The Brief

After losing his Altadena home and most of his musical instruments, Brandon Jay is working to help fellow musicians replace their gear after the fires that ravaged the Los Angeles region last month.

Jay set up a website — altadenamusicians.org — where people who lost instruments in the Eaton and Palisades fires can register and people can provide donations.

It’s like an online wedding registry but for musical instruments, organizers said.

Some people might know Jay from several bands over the years, including Lutefisk, a 1990s alt-rock band based in Los Angeles. He and his wife, Gwendolyn Sanford, composed music for TV shows including “Orange is the New Black” and "Weeds."

Jay said he, his wife and their two children lost their home and music studio in the Eaton Fire.

“I managed to grab my wife’s acoustic guitar, her Martin, and my Fender Strat, and that was about it,” he said.

Looking for connection after fires

He said some instruments will be easier to replace than others. One of his more precious possessions was a set of castanets gifted to him by Kim Shattuck, lead singer of the the Muffs, with whom he played a few shows.

Shattuck died in 2019.

“You can get [castanets] at Guitar Center ... but those are the ones that she gave me,” Jay said.

Instead of focusing only on what his family lost, Jay recruited a group of music industry veterans to put instruments back in the hands of people who lost them. With the help of a web developer, Jay launched Altadena Musicians.

Jay said he drew inspiration from buy-nothing groups that encourage participants to give and receive items within a community rather than buy them.

Sogol Moshfegh's husband and son play their gifted guitar.

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“I’m really enthusiastic about it,” he said. “It’s been so heartwarming and lovely to connect people. ... And a big portion of it is helping heal what you lost.”

Sogol Moshfegh and her family lost their home in the Eaton Fire and were one of the first recipients of instruments from the program, including a Martin guitar similar to one that was special to her husband.

“When these instruments came back into our lives, it was like this reawakening of sorts.” Moshfegh said. “It shifted the whole energy in our house. My husband picks up that guitar every night.”

Looking to expand the effort

So far, Jay said, about 1,000 people have signed up on the site, split pretty evenly between donors and people looking for instruments. He said they’re seeing some international interest thanks to some of his friends in the music business.

“I’m old friends with the guys in Weezer, and they posted on their socials, and we got people that were in Japan offering instruments and like sending in donations,” Jay told LAist. “And so it can be a worldwide thing,”

He said Altadena Musicians is partnering with Fender and other musical instrument brands, and he expects the donations to keep rolling in.

He said he hopes to launch an app that would streamline the donating process.

“Stick with us and hold tight, and we’ll help you get your stuff back,” he said. “And just know that you’re supported.”

Altadena Musicians will be doing outreach at a jazz show for wildfire survivors Saturday at 8:30 p.m. at Pinocchio's Pizza: 1449 N. Lake Ave., Pasadena.

A series of community listening sessions will give residents a chance to weigh in on whether streets, monuments and public parks bearing the name of former labor leader César Chávez should be renamed. 

The sessions, scheduled for October and led by the Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office, come after the county launched a survey in June asking the public what mattered most to them in a renaming process.

In March, the Board of Supervisors approved a motion, authored by Supervisors Hilda Solis and Lindsey Horvath, to rename county honors following a New York Times investigation that alleged Chávez sexually assaulted women and girls within the United Farm Workers movement, including fellow labor leader Dolores Huerta.

“The County of Los Angeles has a firm responsibility to ensure any public recognitions reflect our shared values of justice, dignity, and respect,” Solis said in a statement at the time.

Following the investigation, some Eastside residents called for Cesar E. Chavez Avenue to revert to its former name, Brooklyn Avenue, and for murals depicting Chávez’s face to be taken down.

The board also approved a motion by Solis to rename the César Chávez holiday as Farmworkers Day across the county, which will continue to be observed on the last Monday in March instead of Chávez’s birthday on March 31.

How to weigh in

Three in-person community listening sessions will be held in East LA in October. Online registration is encouraged but not required. To register, click here.

Saturday, Oct. 10 – Anthony Quinn Library

Time: 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Location: 3965 E. Cesar E. Chavez Ave., Los Angeles

Saturday, Oct. 17 – Ruben F. Salazar Park

Time: 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Location: 3864 Whittier Blvd., Los Angeles

Note: This session will be held in Spanish only 

Saturday, Oct. 24 – East LA Service Center

Time: 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Location: 133 N. Sunol Dr., Los Angeles

*Spanish-language interpretation will be available

The post LA County wants your input on renaming Cesar E. Chavez Avenue. Join these meetings to weigh in appeared first on LA Local.

Republican State Assemblyman Carl DeMaio is seeking to distance the voter ID measure Californians will see on their November ballot from President Donald Trump’s efforts to restrict voting at the federal level. During a Monday night speech at the Orange County GOP Central Committee meeting, DeMaio said the ballot measure, Proposition 39, is “not the same” as the failed federal SAVE Act, which would have required proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote.

Speaking to dozens of O.C. Republican leaders, DeMaio acknowledged Californians’ overwhelming embrace of mail-in voting, calling Prop. 39 a “bipartisan solution that keeps mail ballots, so that voting is convenient, but improves trust and confidence by requiring an ID to vote.”

What would Prop. 39 do?

• Prop. 39 would change California’s constitution to require voters to provide a government-issued ID when they cast a ballot.
• Mail-in voters would have to include the last four digits of that ID on the ballot envelope.
• The measure would also require election officials to use “best efforts,” using government data, to verify that voters on registration rolls are U.S. citizens, and to report annually the percentage verified.

Reaction to the ballot initiative

Supporters note that nationwide polling has shown widespread support for voter ID across political parties. They also say using a voter’s signature on their mail-in ballot to verify identity, as California currently does, delays election results and causes some valid voters to have their ballots rejected.

Opponents of Prop. 39 say the initiative feeds into President Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud, which they say are false. Opponents also say the measure would make voting more burdensome and expensive, while opening up mail voters to potential identity theft.

How Prop. 39 is being pitched to voters

The latest polling on Prop. 39 suggests it could face an uphill battle in November.

Registered Republicans make up only about one-quarter of California’s electorate, which means Prop. 39 will need significant support from Democrats and independent voters to pass.

A recent poll from the Public Policy Institute of California found a sharp partisan divide in interest in Prop. 39, with a majority (52%) of Republican voters saying it was the ballot measure that most interested them compared to just 7% of Democrats and 23% of independent voters.

In an effort to appeal to the state’s liberal majority, DeMaio and his Reform California PAC recently launched an ad campaign aimed at persuading Trump foes that Prop 39 is unrelated to the president’s efforts to curb mail-in voting and implement stringent checks for U.S. citizenship.

“Can you dislike Trump and still vote ‘yes’ on Prop 39 for voter ID?” a voice in the ad asks. “Yes, you can.”

During his speech Monday, DeMaio said Prop. 39 would boost confidence in elections “whether you think voter fraud is a big problem or a small problem.”

In a subsequent interview with LAist, DeMaio said he thinks voter fraud is a problem. “ How much fraud is hard to prove because we're not looking for it; we don't have internal controls,” he said.

Trump has claimed that large numbers of noncitizens are voting. In California, a handful of recent cases have made headlines. But nationwide efforts to find and prosecute noncitizen voters have thus far turned up few culprits.

The Texas example

Julia Gomez, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, which opposes Prop. 39, blamed the decrease in voter confidence on the “chaos” sowed by people including Trump and DeMaio in questioning the integrity of elections with scant evidence of fraud.

“The way we build trust in elections is not by adding more hurdles to voting, which the data shows will disenfranchise voters every election, but by educating voters, by not lying to voters about what is and isn't a problem,” she said.

Gomez pointed to Texas as a cautionary tale about the potential consequences of adding an ID requirement to mail-in voting: After Texas passed a similar requirement in 2021, a large percentage (14%) of mail-in ballots were rejected, according to a study last year from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

The study found that non-white voters were more likely to have their ballots rejected. Also, many of those voters stopped casting ballots in subsequent elections.

Gather the Rebel Alliance — the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is officially open to the public in Exposition Park.

The 300,000-square-foot building, sitting on a 13-acre campus in the South L.A. neighborhood, is an ode to the universal tradition of visual storytelling, according to museum officials.

Co-founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, the exhibitions highlight centuries of human culture — ancient sculptures, Renaissance paintings, myths of the American West, photography, fantasy and everyday life, to name a few. There are also plenty of cinema moments for Star Wars fans, of course.

Visitors burst through the doors Tuesday, spilling into the more than 30 galleries, pair of theatres, public park, library and the museum’s full-service restaurant, the Skywalker Grill.

Keenan Wayne Jones Jr., a director in career services at Otis College of Art and Design, was among the earliest guests in the galleries Tuesday. He told LAist that “emotionally invoking” was the first thought that came to mind in the museum, and that he’s already planning the next trip back.

“ There are students all around right now, and they are enthralled. Just seeing their faces light up and seeing that artistic expression being evoked to them is a really cool part of my job,” he said. “Words can't even encompass what it looks like; you have to see it in person.”

Inside the grand opening

At a packed press event ahead of the opening, Hobson said the museum is our building — all the staff who work there, all the construction workers who built it and the entire community across the city.

“It is our gift to you because it belongs to all of us,” she said. “And so we say welcome home.”

Founders Mellody Hobson and George Lucas greet guests on opening day. Hobson was wearing a jacket with "Lucas 26" on the back.

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Presley Ann

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Getty Images for Lucas Museum

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George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, co-founders of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, speaking to a packed press event on Tuesday, Sept. 22.

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Presley Ann

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Getty Images for Lucas Museum

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Founders Mellody Hobson and George Lucas speak onstage during the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art's opening day Tuesday.

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Stefanie Keenan

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Getty Images for Lucas Museum

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In the Norman "Rockwell" exhibition, named for the famous artist whose work the museum includes, L.A. artist Shiloh Williams said he was “incredibly impressed” by the breadth of the collection.

“There's also other artists' work who were inspired by Norman Rockwell in here too, which I thought was really nice,” Williams said. “They have them right next to his stuff, so it's kinda like you can see the inspiration through each generation and subsequent generation which … I would love to have in my own work.”

Keenan Wayne Jones Jr. and Shiloh Williams in the "rockwell" exhibition.

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Makenna Cramer

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LAist

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The Lucas Museum features more than 30 exhibitions across several floors.

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Film students from Lucas' alma mater, USC, were also filtering the space, including Kc Donaldson-Werblin and Nathan Phillips. Donaldson-Werblin said it was cool to see the evolution of the concept art in the cinema exhibition, which includes Star Wars.

“ There's stories in all this art, but there's also a story in the process from concept to finalized thing,” Donaldson-Werblin said. “We're starting where [George Lucas] started from, basically. And it's just very cool to see we have so much time.”

Phillips said they were the first people out of the elevator, but the exhibitions still felt full.

“There's so much art here and so much to appreciate,” Phillips said. “I already know I'm gonna be back here a couple more times 'cause, like, there's no way to intake all of this at one time.”

USC film students were among the first guests filtering through the museum Tuesday, including Nathan Phillips and Kc Donaldson-Werblin.

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Makenna Cramer

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LAist

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The "murals" exhibition on the fifth floor features large-scale public works of art.

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LAist

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Ryan Linkof,  senior curator and head of film programs, told LAist museums only make sense when people are in them. He described the opening as an exhilarating moment that’s been years in the making.

“ I think as an Angeleno … to see something of this scale and to see the amount of investment that was made in this city is just really, really special,” he said. “I feel like it's deserved as well because Los Angeles is, in so many ways, a cultural capital, and this is the spiritual home for narrative art.”

How we got here

It’s a big year for Exposition Park with the Lucas Museum’s grand opening and the California Science Center’s major expansion not far behind this fall.

But why South L.A.?

The museum offers several places to sit and take in the surroundings.

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LAist

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The curved building, designed by Ma Yansong of MAD with Stantec, offers views of the downtown Los Angeles skyline and neighboring Exposition Park museums.

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Makenna Cramer

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LAist

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The site was selected in 2017 because of its location — there are hundreds of schools in the area and more than half a million people living within a three-mile radius of the park, according to museum officials. They said Exposition Park is also among the top tourist destinations in Southern California between its museums, the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, BMO Stadium and EXPO Center.

“ It really is an asset for this community, but also for Los Angeles, and then really for the world,” Linkof said. “ So to bring all these eyes on Expo Park in South L.A. is really part of the mission of the project in many ways.”

But the Lucas Museum wasn’t originally destined for California — it was supposed to be built in Chicago.

That was scrapped in 2015 due to a “disagreement” over the site, according to museum officials. A parks preservation group filed a lawsuit, which effectively pushed the project out of the Windy City, as reported by WTTW.

However, Hobson said at a media preview earlier this month that they believe Exposition Park is where “we were always meant to be.”

Guests were greeted by a familiar character Tuesday: R2-D2 of Star Wars with a Lucas Museum staff lanyard.

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Makenna Cramer

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LAist

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How to see it for yourself

• Where: One Lucas Plaza, Exposition Park, Los Angeles
• When: 
  
  • 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays
  • 10 a.m. - 9 p.m. on Fridays
  • 9 a.m. - 9 p.m. on Saturdays
  • 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. on Sundays
  • Closed Tuesdays
• Tickets: All tickets are timed entry. Tickets are $25 for adults and $21 for those 65 and older. Children 17 and under, members and active-duty military have free entry. Museum neighbors in the LM37 program also have free entry.
• Park and Gardens: Free and open to the public
• Skywalker Grill: You can make a reservation here (no museum ticket required)