The Brief

Each April, tens of thousands of people flock to the heart of the Coachella Valley to camp, dance and let loose at the music festival by that same name.

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival features hundreds of performers on some half a dozen stages, spread out across two consecutive three-day weekends. This year, performances by the likes of Lady Gaga, Charli XCX, Post Malone, Benson Boone and even an appearance by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., instantly went viral.

Coachella's diverse lineup, celebrity-studded audience, and ample commercial opportunities for brands and social media influencers make it one of the most popular and profitable music festivals in the world. The event — combined with the country music festival Stagecoach, which is always the following weekend — sold about 250,000 tickets in 2024.

The catch?

Coachella the festival does not actually take place in Coachella the city. Since its founding in 1999, it's been held in nearby Indio. Both are part of the Coachella Valley, which is in Southern California's Colorado Desert and is also home to the cities of Palm Springs and Indian Wells.

"I think a lot of people who come to this area from other places aren't really sure what's what, and I don't think they really care," says Jeff Crider, a freelance writer and historian who has written a book about the Coachella Valley. "I think they just come and want to have a good time."

But it's worth learning about Coachella, both the place and the festival. The Coachella Valley's two primary industries, agriculture and entertainment, have rich histories that intertwine in fascinating ways.

The Coachella Valley is synonymous with wealth and celebrity, given its long list of famous visitors and winter residents, including many former U.S. presidents and Hollywood stars. But the region — which is also known for its agricultural production, particularly dates — is also home to a large population of farmworkers, many of whom are immigrants

"Yes, the rich and famous have winter homes here. Yes, we have some of the most famous entertainment events in the world taking place here," Crider says. "But the majority of the people who live and work out here year round are not rich and famous. Many, many, many of them are struggling to make it."

Celebrities including Zeppo and Harpo Marx play backgammon in Palm Springs in this undated photo.

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Where did the word come from? 

Coachella itself was a product of the country's railroad system — and a typo.

As the City of Coachella's website explains, the Southern Pacific Railroad laid the first tracks throughout the valley in 1876, linking it to a growing network of railways across California. A secondary track, called a side spur, was built in present-day Coachella.

"It was literally just like an offramp from the railroad," Crider explains.

A railroad employee named Jason Rector was tasked with clearing the trees in that area, which became known as Woodspur. Rector is credited with becoming the town's first permanent resident and "unofficial mayor" for the rest of his life. He also helped name it.

According to the city's website, during the process of laying out the townsite in 1901, Rector proposed "Conchilla," which means "little shell" in Spanish and references the fossils that were found in the area.

The developers, in agreement, designed a prospectus that would announce the opening of the new town. But the product they got back from the printer misspelled "Conchilla" as "Coachella." Rather than delay the announcement, the founders decided to roll with the name — which the valley itself went on to adopt. The town, however, didn't become a city until 1946.

"'Coachella' was a mistake," Crider says. "They decided just to keep the name, even though 'Coachella' itself does not mean anything. It doesn't mean anything in Spanish, it doesn't mean anything in English, other than the place that we know as Coachella."

In the decades that followed, the region's dry, sunny climate and fertile soil began to attract both farmers and celebrities.

Early growers realized their crops could be ready to harvest long before other regions, and started planting dates and other types of produce to sell without competition. It has an important place in the labor movement too: The first significant farm labor strike — against table grape growers — took place in the Coachella Valley in 1965, led in part by Cesar Chavez.

At the same time, grand hotels like Palm Springs' El Mirador began drawing high-profile visitors from Los Angeles, about 100 miles away. The 1960s further boosted tourism, Crider says, thanks to the interstate and air conditioning.

In other words, Coachella Valley was a prominent venue for golf, tennis and other forms of entertainment long before the music festival came on the scene. Crider says it's been "an escape for the elite literally for a century" — and the Coachella festival has only made the area more famous since then.

"Because just like in the 1920's and '30s, when you had the photos of the Hollywood stars lounging by the swimming pool that made this place famous 100 years ago, today what makes this place famous is having pictures of the latest celebrities, Lady Gaga, for example, and others who are at Coachella right now," Crider adds. "They're making this place famous, but they're making the whole valley famous."

It took a few years for the Coachella festival — pictured here in April 2001 — to grow into the phenomenon it is today.

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How has the word been used over time?

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival made its debut in early October 1999, with headliners including Beck and Rage Against the Machine and tickets costing $50 a day.

It was the brainchild of concert promoters Rick Van Santen and Paul Tollett, organized by Tollett's company Goldenvoice — which made its name in the 1980s booking punk rock acts that other promoters wouldn't.

Tollett also helped the band Pearl Jam book alternate venues during its boycott of Ticketmaster after a dispute in the early 1990s. One of their gigs ended up at the Empire Polo Club — and showed Tollett how prime the venue could be for the large-scale festival of his dreams.

Coachella's organizers hoped to emulate the multi-act, days-long music festivals that were so popular overseas, such as those in Reading and Glastonbury in the United Kingdom.

"For Southern California, this could be the start of something really special," Tollett told the Los Angeles Times in 1999.

But that first year wasn't a huge success, in part because of the intentional lack of corporate sponsors, blazing triple-digit temperatures and a drop in advance ticket sales after Woodstock '99 descended into violence. Tollett revealed much later that the festival's first year cost the company $750,000.

Coachella took a break in 2000 and returned in 2001, this time scaled back to a single day and scheduled for the milder weather of April. Its lineups, ticket prices and crowd sizes kept growing.

"The desert town of Indio has become the unlikely location of one of the hottest music festivals in the country," NPR's Stacey Bond reported in 2004.

That was the year tickets sold out for the first time, drawing a crowd of 120,000 to see acts including Radiohead and The Cure, as well the reunited Pixies (the first of many reunions on the Coachella stage).

Coachella has expanded and evolved over the years: It eliminated single-day tickets in favor of three-day passes in 2010, added a second weekend starting in 2012 and increasingly broke attendance records until the city increased its cap to 125,000 in 2017.

These days, general admission passes start around $600, not including extra fees for camping and parking. The festival that originally resisted sponsorship deals now boasts dozens of corporate partners, including food, beverage and cosmetic companies.

And while it still showcases dozens of the moment's biggest artists (144 acts this year), it's about much more than just music, especially in the era of social media and influencers.

"The word 'Coachella' itself has become shorthand for a tastemaker event," the Los Angeles Times declared in 2019, the festival's 20th anniversary.

Festivalgoers enjoy the first weekend of the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club on Sunday.

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Why does the word matter today?

Crider says the local economy is dependent on events like Coachella to draw people in, calling the influx of festival goers "a huge shot in the arm for our economy."

"As someone who has lived in this valley for half of my lifetime, I love seeing the kids come in, come into our stores, buying alcohol, sunscreen, whatever else they need, souvenirs," Crider says. "And then they line up at grocery stores and they go on buses that take them down to … the polo grounds, where they're going to see all the music performed. And it's just a great time."

That said, the reality of life in the region — and the huge discrepancies in wealth — are not necessarily apparent to people who associate Coachella simply with the festival that bears its name.

He says festival goers who complain about the Coachella heat likely don't realize that there are farmworkers harvesting produce in that same sun just miles away, or that many of the people putting the food on their restaurant tables rely on food banks themselves.

"That is something that people might not realize when they're out here spending a gazillion dollars to attend a music festival and being overcharged for drinks and whatnot, as we know that happens," Crider says. "You wouldn't think that there would be so much poverty out here at the same time."

Crider says a lot of young people leave the area for college and don't return because of a lack of jobs, which is something business interests in the valley are trying to change.

"There have been efforts to try to diversify the economy … so that we don't remain forever dependent on just agriculture or tourism," he adds. "But that's how this area was really created — and it works."

Copyright 2025 NPR

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.