Kevin Tidmarsh
is a producer for LAist, covering news and culture. He’s been an audio/web journalist for about a decade.
Published November 2, 2023 9:44 AM
A much-coveted physical copy of Britney Spears's memoir the reporter checked out from the Los Angeles Public Library. If you're waiting for this book, sorry, you'll get it when you get it.
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Kevin Tidmarsh
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LAist
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Topline:
Thousands of Los Angeles Public Library patrons are waiting for a virtual copy of Britney Spears's memoir, which went viral on the day of its release.
How many holds: Over 6,000 people are waiting for the audiobook at the time of writing, while nearly 4,000 users placed a hold on the e-book.
How many copies: LAPL acquired nearly 1,000 copies of the audiobook and more than 600 copies of the e-book.
How long is the wait: Currently, the estimated wait time for both the e-book and audiobook is over three months.
Other popular titles: Some other examples of titles with similar levels of demand are Michelle Obama's autobiography Becoming and Prince Harry's memoir Spare.
Readers in Los Angeles have been saying “gimme more” to the Britney Spears memoir The Woman in Me — and the L.A. Public Library has responded by acquiring hundreds of copies of the book to keep up with demand.
Currently, more than 6,000 people are in line for one of the 969 audiobook copies of The Woman in Me. Meanwhile, nearly 4,000 users are waiting for 614 copies of the e-book. The estimated wait time for both versions is more than three months, according to the reservation system on Wednesday.
Excerpts of The Woman in Me have been going viral prior tothe book’s release last week. Spears shared revelations about her relationship with Justin Timberlake, her father’s control over her life before her conservatorship ended, and her natural hair color, which according to the book is black.
A clip of actor Michelle Williams, who narrated the audio version of the book, imitating Timberlake saying “fo shiz” to Ginuwine made the rounds online the very day the memoir was released. This may have contributed to the high demand for the audiobook rather than the e-book, according to LAPL staff.
“With most titles, there's usually more of an e-book demand,” LAPL electronic resources librarian Eileen Ybarra told LAist. “That's a little surprising to me, but considering it went viral, that makes sense. Anything that is viral or that is well known in the media or press, e-books, audiobooks, anything like that is going to have high demand always.”
The demand is also high outside of the LAPL, but the waitlists are much shorter at other area libraries. At the Burbank Public Library, about 70 patrons are waiting for the e-book version and 40 have placed holds on the physical copy, according to its reservation system. At the Altadena Library, only six patrons have active holds on the book.
The LAPL has gotten in on the fun on social media, even posting a video making fun of the long wait times.
This high level of demand puts Spears in a prestigious category with world-famous authors and prominent political figures. According to Ybarra, the list of other titles that saw this level of demand includes Michelle Obama’s autobiography Becoming, the Harry Potter books, and Prince Harry’s memoir Spare.
The physical copy of The Woman in Me is in less demand at the LAPL: At the time of writing, about 480 users are waiting on 49 copies.
“I’m a patron too, and sometimes the e-book is extremely, incredibly popular, and then I've just checked the paper list, and it's shorter,” Ybarra said. “Or I don't have to wait at all, so I'll get the paper copy instead.”
But if you’d rather wait in line and hear Williams’ narration for yourself, that’s your prerogative.
'Red at Night' captures the spirit of the season at the Nimoy.
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Courtesy CAP UCLA
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In this edition:
Aerosmith and friends at the Bowl, spooky Halloween screenings, Taiwanese dance at USC, pick your pumpkin and don’t forget to vote!
Highlights:
The Hollywood Bowl’s two “Aerosmith and Friends” all-star concerts feature Guns N’ Roses, Billy Idol and Steve Stevens, Heart, the Black Crowes, Sammy Hagar, Tom Morello, Chad Smith, Nuno Bettencourt, Sully Erna and Run-DMC — along with a rare appearance by Aerosmith themselves. If you don’t wanna miss a thing, you have two chances to catch this event; they'll all play the historic venue on both Thursday and Sunday. – Lyndsey Parker
Head to Hollywood’s Bollman House to get a real Halloween horror fix. They’ll use architectural projection mapping to transform the home’s façade all weekend long with animated illusions and tributes to movies including Psycho, The Shining, Frankenstein, Jaws, Nosferatu, 1950s monster classics, and more. The Henry O. Bollman House was designed by Lloyd Wright (Frank Lloyd Wright’s son) in 1922 — a true piece of Hollywood history!
Taiwanese dance company HUNG DANCE, along with their choreographer and artistic director LAI Hung-Chung, make their L.A. debut in BIRDY, which uses a mix of electronic and Chinese classical music to create a unique story that explores the “freedom and limitations” in Taiwan and the journey to modernity through dance.
Trick or treat! Whether you’re dressing up as something silly (maybe grab a friend and go as Aerial Tramway and Red Heart) or scary (pick your favorite political meme), it’s Halloween weekend, so stay safe and have fun.
Plus, don’t let election research get you down — if you haven’t voted yet, there’s still plenty of time to check out our OC and LA Voter Game Plan guides. You can take your mail-in ballot to a drop box, or head directly to the polls on Tuesday. Plus, there are plenty of incentives to cast your ballot; just show your “I Voted” sticker for discounts and freebies like donuts, discounts on food and more at participating local venues.
The L.A. Louver opens its doors again for a special two-day pop-up exhibit of paintings from singer and renaissance woman Joni Mitchell. The 82-year-old songstress and grandmother of folk rock — who's seen a real renaissance onstage the last couple of years, as she's performed with Brandi Carlile and others — is showing 23 paintings in a series called "NEWS," done between 2001 and this year.
Chef Marcus Samuelsson in Conversation with Laurie Ochoa and Sandra Jackson-Dumont
Wednesday, Oct. 28, 7:30 p.m. Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood COST: FREE; MORE INFO
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Courtesy Hammer Museum
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Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s remarkable story spans from Sweden to Ethiopia to Harlem. He’s sitting down with L.A. Times food editor Laurie Ochoa and cultural strategist Sandra Jackson-Dumont to talk about how “the cross-pollination of cultural traditions in Los Angeles has enriched the food and the art that we make and consume.” Samuelsson will also sign copies of his newest book, Back to Green: Rediscovering a World of Delicious, Healthy Eating.
Aerosmith and Friends: California Dream On
Thursday, Oct. 29, and Sunday, Nov. 1 Hollywood Bowl 2301 Highland Ave., Hollywood Hills COST: SOLD OUT, RESALE AVAILABLE FROM $300; MORE INFO
Steven Tyler and Joe Perry will make their return with a Hollywood Bowl performance.
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Kevin Mazur
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Getty Images
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The Hollywood Bowl’s two “Aerosmith and Friends” all-star concerts feature Guns N’ Roses, Billy Idol and Steve Stevens, Heart, the Black Crowes, Sammy Hagar, Tom Morello, Chad Smith, Nuno Bettencourt, Sully Erna and Run-DMC — along with a rare appearance by Aerosmith themselves. If you don’t wanna miss a thing, you have two chances to catch this event; they'll all play the historic venue on both Thursday and Sunday. – Lyndsey Parker
Día de los Muertos events
Sunday, Nov. 1, 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. Forest Lawn Cemeteries Various locations COST: FREE; MORE INFO
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Courtesy Forest Lawn
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Forest Lawn’s Covina Hills, Cypress and Glendale locations will each host Día de los Muertos events featuring marigolds, handcrafted Catrina and alebrijes (spirit guides), artworks and community ofrendas (altars).
CAP UCLA: Red All Night
Friday, Oct. 30, 8 p.m. The Nimoy 1262 Westwood Blvd., Westwood COST: $19.14; MORE INFO
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Courtesy CAP UCLA
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CAP UCLA kicks off Halloween weekend with a screening of Los Angeles-based artist duo Beck+Col’s latest horror film, Red All Night, at the Nimoy. A traditional slasher turns psychedelic in this unpredictable horror, which will be accompanied by live performance elements. Forest monsters, zombies, the evil Smile and more collide in this surreal alternate universe.
LA Opera: Hercules vs. Vampires with live soundtrack
Friday and Saturday, Oct. 30-31 United Theater on Broadway 929 S. Broadway, Downtown L.A. COST: FROM $56; MORE INFO
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Craig T. Mathew
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LA Opera
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The LA Opera’s annual old-movies-with-creepy-slash-super-cool-operative-orchestration is simply one of the best Halloween nights around. This year, they're taking on the undead with a screening of a cult classic — Mario Bava's 1961 Hercules in the Haunted World — that was revamped (no pun intended) with an operatic score into Hercules vs. Vampires. It will be performed with a live operatic soundtrack at the United Theater on Broadway. Don’t forget your costume; Halloween night features a costume contest with a $10,000 grand prize!
HUNG DANCE: BIRDY
Thursday, Oct. 29, 7 p.m. USC Visions and Voices Bovard Auditorium 3551 Trousdale Pkwy., University Park COST: FREE; MORE INFO
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Ren-Haur Liu
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USC Kaufman School of Dance
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Taiwanese dance company HUNG DANCE, along with their choreographer and artistic director LAI Hung-Chung, make their L.A. debut in BIRDY, which uses a mix of electronic and Chinese classical music to create a unique story that explores the “freedom and limitations” in Taiwan and the journey to modernity through dance.
Hollywood Horror
Thursday to Saturday, Oct. 29-31, 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Bollman House 1530 N. Ogden Drive, Hollywood COST: FREE; MORE INFO
Head to Hollywood’s Bollman House to get a real Halloween horror fix. They’ll use architectural projection mapping to transform the home’s façade all weekend long with animated illusions and tributes to movies including Psycho, The Shining, Frankenstein, Jaws, Nosferatu, 1950s monster classics and more. The Henry O. Bollman House was designed by Lloyd Wright (Frank Lloyd Wright’s son) in 1922 — a true piece of Hollywood history!
Jordan Rynning
has reported from MacArthur Park since early 2025, tracking enforcement and talking to people at the park about what they're experiencing.
Published October 28, 2026 5:00 AM
A man in a knit cap uses garbage to burn a fire in MacArthur Park, in the Westlake neighborhood of L.A., on Feb. 11, 2026.
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Jordan Rynning
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LAist
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Topline:
MacArthur Park is a center of L.A.’s overdose crisis — second only to Skid Row in both overdose deaths and violent crime, according to an LAist analysis.
Why it matters: More than 70 people died from drug overdoses in MacArthur Park last year alone, and the blocks in and around the park have averaged at least one new victim of violent crime every day for more than a decade. City leaders have promised change for years. Residents, aid workers and the people using drugs in Fentanyl Alley tell a more complicated story.
Why now: LAist spent more than a year visiting the park, talking to people who make their homes in and near the 35 acres that make up the city's largest urban oasis. Our series, which starts today, traces how decades of disinvestment left one of L.A.’s most densely populated neighborhoods to carry a crisis that observers say more affluent areas would never tolerate.
Few places in Los Angeles hold as much beauty and desperation as MacArthur Park, 35 disheveled acres in one of the West Coast’s most densely populated neighborhoods.
Every morning, crews of service workers walk through the park to hand out naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses, and to dispose of used syringes left in the grass the night before.
The scene repeats daily. They patrol the park throughout the day, checking on the dozens of people smoking or injecting drugs at nearly any given time, ready to intervene when the next person inevitably begins to overdose.
Last year, 74 people died from drug overdoses in MacArthur Park’s ZIP code, according to the L.A. County Department of Public Health. That is an area smaller than 1 square mile around the park. Nearly 300 people died from overdoses in the five years before that, with only Skid Row losing more people to drug overdoses since 2020.
Those who come to MacArthur Park to use drugs typically gather near Alvarado Street, or half a block east in what locals know as “Fentanyl Alley.”
Across the park to the west, children play on soccer fields and playgrounds while parents look out for any spark of violence.
The need to keep watch is real — the blocks around MacArthur Park have some of the highest rates of violent crime in L.A., according to an LAist analysis of crime data from the Los Angeles Police Department.
As with overdose deaths, the only area that had more reported violent crime in 2025 than MacArthur Park was Skid Row, LAist found.
Some people who live nearby told me they rarely or never go to the park out of fear for their safety. Others are careful about which parts of the park they go to and when.
One father, Luis Escobar, said he feels safe taking his 6-year-old daughter to a playground in the park during the day. Nighttime is a different story, he said, as the park is filled with “zombie people,” what he calls the park’s many fentanyl users because of the way using fentanyl can cause people to hunch over at the waist and move slowly or not at all. Escobar said sometimes he’s seen people in the park get into fistfights or even pull guns.
More than 100 crimes have been committed near the park with knives or guns each year since 2023. Records from the L.A. County Medical Examiner show there were nine homicides within half a block of the park through 2024 and 2025. Four of the victims were stabbed; four were shot. One man was pushed into the lake and drowned.
For more than a decade, there has been an average of at least one new victim of violent crime every day in the park and surrounding blocks. Most crimes in 2025 happened on the east side of the park near Alvarado Street.
I spent more than a year talking to residents, business owners, aid workers and government officials to better understand the issues troubling MacArthur Park.
It quickly became clear that there was more to the story than just drugs and violence.
“Every challenge that urban America has faced is so visible and clear in MacArthur Park,” said Fernando Guerra, founder of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. “The history of displacement, the history of movements, all are visible there.”
Many people in the area were hesitant to talk with me because of longstanding fears of retaliation from the gangs in the area. Of those who were willing to speak, some told me they didn’t want to use their names or be seen in front of a microphone or camera. They told me speaking out publicly could bring unwanted trouble, and some knew people who had been threatened or beaten by gang members.
City officials have made multiple attempts at reducing pervasive crime at and near the park, with mixed reviews and success.
“Every challenge that urban America has faced is so visible and clear in MacArthur Park."
— Fernando Guerra, founder of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University
A man smokes from a glass pipe in MacArthur Park on Apr. 13, 2025.
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Jordan Rynning
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LAist
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A man smokes from a glass pipe in MacArthur Park on Apr. 13, 2025.
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Jordan Rynning
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LAist
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Men prepare to smoke drugs in MacArthur Park on March 24, 2025.
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Jordan Rynning
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LAist
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A young man offers a torch to another man holding a pipe at MacArthur Park on March 24, 2025.
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Jordan Rynning
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LAist
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Men make an exchange at MacArthur Park on Apr. 19, 2025.
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Jordan Rynning
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LAist
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A man crouches near a small fire while others walk away in MacArthur Park on Apr. 19, 2025. People stay in the park late into the night.
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Jordan Rynning
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LAist
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People gather across Alvarado Street from MacArthur Park on May 18, 2026. Drug sales and use are often seen at the intersection of Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard.
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Jordan Rynning
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LAist
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A young woman smokes from a pipe at MacArthur Park as DEA agents and LAPD officers conduct a drug enforcement raid across the street on May 6, 2026.
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Jordan Rynning
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LAist
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People stand on the sidewalk on Wilshire Boulevard on Sept. 2, 2026. As drug enforcement operations increased in MacArthur Park, more people have begun gathering on the nearby streets to use drugs.
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One man talks about the pull of fentanyl
Standing in Fentanyl Alley in February of this year, I spoke with a young man who feels the pull of the drug. He goes by the nickname Deuce.
A note on sources
Some of the people who spoke to me for this series were involved in illegal activities, did not have legal U.S. residency status or feared for their safety if they talked to a reporter. In some cases, people agreed to use a first name or nickname to speak more openly about their situations. Others would only talk to me on the condition that they remain anonymous. I only used information from anonymous sources that was corroborated by others.
As we chatted about his favorite foods to buy from street vendors, he casually took out a thin, straw-like pipe, held the flame of a butane torch against a plastic bottle cap with a tiny dab of white powder inside and began to smoke it.
“I'm smoking fetty,” Deuce said when I asked what it was. “Fetty” is a common street name for fentanyl.
Deuce said getting high on fentanyl gives a sedating effect that feels different from other drugs he’s tried.
He said that people become dependent on fentanyl and feel they “gotta do it.” Even though he knows others are regularly falling into overdoses around the park, Deuce said he’s not afraid that it might happen to him.
“I know what I'm doing,” Deuce said.
On the walk with Deuce back toward the park, he talked about how he gets the money he needs to pay for drugs.
He said he just asks people for money sometimes, and he tries to be honest about what he’s going to use it for.
“If I want food, I'm gonna let them know that I’m gonna get something to eat,” he said. “But sometimes I might be like, ‘I’m just trying to get some drugs, would you be able to spare any change?’”
After walking around the corner to Alvarado Street, Deuce stopped at a storefront and motioned to an employee to ask how much he could get for a watch he had been carrying in his hand.
The employee took the gold-colored watch and handed him a few dollars in return.
“Good sell,” Deuce said.
Along with selling a jacket earlier in the day, he said he’d made $15 — all the money he owned.
According to court documents in a drug enforcement case that details drug prices at the park, that was enough for him to buy around a quarter-gram of the same powder he had just smoked. A recent study by Drug Checking Los Angeles and UCLA found that people who use fentanyl in L.A. County consume, on average, about 1,000 milligrams a day — four times what Deuce could afford that morning.
Far less could kill someone who is not used to the drug.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, just 2 milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal to someone who has not built a tolerance to opioids. Even people who use the drug regularly are at risk of fluctuations in the illicit fentanyl’s potency, which can vary wildly.
Within minutes of Deuce trading the watch, two young men came by. One muttered “fetty, fetty, fetty” under his breath, just loud enough for us to hear.
Deuce didn’t buy any this time. Instead, when one of the men saw my camera and accused me of being a snitch, Deuce came to my defense.
The challenges facing MacArthur Park are complex, and longtime observers say no amount of government effort could solve them overnight.
Guerra, who is a professor of political science and an honorary life trustee on LAist's board, told me that issues at the park are deep, driven by immigration policy, land use, access to resources and political representation.
By the late 1990s, the area had long been a notorious underground market.
That evolution, Guerra said, was driven in part by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. That Reagan-era law granted amnesty to about 3 million undocumented people living in the U.S., putting them on a path to legal status. It also required all workers to provide their employers with proof of their immigration status. That new law spurred a busy fake ID industry at the park.
Then MacArthur Park was hit hard by the crack epidemic. The neighborhood's reputation took more damage during LAPD’s Rampart scandal, in which officers responsible for patrolling the area were found to have framed people and stolen drugs. The scandal led to criminal prosecutions of officers, a consent decree with the Department of Justice and the creation of a special review panel. The takeaway for many observers at the time: At MacArthur Park, even the cops were criminals.
Altogether, Guerra said, the negative perception of the area led local governments and businesses to begin a “complete and total disinvestment” in the community.
It wasn’t just luxury retail stores and restaurants that closed their doors, he said. Local entrepreneurs took their businesses out of the area when they became successful, and even nonprofit organizations turned their attention elsewhere.
Opportunities for local communities to build their economic and political power were pulled out of reach, while the illicit market remained.
For decades, Guerra said local politicians knew about the area’s problems but could ignore them with little political backlash.
What the city is doing — and what residents say hasn’t been enough
For nearly four years, the task of making the park a welcoming place for residents and their families has fallen primarily to Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who have each committed to making health and safety issues around the park a priority since taking office in December 2022.
Some residents have voiced their frustration with the officials’ lack of progress, and anger that the majority-Latino neighborhood has been left to face dangerous and unsanitary conditions they say would never be tolerated in other parts of the city.
Bass and Hernandez have acknowledged that a strained city budget has made it harder to provide all the services the area needs — even as they’ve promised to find a way.
The mayor’s office has continued to direct LAPD to increase the presence of uniformed officers in the area. Bass has also worked with Hernandez to provide social services and city infrastructure, including streetlight repair, in an effort to make the park safer.
“I wish we had the resources for it to be done overnight,” Bass told me in a February interview this year. “If we had had the resources, much more would've been done, but we are going to continue until the area is completely transformed.”
Hernandez told me she has gathered $27 million of city, state and other funds to support efforts in the park ranging from medical and overdose prevention services to street cleaning and infrastructure improvements.
In a controversial move, the Recreation and Parks Department also plans to start building a wrought-iron fence around the park this November in order to close it at night, which it says will allow city crews to keep up with necessary repairs.
“We can only keep one bathroom open at MacArthur Park at a time,” Hernandez told me, pointing out one example of the kinds of repairs the city has struggled to keep up with. “What tends to happen is that they break into it, so we close it down, and we open up the next bathroom.”
The wear on the park is constant, with new trash and graffiti quickly returning each time it's removed. Hernandez says the park doesn’t get a moment to rest. Fires and overdoses continue through the night, she said, and sometimes people overdose with no one around and are found too late.
“The fence is meant to just give the park a moment to breathe,” Hernandez told me, “so that every day in the morning when the park opens up, everybody — everybody — gets access to a clean, healthy park.”
Cleaning up in an 'underworld'
A short distance from its open-air drug market, MacArthur Park and the surrounding streets are full of restaurants, shops and public events that draw crowds and give local communities’ vibrant cultural and historic roots a chance to shine through.
People come from across L.A. to enjoy free concerts ranging from cumbia to punk rock at Levitt Pavilion, to taste Honduran flavors at Doña Bibi's or wrap their hands around the famous “Number 19” pastrami sandwich at Langer’s Deli.
Others told me they travel to MacArthur Park for help. Like Skid Row, MacArthur Park is a location that offers reliable free services that help provide basic necessities, including medical care and connections to housing. Several community and faith groups regularly offer free meals in the park, another draw in a county where researchers estimate about 22% of unhoused people get four meals or fewer a week.
People stand in line in MacArthur Park during a heat wave on Aug. 23, 2026, to get free food and water from a community organization.
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Jaime Ramos told me it means a lot to have a hot meal and to meet people who want to help. He has been coming to the park during the day looking for housing, after a previous program he was in fell through.
Jaime Ramos stands in what some locals call Fentanyl Alley, near L.A.'s MacArthur Park, on Feb. 28, 2026. Ramos keeps a broom on his cart to help clean the area.
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Jordan Rynning
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Like about 78% of unhoused people who come to the park, he spends his nights somewhere else.
Ramos said the park is an “underworld” that becomes too dangerous at night to stay nearby.
People gather next to a chain link fence along Alvarado Street on April 19, 2025.
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Jordan Rynning
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He talked about how he got to where he is, and the challenges he hopes to overcome to pursue a better life.
While other young men his age were going off to college or starting careers, Ramos said he was serving an eight-year sentence behind bars.
Life on the outside didn’t stop while he was away, and when he was released, he could see how much he had fallen behind.
"From the age of 18 to now, I don't know how to be a grown man,” he told me. “I don't know how to manage my money, I don't know how to take care of basic necessities that other young men did have the opportunity to — and it's my fault.”
Service workers in the area say it's common for people recently released from jails and prisons to come there, looking for work, housing or other support when a criminal record makes those things much harder to find. Service providers worry that if there isn’t enough support when they get out, more people will return to the dangerous lives they lived before their incarceration, possibly falling even deeper into organized crime or addiction.
Ramos said he’s trying to take ownership of his future. He puts in the extra effort to keep himself clean — washed, shaved and off drugs — even though his surroundings are far from it.
He carries a broom to help with that too.
"From the age of 18 to now, I don't know how to be a grown man... I don't know how to take care of basic necessities that other young men did have the opportunity to — and it's my fault.”
— Jaime Ramos
Ramos said he dreams of becoming a barber, but that’s a lot harder when you’re living on the streets.
“I've gotten my equipment stolen maybe like four times now,” he told me.
Phones, IDs and other valuables are regularly stolen from unhoused people who come to the park, several people told me, and losing your phone or ID can derail attempts to get approved for government housing programs.
Ramos has also kept an eye out for people who may be falling into an overdose. Even with overdose response teams patrolling and Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics regularly responding to calls in the park, it often falls to people like him to step in and help.
“I don't know how many times — numerous times — I've saved people's lives,” Ramos told me.
He recalled a day not long before when he missed his bus and was waiting for the next one to come, when he saw a teenage boy start to overdose.
“I missed my bus for a reason, you know, thank God,” Ramos told me, saying he was able to keep the boy alive.
It was common in conversations with people in the park for them to tell me they had reversed multiple overdoses.
It feels good to bring someone back, Ramos said, but jumping in to give so many people naloxone, rescue breathing or CPR has taken its toll on him.
“I might go sit down somewhere and cry for 10 minutes, because it's emotional,” he said. “I just gave, you know, 10 minutes of my time — my breath — to see this person come back.”
Still, Ramos said that’s not the hardest thing he faces.
“At the end of the day, the biggest thing that I go through is the battle of showing people that I'm still human,” he told me.
Report park conditions — MyLA311 for city services (broken bathrooms, lighting, trash).
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A Los Angeles County polling station clerk sanitizes a voting station at the Monsignor Ramon Garcia Recreation Center polling station in East Los Angeles on Nov. 8, 2022
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Pablo Unzueta
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CalMatters
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Topline:
Saying he had concerns it could disenfranchise voters during the midterm election, a federal judge on Tuesday seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s demands that California election officials set aside 20,000 ballots that it claimed could have been mailed to noncitizens. “Some of these may be very valid voters, and that’s my concern about disenfranchisement,” said U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. Carter said he would issue a formal ruling by Wednesday, but he told the courtroom he was likely going to appoint a special master to weigh the evidence both sides present at a hearing in two weeks. That means his final ruling might not come until after the election.
What to know: Carter also suggested that his ruling would order federal authorities to stop telling election officials that they could face criminal charges if they didn’t comply with the Trump administration’s demands. The Trump administration on Friday sent letters to California election officials telling them to set aside ballots from suspected noncitizens, and threatened them with criminal charges if they allowed those people to vote. “This court believes it would be wise that any threats to state or county (election) employees cease immediately,” Carter told the courtroom. Carter’s remarks point to yet another likely legal blow to the Trump administration as it seeks to validate President Donald Trump’s longstanding claims of widespread election fraud favoring Democrats. Experts and election officials say those claims are meritless.
The backstory: The Trump administration sued California earlier this month saying election officials refused to comply with a 48-hour federal deadline to set aside the ballots of up to 20,000 people the administration had flagged as possible noncitizens until the voters’ citizenship could be verified.
Saying he had concerns it could disenfranchise voters during the midterm election, a federal judge on Tuesday seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s demands that California election officials set aside 20,000 ballots that it claimed could have been mailed to noncitizens.
“Some of these may be very valid voters, and that’s my concern about disenfranchisement,” said U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.
Carter said he would issue a formal ruling by Wednesday, but he told the courtroom he was likely going to appoint a special master to weigh the evidence both sides present at a hearing in two weeks. That means his final ruling might not come until after the election.
He said he didn’t want to “just wing it with a ruling” based on last-minute evidence the federal government submitted to the court the night before Tuesday’s hearing.
Carter also suggested that his ruling would order federal authorities to stop telling election officials that they could face criminal charges if they didn’t comply with the Trump administration’s demands. The Trump administration on Friday sent letters to California election officials telling them to set aside ballots from suspected noncitizens, and threatened them with criminal charges if they allowed those people to vote.
“This court believes it would be wise that any threats to state or county (election) employees cease immediately,” Carter told the courtroom.
Carter’s remarks point to yet another likely legal blow to the Trump administration as it seeks to validate President Donald Trump’s longstanding claims of widespread election fraud favoring Democrats. Experts and election officials say those claims are meritless.
Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, acknowledged that the government’s list of 20,000 people may contain citizens, but he said the possibility that noncitizens were voting illegally was too great a threat.
“I would ask the state how many illegal votes is OK for them?” Essayli said. “It cannot be that the state has a right to facilitate the counting and tabulation of noncitizen votes. There’s no right to that.”
The Trump administration sued California earlier this month saying election officials refused to comply with a 48-hour federal deadline to set aside the ballots of up to 20,000 people the administration had flagged as possible noncitizens until the voters’ citizenship could be verified.
The administration sought a temporary restraining order forcing the state to comply.
California officials argued there was no way they could since they were busy overseeing the election. They also called the demand an illegal effort to meddle in state-run elections that could disenfranchise legal voters.
“I just want to make sure the stakes are clear: that what we’re talking about is stripping voting rights from thousands of people until proven otherwise,” said Anne Bellows, a deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice.
Judge points to immigrant arrests
State and county officials also have questioned the methodology the federal government used to flag possible noncitizens.
In a court filing, Los Angeles County officials said that a sampling of 200 names from the federal list, which included people from all over California, found that many of them were likely citizens and that most had not voted before and were not sent ballots. Federal investigators re-reviewed those 200 names and found that only four were citizens, Essayli told the judge.
“We stand by the reliability of the information,” he said. “We take our obligations and ethics very seriously.”
Carter noted that, last week, federal prosecutors charged 28 California green card holders for allegedly voting or registering to vote in violation of laws prohibiting noncitizens from participating in elections.
He said that if noncitizens really are voting in as large of numbers as the Trump administration claims, there’s nothing stopping federal prosecutors from finding them and charging them without the risk of blocking legal voters from having their ballots counted.
“If it’s this big, you’ve got a remedy for goodness sakes,” Carter told Essayli. “Go out and indict.”
After the hearing, Essayli said from the courthouse steps that the state could “resolve this today.”
“They just seem disinterested in getting to the bottom of this,” Essayli said, noting that the number of ballots in question could tip smaller elections. “A lot of elections are decided by tens of votes or hundreds of votes."
9th Circuit ruled against Trump
The hearing came a day after two judges on a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an emergency effort from the Trump administration to bypass Carter’s courtroom.
The Trump administration sought an emergency order from the appellate court, claiming that Carter didn’t schedule a hearing fast enough. The two judges said prosecutors’ arguments about urgency didn’t hold up.
Their ruling noted that the prosecutors have been making claims about illegal voters on California’s voter rolls since July and could have taken action any time since, so their “claimed emergency, at least in part, is a self-constructed one.”
Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, noted in a concurring opinion that he had “serious doubts” about the federal government’s claims that prosecutors could “superintend or intervene in a state’s election administration.”
He wrote that Congress granted states — not the executive branch — authority over elections.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Patrick Bumatay, another Trump appointee, argued that “federal law precludes California from commingling ballots likely cast by aliens with legitimate ballots, because it encourages and induces illegal voting.”
“Stopping that practice for those identified as likely noncitizens is the bare minimum,” Bumatay wrote.
Libby Rainey
covers the news that shapes Los Angeles and how people change the city in return.
Published October 27, 2026 4:43 PM
The Los Angeles Police Department let its previous agreement with Flock, a company that operates automated license plate readers, to lapse due to questions over security and privacy concerns.
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Justin Sullivan
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Getty Images
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Topline:
The Los Angeles City Council gave L.A. Police Department the greenlight Tuesday to move forward with a pilot program to install new automated license plate recognition cameras in the city, despite concerns from some council members and the public about privacy and surveillance.
What happened: The council voted 9-6 to veto the program, but fell short of the 10 votes required to nix the agreement and send it back to the Board of Police Commissioners. The narrow vote divided the council, which debated at length about whether L.A. should move forward with introducing more license plate readers on its streets without requiring additional restrictions on how the department uses the data.
About the pilot program: Security company Axon will install cameras on some city streetlights for a three-month trial period at no cost to the city.
Read on… for more about the ALPR pilot program and the concerns about its use.
The Los Angeles City Council gave the L.A. Police Department the green light Tuesday to move forward with a pilot program to install new automated license plate recognition cameras in the city, despite concerns from council members and the public about privacy and surveillance.
The council voted 9-6 to veto the program, but fell short of the 10 votes required to nix the agreement and send it back to the Board of Police Commissioners.
Under the pilot program, security company Axon Enterprise will install cameras on some city streetlights for a three-month trial period, at no cost to the city.
The narrow vote divided the council, which debated at length whether L.A. should move forward with introducing more license plate readers on its streets without additional requirements on how the police use the data.
The L.A. City Council voted 9 - 6 to veto the program and fell short of the ten votes required to nix the agreement.
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Courtesy of the L.A. City Clerk's office
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“I certainly understand the department's desire to bring on a new company to replace Flock, but in the neighborhoods that I represent, there still seems to be a lot of uncertainty about how this new technology will work,” said Councilmember Curren Price, who voted to veto the pilot program.
Council members who blocked the veto cited public safety concerns, saying there were other ways to require the police to increase transparency. Councilmember Traci Park said that outrage over the technology stemmed from misinformation.
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who also voted against rejecting the pilot program, said the council’s power to negotiate tighter regulations on how LAPD uses license plate reader data could come later on, after the three-month testing period.
“The point of leverage is going to come after the three months, he said. “That's when we're going to be faced with this question about ‘Do we expand this?’”
How we got here
The City Council weighing in on an LAPD pilot program is not the norm, and comes after months of heightened scrutiny over how the department utilizes automatic license plate reader data. The department primarily uses the technology in its vehicles rather than on city streets.
In July, the Office of the Inspector General for the L.A. Board of Police Commissioners issued a lengthy report on the status of the technology within LAPD, and recommended the department get approval for new contracts from the Board of Police Commissioners, a civilian body appointed by the mayor that determines policy for the department.
That’s what led the board to consider and approve the Axon pilot program in September. That opened up an opportunity for the L.A. City Council to intervene in the decision. Under the city charter, the council can veto actions by boards of commissioners with a two-thirds vote.
That’s what Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez was pushing for when he initiated the council vote. He said Tuesday that the vote was an opportunity to push the police department to commit to independent auditing of how it uses automated license plate reader data, establish board oversight of sharing data with external agencies and limit who in the department can access the data.
“We should take time to make sure that we have thorough, thoughtful protections laid out before we install more cameras,” Soto-Martinez said Tuesday.
The pilot program is just a small slice of LAPD’s business with Axon. The Board of Police Commissioners also recently approved a 10-year, $235 million contract with the company for body cameras, tasers and automated license plate recognition cameras for around 1,600 police vehicles.
That contract will require council approval and is currently being reviewed by the city administrative officer, according to the mayor’s office.
