Space

When Meow Wolf’s Los Angeles location opens later this year, one of its biggest residents will be a 20-foot-tall, 1,000-pound amoeba-like creature named WoWoW.

Created by the L.A.-based multimedia collective Everything Is Terrible, WoWoW is alternately described as a “cosmic entity” and a “cartoony, root vegetable floating alien god.” The multi-eyed organism will serve as the centerpiece of “the N.E.S.T.,” an EIT-designed section of Meow Wolf’s new 26,000-square-foot immersive exhibition space.

In-progress detail of Everything Is Terrible’s WoWoW sculpture for the forthcoming Meow Wolf Los Angeles, shown with multi-color eye lighting.

(Photo by Allyson Lupovich / Meow Wolf)

That acronym has yet to be explained, and is cloaked in Meow Wolf’s intentionally mysterious messaging about its latest incarnation, which is set in an old Cinemark movie theater in West L.A. and will tackle the ephemeral joys and hardships of Hollywood’s dream factory. The L.A. location will be the Santa Fe, N.M.-based immersive art and entertainment company’s fifth outpost after Denver, Las Vegas, Houston and the Dallas suburbs.

The L.A. space boasts 45 local collaborating artists including Gabriela Ruiz, David Altmejd and more. Each is building their own unique installation featuring a variety of sculptures, dioramas and new media.

Everything Is Terrible is one of Meow Wolf’s most prolific partners, creating a variety of psychedelic characters for various installations over the years. The collective dreamed up the N.E.S.T. about two years ago as a way of paying tribute to maximalist roadside attractions like Wisconsin’s House on the Rock or New Mexico’s Tinkertown Museum. It also tells the story of the Noothies, a made-up community of former below-the-line film workers who stumbled upon a god — and a hidden truth about the nature of reality.

The installation presents a paradox by being a Hollywood idea that is completely un-Hollywood. It may wink at the industry’s unseen heroes, but who can afford to make art for art’s sake in the entertainment industry anymore? That seeming contradiction makes it a very Everything Is Terrible idea.

Founded nearly 20 years ago by a group of friends who met at Ohio University, Everything Is Terrible was launched as a found-footage website that created wild and singular art pieces using thrifted VHS tapes. It found viral success with videos about cat massage, and a dancing dinosaur who warns kids about the dangers of pedophilia, as well as its lauded quest to amass as many VHS copies of “Jerry Maguire” as humanly possible. (The group has about 45,000 at the moment, all stuffed in boxes and waiting to be unleashed on the world — perhaps as a pyramid in the desert or maybe featured in some sort of coffee table book.)

“I think our outlook on life has become, ‘look at the worlds that these people created,’” says EIT co-founder Dimitri Simakis. “No one asked them to do this. Someone just wanted to do a kids puppet show in some garage in North Carolina and now they’ve created a simulacra.”

That’s also what the collective is doing with its Meow Wolf exhibit, adds Nic Maier, another EIT member. “It’s what we’ve done for the last 20 years, really. We’re just a bunch of kooks who got together to obsessively make things in celebration of life and in appreciation of each other’s time.”

The marriage of Everything Is Terrible and Meow Wolf is a match made in heaven. The groups first met in 2009, bonded by a shared commitment to interactive art experiences that twist reality using an ornate handmade aesthetic.

A few years later, Maier was hired to work on what would become Meow Wolf’s first large-scale installation, Santa Fe’s “House of Eternal Return.” As he spent hours sculpting large, foam trees for the group, he says he fell in love.

A mystical, neon-colored forest in Meow Wolf’s Santa Fe, N.M., exhibition, “The House of Eternal Return.”

(Meow Wolf)

“We always joke that ever since then, EIT has been a barnacle on the side of the Meow Wolf ship, just hanging on but also occasionally hopping in to contribute,” Maier says.

When Meow Wolf announced it was opening two new spaces, in Las Vegas and Denver, it called on EIT for ideas. Simakis and Maier threw out a few pitches for Denver and one landed: a McDonald’s-like retro freak-out known as Pizza Pals Play Zone, which went on to become one of the attraction’s most talked about, photographed and beloved spaces.

“Pizza Pals Play Zone is super character dense,” says Han Sayles, Meow Wolf’s director of artist collaboration. “It’s just one of those spaces that feels like Meow Wolf. There’s hundreds of different pieces of media framed all around, featuring all of these different characters they created. They even made a bible … that had the narrative backstory of every single character and every deliverable they wanted for that room.”

Pizza Pals Playzone, created by Everything Is Terrible, at Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver.

(Jess Gallo / Meow Wolf)

When Meow Wolf’s Los Angeles project became a possibility, Sayles says Everything Is Terrible was one of the first groups she pitched as a potential contributor. EIT ended up being offered a custom project, in which the group used Meow Wolf’s extensive production facilities and resources to create their vision for the space, weighing in on everything from the shape of their room to the merch it might inspire in the Meow Wolf gift shop.

“We had a super trusting relationship with them,” Sayles says. “We recruited them as partners and negotiated a deal without knowing what they were going to put in the room. Both Nic and Dimitri have such a beautiful, strong sense of the exact genre of whimsy that we go for and they always deliver super deeply, so we knew it would be amazing.”

Sayles says she also thought the group’s experience of Los Angeles would lend itself well to the overall theme of the venue. Shakti Howeth, a creative director at Meow Wolf, agrees, saying that while Meow Wolf attractions are typically pretty otherworldly, they’re always built around an overarching story.

At Meow Wolf’s “Omega Mart,” in Las Vegas, guests first enter a satiric take on a grocery store, where portals lead to otherworldly art exhibitions.

(Christopher DeVargas / Meow Wolf)

The N.E.S.T., Howeth teases, will relate to some of the L.A. attraction’s character groups and themes, as well as its overall story. How audiences first encounter WoWoW and the N.E.S.T. will depend on which door they use to enter the room. From there, the points of visual interest will compound upon each other.

“We’re just incorporating all the things we love,” says Maier, noting that includes roadside attractions, folk art and anything “outsider.”

“It involves everything from the importance of dirt and worms to video games to experimental film to worker uprisings to entering literal other dimensions where you can meet what might be God, all within a [553]-square-foot space,” Simakis adds. “There have been times when we’ve been in the N.E.S.T. and thought we crammed in too much … but then you realize it has to be like that, because we’re trying to tell the whole story of the universe in just that room.”

For example, Maier spent much of the last two years building 45 beautifully weird costumes for the attraction, only two of which will be physically in the N.E.S.T. The other 43, he explains, are there for “world-building” and to make the story feel lived in. Everything in the space will have been created by Everything Is Terrible and Meow Wolf, including what seems like real found footage.

Simakis calls the group’s vision for the space “unrelenting joy mixed with benevolent chaos,” as well as “a beautiful folk art museum that’s also a space rave.” He likens what the group is doing to “building a puzzle out of thousands of other puzzles, gluing it together to make a new thing.”

“It’s like we’re making a movie that’s not a movie,” Simakis adds. “It’s a video game. It’s a living space. It’s all of these things, but you get to walk around in it.”

If that’s confusing, it’s because it’s meant to be — at least a little. How each visitor absorbs or receives the space will be entirely up to them. And while that could be a bit terrifying for some artists, to pour everything into a piece only to have the public possibly misinterpret or even ignore it, Maier and Simakis say they’re open to whatever comes.

“Millions of people are going to potentially walk through our space, so it has to be really special,” Simakis says. “We’ve also thought about all the different ways people could enjoy it, whether they’re a baby or a stoner or someone who’s just really into immersive entertainment or escape rooms. Even if you just go to take selfies, great. We’re pro-that. But also, if you want to keep going back or you want to spend hours there, I promise we’ve made it worth your while.”

Meow Wolf L.A. opens later this year. You can catch both Meow Wolf and Everything Is Terrible in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art Parade on June 20, marching in some of Maier’s 45 costumes from the N.E.S.T.

It could cost nearly $1.2 trillion to develop, field, and operate a new missile defense shield like the one the Trump administration proposes to establish under its Golden Dome initiative, according to a new estimate. Deploying and sustaining a constellation of 7,800 space-based anti-missile interceptors accounts for more than 60 percent of that projected price tag. This puts a particular spotlight on the potential costs of what is arguably viewed as the most critical and controversial aspect of the Golden Dome plan. At the same time, even with this grand investment, the ability of the space-based interceptor layer would only be able to engage 10 targets simultaneously, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

CBO released a detailed cost estimate of what it described as a notional “National Missile Defense System” yesterday. CBO’s $1.191 trillion figure covers various expenses over a 20-year timeframe. This is more than double the projected price tag that CBO had put forward last year. President Trump first announced plans for a new national missile defense architecture in January 2025. The initiative was originally dubbed Iron Dome before being renamed Golden Dome.

“The analysis is based on the objectives laid out in the President’s executive order titled ‘The Iron Dome for America.’ The Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) implementation of that order – an initiative now called the Golden Dome for America (GDA) – is in the early stages,” CBO’s latest estimate explains up front. “Although documents from DoD’s budget request for the 2027 fiscal year provide five-year projections of funding plans for GDA, details about what and how many systems will be deployed – the ‘objective architecture’ – have not been released, making it impossible to estimate the long-term cost of the GDA system being contemplated by DoD. In the absence of specific plans for GDA’s objective architecture, CBO has estimated the cost of a notional NMD architecture based on the defensive systems and capabilities that are called for in the executive order.”

“DoD’s stated cost appears to cover a shorter time frame than CBO’s analysis and may reflect a different scope of activities and budget categories. Even so, that stated cost is far lower than CBO’s estimate for a notional NMD architecture consistent with the ‘Iron Dome” executive order,” CBO’s assessment adds. “That difference suggests either that GDA’s objective architecture is more limited than CBO’s notional NMD system or that DoD expects significant funding from other accounts to contribute to GDA (or both). For example, procurement of interceptors might be funded directly through the services’ missile procurement accounts instead of the GDA fund.”

For its part, the Trump administration has most recently pegged the price tag for Golden Dome’s “objective architecture” at approximately $185 billion. Last year, President Trump himself had put forward a $175 billion figure, which he said would include systems to be fielded “in less than three years.” TWZ has noted on several occasions now that the administration’s estimates may just cover a portion of the planned Golden Dome architecture, which could easily cost hundreds of billions in total to field and operate.

CBO’s analysis is broken into six main elements – the space-based interceptor constellation, upper wide-area surface sites, lower wide-area surface sites, regional sectors, self-defense for four existing surface sites, and a space satellite constellation for tracking targets – as well as a collection of miscellaneous ancillary costs. The surface site and regional sector categories primarily consist of costs associated with expanding on existing land and sea-based anti-missile interceptor and sensor capabilities, such as Aegis Ashore, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, and the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI).

An all-new constellation of 7,800 space-based interceptors is, by far, the largest single component of CBO’s projection. This capability is estimated to cost $723 billion to acquire, and then another $1 billion annually to operate and maintain ($20 billion over 20 years), for a total of $743 billion. This is 60 percent of the total estimated $1.191 trillion price tag, and 70 percent of the projected acquisition costs.

CBO provides a detailed breakdown of how it arrived at these figures.

“The average cost per SBI [space-based interceptor] satellite would be $22 million. That average is for the initial 7,800 SBIs as well as the nearly 1,600 SBIs that would be needed each year thereafter because of the satellites’ short five-year service life. The need to periodically replace SBIs means that the acquisition costs would be spread over the life of the system,” according to the cost assessment. “The total is based on a cost of $500 per kilogram to launch the SBIs into orbit. Although that launch cost is lower than typical launch costs today, it is thought to be achievable using the new generation of heavy-lift rockets, such as the Space-X [sic] Starship, that are being developed. Even lower launch costs may be realized in the future, but that could have only a limited effect on total costs for the SBI layer because, even at $500 per kilogram, launch costs account for less than 5 percent of the total.”

“Both the very large number of SBIs needed to engage just 10 targets simultaneously and the SBIs’ short service life are the result of how the satellites move in orbit. To be close enough to reach their targets within the three to five minutes available in the boost phase, SBIs must be in LEO at altitudes of roughly 300 to 500 kilometers,” it continues. “However, the characteristics of satellite motion in LEO affect the size of constellations meant to provide continuous coverage over specific locations on Earth. (For boost-phase SBIs, “coverage” is relative to an ICBM’s [intercontinental ballistic missile] launch location, not the location of the ICBM’s target.)”

“Satellites in LEO cannot be fixed over specific points on Earth; they orbit in a band centered on the equator and bounded equally north and south by their orbital inclination (usually measured in degrees of latitude). Therefore, constellations of many SBIs are needed to ensure that a sufficient number (20, for example, if two shots are needed against 10 ICBMs) are always close enough to potential launch locations to reach targets during the boost phase,” the assessment adds. “The total number of satellites in a constellation depends mainly on the speed of the interceptors, how quickly they can be launched, the number of simultaneous targets the system needs to handle, and the latitudes to be covered.”

“Because atmospheric drag at the altitudes at which SBIs would orbit causes their orbits to decay over time, each satellite would need to be replaced roughly every 5 years. (By contrast, the service life of surface-based interceptors can be 20 years or more, and surface-based interceptors can be maintained and upgraded during that time.),” CBO also says. “For CBO’s notional constellation, roughly 30,000 satellites would be needed to keep 7,800 in orbit for 20 years.”

All this being said, CBO’s notional space-based interceptor architecture is still predicated only on defeating a relatively limited strike (a single wave of 10 ICBMs) from “a regional adversary,” a term typically used to describe countries like North Korea and Iran. The Trump administration has indicated in the past that Golden Dome is intended to defend against a much broader array of threats, including from peer adversaries like Russia and China.

Furthermore, CBO points out that its cost estimate does not include additional space-based interceptors designed to engage missiles during the mid-course portion of their flight, which are also being explored now as part of the Golden Dome plan.

“Although the notional NMD system analyzed by CBO would be far more capable than defenses the United States fields today, it would not be an impenetrable shield or be able to fully counter a large attack of the sort that Russia or China might be able to launch,” the latest cost estimate also stresses. “As a result, the strategic consequences of deploying an NMD system with the capacity considered here are unclear because they hinge on an adversary’s perception of the defense’s capability and how that adversary chose [sic] to respond.”

“Such a deployment could prompt regional adversaries to increase their inventories of long-range missiles (nuclear or conventional) or to pursue more effective countermeasures to improve their chances of penetrating the NMD system,” the assessment notes. “Peer or near-peer adversaries could overwhelm CBO’s notional NMD system with salvoes of many missiles in a large-scale attack with their current nuclear forces, although they still might choose to increase their arsenals of long-range missiles (both nuclear and conventional) to ensure they maintain that capability.”

With this in mind, “DoD could opt to build a national missile defense system that was smaller or larger than (or altogether different from) CBO’s notional system. A larger system designed to handle a full-scale Russian ICBM attack, for example, could include more space-based interceptors or more NGIs at the three upper wide-area surface layer sites,” it also cautions. “It could also include more interceptors at lower levels. A smaller system, by contrast, might be able to engage fewer missiles or protect fewer areas. The total number of regional sectors in CBO’s notional system is based on providing some terminal coverage to the entire country as suggested by the language in the ‘Iron Dome’ executive order.”

As mentioned, putting interceptors in space has been one of, if not the highest profile aspect of the stated Iron Dome/Golden Dome plan from the very start. Space-based weapons were also a central element of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which was directly referenced in the original executive order outlining the new missile defense initiative. Infamously dubbed “Star Wars” by its critics, SDI never came close to achieving its ambitious goals. Its planned anti-missile capabilities in orbit were especially hampered by technical challenges and high costs.

The U.S. Space Force is already leading a new SBI program, with a stated goal of demonstrating a relevant capability integrated into the larger Golden Dome architecture by 2028. Space Force has already awarded deals with a combined value of $3.2 billion to 12 companies for SBI-related work. Several firms, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Anduril, have already announced work on prototype interceptor designs.

The Northrop Grumman video below includes a computer-generated clip depicting a space-based interceptor engaging a target outside the Earth’s atmosphere, starting at 0:13 in the runtime.

Northrop Grumman Third Quarter 2025 Highlights

Over the past year and a half or so, U.S. military officials have voiced particular support for the space-based component of Golden Dome, saying that advances in relevant technologies in the decades since SDI make it a more viable concept today. They have also downplayed the costs, as well as the geopolitical ramifications of further weaponizing space, as necessary to defend Americans against growing missile threats.

“I think there’s a lot of technical challenges,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said during a live interview as part of Defense One‘s State of Defense 2025: Air Force and Space Force virtual conference last year. “I am so impressed by the innovative spirit of the American space industry. I’m pretty convinced that we will be able to technically solve those challenges.”

“Depends on where you sit, right, you know? But to say that it’s the responsibility for the U.S. government to protect its citizens from emerging threats makes perfect sense to me,” he added at that time when asked about the potentially destabilizing impacts of Golden Dome. “And we clearly see a country like the PRC [People’s Republic of China] investing heavily in these kinds of threats, whether it’s hypersonic [weapons], whether it’s threats from space. And so now it’s time for the U.S. government to step up to the responsibilities to protect American citizens from those threats.”

“We’re basically responding to a warfighting domain where our adversaries have already put interceptors in space, and we want to make sure that we rebalance that in terms of deterrence,” Saltzman said more recently in response to a question from our Howard Altman at a roundtable on the sidelines of the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) annual Warfare Symposium in February.

“Interceptors by definition refer to a handful of well-acknowledged capabilities that other countries have, like ground and air-launched anti-satellite missiles or capabilities like the SJ-21, which has a grappling arm,” a Space Force spokesperson later clarified to TWZ when asked for further details about the “interceptors in space” Saltzman had mentioned.

This all highlights the very real prospect of actual fighting in space during future conflicts, something the U.S. military is increasingly preparing for, as you can read about more here. What would be necessary to protect 7,800 anti-missile interceptors in orbit, as well as critical associated space-based sensors and communications constellations, could easily add to Golden Dome’s total cost.

As CBO makes clear in its latest assessment, much is still unknown publicly about the actual scale and scope of Golden Dome, and what it might therefore cost in the end. At the same time, space-based interceptors are a very real part of the planned architecture, with work underway now to develop those capabilities.

The concept that CBO has outlined already involves an extreme expenditure of money and resources, all for a capability it still assesses to be useful only against relatively limited barrages from rogue states. Those are threats that could well be addressed using far less expensive surface-based systems, though not ones that can intercept targets in their boost phase.

As underscored now by CBO’s latest cost projection, a relevant constellation of interceptors in space remains likely to be the most costly and complex aspect of Golden Dome, if it comes to fruition at all.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

IF you’re an over-packer who constantly battles to zip your suitcase shut, this Amazon find is a game-changer.

Shoppers are rushing to buy these compression packing cubes that do far more than just organise your holiday outfits – they actively squeeze your clothes down into compact bundles, too.

While regular packing cubes can save you around 15% luggage space, compression cubes can save you up to 50% – effectively giving you another half a suitcase to fill.

Travel Compression Packing Cubes, £19.99 (was £29.99)

The cubes are slashed to nearly half-price on Amazon, where you can snap them up for just £19.99 – 33% down from the usual £29.99.

These compression cubes come in handy for all sorts of holidays, whether you’re heading off backpacking or want to pack as many Ibiza party outfits as possible.

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They even have a waterproof compartment to separate any dry and damp clothes from after your travels.

One pleased shopper said “These travel compression packing cubes were a game changer when I was travelling around Thailand with just a backpack.

“The sizes are really well thought out, making it easy to separate clothes, keep everything organised, and maximise space”.

Another shopper said “Really good packing cubes for the price I paid.

“Makes packing much easier and more organised. I wish I had bought them years ago!”

Travel Compression Packing Cubes, £19.99 (was £29.99)

These packing cubes have rip-resistant double stitching and zip smoothly, even when you’ve stuffed them full.

Plus you’re even doing your bit for the environment by picking these cubes, as they’re made from recycled plastic bottles.

The compression packing cubes come in six different colours: grey, beige, blue, black, green and red.

As well as condensing down your clothing into tightly-packed bundles, packing cubes can be a great organising tool.

You can pick an item to bundle into each section – t-shirts, trousers, dresses, socks, toiletries – then pick a cube to pop each of them into.

That way when you need to grab something on holiday, you won’t be rummaging around in your suitcase – you’ll know exactly where to find it.

Travel Compression Packing Cubes, £19.99 (was £29.99)

Prices correct at time of publication.

Brace yourself, Coronado. The hospitality maven who brought San Diego its most over-the-top maximalist hotel — the Lafayette in North Park — is back with another glitzy project, this time in the wealthy island city known for its traditional bent.

Opening Thursday, Baby Grand includes a 35-foot faux rock wall, a 20-foot waterfall, a Mediterranean restaurant that feels like a Greek ruin being consumed by a jungle and a hidden oyster bar full of crystal and mirrors. All of this, including the Spanish statuary, Moroccan fixtures and Murano glass, is squeezed onto an Orange Avenue lot that once held a 1950s motel. If Liberace had run away with an art historian, they might have landed here.

The idea was “to create this little mirage within the mirage that is Coronado,” said Arsalun Tafazoli, founder of CH Projects, the group behind a multitude of design-intensive establishments across San Diego including the speakeasy Raised by Wolves, the hi-fi listening bar Part Time Lover and the Middle Eastern restaurant Leila.

The Baby Grand hotel and its restaurant Night Hawk stands along Orange Avenue about a block from the Hotel del Coronado.

The patio dining area of Coronado’s new Night Hawk includes seating for about 150.

Baby Grand’s high-density, high-gloss environment, which cost about $17 million and took about five years to complete, will come as no surprise to those who have followed Tafazoli’s earlier ventures.

Asked about the design philosophy behind the 2023 renovation of the Lafayette — the company’s first hotel — Tafazoli had a simple answer: “More is more.”

The Baby Grand project, put together in collaboration with design studio Post Company, is cut from the same cloth, describing itself as a “polychromatic pastiche” on its website. The goal, Tafazoli said, is to enrich Coronado’s culture and give people a respite in an anxiety-ridden time. But “it is different,” he said. “I don’t know if it is going to be embraced.”

Getting the necessary city permissions “was definitely a struggle,” Tafazoli said. “Had I known how difficult this was going to be, I don’t know …”

In the days before the hotel’s opening, Tafazoli, 44, led a tour of the site. The entrepreneur, whose heritage is Persian, wore his hair in braids and a button-down Supreme shirt featuring Barack Obama.

The Baby Grand hotel’s guest rooms feature separate tub and shower.

“I have a very one-dimensional existence. I’m single. I have no kids. This is what I do,” said Tafazoli, who grew up in San Diego and studied at UC San Diego. He lives now in downtown San Diego’s East Village, where his company is based and where his first CH venture, Neighborhood, opened in 2007.

Though his company started with eating and drinking establishments, Tafazoli said, his goals were always to create and run hotels, “the pinnacle of hospitality.” As a child of divorce, he said, he may have a heightened awareness of when the energy feels right in a room and when it doesn’t. Creating social environments, he said, gives him some control over that. Moreover, he added later, “beauty is important to me, because it conveys care.”

To make the most of Baby Grand’s compact location (2/3 of an acre), the CH team has exported parking. Instead of leaving their cars on site, guests will hand keys to valets who will deposit vehicles in a Bank of America parking structure a block away. That move freed up space for not only palm trees, torches, tables, booths and 21 pieces of statuary from Spain, but also a little faux beach with a 4-foot-deep wading pool that can hold a handful of people.

“I can’t tell you how many iterations of sand were brought in and taken out,” Tafazoli said. “Sand is its own universe. You want local sand. But local sand was not conducive to that feeling.” So the sand is from Turkey.

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1. Guest shower in an en suite bathroom. 2. Hotel design touches include guest bathroom door handles. 3. Fiberglass clamshells serve as headboard in guest rooms.

The property’s main restaurant, Night Hawk, is Mediterranean, with cooking by open fire, a Greek ruins vibe and seating for about 150. The second restaurant lurks behind the lobby — a hidden oyster-and-Champagne bar that holds about 35 people, reservation only. The space, called Fallen Empire, features red mohair booths, built-in Champagne buckets, mirrored walls and chandeliers, sconces and lamps from the Italian glass-blowing island of Murano. The floor is a custom mosaic of sea creatures.

There are 31 guest rooms, beginning at $350 per night. Each is dominated by a custom-made clamshell headboard (fiberglass). Beds are surrounded by animal-print seating, parquet oak flooring, marble tables, mirrored cabinets and custom wallpaper. The rooms measure roughly 300 square feet each, nearly half of that space taken up by their elaborate bathrooms, each with separate tub and shower, sinks from Morocco.

Now picture all of that placed in the heart of Coronado (population 20,192), which sits next to Naval Air Station North Island and is known for attracting well-heeled retirees. The median home value is $2.5 million.

Up the block from the Baby Grand is the grand dame of San Diego County tourism, the Hotel del Coronado, which went up in 1888, completed a $550-million renovation last year and starts its rates north of $600. Another option is the Bower Coronado, also a dramatically upgraded motel that reopened in 2025 with prices similar to Baby Grand’s but a much more buttoned-down style.

This view from above at the Night Hawk restaurant space shows a stone booth, elaborately patterned cushion and table top.

All of those properties stand close to Coronado’s wide, sandy beaches — which means they all face challenges as waters are often fouled by the northward flow of untreated sewage from greater Tijuana. The longstanding problem has worsened in recent years, and Coronado’s Central Beach was closed to bathers on 129 days in 2025 because of unsafe bacteria levels. The U.S. and Mexican government say they have sewage-treatment projects in progress, with improvements expected by the end of 2027.

“We are, unfortunately, not marine scientists just a group of deeply overcaffeinated hoteliers with strong opinions about lighting, linen textures, and good design. So please check local water conditions before swimming,” Tafazoli wrote in a statement.

Asked his target market for the new hotel, Tafazoli said he was looking close to home.

“I see this as a staycation for locals” from San Diego County, Tafazoli said. “The big risk is that we don’t get locals and it doesn’t resonate with tourists who like the status quo.”

That said, Baby Grand and Coronado might be a better match than some imagine. Christine Stokes, executive director of the Coronado Historical Assn. and Museum, sees at least a few parallels to Baby Grand in local history, beginning with the historical association’s own building. From the 1950s into the 1990s, Stokes noted in an email, Marco’s Restaurant operated in the space, with a “Roman Room” bar — “a dark and immersive hidden gem where bartenders performed sleight-of-hand magic tricks.”

Guest rooms, including No. 103, are labeled with inscribed brass clamshells.

Then there was the Hotel del Coronado’s Circus Room restaurant, open from the 1930s into the 1960s. That was “an immersive environment, using specialized murals and striped tents on the walls,” Stokes wrote. It’s also where, in 1950, the manager of an L.A. TV station spotted a promising young piano player and decided to give him a chance on screen. The pianist’s name was Liberace.

However people respond to the particulars of the new hotel, Tafazoli said, he knows that the larger setting of Coronado is a special place.

From his office in San Diego’s East Village, “it’s a six-minute drive,” he said. “I come off that bridge, and I feel like I’m in a different place.” It’s amazing, he said, “to be so close and feel so far away.”

The Wende Museum of the Cold War announced on Saturday that it plans to build a $16-million expansion in Hawthorne.

The Culver City museum has purchased a historically significant midcentury modern building in Hawthorne, which it plans to transform into a research institute and interactive storage facility for its collections — a “living archive,” as it’s calling the facility.

The Wende plans to debut the space in spring 2028.

“In the museum world, there’s typically public space and storage space — meaning dead storage,” Wende founder and Executive Director Justin Jampol said in an interview. “And this living archive is a hybrid that combines both. It houses the collections and makes them accessible for discovery.”

The 24,000-square-foot building was erected in 1965 by shopping mall pioneer and developer Ernest Hahn to serve as his corporate headquarters. It was designed by movie theater architect George Nowak, who also designed the Writers Guild Theater.

The Wende plans to renovate the building, adding a 7,000-square-foot extension, with flexibility to further expand in the future. The facility will include state-of-the-art, climate-controlled storage for the museum’s more than 250,000-object collection of paintings, sculptures, photographs, tapestries and Cold War-era ephemera from the Soviet Union, East Bloc, China and other countries.

Interactivity, however, is the goal: so there will be spaces for “respite and inspiration,” Jampol said, such as a “scholar’s garden,” reading rooms and a library with a community learning lab and free coffee for visitors.

“The idea is to make it as engaging and comfortable as possible,” Jampol said. “Most archives are places that are very uncomfortable and uninspiring — think fluorescent lights blinking in a basement. The idea here is to open this up in a way that makes people want to be here. And focus on the content and not the space itself. We’re trying to create an experience that makes visitors want to go on an adventure.”

The Glorya Kaufman Community Center at the Wende Museum debuted this past fall.

(Stella Kalinina / For The Times)

The Wende’s Collections Department will be headquartered in the new building. The facility will also house a conservation center for endangered objects and paper archives, and will feature a digitization and imaging lab that will make the collections available online, free of charge.

It will also include reading rooms and research offices for up to 100 visiting scholars or artist fellows annually.

“The collections, instead of being hidden in a box, will be on full view,” Jampol said. “When you walk through, you won’t see boxes. You’ll see vases, tapestries, ceramics and more.”

Construction on the building, at 2311 W. El Segundo Blvd., starts May 15. Funds for the project came from the Arcadia Fund, the Kaufman Foundation and the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, among other capital supporters.

The Wende Museum in Culver City opened its doors in 2017 inside a former 1949 atomic bomb shelter. It now draws about 25,000 visitors annually, who come to take in four exhibitions and more than 60 public programs. Admission is free.

Rapid expansion has been a hallmark of the Wende of late.

In September, it debuted a $17-million culture and wellness center offering free yoga, meditation, sound baths and therapy. The 7,500-square-foot facility was made possible with funding from the late philanthropist Glorya Kaufman who died a month before the building opened to the public. It’s called the Glorya Kaufman Community Center.

The Wende’s Glorya Kaufman Community Center includes a century old A-frame theater, an old MGM prop house, for free culture and wellness events.

(Stella Kalinina / For The Times)

In February, the Wende bought a three-bedroom house built in the 1940s adjacent to the museum’s campus that will be used as a live-work space for photographers in residence. It will include a community space for photography workshops and a post-production studio. The Nikita Foundation and the Victor Family Foundation provided funding.

It debuted a tiny home on its campus last fall, nicknamed “The Stevie” after donor Steve Markoff. It’s used for cross-disciplinary artist residencies.

A facility for interactive museum storage and research is not a new concept in Los Angeles.

The Autry Museum of the American West — after merging with the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in 2003 and since stewarding its collection of Indigenous art and artifacts — debuted a $32-million, 100,000-square-foot facility in Burbank in October 2022.

The so-called “Resources Center” was built to house, conserve and care for both museums’ collections in a state-of-the-art, climate-controlled and fire-safe environment. It also serves as a research destination for scholars, artists, tribal representatives and others to study the collections.

Jampol said that the project will enable the Wende to serve a wider swath of visitors, from specialists to the general public, and to venture outside of Culver City to engage other communities.

“It’s about making the collections both safe and accessible,” he said. “We looked to the Autry for inspiration alongside the V&A East in London — they both invite people in from the community, alongside scholars, to explore the collections. It’s the democratization of art — I love the ethos and spirit of that.”

In the fragmented mysteries of the great Argentine filmmaker Lucretia Martel, her explorations always start with sensory flashes: faces, spaces, objects, sounds in transfixing procession. The language is its own, resulting in disorienting but undiluted depictions of the worlds of modern elites (“La Ciénega,” “The Headless Woman”) and 18th century colonists (“Zama”) alike.

But now, with her first feature documentary, “Our Land (Nuestra Tierra),” Martel unravels a political crime and the larger offenses behind it with a vital clarity. The film is centered on the 2009 murder of Javier Chocobar, an Indigenous Chuchagasta man from Argentina’s northwestern Tucumán province, who was shot while defending his ancestral homeland from a thuggish incursion. The weight of the issue at hand — stolen land, territorial rights and the overdue recognition of a colonized country’s original peoples — brings out a tantalizing lucidity from the typically elusive Martel on a serious subject that requires discipline.

In one sense, she’s dealing with a rights issue too painful to be aggressively aestheticized, but she’s also exploring a blood-soaked injustice that can’t be treated conventionally. She begins, in fact, with rolling satellite images from space — as if to say: This appropriation of nature is the world’s problem, not just Argentina’s.

What follows, toggling between a courtroom and vast, contested land (filmed with dreamlike urgency by cinematographer Ernest de Carvalho), is a righteous, visually arresting swirl of fact and feeling, past and present. It’s also anchored by the stories of a community desperate to claim territory they’ve cultivated for centuries. “Our Land” is as honorable a documentary as you’re likely to encounter this year about what fighting looks like in today’s era of grab-what-you-can thievery.

First, we hear from the defendants, captured by Martel’s cameras at their 2018 trial in Buenos Aires (an unconscionable nine years after the shooting). The three accused men — a businessman and two ex-cops — flounder at positioning themselves as the true victims when their own handheld video of the incident shows otherwise: The confrontation with the Chuchagastas only escalated because they brought a gun. Their lawyers obnoxiously push a narrative of ownership versus trespassers, backed by reams of documents and tossed-around historical dates.

But as Martel patiently unfolds the Chuchagastas’ perspective — personal narratives that come to life in intimate photos, atmospheric sound design and warm home footage — we begin to understand that documents and files are a bogus battleground given their hundreds of years of careful tending. One community member distrusts dialogue to begin with, calling it a means to “give up something.”

“Our Land” is the work of a director whose attention is rigorous, whose care is genuine, but who is also conscious of her outsider’s perspective. It’s an ally’s respect. There’s no better proof of that than in her drone shots of this embattled community’s sun-soaked valley: elegant, purposeful, even awkward (a bird hits one) visitations from the air. They’re a reminder that she’s the filmmaker, surveying a story that belongs to others. Documentaries don’t get much more honest than that.