CANNES, France — The movies of Na Hong-jin aren’t hard to love — they’re as obsession-worthy as the stylish rigor with which they are made. His 2008 debut, “The Chaser,” found new febrility in the post-Fincher serial killer thriller. “The Wailing” somehow added ghosts, demon-possessed children and inky black crows to the mix with a near-crazed sense of showmanship.
That was 10 years ago. Na, 51, now sits on the other side of a project that has consumed him for years, a sci-fi action film called “Hope” that arrives with expensive CGI, a pair of A-list stars (Michael Fassbender and Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander) and James Cameron-sized franchise ambitions. It will undoubtedly make Na’s gallows-humor-inflected brand more global, even if it lifts him out of the cult niche that’s nourished him to date.
Cannes is an unlikely place to launch “Hope.” That could be seen as a sign that the festival’s increasing accommodation of blockbuster bigness doesn’t need Hollywood. Na sits in the corner of a Côte d’Azur waterfront lounge on a glorious midday, the sky an almost abstract blue. He tugs at his goatee distractedly. His world premiere is tonight.
Neon, the distributor currently enjoying a six-year Palme d’Or winning streak, will release “Hope” in America sometime after its summer bow in Na’s native South Korea. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity. It also contains significant spoilers.
A scene from the movie “Hope,” directed by Na Hong-jin.
(Neon)
When did you realize that you had a big sci-fi alien monster movie in you?
The idea came to me in 2017 in Seoul. The premise started off with somebody watching news in a diner or a small restaurant. It was that image that I had in my head. So I started developing that initial image in more detail. By 2018, I was able to write my first draft.
“Hope” brings to mind several genre classics, from “Jaws” and John Carpenter movies like “The Thing,” to something more homegrown such as Bong Joon Ho’s “The Host.” Were those inspiring to you?
I must have looked all the genre films that I could find, including the ones you mention, before I went into filming. And, as I hope you noticed, I was looking more at films from before 2000 and I tried to reflect that look.
It seems like you’re using Cannes as a moment to pivot or reinvent yourself. Is that intentional?
I didn’t intend for this to be a turning point in terms of style or direction going forward. I never thought of it that way. What I really dwelled on was thinking about how to tell this story in a way that was approachable and entertaining for people.
Why did you set the story in the demilitarized zone?
If you look at it from a universal perspective, what happens in this very shabby, humble, small, insignificant space potentially creates an impact that can go on infinitely. I think none of the characters in the film do anything with any malice. I guess the underlying story I want to tell is that there is no reason for evil intention behind anything, but innocent acts can build up to something tragic.
Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander are wonderful surprises in the movie as some rather dignified aliens. What led you to them?
When I was casting the alien roles, I had a bigger story in mind. I don’t know whether there’ll be a sequel after this one, but if so, that sequel is going to be centered around them. So picking the right actors was very important for me. We asked them to learn this invented alien language, which they prepared and came onto set knowing.
How important to you is comedy and releasing tension with laughs?
Very. I try to really think it through and if it comes out the way I intended, that gives me such a thrill. I tried to incorporate it in many places.
A lot of the movie feels like a virtuoso chase sequence, people barreling down the road, guns blazing. But it took me a minute to realize that the more interesting question is: Who’s doing the chasing? Is “Hope” meant to make us examine our own violence?
Yes, very much so. And two of the major chase scenes were designed so that what starts off as righteous somehow tilts toward being unjust. I wanted the action to bring up that transition in perspective.
You’ve premiered at Cannes before but, in a way, it feels like the wrong festival for a movie like this. You’re laughing because I think you agree with me.
It goes without saying. I’m incredibly nervous. And I feel so grateful that you’re treating me so nicely and gently.
A scene from the movie “Hope,” directed by Na Hong-jin.
(Neon)
Why did it take you 10 years to make this film?
There was a pandemic in the middle of that. But except for the pandemic where everything stopped, I was working my ass off before and after. It still took this long. I’m a little concerned myself, like: How did this happen?
With “Hope,” are you saying goodbye to the filmmaker you once were?
Not at all. Throughout the entire process of making this film, I was bloodthirsty. I was thirsting for blood. I have another script written already.
And maybe now it’ll go faster because there won’t be a pandemic. Are you hoping that this movie is going to have an impact on the Korean film industry?
It’s not my place to say that. I’m not sure. I want things to be freer.
Would it be a mistake to read this film as an allegory for what’s happening now in the world? Is it a plea for understanding?
I don’t regard it as a plea for understanding. Rather, let’s hope people will be able to relate to it and be empathetic about the story and realize for themselves, understand for themselves. Maybe there’s something more to it, but you take away what you will from that.
Your dark humor flares on occasion. Did you make it a point to try to preserve that?
Well, you can’t just do something like this without having that. It’s not fun.
This doesn’t feel like an “Avatar”-style film. There’s an openness to it, a sense of exploration. Do you believe in heroes?
I do believe in heroes, but, as I tell in the story, anyone can be a hero.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Thousands of people rallied Saturday in the cradle of the modern civil rights movement to mobilize a new voting rights era as conservative states dismantle congressional districts that helped secure Black political representation.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey called Montgomery “sacred soil” in the fight for civil rights.
“If we in our generation do not now do our duty, we will lose the gains and the rights and the liberties that our ancestors afforded us,” Booker said in the Alabama capital.
The crowd was led in chants of “we won’t go back” and “we fight.”
“We are not going down without a fight. We are not going down to Jim Crow maps,” Shalela Dowdy, a plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case said, alluding to racial gerrymandering in several states that has followed the recent Supreme Court decision to roll back the Voting Rights Act.
A crowd of thousands gathered in front of the city’s historic Alabama Capitol, where the Confederacy was formed in 1861 and where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in 1965 at the end of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march. The stage, set in front of the Capitol, was flanked from behind by statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and civil rights icon Rosa Parks — dueling tributes erected nearly 90 years apart.
Speakers said the spot was once the temple of the Confederacy and transformed into holy ground of the civil rights movement.
Some in the crowd said the effort to redraw lines has echoes of the past.
“We lived through the ’60s. It takes you back. When you think that Alabama’s moving forward, it takes two steps back,” said Camellia A. Hooks, a 70-year-old Montgomery resident.
The rally began in Selma, where a violent clash between law enforcement and voting rights activists in 1965 galvanized support for passage of the Voting Rights Act. It then moved to the state Capitol, where King gave his “How Long, Not Long” speech the same year.
The Supreme Court ruling involving Louisiana hollowed out a tenet of the Voting Rights Act that was already weakened by a separate high court decision in 2013 and then narrowed further over the years. That helped clear the way for stricter voter ID laws, registration restrictions and limits on early voting and polling place changes, including in states that once needed federal pre-clearance before they could change voting laws because of their historical discrimination against Black voters.
Veterans of the civil rights movement are alarmed by the speed of the rollbacks, noting that protections won through generations of sacrifice have been weakened in little more than a decade.
Kirk Carrington, 75, was a teen in 1965 when law enforcement officers attacked marchers in Selma on what became known as Bloody Sunday. A white man on a horse wielding a stick chased Carrington through the streets on that day, he said.
“It’s really just appalling to me and all the young people that marched during the ’60s, fought hard to get voting rights, equal rights and civil rights,” Carrington said. “It’s sad that it’s continuing after 60-plus-odd years that we are still fighting for the same thing we fought for back then.”
The effect in Montgomery
Montgomery is home to one of the congressional districts that is being altered in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.
A federal court in 2023 redrew Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District after ruling that the state intentionally diluted the voting power of Black residents, who make up about 27% of its population. The court said there should be a district where Black people are a majority or near-majority and have an opportunity to elect their candidate of choice.
But the Supreme Court cleared the way for a different map that could let the GOP reclaim the seat. While the matter remains under litigation, the state plans special primaries Aug. 11 under the new map.
Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, who won election in the district in 2024, said the dispute is not about him but rather people’s opportunity to have representation.
“When Republicans are literally turning back the clock on what representation, what the faces of representation look like, what the opportunities, legitimate opportunities for representation look like across this country, then I think it starts to resonate with people in a little bit of a different way,” Figures said.
Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, a Republican, said the Louisiana ruling provided an opportunity to revisit a map that was forced on the state by the federal court.
“People tend to forget what happened. When this thing went to court, the Republican Party had that seat, congressional seat 2,” Ledbetter said last week. “There’s been a push through the courts to try to overtake some of these red state seats, and that’s certainly what happened in that one.”
Evan Milligan, the lead plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case, said there is grief over the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, but it is crucial that people recommit to the fight.
“We have to accept that this is the new reality, whether we like it or not,” Milligan said. “We don’t have to accept that this will be the reality for the next 10 years or two years or forever.”
When I wrote last week about one of my favorite mountain ranges — L.A.‘s sidewalks — I immediately began fielding questions.
People wanted to know about the scoring system that awarded just 15 points, out of 45, to John Coanda and his wife, Barbara, who uses a wheelchair because of ALS. The Mar Vista couple had applied to the city’s Safe Sidewalks program to have some busted-up sidewalk in front of their home repaired.
With several sidewalk hazards on both sides of their block, Barbara can’t safely make it down her street. So how is it possible that under L.A.’s “Sidewalk Repair Program Prioritization and Scoring System,” their meager 15 points means they could be waiting “in excess of 10 years” for help?
I have the answers.
The Coandas got 15 points for being in a residential zone. But they didn’t meet the requirements for getting two additional awards of 15 points. They do not live within 500 feet of a bus or transit stop. And they had not been in the sidewalk repair backlog queue for more than 120 days.
It is not clear, however, that moving up to a score of 30 will bring out city work crews in less than 10 years. Knowing what I know, I wouldn’t bet on it.
The scoring system exists because in a lawsuit settlement 10 years ago, the city agreed to spend $1.4 billion over 30 years to repair damaged sidewalks and other infrastructure failures that impede the mobility of people with disabilities.
But there’s a backlog. A huge backlog, in the thousands. At my request, the city disclosed on Friday that it’s receiving about twice as many new disability-access repair requests each year as it’s addressing. In addition, the backlog for disability access requests and from residents applying for a sidewalk repair rebate program stands at roughly 30,000, with about 600 repairs being made each year.
As I said in a previous column, L.A. might indeed be all buttoned up by the ‘28 Olympics, but that would be 3028, not 2028.
Cracked sidewalks, to be clear, are but a symptom of a deeper, decades-long breakdown at City Hall. Basic services have been sacrificed to pay for employee compensation and pension costs the city can’t afford, with homeless services adding to the budget crisis.
By the way, I heard from one reader in response to my suggestion last week that if you can’t wait 10 years or more for the city to fix a broken sidewalk, you can apply to the rebate program, which will cover a portion of repairs. Don’t bother, said Lori Lerner Gray, who owns a house in Silver Lake and applied two years ago, but finally gave up.
“There is a massive waiting list and it’s a very complicated procedure just to try to get on it, let alone speak with anyone to help,” Gray said. “Once you finally get into the program, it’s impossible to proceed because of permits, engineering reports and finally you are required to bring the entire area to ADA compliance on your own dime.”
She said she was told she’d have to pay to relocate a utility pole.
And sidewalks aren’t the only infrastructure problem, as other readers noted. The city is way behind on filling potholes, repaving streets, installing curb ramps, making park improvements and replacing broken lights. I recently wrote about all the blight around City Hall, including the graffiti-tagged monument and fountain that has been inoperable for most of the last 60 years.
Oren Hadar, a Mid-City resident who writes about housing and transportation on his The Future Is L.A. website, reported last year in a Times op-ed that city streets were falling apart because the city had switched from repaving entire roads to doing what it called “large asphalt repair.”
With the switch, the city avoided federal requirements to upgrade curb ramps on repaved streets, Hadar said. He told me that when he travels to other cities near or far, “I’m always jealous of everything. Sidewalks are in better shape or there are better bike lanes. … You could go to even Santa Monica or Culver City. You don’t have to go far to see infrastructure that’s better.”
Other major cities have had formal infrastructure plans for years, while L.A. has ducked and dithered. Finally, earlier this month, Mayor Karen Bass introduced the city’s long-awaited CIP (capital infrastructure program), and offered a brutal assessment of what went wrong.
“For too long,” she said in the executive summary, “information has been scattered across departments, buried in lengthy reports and budgets, and difficult to fully understand. These challenges have had real consequences, contributing to decades of underinvestment in our built environment.”
The summary reads like an indictment of City Hall leadership and the manner in which public spaces have deteriorated. With Bass running for reelection, voters have to decide whether her role in those failures is grounds for dismissal, or her campaign-season pitch for a new day should help earn her a second term.
The report, with backing by members of the City Council, cited “fragmented systems and data silos,” “no shared vision across city departments,” “growing maintenance deferrals,” “slow, inefficient capital planning,” no “project intake standards,” “highly decentralized and uncoordinated grants,” “resource planning and staffing misalignment,” and “opaque capital planning process.”
Way to go, team.
You could take many of those same critiques and apply them to the haphazard way in which city and county leaders have addressed homelessness.
However, the city’s infrastructure plan does offer a framework for assessing the damage and prioritizing projects, and using charter reform to create a public works director position with greater authority. None of this will happen quickly, and given the budget crunch, you might be wondering how any of this would be paid for.
The suggestions in the report include bonds, a parcel tax, grants, fees on tickets to concerts and sporting events, fees on taxi and rideshare trips, and much, much more. None of this will be popular, especially if the public is unconvinced that city leaders can be trusted with more money.
Urban planner Deborah Murphy, chair of the city’s pedestrian advisory committee, noted that L.A. has gotten grants or state funding in the past for specific projects and then, because of staffing shortages or other stumbles, failed to hold up its end of the deal.
“It kind of ruins our reputation for getting future money,” Murphy said.
“But the key question is: who is actually in charge of making it happen?” she asked.
It’s critical, Meaney suggested, for city leaders to push for charter reform that puts infrastructure authority under a newly empowered public works director. If the city gets this right, she said, implementation of the infrastructure plan “could finally show Angelenos the true scale of deferred maintenance, make trade-offs visible, and create a road map for better sidewalks, streets, parks, and accessibility.”
If the current fragmented authority remains in place, Meaney said, the headline would be:
“No one is in charge of your sidewalk and City Hall is determined to keep it that way.”
Now we know exactly where and when all 32 teams will play every week this fall.
That’s pretty exciting, right?
Oh, and all 32 teams also dropped schedule release videos, with all the Easter eggs, inside jokes, pop culture references and head-scratching moments you can handle.
Now that is exciting.
As always, the teams have given us a wide variety of visual experiences to enjoy. There are spoofs galore (the Rams adapted the “Napoleon Dynamite” opening credits and even included a newspaper called the Los Angeles Hard Times; the Las Vegas Raiders produced a new version of “Step Brothers” starring quarterbacks Fernando Mendoza and Kirk Cousins; the Kansas City Chiefs took on the QVC shopping network).
Some videos were clearly meant to appeal strictly to that team’s fanbase, such as the Philadelphia Eagles’ 14-minute (by far the longest of the bunch) offering of five players giving their “unfiltered reactions” to every game on their schedule and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ piece that pokes loving fun at local fans with many references only true Yinzers would understand.
While many of the videos were high-tech and well-rehearsed, a handful featured unscripted fun, like New York Giants quarterback Jameis Winston drawing pictures to help fans guess the opposing teams and Baltimore Ravens receiver Zay Flowers surprising a couple of super fans at their wedding.
Here are five of our favorites from this year’s crop of videos. It’s an extremely subjective list, but the stakes could be high — the Seattle Seahawks had our No. 1 video last May and went on to win the Super Bowl nine months later.
The 67-mile Backbone Trail through the Santa Monica Mountains is a bucket-list trip for many Southern California hikers.
Often, though, it’s hard to carve out time to tackle the whole thing at once. There are limited backcountry camping options, and water can be sparse on the trail. That’s why hikers, myself included, often complete it in sections, similarly to how people will hike the Pacific Crest Trail or Appalachian Trail in segments.
Last week, I ticked off a segment that runs through Latigo, Solstice and Corral canyons that my friends who frequently hike the Santa Monica Mountains have told me is a “must” to try out. I can now see why!
I am eager to share my experience with you and how this hike offers essentially everything there is to love about hiking in the Santa Monicas: incredible ocean views, massive rock formations, native wildflowers and diverse wildlife experiences — all within a short drive from L.A. How lucky are we?
You are reading The Wild newsletter
Sign up to get expert tips on the best of Southern California’s beaches, trails, parks, deserts, forests and mountains in your inbox every Thursday
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
I often hike alone on the weekdays, and I have come to enjoy the solitude. But last week, I hiked a 9.8-mile segment of the Backbone Trail alongside almost 30 other hikers.
Hikers from the Santa Monica Mountains Trails Council’s annual Backbone Trek trudge along the trail.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
It is an annual trip organized by the Santa Monica Mountains Trails Council, a volunteer-run group that maintains trails throughout the Santa Monica Mountains and nearby public lands. (The council has regular volunteer opportunities, including three trail workdays this month; RSVP required.)
This was its 21st year to offer the trip at a cost of $625 per person. Trail council volunteers set the route, provide daily hike leaders, set up camp for the group and lug most of the equipment — outside of daypacks, water and snacks — to the group’s next campsite.
The trip usually ends at the eastern terminus of the Backbone Trail in Will Rogers State Park. That area remains closed after the Palisades fire damaged the trail, destroying the Chicken Ridge Bridge. The bridge “is an important link on the [Backbone Trail] and will be the biggest single reconstruction effort for State Parks,” Rachel Glegg of the Sierra Club’s Santa Monica Mountains Task Force wrote last year.
A view from the Backbone Trail around the Newton Canyon area of the Santa Monica Mountains.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
I joined the trail council‘s Backbone Trek last Wednesday as an enthusiastic interloper. I showed up late because of horrendous traffic on the 101 Freeway, earning me the trail nickname “Late Edition,” in honor of my punctuality and newspaper job. I felt immediately welcome (and forgiven).
We took a bus from Malibu Creek State Park’s lush group campsite over to the Latigo Canyon trailhead. There is a dirt parking lot there, making it an easy starting point for a day hike.
Our goal was to trek four miles east to the Corral Canyon area, where we’d have lunch among giant rock formations. Shaded by laurel sumac, oak trees and other native plants, we began our journey through the canyons. We were immediately greeted by a resplendence of wildflowers, including purple-pink woolly bluecurls, bright orange southern bush monkey flower, red bursts of cardinal catchfly and at least one Catalina Mariposa lily.
Clockwise from top left: Southern bush monkey flower, Catalina Mariposa lily, keckiella corymbosa and San Bernardino larkspur. Center: Variable checkerspot.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Because I love to dillydally, photographing flowers and taking in the views, I became fast friends with Denise Pomonik, a trail council leader who served as the day’s sweeper, making sure no one got left behind.
Pomonik, who lives in the San Fernando Valley north of the mountains, started volunteering with the council in early 2019 after seeing the 2018 Woolsey fire rip through the Santa Monica Mountains. “The more you hike an area or mountain-bike it, the more personal it gets,” Pomonik said. “I couldn’t control the fire, but I could control what I could do afterward.”
Denise Pomonik of the Santa Monica Mountains Trails Council waves from a large rock formation where the Backbone Trek group had lunch.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
The council organizes the annual Backbone Trek not as a fundraiser but instead as a means of creating new land stewards who they hope will fall in love enough with the landscape to want to help protect it, either by donations, volunteerism or activism.
“The more people who fall in love with this mountain range, the more it will be protected,” said Pomonik, who works in the entertainment industry and had no prior trail work experience.
I did not anticipate how expansive the views would be, both of the Pacific Ocean to the south and the nearby peaks, hillsides and valleys to our north. I felt grateful and small.
Chatting with several of the hikers on the trip, I found they had signed up for two main reasons: adventure and healing.
A hiker on the Backbone Trek takes a photo of another as they trek along large boulders and ancient rock formations.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Vidya Oftedal, of Soldotna, Alaska, heard about the trip from a friend who serves on the trails council. Having someone else set up and haul all the gear was the biggest draw for her, she said, because then she could just simply focus on the hiking.
Oftedal, 71, said she loved pushing herself every day on the trip, finding a balance between knowing her limits and learning more about what her body can do.
“I’ve always loved the outdoors,” Oftedal said. “It speaks to me. I feel oneness with nature. Everybody is such an inspiration here. A lot of the women have done solo [trips] … and they’re all seniors like me. It’s like, ‘Wow, maybe I can pick up some courage and do things like that.’”
The camaraderie among the group was easy to see. Although many of them had been strangers just a few days prior, the hikers checked on each other and cheered one another on. After especially steep stretches, we’d pause to catch our breath, and someone would undoubtedly offer snacks to their fellow group members, including roasted fox nuts, or makhana, which the group had become especially taken with.
A raven flies over the rock formation that hikers along the Backbone Trail often say resembles an elephant’s eye.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
At lunch, we sat in an area full of large, dramatic rock formations, including one that resembled an elephant’s eye. A few group members perched into small shady alcoves within the boulders. I commented that people had probably been sharing meals together in this area for thousands of years.
I was surprised by how many hikers on the trip were from Southern California but had never visited the Backbone Trail.
I spoke to Bill Edmonds, who told me he’d wanted to tackle the Backbone Trail for years. He grew up in Culver City and around the San Fernando Valley.
Edmonds said he led an active lifestyle, regularly running and skiing, and hiking with his wife, Kathy, who died last June after 51 years of marriage together.
“This has been special,” Edmonds said. “It helped me think about how much she would have enjoyed this.”
A view of the Pacific Ocean from a high point along the Backbone Trail.
I headed out as the group grabbed showers and prepared their taco dinner. I got into my car with a deeper appreciation for what the Santa Monica Mountains can provide us all, along with a few new friends — and a new trail nickname.
3 things to do
Cyclists on a previous Glow Ride hosted by People for Mobility Justice.
(People for Mobility Justice)
1. Illuminate the streets of Florence-Firestone People for Mobility Justice, an L.A.-based transportation equity collective, will host a bike ride from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday starting at Ted Watkins Memorial Park. Riders are encouraged to decorate their bikes with colorful and creative lights for this free Glow Ride through the streets of the Florence-Firestone neighborhood. Register at eventbrite.com.
2. Ascend to new heights in L.A. The Saturday Hike Crew will host a trek at 8:30 a.m. Saturday through Ascot Hills Park. Hikers will ascend steep hillsides to lookout points with sweeping views of L.A. Sturdy shoes are recommended. Register at eventbrite.com.
3. Pack out trash in Fullerton Friends of Coyote Hills needs volunteers at 9 a.m. Saturday to clean up a trail in Fullerton. Participants are encouraged to bring their own gloves and water. You can also bring a trash grabber if you own one. Volunteers should wear sun protection and comfortable sneakers or boots. Register at eventbrite.com.
The must-read
A sign is posted on a eucalyptus tree stating, “Stop killing our trees,” on Glenrose Avenue, where the trees were previously cut down.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Trees in and around the Palisades and Eaton fire burn scars are dying — or being inappropriately removed — at an alarming rate, Times staff writer Noah Haggerty wrote. After a fire, surviving trees in a burn scar often need support, including watering, to survive. Neither city nor county officials prioritized such efforts in the Palisades or Eaton fire scars. Additionally, contractors have removed trees that they were authorized to take down. Builders have also pressured homeowners to cut down trees that they claimed would die anyway, although advocates say native oaks incorrectly identified as dead could have recovered.
It makes me wonder about the fates of trees along hiking trails in the burn scars.
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
Angeles National Forest is home to at least three new ursine residents. Wildlife photographer Robert Martinez documented three cubs following their mom through the forest in late April. Interestingly, the Chaney Trail Corridor Project documented a mama bear and three cubs walking through the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains near Altadena in early May. I asked them: Could it be the same family? “In theory possible, but unlikely as the locations are more than 20 miles apart,” a volunteer from the Chaney Trail Corridor Project told me via Instagram. “Black bears with young cubs usually keep a smaller home range of just a few square miles. Both families are equally adorable though and about the same size and age!” If this news gives you a bit of the heebie-jeebies, then head over to my article where I explain how to best protect yourself if you encounter a bear while hiking. Be safe out there!
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
A pivotal moment early in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” arrives when Harry’s suburban house is swarmed and flooded with letters of acceptance for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry’s aunt and uncle have been preventing such dispatches from reaching the young wizard-to-be, but the boarding school’s messenger owls are having none of it.
Letters flood in from the fireplace, windows and nearly seem to cause the house to burst. And while watching the film recently at Inglewood’s Cosm, home to an all-encompassing high-definition spherical screen, I half expected a letter to fall upon my lap. Cosm specializes in sports, but has released three collaborations with Warner Bros. for what it deems “experiential film.” A framed screen displaying the original 2001 work from director Chris Columbus is untouched, but surrounding it are newly added digital animations designed to envelop guests.
And in this early “Sorcerer’s Stone” scene, letters were a-flying any which way I looked. Up, down, left and right — mail missives were rocketing toward the center screen. As the world closed in on Daniel Radcliffe’s Potter and family, it did so, too, at Cosm. I’ve seen Cosm’s take on “The Matrix” and “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” so I knew a letter wouldn’t come zapping my way, but one could be forgiven for protecting their cocktail — themed, of course — from being knocked over.
The famed “sorting hat” scene at Cosm’s interpretation of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
(Cosm)
Such is the power of Cosm’s curved screen, which brings a sense of dimension, and even at times movement, to the film. Think of Cosm, perhaps, as a mini version of Las Vegas’ Sphere, but smaller doesn’t mean any less sweeping. No, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” in Cosm’s hands is often quite grand, as the first glimpse of Hogwarts Castle inspired cheers from the opening night audience, its cliffside towers, a romanticized spin on medieval architecture, towering above us in such a way that we will crane our necks. Only in Universal’s theme parks does the palace seem more real and welcoming.
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” arrives at Cosm during what is a big year for the franchise. It’s the 25th anniversary, of course, of the first film in the series, and later this year on Christmas Day a new television series based on author J.K. Rowling’s popular book series is set to premiere on HBO Max. This summer, Harry Potter: A Hogwarts Express Adventure will open at the Southern California Railway Museum for guests to experience the Wizarding World rite of passage aboard a real moving train in the Inland Empire.
All of this activity is happening as Rowling has become the center of heated debate for her controversial views on trans women. None of it, however, has seemed to curtail fan interest in the series. The 2023 video game “Hogwarts Legacy” became a massive hit despite calls for a boycott, and Universal Studios last year opened in Florida a brand new theme park land based upon the franchise at its Epic Universe park, with its centerpiece ride, Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry, often commanding some of the longest waits at the park.
At the film’s early May premiere at Cosm, Rowling was mentioned little, and wasn’t among the massive list of names being thanked by studio and Cosm execs. “Harry Potter” in 2026 is perhaps best viewed as a franchise that has outgrown its creator to take on a life of its own, and Cosm’s approach is that of a love letter to its many fans, recognizing that this is a magical, enchanting world that generations have long wished to find themselves immersed in.
A climatic scene in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” is outfitted with additional effects at Cosm.
(Cosm)
To that end, I’d rank “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” as the most successful of Cosm’s three cinematic interpretations. Certainly the subject matter plays a role, and while Cosm has been successful in matching the high-energy of “The Matrix” or the trippiness of “Willy Wonka,” here Cosm and its partners — experiential firm Little Cinema and effects house MakeMake — can simply luxuriate in atmosphere. The train to Hogwarts, for instance, is especially well done, seemingly stretched to infinity. The famed “sorting hat” scene, too, as Cosm’s wizards contrast the internal anxiety of being assigned a role with the external one of doing so in front of an audience, bringing to exaggerated life the cavernous Hogwarts assembly hall.
‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’
Cosm works best when it’s able to use its venue to create the illusion of no longer being a spectator, when the space itself starts to feel like a living theater. Feel this, for instance, when Harry and pals traverse the moving staircase. The frame of the screen may move, creating a slight sense of disorientation as the stairs themselves shift. The portraits on the wall, whose characters occasionally come alive, start to envelop us. Cosm used some restraint here, keeping us guessing as to which framed pictures may seek to speak or nod our way.
If there’s any qualm in Cosm’s work it’s that at times there could be a tinge more self-control in order to let the film do its work. Stepping into the hidden magic nook of London’s Diagon Alley is a showcase moment in Columbus’ film, and at times it is in Cosm’s interpretation as well. Out on the street, the shops circle around us, further conveying the cramped nature of the neighborhood. It feels, more than ever, like a real-life space. Inside an intimate pub, however, filling out the scene with empty tables could distract from the hurried, nervous nature of the filmmaker’s original intent.
But we live in an immersive age. Art, increasingly, is maximized to encompass us, and Cosm understands this moment well. Once again, the venue has made the argument that cinema can feel like communal, live entertainment.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Appealing to voters’ anxieties about the soaring cost of living is central to Democrats’ messaging in their hopes of big wins in this year’s midterm elections. In Oregon, a question on the primary ballot is complicating that strategy.
The Democratic-controlled Legislature raised the state gas tax and a range of fees last fall as a way to pay for road improvements and plug a hole in the state’s transportation budget. Republicans responded with a petition to repeal the increases, leading to a referendum that will land before voters just as the Iran war is causing the price of gas to skyrocket around the United States.
“It is a hell of a time to be raising gas taxes on people,” said Jeanine Holly, filling up her tank on a recent morning in Portland.
The gas tax repeal on the state’s May 19 primary ballot comes amid widespread disruptions in the oil industry from the war with Iran started by Israel and President Trump. Discontent is high among U.S. consumers across the political spectrum, with the price of gas topping $4.50 a gallon nationally on Friday and averaging about 80 cents more per gallon in Oregon.
The referendum will give voters a chance to weigh in on a hot-button issue hitting them directly in the pocketbook at a time when prices remain elevated for everything from housing to groceries. Nationally, Democrats have focused on the affordability concerns similar to those that helped propel Trump to victory in 2024. Some of their candidates have even proposed ways to cut taxes as a way to promote their agenda and counter a traditional GOP strategy.
“It’s difficult to imagine a worse situation for … a gas tax increase than right now in American politics,” said Chris Koski, professor of political science and environmental studies at Portland’s Reed College.
Republicans sense an opportunity
Republicans wasted no time in appealing to voters after the Legislature and Democratic governor signed off on the tax increase, which also included a higher payroll tax for transit projects and a boost in vehicle registration and title fees.
They needed 78,000 voter signatures to qualify the referendum for the ballot. They quickly got 250,000.
“That is a remarkable number,” Republican strategist Rebecca Tweed said.
Republicans in Oregon have countered Democrats’ affordability messaging by portraying the tax and fee increases as further fueling the high cost of living.
“Do Oregonians want to pay more? The answer is no,” said GOP state Sen. Bruce Starr, who helped lead the referendum campaign. “Everything they’re looking at is expensive.”
Under the legislation, Oregon’s gas tax would rise from 40 cents to 46 cents a gallon. That would make it tied with Maryland for the eighth-highest gas tax of any state when factoring in other state taxes and fees, according to figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
At the Portland gas station, Michael Burch said he used to spend $70 to fill three-quarters of his pickup truck’s tank, but now pays $80 for just over half a tank.
“I’m sick and tired of taxes,” the 76-year-old retiree said. “Gas is certainly dampening the spirits and the coffers of folks that aren’t as well off.”
Hannah Coe, a 30-year-old student, said she was not sure how she would vote on the primary ballot referendum.
“I think I would be in favor of it if it was going to go to the things that it was saying it was going to go to, such as fixing our roads,” she said. “I also kind of feel like that’s just a grab at trying to get more money from the people who live here.”
Democrats blame the Iran war
Oregon Democrats spent much of last year fighting to pass a transportation funding bill to help raise money for services such as road paving and snow plowing. The debate came amid projections of declining gas tax revenue as more people adopt electric, hybrid and fuel-efficient cars.
They finally passed a narrower version of their plan during a special session called by Gov. Tina Kotek.
She recently acknowledged the challenging timing of the referendum.
“Certainly, the conversation at the ballot this year … is a tough sell right now, because I think everyone is feeling a pinch on their household budgets,” she told reporters.
But she and other Democrats said the root cause of the jump in gas prices is Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran. She suggested the federal government consider reducing the federal 18-cent-a-gallon gas tax if it wants to provide relief at the pump for Americans.
Some Oregonians are receptive to the Democrats’ reason for passing the legislation last year. Kurt Borneman, 68, said he would support the gas tax increase, even though he’s now paying at least $10 more to fill up his tank.
“I realize that money’s tight and roads need to be improved,” he said at the Portland gas station. “I want less government, but I also want nice roads.”
Democratic state Rep. Paul Evans said his party lost the battle over how to frame the gas tax increase to the public. So far, there has been no organized effort from Democrats and their allies to oppose the ballot referendum.
“When anything is reduced to, ‘Do you want a tax or not?’ Most people are going to say no,” he said. “The messaging got away from us, and it became focused upon the price instead of the value.”
Trevor Bauer wants to pitch in the majors again — so much so that he’s willing to start over in the lowest levels of the minor leagues and work his way up.
And he’s willing to do it without being paid.
That’s the hypothetical Bauer proposed Friday on X: A talented former Cy Young Award winner signs a minor league deal with an MLB team for a “$0 salary” and can be cut at any time at no financial risk to the organization.
Since his last MLB start on June 28, 2021, as a member of the Dodgers with a $102-million, three-year contract, Bauer has been accused of sexual assault by four women. He served a 194-game suspension for violating the league’s sexual assault and domestic violence policy. He has denied all the allegations and has never been charged with a crime.
While some might think signing Bauer might be a risky move for an MLB organization, Bauer feels his plan is foolproof in that regard.
“Hypothetical: You’re the owner of an MLB team,” Bauer wrote. “I offer to take $0 salary and sign a minor league contract and go to Low A. If the ‘he sucks now’ crowd is right and I get lit up, you cut me, lose $0 and there’s no risk to the big league club.
Hypothetical: You’re the owner of an MLB team. I offer to take $0 salary and sign a minor league contract and go to Low A.
If the “he sucks now” crowd is right and I get lit up, you cut me, lose $0 and there’s no risk to the big league club.
If the “clubhouse cancer” crowd is…
— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) May 8, 2026
“If the ‘clubhouse cancer’ crowd is right, you see it immediately at Low A and cut me. You lose $0 and there’s no risk to the big league club. If there’s massive negative PR, which we already know there won’t be, you just cut me and move on. The story is dead in a couple days, you lose $0, and there’s no risk to the big league club.”
In the comments on Bauer’s post, someone challenged him on the notion that “we already know there won’t be” any negative PR if he is signed. In response, Bauer pointed to his current stint with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League to support his argument.
“Where has the negative PR been?” wrote Bauer, who is 3-1 this season and pitched a no-hitter for the Ducks late last month. “I’m playing in America. In New York of all places. Most ‘hostile’ media market in the United States. Stadiums are sold out when I pitch. There’s no boycotts. No media frenzy. Where is it?”
Bauer wrote in his proposal that if none of the negatives he laid out earlier happen, then the organization can promote their cost-free pitcher through the ranks, re-evaluating him every step of the way, until he reaches the big leagues — “if I earn it,” he wrote, “which you’d be 100% in control of deciding.”
“If you don’t think I’m good enough, you lose $0 and there’s no risk to the big league club,” Bauer wrote. “You could take away my ‘antics’. You could take away my social media. You could ask anything of me. If I don’t comply, you cut me, lose $0, and there’s no risk to the big league club.”
One X user asked why Bauer doesn’t just take away his “antics” on his own.
“Because no teams actually care about that,” Bauer responded. “They enjoy the content. And I’m not going to rob baseball fans of great baseball entertainment just to solve a problem that only exists in the minds of x bots.”
Informed that the MLB Players Assn. might have an issue with him playing for free, Bauer replied, “Who gives a crap about what mlbpa does or doesn’t want?”
This isn’t the first time Bauer has made what he considers to be a low-risk proposal for an organization to bring him back into the league. In 2024, Bauer spoke with The Times’ Bill Shaikin about an offer he made to play for the league minimum.
“The reason for that was, I want to go back to work, and I am trying to find any way that I possibly can to limit the risk and exposure for a team,” Bauer said. “I realize there are a lot of other things, outside of the on-field stuff, that go into whether to sign me. So I figured that, if I could limit the on-field risk as much as possible, perhaps that offsets some of the other perceived risks.”
It remains to be seen whether any club is willing to take up Bauer on his current offer.
“What logical reason is there to not do this?” Bauer wrote. “At worst, you cut me and there’s no risk to the big league club. At best, you get a Cy Young winner for $0 who you know can still pitch and could help the big league team if and when you see fit.”
Former Miami Marlins president David Samson weighed in on Bauer’s proposal in a post on X.
“This will never happen,” Samson wrote. “First of all, no team wants to sign him. Secondly, no player is allowed to play for $0. And finally, no team wants to sign him.”
Candles flickered on long wooden tables beneath a sprawling mulberry tree as Matt French stepped in front of the doorway of his sleek Pioneertown home, holding a drink aloft. Dressed in fitted jeans and a dark western shirt, he welcomed the roughly 60 guests who had assembled in his front yard for the kickoff event of the High Desert Art Fair that would take over the 19-room Pioneertown Motel he owns with his brother Mike.
“We’re super honored to be hosting this event and hosting tonight,” said Matt, addressing a crowd that included local artists, musicians and well-heeled art world types from L.A. “This is the exact kind of event that we want to have in the desert.”
Although the French brothers were not directly involved in the art fair itself, the evening’s itinerary had their fingerprints all over it. Dinner was held in front of the expansive compound they share, and the food — perfectly grilled tri-tip with chimichurri, sourdough bread with cultured butter, flatbread pizzas — was prepared by the owners of the Old Town Public Market, a yet-to-open organic deli and wine bar that would soon occupy another building the brothers own in nearby Yucca Valley. After dessert, the ringing of an old-fashioned triangle bell alerted guests that it was time to cross the road to the Red Dog Saloon, another French brothers business, where Shepard Fairey was already DJing to a packed crowd that spilled onto the rustic porch, the cacophony of laughter, bass and cigarette smoke wafting down the town’s main drag.
It was just another dreamy, highly curated night in the high desert of Matt and Mike French’s making.
Vintage design details abound at the French brothers’ properties, including the Pioneertown Motel.
Few people have had more influence on the modern aesthetic of the sun-drenched desert near Joshua Tree National Park than the two brothers from Portland whose properties regularly pop up in travel publications, Instagram reels and “best of the desert” lists. Since buying the Pioneertown Motel in 2014, Matt, 42, and Mike, 37, have built a portfolio of businesses that tap into the mythology of the California desert — part cowboy, part Rat Pack, part cosmic traveler. Across historic restoration projects like the motel where Gene Autry once played cards all night, the Red Dog Saloon where 1940s film crews unwound after long days of shooting and the Copper Room, a restaurant and bar at the Yucca Valley airport that was a favorite of Gram Parsons, their properties give tourists and locals alike a taste of the desert’s history and glamour all while making it feel like patrons have just stumbled upon these magical spots themselves.
Now, the brothers, along with Eric Cheong, a designer and the third partner in their company Life & Times, are expanding their unique vision to other parts of the desert with two new projects. In late 2026, they will open Lord Fletcher Inn, a 1960s-era steak house in Rancho Mirage where Frank Sinatra occasionally stepped behind the bar. Miracle Hill, the brothers’ colorful take on a geothermal bath house in Desert Hot Springs, is slated to open at the end of 2027.
The French brothers purchased the 1960s-era restaurant Lord Fletcher’s in Rancho Mirage, where Frank Sinatra occasionally tended bar.
Designer Eric Cheong, left, on the porch of the Red Dog Saloon, with Matt and Mike French.
With these two new businesses, as well as an ambitious expansion of the Pioneertown Motel, including an extension of the Western facade of Mane Street that was approved in December, the brothers say they feel a renewed commitment to the desert community where they have lived and worked for more than a decade. Although they toyed with the idea of doing projects in other parts of the country, they ultimately decided that the world they have created in this dry desert landscape is too valuable to leave.
“The lady at the post office has treats for my dog and knows my dog’s name,” Mike said. “You can’t buy your way into community like that. You have to earn it.”
The French brothers’ story may sound like a desert fairy tale, but they insist it wasn’t always that way.
Although they’d been traveling to Palm Springs for family vacations since they were kids, it wasn’t until 2009 that Matt first drove up the rocky mountain pass to Pioneertown and fell in love with the funky desert community originally built in the 1940s as a working film set. After learning that the rundown motel across the street from Pioneertown’s iconic roadhouse and concert venue Pappy & Harriet’s was for sale, Matt, who was working for a boutique hotel company at the time, convinced Mike to join forces with him and buy it. It took five years of starts, stops, heartbreak and nearly giving up before the deal finally went through in 2014.
“Matt was really the driving force,” Mike said. “I was like, this is nuts, but I’m in.”
Those early days were challenging. One of their first orders of business was to evict the previous owner’s weed dealer who had been living in one of the rooms rent-free. The manager at the time was known to yell people off the property. Skilled workers were hard to find, and the desert’s popularity as a tourist destination had not yet ballooned.
Mike and Matt French are setting the stage for their next venture, Miracle Hill, a geothermal bath house in Desert Hot Springs.
“In retrospect it can look very obvious and very, like, ‘Oh, of course, the hotel’s cool and it’s right next to Pappy’s,’” said Matt. “But that is not what it felt like back then.”
The brothers also had to contend with a notoriously fierce local community that was deeply suspicious of the lanky millennials from out of town.
“We had our claws out and our guns cocked,” said David Miller, 81, a longtime local and the president of Friends of Pioneertown. “But it turned out that they are model citizens.”
For two years, the brothers ran the motel remotely while continuing to work other jobs — Matt for a real estate company that did large-scale development in Portland and Mike for a ticketing and events start-up in L.A. In 2017, they decided they needed a home base in town and bought a rundown house with an even more rundown barn a 10-minute walk from the motel. They have since renovated it into two homes just yards from each other with a shared backyard that includes a pool, sauna, cold plunge, hot tub and custom-built hammock that can hold up to 20 people. In 2018, they moved in full time.
A Pioneertown Motel pick-up truck, spotted outside the kitchen window of Matt French’s home.
Two years later, in August 2020, they opened the Red Dog Saloon, a full-scale renovation of the historic bar of the same name that originally opened in 1946. The brothers say they weren’t necessarily looking to open a new business — they just really wanted another place to eat and drink in town besides Pappy & Harriet’s. Their original plan was to create a 16-seat whiskey bar in a small building across from Pioneertown’s picturesque Post Office, but their partners, restaurateurs Adam Weisblatt of Last Word Hospitality who operates Hermon’s and Found Oyster and Eric Alperin from the Varnish, suggested they look at the much larger Red Dog Saloon instead.
“They were like, ‘You can actually make money that way,’” Mike said about the restaurant and bar that can serve as many 1,000 people a day. “And we were like, ‘Yes, that’s a great point.’”
The same team came together again to open the Copper Room, a higher-end, full-service restaurant at the Yucca Valley Airport that opened in 2022 on the site of a dive bar they used to frequent called Wine & Roses.
In 2020, the brothers opened the Red Dog Saloon, a full-scale renovation of the historic bar of the same name that originally opened in 1946.
“At the time we really weren’t sure if Yucca Valley could support that kind of dining experience,” Mike said. “Now we have a $200 tomahawk steak served tableside on the menu and they sell out. There is no way we could imagine that happening when we opened.”
As they did with the motel and the Red Dog, the brothers and Cheong leaned into the history of the space when designing the Copper Room. They kept the curved bar where Gram Parsons drank his last margarita intact but went with a 1950s vibe in the main dining room, with heavy brocade banquets and floral wallpaper, nodding to the restaurant’s opening in 1957.
Cheong said that across each project, he and the French brothers leaned heavily on the space’s unique history for design inspiration.
The vintage-style entrance into Red Dog Saloon.
“We really base it around story and lore,” Cheong said. “The spaces merge together because there is a similar strategy, but it’s not a style. It’s not a color palate. It’s like a feeling of respect and honor, but it’s also our twist on it.”
The brothers’ three businesses were thriving, but in 2023, they found themselves in a lull. “We were having trouble figuring out what to do next,” Matt said. “ We have a very specific criteria of what we want to do and we were like, maybe we look outside of the desert. Maybe things here are plateauing.”
The brothers already had one property outside of the desert — Captain Whidbey, a historic lodge and resort on Whidbey Island in Washington that was named one of the best hotels in the world by Travel + Leisure in 2020 — but ultimately they concluded that the price of leaving Pioneertown to start over somewhere new was too high to pay. They had invested years into building relationships with the high desert’s eclectic community. Somewhere along the way they had also come to feel like chosen family.
The French brothers and Eric Cheong leaned into the history of the space when designing the Copper Room.
“So many things were pulling us in different directions, but life is more personal than business,” Mike said. “So we committed to the desert, which was not just committing to doing business in the desert, but was really committing to living in the desert.”
Since then, more opportunities have opened up. The brothers purchased Lord Fletcher’s in 2025 after a real estate agent happened to mention a 1966-era steak house in Rancho Mirage was for sale. Miracle Hill came about in part because the town of Desert Hot Springs is eager to grow its reputation as a destination for geothermal bathing and offered to help them find a suitable location. For the brothers, it represents the first time they are creating a space from the ground up. Construction has yet to begin, but they have already crafted a story for the space that builds off the community’s early 20th century history and mystical geology.
“The core narrative is that it feels like an eccentric, gregarious host’s home that you are going into,” Mike said. “And the mountain alignment, the sun, the wind, the faults and the geothermal water are the five forces that create a vortex-type energetic field deal. So we’re kind of leaning into that.”
At the same time, Mike revived the community’s historic Pioneertown Gazette, which he originally started printing as an in-room publication but has since expanded to a weekly newsletter that enthusiastically highlights the growing calendar of events happening at several venues across the high desert. And in the next few years, the brothers plan to begin construction on the next phase of the Pioneertown Motel, which will include a swimming pool, restaurant and 47 new rooms.
A game of horseshoes at Pioneertown Motel.
Signage pointing to the Red Dog Saloon.
Pioneertown’s history buffs, and there are many of them, will tell you that the picturesque community has a long history of newcomers showing up with dollar signs in their eyes, hoping to make it big in the desert. But few, if any, have been as successful as the French brothers at making those businesses come to life. It helps that they have a good sense of design and an intuitive understanding of what people want. It also helps that they’ve attracted like-minded people like Jeffrey Baker, the warm and personable general manager at the Copper Room and future general manager of Lord Fletcher’s who excels at management (a self-described weak point for Matt and Mike) and makes everyone he meets feel like an instant friend.
But their true secret sauce might be that aside from the motel, their businesses are designed to cater to the local community at least as much as to tourists.
“People here love these restaurants,” Matt said. “They love the Red Dog, they love the Copper Room, they love the Gazette. So we felt that vibe shift of people being supportive and excited about what we’re doing.”
It also helps that over the last few years, some bad actors have demonstrated what the alternative might look like, with new management at Pappy’s that alienated locals from their longtime watering hole and a wannabe developer who floated much-maligned plans to build a concert venue and a massive glamping complex in Pioneertown. (Both parties have since left the area.)
“I think that has given some people some perspective that having locals do it right, and seeing that we are committed, has really made a difference,” Matt said.
Mike and Matt French walk down Pioneertown’s Mane Street.
It’s been a winning business formula, but if you believe the brothers, there’s more to it than that. Creating spaces where everyone from foreign tourists to drunken bachelorettes to crusty locals to families with young kids feels comfortable and welcomed is all part of the desert ideal they’ve been curating for more than a decade.
Mike said that there’s nothing like seeing Pioneertown old-timers drinking with their buddies at the Red Dog.
“It’s so good,” he said. “And then you find other people who get lit up by the same silly thing, and it’s like, maybe it’s not so silly. Maybe it’s the whole point.”
I excitedly followed my uncle down the narrow dirt path along Wildhorse Creek, a canopy of oaks, maples and other deciduous trees above us.
“What’s this?” I asked, picking up a stick that looked like it’d gotten into a fight with a wood chipper.
“That’s a beaver stick,” my Uncle Dale told me, explaining that one of the cute rodents had chewed on it, probably in the midst of making a dam along the river.
“Can I keep it?” I asked, a little in awe that I could hold such a magical thing.
We were trekking along a trail that my uncle had created on my family’s land in Oklahoma. For years, the stick was in my childhood bedroom, a memento from my earliest hiking memory.
You are reading The Wild newsletter
Sign up to get expert tips on the best of Southern California’s beaches, trails, parks, deserts, forests and mountains in your inbox every Thursday
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
Spending time hiking with my uncle helped me fall in love with the outdoors, and I hope this week’s edition of The Wild, The Times’ weekly outdoors newsletter, helps you make memorable moments with the kids in your life too.
I chose three hikes for children of all ages, including for us kids at heart. The trails are all either easy or some level of moderate. They don’t require technical skills, but curiosity, sunscreen and a reusable water bottle are all encouraged. They each feature a mix of native plants and trees and offer opportunities to see a range of wildlife.
I chose trailheads where parking isn’t too challenging (at least, I hope it isn’t). There are restrooms at two out of the three trails. You’ll want to pack snacks and water, as two of the three hikes don’t have water refill stations available.
Logistics done, let’s dive into the hikes!
The Park to Playa Trail offers panoramic views of L.A. County, including views of the Pacific Ocean and San Gabriel Mountains.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
1. Park to Playa Trail to Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook
Distance: 2.6 miles Elevation gain: 304 feet Difficulty: Easy Dogs allowed? Limited (see below) Accessible alternative: Gwen Moore Lake path at Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area
The Park to Playa Trail is a 13-mile regional trek that starts near Leimert Park and takes hikers all the way to the Pacific Ocean. It’s also fun to break into small adventures, like the one I outline below.
You can take Park to Playa from Culver City up to the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, a fun day for adults and kids (and teenagers who enjoy taking selfies with great views). If visiting Friday through Sunday, you and your kids can pop into the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook Visitor Center, which offers educational exhibits, maps and more.
Although Culver City Park allows dogs, canines aren’t allowed on trails in Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, so you and Fluffy would need to use roads or sidewalks once you enter state parkland.
To begin your hike, park in or near this Culver City Park lot. The lot offers two-hour parking. If you’d like to stay longer, you can pay to park in the 10-hour parking along the street. Either way, you’ll follow the Park to Playa Trail signs northeast out of the lot.
A wood bridge trail leads hikers to great views of L.A.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
You’ll take a well-built wood bridge trail that’s shaded by several large oak and other trees. At the top of the bridge, you’ll arrive at a small picnic area with a public art piece that’s also an equatorial sundial. You’ll get your first glimpse here at the views you can expect the higher you climb.
Head north, either taking the short stairs or ramp, to then hike east past green sports fields. You’ll follow the Park to Playa Trail around a field before entering Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook via a charming metal archway.
From here, the dirt path widens, and you’ll start to notice more native plants such as California brittlebush and a variety of sages (which offer a fun sensory experience when you pause to give them a sniff).
The Park to Playa Trail passes through the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook area.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Just under a mile in, you’ll reach your first large overlook. Look east toward the Hollywood Hills, and you can likely spot the Hollywood sign and Griffith Observatory. I paused here to watch a red-tailed hawk dip and fly above the city below.
Follow Park to Playa as it winds around, turning left (east) onto a separate trail that will take you up to the main overlook. You’ll soon pass the famous Culver City Stairs, which you could take the rest of the way up to the overlook, or follow the gentler dirt path before you. The path will head southeast before leading you to the overlook where it’s mandatory to pause and take it all in: the ocean, the mountains, the views of why we live here.
From the overlook, you can take the path south to the visitor center, where you’ll also find flush toilets and water fountains. You have the option to turn back around and head down with your crew to where you parked — or continue onward on Park to Playa, which if you feel adventurous, you could take to Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area.
The Antonovich Trail runs alongside Walnut Creek in San Dimas.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
2. Antonovich Trail
Distance: 7.8 miles out and back Elevation gained: 385 feet Difficulty: On the easier end of moderate Dogs allowed? Yes Accessible alternative: The Antonovich Trail, but instead of entering the trail off San Dimas Avenue, where you must navigate a steep hill, start the trail from this parking area; the trail is not paved, but it is mostly flat if you head in the westerly direction from the parking lot.
The Antonovich Trail is a 7.8-mile out-and-back trail that follows gently flowing Walnut Creek, shaded by canopies of coast live oak, fig and Southern California black walnut. Besides a steep descent from the parking lot into the canyon, the route is mostly flat.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy restroom access along the trail. If that’s a deal-breaker, then I’d recommend the Placerita Canyon and Waterfall Trail, which I wrote about here, if you’d like to hike in a similarly shaded canyon vibes. You’ll park near the Placerita Canyon Nature Center, which I’d highly recommend visiting for its educational exhibits and animal ambassadors. It has flush toilets and water fountains.
As shown on this map, there are multiple places to start the Antonovich Trail. If starting it from the lot off San Dimas Avenue, you will navigate an exposed, steep dirt path down into the canyon. As you descend, take in the views of the San Gabriel Mountains.
The trail is popular with horse riders and locals who enjoy bringing their dogs to frolic in the cool creek waters. Keep a keen eye out for birds commonly spotted here, including black phoebe, acorn woodpeckers and hawks. Also watch out for poison oak.
The path splits off into multiple unofficial trails, so keep an eye on your hiking app or map as you scurry along. The first time I hiked this trail, I was diverted from the main route a few times, including once when, to my delight, my detour brought me to a tire swing (which I tested out, flying over a nearby sparkling pool of water).
The trail appears to just abruptly end, but it actually connects to a larger local trail network.
The Devil’s Chair Trail in Devil’s Punchbowl Natural Area leads to an incredible overlook point on a small boulder.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
3. The Devil’s Chair Trail
Distance: 7.4 miles Elevation gain: About 1,500 feet Difficulty: Moderate Dogs allowed? Yes Accessible alternative: Prime Desert Woodland Preserve walking trail in Lancaster
The Devil’s Chair Trail is a 7.4-mile out-and-back hike that takes visitors through ancient sandstone formations of every imaginable shape and size. It’s a great all-day adventure for adults, teenagers and older kids.
About an hour-and-a-half drive from L.A. near Pearblossom, the hike starts in the Devil’s Punchbowl Natural Area, a 1,310-acre L.A. County park with massive sandstone rock formations and a healthy desert landscape of juniper and Joshua trees, along with native wildlife, including bighorn sheep.
Upon arriving in the large parking lot, you’ll find vault toilets and a visitor check-in area. The nature center is a great stop with live snakes, bugs and other crawly creepers inside. The rosy boa and tarantula are among my favorites to view.
The Devil’s Chair Trail was previously closed because of storm damage, but reopened about two weeks ago, thanks to the diligent work of county staff.
Its trailhead is in the southeast corner of the parking lot. The first mile of this hike is arguably the hardest part because you gain 500 feet in just under a mile.
After catching your breath, you’ll turn left (or east), cross a seasonal creek and hike for just over 2½ miles on a gentle path.
As you hike along the trail, you’ll likely spot chipmunks and gray squirrels. I frequently hear a variety of birds when I hike in the park, including hawks, ravens, white-crowned sparrows and dark-eyed juncos (which are very cute).
You also get incredible views of the desert below and mountains in the distance, including nearby Table Mountain in Angeles National Forest and the Tehachapi Mountains in Kern County.
To reach the trail’s namesake, you will walk down a narrow fenced path to a small boulder, surrounded by a short fence, that overlooks the valley below. This is the aforementioned devil’s chair. It’s a great spot to take a family selfie, share snacks and reminisce. And if you’re lucky, you might spot bighorn sheep in the valley below.
***
Regardless of how you spend time in the outdoors, with your immediate or chosen family, I hope you make great memories on our public lands.
3 things to do
A guest at Clockshop’s Kite Festival flies a large octopus kite at L.A. State Historic Park.
(Gina Clyne / Gina Clyne Photography)
1. Fly a kite with friends in Chinatown Clockshop’s Kite Festival, an annual free celebration, is scheduled from 2 to 6 p.m. Saturday at L.A. State Historic Park. Visitors can attend free art and kite-making workshops, compete in a kite competition and dance to local music. This year, The Times collaborated with Clockshop to publish a newspaper kite design. We will have a booth where you can get a copy of our newspaper kite design while supplies last. RSVP and donate at clockshop.org.
2. Yank weeds in Northeast L.A. The Ascot Hills Green Team and local hiking group We Explore Earth will host a volunteer day from 8 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Ascot Hills Park. Participants will yank out castor bean and black mustard, two invasive species that turn into serious fire hazards when they dry out. Closed-toe shoes, long pants and a reusable water bottle are recommended. Register at eventbrite.com.
3. Restore the land in Santa Clarita TreePeople, an L.A. climate resilience nonprofit, will co-host a volunteer restoration day with CalFire from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday in San Francisquito Canyon in Santa Clarita. Volunteers will remove invasive weeds and water native plants over uneven ground. Register at treepeople.org.
The must-read
(Photo illustration by Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times; source photo / Getty Images)
Cute animal videos are a huge part of what makes the online world go round, including a recent viral video where Big Bear’s bald eagle Shadow appears to give his famous mate Jackie a nice massage. Too bad it was fake. Times staff writer Lila Seidman wrote that deepfake wildlife videos are taking over social media, prompting much concern from animal experts. “Far from benign, some experts say the videos can skew how people view and even interact with wildlife — potentially leading to perilous encounters,” Seidman wrote. “They may also undermine viewers’ growing desire to tune into nature to escape the frenetic rhythms of daily life.”
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
Any hiker who has driven into Angeles National Forest has undoubtedly forgotten to buy a $5 day pass or mistakenly left their annual pass at home. Good news, forgetful ones! Angeles National Forest installed an automated day pass dispenser at the pull-off at the intersection of Angeles Crest Highway and Angeles Forest Highway. The lot previously housed the Clear Creek information center and sits just west of the entrance to Switzer Picnic Area. The machine only takes cards. Better to stop and grab a pass than risk a ticket!
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.
Correction: A previous version of the April 30 edition of The Wild instructed readers to take Griffith Avenue outside the Audubon Center at Debs Park. The street’s name is Griffin Avenue.
Democrats have a huge opportunity to make a huge difference. But whether they’ll grab it is a huge question.
In 2020, I wrote that voters were “weary, anxious and looking for salve” after President Trump’s first term. I said then that the experienced, reassuring Joe Biden fit the moment. Now I fear that if Democrats nominate a similar presidential candidate in 2028, one who wins yet doesn’t act with alacrity on democracy preservation and helping Americans live better lives, a fed-up electorate will once again turn them out as ineffectual.
Who can or should lead the party at a time like this?
I’m not alone in hoping for a tough and confrontational 2028 nominee, someone who is aggressive, persistent and, when necessary, as ruthless as the forces on the opposite side. This person also must have the energy to undertake the mammoth task of repairing the institutional wreckage of Trumpism. Which suggests Democrats should be checking out younger nominees.
Fortunately, newer generations of leaders are emerging. Those who “get it,” in my view, include Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
Obviously any Democrat will be better than anyone from Trump’s team or orbit, including JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr. or Marco Rubio. The issue facing Democrats is whether moderate or policy wonkish people such as former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro would be the democracy warriors this moment demands. Repairing a crucial interstate bridge with lightning speed is a great thing and, sometimes, so is outreach to Republicans and Fox News. But would they prioritize thinking big and fighting hard for the fundamental changes we need?
Where would centrist former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger, the new Virginia governor, land on this scale? Even after coming around to supporting new House maps that will net four seats for her party? Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who began his podcast by inviting MAGA guests, championed a referendum on five new Democratic seats in his state and led his party to a redistricting triumph. Where would he land? Would he prioritize outreach to Republicans or the battle to assure a “no kings” future for America? The need for structural changes in our outdated institutions is glaringly obvious. Who will run to repair this country? Who can be trusted to follow through? Because the solutions are out there, staring us in the face:
Checks on presidential pardon power. A larger, term-limited Supreme Court bound to an enforceable ethics code. A national law requiring independent redistricting commissions or, better yet, multi-member districts with proportional representation. A voting rights law that sets minimum standards for mail voting, early voting and voter IDs. Anti-corruption laws that prevent profiteering by presidents and their allies. Explicit limits on presidential construction and alterations to federal properties. A stronger “impoundment” act with sharp teeth to make sure future presidents spend taxpayer money constitutionally, as Congress intends, instead of any way they want. D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood to start rebalancing a Congress and electoral college that have shortchanged urban America since the late 19th century.
It’s a long list, and there’s no guarantee that today’s Supreme Court would allow any of it. But realizing some of these goals will take decades; we can’t be discouraged by temporary impediments such as the current lineup of justices. The work on all of it should start ASAP — next year in the next Congress if Democrats are running one or both chambers. And at some point, we’ll have a different high court.
I can already hear the protests: What about affordability? That’s the best part: Trump has done so many things to make life more expensive that simply reversing them would have immediate impact. Stop the Iran war; reopen the Strait of Hormuz; aim to restore the Obama-era agreement that kept Iran’s nuclear ambitions in check; end the Trump tariffs; stop shrinking labor forces in agriculture, healthcare, construction and other industries by ending detentions and deportations of noncriminals; reverse last year’s tax breaks for elites and restore the money for Medicaid and health insurance premium subsidies; and kill off the Versailles-level Trump ballroom that he now wants to fund with taxpayer dollars (initially $400 million, now $1 billion).
Then Democrats could revisit some of their own affordability priorities, including the expanded child tax credit that significantly reduced child poverty, new ways to put housing within reach of more people and national paid family leave. They could also crack down on military spending that is pointless in the modern era and refocus on cheap and effective equipment such as drones like Ukraine is using to strike inside Russia.
As it happens, a stark indicator of the political tides came as I was writing this. Maine Gov. Janet Mills suddenly dropped out of the Democratic Senate primary race against Graham Platner. It was a lightning bolt, given her establishment support after being recruited by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. But in a way it was inevitable.
Mills is 78. If she had gone on to win the primary and defeat GOP Sen. Susan Collins, she would have been sworn in at age 79. Platner is 41, an oyster farmer and military veteran with a compelling, relatable persona. Though he has a controversial past, Mills’ negative ads did nothing to dent his appeal. Polls showed him winning the primary vote against Mills, sometimes by 2 to 1, and with a consistent general-election edge against Collins as well.
Platner told Jon Stewart last week that the party leadership establishment had largely ignored him. His message to them? “You should be curious, because I’m polling 40 points ahead.” By the next morning, Mills was out, and the establishment — Schumer and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, chair of the Senate campaign committee — said they’d work with Platner to flip the seat.
The midterm races are sending Democrats clues. They should take them seriously.
Jill Lawrence is a journalist and the author of “The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock.” Bluesky: @jilldlawrence
In 1995, when the L.A. Metro system was in its most nascent stage, Ken Karagozian — then an amateur photographer in an Owens Valley, Calif., workshop — found his way underground to document the subterranean marriage between downtown L.A. and Westlake through Metro’s Red Line, now called the B Line.
From that came a feature in Life magazine, but more importantly, a driving principle: Karagozian believed that the construction workers, engineers and electricians who were subject to the whims of a city indecisive on the subway project were deserving of intimate documentation. The invisible many who built the pyramids and New York’s skyline never got that chance, he said, but the people who contributed to the historically controversial Metro D Line from Koreatown to Westwood would, if he had a say.
“When I did take photography workshops, they always said, ‘Do a project close to your home,’” Karagozian said on a call from his Agoura Hills residence. “I wrote a letter to [L.A. Metro], which said, ‘How can I get permission to photograph?’”
Days before the fires ravaged L.A. in 2025, Altadena-based historian and author India Mandelkern had a phone call with Karagozian, who was interested in collaborating on a project about the D Line. After publishing a book on the art and politics of street lighting in Los Angeles, Mandelkern worked on the L.A. Metro blog, soliciting interviews from Angelenos who seemed desperate for a line to the Westside.
A Karagozian photo shows a group of workers during the Section 2 breakthrough during the underground construction of the Metro D Line.
(Ken Karagozian)
A photo by Karagozian shows sunlight filtering underground into the Wilshire/Fairfax site during construction.
(Ken Karagozian)
After Mandelkern connected with Karagozian, their project had solid form: a photo book, titled “Wilshire Subway: The Making of the D Line Subway Extension,” about the history, conflict and people behind the scenes and underground ahead of the May 8 opening of the subway expansion along Wilshire Boulevard. (New stations will be added at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega. In the future, stations in Beverly Hills, Century City and Westwood will open.)
A related photo exhibition, “Wilshire Subway: Photographed by Ken Karagozian,” is on view through May 14 at the 1301PE art gallery on Wilshire Boulevard.
This week, we chatted more with Karagozian and Mandelkern about their project.
After writing a book about the social history of street lighting, what brought you underground?
Mandelkern: Well, a couple different reasons. First, I was very interested in Metro just because I had worked there as the blog editor, and in that role, I got to explore so many different stories. I thought Wilshire Boulevard was one of the most interesting places, the stories of this rail-building ambition that persisted for so many different years, and what that says about Angelenos. Second, I think that we talk about L.A. as a horizontal city, and that’s certainly true. If you go somewhere like Tokyo, you instantly see that this is what a vertical city is, but I wanted to bring a little bit of that to L.A. There is so much history buried beneath the ground that we seem to forget, and once you start tunneling, you realize that it’s always been there and it hasn’t disappeared. It’s just pushed beneath us.
In support of their new project, writer India Mendelkern, left, and photographer Ken Karagozian appear at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in April.
(Ken Karagozian)
Of all the people you spoke to for this book, which one most influenced the way you understood what the D Line could provide for the city?
Karagozian: This was a joint venture between three contractors, and they each had their specialty. It was Skanska, Traylor [Bros.] and Shea. With Traylor, they were brothers and they were doing the tunneling. Richard McLane [chief mechanical engineer of Traylor Bros.] was very helpful in telling me a little bit about the history of Wilshire Boulevard and facts of tunneling. … All these different contractors impacted the project in some way.
Mandelkern: I always say Ken is one of the best construction photographers out there, but his specialty is really people. When I interviewed some of these individual workers, a whole different story came to light, and I realized that many of these workers came to L.A., started at the bottom of the totem pole, and through working on the subway have risen through the ranks, gotten promotions, become leaders, and their kids now work in construction. … It’s just so amazing that so many of these individuals are doing all this work behind the scenes that creates infrastructure that connects all of us.
1
2
1.Carpenter Jenna Dorough poses for a portrait by Karagozian during the underground construction of the Metro D Line.2.A concrete supervisor photographed by Karagozian at the La Cienega Boulevard station.(Ken Karagozian)
There are many portraits in the book of the builders who created the D Line. India referred to the short lifespans of the workers compared to the marvelous structures they craft: Was it intentional that you documented most of the D Line’s visual history through the people who built it?
Karagozian: When I go down underground and after the stations are completed, to me, it’s the people that built it that should tell the story. I didn’t just want to get a shot of them from behind. I really like to photograph their faces. … When I photographed the workers from the Red Line, some of these workers from the middle ’90s are still working on the Purple Line. I’ve known them for years, and now their children are working in construction; it becomes a family issue. … Going down and photographing the tunnels with that lighting in that perspective, it’s always been so interesting.
Mandelkern: That just reminded me of one of the quotes in the book from John Yen, who is the VP of operations at Skanska. He said, “In construction, we work ourselves out of a job.” I always found it really interesting that, as we build, the whole point is to kind of disappear. It reminded me of one of my favorite quotes in the essay, when James [Rojas] writes [that] when the stations are open, they’ll be shiny and new, but that will kind of erase all the memories and all the work of the people who’ve been doing this for all this time. This book really became a way to sort of remember all of these different people that have been working on these projects for decades and decades, even if they’re not really remembered in the official record.
As the D Line prepares to open, does it somehow feel like the end of a journey?
Mandelkern: This just [started] so many other things for me. Afterwards, I decided I really want to learn about the geology of L.A., and I found an interest in paleontology, too. I hope with any book that it just gets people curious, and it gets them to start asking questions. I think that “Wilshire Subway” does accomplish that. L.A. is just this bowl with all these different salad layers, and as we penetrate down, we learn more and more about our history.
Karagozian: It does a little bit. With May 8 being the grand opening, and as the stations are complete and they’re testing the trains underground, it almost feels like it’s graduation time. Time to celebrate the journey of going through high school, college, whatever. I am still continuing to photograph the [Purple Line extension], which is Rodeo or Beverly [Hills] station … Now it’s just the accomplishment of celebrating all the work that I’ve put into this project and going down almost once a week and photographing the process for so many years.
Art exhibition
‘Wilshire Subway’ exhibition
“Wilshire Subway: Photographed by Ken Karagozian” is a new exhibition based on a new photo book by Karagozian and writer India Mandelkern.
Where: 1301PE art gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles
When:Through May 14.
Hours: The gallery is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. (There’s an opening reception and book signing from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday.)
Here comes Bob Chesney’s rebuild. And Iamaleava’s redemption. An exceptional head coach and an exciting quarterback, with the wind at their backs, racing toward a relatively breezy schedule?
USC defensive tackle Carlon Jones grabs UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava during a game on Nov. 29.
(Kyusung Gong / Associated Press)
Sky’s the limit, man.
Watch them dip and dance and make defenders miss all the way to New York. Watch the cautionary tale about the perils of the transfer portal turn into a fairy-tale comeback.
No, that’s not me building castles in the sky.
Consider the unprecedented heights to which Chesney took tiny James Madison, and think of the places he can go with a junior QB whose trajectory had him headed toward Heisman Trophy hopefuldom before turbulence hit.
Iamaleava arrived in Knoxville, Tenn., with more hype than any quarterback since Peyton Manning. The 6-foot-6 Long Beach native, with an outside hitter’s rocket arm and the gazelle-like gait, was considered the nation’s No. 2 overall recruit out of Warren High in Downey. As a redshirt freshman in 2024, he won 10 games and led the Volunteers to the College Football Playoff.
Heisman buzz was building. Until it wasn’t, deadened last spring by the contract dispute that was debated ‘round the college football world. There was disagreement between Iamaleava’s camp and Tennessee — which was reportedly paying him more than $2 million per season, less than the going rate for some comparable quarterbacks and more than the Bruins reportedly offered.
UCLA — 3-9 last season and with only two bowl appearances in eight years — isn’t anyone’s idea of a shortcut back to glory. But there is this: The Bruins seem really to have Ted Lasso’d a certain energy these days. A can-do frequency. Joy and positivity are in.
UCLA coach Bob Chesney leads the Bruins through their first spring football practice at Spaulding Field on April 2.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Alysa Liu, the figure-skating psychology-student Olympic champion? She said there’s a new golden rule: Am I having a good time?
And mercy, the No. 6-ranked softball team — whose silly postgame interviews have gone viral — is having a record-smashing season.
Now we also have Chesney extra-cheesing out here, showing up with free pizzas at fraternities, outreach to get the bros out to the Bruins’ spring game Saturday at the Rose Bowl.
But how does Iamaleava fit into this bright motif?
Perfectly, actually. When I asked him last year what he was telling his teammates after head coach DeShaun Foster was fired three weeks into the season, sky falling, wheels falling off, Iamaleava smiled his easy smile: “Man, just keep the belief.”
If that reads like a cliché, imagine the coolest guy in school saying it, and meaning it.
Iamaleava has a Long Beach lean, laid back and comfortable in his skin. He’s super-tight with his seven siblings, and super-proud of their Samoan heritage. And even though he and his younger brother Madden, a backup UCLA quarterback, were always “the toughest dudes on the field,” former Warren coach Kevin Pearson said, “they are the nicest, sweetest off of it.”
But wasn’t Nico the villain? The bad guy? That disloyal, greedy kid at the center of college football’s first apparent holdout?
The criticism was so loud — and so wrong, Pearson said — it had the man stressing. “It made my stomach hurt,” he said, “what people were saying about Nico.”
Pan out and Nico is a face in a crowd. For example, of the top 600 football prospects in the class of 2021, more than 60% of them transferred at least once, and 42 of the top 50 quarterbacks changed schools, according to the Athletic.
And he was about the only thing that was good about last season’s Bruins.
UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava passes the ball during an upset of Penn State at the Rose Bowl on Oct. 4.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
He was their leading passer and rusher. Of UCLA’s 24 touchdowns, he accounted for 17, including five in the Bruins’ 42-37 victory over No. 7 Penn State, which earned him a slew of national weekly honors, including Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week.
But the Bruins won only three games. The whole season was a hot mess, though you wouldn’t have known it, talking to Nico.
He seemed to get it. Not like he understood the assignment of rehabilitating his image, but with the sincerity of someone who appreciates what’s actually hard.
You might remember, his mom, Leinna, was diagnosed with breast cancer when he was 14.
“She definitely opened my eyes, just as a young kid growing up,” said Iamaleava, noting that she is OK now, busy traveling all over the country with his younger volleyball-playing sisters.
“She got diagnosed my freshman year and it was just kind of time to grow up and take care of the little ones. That changed my mindset and my perspective on life. Life’s short, you know? And we’re very blessed to be here and wake up every day.”
Nico could have been defensive in the face of criticism and failure, but he never was. Could have disappeared after defeats as some quarterbacks have, but he didn’t.
His mantra: “That’s on me, man.” Even when it wasn’t.
Despite everything, he was overly accountable, gracious under pressure, upbeat.
“Think about what he had to go through last year,” Chesney said. “He got the preseason, had a couple weeks with the guys, then he got into season, had a couple weeks with the guys, and then all hell broke loose, right?
UCLA offensive linemen Garrett Digiorgio, left, and Sam Yoon, right, help quarterback Nico Iamaleava up after he ran for extra yards against Penn State at the Rose Bowl on Oct. 4.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“To be able to stick with it and stay through that, you’re just probably trying to keep your head above water. And a lot of our conversations are about that, ‘Hey, this is different this time around.’”
Way different. Chesney has revamped UCLA’s roster with 40-plus transfers, including several key contributors from the JMU team that made the College Football Playoff.
And then there’s Nico, looking like everybody’s big brother at spring practices, smack-talking and celebrating the guys, as engaged as Chesney but easier to spot because his golden helmet glistens above everyone else’s.
“We did a leadership vote,” Chesney said, “and it was undeniable, [Nico] was the No. 1 vote on this entire team to be the leader. And I wanted to just share that with him and make sure he didn’t have to wonder, ‘Do these guys respect me?’ They do. And not only by the position you play, but by the way you play it. By the way you handle it off the field.”
By smiling through it all, even in the immediate aftermath of the Bruins’ loss to New Mexico, their third loss in as many weeks, when it looked like UCLA might not win all season.
“This is a game that as a little kid you loved to play,” Nico said that night. “A lot of [us] are treating this like a job. We gotta get back to having fun.”
And now that Nico and the new-look Bruins have that kite in the air, watch them run with it.
As the spines of the invasive thistle bit into my legs, I worried I had failed.
I had spent hours at my computer staring at maps of northeast Los Angeles in hopes I could develop an urban hike that used existing trails to connect at least four of the area’s parks.
But there I was, standing in a narrow footpath on a hilltop, realizing I’d essentially hit a dead end, because to get into Ascot Hills Park, I would need to trespass (not allowed) or do something dangerous (also not allowed).
I headed down the steep hillside and told myself, “It’s OK. It’s your job to fail a little.” It was time to try again!
You are reading The Wild newsletter
Sign up to get expert tips on the best of Southern California’s beaches, trails, parks, deserts, forests and mountains in your inbox every Thursday
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
In today’s edition of The Wild, I will introduce you to a 13.5-mile urban hike that I developed and fact-checked myself from the ground. I have admittedly been a mountain hiking snob since arriving in L.A., running off to the San Gabriels or Santa Monicas any chance I get. This experience opened my eyes to the joy and potential of urban hiking. I’m so excited to share what I learned with you.
I was inspired to develop this route for a few reasons. For one, I love going to Ernest E. Debs Park and Elephant Hill Open Space, and because I could see one park from a hilltop in the other, I’d wondered: “Could these be connected?”
A view of downtown L.A. and the surrounding city, as seen from the City View Trail in Ernest E. Debs Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Secondly, I attended the California Trails & Greenways conference earlier this month where I learned in sessions about hikers connecting existing trails, including San Francisco’s Crosstown Trail and the American Discovery Trail, which I wrote about in last week’s Wild.
Each time I visit one of L.A.’s open spaces, I am in awe of how hard local residents fought to protect the space and how each space has a dedicated fleet of volunteers lovingly restoring it to its glory by ripping out invasive plants (like thistles) and bringing back oaks, sumac and gorgeous wildflowers.
Some quick logistics before I dive into the route:
I developed the route using CalTopo, an online mapping software with a desktop site and mobile app. You can download the trail from CalTopo to use on your Garmin or other device. I also uploaded it to my AllTrails profile.
I called the trail “River to the Hilltops” in CalTopo. I kept it simple. If you have a clever name, feel free to suggest it.
I haven’t marked everywhere you can find a restroom or water, but will try to add those as time allows. Please plan accordingly, as some stretches run through neighborhoods or open spaces where there isn’t much nearby.
There is no single place to start this route. You can start and stop this route in several spots.
Trail access and conditions can change. Please follow all posted signage (and contact me if you encounter major issues).
This route travels through several neighborhoods. Please refrain from using Bluetooth speakers and anything else that would be disruptive to residents.
At several junctures along the suggested route, you will have an option to take a different path that will essentially get you the same place. Do what’s best for you, and most important: Have fun, be safe and don’t trespass!
Elephant Hill Open Space and the San Gabriel Mountains, as seen from near Ascot Hills Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Now let’s talk more about the route.
To begin my “River to the Hilltops” hiking adventure, my friend Patrick and I met last week at the entrance of Flat Top Park, parking on the shoulder of the north side of Montecito Drive. Our plan was to check the route I’d mapped out from Flat Top to Rose Hill Park, Ernest E. Debs Regional Park and the Arroyo Seco. I planned to walk the rest of the route a few days later.
Neither of us had been to Flat Top, an open space of more than 120 acres with several private owners. Local residents have advocatedfor years for Flat Top to be turned into a public park. North East Trees, a local environmental justice group, manages about 37 acres of the site that feature trails and native plant installations.
A snake skin hangs atop buckwheat in Flat Top Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
From the gate, we trekked southwest along its wide dirt path. Patrick soon spotted a buckwheat plant with a snake skin draped over it, a gift from a previous visitor for all to appreciate.
We headed onward and were greeted by the park’s panoramic views of L.A. County and the San Gabriel Mountains. It’s a quiet respite in the middle of the city.
As we left Flat Top, we spotted a large gopher snake that we both mistook for a rattler. Our day was already off to a cool start!
We traveled northeast on Montecito Drive, watching for cars while observing interesting stilt houses and one home that reminded us of Storybook architecture. Just over half a mile from Flat Top, we found the trail I’d noticed in my research. Its entrance has two barriers in the middle that I interpreted as an attempt to keep out motorized vehicles.
The narrow dirt footpath, called Rose Hill Link Trail on some maps, featured multiple Southern California black walnut trees and at least two healthy Canary Island palms. I paused Patrick mid-sentence because I really wanted to know who was providing us with such loud birdsong. It was a mix of house finch and red-whiskered bulbul.
Weeds crowd the Rose Hill Link Trail, but it remains passable.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Portions of the trail were overgrown with castor bean and other invasives, but some park workers or kind volunteers are doing their best to keep it clear enough to pass.
We took a quick detour to Rose Hill Park in search of a restroom. Both facilities with flush toilets were closed as of Saturday, but there are portable toilets with a hand-washing station.
We headed north from Rose Hill Park onto a steep, direct route to Peanut Lake, a small pond with benches, shade and turtles. We walked around the pond clockwise and took a route on the north end of the pond to continue northward.
After just a tenth of a mile from the pond, we turned left (or west) onto the aptly named City View Trail. The route started to descend steeply after just a third of a mile. I criss-crossed the path to create my own switchbacks, which helps with gaining traction and makes traveling downhill easier on your joints.
We did not take the first left turn off the City View Trail because a hiker carrying a toddler on their back told us it was kind of steep — and they seemed more hardcore than we were. Instead, you’ll find my route suggests you take the Scrub Jay Trail, the second left turn from the City View Trail.
Wild writer Jaclyn Cosgrove and friend Patrick crab-walk down the river embankment.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Patrick and I actually took a different path because I thought the map had suggested there was an entrance to the Arroyo Seco Bike Path from near South Avenue 52. I can’t recommend that option, as it involves an unofficial trail and crab-walking down the side of the concrete river bank.
Instead, you’ll essentially follow the Scrub Jay Trail to a road that leads hikers past the Audubon Center at Debs Park and onto Griffith Avenue. There’s a crosswalk you can take across to an actual entrance to the river bike path.
We ended our day here, taking a rideshare car back to our vehicles. Our driver was curious enough about our day to want to subscribe to The Wild to learn more. I felt that was a good sign!
A few days later, I walked about 9.2 miles to check the rest of the route. I walked up steep hills through South Pasadena before passing through a green space (with a significant history) and into El Sereno. Soon, after chatting with a resident feeding her beloved speckled hens some fresh fruit and complimenting a man’s classic restored truck, I arrived at Elephant Hill Open Space.
The view of downtown L.A. from a high point at the Elephant Hill Open Space in El Sereno.
The agency has worked with community activists to develop the open space’s first official hiking trail, which I had the pleasure of hiking before the grand opening this Saturday. I trekked past the L.A. Conservation Corps workers and contractors busily working to complete the new path. Boulders and oak trees along gates to tamp down illegal off-roading have been added to the space.
After saying hello to a friend who lives nearby, I took Collis Avenue for two blocks and turned onto Yoakum Street, a dirt path, up to Harriman Avenue.
I followed the path labeled “Elephant Hill/Ascot Hills Connector” on my map, where I foraged for a Diet Coke and pretzels at a convenience store and grabbed a poetry book from a free book rack outside Son of a Vet thrift shop. There are many perks to urban hiking!
Soon, I faced my next surprise.
A metal stool sits along a trail in Debs Park where hikers can see great views of L.A.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
For reasons unclear to me, someone labeled a spot north of Ascot Hills as the “Ascot Hills Northern Trailhead.” Maybe they were manifesting what could someday be a great walk, because what I found was not a trail I’d repeat.
As I mentioned up top, I hoofed up through thistle and dried-out mustard, thinking I’d find a connection to the well-maintained trails I knew were in Ascot Hills Park. I got to about here, and although I could see the park’s actual trails, I could not safely or legally reach them. Cursing, whining, bemoaning, I made it back down the path that was about a 20% grade.
I stood in the neighborhood, looking like a sad weirdo with a backpack. I decided to try one last thing. It looked like, from the map, there was a northern entrance.
I headed west on Bedilion Street and then turned south onto Bowman Boulevard. After two-tenths of a mile, I turned west onto Lynnfield Street. On the fence, I noticed a wooden sign with green, white and red letters. “Victor’s Walk starts here,” it read.
A memorial for a neighbor near Ascot Hills.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
“Who was Victor?” I asked a resident cleaning the street.
He told me that Victor had died recently. He’d helped Victor, who walked daily, keep the street tidy by tending to the plants and picking up trash, and he was doing his best to make his late neighbor proud. We chatted more, and he confirmed that there was a nearby way to reach Ascot Hills. (He’d helped other hikers who’d taken the thistle-filled route.)
I soon found a locked gate with access for hikers, and farther down a paved road and a razor-wire-lined fence, an opening to the park.
Ascot Hills Park in Northeast L.A.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Reaching a vista point, I took in the views of downtown L.A. and the rest of the city, grateful for my first visit to the park and the people I met along the way to get there.
Before finishing the final 2.6 miles, I stopped at the Village Mart & Deli near Ascot Hills for a sandwich.
The rest of my day included more life-affirming surprises.
Lincoln Park in Los Angeles.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
I reached Lincoln Park as a Union Pacific train rumbled past. A Muslim man performed his late afternoon prayer with his mat under a shade tree. Kids played baseball in an adjacent field. I followed the concrete path to the lake, where I navigated around ducks and geese and watched a fisherman catch a bass.
Continuing north, I stopped at the Wall Las Memorias AIDS Monument and ran my fingers over the names etched into one of the panels honoring the dead. I felt chills as I took in the reverence for human life communicated in the memorial’s art and design. I hope you’ll stop by as a part of your walk too.
The entrance to the Wall Las Memorias AIDS Monument in Lincoln Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
I had fooled myself into believing the end of my walk would be easy — like somehow I’d gently ride off into the sunset.
Instead, after taking Gates Street to North Broadway, I looked up to discover what I told a friend in a text message was my “final boss”: North Thomas Street. In just under a third of a mile, the street gains about 260 feet, similar in steepness to the start of a challenging mountain trek.
North Thomas Street, a steep road along the 13.5-mile path.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
I rallied, reminding myself of the time I walked all 27.4 miles of Washington Boulevard in one day, and headed up. Just under half a mile in, I reached the top. I thrust my arms into the air and cheered like I’d won a race.
Ever since moving to L.A., I’ve been blown away by just how many people truly care about our public lands and open spaces. It has taken decades for the parks on this route to be as protected as they are, although much of the space remains threatened by development.
My route is a kind of thank-you to those of you who’ve been doing this work. I hope more people see it, appreciate it and want to show their gratitude too.
3 things to do
Stargazers observe the celestial bodies at the Star Party, hosted by the Los Angeles Astronomy Society, last year.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
1. Jump for Jupiter in Silver Lake The Los Angeles Astronomical Society will host a free star party from 8 to 10:30 p.m. Thursday at the Sunset Triangle Plaza in Silver Lake. Guests will listen to local musicians while hopping among telescopes. Learn more at the group’s Instagram page.
2. Notice the nighttime critters in Orange County We Explore Earth will host a 3-mile nocturnal wildlife hike from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday through Black Star Canyon about 15 miles east of Santa Ana. Hikers will look for evidence like burrows, nests and tracks of tarantulas, toads, scorpions, glowworms and other nighttime creatures. The trek is along a wide dirt trail with minimum elevation gain. Register at eventbrite.com.
3. Hike in solidarity and support in Claremont Hiking With Bill, a sober hiking group, will host a hike at 7 a.m. Saturday at Claremont Hills Wilderness Park. The group aims to provide a safe, sober and supportive community outdoors experience. To learn more about the group’s exact meeting location, either email hikingwithbill935@gmail.com or visit the group’s Instagram page.
The must-read
An opening date for later this year was announced at the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in Agoura Hills on April 22.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Apparently, social media still has the power to create sudden outrage over seemingly the most random of targets: the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing. Times staff writer Lila Seidman wrote that after a conservative think tank dubbed the bridge a $114-million “bridge to nowhere,” conservative media and politicians jumped on the opportunity to criticize the effort (and Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat considering a presidential run). Curiously, the bridge is a fourth of the cost of President Trump’s White House ballroom — as the bridge’s original price has increased in part due to worsening inflation and tariff-driven price increases. The bridge is set to open Dec. 2.
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
Although I find most trails around L.A. County are largely free of litter, I have seen metallic balloons deep within the San Gabriel Mountains, far beyond wherever they were released. I wasn’t surprised when I saw, via a post from Steampunk Farms Rescue Barn, a Ranchita-based farmed animal sanctuary, that the balloons can make it far into the Mojave too. The image of a desert tortoise considering a lunch of a “Congrats, Grad!” balloon still made my stomach lurch. The organization asked readers to consider: “Don’t release balloons. Any of them — mylar, latex, ‘biodegradable,’ sky lanterns. Weight them, pop them, recycle them indoors,” among other helpful ideas.
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.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday sharply limited a part of the Voting Rights Act that has forced states to draw voting districts to help elect Black or Latino representatives to Congress as well as state and local boards.
In a 6-3 decision in Louisiana vs. Callais, the court ruled that creating these majority-minority districts may amount to racial discrimination that violates the 14th Amendment.
When weighing what the Voting Rights Act requires, “we start with the general rule that the Constitution almost never permits the federal government or a state to discriminate on the basis of race,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the court.
Alito said states may draw election districts for partisan advantage but may not use race as a basis for redistricting.
The ruling in a Louisiana case appears to clear the way for Republican-led states across the South to redraw their election maps and eliminate voting districts that favor Black or Latino candidates for Congress, state legislatures and county boards.
UCLA law professor Rick Hasen said, “It is hard to overstate what an earthquake this will be for American politics,” adding that the decision makes the Voting Rights Act a “much weaker, and potentially toothless law.”
Hasen said it’s unclear how the decision will affect the November election because in many states early voting has already started and primaries have already taken place.
But the ruling’s long-term consequences for minority representation in Congress, state legislatures and local government are almost “certainly” going to be felt in 2028, Hasen said.
Republican leaders in states across the South have already signaled they intend to move quickly to redraw congressional maps in the wake of the ruling.
Alabama Atty. Gen. Steve Marshall said the state will “act as quickly as possible” to ensure its congressional maps “reflect the will of the people, not a racial quota system the Constitution forbids.” Marshall called the decision a recognition of how much the South has changed since the civil rights era.
“The court rightly acknowledged that the South has made extraordinary progress, and that laws designed for a different era do not reflect the present reality,” he said in a statement.
Florida was already in motion before the ruling came down. But Gov. Ron DeSantis celebrated the decision and said it was all the more reason for state lawmakers to redraw its congressional maps, in a manner that could give Republicans up to four more seats in Congress.
The proposed congressional maps, drawn by DeSantis’ office, were first unveiled to Fox News on Monday. On Wednesday, both chambers approved the maps, and readied them for DeSantis’ final approval.
In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves had already called lawmakers into a special session at the end of May in anticipation of a court ruling on the Voting Rights Act. In a post on X, Reeves underscored the ideological underpinnings to the ruling’s potential implications.
“First Dobbs. Now Callais. Just Mississippi and Louisiana down here saving our country!” Reeves wrote.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) speaks at a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol after the Supreme Court ruling.
(Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call / Getty Images)
At issue was how to ensure equal representation for Black and Latino citizens.
About one-third of Louisiana’s voters are Black, but the state seeks an election map that will elect white Republicans to five of its six seats in the House of Representatives.
Lower courts said that map violated the Voting Rights Act because it denied fair representation to Black residents.
The state had one Black-majority district, in New Orleans.
Two years ago, judges upheld the creation of a second Black-majority district that stretched from Shreveport to Baton Rouge on the grounds that it was required under the law.
The state’s Republican leaders appealed and argued that race was the motivating factor in drawing the second district.
Alito and the conservatives agreed and called that district an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
The three liberals dissented. The consequences of the ruling “are likely to be far-reaching and grave,” said Justice Elena Kagan, adding that it will allow “racial vote dilution in its most classic form.”
She said the decision means “a state can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power. Of course, the majority does not announce today’s holding that way. Its opinion is understated, even antiseptic.”
But she said states across the South may draw electoral districts that deprive Black voters of equal representation. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed.
The decision was the latest example of a partisan political dispute in which the court’s six Republican appointees vote in favor of the Republican state plan, while the three Democratic appointees dissent.
The ruling is likely to have its greatest impact in the Southern states, where white Republicans are in control and Black Democrats are in the minority.
The court’s divide over redistricting is similar to the long dispute over affirmative action.
For decades, university officials said they needed to consider the race of applicants to achieve diversity and equal representation.
But in 2023, the court by a 6-3 vote struck down college affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina and ruled race may not be used to judge applicants.
The historic Voting Rights Act of 1965 succeeded in clearing the way for Black citizens to register and vote across the South, but it took longer for Black candidates to win elections.
The dispute was highlighted in a 1980 case from Mobile, Ala. Its three commissioners were elected to six-year terms, and each of them ran countywide.
Even though one-third of the county’s voters were Black, white candidates always won.
The Supreme Court upheld this arrangement as legal and constitutional. In dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall said Black residents were left with the right to cast meaningless ballots.
In response, Congress amended the Voting Rights Act in 1982 to say states must give minorities an opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.
Four years later, the Supreme Court interpreted that to mean that states had a duty to draw voting districts that would elect a Black or Latino candidate if these minorities had a sufficiently large number of voters in a particular area.
In recent years, the court’s conservatives, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, have chafed at the rule on the grounds it sometimes required states to use race as a factor for drawing election districts.
Alito’s opinion adopted that view and said states are not required or permitted to use race as a basis for drawing districts.
Hours after the ruling came out, President Trump met with reporters in the Oval Office and said he had not yet seen the decision. He was visibly excited, however, when a reporter explained the decision favored Republicans.
“I love it!” he said. “This is very good.”
Former President Obama said in a statement that the court’s decision “effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities — so long as they do it under the guise of ‘partisanship’ rather than explicit racial bias.”
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in Los Angeles, also denounced the decision.
“The Supreme Court’s decision blesses racially discriminatory gerrymandering, and dismantles the legal protections for minority voters,” said Nina Perales, the group’s vice president for litigation. It “openly invites states to dilute minority voting strength, and undermines our democracy.”
When Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong’s scathing remarks about Dodgers fans took off this spring, he wasn’t worried about how fans might interpret them. His back-and-forth with the Dodgers fans dates back several years.
“I wanted to make sure that the people on the other side of the field who I really respect knew where I was coming from, and that it had nothing to do with the people on the field,” Crow-Armstrong told The Times before the Dodgers’ 6-4 loss to the Cubs on Friday, full of gratitude for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, shortstop Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman in particular. “I wanted to make sure that nobody took it in that way, that I was going at the Dodgers.
“Was I poking fun at Dodgers fans? Absolutely.”
It all started in late February, with a Chicago Magazine article on Armstrong, which quoted him: ‘‘I love Chicago more and more. It’s just an incredible city. The people are great. … They aren’t just baseball fans who go to the game like Dodgers fans to take pictures and whatever. They are paying attention. They care.’’
After the story came out, Crow-Armstrong went on “Foul Territory” and doubled down.
When the Cubs came to town Friday, Dodgers fans made it clear they hadn’t forgotten. Thunderous boos greeted Crow-Armstrong as he walked up to the plate for the first time. But Crow-Armstrong was expecting that, and he didn’t walk back anything he said.
“What I wish people could see through is, I’m not getting at die-hard Dodger fans,” he said. “They obviously exist, they’re out there. I grew up seeing those people, too, but it’s a see-me city, man. It’s a Lakers city where people show up to sit courtside and look good. And I view it the same way here.
“Thank you, Shohei [Ohtani] and Freddie and Mookie because it wasn’t always like this.”
On that last point, his tone was sincere.
Friday’s announced attendance at Dodger Stadium was 53,733, the seventh sellout of the season.
Dodger Stadium played an important role in Crow-Armstrong’s baseball upbringing. The son of two actors, Ashley Crow and Matthew John Armstrong, Crow-Armstrong grew up in Los Angeles and went to Harvard-Westlake.
He went to plenty of Dodgers games, but when Crow-Armstrong was younger, he latched on to players rather than teams. From the Dodgers, he was drawn to Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, and of course, Clayton Kershaw.
“I remember specific stuff too, like Adrian Gonzalez’ first homer as a Dodger,” Crow-Armstrong said. “We were all watching that together. The Dodgers were a huge part of my life growing up.”
Pete Crow-Armstrong celebrates in the dugout after scoring off a triple hit by Dansby Swanson during the seventh inning Friday.
(Ryan Sun / Associated Press)
Crow-Armstrong, baseball-hungry from a young age, also would go to Angel Stadium when the Yankees were in town to watch Derek Jeter, one of his favorites, go up against Mike Trout’s Angels. Eventually, his father, an Illinois native, recruited his son into Cubs fandom.
Crow-Armstrong’s L.A. ties made that first trip with the Cubs to Dodgers Stadium feel “special.” Regardless of the size of the stadium, or the major-league stage, part of that first experience in September 2024 made him feel like he was back in high school.
“I’m playing in front of my friends again, and I’m getting a show off for my friends and all that fun stuff,” he said. “There’s nothing better to me than seeing a random face that I didn’t know was coming to the game, and they’re sitting three rows behind our dugout. … That’s by far what I look forward to most about this trip.”
Show off he did.
Crow-Armstrong’s standout defensive showing peaked in a game-sealing catch over the wall in right-center field, robbing Max Muncy of a home run.
The rookie center fielder didn’t bother to hide his delight, jumping and shouting in celebration. He developed a contentious relationship with Dodgers fans in that series.
“They were really quick to talk … to me when I was in center field,” Crow-Armstrong said. “And I appreciate that kind of stuff. Like they’re obviously engaged and in the way that they want to be. … And just very easy to kind of give it right back. Like, ‘Yeah, please, be my guest.’ But I kind of love that.”
The Cubs’ next visit to Dodger Stadium was just as eventful. News broke that the Cubs and Crow-Armstrong’s agents at CAA had engaged in extension talks. Then he broke out of a slump to hit two home runs and a triple in a win that clinched a series victory.
“I love playing here,” Crow-Armstrong said afterward. “It’s a fun crowd, and I like the noise. I think the Cubbies like playing here, too.”
He grinned, in case the jab was too subtle.
Crow-Armstrong had a similar look on his face when that history came up again Friday.
“If we’re going to be immature and childish about it,” he said, “I’d say they started it, they just gave me an opportunity to kind of run with it.”
Crow-Armstrong walked into Dodger Stadium expecting it to be a topic he’d have to address all weekend, fully prepared to keep running with it.
“Each fan base has their own personality,” he said. “And I was really just comparing my own two experiences: playing for the Cubs, and people showing up and enjoying it, and there’s just an air about the place; and then here, it is what it is like. Maybe if I played here, it’d be different. But I don’t.”
His experience with Cubs fans also factored into his desire to stay with the organization long term. This spring, he signed a six-year, $115-million contract. And on Friday, he commended Cubs fans for their patience.
“It wasn’t the hottest start to my career, but I got loved the same way that I do today,” Crow-Armstrong said. “And even right now, when it’s been tough on me results-wise, all I hear running out to the field is, ‘Hey, we love you. We got you. The city loves you. You’re the best.”
The sentiment from Dodgers fans Friday was a little different. Not only did they boo Crow-Armstrong every at-bat, but even the Dodgers’ social media team piled on.
After Crow-Armstrong struck out in his first at-bat — one of Dodgers starter Emmet Sheehan’s career-high-tying 10 strikeouts — the Dodgers’ social media account posted a video of his last whiff, with the caption: “A strikeout worthy of taking pictures and whatever.”
Crow-Armstrong and the Cubs, however, got the last laugh, as the Dodgers’ bullpen buckled. With the game tied in the ninth Friday, Crow-Armstrong lined a single into shallow left field against Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott. Then Scott grooved a fastball down the middle to Dansby Swanson, who hit it over the left-field wall.
Crow-Armstrong had a trip around the bases to relish the relative quiet he and his teammates had induced.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has ended its probe into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, clearing a major roadblock to the confirmation of his successor, Kevin Warsh.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeannine Pirro said on X that her office was ending its probe into the Fed’s extensive building renovations because the Fed’s Inspector General would scrutinize them instead.
The decision ends an investigation, one of several undertaken by the Justice Department into President Trump’s perceived adversaries, that for months had failed to gain traction as prosecutors struggled to articulate a basis to suspect criminal conduct.
A prosecutor handling the case conceded at a closed-door court hearing in March that the government hadn’t yet found any evidence of a crime, and a judge subsequently quashed subpoenas issued to the Federal Reserve. The judge, James Boasberg, said prosecutors had produced “essentially zero evidence” to suspect Powell of a crime. Boasberg prosecutors’ justification for the subpoenas as “thin and unsubstantiated.”
More recently, prosecutors made an unannounced visit to a construction site at the Fed’s headquarters but were turned away, drawing a rebuke from a defense attorney in the case who called the maneuver “not appropriate.”
The move could lead to a swift confirmation vote by the Senate for Warsh, a former top Fed official whom Trump, a Republican, nominated in January to replace Powell, whose term as chair ends May 15. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, has said he would oppose Warsh until the investigation was resolved, effectively blocking his confirmation.
Warsh said Tuesday that he never promised the White House that he would cut interest rates, even as the president renewed his calls for the central bank to do so.
“The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,” Kevin Warsh, a former top Fed official, said under questioning by the Senate Banking Committee. “Nor would I ever agree to do so if he had. … I will be an independent actor if confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve.”
Warsh’s comments came just hours after Trump, in an interview on CNBC, was asked if he would be disappointed if Warsh didn’t immediately cut rates and responded, “I would.”
This week Tucker Carlson apologized for unintentionally “misleading” voters into supporting President Trump’s return to the White House. The apology came days after the president called Carlson dumb and overrated on social media. We’ve seen this plot before: It’s a different name but the same story.
Recall the president’s first term was closely shadowed by high-profile breakups from loyalists who disagreed with him on matters of substance. For example, the split with his first Defense secretary, James Mattis, began in 2017 when Mattis, a man who spent more than four decades in uniform, defended the importance of NATO. His successor, Mark Esper, found himself at odds with the president for refusing to use the military on citizens. On his way out the door, Esper told the country that if his replacement was “a real ‘yes man’ … then God help us.”
Some of the highlights from Trump’s second term include squabbles with his biggest donor, Elon Musk, who was upset the president wasn’t lowering the national debt enough; with former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene because millions of Americans faced losing health insurance; and with Rep. Thomas Massie for having the audacity to seek justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking operation.
Now it appears it’s Carlson’s turn. He, like Pope Leo XIV and many of our allies and nearly 70% of Americans, disapproves of the president’s handling of the war in Iran. On a recent episode of the Carlson podcast, the former Fox News host invited his brother Buckley, himself a former Trump speechwriter, on the show to discuss their buyer’s remorse.
Everyone has that line they won’t cross for the president.
Omarosa Manigault Newman left reality TV to advise Trump. She followed him to the White House, found out there was a lot of racism over in MAGA land, and ended up back on reality TV. For Mattis, it was abandoning our allies. For Esper, it was shooting protesters.
For Carlson, it’s Iran. Candidate Trump campaigned on ending endless wars. This week, Trump said there’s no timeline for when the war he started with Iran will end.
“I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,” Carlson told his brother. “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”
Now before Tucker’s apology, Buckley defended his initial support of Trump’s candidacy in 2015 — despite “all of his obvious foibles and his disgusting elements of his personality” — in part because “he built things.” Buckley also said that after the election of President Obama, white Americans in Washington were subjugated by a version of Jim Crow in education and society, and that progressives “would look blank or angry” whenever he asked what Obama was doing to strengthen the nation.
In other words, being red in the face over Trump did not turn the Tucker boys blue. In fact, the episode ended with the two calling the left a bunch of “lunatics,” even after listing the ways the Trump administration was holding back release of the Epstein files and hurting the country.
“Demonic influences concentrate on those who have power. Beware of power,” Tucker warned listeners halfway through the show before his brother chimed in: “And those who seek power.”
Of course, Trump’s ascension to the White House wasn’t solely based on the contributions of media folks. The president entered 2015 having been a public figure for more than 30 years. He’s had the luxury of criticizing elected officials and legislation on camera without the burden of governing for much of that time. When he entered the political arena, he didn’t have a record to defend. He likes being quotable, not being held accountable. That’s why it’s doubtful he would have been elected a second time if not for the support from unscrupulous podcasters masquerading as political journalists such as Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, who less than a year ago said everything Trump “campaigned on, I believed he wanted to do. And now he’s doing the exact opposite thing.… I voted for none of this.”
As if “this” had not been clearly spelled out in the pages of Project 2025 for all to see before deciding whether to vote for Trump and that agenda.
Schulz, the comedian and podcaster, might not have read that outline, but Tucker Carlson probably did. That’s why his apology to listeners — like the mea culpas from the discarded loyalists of the past — ultimately won’t mean anything to mainstream Republicans or MAGA. Those who identify with the latter listen only to Trump. As for the former — they have always known that people like Carlson don’t regret supporting Trump. They regret falling out of favor.
The part of a lawyer, walking down his opposition in the open court. He delivered an airtight opening argument that was stunning for how much stronger it was than opposing coach Ime Udoka’s. And evidence of how far Redick has come.
Now, look, your honor: The short-on-star-power Lakers winning both games at home to take a 2-0 series lead over the heavily favored Houston Rockets in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs? That’s a compelling start.
But Redick, James and Associates are only halfway there; they’re still proving their case.
They still need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that their top role players can perform as persuasively on the road as they have at home.
And they’ll probably have to prove they can effectively rebut the Rockets’ adjustments, though those are merely conceptual at this point, they’re so overdue.
Two games into this series it looks to us, the members of the jury, as though Redick has taken this allegedly open-and-shut case, this slam dunk of a trial — and thrown down a reverse.
The Lakers look like the better team. Like the better-constructed team, even. And that’s without injured stars Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, who are hustling back as fast as their bodies will let them from hamstring and oblique injuries, respectively.
They look like the better-coached team.
It’s the opposing counsel who looks dressed for the part, Udoka in a sweatsuit like a dad at a Saturday morning youth league trying to get his players to get along, with just one play in his pocket: Give the ball to Kevin.
Meanwhile, the legal team minding the game in the Lakers’ huddle is running laps around the guys on the other bench.
Coach JJ Redick and forward LeBron James have helped the Lakers earn a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven playoff series agains the favored Rockets without injured guards Luke Doncic and Austin Reaves.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Exhibit A: One of the game’s greatest scorers, Kevin Durant, has been forced by his own team to do a lot of ballhandling chores too. So the Lakers have been double-teaming and blitzing Durant all over the court, compelling him into nine turnovers in Tuesday’s 101-94 Game 2 victory at Crypto.com Arena. Using the same strategy, they’ve turned him over 20 times in his last three meetings with the Lakers, going back to the regular season.
Exhibit B: By playing drop, hedge, man and mixing zone defenses, the Lakers also have been, according to Marcus Smart’s postgame testimony, “throwing different packages” at the Rockets. It’s working: Houston has failed to score 100 points in either game of the series.
Exhibit C: The Lakers are putting the ball in Smart’s hands, using him in a way that forces the Rockets to defend honestly, instead of sagging off him. They’ve also been intentional with how they leverage Luke Kennard, running actions that overrule his reluctance to shoot. It should please the court to see the man shooting 65.4% (17 for 26) from the field in the first two games!
With these tactics and others, the Lakers seem almost to be creating new precedent for the laws of basketball, because what do you mean the Rockets have taken 44 more shots but have been outscored by 16 points?
What makes it so wildly impressive is that before the Lakers brought this thing to trial, it looked as though it would be thrown out on the grounds of insufficient star power.
With just 41-year-old LeBron James to carry them without Doncic and Reaves, Houston seemed so much stronger. Physically, on the boards, in just about every way — except in terms of chemistry, camaraderie and communication.
Even Udoka’s record seemed superior. In 2021-22, his first (and only) season as the Boston Celtics’ coach, he led them to the NBA Finals.
Redick, in his first playoffs as a coach last year, showed such contempt for his own team and made an absolute mockery of the game plan that got the Lakers to the postseason in the first place. Remember how he panicked, refusing even to approach the bench to give his preferred five a breather for a full losing half in Game 4 against the Minnesota Timberwolves? The little tantrum he threw when asked about it before the Game 5 finale?
The Duke graduate and self-proclaimed “basketball sicko” has appeared much more prepared this time, much more composed.
He seems to be in his element, problem-solving alongside his former podcast host, James, who has stepped right up with 47 points, 20 assists and 16 rebounds — including some highlight-reel dunks and passes — through the first two games. We are all witnesses.
Still, this thing is going to last at least two more games, and possibly more, before we get a verdict.
And if it goes the Lakers’ way?
Congratulations, JJ, you will have earned the reputation as a coach who can take on the toughest cases and win them. And do we have an impossible challenge for you next on the docket.
The top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder are young, deep, and up 2-0 in their first-round series against the Phoenix Suns. The defending-champion Thunder have run the Lakers out of court in every meeting this season, beating them by an average of 29 points. And they’re clever too; referees — those judges on the court — always seem so sympathetic to OKC.
Would the Lakers have any chance? Redick is proving he might be able to make a case.
It was my first time hiking through Tilden Regional Park, a 2,079-acre wooded hilly expanse near Berkeley, and I was looking for one very specific thing: a small red, white and blue rounded triangular trail marker with a tiny map of the United States.
I’d already struck out twice, parking at the wrong trailheads, and I was really hoping the third time would be the charm. I trudged up the Upper Big Springs Trail, a wide dirt path lined with fragrant eucalyptus, pine trees and California bay laurels and, peeking out of the invasive grasses, California poppies and orange bush monkey flower.
I crested a hill after about two-thirds of a mile, and there I saw a sign, both literal and metaphorical, on a small brown post letting me know I was exactly where I needed to be. I was officially hiking along the American Discovery Trail, a contiguous 6,800-mile coast-to-coast nonmotorized route of multiuse trails that runs from Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County to Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware.
The American Discovery Trail sign in Tilden Regional Park near Berkeley.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
“The ADT is all about connections — people to people, community to community, urban areas to wilderness,” according to a website outlining its history. “… The ADT connects five National Scenic, 12 National Historic, and 34 National Recreational Trails; passes through urban centers like Cincinnati and San Francisco; leads to 14 National Parks and 16 National Forests” and visits thousands of historic, cultural and natural sites.
I’m excited to share not only about the joy that can be found along this route, but also how you can join a relay in July across America along the trail. I certainly plan to!
You are reading The Wild newsletter
Sign up to get expert tips on the best of Southern California’s beaches, trails, parks, deserts, forests and mountains in your inbox every Thursday
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
I’d never heard of the American Discovery Trail until last week when I attended the California Trails & Greenways conference in San Ramon. There, I met with American Discovery Trail co-founder John Fazel and John Mercurio, the trail’s California coordinator, to learn more.
The idea to create a coast-to-coast trail was born out of a 1980-81 hike across America called “HikaNation,” where several members of the American Hiking Society trekked more than 4,000 miles across the country. That adventure inspired Backpacker magazine and the American Hiking Society in 1989 to start developing the American Discovery Trail.
A view of the San Francisco Bay from the Seaview Trail in Tilden Regional Park near Berkeley. The route is a part of the American Discovery Trail.
Then, in 1991, the American Hiking Society hired a national coordinator to work with volunteer state coordinators to develop the route, and in 1996, trail advocates formed the American Discovery Trail Society to ensure their dreams became a reality.
“It’s an opportunity to get to know America up close and personal and not as a flyover,” said Fazel, who grew up in Iowa.
The San Pablo Reservior as seen from Tilden Regional Park near Berkeley.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Most people don’t complete the trail in one trip, Fazel said, as it takes months to finish and requires participants to leave the East Coast around February to ensure that enough snow has melted by the time they reach the mountains in Colorado and California.
Although the trail has existed for several years, Fazel and Mercurio admit that they don’t know exactly how much of the route is a recreational trail, sidewalk or roadway. That’s in part because it’s a technically complicated task to complete, especially for a mostly volunteer group. But it’s also because the route is ever-evolving (which is actually exciting).
“Since we got involved, small towns, counties, even states are funding millions of dollars to build trails in their area, and when they see a national trail goes across the country, they want to connect to it, and when they do, where it is on back roads, we can move it off,” Fazel said. “And it happens.”
A labyrinth in Tilden Regional Park along the American Discovery Trail.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times )
In California, the only place hikers are on pavement for a significant amount of time is from the Antioch Bridge north to Sacramento as they travel through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Fazel said.
Mercurio said he is working with local officials to try to move the trail from this narrow roadway onto an old railroad track that’s owned by the state.
“It’s been sitting there vacant for many, many years,” Mercurio said. “Now, they should know that there’s this national trail, this coast-to-coast trail, [that] is interested in utilizing that to provide a safe way for us to make our way across the delta.”
Unlike the Pacific Crest Trail, Appalachian Trail and other multistate routes, the American Discovery Trail is not federally designated under existing law.
The National Park Service studied the American Discovery Trail in the mid-’90s and acknowledged that the American Discovery Trail doesn’t fit neatly into any of the existing categories outlined in the National Trails System Act, Mercurio said. The agency mapped out three options for Congress to consider, including creating a new category for discovery trails, he said.
A lush tree canopy along the Seaview Trail, part of the American Discovery Trail, in Tilden Regional Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Trail advocates have been pushing Congress for more than 25 years to create such a category. They came close in 2021 when U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) introduced such legislation that garnered 63 co-sponsors.
“We had people on the House resources committee who were far right and killed it,” Fazel said, adding the trail has otherwise garnered bipartisan support for decades in states it passes through.
There was a mix of suspicion and concern that the recognition of the trail would lead to eminent domain and requests for federal money, neither of which the trail’s organizers want, Fazel and Mercurio said.
“The thing is, we don’t build any trail at all,” Mercurio said. “All we do is route onto stuff that’s already there, and our presence influences local jurisdictions to create trail that would be good for our route. But they’re in this anti-federal feeling, so they just knee-jerk don’t want to support it.”
The Golden Gate Bridge as seen from Tilden Regional Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
The duo remains optimistic that their trail will get national recognition. In the interim, they’ve got other big plans.
On July 1, as long as everything goes according to plan, the American Discovery Trail Society will launch its “America 250 Relay,” aiming to cross the Golden Gate Bridge by July 4 and ending in Delaware at the Atlantic Ocean on Thanksgiving Day.
Anyone can join to traverse the trail in a people- or horse-powered way. Participants will carry a copy of the Declaration of Independence in a celebration of America and the outdoors. (I’ve already texted two best friends to entice them to do part of the relay with me!)
A flax-leaved blue pimpernel in Tilden Regional Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
In a time of rising authoritarianismacross the globe, it’s important we seek both joy and connection, focusing less on what we’re fed by algorithms and more on our shared humanity. I know that sounds fairly Pollyanna, but especially as a transgender American who constantly worries about whether I can safely visit my family in the Midwest, where lawmakers are seemingly seeking to outlaw my existence, I do actually mean it.
As I neared the end of the trail, a golden Labrador retriever greeted me, and after lots of head scratches, I met the dog’s owner. He and I started chatting, and soon realized that, although we belonged to different generations, we had both grown up as farm kids.
He started to tell me the story of when his dad ran himself over with a tractor.
“My dad ran himself over with a tractor too!” I said. “Did your dad start the tractor from the ground even though he’d told you a million times as a kid not to?”
“No, but he did try to get off and get back on a moving tractor,” he said, which my new friend’s father had repeatedly told him not to do.
I didn’t expect to discuss tractors and hay bales with a stranger in the East Bay, but I found that these experiences are a part of what the American Discovery Trail provides.
3 things to do
A human and canine guest travel along a previous CicLAvia event route.
(CicLAvia Los Angeles)
1. Wander the car-free streets of West L.A. CicLAvia, an L.A. nonprofit, will host a free three-mile, car-free open streets event from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday through West L.A. The event marks the 65th open streets event the organization has held around L.A., but it’s the first time that one has been held in West L.A. The route includes portions of Santa Monica and Westwood boulevards. Attendees are invited to traverse the route in any people-powered device, although there are certain restrictions on e-bikes. Learn more at ciclavia.org.
2. Prop up the pollinators in Castaic TreePeople will host Pollinator Palooza from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday at Castaic Lake. Volunteers will plant milkweed and restore habitat. The event will also feature plant giveaways, an environmental resource fair and a pollinator-themed fashion show. Learn more at treepeople.org.
3. Orient yourself in Irvine Save Orange Hills and Naturalist For You will host a hike, yoga and meditation event from 8 to 10 a.m. Sunday at Irvine Regional Park. After a short warm-up hike, guests will take part in an all-levels yoga session. Tickets are $17.85, but no one will be turned away due to lack of funds. Register at eventbrite.com.
The must-read
San Joaquin River Parkway, currently operated by the San Joaquin River Conservancy, would join various properties into an 874-acre state park, expanding recreation opportunities and greater access along the river. The park would complement nearby Millerton Lake State Recreation Area.
(California State Parks)
California could soon see the development of three new state parks in the Central Valley. State officials announced the proposed parks on Wednesday, which are Feather River Park in Yuba County, San Joaquin River Parkway near Fresno and Dust Bowl Camp in Bakersfield, Times staff writer Hayley Smith wrote. State officials also aim to expand three existing parks in Mendocino County, Nevada County and San Mateo County. “California’s state parks are nothing short of iconic — with locations like Big Sur, Southern California beaches, and the world’s tallest trees — but our state has even more to offer,” said Wade Crowfoot, California’s natural resources secretary.
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
Hikers and trail builders have until April 30 to complete the California Trails Survey, which state officials will use to help shape how nonmotorized recreational trails are developed in the state — and how officials use millions from Prop 4, often called the “climate bond” because its money is supposed to be spent to combat climate change. The survey includes two portions, one for trail users and another for trail builders and advocates. If you fit both categories, you are invited to complete both portions. Early data, released at a trails conference I attended last week, suggested that white hikers were overrepresented in the results, so please spread the word, especially to BIPOC hiking organizations in your area!
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.
Plucked from a previous life as a working actor, Richard Gadd experienced a disorienting whirlwind less than two years ago. “Baby Reindeer,” his painfully personal 2024 Netflix show, based on the sexual assault he survived, instantly opened the floodgates of fame for him.
“The show came out on Thursday, and by Sunday, I could barely walk anywhere without being recognized, without being stopped,” Gadd says while visiting The Times’ offices earlier this month. “That’s an adjustment because I always thought if anything like that ever happened, it would be a bit more of a gradual process. But it was overnight, so I didn’t have time to adjust.”
Now the winner of three Emmy Awards and a slew of other accolades for that series, which he starred in, wrote and served as showrunner, Gadd, 36, has already helmed a new emotionally ferocious show.
Probing the tropes of rigid masculinity, “Half Man,” premiering Thursday on HBO, chronicles the destructive bond between two men over several decades. Niall and Ruben — whose respective mothers are romantic partners — call themselves brothers but they couldn’t be more dissimilar.
Bullied at school, meek Niall (played by Mitchell Robertson in his youth and Jamie Bell in adulthood) lost his father as a young boy. He dreams of being a writer. Meanwhile, the insolent and hyper-confident Ruben (Stuart Campbell as a teen and Gadd as a grown-up) has been in trouble with the law from a tender age. Facing any conflict, he resorts to brutal violence. When Ruben takes Niall under his wing, the two become inseparable. But as the years and resentments pile on, their cancerous brotherhood threatens to obliterate them both.
“Half Man” follows the destructive bond between Ruben (Richard Gadd), left, and Niall (Jamie Bell) over several decades.
(Anne Binckebanck / HBO)
“Richard’s writing is really unique and really singular,” Bell says on a video call from England, where he’s currently shooting the “Peaky Blinders” sequel series and is sporting a shorter haircut. “He identifies that real gray area of humanity really well and he puts a voice to the most uncomfortable places that we go into or things that we think when we’re alone in the dark, when we think no one’s watching.”
Gadd wrote the first episode of what would become “Half Man” back in 2019, while he still was performing the live version of “Baby Reindeer,” which he turned into the series. At the time, he recalls, society at large was seriously engaging in conversations around toxic masculinity and sexual violence as the #MeToo movement gained strength.
“It wasn’t necessarily that I set out going, ‘Oh, I want to make a show about that,’” Gadd says. “It was more that something must have just drifted into my head thinking, ‘You take two men repressed in their current life, repressed in the modern world. And then you go all the way back to their childhood. You contextualize learned behavior; you contextualize trauma and things they learned that make them these repressed adults. And you bring a bit of context to, I suppose, difficult male behavior in the present.’”
As “Baby Reindeer” launched his career as a creator, Gadd put “Half Man” on ice for four years but couldn’t stop thinking about returning to it. “Even as I was coming to the end of ‘Baby Reindeer,’ I thought, ‘I’m really looking forward to getting back to that project,” he recalls. “The second ‘Baby Reindeer’ finished, I thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do now.’”
Sitting across from the mild-mannered Gadd, the magnitude of his transformation on screen for “Half Man” becomes even more impressive. Gadd comes off as thoughtful and emphatic, while Ruben, his physically imposing character, commands trepidation.
“The second ‘Baby Reindeer’ finished, I thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do now,’” Gadd says about working on “Half Man.”
(Ian Spanier / For The Times)
Watching Gadd as the rage-fueled Ruben, one might be surprised to learn he originally had no intention of acting in “Half Man.” After wearing multiple hats on “Baby Reindeer,” Gadd thought this time around he could get a purely external bird’s-eye view of a project as showrunner and writer of “Half Man.” But eventually people around him suggested he should be in front of the camera once again.
“My initial response was always, ‘That’s just so far away from anything I’ve done before. It’s so far away from me. Are people going to buy it?’” he recalls. “And behind every single fear-based thought was a worry of what people might think, which in my opinion, isn’t a good enough reason to not do something.”
Convinced audiences would struggle to see the guy from “Baby Reindeer” as this “hard man,” a U.K. term for tough and intimidating men, he had to physically morph. To inhabit a new body, Gadd underwent a strict exercise regimen, and most importantly, a new diet.
“I had a chef make these meals in England, fun enough, and send them up to Scotland where I was filming,” he recalls. “I’d eat them at specific times. You go through periods of fasting and through dehydration whenever you had your top off. There was a real science to it.”
And yet, though he at first worried he wouldn’t look big enough, Gadd refused to portray Ruben with a chiseled physique conceived for mere aesthetics.
“I didn’t want him to have a six pack, I wanted him to feel like a real person,” Gadd says. “Sometimes when you see someone on TV and they’re ripped, I almost don’t think that’s real strength. Someone like Ruben, they wear their life in their body, they’re heavy set. It’s not ripped. It’s bulky. It’s natural to him.”
Before he agreed to play the character, Gadd auditioned numerous actors for the part, but with all of them he felt they were too focused on his appearance as an imposing figure and not his inner turmoil. “Ruben is extremely sad as a person. He’s terribly broken and traumatized,” he says.
For the series, Gadd bulked up to become more physically imposing: “Someone like Ruben, they wear their life in their body, they’re heavy set. It’s not ripped. It’s bulky. It’s natural to him.”Richard Gadd in “Half Man.”(Anne Binckebanck / HBO)
When asked if he sees himself as Ruben, Gadd contemplates the question, debating whether it’s his “jetlagged brain” or ambivalence about finding some of Ruben within him.
“Do I see myself in Ruben?” After a pause, he concedes: “All of his behavior is a reaction to a deep traumatic happening in his life. I can relate to finding it extremely difficult to get past big traumatic events and coming to terms with them and coming to terms with yourself even as a result of them.”
With less hesitation, Bell, 40, acknowledges that he finds a certain kinship with his character. As a teenager, Bell flocked to people with a defiant edge. “I grew up without a father in an all-female household and I felt very naked as a child in terms of needing to be protected by someone who was dominant and aggressive,” he says. “I totally understand why Niall seeks solace in someone like him. No one will touch Ruben. There is a safety in that.”
Gadd says he doesn’t think about celebrities when searching for the actors. “I’m quite fame-averse when it comes to casting because I think sometimes it can get in the way,” he explains. “You can have a show, which starts up with all the best intentions, turn into a sort of acting vehicle for someone, or the discussion becomes about the actor doing this role.”
That said, when the casting director on “Half Man” asked him about his “dream cast,” Gadd expressed Bell was the only one who would genuinely excite him. But could that happen? “In my head, I was still in pre-‘Baby Reindeer’ time where I thought, ‘Well, somebody like him is not going to be interested.’ And then I thought, ‘Well, he might be,’” Gadd says.
For his part, Bell found the “nihilism” in Niall, a man desperately running from his true self and living in Ruben’s shadow, an enticing and complex character to play. “[Niall] conceals himself in many different ways, and has a lot of self-loathing, but at the same time has all these ambitions and actually is incredibly egotistical and thinks that his way is the correct way, and that other people don’t understand that he is terminally unique,” Bell explains with a chuckle.
Bell, who plays Niall, says his character “conceals himself in many different ways, and has a lot of self-loathing, but at the same time has all these ambitions and actually is incredibly egotistical …”
(Anne Binckebanck / HBO)
Aside from a tight schedule to produce “Half Man,” the challenge for Bell was adjusting to the dramatic intensity that Gadd was after. “I wasn’t particularly prepared for that, therefore sometimes my reading of certain scenes I’d get wrong. We’d start scenes and Richard was like, ‘You are pitching it at like a six, and this is very much an 11,’” Bell recalls laughing. I was like, ‘Oh, OK.’ That took some modulating.”
In Gadd’s mind, Bell remains an “underrated” artist. A proud Scotsman, Gadd recalls loving Bell in the 2007 romantic dramedy “Hallam Foe,” where the British actor played Scottish. For “Half Man,” Gadd thought Bell could convey the pain that haunts Niall, even as his actions paint him less like Ruben’s victim and more like a vengeful participant in the chaos.
“There’s always something I find so vulnerable about Jamie and I knew that I was going to take Niall in some really big journeys where he was going to almost test the audience’s love for him,” Gadd says. That Niall finds Ruben so alluring is natural to Gadd, who believes the notion of a valiant male figure has been bred into everyone via fables and fairy tales.
Gadd adds that whether or not we like to admit it, we’re drawn to alpha male characters. “Because from an early age, we’ve been told they are always at the top of the social hierarchy. And as a result, we’ve always, as a society, answered to those kinds of people as some sort of leaders.”
And though he says he’s unfamiliar with the “manosphere,” the misogynistic and chauvinistic online community, Gadd doesn’t believe Ruben would fall for the gurus in those circles who claim to have the answers for young guys to become “real men.”
“Ruben carved his own masculinity. To give him credit, if that’s even something you can give him, those spaces wouldn’t hold any weight for him. He’s his own man,” Gad says. “He would never follow anyone on social media. He’s the person to be followed.”
Based on the tone of Gadd’s output thus far, it may come as a surprise that as a young person he dreamed of creating a show along the lines of the U.K.’s “The Office,” which he considers a “perfect piece of art.” The stories he is telling now better reflect his “neuroses” and the experiences he’s endured.
“My life just took a very dramatic turn, and my sensibilities weren’t workplace sitcoms anymore. When I grew up and I was doing comedy I thought, ‘I’ll write a sitcom one day and every character will be sort of funny in it,’” he says. “But my life just took a turn to the point where I needed my writing and my art darkened because what I went through was very dark.”
Humor is not entirely absent from “Half Man,” some of the characters’ reactions to their distressing realities earn a chuckle. Still, Gadd’s funny bone might also find an outlet in other people’s narratives. He was recently announced as part of the cast in Apple TV’s upcoming high-concept series “Husbands,” for which he already shot his scenes. Adapted from a bestselling novel of the same name, it stars Juno Temple as a woman who gets to experience life with a different partner every time she changes the light bulb in her attic.
“I’m very picky with stuff I take on. Because I love writing my own work so much, anything that takes me out on someone else’s show has to be very special. And this was very special,” Gadd says.
“Everything I do doesn’t have to be dark,” he adds with a soft smile.
For three seasons, Jimmy, a therapist grieving the loss of his wife, has used unconventional methods —think taking someone with aggression issues to a boxing ring — to get through to his patients. In the last moments of “And That’s Our Time,” Jimmy’s mentor and fellow therapist Paul (Harrison Ford) turns that approach on its namesake, flying across the country to give Jimmy a much needed push to move forward with his life. “Jimmy needed permission and encouragement from someone to say, ‘All right, it’s time,’” Segel says. “This is the end of this story and it’s time to start a new one.”
In the scene, Paul finally tells Jimmy he’s like a son to him. “I found ourselves writing a conversation that if we were lucky enough to have a conversation like that with our own fathers, we’d be grateful,” executive producer Bill Lawrence says. “A lot of my shows have an element of mentorship in them. To see Jimmy’s mentor come through for him in the way that I would always hope he would meant a lot to me.”
Lawrence had always envisioned the three-season arc for Jimmy ending this way. But when they found out the comedy would be returning for a fourth season, he and his fellow executive producers were faced with a dilemma: End the season the way they would have the series or push their original ending out for one more season. After much discussion, they decided to stick the landing.
“It still felt right,” Lawrence says. “This particular story with these characters has been told and you should feel, in a good way, like it’s gonna be OK for Jimmy. Jason is so good at it, watching him play the agony of trying to get through it all and come out on the other side was my favorite kind of journey on the whole show.”
Segel spoke to The Envelope about filming this pivotal scene and bringing the third season to a close.
What did filming this final scene mean to you? To play this part of Jimmy’s journey coming to an end?
I’m always really interested in, “What is the dirty underneath? If we go one level deeper, what is the thing that the person is not saying?” This arc with Jimmy over the three seasons had been building up to Jimmy finally saying the actual thing, which is some version of, “Who’s gonna want me now?”
Paul answers that question by telling Jimmy that his scars are “evidence of a life well–lived.”
I had a therapist I was talking to about having to show up somewhere with people I knew from 25 years ago. I remember having a little bit of apprehension because I’ve had a twisty-turny life. I thought, “God, there’s so much to catch up on and I’m showing up covered in scars.” And this therapist said to me, just matter of fact, “What a shame it would be to show up anywhere at 45 years old not covered in scars.” And I went straight to Bill and [executive producer] Neil [Goldman], this is a year ago, and I said, “This is what Harrison says to Jimmy at the end of this arc.” And we worked it in.
What was the actual day of filming the scene like for you?
It was a difficult day. It was loud that day. There was a little bit of discombobulation on the street. There was construction and they couldn’t hold the cars right. It wasn’t the ideal environment for a scene like this where you would love to hear a pin drop. People were coming into the restaurant asking, “Are you guys open?” It almost felt like we were making a student film. And Harrison and I took a minute and we walked away from the set and we started running the scene, walking up and down the busy street to kind of acclimate ourselves. And I’m walking up and down the street with this man who I idolize and we are at that moment like equals and teammates. We have to go build this scene together. It is a real honor to have that dynamic with him.
Do you think it was important to have such a pivotal scene outdoors?
They’re a good reminder that the show takes place in the real world and that you’re like a representative of reality almost. I think that there’s something vulnerable about all that taking place outside. … There’s other patrons there. It’s surrounded by people, surrounded by life, and Paul is showing up and telling Jimmy, “It’s time to step into it. Look, it’s all around you.”
This season we met Jimmy’s father (played by Jeff Daniels), who never really connected with his son and, in a heartbreaking moment, chooses a fishing trip with his buddies over staying for Alice’s (Lukita Maxwell) high school graduation.
One of the things this show does really well is handle these situations honestly. Whether it’s Parkinson’s or loss or a complicated relationship with a family member. It’s not gonna magically change. None of it. And so the show is very much true to, “How do we get through it with each other?” That’s really the theme of the show. These issues are gonna be there. What are we gonna do with the realities of life? I think the reason they brought Jeff Daniels in is to highlight why Jimmy so desperately wants Paul’s affection. Where is this coming from? Bill is a genius in terms of setting something up in a previous episode so that there’s a payoff in the finale. I think that we understand suddenly how desperate Jimmy is to have somebody say, “You’re my son and I love you.” And he finally gets that at the end from Paul.
The other major event that happens in the finale is that Alice leaves for college.
To me, [Jimmy’s relationship with Alice] has been the heart of the show and the most important storyline. The show started out with Alice parenting a troubled child in her father. And that dynamic slowly, slowly, slowly shifted to being the right direction. Until finally he is able to see her off to college and she feels safe to leave him behind. He is the parent and she is the child and everything is the right size again. I think watching Lukita as an actor and a human being grow up over these past four years, it’s been really the joy of my career. When I met her, she called me Mr. Segel. I realized she grew up with my “Muppet” movie. I have the real honor of being more of a mentor than a contemporary to Lukita. To get to the point where I am being surprised and challenged and blown away and moved to tears in scenes with Lukita is like the coolest thing in the world.
Cobie Smulders and Jason Segel in “Shrinking.”
(Apple TV)
We see Jimmy sit down at the restaurant with his potential love interest Sofi (Cobie Smulders), but we don’t hear their conversation.
It originally ended with a hard cut to black. Then then they did this beautiful cinematic pullback. I think the most important line is, “Hello.”
As the scene ends, Paul tells Jimmy that he can either “stay stuck” or “go make new scars.” Paul advises Jimmy to “choose wisely” and then winks at Jimmy. It’s a subtle nod to the famous “choose wisely” scene from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”
Harrison is not so secretly one of the funnier people I know. He always knows exactly what he’s doing and we’ve had a few of those throughout the season, some little nods to Harrison’s body of work. It was a perfect way to end that scene. Paul slash Harrison is always just a little smarter than you. One of the great qualities that they have is they’re just a little bit ahead of you, which a great mentor should be, right?
Have you thought about how it will be to play Jimmy in the show’s fourth season now that this particular story arc has come to an end?
I think an equally interesting and complicated and fun area is someone deciding they’re ready to be happy. Because God knows it’s one thing in your house alone in front of the mirror [to say], “Now I’m gonna be happy.” And then you go out and in practice, it’s its own set of complications, right? And so, I’m actually really excited about that idea of someone saying, “OK, I’m ready to take it for a spin.” And then seeing that’s its own thing.
