The Brief

One thing you can be sure of in L.A. is that there’s never an excuse to stay home. Just this week, both the L.A. Phil and the Geffen Playhouse announced their new seasons, and there’s tons of great music and theater on the way this fall — and we haven’t even gotten to summer yet!

Even with Dudamel leaving us for NYC (and don’t worry, there are still many chances to see the maestro before then), the L.A. Phil has a lot of special shows on tap, including an evening with Andrew Bird and a tribute to Philip Glass. The Geffen has two plays coming straight from Broadway, including Branden Jacob-Jenkins' Purpose, directed by Phylicia Rashad, and Bess Wohl’s Liberation. Plan accordingly!

More imminently, your music picks for this weekend from Licorice Pizza include Peso Pluma at the Intuit Dome, Conan Gray at the Forum, Ashnikko with Princess Nokia at Shrine Expo Hall, Jeff Tweedy at the Belasco, Inara George at Largo and Peaches bringing her debauchery and sex-positivity to the Bellwether — all on Friday, though Peaches will be effing the pain away on Saturday, too.

Saturday’s a big night, with Jeff Tweedy playing a second show at the United Theater, Maggie Lindemann at the Regent, Spiritual Cramp at the Teragram, Paul van Dyk at Avalon and Yeasayer’s Anand Wilder at Townhouse Venice. If you’re feeling nostalgic, there’s the "I Love The 90s Tour" with Vanilla Ice, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Milli Vanilli, Tone Loc, Color Me Badd and Young MC at Great Park Live. Finally, end your weekend on Sunday with the "Boys 4 Life Tour" at the Forum, Hawthorne Heights at the Belasco or local punk icons Redd Kross at Alex’s Bar.

Elsewhere on LAist, learn where to order your latte with a side of feminist history, read about a queer Latin dance studio and score a ticket for next weekend’s Marketplace Live with Kai Ryssdal.

Events

Ukrainian Egg-Decorating Festival

Sunday, March 22, 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Ukrainian Cultural Center
4315 Melrose Ave., East Hollywood
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy Ukrainian Art Center

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Trust me, your supermarket egg dyes have nothing on the intricate designs of Ukrainian Easter eggs. Learn about the historic tradition of pysanka and try out the craft for yourself at the Ukrainian Cultural Center’s Pysanka (Egg-Decorating) Festival. There’s also folk dancing, singing and delicious Ukrainian food and drink.

Innovation Social

Friday, March 20, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. 
Music Center Plaza
135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown L.A. 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

Learn more about the L.A. art and tech scene by mingling with the people making it happen at the next Innovation Social on Music Center Plaza. While there, check out the latest from Iranian multimedia artist Armon Naeini’s The Music Center Presents ID Pt. III, which uses motion tracking to generate responsive visuals that shift and change as you move.

Venice Love Fest 

Saturday, March 21, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Windward Ave. and Ocean Front Walk, Venice
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy Create Entertainment

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Venice is the place to be this weekend for the annual Venice Love Fest, which moves to its rightful beachside location this year. It’s going to be hot, and the music is going to be rocking, with some of my favorites (including the Midnight Cowgirls) taking the Love Fest stage. Best of all, it’s free. Plus, Passion Pit is playing a free set at the Rivian space at 7 p.m., and the Venice Heritage Museum is reopening in its new location on the same day. Wander over to 1234 Pacific Ave. to check it out on your way to or from.

Jacob Jonas: Keeping Score

Through Sunday, March 22
Broad Stage
1310 11th St., Santa Monica 
COST: FROM $35; MORE INFO

Innovative artist, dancer and choreographer (and Santa Monica native) Jacob Jonas brings a trilogy about illness and resilience to the Broad Stage for a series of unique performances across three days. Jonas, a Stage 4 cancer survivor, has taken his journey onto the stage, creating a visceral piece that “intersects contemporary dance, performance art, musical composition, and theatrical storytelling to explore how early life trauma, illness, and resilience are encoded in the body.” Inspired by The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, the work — which includes a combination of dance, film, binaural sound, meditation and conversation — looks at the before, during and after of illness.

VinylCon

Saturday and Sunday, March 21 and 22
California Market Center
110 E. Ninth St., Downtown Los Angeles
COST: FROM $8.75; MORE INFO 

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Eric Krull

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Vinyl-heads, this is for you. Head to California Market Center for "the largest record fair in California that anyone can remember," complete with a DJ lineup that includes The Gaslamp Killer and DJ Nu-Mark, plus more rare and vintage vinyl than you can possibly get away with bringing home.

Annual Vegan Chili Cook-Off

Saturday, March 21, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 
Tony’s Darts Away
1710 W Magnolia Blvd., Burbank 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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American Heritage Chocolate

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Enjoy chili and craft beer at the vegan chili cookoff, where favorite spots like Highland Park Brewery and Ogopogo Brewery will compete for the crown at Tony’s Darts Away in Burbank. Your entry ticket includes five servings of vegan chili, so come hungry. Plus, you’ll get to cast your vote for the People's Choice Award!

66th Annual Swallows Day Parade

Saturday, March 21, 11 a.m. 
Downtown San Juan Capistrano
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy San Juan Capistrano Fiesta Association

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The swallows — las golondrinas — make their way back to California from Argentina like clockwork every March, and San Juan Capistrano is ready. This year’s Swallows Day Parade includes equestrian units, historical reenactors and community groups celebrating the heritage of the historic Orange County town.

Art Jam 

Sunday, March 22, 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. 
Boomtown Brewery 
700 Jackson St., Downtown L.A. 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

Maybe the next Linda Lindas will be discovered at this year’s Art Jam, an all-ages youth arts and music event at Boomtown Brewery with a teen battle of the bands, live car painting, hands-on art workshops, a photo show, art vendors and more — all benefiting Mount of Angels and their free art programs for L.A. youth.

Sake tasting 

Friday, March 20, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. 
The Gamble House 
4 Westmoreland Place, Pasadena 
COST: $50; MORE INFO 

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Zaji Kanamajina

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It’s sakura season in Japan, but you can celebrate without hopping a plane to Tokyo at this sip and learn event at Gamble House. Coinciding with the exhibit From Strand to Sculpture: Contemporary Japanese Basketry, the event includes a lecture from Asian art historian and former Curator of East Asian Art at Pacific Asia Museum Meher McArthur about the 2,000 year-old tradition of sake-making in Japan and the art that evolved around it, followed by a guided sampling.

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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Courtesy Steve Campos

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”