wants to mothball that program and use short-term rental vouchers she claims will be far less expensive and more effective. She wants to open doors for City Controller Kenneth Mejia to audit every dollar spent on homelessness. She says she’ll demand a full accounting of county services, use Medi-Cal funds for more street medicine teams, invest in shared housing and case management.
“City Hall has put together a patchwork of programs, agencies, and dollars that were never required to prove they work together, or work at all,” Raman says on her homelessness strategy page. “No agency or program has been required to demonstrate results. No department or office has been put in charge of monitoring the spending.”
Putting a plan on paper is one thing. Pushing it through the teeth of the City Hall grinder without the wholesale shredding of good intentions is a tougher trick. And it remains to be seen whether Raman can wrangle the support of council members who shunned her and unanimously endorsed Bass.
But Raman has a few things going for her, including a penchant for defying expectations. She blitzed two incumbents, first to win a council seat and then to bounce Bass. Then there’s her urban planning education and her work as one of the co-founders of the SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition. That gave her a street-level study of the challenge as well as the disjointed government response, and she then led the City Council’s homelessness committee.
“I think that situational awareness” will serve her well, said Louis Abramson, a Hollywood resident and Rand researcher who serves as chair of the SELAH board. “She’ll be able to argue from a perspective of expertise.”
Abramson is also hoping Raman will be able to deliver more affordable housing.
“She’s … proven to be uniquely tolerant of the political risks of being a YIMBY, of making Los Angeles a place that can fit everybody who wants to live here,” Abramson said.
At SELAH, and in Raman’s council district, building meaningful relationships with clients has been a central mission. That’s not always fast or easy. Some people are ready to reach for a helping hand; others are severely damaged in multiple ways, and it takes time.
I learned long ago that recovery is not linear. Sometimes it’s one step forward and two steps back. And as one social worker suggested to me, we’re so preoccupied with getting people in the front door, we barely notice when they slip out the back door.
Reversing homelessness does not end with a temporary address. Long-term case management is critical, and so is a sense of purpose and belonging. The formerly homeless people I recently met at Chrysalis, all of them working now, and all of them housed, were a testament to this idea.
I’d love to see Raman find more ways to turn able-bodied homeless people into a workforce that can help address the city’s many needs. I’d love to see her encourage more people to contribute by volunteering for organizations like SELAH, or for faith-based groups and non-profits.
Nathaniel Ayers works on music in his nursing home quarters, inspired by fellow Cleveland native Halle Berry.
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
In the case of my friend Nathaniel, the musician, it took me, his friends in the L.A. Phil and various outreach workers a year to convince him to move indoors 21 years ago. He is in a nursing home now, where he listens to music for hours every day and has kept a gallery of photos on his wall, including Beethoven, Bach, and another person with a “B” last name.
Actress Halle Berry.
“She’s beautiful,” Nathaniel said one day when we were going over a list of famous people from Cleveland, his hometown, and he decided that Berry deserved a prominent place on his wall of fame.
My relationship with Nathaniel, Abramson said, “is not an ancillary thing. It is THEE thing. I have come to believe that the human relationship is the necessary pre-condition to this working out.”
True enough, we are too predisposed to think of the ongoing human catastrophe in purely statistical terms. But there’s more truth in people’s stories than in their status, and more community buy-in when we recognize ourselves in each other.
For the 40,000 Nathaniels of Los Angeles, and nearly 4 million of their neighbors, here’s hoping the next mayor of Los Angeles can make a difference.
Édouard Manet’s “Execution of Maximilian” will go on view at Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum next week, marking the first time the painting has been exhibited on the West Coast. The historic canvas, on loan from London’s National Gallery, has a fascinating backstory and represents a key moment in French political history, making its arrival shortly after this country’s stunning midterm election particularly auspicious.
The painting is the second of five versions Manet created (circa 1867-68) shortly after the shocking execution of Austrian archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, who briefly served as the emperor of Mexico after being encouraged to do so by the French emperor Napoleon III. In 1867, Maximilian — along with his generals Tomás Mejía and Miguel Miramón — faced a firing squad made up of soldiers loyal to former Mexican President Benito Juárez, who had been forced out of Mexico City in 1863 when French forces descended on the capital. Maximilian’s ouster and death stunned many Europeans, who blamed Napoleon III for the bloodshed.
Manet’s monumental canvas is cold and unyielding in its impersonal depiction of the violent episode, and in many ways helped birth the modern historical political painting. Through Manet’s eyes, political violence is not heroic, but pedestrian, benign even. It contains echoes of another famous political painting: Francisco de Goya’s “The Third of May, 1808,” which also depicts death by firing squad — this time the execution of civilians by French troops during Napoleon’s notorious occupation of Spain.
The canvas coming to the Norton Simon was long neglected and is thought to have been discarded by Manet when he became dissatisfied by discrepancies in the size of the figures he painted. His family cut the canvas into four pieces after his death and sold them separately. It was saved from oblivion by Manet’s friend Edgar Degas, who managed to get a hold of all the fragments. The painting was acquired by the National Gallery in 1918 at Degas’ studio sale, and the painting was pieced together again in the late 1970s.
“Manet’s Execution of Maximilian is not only an icon within the history of nineteenth-century art, but also a profound reflection on the ways in which images shape our understanding of political events and collective memory,” said Emily Talbot, vice president of collections and chief curator at the Norton Simon in a news release. “By bringing this extraordinary painting together with historical materials that document the French intervention in Mexico, we invite visitors to consider how history is constructed in visual form.”
The painting will be on view at the Norton Simon from Nov. 14 to March 1, 2027.
I’m Arts editor Jessica Gelt ready for a jubilant walk through a museum on the heels of a roller coaster of an election. This is your arts and culture news for the week.
[Update: A previous version of this story said Manet’s “Execution of Maximilian”had not been shown in the U.S. for 20 years. It has not been shown on the West Coast before, but was shown in New York in 2024.]
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The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY
LA Phil’s incoming music director Daniel Harding conducting at the Hollywood Bowl in 2025.
(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)
Daniel Harding Leads Bernstein & Brahms The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s incoming music director leads the orchestra for Leonard Bernstein’s “Symphony No. 1,” with mezzo-soprano Avery Amereau, and is joined by Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes for Johannes Brahms’ “Second Piano Concerto.” 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
Idina Menzel The Broadway star joins with the Pacific Symphony, led by conductor Enrico Lopez-Yañez, for a night of hits. 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 300 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scfta.org
NOW 2026 REDCAT’s New Original Works Festival features a different program each week over three weekends. First up, Alfonso Abraham Cervera and Irvin Manuel Gonzalez’s “las cosas que enter(r)amos,” a mix of Latinx American social and folk dance, storytelling, and contemporary dance; Scottie Harvey’s “Hole Gazers,” a comedic satire about fantasy, surveillance and life online; and Jeonghyeon Joo’s “how to bathe properly,” a solo work for haegeum, a two-string instrument, performed in a staged Korean sauna. 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, through Nov. 21. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., downtown L.A. redcat.org
Radio Galaxy Joey McIntyre, Lesli Margherita, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Meera Simhan, Rishi Golani and Jordyn Rahman star in a new play by Michèle Aldin Kushner about a New Jersey teen who dreams of becoming an astronomer. Directed by Kimberly Senior. Through Nov. 22. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. thewallis.org
Sable Elyse Smith “Sky Fence Ground” features new woven works on paper, a recent video work and a monumental kinetic sculpture by the multimedia artist. Opening reception, 6-8 p.m. Friday, exhibit runs through Dec. 19. Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. regenprojects.com
SATURDAY
Angela Anh Nguyen Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) presents the artist’s “Entropy,” a site-specific installation that addresses the collective experience of the 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires through social media, monitoring apps, and other forms of digital communication. Opening reception, 1-4 p.m., exhibit runs through Dec. 13. Old Fire Station No. 6, 534 E. Edgeware Road, Angelino Heights. nomadicdivision.org
Takes Care of Them Four large-scale prints by artist Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota) each depict a dress adorned differently to reflect on the roles of Lakota women in four areas: Wówahokuŋkiya (Lead); Wókaǧe (Create); Nakíčižiŋ (Protect); and Wačháŋtognaka (Nurture). Autry Museum of the American West, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Griffith Park. theautry.org
SUNDAY
Billie Holiday and The Blues L.A.’s Marlonius Jazz Orchestra, led by virtuoso bassist and composer Marlon Martinez, is joined by Brooklyn vocalist Mara Kaye for this tribute to Holiday and deep blues cuts. 8 p.m. Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd. sierramadreplayhouse.org
Camerata Pacifica The November program includes a world premiere by Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Mozart’s “Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major,” alongside contemporary chamber works by Michael Daugherty, Missy Mazzoli and the late Sarah Gibson. 3 p.m. Sunday. Bank of America Performing Arts Center, Janet & Ray Scherr Forum Theatre, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks; 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. The Huntington, Rothenberg Hall, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino; 8 p.m. Thursday. The Colburn School, Zipper Hall, 200 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A.; and 7 p.m. Friday. Music Academy of the West, Hahn Hall, 1070 Fairway Road, Santa Barbara. cameratapacifica.org
Romeo and Juliet: Time Enough for Love Open Fist Theatre Company presents a new age-reversed adaptation conceived and directed by Christian Lebano. Previews, 7:30 Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday, play runs Nov. 13-Dec. 19. Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave. openfist.org
Sage Ni’Ja Whitson: Revival_ _Revival A free processional performance across the once predominantly Black community of Santa Monica, visiting sacred historic sites lost to time and gentrification, with a live score of gospel, house, hip hop, and voice. Audience members are invited to wear white clothing and white masks, and the procession closes with a fellowship meal at Ocean Bay Beach. 2 p.m. First AME Church, 1823 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica. 18thstreet.org
WEDNESDAY
Destiny of Desire Karen Zacarías’ smart and fearless homage to telenovelas yields an epic, twisting yarn, full of coincidences and cliff-hangers, mistaken identities and gobsmacking revelations. It’s invigorating fun but also radiant with insight into the age-old debate between nature and nurture. When I first saw the play at South Coast Repertory in 2016, I was seduced by the production’s Brechtian energy. And I’m eager to see what fresh light director Marcela Lorca sheds on a play that my students at CalArts one year claimed as their favorite of the semester — and they have excellent taste. (Charles McNulty) Through Dec. 20. Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. centertheatregroup.org
LaTanya Richardson Jackson, from left, Kara Young, Glenn Davis and Jon Michael Hill in the Broadway/Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of “Purpose.”
(Marc J. Franklin)
Purpose The original Steppenwolf Theatre Company cast of the Broadway production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-winning drama reassembles at the Geffen Playhouse for the most anticipated dramatic event of the season. The play, about a prominent Black Chicago family headed by a civil rights icon with skeletons in his closet, has the scope, heft and flamboyant idiosyncrasy of the landmark American domestic dramas of the past. Under the assured direction of Phylicia Rashad, the actors brought the characters so richly to life in New York that I can’t wait to experience their ensemble alchemy in L.A. (Charles McNulty) Through Dec. 13. Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. geffenplayhouse.org
THURSDAY The Heiress Theater 40 presents the classic American romantic drama, adapted by Ruth Goetz and Augustus Goetz from Henry James’ novel “Washington Square.” Directed by Ann Hearn Tobolowsky. Through Dec. 13. Beverly Hills High School, Mary Levin Cutler Theatre, 241 S. Moreno Drive. theatre40.org
Kafka’s Letter to His Father Keeping things in weird perspective, CAP UCLA, in collaboration with Brightwork Ensemble, presents a production of Czech composer Jiri Trtik’s opera “Letter to His Father.” About Kafka’s artistic liberation from paternal authority, it is produced by and stars the most transformative tenor of our time, Timur. (Mark Swed) 8 p.m. Thursday-Nov. 14. UCLA Nimoy 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu
Las Migas The Spanish Latin Grammy-winning all-women quartet melds traditional flamenco with contemporary stylings to reimagine the classic art form. 7:30 p.m. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. thewallis.org
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Isata Kanneh-Mason The New York-based classical ensemble is joined by the British pianist for a program featuring Mozart, Handel, Haydn and Welsh composer (and New York transplant) Katie Jenkins. 7:30 p.m. Broad Stage at Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica. broadstage.org
Dispatch: A harrowing exhibition of Iranian art in Chinatown
“Lunch,” by BSisters (Behnaz and Baharak Khaleghi), on view at the Fellows of Contemporary Art gallery in Chinatown.
(Fellows of Contemporary Art)
“Lunch,” a centerpiece installation at Fellows of Contemporary Art’s new exhibition centered on the works of Iranian-born women artists in California, is an upsetting sculpture that’s as soft and intimate as a pillow.
The piece, by the Bay Area duo BSisters (Behnaz and Baharak Khaleghi), riffs on the myth of Zahāk — a vain tyrant with snakes around his head that eat human brains to keep him alive. It’s a tale from the Shahnameh, a 1,000-year-old Persian epic poem. BSisters have rendered it here in cozy pastel fabrics and gauzy spilled cotton, materials that speak to how women activists in Iran have been brutalized and consumed by the fundamentalist regime there. The sculpture — very funny and unnerving at once — also evokes the strange mix of distance and intimacy of Iranian immigrants to the U.S., watching the current conflict curdle their hopes for change into deeper worry.
It’s one of several affecting pieces on display at FOCA’s Chinatown gallery as part of “I Saw a Woman, Pounding Light into Mortar,” an exhibition in which six California-based Iranian women artists grapple with distance and helplessness, amid a conflict where both governments seem driven by an almost cannibalistic consumption of people and resources.
“Growing up in Iran, political repression was never something distant from our everyday lives. It shaped our childhood, our experiences as women, and the ways we learned to express ourselves,” said Katayoun Bahrami, the exhibit’s curator. “Living in the United States now, I feel a constant tension between building a life here and remaining deeply connected to what is happening back home. This past year has been especially painful. After the deadly crackdown on protesters in January and the war that followed, hope and anger have been hard to separate. Watching from thousands of miles away, unable to do much, has brought a sense of helplessness that is difficult to describe.”
Much of the work here is quietly devastating in evoking absence, fear and exile. Shaghayegh Cyrous’s video installation “Reenacting the Future” is a mirror image of a mother and daughter, filmed over 12 years in the U.S. and Iran, a visual echo cleaved by exile. Narges Poursadeqi’s sculpture “Between Dots of Blindness” could fit in a desk drawer, but the braille poem it spools through a music box feels like the last thing you would shove in a suitcase, fleeing for a new country.
“This exhibition was born during the internet and phone shutdowns in Iran, when we had no way to reach our families or know whether they were safe. That silence was terrifying,” Bahrami said. “Bringing these artists together became deeply personal for me. I recognize parts of my own fears, memories, and longing in their work. Through their art and our conversations, I’ve found ways to process feelings that are difficult to carry alone. Curating this exhibition has helped me turn some of that helplessness into something meaningful. It has also reminded me how much we need one another, especially when we feel powerless to change what is happening.”
“I Saw a Woman, Pounding Light into Mortar” at FOCA-LA through Nov. 28; 970 N. Broadway, Suite 208, Los Angeles 90012.
— August Brown
Culture news and the SoCal scene
Director Zhailon Levingston sits outside before the rehersal of “Passing Strange” at the Pasadena Playhouse.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
“Passing Strange,” a 20-year-old musical that takes place in downtown L.A. and went to Broadway, has never been performed here — until now. Pasadena Playhouse hosts its SoCal premiere.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic is shaking things up. This week it announced a slew of new leadership positions that will go into effect alongside incoming music director Daniel Harding. The orchestra’s post-Dudamel future is shaping up to be quite interesting.
The most anticipated play of the season is about to open as “Oh Mary!” heads for the Ahmanson. Ticket sales have been so brisk that Center Theatre Group has already booked the show again for next season.
A “Do Not Enter” sign hangs on the fence at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sept. 25 in Washington.
(Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP photo)
The Kennedy Center may be closed indefinitely for renovations, but that did not stop its Trump-anointed leaders from announcing who would be recognized at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors — to be held by necessity at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 7. Honorees include singer-songwriter Paul Anka, music producer David Foster, actor Andy Garcia, playwright David Mamet and country singer Barbara Mandrell.
The girlfriend of Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil was arrested Sunday for reportedly striking the singer.
Rainbow Hannah Andreani, 45, was booked in Williamson County, Tenn., for alleged domestic assault, according to arrest records viewed by the Los Angeles Times. Andreani posted a $5,000 bond and was released Monday. She is due in court Dec. 3, according to the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office.
Andreani’s arrest occurred after she allegedly hit Neil, 65, TMZ reported.
The makeup artist, who goes by “Rain Hannah,” and Neil have been in a relationship since 2011, according to People. In 2025, she was aboard Neil’s Learjet when it was involved in a fatal crash in Scottsdale, Ariz. The aircraft left the runway when landing, collided with a parked plane and killed one pilot. Neil was not on the plane.
Rainbow “Rain” Andreani
(Williamson County, Tenn., Sheriff’s Dept.)
Neil wrapped up a 34-date North American tour on Sept. 26 in Washington with his Mötley Crüe bandmates, bassist Nikki Sixx, drummer Tommy Lee and guitarist John 5, who joined the group after Mick Mars’ 2022 departure. The Return of the Carnival of Sins tour celebrated two milestones for the band: the 20th anniversary of the 2005-2006 Carnival of Sins tour and the band’s 45th anniversary.
Days after the midterm elections, Proposition 40 has yet to be decided. The ballot measure, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on California billionaires to help fund healthcare, is failing by more than 8 percentage points.
Statewide, more than 4 million votes remain to be counted in this race, according to the Associated Press, which calculates the expected vote using returns and other data. That includes more than half a million from Los Angeles County, where the “yes” vote leads by more than 7 percentage points.
The proposition has so far found support in nine counties: Alameda, Humboldt, Los Angeles, Mendocino, Monterey, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Sonoma and Yolo. In Southern California, Los Angeles is the only county leaning toward “yes.”
Propositions 41 and 42
While Proposition 40 focuses narrowly on taxing billionaires, competing Propositions 41 and 42 would have broader impacts on the state’s ability to enact new taxes. And the measures could undercut Proposition 40 if it passes.
As of Friday, the latest vote tallies showed “yes” on Proposition 41 trailing by more than 7 points, while “yes” on Proposition 42 was ahead by more than 6 points.
Proposition 41 would would require audits for new state special taxes and prohibit new state taxes from being exempted from a voter-approved state spending limit. Proposition 42 would prohibit new taxes on retirement holdings, individually owned assets and other personal savings. If Proposition 40 passes and either of these measures passes with more “yes” votes than Proposition 40, it would prevent the billionaire tax from becoming law.
A late October poll showed voter opposition to Propositions 41 and 42 had grown even as support for the billionaire tax declined.
The money behind the measures
Support for Proposition 40 has totaled to nearly $35 million, mostly from the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the healthcare workers union that proposed the tax.
Backers of Propositions 41 and 42 also opposed Proposition 40. Combined, they raised more than $300 million. Most of that money came from the billionaires who would be subject to the tax.
Unrivaled will tip off its third season with a coast-to-coast event on Jan. 8 at Intuit Dome, featuring a doubleheader.
Opening night in Los Angeles will begin at 7 p.m. with a matchup between the league’s first two MVPs, as Napheesa Collier and Lunar Owls BC go up against Chelsea Gray and Rose BC. The second game of the night will feature newly crowned WNBA champion Gabby Williams, the Sparks’ Cameron Brink and Hive BC going against Jackie Young and Laces BC.
“Opening our third season in Los Angeles at Intuit Dome is a significant milestone for Unrivaled and reflects how far the league has come in just two years,” said Unrivaled president and CEO Alex Bazzell. “With our expanded roster of talent and a coast-to-coast opening night, we’re excited to introduce even more fans across Los Angeles to the competition and player experience that make Unrivaled unique.”
Before the games at Intuit Dome, Unrivaled will start the season in Boston with a rematch of last season’s final, as the defending champion Mist take on Phantom. The opening game will be followed by Vinyl vs. Breeze.
The rest of the season will be played as part of an eight-city tour, including stops at the league’s home base, Sephora Arena in Miami, as well as Detroit and San Francisco on Jan. 11, Brooklyn on Jan. 22, Minneapolis on Jan. 24, Houston on Feb. 12 and Philadelphia on Feb. 15.
Unrivaled began touring the country during its second season, starting with a historic soldout game at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia. The league also held its semifinal games before another sellout crowd at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Three-on-three basketball made its Olympic debut at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, where the United States took home the gold medal. Germany won the top prize at the Paris Summer Olympics. Unrivaled has maintained the three-on-three approach, but it is played on a condensed full court rather than the Olympic halfcourt format.
The league features WNBA stars such as Kelsey Plum of the Phoenix Mercury, Paige Bueckers of the Dallas Wings and Marina Mabrey of the Toronto Tempo.
Games will be televised on TNT, truTV and HBO Max.
In a surprise shakeup of the Dodgers coaching staff, hitting coach Aaron Bates and the team are parting ways, as confirmed by a person with knowledge of the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said after the season that he expected “status quo” for the coaching staff. But, as MLB Trade Rumors first reported, negotiations on a new contract for Bates eventually reached an impasse.
The rest of the Dodgers coaching staff, including co-hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc, is expected to return next year, according to people with knowledge of the matter but not authorized to speak publicly.
Bates spent 12 years in the Dodgers organization, including four as a co-hitting coach with Van Scoyoc, and four as an assistant hitting coach. Before joining the major-league staff, Bates served as a minor-league hitting director and coach.
This past season, the Dodgers’ star-studded but aging offense ranked No.2 in weighted runs created-plus (111) — a comprehensive offensive stat that adjusts for ballpark factors — behind only the Cubs. But the Dodgers are working to diagnose two straight years of a July and August dip in offensive production.
Their search to replace Bates begins in a unique offseason. When the current CBA expires on Dec. 1, MLB team owners are expected to impose a lockout, during which teams will be restricted from communicating with players. So, if the Dodgers want their new hitting coach to meet with hitters or contribute to their offseason hitting plans, they will have to finalize the hire or promotion in the next few weeks.
It was Angel City’s fifth match of the season and Anderson, the team’s goalkeeper, made a crucial error in stoppage time that led to a winning goal. And while that was significant, what really made the game stand out is what happened next.
When she carried the weight of the loss home with her, her boyfriend, Las Vegas Raiders defensive tackle Thomas Booker, staged an intervention. Every time she make a mistake, Booker told Anderson, she would beat herself up. Yet when she played well, she simply considered that part of her job.
“We came to this conclusion that is not sustainable,” Anderson said. “I’m putting way too much pressure on myself so I had to figure out a way to care, not less, but care optimally. As athletes, we’re always like ‘what more can I do?’ when really I think it’s ‘what’s optimal for you?’
“That kind of gave me more freedom on the pitch.”
Playing with that freedom, Anderson gave up just one goal per game during the rest of the season, pitching a league-best nine shutouts since May 17 and leading Angel City (15-8-7) to its second playoff appearance. Anderson and Angel City will meet Kansas City (16-9-5) on Saturday morning at CPKC Stadium, where the Current is unbeaten in its past 32 games.
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Aaron Donald works on fumble recovery
From Gary Klein: Since coming out of retirement before this season, Rams defensive lineman Aaron Donald adopted a humble approach, always allowing younger, less-accomplished players to go ahead of him during drills.
But on Thursday, the future Hall of Famer enthusiastically moved to the front of the line.
The Rams practiced scooping fumbled footballs off the turf.
“I needed that,” Donald said Thursday, chuckling. “Learn bending and getting down.”
Last Sunday against the Chargers, Donald missed the opportunity to score his first NFL touchdown when, with a clear shot to the end zone, he failed to come up with a fumble, albeit in hilarious fashion.
From Kevin Baxter: Angel City heads into this weekend’s NWSL playoffs with the youngest starting lineup in the league. And with a 10-game unbeaten streak, it has the hottest team in the league as well.
On Thursday, that team got a little younger and potentially a bit better when it announced the signing of 17-year-old Maddie DiMaria, the leading scorer in the U-17 women’s World Cup. Financial terms of the four-year deal were not released.
“This person is special,” sporting director Mark Parsons said of DiMaria, who signed with Angel City before scoring 12 goals in four games in the age-group World Cup. “But she also represents what Angel City football is about and what Angel City is trying to do over the so many years, which is win.
“And she’s a winner.”
A two-time Gatorade girls’ national soccer player of the year, DiMaria scored 24 times in 23 appearances with the U-17 team, with her 12 goals in Morocco breaking Michelle Akers’ 35-year-old American record for most goals in a World Cup. Before graduating from Cor Jesu Academy in St. Louis, she scored 67 goals and had 25 assists as a junior, leading her team to a 25-0 season and a state championship.
James, who is the third year of a four-year contract worth $7.9 million ($4.4 million guaranteed), played only 12 minutes this season across five games, scoring four points on two-of-three shooting while missing his only three-pointer.
Carr, who was the 24th overall draft pick this summer, has played only four minutes in three games, missing the only shot he took.
Sienna Betts scored 17 points on eight-of-10 shooting and No. 11 UCLA used a big start and strong finish to roll to a 78-42 win over UC Irvine on Thursday night.
The Bruins never trailed after Betts hit a short basket 12 seconds into the game. It was 23-8 after one quarter. The Anteaters were only outscored by seven in the middle quarters and then UCLA had a 14-0 advantage in the fourth quarter when Irvine went 0 for 11 from the field and committed seven turnovers.
Cutter Gauthier became the first Ducks player with nine goals over a four-game span, scoring and adding an assist in a 5-4 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday night.
Gauthier — coming off consecutive hat tricks — has seven power-play goals in the four-game span. Dating to 1933-34, the only other NHL players to accomplish the feat are Dave Andreychuk (eight, Nov. 7-14, 1992) and Teemu Selanne (seven, Oct. 25-31, 2008).
Pavel Mintyukov and Beckett Sennecke each had two goals and an assist for the Ducks, and Laurent Brossoit made 23 saves. They have three in a row to improve to 8-7-1.
1869 — First U.S. college football game played, Rutgers 6, Princeton 4.
1934 — Joe Carter scores four touchdowns and Swede Hanson rushes for 190 yards as the Philadelphia Eagles crush the Cincinnati Reds 64-0.
1966 — Philadelphia’s Timmy Brown returns kickoffs 93 yards and 90 yards for touchdowns to lead the Eagles to a 24-23 victory over the Dallas Cowboys.
1981 — Larry Holmes knocks out Renaldo Snipes in the 11th round to retain the world heavyweight title in Pittsburgh.
1983 — James Wilder of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers rushes for 219 yards and a touchdown in a 17-12 victory over the Minnesota Vikings.
1988 — Britain’s Steve Jones win the New York City Marathon in 2:08:20, the fastest time in the world this year. His margin of victory, 3 minutes and 21 seconds over Salvatore Bettiol, is the largest in the history of the five-borough race. Grete Waitz wins an unprecedented ninth women’s title, finishing in 2:28:07 well ahead of Italy’s Laura Fogli (2:31:26).
1992 — Manon Rheaume of the Atlanta Knights becomes the first woman to suit up for a regular-season pro hockey game. The 20-year-old goalie doesn’t play in Atlanta’s 3-2 overtime loss to Cincinnati in the IHL game.
1993 — French-based Arcangues stages the biggest Breeders’ Cup upset, rallying to beat Bertrando by 2 lengths in the $3 million Classic at Santa Anita. Arcangues went off at 133-1 and returned $269.20 on a $2 bet.
1993 — Evander Holyfield regains the WBA and IBF heavyweight championships from Riddick Bowe in a fight disrupted by a parachutist. During the seventh round at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the chutist tumbles into the ringside seats and stops the fight for 21 minutes. Holyfield becomes the fourth man to become a heavyweight champion at least twice.
1995 — Art Modell officially announces Cleveland Browns are moving to Baltimore.
1999 — Charles Roberts rushes for 409 yards and five touchdowns to lead Sacramento State past Idaho State 41-20, setting a new NCAA record for a single-game rushing performance.
2005 — Annika Sorenstam becomes the first player in LPGA Tour history to win a tournament five straight times, shooting an 8-under 64 for a three-stroke victory in the Mizuno Classic.
2010 — Michigan wins the highest scoring game in its 131-year history by stopping a 2-point conversion attempt in the third overtime for a 67-65 victory over Illinois.
2010 — Zenyatta comes within a head of finishing a perfect career. Horse racing’s biggest star closes from dead last, but Blame holds off the 6-year-old mare and wins the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic under the lights Churchill Downs. Zenyatta entered the race hoping to improve to 20-0 on her career.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
Third-year guard Bronny James and rookie guard Cameron Carr have been assigned to G League Coachella Valley, the Lakers announced Thursday.
James, who is the third year of a four-year contract worth $7.9 million ($4.4 million guaranteed), played only 12 minutes this season across five games, scoring four points on two-of-three shooting while missing his only three-pointer.
Carr, who was the 24th overall draft pick this summer, has played only four minutes in three games, missing the only shot he took.
James has played in 74 games during his young career, including 42 last season when he averaged 2.9 points and 1.2 assists in 8.9 minutes.
The Lakers moved their G League affiliate to Coachella Valley, where they will open the season Friday at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert against Salt Lake City.
That’s what I initially thought when a political novice named Nithya Raman upset an incumbent in 2020 to become the first democratic socialist elected to the Los Angeles City Council.
That’s what I felt when Raman weathered well-funded challengers and loudmouth opponents to win reelection outright in the 2024 primary, despite representing a district redrawn to her disadvantage.
Bold was Raman filing to run for mayor just before the deadline. Taking on her ally Karen Bass, an L.A. institution she had endorsed just weeks earlier. Angering members of the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter, who hadn’t planned to mount a mayoral campaign this year. Calling out L.A. establishment shibboleths like the pricey Convention Center renovation.
Picking Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” as a campaign theme song despite its stark lyrics of urban despair. Dancing with all the grace of Elaine from “Seinfeld” on primary night, despite being in third place at the time.
“Bold,” I texted a friend when we found out Raman was holding her Nov. 3 election night party at the Greek Theatre — either a brilliant move that would mark the start of a new day for L.A., or the worst venue choice for a political loser since Hillary Clinton threw her 2016 party in a hotel ballroom with a glass ceiling.
Bold was all Raman had going for her. Bass raised more funds and was backed by L.A.’s blue establishment. Haters, from the Los Angeles Police Protective League to the California Post to her fellow City Council members, painted Raman as an immature, insecure pinko wimp who didn’t know L.A. and barely could do her job, let alone run one of the world’s great cities.
But Raman didn’t stop. She left the hipster areas of the city where democratic socialists have found a base and campaigned in districts represented by council members who openly loathed her. She trotted out her imperfect Spanish to show that she wanted to reach Angelenos in any way possible and was vulnerable enough to reveal that she still was learning. Raman even teared up in public, which City Hall insiders have long mocked her for, when crying in the name of trying for a better L.A. is as bold as you can get.
Bold is what this metropolis needs. And bold is what Los Angeles is going to get now that Raman has taken out Bass in a campaign for the ages.
Critics will downplay the victory as more a verdict on a deeply unpopular mayor than an embrace of Raman — a tree stump could have trounced Bass, they’re already saying. But that’s not what heavyweights who have long aspired to become mayor — like billionaire developer Rick Caruso, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez — were thinking when they had the chance to run this year and chose not to.
They saw the road to City Hall as too dangerous to risk their reputations on a potential loss. They weren’t bold.
I can’t say I saw any of this coming. I did call Raman the comeback kid of L.A. politics in a September columna, as indefatigable a politician as I’ve ever covered. But she spent the last month of her campaign apologizing for easily preventable gaffes that seemed to confirm all the skepticism about her. The attacks against Raman became nastier and more relentless, while Bass glommed on to anyone she thought might get her more votes, from walking alongside Caruso to standing next to future governor Xavier Becerra at Homegirl Cafe the day before the election.
I told a friend on the morning of the election that Bass probably was going to win. Angelenos wouldn’t be brave enough to go with Raman. As I wrote just a few weeks ago, Los Angeles has long gone with the old for mayor, when it could have gone bold.
Not this time.
Los Angeles Mayor-elect Nithya Raman, left, embraces her father, Venkit Raman, during an election night party at Boomtown Brewery.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
As mayor, Raman will need to be bolder than ever. Angelenos yearn for safer streets, an end to homelessness, a renewal of the dreamland that the city has represented for more than a century. They want less of the bureaucracy that has slowed down rebuilding in Pacific Palisades and made running a small business more of a punishment than a reward. They don’t want someone beholden to any ideology other than that the City of Angels needs to be heaven again.
Raman will assume office with nearly half of those who voted, not to mention the entire City Council, having supported her opponent. She needs to go in with the humility to convince naysayers, the conviction to get rid of things and people that aren’t making L.A. better, the smarts to keep what works, the courage to defy the DSA and the vision to make the city believe in itself once again.
Above all, Raman needs to be bold enough to not become another Karen Bass.
The lifelong Angeleno used to be bold when she was an activist in South L.A. pioneering multiracial coalitions and taking on the old guard. She was an effective Assembly member and Congress member. But City Hall sucked out her creativity, her optimism, her drive. She became cautious, then negative. By the end of the race, Bass seemed to be running only so she could say she kept away another DSA insurgent as a final gift to the city.
Bright-eyed outsiders drowning in the swamp — that’s the story of L.A. politics. It’s a story Raman needs to show can come to an end.
“Bold” ultimately is having hope that you can be the one who breaks systems that need to be obliterated. That was the other big note Raman incessantly hit during her campaign, culminating in her election night speech at the Greek.
“Hopelessness can be fatal for a city,” she told an adoring crowd that kept getting bigger and bigger until security closed off the entrances. “But this campaign refused to accept that. You refuse to accept that. You saw hopelessness, and you chose hope.”
Harold Greene, a beloved Los Angeles news anchor, has died. He was 82.
His daughter, Courtney Greene, shared news of his passing on Wednesday via Facebook, adding that she was by his side, alongside his wife, Charlene Greene, when he “signed off for the last time.”
His cause of death has not yet been announced by the family, but his daughter shared that “there was an extraordinary amount of love in the room” when he passed.
“We have a feeling he’s already settling into the great newsroom in the sky, no doubt with a few suggestions on how things should be run,” Courtney wrote in the Facebook post.
Harold Greene began his career as a reporter and producer for KABC (ABC7) Los Angeles in 1970. Throughout the decade, he shared his talent across other newsrooms in California, including San Diego, where he helped launch KCST-TV (now KNSD) and a short stint in the Bay Area at the CBS affiliate KPIX-TV, where he co-anchored alongside Dave McElhatton, who died in 2010.
Greene later returned to ABC7 for multiple stints, according to the news outlet, including their top-rated “Eyewitness News” team. His final return to the flagship station was in 1982, when he was hired as a reporter and weekend anchor. He served as host/celebrity interviewer of locally produced programs such as “Hollywood Close-Up” and “A.M. Los Angeles” for the station.
In 1986, he earned one of 10 Golden Mike Awards for his coverage of the Cerritos air disaster. He left ABC7 in 2000, but continued his work as a dynamic anchor at KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV until his retirement in 2008.
His on-air image was reportedly the inspiration behind the mustachioed protagonist portrayed by Will Ferrell in the 2004 comedy “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.”
Over his career, Greene earned multiple Emmys and three Edward R. Murrow awards, and he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999.
I was so focused on looking ahead to make sure a mountain lion or bear wasn’t emerging from the fog that I didn’t notice the semitruck headed straight for me.
I simultaneously gasped and panicked.
Then my brain caught up with my body. I remembered I was hiking on a closed highway. And I was staring at, thankfully, stationary construction equipment. My heart rate slowed, and then I wondered aloud: “What’s this doing here?”
Construction equipment sits on a turnout on Highway 39 on a closed segment. Caltrans is, yet again, tending to emergency repairs the highway requires after serious storms last winter.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Last week, I hiked on a foggy, misty day along a 4.4-mile stretch of Highway 39 that’s been closed for almost 50 years, after massive landslides left the road impassable (and too expensive and dangerous to fix). It’s since been a popular hiking and biking route, offering a quiet escape and easy connection to the larger Angeles National Forest. But how long can this road survive the elements, especially with El Niño increasing the odds of substantial storms this winter?
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In this week’s edition of The Wild, our weekly outdoors newsletter, I will try to answer that question, which per a recent Reddit discussion, is weighing on local hikers. I can say that, after reporting this out, I actually feel some hope about Highway 39’s future.
On Friday, I began my hike at the start of the highway’s current closure, which lengthens the journey from 4.4 miles to about 6 miles. I parked in a large lot just past the Crystal Lake turnoff.
The gate that leads to the 4.4-mile segment of Highway 39 that has been closed almost 50 years.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
The stretch of Highway 39 that runs from Crystal Lake to Islip Saddle was constructed by inmates from San Quentin and other prisons, opening to traffic on Nov. 6, 1961, according to Times archives. This was part of a long history of California using prison labor — or commonly referred to as “involuntary servitude” by civil rights groups — to construct its roadways. The state is said to have granted workers credits toward reducing their sentences based on the number of days they worked.
The road was quickly at odds with Mother Nature.
Rain during an El Niño winter caused a major landslide in January to February of 1969 near Snow Spring and then again, in February and March of 1978, according to a Caltrans analysis and Times archives.
The roadway has been closed since and remains one of the Caltrans L.A. office’s biggest headaches, as massive boulders frequently tumble down from the jagged mountain side, and landslides remain common. Caltrans, meanwhile, remains bound by state law to maintain the roadway to some degree.
Heaps of scree and dirt line much of the shoulder along the closed segment of Highway 39.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
After my mosey down the closed road, I can easily see why the road is such a headache to repair. A massive boulder blocked most of the right lane (the lane that drivers would take to travel from Azusa to Islip Saddle). Several hillsides had collapsed, sending heaps of scree onto the shoulder or roadway.
One of the biggest challenges, though, for Caltrans is 2.3 miles from the first gate where storms have almost washed out the entire road. The large hole, covered in a thick white material that appears to be plastic, has a steep drop-off into the valley below, resembling someone trying to build an infinity pool in the middle of the forest.
I was surprised to find an active construction project underway.
Highway 39 is often said by influencers and bloggers to be an “abandoned” highway, and although that’s inaccurate, Caltrans has actually tried to relinquish its responsibility of this troubled road. In 2012, the agency asked if either the U.S. Forest Service or Los Angeles County officials would take the reins. Both agencies essentially said, “No thanks!” with the U.S. Forest Service adding that its interpretation of the contract between the state and federal agencies was that Caltrans would actually have to remove the roadway and “return the area to the natural landscape,” according to Times archives.
A large hole where storms destroyed a segment of Highway 39.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
All that‘s to say: Caltrans remains stuck with this road for the foreseeable future and thus has to keep working on it.
Caltrans spokesman Marc Bischoff said in an email that multiple severe winter storms between December 2025 and January 2026 produced higher-than-normal rainfall “that resulted in concentrated runoff down a slope at post mile 40.8 that eroded the slope, berm, and shoulder, and undermined and collapsed the roadway.”
“This section of highway must be repaired as soon as possible to provide access to emergency service response and maintenance vehicles,” Bischoff said. “Work includes excavation and removal of failed roadway and unstable slope material; disposal of material; reconstruction of the embankment; reconstruction of the roadway and shoulder with hot mix asphalt; and placement of erosion control mesh, turf reinforcing mat, fiber rolls, and hydroseeding to stabilize the disturbed slopes and reduce future erosion.”
Tall rock piles line the roadway that’s been closed to vehicles for almost 50 years.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
But Caltrans has plans beyond emergency repairs.
For several years, Caltrans has studied how it should address the future of Highway 39. After weighing several options (including doing nothing) with other state and federal agencies, the agency will move forward with a plan (called Alternative 2) to reopen State Route 39 as an evacuation route for emergency service responders and maintenance crews only. Caltrans will continue to allow hikers and bikers “informal” access to the roadway, according to its January 2025 environmental impact report.
This project is in its design phase. Construction is expected to begin in winter 2032, Bischoff said.
Some of the challenges that Caltrans will face include that, “the highway ascends from an elevation of 5,560 feet above mean sea level (AMSL) at the southern end to 6,670 feet AMSL at the northern end where it intersects with SR-2. The project area is located in the San Gabriel Mountains, within the Transverse Ranges geomorphic province, which is characterized by a complex series of mountain ranges and valleys with dominant east–west trends. Most of the roadway alignment and immediate area is predominantly underlain by slightly to moderately weathered and moderately to intensely fractured igneous intrusive bedrock … Due to the geologic conditions, significant rockfall events have occurred at numerous locations throughout the project area,” according to its environmental impact report.
A view of an open stretch of Highway 39 that leads to Crystal Lake Recreation Area, which includes a large campground and cafe.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
During construction, Caltrans might restrict access, though, when it is unsafe for hikers and bikers to pass through. I didn’t see any construction workers or signage barring access when I went. Please follow posted signage, as it’s generally there for your safety.
This closed stretch is even more important to hikers after a massive storm pummeled Angeles Crest Highway, leading Caltrans to close the roadway just past Three Points. (If you’re wondering about what El Niño could potentially do to Highway 2, check out my recent article.)
Clouds dissipate in the late afternoon above an open stretch of Highway 39 north of Azusa.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
With the Angeles Crest Highway closure, hikers could take Highway 39 about six miles to Islip Saddle, rather than the 10-mile journey required by parking at the Angeles Crest Highway closure and walking that stretch of closed road.
Caltrans has tried for years to address Highway 39’s long-term future. The agency projects its current plan will cost an estimated $46 million.
Meanwhile, the agency remains bound by California Streets and Highway Code to maintain the highway. If El Niño brings storms that damage the road again, history suggests Caltrans will fix it, seemingly stuck in an endless loop of patchwork repairs for one of California’s most challenging mountain highways to maintain. That’s a strange silver lining to a bureaucratic nightmare.
3 things to do
A Cabrillo Marine Aquarium staffer teaches children about life in a tide pool.
(Cabrillo Marine Aquarium)
1. Search for cephalopods in San Pedro Educators from the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium will host tide-pool walks on Saturday (12:30 to 2 p.m.) and Sunday (1:30 to 3 p.m.) at the Point Fermin tide pools in San Pedro. Guests can attend a brief orientation and then head on a naturalist-led hike to see the animals in their natural habitats. Outdoor clothing and closed-toed sneakers are recommended. Learn more about the Saturday and Sunday hikes at cma.recreation.parks.lacity.gov.
2. Assist the land’s recovery near Altadena We Explore Earth, a community-building outdoors nonprofit, is organizing a volunteer group to repair habitat from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Friday at Eaton Canyon Nature Area. Volunteers should wear close-toed shoes, long pants, work gloves and other protective gear, along with their own water and snacks. Park staff will provide hand tools. Sign up at signupgenius.com.
3. Seek out snowy egrets in Santa Paula The Ventura County Resource Conservation District will host a free 3-mile walk from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday through the Santa Clara River Preserve (1368 Mission Rock Road in Santa Paula). A bilingual biologist will answer questions as guests meander the habitat, looking out for local bird species. Register at eventbrite.com.
The must-read
Times staff writer Deborah Vankin, left, participates in a 50-minute walking therapy session with therapist Ismary Colón Angueira on the Fern Dell Trail in Griffith Park.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
I often tell my wife as I return home that a hike felt “therapeutic,” but I mean it more in a holistic sense. I leave the trail often in an improved mood with more clarity — sometimes after talking through a problem with myself as the trees listen. But I hadn’t thought about meeting my therapist on the trail. Times staff writer Deborah Vankin recently explored the practice of walking therapy by taking a hike through Griffith Park with psychotherapist Ismary Colón Angueira, who specializes in the modality. “Bringing people back into relationship with nature,” Colón Angueira said, “is the bigger point of all this. In my ideal world, my clients continue walking after they stop seeing me. And they reconnect to this relationship with place. Being in nature is our birthright. It’s something that everybody has access to. And it’s healing.”
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
The Trans-Catalina Trail is a 38.5-mile journey across Santa Catalina Island, taking hikers through rugged landscape with incredible views of the island’s mountains, pristine coast and the Pacific Ocean. Planning a multi-day backpacking trip there is no easy feat, as visitors must pack for significant elevation gain and loss — more than 6,000 feet total, according to the Catalina Island Conservancy — on a route with minimal shade. Sports and outdoors store Sports Basement will host a free seminar about how to prepare for hiking the Trans Catalina Trail at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at its Long Beach location. Regardless of how long this trek has been on your adventure bucket list, this sounds like a great opportunity to learn more.
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.
For Democrats, one of the most delicious ironies of their historic victory in Tuesday’s midterms is that they won many of the congressional districts President Trump and his allies had recently redrawn to favor Republicans.
As the results rolled in on Tuesday evening, one after another of those gerrymandered Republican “safe” districts in Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Alabama got swamped by the overwhelming blue wave.
Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom led the charge to push back against Trump’s initiative and redraw as many districts as possible in favor of Democrats. On Wednesday, he bragged on X, “We fought fire with fire. And won.”
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While it’s all laughter and high-fives for Democrats now, it’s worth remembering that in the summer of 2025 they were in utter despair.
The GOP’s redrawn maps spelled doom for Democrats
It seemed they had no hope of winning the Senate in 2026. Their razor-thin chances of retaking the House appeared to be dissolving as Republicans simply broke out their Sharpies and started doodling on maps.
Congressional districts are typically adjusted once a decade, after each census. The idea is to reflect where people actually live and distribute representation accordingly.
Redrawing the maps mid-decade was a norm-busting move by Trump and his allies who made little effort to hide that it was a naked bid to tighten the president’s grip on power. He seemed to revel in Democrats’ shock and dismay.
While others were wringing their hands and writing think pieces about the fate of democracy — as Democrats tend to do — Newsom made what felt to many like an indecent proposal.
Newsom’s ‘retaliatory’ proposal
What if California, the country’s most populous state with the most congressional districts, just as cynically redrew its maps to favor Democrats?
But there was a catch: Californians had voted for a ballot proposition in 2008 to take such gamesmanship out of politicians’ hands and entrust the drawing of the maps to a (hopefully) independent, nonpartisan citizens commission. Newsom would need to get voters to approve a new proposition to change the rules.
Local conservatives were outraged.
“Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political ambitions have reached a new low. In his efforts to look like a ‘fighter’ ahead of a potential run for the presidency in 2028, he’s willing to ignore democratic rules in pursuit of political aims,” wrote Lanhee J. Chen, a former Republican candidate for state controller, in the Los Angeles Times.
Even fellow Democrats had serious misgivings, calling Newsom’s plan obviously “retaliatory,” “misguided” and a “moral conflict.”
They were right, of course — it was all of those things. But voters approved the new maps, and it worked.
Tuesday’s blue wave
Californians elected Democrats in all five of the state’s redrawn districts, after Democrat Marni von Wilpert won in what had been the lone holdout, Republican Darrell Issa’s old haunt in San Diego and Riverside counties.
From the start, Newsom understood the moral murkiness of his maneuver and included a provision returning map-drawing to the independent commission after the 2030 census.
Will that actually happen? Time will tell.
But as his party’s victory became obvious on Tuesday night, he didn’t exactly take the high road and start talking about mending fences.
Nearly 56% of California voters rejected the proposal while 44% voted for Proposition 40.
However, with roughly 6 million votes still needed to be counted, the results are still too close to call.
A new era for Democrats
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(Joao Fazenda / For The Times)
Today’s recipe
(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
With Thanksgiving only weeks away, now is a good time to perfect your favorite recipes that feature sweet potatoes. This sweet potato bread recipe is a good place to start. You can use any leftover sweet potato you have on hand, whether roasted or steamed, or you can microwave until tender a whole one that’s been pricked with a fork, about five minutes on high. Canned sweet potato works, though the bread will be a touch less flavorful.
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Photo of the day
Los Angeles resident Aline Argueta, 18, celebrates after casting her vote for the first time at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CIHRLA) Flex Voting Center in Los Angeles.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Jack Dolan, investigative reporter Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor Andrew Campa, weekend writer Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
From Broderick Turner: On a night when Lakers coach JJ Redick said his team was “a little flat,” Luka Doncic flattened yet another opponent.
Even Doncic started slow compared to his usual first-quarter exploits, but he picked up his pace as the game progressed, dropping 40 points on the woeful Sacramento Kings to lead the Lakers to a 116-103 win Wednesday night at Golden1 Center.
Doncic has scored 40-plus points in three straight games and in five of his last six.
So, after he went 11-for-23 from the field and six-for-13 from three-point range and after he also notched nine rebounds and seven assists, Doncic was asked if he’s ever had a better offensive stretch over his eight-year NBA career.
“Maybe. I don’t know,” he said. “I had some good stretches in my career. But obviously this could be one of the highest ones. But there’s still some work to do.”
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Clippers lose at last second
Klay Thompson made the winning three-pointer with a second left in overtime and the Miami Heat rallied past the reeling Clippers 117-116 on Wednesday night.
Bam Adebayo set season highs with 35 points and 10 rebounds for the Heat, who have won three of four after losing their first four games. Thompson scored 30, going eight of 17 from three-point range, and Giannis Antetokounmpo had 27 points, 14 boards and six assists.
Miami trailed by 20 in the second quarter and was still down 10 with 4 1/2 minutes left in the fourth before a 9-0 spurt set up the tight finish.
Garrett, the reigning NFL defensive player of the year, has been on injured reserve since undergoing left knee surgery after the Rams’ season-opening loss to the San Francisco 49ers in Australia.
Coach Sean McVay said the Rams have attempted to be “as diligent, as thorough” as possible before allowing Garrett to practice and opening the 21-day window for him to return to the roster.
McVay said Garrett would take half the amount of full reps on Wednesday and would be evaluated each day before determining when he would be activated to the roster for a game. Garrett went through individual drills with edge rushers during the portion of practice open to reporters.
The Rams play the Washington Commanders on Sunday in Landover, Md.
Watson, who signed with the Rams as a free agent after winning two Super Bowl titles in four seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs, reinjured his shoulder during last Sunday’s victory over the Chargers at SoFi Stadium.
“That’s a big blow,” McVay said. “Bummer for him. He’s been such a stud for us. He wanted to be able to play through it but just kind of understanding the totality of it all, just some of the different things, recommended to get that surgery.
Adrian Kempe had a hat trick and an assist, Quinton Byfield scored two goals, and the Kings routed the San José Sharks 7-2 on Wednesday night.
Erik Haula and Joel Armia also scored for the Kings and Darcy Kuemper made 30 saves. Artemi Panarin had four assists.
It was the 37th multigoal game Kempe has had with the Kings, moving him past Dustin Brown for sole possession of ninth place in the history of the franchise. Kempe returned to the lineup after missing a 3-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday because of an undisclosed injury.
1927 — Walter Hagen beats Joe Turnesa 1-up to capture the PGA Championship for the fourth consecutive year and fifth overall.
1955 — Montreal’s Jean Beliveau scores the second fastest hat trick in NHL history in a 4-2 win over Boston. Beliveau, who scores all four Canadien goals, gets three in 44 seconds against Bruins goaltender Terry Sawchuk on the same power play.
1961 — Bill Stacy of the St. Louis Cardinals returns two interceptions for touchdowns in a 31-17 victory over the Dallas Cowboys.
1966 — Virgil Carter of Brigham Young passes for 513 yards and rushes for 86 to set an NCAA record for total yards with 599 in a 53-33 victory over Texas Western.
1977 — BYU sophomore Marc Wilson sets an NCAA record with 571 passing yards in a 38-8 rout of Utah.
1978 — Oakland coach John Madden becomes the 13th head coach to win 100 games in the NFL as the Raiders beat the Kansas City Chiefs 20-10.
1988 — Alysheba becomes the richest racehorse when he beats Seeking the Gold by a half-length in the $3 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs.
1994 — George Foreman regains part of the heavyweight title he lost to Muhammad Ali in 1974, stopping Michael Moorer with a two-punch combination at 2:03 of the 10th round. Foreman, 45, captures the IBF and WBA championships to become the oldest champion in any weight class.
1999 — Carolina’s Ron Francis becomes the sixth NHL player to reach 1,500 points when he assisted on Sami Kapanen’s first-period goal for the Hurricanes in 3-2 loss at Detroit.
2008 — Tony Parker scores a career-high 55 points, including a 20-footer at the buzzer to force a second overtime in San Antonio’s 129-125 victory over Minnesota.
2010 — Calvin Borel and Javier Castellano tussle at Churchill Downs just moments after tangling during the $500,000 Breeders’ Cup Marathon in an ugly, chaotic scene. Castellano’s horse Prince Will I Am runs into the path of Romp and Martin Garcia. Garcia is able to stay on top of his horse but also impedes Borel and A.U. Miner. After the race, an enraged Borel is restrained by security personnel and his older brother Cecil.
2010 — Mexico beats the United States in one of the biggest upsets in the history of women’s soccer. The Mexicans, on goals by Maribel Dominguez and Veronica Perez, post 2-1 victory and qualify for the 2011 World Cup.
2011 — Drew Alleman kicks a 25-yard field goal in overtime to give top-ranked LSU a 9-6 win over No. 2 Alabama.
2016 — Arrogate catches 4-5 favorite California Chrome in the final 100 yards to win the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic.
2017 — Shalane Flanagan dethrones three-time winner Mary Keitany to become the first American woman to win the New York City Marathon since 1977.
2017 — Eli Manning of the Giants became the seventh NFL quarterback to reach the 50,000-mark with his completion to Sterling Shepard in the fourth quarter against the Rams.
2022 — Alex Ovechkin scores 787th goal for the Washington Capitals surpassing Gordie Howe of the Detroit Red Wings, for all-time NHL record for most goals scored for a single team, in 3-2 loss to Arizona Coyotes.
2022 — World Series: Houston Astros win second title in franchise history; beat Philadelphia Phillies, 4-1 iat Minute Maid Park, Houston for 4-2 series victory; MVP: Astros SS Jeremy Peña, Dusty Baker (73) becomes oldest manager to win championship, Phillies set ignominious record striking out 71 times.
2025 — Washington Capitals left wing Alex Ovechkin becomes first NHL player to score 900 goals in a 6-1 win over the St. Louis Blues
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
On weekends, 1st and 2nd streets between Alameda and Los Angeles swell with crowds of families, anime fans, sneakerheads and tourists and locals alike in search of ramen or sushi, manga and magazines, matcha, toys, Japanese crafts, groceries, traditional sweets, records, Shohei paraphernalia and vintage fashion.
This is Little Tokyo, one of the most walkable, vibrant neighborhoods in Los Angeles — a historic small town within a big city that has thrived, even if sometimes precariously, through waves of urban development.
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.
The 300 block of 1st Street is known as the Little Tokyo Historic District, a nationally registered designation that’s the heart of the neighborhood. Here more than a dozen buildings preserve the pre-World War II streetscape and represent the social and cultural history of Japanese Americans in L.A.
The block is also an emblematic crossroads, where sweeping changes and cultural preservation converge.
“People want places like Little Tokyo,” says Kristin Fukushima, executive director of Little Tokyo Community Council, a nonprofit focusing on sustainable development for more than 5,000 residents and 400 businesses. “People identify with the culture and character of the neighborhood.”
In 1884 a cook named Hamanosuke “Charles Hama” Shigeta opened L.A.’s first Japanese-owned business, Kame, a 1st Street restaurant that stood where gift shop Bunkado is today. It was the seed of what’s now the largest Japanese American neighborhood in the U.S.
In the spring of 1942, Little Tokyo was emptied almost overnight, its residents forced from their homes and sent to incarceration camps. The businesses and institutions that survived and rose after the war remain part of its foundation, including confectionery shop Fugetsu-Do, Anzen Hardware and Far East Cafe, along with Buddhist temples such as Koyasan and Higashi Honganji.
Echoes of displacement resounded last summer when masked federal agents arrived in Little Tokyo and armored vehicles flanked the Japanese American National Museum — a memorial of historic trauma turned into a backdrop for immigration enforcement sweeps.
Meanwhile, generations of activists have helped save the neighborhood from being erased by eminent domain and real estate development. Every major monument and community space exists because of negotiation between activists, city government and corporate interests. “Asian American civil rights are a critical piece of the history here,” Fukushima says, referring to a movement that fought urban displacement, created services and allied with Black, Latino and anti-war groups for social justice.
The latest chapter of endurance is taking shape at the 1st Street North Residences, a mixed-use development with 100% affordable housing that used to be a city-owned parking lot. But before the 1950s the same land was a neighborhood of Japanese American businesses and homes for a growing Black community. Those buildings were demolished following evictions via eminent domain to make way for police headquarters. Now the project represents a reclamation.
Iconic Little Tokyo restaurant Suehiro and mochi maker Fugetsu-Do are expected to move into ground-floor retail spaces surrounding a cherry tree courtyard and the Go For Broke Monument, a black granite memorial honoring the more than 16,000 Japanese American men and women who served in the U.S. Army during World War II.
Philip Hirose is a third-generation owner of Anzen Hardware, an institution that disappeared from Little Tokyo in 2023 but returned to its original location on 1st Street earlier this year. He also operates Azay, a restaurant his mother and late father founded. “Being in Little Tokyo where families have known each other for generations, there’s a lot of interconnectedness,” Hirose says. “You get a kind of gem.”
When asked what it’s like to be part of this neighborhood, one that’s rooted in a century of resilience and renewal, he says, “It feels like everything.”
What’s included in this guide
Anyone who’s lived in a major metropolis can tell you that neighborhoods are a tricky thing. They’re eternally malleable and evoke sociological questions around how we place our homes, our neighbors and our communities within a wider tapestry. In the name of neighborly generosity, we may include gems that linger outside of technical parameters. Instead of leaning into stark definitions, we hope to celebrate all of the places that make us love where we live.
Our journalists independently visited every spot recommended in this guide. We do not accept free meals or experiences. What L.A. neighborhood should we check out next? Send ideas to guides@latimes.com.
Just after 11 on election night, Nithya Raman took the stage in a plum-colored dress outshined only by her smile.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had a narrow lead in early returns. But to Raman and her supporters who packed the plaza in front of the Greek Theatre, they had already won.
A blue deluge had swept across the U.S. to clear out the MAGA status quo that has gaslit Americans for too long. The clueless Republican ruling class’ only defense was that the liberal alternative was worse than the crap President Trump fed Americans while calling it apple pie.
Los Angeles is as blue as the Pacific, yet the same anti-establishment wave, fueled by voters frustrated with the high cost of living and a mayor who face-planted during crisis after crisis, had crashed hard here. Raman, a City Council member, was standing on its crest.
A campaign that started on the last possible day, dismissed by rivals as amateurish and given little chance to succeed against an incumbent with decades of experience and the support of nearly the entire L.A. Democratic establishment, was poised to win. Raman, 45, was expected to pull ahead as more ballots from younger, left-leaning Angelenos were counted.
Standing before Raman was the coalition that made her unlikely rise happen — one that, despite the obvious differences between L.A. and heartland politics, paralleled the one that made the Democratic Party’s takeover of the House and Senate possible.
There were the democratic socialists, who embarrassed mainline Democrats in L.A. once again with a blockbuster night for candidates endorsed by the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter. In addition to Raman’s strong initial showing, Marissa Roy was ahead in the city attorney’s race, and Angela Gonzales-Torres had a substantial lead in her Eastside congressional matchup against incumbent Jimmy Gomez, a scion of the fabled Eastside Latino machine.
There were young people like Arthur Johnson, a 23-year-old Cal State Northridge student who waited in a long line on campus earlier that day to vote in person, “because I wanted that old-school feeling.” Johnson told me that many of his friends were voting for the first time “because they hate Trump, they hate Karen, and they wanted change, however it came.”
There were Latinos like Eloisa Galindo, 45, of East Los Angeles, who showed me a cellphone video of her hanging a handmade pro-Raman manta — a bedsheet sign — on a freeway bridge over the weekend. In Texas and California, Latino voters turned out in huge numbers, helping to make history in each state by electing one of their own as governor for the first time. Galindo and her fellow members of Eastside Padres Contra la Privatización, a group created to help residents affected by the Lineage warehouse fire, felt that Raman represented a new, better way.
“She paid attention to us, and the mayor didn’t,” Galindo said in Spanish. “We felt discriminated against, we felt forgotten — but Nithya did none of that.”
Galindo and her crew were far in the back but cheered so loud that it practically echoed across Griffith Park. The Four Tops’ ”Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” faded out, and Raman beamed.
L.A. mayoral candidate Nithya Raman dances with her campaign chair, Kathleen Murray, at her election night party on the patio in front of the Greek Theater.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“Do you love Los Angeles?” she exclaimed. “Are you ready for an L.A. that loves you back? Look at the space around you. Look at what we built together.”
Her rousing speech surveyed the course of L.A. history, from its striving immigrants to Cecil B. DeMille to LGBTQ+ history to the creation of San Pedro’s harbor. She tied her campaign to an election year in which voters across America “demanded change” because they were “angry about a broken status quo, and the politicians who failed them over and over again.”
Angelenos, she said, have become convinced “that this is the best that we can do. Our City Hall became a place where we became so used to saying, ‘No,’ we forgot how to say ‘Yes.’”
She decried the “cynicism that started to take over this city, that started to make us believe that L.A.’s problems weren’t just bad, but they were permanent. That L.A.’s best days were behind us.”
Raman praised her supporters for believing in “hope” — for a better city, a better future, but also hope that even the most entrenched longtimer could be brought down by people who were just tired of being told their concerns didn’t matter.
She spoke for about half an hour and apologized for going on so long in the chilly weather — but no forgiveness was needed on a night like this. Supporters cried tears of joy and hugged one another, sharing political news of the city and also the country, as the energy in the crowd further amped up seemingly every half-hour. James Talarico won in Texas! Dr. Abdul El-Sayed took it in Michigan? Mississippi was in play?!
Was the blue wave real? Could it hold against an angry, vengeful Trump? On this night, at least, it would.
“We have shown Los Angeles” that it’s “a city that is worth fighting for every single day of our lives,” Raman said.
She ended her speech by inviting her Indian American family to the stage — parents, brother, husband and twin 10-year-old children. Faces of a new, more progressive America, now likely the First Family of L.A. They descended the stairs together, and then a crush of Raman supporters stopped her for photos and congratulations.
Another Motown classic — “Dancing in the Streets” — blared, a song of freedom and boogie and promise from a previous generation.
Early in Raman’s speech, she asked the crowd for a favor: “Will you all get on the dance floor with me?” Many obliged, joining their leader to shimmy to Selena and other SoCal favorites.
Tomorrow would come the hard part: What to do next. But on this night, Raman and blue America would dance.
A few hours later, with more votes counted, she was ahead of Bass.
Klay Thompson made the winning three-pointer with a second left in overtime and the Miami Heat rallied past the reeling Clippers 117-116 on Wednesday night.
Bam Adebayo set season highs with 35 points and 10 rebounds for the Heat, who have won three of four after losing their first four games. Thompson scored 30, going eight of 17 from three-point range, and Giannis Antetokounmpo had 27 points, 14 boards and six assists.
Miami trailed by 20 in the second quarter and was still down 10 with 4 1/2 minutes left in the fourth before a 9-0 spurt set up the tight finish.
Darius Garland had 26 points and seven assists to pace the Clippers, who have lost seven games in a row since winning their season opener Oct. 21 against Sacramento.
