The Brief

The concert-promoting agency Sid the Cat has become a key part of Los Angeles’s indie music scene over the last 10 years. Their shows often aren’t in full-time concert spaces, but in historic buildings and other unorthodox places.

Keeping with that tradition, the Sid the Cat Auditorium, which holds its first show Thursday night, is in an old South Pasadena elementary school built in 1931.

About Sid the Cat

Music fans may know Sid the Cat’s place in the independent music ecosystem, but if you don’t, here’s just one anecdote: Pasadena’s own Phoebe Bridgers met her future collaborator Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes after cofounder Kyle Wilkerson put the two of them on the same bill before Bridgers became nationally known.

Sid the Cat books shows in venues of all sizes, from the tiny Permanent Records Roadhouse all the way to the Hollywood Bowl — and they book artists big and small to fill them.

“ Me, as the booker, I try to remain curious to new sounds and new music and new songwriters,” Wilkerson said. “It's the same when we come into a space. We get geeked on putting on an event that maybe nobody has ever done a show in this room.”

Wilkerson said the new auditorium reminds the team most of the midsized venues, including Highland Park Ebell Club, where they booked some of their first ever shows.

This bar area next to the Sid the Cat Auditorium will be open even on nights when there aren't any shows.

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The new venue

The venue has two main spaces, a main auditorium and a side bar area. The bar will host DJs nightly, even when there’s no main concert going on.

Besides being concert promoters, the Sid the Cat team are history buffs. A case in the bar area shows off historical documents from the building and keepsakes from the 10 years of Sid the Cat concerts.

One of the many mementos Sid the Cat has given out over the years.

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“ Our dream was always to have a trophy case and to celebrate art the way that people celebrate sports and other major events,” Sid the Cat cofounder Brandon Gonzalez said.

Another thing that’s on display in the main room: four murals from Lucile Lloyd, a prominent 20th century decorative artist. Wilkerson had a hunch based on historical documents that her art was somewhere in the elementary school, but couldn’t corroborate it even after consulting with the University of California, Santa Barbara, which hosts her collections.

These murals, the only surviving Lucile Lloyd murals on this site, were originally covered when the Sid the Cat team bought the venue.

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It was a lucky rainstorm that partially revealed the murals under some paneling in the rafters, Wilkerson said. The murals are now on display, along with a plaque commemorating Lloyd.

The venue has a few modern touches, too, including a new sound system and a pickleball court on the floor with the Sid the Cat logo in the middle. They even have a net for staff and artists to play during off hours.

The Sid the Cat team said they long dreamed of a basketball court with their logo in the middle, but due to space issues they settled on a pickleball court.

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“I hope people show up”

Concertgoers might notice a couple slogans around the venue. One is "Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow," a nod to the motto of Wilkerson’s great-grandfather’s bottling company. The other one is, “I hope people show up.”

Sid the Cat's cofounders.

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Gonzalez said that’s because in the live music industry, it’s never guaranteed people will come out on any given night.

“ It truly is hard for people to show up and when they do, it's really beautiful and it's powerful,” Gonzalez said. “I love that uniqueness about each night that we put on shows, and if it's raining or there's something going on, it's like, we truly don't know if people are gonna show up.”

Upcoming shows

The venue’s first show, featuring the L.A. bands Peel Dream Magazine and Goon, is Thursday, Dec. 4.

You can see the full upcoming lineup on Sid the Cat’s website.

If there were such a thing as the perfect résumé for hosting The Great American Baking Show, Los Angeles-based actor, writer and comedian Casey Wilson (Happy Endings, SNL) might be the one to have it — despite the fact that she doesn’t bake

She has the sketch comedy and acting experience to pull off the show’s opening skits and introductions to the baking challenges. But also, when it comes to chatting with the bakers throughout the episodes, Wilson literally wrote a book (an audiobook, fittingly) titled The Art of Small Talk with fellow actor, writer and comedian Jessica St. Clair.

What’s unique about making small talk during the Baking Show, which Wilson has co-hosted for four seasons now for The Roku Channel — the latest with her friend and former Black Monday co-star Andrew Rannells (Girls, Another Simple Favor) — is making chit-chat with someone who’s trying to focus on making some elaborate cake, bread or pastry, and likely also pretty stressed.

“ In real life,” Wilson told LAist, “if you saw the emotional state of the people that are baking, you would immediately know, ‘Let me back up and allow them their space.’ Meanwhile, [the producers] are like, ‘Go on in.’ And Andrew and I always say, we're like, ‘Tell us about your grandpa.’”

Luckily, the contestants are good-natured about the whole thing. And Wilson and Rannells’ repartee with the contestants, each other and judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith just add to the overall good vibes of the competition — in keeping with the tradition of the much-beloved original British version of the show.

An added bonus of the American version is some of the cultural confusion that arises, like this exchange featured in the trailer about “box cake”:

Wilson spoke with LAist about what goes on behind the scenes of The Great American Baking Show (the latest season of which premiered on The Roku Channel on May 11) and her top picks for baked goods in Los Angeles.

LA bakeries to check out for non-bakers (and bakers who want a break)

When she’s home in L.A., Wilson says, she’s not so much into baking herself, but because of that, she knows where to go to get a good cake, dessert or bread. She offered this list of her top picks:

• SusieCakes (various locations) :  “I know now it's, like, a chain, but in L.A., I love SusieCakes, and I wanna shout it out. If you have forgotten someone's birthday, it's amazing to order on DoorDash and they have like this old-fashioned cake [...] and they'll write on it. […]  It's wonderful and truly the best cake and cupcakes."
• Lark Cake Shop (Silver Lake): “ Lark, which is a small bakery in Silver Lake; they have an ice box cake that is tremendous. It's incredible.”
• Claudine Kitchen & Bakeshop (Encino):  ”I live in Los Feliz, so that's a drive, and I will embark on it to get these s'mores bites. [...] If I have them, people are angry that I don't have more, and it's the greatest dessert ever.”
• Cake Monkey (Mid-City):  ”My son has celiac disease, so we're always trying to look for gluten-free, which is hard to find, you know, especially for a kid. [...] Cake Monkey is a bakery, more like a Mid-City area, and they have an incredible gluten-free triple berry cake that's great, and they just have a lot of gluten-free options that are awesome.”
•  Breadblok (Silver Lake): “It's all gluten-free breads, and they have some desserts too. They have a brown butter chocolate chip cookie that's wrong — should be illegal. But their breads are so good, and it's for everybody. People go there that aren't even gluten-free because it's just that good.”

The BTS of GBBO (and GABS)

The Great American Baking Show films at the same English countryside location and with the same crew as The Great British Bake Off (titled The Great British Baking Show in the U.S.), many of whom, Wilson explained, have been with the show since the beginning.

One thing Wilson said people are sometimes surprised to learn is that there are no retakes and the time constraints on the baking challenges are very real.

“It's very pure in that sense,” Wilson said. “They have exactly that amount of time. And even a couple times when it was time to say, ‘Bakers, your time is up,’ I would walk slowly 'cause I'd see somebody needing more time and [the producers] are like, 'We see you! Walk!'"

Another surprise to her, Wilson said: “You cannot believe how many camera people there are — I mean, 12 roaming at all times” to capture the bakers’ moves.“ It's kind of like The Truman Show, basically.”

And while you might assume that the short skits that she and Rannells film that introduce each episode’s theme are filmed all at once, they’re not. Instead, they’re always filmed in the early morning hours of the second day of each episode’s two-day shoot.

As for what happens during the week, when filming is done, Wilson explained, “ The poor bakers, they have to practice so much, so they're basically like hostages in their apartments, baking every second. But Andrew and I were a bit more footloose and fancy free, you might say. So we bopped around and we saw shows and we hung out a lot with Paul Hollywood, who I love, and it was just a dream.”

Walking into Mexican Monk Brew House, you're greeted by a space filled with natural light. Repurposed cathedral window frames hang as artwork alongside a few well-placed mirrors; Selena plays over the sound system.

A massive mural of its logo dominates an exposed concrete block wall. A robed monk dressed in a sombrero and serape, eyes closed, cradling a beer as an offering — an image that tells you immediately who this place is for and who built it.

The Mexican Monk Brewhouse mural that greets you inside the Paramount taproom.

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Located in the city of Paramount, Mexican Monk is an independently Latino-owned craft beer taproom, the first of its kind in the area. The space is the vision of independent craft brewer Ray "Ricky" Rivera, who has spent the past decade building toward this moment. He's partnered with David and Ashley Vazquez, who have operated Horchateria Rio Luna since 2016 — first at a smaller location, then in their current home in 2020 — the cafe next door where Mexican Monk now lives.

Mexican Monk is currently in its soft-opening phase, open Thursday through Sunday, with a grand-opening celebration planned for the coming weeks.

Ashley Vazquez, David Vasquez, and Ray "Ricky" Rivera inside Mexican Monk Brewhouse at Horchateria Rio Luna in Paramount.

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Half a mile away

Last summer, the city of Paramount found itself at the center of a national debate about who belongs when federal immigration agents massed near a Home Depot on Alondra Boulevard and the community spilled into the streets to meet them.

David Salinas is the second-generation owner of Paramount Barbers. He watched the raids ripple through the neighborhood in real time.

"Foot traffic wasn't happening. Everyone was just on alert," Salinas said. According to local business roundtable meetings he attended, commerce in the area dropped 20% to 30% on average in the aftermath. "For some smaller businesses, that became tough."

But even as the neighborhood absorbed the blow, something was already taking shape a few blocks away.

Crafting a partnership

Like a lot of things these days, the Brew House began with an exchange on Instagram. Rivera noticed that Vasquez had started offering beer at the cafe, specifically from Brujeria — a local, Latino-owned brewery in Pico Rivera — and sent him a DM. What followed was a series of visits, casual conversations, and eventually an unexpected pitch: Vasquez and his partners had an empty 1,400-square-foot room adjoining the cafe and were looking for someone to bring it to life.

Rivera had been sitting on the Mexican Monk concept for about five years — a robed monk in a sombrero, a brewer, a mythical figure with a whole backstory. He pitched it. Vasquez, who was born and raised in Paramount, loved it.

"We knew our city was underserved regarding cool, trendy spaces," Vasquez said, noting that residents have long made the drive to Long Beach, Orange County, or downtown Los Angeles to find what Mexican Monk is now bringing to their own backyard.

A pint of Sippin' Santos, Mexican Monk Brewhouse's Mexican-style lager, sits on the bar at the Paramount taproom.

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Rivera had a background in brewing, first as founder of the L.A.-based homebrew club SoCal Cerveceros, and then with his solo contract brewing operation Norwalk Brewhouse. Its flagship beer is named Bidi Bidi Blonde Blonde, a blonde ale named after the Selena classic.

Mexican Monk, he said, is the physical realization of what Norwalk Brewhouse was always building toward — a space where the culture isn't a footnote, it's the foundation.

What’s on the menu

The beer list reads like a who's who of the Latino craft beer world — there are six house brews contract-brewed locally, from Sippin' Santos, a Mexican-style lager, to La Blanca 1544, a Belgian-style witbier, all priced between $8- $9. The remaining taps and a curated can wall of 26 selections draw almost entirely from independent Latino-owned breweries across Southern California and beyond.

For food there's six different types of wings, including a spice-forward chorizo dry rub, a nutty salsa macha, and the standout of the bunch, the mole wings, whose chocolatey, earthy depth works surprisingly well with their slightly hop-forward West Blessed, especially after a proper dip in their house-made jalapeño ranch. The menu rounds out with nine-inch pizzas made with Mexican Monk lager dough and truffle fries.

Mole chicken wings with house-made jalapeño ranch alongside a Mexican Monk pint at the Paramount taproom.

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For barber David Salinas, Mexican Monk is a catalyst — the kind of anchor business that he hopes will inspire others.

"Ray and I talked, and we were saying there needs to be a little bit more," he said. "It can't just be his brewery for him to succeed. He needs a community around him."

That may be growing. When you walk through the door at Mexican Monk, what you find is something quieter and more durable than a protest or a headline. A city imagining what comes next, one pint or plate of wings at a time.

The number of unhoused Angelenos living in Hollywood, Skid Row and Venice remained relatively steady in 2025 compared to the previous year, but the population of people without any type of shelter continues to rise, according to a study released Thursday.

According to the RAND Housing Center, which conducted the study, unsheltered homelessness stayed flat in those Los Angeles neighborhoods between December 2024 and January of this year despite ongoing government efforts to clear tent encampments. In a separate study, RAND found a 15% decrease in the overall unhoused population in those three neighborhoods in 2024 compared to the previous year.

Within those populations, many more people were seen “rough sleeping” — meaning they had no tents, makeshift shelter or vehicles. According to the study, by January, 44% of the total unsheltered population in those areas was “sleeping rough,” compared to 30% in 2021-2022.

The study also found that almost 90% of all tents counted in those neighborhoods were in Skid Row near downtown L.A. compared to 60% four years ago.

RAND said the finding is particularly important because so-called rough sleepers tend to have “greater clinical need” than those who have some type of shelter, are harder to locate and are, therefore, harder to place in interim or permanent housing.

Researchers warned that “continued reliance on tent-focused homelessness resolution approaches will likely yield diminishing returns, especially in Hollywood and Venice, where these living arrangements are now uncommon.” They recommended that city, county and regional agencies use a mixed approach that includes providing centralized service hubs and expanding permanent supporting housing along with behavioral health.

Other findings included:

• Hollywood and Venice were statistically flat after previous declines in 2024. Out of the three neighborhoods studied, Skid Row was the only one where the unsheltered population had grown continuously since 2021-2022.

• Rough sleeping increased (up 20%, up 250 people), tent dwelling declined ( down 23%, down 310 people), and vehicle dwelling rose ( up 11%, up 90 people) during 2025. Since 2021, the number of tents declined by half and were largely replaced by vehicles and rough sleepers.

• For every four tents removed, three vehicles or rough sleepers were added on average each day. The switch toward fewer tents and more people living in cars or without any shelter at all was “especially pronounced” in Hollywood.