The Brief

There isn't as much filming going on in Los Angeles right now due to the ongoing actors' strike and only recently resolved writers' strike. But for decades, cities east of downtown L.A. — including Pasadena, South Pasadena and Altadena — have been a big draw for film and TV productions.

Veteran location scout and manager Rick Schuler says the "denas," with their wide variety of single-family homes and tree-lined streets, are most often used as stand-ins for the Midwest or East Coast.

Schuler recently took the How To LA team on a tour of some filming locations, used in movies like Halloween, Back to the Future and Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

A small-town feel in L.A. County

The city of South Pasadena, Schuler says, is often a go-to destination when a film crew wants a location that has the feel of a small, Midwestern town.

And interestingly, the city does have a historical connection with the Midwest — the Anglo founders of South Pasadena and Pasadena, back in the 1870s, were from Indiana.

Probably the most well-known filming location in South Pasadena is the “Michael Myers” house at 1000 Mission St., which was featured in the 1978 horror classic Halloween. In the film, and subsequent sequels, it’s the home of the killer, Michael Myers.

The "Michael Myers" house in South Pasadena featured in the 1978 film "Halloween," set in a fictional town in Illinois.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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A still from the 1978 film “Halloween,” written and directed by John Carpenter.

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Shout! Factory

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The Victorian-style home, built in 1888, is one of several South Pasadena houses featured in the film and is meant to be the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois.

“But they chose South Pasadena,” Schuler says, because “South Pasadena is like an everywhere American city, basically from the Midwest or the East Coast. And what makes it that are the tree-lined streets, the type of architecture that's here. And it feels like a small town.”

Schuler says there’s also a good number of brick buildings in South Pasadena, which you don’t see too much of in L.A., and lots of big camphor trees that form canopies over streets.

The South Pasadena Public Library is surrounded by trees, including some pesky palms.

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The only tree that’s a problem? Palm trees — a dead giveaway that you’re in L.A.

“Palm trees can be the bane of our existence,” Schuler says. Or at least, they used to be. “In the age now of CGI and all that kind of stuff, they can quickly now say, ‘Oh, we can remove that.’”

There are other workarounds too that don’t involve computers. For example, near the Pasadena home that Schuler found for the 2005 movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which was set on the East Coast, the film crew disguised the tree trunks of some palm trees that line the street.

“We wrapped them with two semi-cylinder, oak-looking or camphor-tree-looking shells,” Schuler says. “And so we did like 10 feet of that” because only the tree trunks could be seen in the frame.

Being from the Midwest himself though, Schuler says South Pasadena and Pasadena aren’t exact matches for the region.

“I think we've created kind of a movie version of the Midwest with a white picket fence, dormers [on the house] and wood shingles. And that kind of thing does exist there, but there's all kinds of other styles there too.”

Knock, knock. Can we film at your house?

Another big challenge to filming in residential neighborhoods, Schuler says, is getting the support of a homeowner to use a specific house.

The first step is knocking on the door, then explaining why you’re there, but also not giving them too much information too quickly.

“What we would have to do is talk to the people [about] whether they want to do it,” Schuler says, “and then eventually [explain that] yes, we need to move you out into a hotel, we want to take all your stuff out and put it in storage, we want to bring our stuff in…”

And depending on what city you’re in and what time of day or night you want to film, productions also need to get sign off from a certain number of neighbors.

A house in Pasadena featured in the film "Mr. & Mrs. Smith."

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A still from the 2005 film “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” directed by Doug Liman.

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20th Century Fox

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Robbie Leslie shows a photo of his family with actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who filmed “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” in part, at the Leslie’s home. Robbie is on the far left.

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Claire Fogarty

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In the case of the Colonial-style Mr. & Mrs. Smith house on San Pascual Avenue in Pasadena, which was only used for outdoor shots, the owners also agreed to let the film crew drive a car up onto their lawn, build a temporary garage in the backyard, and even set off a small explosion.

Robbie Leslie, whose parents own the home, and who was 7 years old at the time of filming, remembers it as a great time.

“We were put up in the Ritz Carlton a couple miles away and I remember putting it to good use,” Leslie says. “I would always go down to the bar after school and ask for a bowl of cereal, which they would always provide. And it was fun.”

“Now it's kind of like every icebreaker thing that I ever need. I can be like, ‘Oh, have you ever seen Mr. & Mrs. Smith? That's our house … [and] no, it didn’t really get blown up.’”

A variety of architectural styles

Another draw for film location scouts are the variety of homes in the “denas.”

Just down the street from the main Mr. & Mrs. Smith house is a Tudor-style house that was also used for a short scene.

A house in Pasadena featured in the film "Mr. & Mrs. Smith."

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A still from the 2005 film “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” directed by Doug Liman.

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20th Century Fox

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And it’s just a short drive across the city to the iconic Craftsman Back to the Future home (or Gamble House) which is a popular tourist destination with architecture buffs and film-lovers alike. It was designed by the renowned architectural firm Greene and Greene.

The Gamble House in Pasadena which was featured in "Back to the Future."

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Though, in the case of the Gamble House, Schuler says it now may be too well known now to use in other films. “Not so much because it’s the Gamble House, but more because it was in Back to the Future.”

And even though having a house become somewhat “off limits” isn’t a great thing for location scouts like him, Schuler says: “in some sense that's good, because we showcase certain things that people sort of get interested in preserving.”

That ocean breeze is just not cutting it in schools in Torrance and Long Beach as Southern California reels from a heat wave.

Parents have taken to social media, created petitions and are proposing a bond measure in order to address the sweltering classrooms as temperatures hit triple digits in some areas.

Only 25% of Torrance Unified classrooms have air conditioning, according to a district spokesperson. And while 90% of Long Beach Unified schools have air conditioning, the schools without air conditioning have to bear this heat spell until the end of 2027 when new air conditioning will be in all classrooms.

What are schools doing to beat the heat?

In Long Beach, the district says there are portable fans in classrooms without AC and the district has installed heat-blocking window covers.

"The things that we do immediately and have been doing for several years, hydration stations,” Keith Butler, the deputy superintendent at TUSD, told the school board early this week. “So our nutrition services freezes blocks of ice, puts them into containers with water, and students are — and staff are able to rotate through and at least get ice water.”

There is also a classroom rotation system so everyone gets a turn in cooling zones, he said.

Can schools close on extreme heat days?

Eric Mitchell, a spokesperson for LBUSD, told LAist, “The District will not close schools because of extreme weather unless the City of Long Beach Public Health Department or a state-authorized emergency response agency directs it.”

Baillie echoed his words adding that a state-declared emergency allows schools to close temporarily without needing to make up teaching time. School funding is dependent on attendance and instructional time.

If a local emergency is declared, school districts, she said, must consult with labor unions to adjust the school schedule to either extend the school year or move to a student-free professional development day.

“Our district is actively discussing creating union-approved ‘weather days’ that would provide a mechanism to adjust the schedule,” Baillie said. “Thresholds would be part of that discussion and might focus on when national weather alerts elevate a heat advisory to an extreme heat event, as they did this week.”

So how can Torrance get ACs in the classroom?

School districts like Torrance pay for facility upgrades like new ACs through district issued bond measures. A school district takes a loan and the people in that city pay back that loan through an increase in their property taxes. That is because there is no specific state allocation of funding for major upgrades or construction. Most of the money schools get from the state is spent on instruction and other student services. There have been some occasional grant programs, like CalShape, but no ongoing source of funding.

This week, a petition to get TUSD to place a bond measure on the ballot to fund ACs has already garnered over 1500 signatures.

But, Baillie said, “Third-party polling completed earlier this year showed a willingness to vote for additional future bonds; however, when specifically asked about the costs of specific bonds to fund the $520 million needed to upgrade the electrical systems and install AC at all 34 campuses, polling showed there would not be enough support (bonds require 55% +1 of voters in an election) to pass a bond for AC.”

And so the bond measure was not placed on the upcoming ballot.

Butler, the deputy superintendent, explained during this week’s school board meeting that parents cannot simply donate an AC unit.

“ One [reason] is it's not super effective to have a typical window unit from a home that would be trying to cool a 960 sq. ft. classroom with 27 students and a teacher, maybe an instructional aide,” he said. “But the bigger issue is the ones that are large enough to really do that, the room has to have a large electrical load, and our electrical system within our buildings where most of them were built in the 1960s, it's just not meant to handle what it does.”

LAist reporter Mariana Dale contributed to this article. 

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is hosting a buyback event Sunday where people can exchange their e-bikes and e-motorcycles for up to $1,000 in gift cards. The goal is to reduce the number of illegal bikes on the road, and give parents an incentive to get dangerous vehicles out of kids’ hands.

“These vehicles are not child’s play, and the consequences are incredibly dangerous and increasingly deadly,” DA Todd Spitzer said in a news release announcing the event.

Communities in Orange County have been grappling with a surge in e-bikes and e-motos on the road, including among young kids, and an accompanying increase in serious crashes.

“Our area has pretty much the highest concentration of e-bike injuries and e-bike accidents in the country,” said Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the trauma medical director at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.

Takeuchi said  just over 70% of the children treated at the hospital for e-bike injuries had some level of head injury, “from a simple concussion to devastating brain damage, brain bleed and skull fracture."

A lot of those injuries are among teenagers not wearing helmets, he said. Plus, many e-bikes on the market are too heavy and fast for children to control, Takeuchi said.

Besides safety concerns, tensions have flared with other drivers, pedestrians, and neighbors in areas with heavy concentrations of e-bikes.

Newport-Mesa Unified School District became one of the first districts in the country this year to restrict e-bikes to high school campuses only. District leaders say the policy is working to disincentivize young students from riding e-bikes to school. But at one middle school, students with e-bikes have opted to ride them anyway, parking in the surrounding neighborhood and raising the ire of homeowners.

The DA’s approach

The DA’s office has started to target parents who allow their children to ride e-bikes and e-motorcycles that have been illegally modified for high speeds, sometimes with deadly consequences. In April, the district attorney filed child endangerment charges against a mother from Aliso Viejo after her 14-year-old son struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest. The boy was riding an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 mph.

Details of the buyback program

The e-bike and e-motorcycle buyback program is part of the DA’s plan to address safety concerns with e-bikes. Local police departments, hospitals and the California Office of Traffic Safety will also be onsite with information booths.

People can bring in functioning or non-functioning e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and pocket bikes and exchange them for gift cards worth up to $1,000 — while supplies last.

The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 13, at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.

An appeals court issued a ruling Friday that strikes down a federal government effort to block a lower court’s order requiring the construction of 2,550 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles.

The long-running case, brought forward by disabled veterans struggling with homelessness in the L.A. area, has centered on the use of the sprawling 400-acre VA campus.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had previously scrutinized leases for the private Brentwood School’s athletic facilities, a parking lot company, an oil drilling enterprise and UCLA’s baseball stadium.

Ruling that the campus was meant to aid veterans, Carter ordered the VA to not renew the leases and quickly build 750 units of temporary housing and 1,800 units of permanent housing.

But Carter’s September 2024 order has been on hold ever since the defendants asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review his decision.

Case returns to lower court

On Friday, more than two-thirds of the court’s 29 judges ruled against the VA’s petition for a rehearing.

“It's a historic day for veterans,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs.

“The government has been fighting their veterans, who went to fight on behalf of the nation,” he added. “They've been fighting them like they are the enemy. They went to the district court to fight. They lost.”

Rosenbaum said he’s pleased to see the case return to Carter’s courtroom after a long appeals process. Carter, himself a Marine Corps veteran who served in the Vietnam War, took an active role in pushing the VA to address a homelessness crisis that has thousands of former service members experiencing homelessness on any given night in L.A. County.

Could the VA pursue further appeals? 

Carter has also ordered the VA to stop using veterans' disability payment benefits as a reason to make them ineligible for supportive housing programs due to income restrictions.

But Rob Reynolds, an Iraq War veteran who advocates for L.A.’s veteran community, said the federal government’s attempts to win an appeal could continue.

“The government can still appeal this to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Reynolds said.

When veterans involved in the case first heard today’s news on the 9th Circuit ruling, he said they immediately asked about the potential for further appeals.

“All of us are really hoping that the government stops this fight, and that we can get housing built for our veterans and end this madness once and for all,” Reynolds said.

A spokesperson for the VA declined to comment on the ruling, saying the department does not discuss pending litigation.

Jenny Yang, a comedian from L.A., has been traveling across the country turning immigrant grocery stores into comedy hubs. Now she’s back in L.A. getting ready to start a mini-residency in Highland Park, tape her first one-hour special and share moments from the tour.

Yang kicked off her Good Egg Immigrant Grocery Store Standup Comedy Tour in June in L.A., then took it to 15 cities across the country. She told LAist the decision came as a way to cope with the grief from her dad’s death, 10 failed in vitro fertilization treatments between 2020 and 2025 and seeing the news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids spread across the country.

She said the idea to tour grocery stores was a way to reclaim those spaces, after immigration enforcement left many afraid to go out and do simple tasks like buying groceries.

“If we cannot laugh in front of a wall of instant ramen around our bok choy," Yang said, "then what is the American dream for?"

Her routine wove in stories about her fertility struggles and the challenges of having to be a “good egg” growing up as the child of immigrant parents from Taiwan. Her hope for the tour was to connect with people, to make jokes and help people feel lighter after.

The tour proceeds went to local nonprofits serving immigrant communities, and Yang said those organizations helped recruit the grocery stores. She said some stores said no at first — they felt overwhelmed by ICE activity in their city, had lost staff or worried about drawing attention.

“That's part of the story of the tour is it's one thing to want to imagine this beautiful world where you can tell jokes inside of immigrant grocery stores," Yang said. "It's another thing to know what those obstacles are, and I think that's still very telling for where we are as a country.”

One moment stood out to Yang: performing at Shuang Hur Supermarket in Minneapolis. It’s near the memorial for Alex Pretti, the nurse that a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed in January as federal agents carried out immigration enforcement in the city.

“I was able to talk to Henry, the owner who’s a Chinese American uncle. [He] was so proud of being able to help his regular patrons, who for the most part even though it was an Asian centered grocery store, were majority Latino,” Yang said. “I was able to bear witness to their resilience as a community, what they did to take care of each other.”

Now she’s back in L.A. and is doing a mini-residency at the Outside In Theater at 5317 York Blvd. in Highland Park. Her first show is 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 12, followed by shows on Sept. 19 and 26 at the same time. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, and you can find them at Outside In's website.

In February 2027, Yang will be taping her first one-hour special at Rancho Meat Market #1 in Lincoln Heights. She describes it as a love letter to Los Angeles that’s endured so much, from the ICE raids to the January fires.

You can follow Jenny Yang’s work here.