The Brief

We’re always spoiled for choice, no matter what kind of musical groove you’re into, and this weekend has it all. It’s a great time to support our friends at Levitt Pavilion after the MacArthur Park immigration raid; they have a free show with Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band on Saturday. There are also big-name concerts from K-Pop superstars Blackpink at SoFi, absolute icon Paul Simon at Disney Hall (back from a few cancelled shows post-surgery), and newcomer Noah Cyrus will shimmer under the stars at the Ford.

Plus, explore even more on LAist.com, where you can read about the volunteers working to preserve the oral histories of Eaton Fire survivors, mourn the loss of Cole’s French Dip downtown, make a plan for all the crazy treats you’re going to try this year at the Orange County Fair and get your summer reading set with these book recommendations.

Here's what else is happening around the region.

Events

July 11-13
Tryst Alternative Art Fair and NOMAD IV
Torrance Art Museum, Del Amo Crossing
21535 Hawthorne Blvd., Torrance 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Discover Torrance

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The work of more than 175 artists will be on display at the third annual Tryst Alternative Art Fair at the Torrance Art Museum, which celebrates bringing together artists from Southern California and more from around the world. The event features artist-run spaces and galleries that create conversation between artists, and it lets the public in to be a fly on the wall for those collaborations. Together with NOMAD IV happening at the same time, Torrance will light up with live DJ sets, performance art and more.

July 12-13 
Belly Laughs Comedy Festival 
Peacock Theater 
777 Chick Hearn Court, Downtown L.A.
COST: FROM $129; MORE INFO

Hasan Minaj, Margaret Cho, Kumail Nanjiani, Bobby Lee and more comedians and special guests are taking the stage at the Belly Laughs Comedy Festival, celebrating Asian-American culture. Plus, there’s a special Asian night market with food from favorites like Holy Basil and Hermanos Empandas.

July 12-13 
44th Echo Park Lotus Festival 
751 Echo Park Ave., Echo Park 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

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JuanCarlos Chan

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Los Angeles Dept of Recreation & Parks

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A celebration of South Korean heritage and culture takes over Echo Park with fun stuff for kids, a lantern launch, dragon boat races, food vendors and live entertainment — including a lion dance and ballet performances. The events are all free to attend but if you want to launch a lantern, and I think you do, you can buy tickets. There’s also a 5K run/walk on Sunday.

July 11-13
Daredevil Arts Festival 
Electric Lodge 
1416 Electric Ave., Venice 
COST: FROM $15; MORE INFO

Performance art, dance, theater, comedy, even clowning — the Daredevil Arts Festival has it all. The line-up includes Psychopomp Dance Theater’s modern reimagining of Der Golem and the feel-good drag-king spectacular, The Ramón Show. Check out individual hour-long shows like John Newspaper & Friends or the dark comedy Brainwashed for a taste of local performers at this first-ever outing for the Venice fest, which features more than 20 original productions.

Sunday, July 13, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 
We Outside Soccer Fest: Club World Cup Final Watch Party 
Intuit Dome Plaza
3930 W Century Blvd., Inglewood 
COST: FREE WITH RSVP; MORE INFO

Join soccer fans in Inglewood outside the Intuit Dome Plaza to watch the FIFA Club World Cup Final. Enjoy a DJ lineup, food vendors, and more. It’s a great taste of the types of fan events we can expect to enjoy when the World Cup comes to L.A. in 2026.

July 12-13
'Art Within the Craft'
120 East 8th St., Suite 805, Downtown L.A. 
COST: FREE, DONATIONS ACCEPTED; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy Art Within the Craft

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Production design is often an overlooked but very key part of moviemaking, and a group of local artists is making sure designers get their due at this new exhibit. The pop-up features everything from sculpture to digital works, celebrating those who literally build the worlds we see on the big screen.

Saturday, July 12, 6 p.m. 
Art, Punk Rock and Gender Roles, a panel discussion with Exene Cervenka
Laguna Art Museum
307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach 
COST: FROM $35; MORE INFO 

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Eric Stoner via Laguna Art Museum

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Laguna Beach won’t know what hit it when punk icon Exene Cervenka of Punk Band X joins a panel discussion with friend of the newsletter Shana Nys Dambrot (13 Things L.A.) and writer Jenny Doh. The evening marks the close of Laguna Art Museum’s Carole Caroompas: Heathcliff and the Femme Fatale Go on Tour exhibit. Caroompas’ bold work combines punk rock and feminism wrapped in a fine art package.

Sunday, July 13, 10 a.m. 
Drop-In Tactile Filmmaking Workshop 
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
LACMA West, 6067 Wilshire Blvd., Miracle Mile 
COST: $25, FREE WITH MUSEUM ADMISSION; MORE INFO

Check out this "Drop-In Tactile Filmmaking Workshop," where you can make a camera-less movie, animating directly onto 16mm film using materials like markers, tape, pushpins and ink. It’s your last chance to catch the "Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema" exhibit at the Academy Museum before it closes on Sunday. The workshop is followed by curator tours of the show. The unique exhibit looks at the techniques of groundbreaking filmmakers like Len Lye, Oskar Fischinger and Mary Ellen Butte.

Outdoor Pick

Saturday, July 12, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. 
Plastic-Free July Cleanup Challenge with L.A. Waterkeeper
Tower 20
2030 Ocean Way, Santa Monica
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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L.A. Waterkeeper

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Do your part to keep our beaches clean and plastic-free by heading to the L.A. Waterkeeper beach cleanup. Can’t make it to the west side? North Atwater Park is up next on the calendar for a community plastics sweep on Saturday, July 19.

Viewing Pick

Sunday, July 13, 7:30 p.m.
Love Island USA season finale watch party 
The Penmar 
1233 Rose Ave., Venice 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

At this point, I think I might be the only person not watching Love Island USA. But as we are here to serve, I must share with you that the group chat is moving to The Penmar to watch the season finale, and drinks will definitely be flowing as the sun sets over the golf course and on this drama-filled (I assume) season of the reality show.

Dine & Drink Deals

Weekends through Sept. 1, 12 to 8 p.m.
Loreto x Calabra pop-up
Calabra at Santa Monica Proper
700 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica
COST: VARIES, MORE INFO

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Courtesy Calabra and Loreto

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The Proper Hotel rooftop in Santa Monica is hosting Frogtown gourmet Mexican favorite Loreto all summer long. The space is the perfect spot to watch the sunset while enjoying spicy crudo, bang bang shrimp tostadas, refreshing ceviche or an all-out seafood tower with oysters and more. Plus, margaritas and spritzes that go down easy.  

July 11, 9 to 11 p.m. 
French Fry Day: FryLab L.A.
Amboy Quality Meats 
727 North Broadway, #117, Chinatown
COST: $25; MORE INFO

Ahem, name a better holiday than National French Fry Day. I’ll wait. Then head to Chinatown for FryLab L.A. from Chef Alvin Cailan, who is taking Amboy to the next level with an experimental “FryLab” tasting room with Lamb Weston and Spiceology. There are fries, but not just any fries. Expect Bloody Mary fries and Filipino flavor-inspired Picadillo Fries. Plus, beer and ice cream, natch.

Sunday, July 13
FabFitFun x Creamy Boys
Melrose and Abbot Kinney 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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FabFitFun x Creamy Boys

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Did someone say free ice cream? Head to 8408 Melrose Place from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. or 1344 Abbot Kinney in Venice from 3 to 5:30 p.m. and score free New Zealand-style ice cream, courtesy of Creamy Boys. There will also be free stuff and prizes from favorite brands like Our Place, Thrive Causemetics, Kopari and more.

California’s Public Utilities Commission will decide on Thursday whether to claw back or keep $37.5 million in grant funding meant to bring fast, reliable internet to Catalina Island.

The island is home to more than 4,000 residents, and it draws thousands of tourists each year. Its slow, unreliable internet connection affects everything from remote learning to emergency response.

Lance Ware is CEO of AVX Networks, the company awarded the grant from the CPUC in December 2025. He told LAist host Nereida Moreno that the island depends on a very limited wireless internet link.

“When the town is busy, for instance, a cruise ship comes … the internet just gets crippled along with all the telephone services,” Ware explained.

Months after AVX Networks was awarded the grant, CPUC staff accused the company in July 2026 of breaking federal spending rules, citing insufficient justification and documentation for invoices.

The proposed plan would build the fiber-optic network under the San Pedro Channel from two points on Catalina Island to landings near Huntington Beach. Those cables will then connect to the Middle Mile Broadband Network in Stanton.

Where do things stand today? 

CPUC staff allege that AVX Networks violated several program requirements, according to records.

“Since the award, AVX Networks has not shown itself to have the requisite administrative, technical, and operational capacity to deliver on its project, and AVX Networks has failed to comply with the terms and conditions of its award,” the CPUC agenda item records state.

Ware said he “vehemently disagrees” with those statements.

“There are allegations on things in there that do not make sense to us in that we've had no due process or cure and correct period to address,” Ware said.

What’s next? 

If the commission terminates the contract and pulls the funding, Ware said the project will be delayed, but not stopped.

“This is not curtains down for us,” Ware added. “It's gonna take longer, and we'll have to find some other way to finance it, but we certainly haven't given up.”

Nereida Moreno contributed to the reporting of this story.

Southern Californians are feeling squeezed by the rising costs of, well, everything. And now their local governments are asking for more money, too.

By LAist’s count, more than 30 cities or districts in Los Angeles and Orange counties are asking residents to approve tax measures on Election Day, Nov. 3, citing stagnant revenues that haven’t kept pace with the rising costs of insurance, maintenance and infrastructure projects, and employee pensions. Big cities, suburbs and small towns are all facing multimillion-dollar budget deficits and asking residents to open their wallets — or potentially see deep cuts to basic city services.

The list of local measures on ballots from Culver City to San Clemente includes sales taxes, hotel taxes, business taxes, parcel taxes and utility taxes. Some ballot measures would extend or increase existing taxes while others are brand-new.

Much of the answer to why so many tax measures are on the ballot lies in Proposition 13, which capped property taxes in 1978.

Before Prop. 13, cities and counties relied on property taxes for nearly all of their revenue. In the decades since, they’ve increasingly turned to other types of taxes. Hotel and utility taxes, for example, were essentially nonexistent before the mid-1970s, and sales taxes represented a small sliver of revenue. Even as these taxes have grown, they’ve struggled to replace property tax revenue.

State law caps the maximum combined local and county sales tax rate, and many Southern California cities are already at or near that cap, Coleman said. And sales tax isn’t as reliable as it used to be, amid the broader retail downturn and shift to a service-based economy (most services aren’t taxable in California).

All of that means cities are increasingly turning to “ticky-tacky, peculiar taxes” to come up with revenue, according to Kirk Stark, a professor of tax law and policy at UCLA.

The “conventional tax instruments” — property, income and sales taxes — are all limited by state law, Stark said. “Local governments that are hoping to satisfy demand for any kind of public expenditure have to turn to other, less conventional sources of revenue.”

This year, cities are asking Southern Californians to say yes to a wide range of taxes. Below, we look at three examples in South Gate, Orange and Diamond Bar.

South Gate: A utility users tax

South Gate is asking voters to approve something less common: a utility users tax, or UUT for short. If Measure SG is approved, the 8% tax would be added to bills for utilities such as electricity, water, natural gas, cable and phone service. The tax would bring in an estimated $10.4 million per year.

The city is facing a potential fiscal emergency and a $9.4 million budget deficit. Earlier this year, South Gate began cutting back services, including eliminating its crossing guard program and assigning fewer police officers per shift.

At a City Council meeting on the tax measure earlier this year, several residents spoke against the measure, with some calling the deficit a result of potential financial mismanagement that shouldn’t be pushed onto residents. Others said the monthly costs would simply add a new burden to already tight budgets.

“Being a homeowner here for the past 13 years, I have seen my utilities go up as well as the cost of living, my insurance for my house, and my car insurance go up. I believe there’s got to be a way to fix this problem without the UUT measure,” one resident told the City Council.

“I’m extremely frustrated that you now want to do electricity, water, sewer, cable, cell phone, gas. ... That hurts us. You’re passing that on to us, and that is absolutely not acceptable,” said another.

The only other utility users tax on the ballot in Los Angeles or Orange counties this year is in San Marino, where residents will decide whether to extend the city’s existing 5% utility users tax, which is set to expire on March 31, 2027, and increase it to 6%. Last year, the tax provided almost $2.2 million in revenue. As of 2021, a total of 162 out of 540 California cities and counties had a utility users tax, according to Coleman’s California Local Government Finance Almanac.

Orange: Hotel and sales taxes could go up 

Most people don’t book a hotel in their own city. That’s made hotel taxes an easier pill to swallow for voters, since the tax is mostly levied on visitors.

The city of Orange is asking voters to approve Measure J, which would raise the hotel tax from 10% to 14%. Orange is one of 10 cities across Los Angeles and Orange counties where voters will decide in November whether to increase or establish a local hotel tax, also known as a “transient occupancy tax.”

Orange residents will also vote on a 1-cent sales tax measure, as the city projects a $27.6 million deficit that it calls “one of the largest financial challenges in the city’s history.” The sales tax is expected to bring in $37 million annually, and the hotel tax would add $3 million.

Diamond Bar: A new 1-cent sales tax 

Diamond Bar voters will decide on Measure Q, a 1% local sales tax that would add a penny per dollar to purchases of taxable items. The city estimates the tax will bring in an additional $6 million annually, which could help plug a projected budget deficit of $5 million a year by 2030.

“The city’s challenge is simple: costs for city services are going up faster than revenues,” states Diamond Bar’s fact sheet on the measure, which cites rising public safety costs and $100 million in infrastructure and maintenance needs.

Several other cities have local sales tax measures on the ballot, including Santa Ana’s 1.5% sales tax extension and Los Angeles’ sales tax increase for the Los Angeles Fire Department, Measure FD.

“There’s a variety because circumstances among these local governments vary. The types of economies among governments vary, the local conditions, even the preferences for what type of revenue measure or tax measure might work varies,” Coleman said. “A local government that’s looking at one of these is going to look at a number of different options and consider what might be most palatable to the voters in their community.”

What’s on your ballot?

Our LAist Voter Game Plan is here to help guide you through the Nov. 3 election with guides to races across Los Angeles and Orange counties — and that long list of state propositions — to help you cast a ballot that’s in line with your own personal beliefs and values.

But the one thing we don’t do? We don’t tell you how to vote. That part is left up to you.

You can find it all at LAist.com/Vote.

Further reading

• Voter guide for parcel taxes in Culver City, Santa Monica, Las Virgenes Unified, San Marino Unified (LAist)
• City of Pasadena Measure PFD: What to know about the tax to support the Pasadena Fire Department (LAist)
• Los Angeles Measure FD: What to know about the proposed sales tax bump for the LA City Fire Department (LAist)
• Proposition 43: Making it harder to pass citizen-led local tax initiatives (LAist)

At the height of the Los Angeles fires in 2025, millions of residents were exposed in a 24-hour period to toxic lead levels from smoke that were 80 times higher than the typical background level, according to a new study.

Researchers from the California Institute of Technology compared the chemical composition of smoke from the Eaton Fire with that of a wildfire and found that the urban plume had more lead, arsenic and halogens (which include chlorine and bromine) linked to burning vehicles, building materials and electronics.

“The main, key finding is really that wildfire smoke is very different fundamentally from the urban smoke,” said Nga Lee “Sally” Ng, an author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. With the new technology they used to measure what was in the smoke, they were able to “actually see the very detailed component of these particles that we are breathing.”

Co-author Haroula Baliaka said understanding the different chemical compositions of smoke from an urban versus a wildland fire helps bridge a missing gap in research. Wildfires are growing larger, more intense, faster-moving and more frequent largely because of drier and warmer weather associated with human-caused climate change. As urban growth and climate change push more fires into cities, researchers said monitoring and emergency response will have to adapt.

Ed Avol, professor emeritus in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California who has researched the health effects of air pollution for decades, said significant exposure to heavy metals is consistent with what he’d expect, “but certainly surprising because we haven’t been able to document this sort of thing.”

“One of the real advantages of this study is that it had the opportunity to make measurements sort of hour-by-hour across the sampling network. And typically we make measurements of airborne particulates and so forth a couple of times a week, at best,” said Avol, who wasn’t involved in the study.

Thousands of structures burned, releasing toxic chemicals

The two wind-whipped infernos in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades that ignited on Jan. 7, 2025, killed at least 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures, mostly homes, and everything in them — cars, paint, furniture, chemicals under sinks and more. Millions of people were exposed to smoke, which across the entire United States has been linked to tens of thousands of deaths annually. A recent study found that metal mixtures in the leftover smoke, ash and debris from the deadly 2023 Maui wildfires were harmful to the lung health of people living nearby long after the burning ended.

During the fires, researchers measured trace elements of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, every hour reported by instruments in the Atmospheric Science and Chemistry mEasurement NeTwork ( ASCENT ), a relatively new network of air quality monitors across the U.S. that measures the size and chemical composition of these particulates in real time. Ng said ASCENT is the U.S.'s first measurement network able to measure the chemical composition of airborne particles in real time.

Researchers were able to see what chemicals were in the smoke, track how its composition changed over the fire’s course, and distinguish emissions coming from burning structures. From there, they estimated how many people across Los Angeles were exposed to the heavy metals, particularly lead, during the fire’s first days.

They compared the typical value of lead before the fires and the chemical makeup of smoke from a 2024 fire in Riverside County that burned mostly vegetation with data from the Eaton Fire plume. Contrasted with the wildfire smoke, the plume from the LA fire contained 50 times more lead, three times more arsenic, and seven times more halogens. At the peak of burning, about 7 million people were exposed for 24 hours to lead levels more than 80 times what’s typical.

Lead is a neurotoxin that can stunt children’s development, lower IQ scores and increase blood pressure in adults. Scientists still don’t know how short-term, high exposure to lead impacts human health. Arsenic exposure is associated with various cancers.

Yaguang Wei, assistant professor in the department of environmental medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who researches the health impacts of air pollution, wildfire smoke and severe weather, said their findings reinforced some conclusions of a recent study he co-authored that found, in part, that PM2.5 from wildfire smoke was more toxic than particulates from other sources.

“I think their findings are not surprising,” said Wei, who was not involved in the study. When fires burn properties, they’re also burning “a lot of lead on your wall paint and the plastics and electronics and those are very toxic” when they burn, he said.

Monitoring, policies and emergency response need to adapt, experts say

Wei said the study has “important policy implications.” He thinks governments should take stronger actions to protect public health during these fires by investing in more wildfire monitoring and public alerts, and having more prescribed fires.

For Avol, the study is a reminder of our “strange and increasingly dangerous new world” where urban and wildland intersect — and increasingly catch fire.

“It reminds us to be cautious and be concerned and, you know, think about what we can do to minimize this. We’re not going to stop using all these materials containing metals and halogens and so forth in our homes,” he said. “How do we protect people from being exposed to that?”

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

The Los Angeles City Council voted 13-0 Wednesday to ban new oil wells and phase out all existing ones within 20 years, the final vote needed to pass the citywide ban.

For community residents and environmental advocates, this has been a long time coming — the push to enact this ordinance began over a decade ago.

“To every single one of us, this is what this means: That we hopefully will inherit a safer Los Angeles, a healthier city, not just for us, but for generations to come,” said Ashley Hernandez, a community organizer and Wilmington resident.

Hernandez was among dozens of demonstrators who gathered outside City Hall Wednesday morning for a rally ahead of the council vote, holding signs with slogans like “Clean air & health over big oil wealth” and “Together we can stop the climate emergency.”

Ashley Hernandez spoke about the ban on oil drilling creating a healthier city for future generations. She spoke at a rally before the L.A. City Council voted to ban new wells and phase out existing ones.

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Kevin Tidmarsh

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LAist

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The backstory

The city of L.A. first moved to phase out oil drilling in 2022. That motion was later overturned after Warren Resources, an oil company, sued the city, arguing that only the state could enact such a policy. A state law passed last year explicitly granted cities the right to ban oil drilling, and the L.A. City Council again took up the cause. L.A. County is planning a similar ban.

The push to close the wells

Councilmembers Katy Yaroslavsky, Heather Hutt and Adrin Nazarian spoke in favor of the ban at the morning rally.

“Seven hundred fifty-nine of these active wells sit just steps from homes, churches, parks, hospitals and other places that our residents visit and congregate on a daily basis,” Nazarian said.

Richard Parks,  president of Redeemer Community Partnership in South Los Angeles, said his family and several of his neighbors who live near oil drilling sites where odor-neutralizing chemicals are sprayed into the air have faced health consequences, including miscarriages.

“We were left to wonder, did we lose these children because of the way these oil companies were operating in our community?” Parks said.

For South L.A. resident and high school senior Isabella Galbraith, the fight to close oil wells has lasted most of her life. She said she participated in her first protest, advocating for the closure of the Jefferson drill site, when she was just 5 years old. (That site has been closed and is now being developed into a park.)

“It's not normal to struggle to breathe. It's not normal for all of your family members to have asthma, to be getting cancer,” Galbraith said. “It's a daily reality for all of us, and it shows up in the little ways, and they have big, lasting consequences.”

What’s next

Oil companies have already said they plan to fight the ban, arguing that the ordinance constitutes a taking of private property without compensation and a violation of their rights.

Meanwhile, Parks said he hopes the city continues to take action on oil wells, including revoking conditional use permits for nuisance oil drill sites and using the authority of the L.A. Fire Department to plug idle oil wells.

Meanwhile, Yaroslavsky also advocated for the wells to be properly plugged and cleaned up.

“We need to make sure these wells are properly plugged and these sites are cleaned up, and we need to make sure the companies responsible for this pollution are held accountable,” she said.

Local residents are already looking to the future of what these sites could be once they’re shut down and cleaned up.

“I'm looking at … the future of these sites. Maybe these could be parks that our communities desperately need,” said Wilmington resident and rally organizer Wendy Miranda. “I'm just really excited for Wilmington, for South L.A., for other communities that have oil drilling near them to see that this will no longer be in our neighborhoods.”