Chad Damiani performs his opening act at Stand Up and Clown at the The Elysian on Nov. 25, 2024, in Los Angeles.
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Carlin Stiehl
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LAist
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Topline:
Clowns are everywhere in the shadow of Hollywood. As the mainstream entertainment industry enters a new era, after the Writers and Screen Actors Guild strikes and with the use of A.I. on the rise, performers and creators are looking to an ancient, absurd and human art form.
Why it matters: A surprising performance art has taken off in Los Angeles — clowning — against the backdrop of an entertainment industry that is quickly losing its working class. We dive into the stories of award-winning independent filmmaker Vera Drew and clown performer and teacher Chad Damiani to understand why this art form is resonating with so many people today.
Read on.... for the full story, and listen to the Imperfect Paradise episode below, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Right now, clowns are experiencing a cultural moment. You’ve seen thememes.
You’ve read the Paper Magazine interview where pop sensation Chappell Roan says “I’ll show you a clown, if you want to see a clown!” when describing her iconic makeup look. Maybe you even bought a harlequin print cardigan during the height of the clowncore aesthetic trend in 2022. And, post-election, clowns are also showing up as descriptors of our political moment.
If anything, the clown cultural moment is only getting bigger and bigger. And if clown is everywhere right now, its contemporary center is arguably right here in L.A. More specifically, The Elysian Theater in Frogtown, where clowns are teaching classes, workshopping shows, and looking for a change from the grind of Hollywood.
The marquee at The Elysian on Monday, Nov. 25, 2024 in Los Angeles, CA.
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Carlin Stiehl
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LAist
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Let me break it down for you.
La La Land? More like Clown Town
First things first: clowns are a centuries old theatrical symbol of foolishness, naiveté, that can be used to question power and institutions. That makes the artistic practice sound incredibly high-brow, but I need you to picture Lucille Ball, Jim Carrey, or Beetlejuice. It’s a highly skilled form of comedy that really utilizes physicality — pure, honest, commitment to the bit.
So, it makes sense that here in Hollywood — an industry town currently ravaged by productions shutting down during the pandemic, the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America strikes last summer, ever-increasing usage of AI, more and more adaptations of existing IP and fewer original works, productions leaving California all together, and the seeming destruction of a working class in entertainment — writers and performers would turn to clown.
FLWLS performs at Stand Up and Clown at the The Elysian on Monday, Nov. 25, 2024 in Los Angeles, CA.
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Carlin Stiehl
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LAist
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It’s an art form that’s grounded in humanity…and absurdity.
I myself turned to clown in 2022 after signing up for The Elysian’s mailing list. One upcoming class that winter was called “Clowns on Acid: Eating Your Panties.” I was sold. After finishing grad school with a degree in journalism in May of 2020, I was feeling a bit…dissuaded and lost. Years of academic rigor followed by navigating a rapidly changing field in a world that was not the one promised to me as a young adult? Tough! I wanted to embrace the absurdity, reconnect with my theater kid roots, and try something new.
So I let longtime clown and performance artist, the incredibly tall and beautiful Kira Nova, lead me and a small group of fellow wannabe clowns into the mountains as the start of a weekend clown intensive. I was particularly taken in by a (now deleted) ten minute video she had posted on Instagram shortly prior to the workshop, wherein she described wanting to break Americans “out of the matrix” — a world dominated by capitalism, created by a dearth of arts education and funding.
That’s a sentiment echoed by Chad Damiani, a well-known clown teacher and performer in the scene.
From professional screenwriter to father of clowns
After teaching one of his incredibly popular workshops at The Elysian, the charismatic and almost professorial Damiani said, “ clown tends to exist at times when there are people with great power who need to be taken down a few notches or institutions that seem to be completely suffocating a culture.”
Chad Damiani does his warmup exercises before Stand Up and Clown at the The Elysian on Monday, Nov. 25, 2024 in Los Angeles, CA.
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Carlin Stiehl
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LAist
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Think court jesters, or even Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator. Damiani says that “clowns can go in and their job is to break all the rules and show you that the system, the institution, is actually a lie.”
Damiani’s career has ranged from editorial assistant to an announcer for World Championship Wrestling. Eventually, he landed in L.A. as a working screenwriter, taking improv classes in the evenings. That is, until he and his writing partner JP Levin sold a movie pitch based on the popular mobile phone app, Fruit Ninja.
The film never got made.
“There's no denying what we've become. We are so part of the system,” said Damiani, reflecting on the experience of writing and pitching the Fruit Ninja movie.
The failure of that film is what led him to be “all in on clown.”
“I had this fruitful, amazing life at night, performing these experimental shows…And it became harder and harder to ignore how much happier I was at the things that I was making no money doing," Damiani said.
Chad Damiani performs an opening monologue at Stand Up and Clown at the The Elysian on Monday, Nov. 25, 2024 in Los Angeles, CA.
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Carlin Stiehl
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LAist
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This clown ethos also extends beyond live performance.
"The People’s Joker" rises
Filmmaker, writer, and comedy editor Vera Drew is the epitome of clown in her debut feature film, The People’s Joker.
Filmmaker Vera Drew inside her apartment on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024 in Pasadena, CA.
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Carlin Stiehl
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LAist
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After years of working in comedy as an editor on everything from The Eric Andre Show to Who Is America, Drew was ready for a change. She says she was starting to feel “compartmentalized to being in this very straight cis guy dominated comedy circle” and was ready to lean into sincerity rather than irony.
During the lockdowns in 2020, as Drew was experimenting with makeup and clown aesthetics, Todd Phillip’s Joker became a comfort film. She says it felt like watching her own story, and jokes that she’s seen it “8,000 times.”
This led to the creation of a feature length Joker parody in Drew’s idiosyncratic, alt-comedy style, and enlisted the help of hundreds of artists from around the world to provide animation ranging from CG to rotoscope. The result, The People’s Joker, is a kaleidoscopic queer coming-of-age story that reimagines the Joker as a trans woman, and functions as a takedown of comedy institutions like Saturday Night Live and the improv school Upright Citizens Brigade.
A strongly worded letter from Warner Bros., the studio that owns the DC Comics intellectual property (and is infamously known for throwing finished films in the trash for tax write-offs), attempted to shut down distribution of Drew’s film.
But clowns beat the system: The People’s Joker was ultimately acquired by a small film distributor and has played in theaters, received a physical release, and is also streaming online. And Vera Drew just won Best Breakthrough Director at the Gotham Awards. You can't keep a clown down.
Filmmaker Vera Drew inside her apartment on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024 in Pasadena, CA.
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Carlin Stiehl
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LAist
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Filmmaker Vera Drew holding her film “The People’s Joker,” inside her apartment on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024 in Pasadena, CA.
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Carlin Stiehl
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LAist
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All this to say, in a world where it’s becoming easier and easier to get swallowed up by machines, to remove human touch and connection from art and our day to day lives….Vera Drew and Chad Damiani’s work affirms the necessity of clowns to our moment: making crude jokes, but also asking us to think outside the frameworks of our current systems.
To hear our full exploration of clowning, listen to the Imperfect Paradise episode below.
Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins, left, talks with Assemblymember Christopher Ward during an Assembly session at the Capitol, Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, in Sacramento, Calif.
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Jeff Chiu
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AP Photo
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Topline:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law Tuesday banning local, state and federal law enforcement officers from using gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks to people.
Why it matters: The ban on shock gloves will take effect next year and remain in place until 2030. It comes weeks after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement moved to equip its officers with the gloves, which are designed to gain compliance from combative individuals. Last month, the agency awarded a nearly $17 million contract to buy 6,000 pairs.
The backstory: The law is the latest example of how Democratic-led states have been pushing back against President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts since he took office last year. In California, lawmakers passed at least two dozen bills this year seeking to fortify immigrants’ rights, restrict cooperation with federal immigration agents and tighten regulations on immigrant detention facilities, among other things.
Read on... for more on the ban.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law Tuesday banning local, state and federal law enforcement officers from using gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks to people.
The ban on shock gloves will take effect next year and remain in place until 2030. It comes weeks after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement moved to equip its officers with the gloves, which are designed to gain compliance from combative individuals. Last month, the agency awarded a nearly $17 million contract to buy 6,000 pairs.
“Trump has put his political interests above the health, safety and livelihood of American families,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state.”
The law is the latest example of how Democratic-led states have been pushing back against President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts since he took office last year. In California, lawmakers passed at least two dozen bills this year seeking to fortify immigrants’ rights, restrict cooperation with federal immigration agents and tighten regulations on immigrant detention facilities, among other things.
Nationwide, 17 states with Democratic-led legislatures have passed a total of more than 100 pro-immigrant bills this year, according to an Associated Press analysis using the bill tracking software Plural. The most common purpose is to limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agents.
Democratic California Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins said she introduced the shock-gloves legislation to “put a pause” on law enforcement’s use of the devices while the state examines their potential risks. The law requires the state’s Justice Department to study their safety and report to lawmakers by 2029.
“There’s a lot of unrest and a lot of uncertainty,” she said in an interview. “A lot of people are scared.”
The law will again test the state’s authority to restrict federal agents amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. A federal judge earlier this year blocked the state’s first-in-the-nation law barring federal officers from wearing face coverings, deeming it too selective because it applied to local and federal law enforcement but exempted state officers.
Lawmakers passed a new bill this year to make the ban apply to all officers. Newsom signed that legislation.
Kevin Johnson, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, said courts are likely to ultimately rule that the state cannot bar federal officers from wearing shock gloves or face coverings. The laws are well-intentioned, he said, but likely conflict with the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which generally sets federal law as supreme over conflicting state law.
“The state has very limited, if any, powers in dictating to the federal government how its officers are armed,” he said.
California law enforcement groups broadly opposed the ban.
Sacramento Sheriff Jim Cooper, a Democrat and former state lawmaker, said banning shock gloves “really makes no sense” because they are among the non-lethal tools officers can use if necessary.
“When the federal government does something, the state Legislature wants to ban it,” he said at a news conference. “They’re making our job harder.”
Sharp-Collins said ICE’s plan to use shock gloves was the catalyst for the ban. But she cited their use by other officers, including a case in which a Kentucky family alleges a man died after being tased and shocked with the gloves dozens of times while in law enforcement custody in 2024.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat who wrote last year’s mask ban, also authored this year’s measure to expand it to state officers.
“California must use every available tool to stand up for our communities under attack from ICE’s secret police terror campaign,” he said in a statement after it passed the Legislature.
Associated Press writer David A. Lieb contributed to this report from Jefferson City, Missouri.
At center, Gayle Nicholls-Ali, an Eaton Fire survivor, holds a sign while protesting outside the Governor's Mansion in Sacramento on Aug. 25, 2026. The group was protesting proposed legislation related to wildfires and utilities.
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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.
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CalMatters
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Topline:
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed two bills that would have helped improve the insurance-claims process for consumers but signed one that also addresses claims-related issues, leaving Los Angeles County fire survivors and others wondering whether the vetoes were retaliatory.
Why it matters: One bill, Senate Bill 877, would have required insurance companies to explain in more detail to their customers how their claims payments are calculated. Another, SB 878, would have required insurers to pay claims within a certain amount of time, and imposed penalties for delays.
Why now: In his veto statement Sunday, the governor said the bills codified existing regulations and were “unnecessary at this time.”
Read on... for more on Newsom's veto.
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed two bills that would have helped improve the insurance-claims process for consumers but signed one that also addresses claims-related issues, leaving Los Angeles County fire survivors and others wondering whether the vetoes were retaliatory.
One bill, Senate Bill 877, would have required insurance companies to explain in more detail to their customers how their claims payments are calculated. Another, SB 878, would have required insurers to pay claims within a certain amount of time, and imposed penalties for delays.
In his veto statement Sunday, the governor said the bills codified existing regulations and were “unnecessary at this time.”
But he signed SB 876, which among other things requires insurers to send their customers a status report within 15 days of assigning a new adjuster to their claims; doubles penalties during a declared emergency when insurers violate fair claims practices and settlement law; and mandates that insurers send a disaster-recovery plan to the Insurance Department.
Newsom’s office would not provide more information. Spokesperson Anthony Martinez said the governor’s veto message speaks for itself, and pointed to other legislation Newsom signed that helps survivors, such as setting new smoke-damage standards.
Martinez did not respond to a question about an accusation that the governor vetoed the two bills because they were sponsored by fire survivors and a consumer advocacy group who fought against his failed effort to reduce utilities’ liability for wildfires they cause.
Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, told CalMatters that all three bills “were along the same vein, addressing claims-handling problems,” although they did not overlap. The difference, she said, was that the two bills Newsom vetoed were sponsored by her group and Every Fire Survivors Network.
“It’s a real black mark on the governor that he would throw survivors under the bus in that way for what appears to be a petty reason,” Balber said.
Democratic state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez wrote SB 877 and 878, prompted by experiences of fire survivors she represents in Altadena. She pushed back against the governor’s veto statement, saying existing regulations have not been enough to avoid insurers’ delays and denials of survivors’ claims. As an example, she pointed to the insurance department’s findings that State Farm violated laws in its handling of L.A. fire survivors’ claims.
“I would hope (the decision) is not because of politics and petty infighting,” Pérez told CalMatters.
The senator added that her bills got bipartisan support and that the insurance industry eventually dropped their opposition to them. She noted that some survivors of the January 2025 fires are still navigating their claims. “The reality is that this decision is going to have an impact on survivors’ recovery,” she said.
Every Fire Survivors Network agreed.
“These vetoes mean more families will face what we have faced: rebuilding stalled, bills piling up, and lives on hold while waiting for insurance money they are owed,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the group, in a statement.
Pérez, Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivors Network vowed to try again next session.
Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara was also a co-sponsor of SB 878 but had no comment on the governor’s veto, although his office issued a statement celebrating the signing of SB 876: “It holds insurers accountable when they drag their feet.”
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Elly Yu
is part of the LAist newsroom's coverage of the 2026 general election.
Published September 29, 2026 5:00 AM
L.A. County will begin sending out mail-in ballots for the Nov. 3 election this week.
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Robyn Beck
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AFP via Getty Images
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Topline:
Los Angeles County will begin sending mail-in ballots starting this Thursday ahead of the Nov. 3 elections. Counties across the state have until next Monday, Oct. 5, to begin mailing out ballots.
What’s new: The elections are just five weeks away, and mail-in ballots are soon on the way in L.A. and Orange counties. While L.A. will start mailing ballots later this week, Orange County officials say they’ll go out starting Monday.
Why it matters: Voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots through mail-in ballots in the June primary. Nearly 82% of the total ballots cast in L.A. County were through vote-by-mail ballots — and nearly 87% in Orange County.
A push to vote early: State and local officials are encouraging people to vote early. Officials say voters can turn in their ballots as soon as they receive them by mail or at official dropboxes. They can also turn them in person starting Oct. 24 at Vote Centers.
Los Angeles County will begin sending mail-in ballots starting this Thursday ahead of the Nov. 3 elections. Counties across the state have until next Monday, Oct. 5, to begin mailing out ballots.
State and local officials are encouraging people to vote early.
When can I turn in my ballot?
L.A. County elections officials say voters can turn in their ballots by mail as soon as they receive them. No postage is necessary.
They can also turn them in starting this week at official dropboxes across the county, which are often found at parks, community centers or libraries.
Voters can also turn them in or vote in person at the county’s Vote Centers, which L.A. County officials say will start to open on Oct. 24. Officials say all Vote Centers will be open by Halloween.
What about in Orange County?
Orange County officials say U.S. Postal Service officials are scheduled to pick up about 1.9 million ballots from the county elections office on Saturday and start delivering them on Monday, Oct. 5.
The Trump administration has tried to restrict mail-in ballots. Will my ballot be affected?
"Voters will be able to cast their ballots without uncertainty, without hesitation, and without fear that their voices will be questioned or their ballots rejected," said Secretary of State Shirley Weber.
Julia Paskin
is the local host of All Things Considered and the L.A. Report Evening Edition.
Published September 28, 2026 6:29 PM
Public health officials are warning of an unusually large number of rabid bats in SoCal this year.
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Carolyn Cole
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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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Topline:
Los Angeles County is reporting the highest number of rabid bats on record, a to-date total of 69, officials said. This year’s rabid bat count has already matched 2025’s total, according to the L.A. County Department of Public Health, which shared information today, marking World Rabies Day.
Where are they: Rabid bats have been found all over the county, but 68% of the 69 found so far were identified in the Santa Clarita Valley, and they were mainly canyon bats. Peak season begins in late summer.
What to do after a bite: Bat bites are small and can be hard to detect. Rabies can also be spread through scratches or other transfers of saliva. “If you find a bat indoors or think you may have had contact with one, contact your medical provider or Public Health right away,” Dr. Muntu Davis, a Los Angeles County Health officer, said in a statement. “And remember, never touch a bat or any wild animals. Immediately report any bat found indoors, or outdoors if it appears sick, active during the day, unable to fly, or dead, to your local animal control.”
Los Angeles County is reporting the highest number of rabid bats on record, a to-date total of 69, officials said.
This year’s rabid bat count has already matched 2025’s total, according to the L.A. County Department of Public Health, which released the count Monday, marking World Rabies Day.
Health officials emphasized that rabid bats have been found all over the county "from suburban areas such as the San Fernando Valley to urban areas like downtown Los Angeles, in office buildings, parks, schools, businesses, and residential backyards."
That said, a large share of rabid bats — 68% of the 69 found so far — were in the Santa Clarita Valley, and they were mainly canyon bats, which are common in California.
When to be on high alert
Officials warned that a third of human encounters with rabid bats happened indoors, where the risk of exposure to the virus is higher.
Bat bites are small and can be hard to detect. Rabies can also be spread through scratches or other transfers of saliva.
“If you find a bat indoors or think you may have had contact with one, contact your medical provider or Public Health right away,” Dr. Muntu Davis, a Los Angeles County Health officer, said in a statement. “And remember, never touch a bat or any wild animals. Immediately report any bat found indoors, or outdoors if it appears sick, active during the day, unable to fly, or dead, to your local animal control.”
