The Brief

Walking down an alley in Hollywood might not be the typical way to watch a live show, but at the Hotel Café on Cahuenga Boulevard, it’s what music lovers have done for 25 years.

It’s a storied music venue that’s been a home for generations of artists. Even big names cut their teeth here, like Adele, Sara Bareilles and Mumford & Sons. It’s the kind of place that has a line well before anyone gets on stage. Phones are a rarity here, and the audience is so silent you can hang on every note.

This place is closing down in early 2026. But the Hotel Café won’t be gone forever — bucking the normal narrative of closures, it’s shutting down in order to expand.

Let’s dig into what made the small space special.

The Hotel Café’s humble origin

It started out as a bit of a sidequest.

Back in 2000, an idea popped into the minds of screenwriting partners Marko Shafer and Max Mamikunian. Why not open a coffee shop together that could serve as a creative home base?

The two bought a vacant space right below a hotel. The plan was simple: Be successful enough to have a staff and go back to screenwriting. The Hotel Café, as they named it, reached that milestone right before Sept. 11 rattled America — and consumer habits nationwide.

“ We were in that position of just having made our success as a coffee shop and then all of a sudden nothing,” Mamikunian said. “We thought we were going to close down.”

Then musician Gary Jules came in, fresh off the heels of his hit version of “Mad World” in the Donnie Darko movie. He wanted to do a set, which put them on a trajectory no one could have seen coming.

“ The line was down the block, and half of the people in line were musicians,” Mamikunian said.

After his show, the Hotel Café gradually morphed into a regular music venue. Jules stuck around to perform and handle some of the booking, then Shafer took the helm.

Magical nights

The intimate, dimly lit setup quickly drew music agents, crooning fans and audiophiles. In the early days, they’d get inundated with demo CDs (now it’s SoundCloud). Shafer hid sometimes from hopeful performers because the demand was just too much.

Musician James Bay's performance in 2022.

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Justin Higuchi

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The Hotel Café

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A crowd at the Hotel Café in 2022.

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Justin Higuchi

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The Hotel Café

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He and Mamikunian credit the Hotel Café’s following to its consistently curated performance and group showcases, like Songwriter Sunday and Monday Monday. Shafer remembered a time in 2003 when Weezer joined one of those nights.

“ Their manager called me on my Razr flip phone, and so there was no proof it was actually her. I had to take her word for it,” he said.

It was real. Weezer showed up, loaded in some stools and played an acoustic set. Another fond memory, production manager Gia Hughes said, is when Chris Martin’s team called in for a last-minute show. The Coldplay frontman arrived on a Vespa.

“ He’s sound checking ‘The Scientist,’ and it’s just me and the bartender and the sound engineer,” she recalled. “I'm just like, ‘holy sh--, this is unreal.’ It was just one of those super magical nights.”

Hughes said their success also comes from the respectful culture the Hotel Café is known for. It’s as much of a place for music fans as it is for artists. They can sing for a tuned-in audience, or — like Radiohead did — roll up to enjoy a show undisturbed.

A new era

As more and more people came, it was clear the performance space needed more room. They later expanded in 2004 to include the stage next door. Today, they’re in a similar predicament.

A closure date for the Hotel Café hasn't been set yet.

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Gia Hughes

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The Hotel Café

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That’s why they’re moving to a bigger space inside Lumina Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard in the first half of 2027, which they recently announced on Instagram. The new spot will have two stages and a restaurant component.

While many Hotel Café fans are sad to see it move, Mamikunian said it’s another period of reinvention. He’s proud of their time on Cahuenga Boulevard.

“Any business lasting anywhere for 25 years is an accomplishment,” he said. "I think we want to go out in a kind of celebratory way.”

It’s unclear when exactly the Cahuenga spot will close, but they have several farewell performances scheduled through at least the first couple of months in 2026.

“A lot of people are asking us, especially because everybody wants to be one of the last to play the room,” Mamikunian said. “I  think we’ll know within the next few weeks for sure that we can put an actual date on it.”

After months of debate and false starts, the Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday in favor of developing a potential November ballot measure that would ask voters to rein in the city’s controversial “mansion tax.”

Ahead of the 9-5 vote to proceed with proposed tax breaks for new apartment buildings, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he has seen affordable housing construction decline in his district after the policy — called Measure ULA — took effect in 2023.

“I can tell you with certainty ULA has not helped,” Harris-Dawson said. “Housing starts are as low in my district as they’ve been the entire time I’ve been in office.”

Harris-Dawson said neighboring cities, such as Inglewood and Gardena, where new apartment buildings are not subject to L.A.’s tax, have not seen similar declines.

While a majority of the council voted to proceed with a possible ballot measure, Councilmembers Ysabel Jurado, Imelda Padilla, Monica Rodriguez, Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez voted against the proposal.

Reform advocates cheered the vote, but said more work is needed. Miguel Santana, president of the California Community Foundation, has pushed for changes with the “Mend It, Don’t End It” coalition, a group of affordable housing developers, labor organizations and business leaders.

“Today the City Council took another important step towards reforming Measure ULA in a way that will allow us to start building housing again while saving a critical funding source that we desperately need," Santana said in a written statement.

‘Mansion tax’ nuts and bolts

Measure ULA taxes the sale of real estate worth $5.3 million or more. That includes large, luxury single-family homes, which is why the measure is often called the city’s “mansion tax.”

However, the tax also applies to apartment buildings and other commercial real estate. Economists have said that’s causing a slow-down in new multi-family construction at a time when L.A. needs more housing supply to keep up with demand and prevent rents from spiking.

During Wednesday’s meeting, Councilmembers Tim McOsker and Katy Yaroslavsky put forward a motion asking the City Attorney to draft a ballot measure that would ask voters to cancel the tax on sales of multifamily and residential mixed-use buildings within the first 10 years of their construction.

That reform proposal is somewhat similar to earlier failed attempts at changing the tax, including from Councilmember (and now mayoral candidate) Nithya Raman and a separate effort from state legislators.

What happens next? 

The council’s proposed measure is still far from officially qualifying for the November ballot. Sending final language to the ballot will require another council vote, and the council could potentially decide later this summer to pull the measure.

If it does appear on the ballot, a majority of L.A. voters would need to approve the changes before new apartment buildings would be exempt. Close to 58% of the city’s voters supported Measure ULA when it first came up for a vote in November 2022.

In a separate vote Wednesday, the council moved forward with another potential ballot measure that would ask voters to exempt Pacific Palisades homeowners from the tax if they sell their properties after the January 2025 Palisades Fire.

To complicate matters further, voters are likely to encounter yet another measure on the November ballot related to the city’s “mansion tax.”

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has qualified a measure that would repeal L.A.’s tax, and similar taxes across the state, while simultaneously raising the voter-approval threshold for new taxes.

How we got here

Though reforms are tentative at this point, the council’s decision to pursue a ballot measure is an about-face from a committee’s earlier decision to keep changes off the November ballot.

Jurado, the chair of that committee, repeated her argument that it’s too soon to conclude the tax has caused apartment developers to retreat from L.A.

“When we focus just on housing production alone, we’re missing the mark about what this measure was actually intended to do, which is to keep Angelenos housed,” Jurado said during Wednesday’s meeting.

What has tax revenue funded so far? 

Measure ULA has raised $1.2 billion over the last three years, far less than the $1.1 billion in annual funding supporters said the tax could raise. That funding has gone toward affordable housing construction and tenant aid programs, such as rent relief and eviction defense.

However, the city has encountered trouble spending the money on its intended purposes.

City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto has refused to sign contracts approved by the city council and the mayor in April for $177 million in tenant aid. And the measure’s strict rules on how tax revenue can be spent to support affordable housing projects have required city leaders to pursue changes to funding restrictions.

We asked the United to House L.A. coalition, supporters of the tax, for reaction to the city council vote, but did not receive an immediate response.

A fire at a Boyle Heights commercial building sent massive plumes of black smoke up Wednesday and prompted a shelter-in-place order.

The fire broke out around 2:35 p.m. at 1400 S. Los Palos St., according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. Aerial footage from KTLA showed the fire involving solar panels on the roof of the storage facility.

Heavy smoke was visible around Boyle Heights and into other parts of LA, and the LAFD said people near the fire should immediately shelter in place.

“Get inside IMMEDIATELY and close all windows and doors. Turn off air conditioning/heating. Bring all people and pets to an inside room until you receive more instructions,” an LAFD alert said.

The shelter-in-place order was in effect for the area south of Interstate 5, east of Soto Street, north of Washington Boulevard and west of Indiana Street.

According to East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, the structure is an industrial freezer facility. In a series of Instagram stories, the organization urged residents to close their windows and stay inside.

This is a breaking story. Check back for updates, or follow us on Instagram.

The post Massive fire breaks out at Boyle Heights commercial building, LAFD orders shelter in place appeared first on LA Local.

Air quality regulators say an oil recycling facility in Compton violated pollution rules and improperly maintained some of its equipment.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District issued four notices of violation to World Oil Recycling in Compton, and one notice of violation to a contractor operating leaky equipment on its property.

The Compton facility “receives used oils, glycol and wastewater and re-refines these materials into engine oil and glycol products for reuse,” according to the air district. The largest oil recycler in the state, it’s located in some of the most pollution-burdened and low-income neighborhoods in California, as well, where asthma rates are higher than 95% of census tracts, according to state data.

The violations came after the air district started receiving odor complaints from residents at the start of this year. The agency received more than 70 complaints of strong odors of gas, including from the nearby Jefferson Elementary School, the agency said in a news release.

Officials then carried out more than a dozen on-site inspections, including using an infrared camera to identify gas leaks. They found hydrocarbons leaking from a wastewater storage tank, as well as a centrifuge pump. A small fire at the facility in late May also led to nuisance notices from the agency.

The company told LAist it is working to remove the leaky storage tank that may have caused the odors.

“World Oil Recycling provides an essential environmental service by recycling used oil and other materials, helping to keep them out of landfills and waterways,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement. “We are committed to meeting or exceeding the highest standards at our facility in Compton, where we have operated safely for more than 40 years and serve as a major local employer.”

If World Oil Recycling doesn’t comply, it could face fines or litigation.

The company has faced such issues in the past. In 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency reached a settlement with World Oil’s Compton and Vernon facilities for violating hazardous waste regulations. The agreement required the companies to pay a $39,092 penalty and spend $167,967 on air filtration systems in nearby schools to reduce indoor air pollution.

The facility has received dozens of violation notices from the air district over the years, as well, mostly for minor maintenance issues.

In a statement to LAist, Compton Mayor Emma Sharif said the city “is working with the appropriate regulatory agencies as they continue their investigation.”

California will not consider the city of Los Angeles’ request for a time extension on three mobility projects in underinvested communities that are largely funded by more than $100 million from the state.

The exclusion of the request from the California Transportation Commission's June agenda spells an uncertain fate for the projects in Boyle Heights, Skid Row and Wilmington, which involve repairing sidewalks, adding bike lanes and installing traffic-calming measures to make streets friendlier to non-vehicular modes of transportation.

In April, the city formally requested a six-year extension on state-mandated deadlines to complete pre-construction work on the projects, saying recent staffing and funding constraints in the public works and transportation departments have hampered progress.

Justin Behrens, the spokesperson for the commission, said that while the state grant program offers time extensions in certain cases, “The requested time exceeded what is allowable under the guidelines,” and extensions were ultimately not recommended to be considered by the commission.

The state funds for pre-construction work, including environmental review and design, are set to lapse at the end of June.

L.A. officials said in a March report that without the time extension, “The city will be unable to meet these deadlines and lose the opportunity to provide these critical improvements for the city.”

The Bureau of Street Services, which is the lead agency on the three projects, did not respond to requests for comment.

'A deeply disappointing moment'

A statement from the office of L.A. City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado said the situation is “disappointing” and that the councilmember is taking time to “fully understand” what the California Transportation Commission’s decision means for the projects in her district.

“What we can say clearly is this: We are not giving up,” the statement read. “Boyle Heights and Skid Row have waited far too long for safer, more accessible streets, and the residents who organized for these improvements deserve more than a setback and a closed door.”

Jurado advocated for additional staffing resources across the bureaus of Street Services, Street Lighting and Engineering, as well as the Department of Transportation, to deliver the projects.

For Jens Midthun, the president of the DTLA Neighborhood Council, any investment in improving the walkability of downtown L.A. is a worthy one.

“People in downtown L.A. are here because they want to be,” Midthun said about the neighborhood’s transition from a business hub to a residential destination. “People want to be part of a vibrant city center.”

L.A. City Councilmember Tim McOsker's office said in a statement that infrastructure improvements in Wilmington “remain a priority.”

“We will continue exploring funding opportunities and other available options to advance as much of the project as possible,” McOsker's office said.

The grant program

Since its launch in 2013, the state’s Active Transportation Program has funded capital projects that promote walking, cycling or other non-motorized ways to get around. Behrens said the program is competitive and over-subscribed, meaning the applications for funds “far exceeds the available resources.”

Over the course of the grant program, L.A. has secured $500 million to fund 46 transportation projects across the city, according to a June report from Laura Rubio-Cornejo, the general manager of the city’s Department of Transportation.

Twenty of those projects have been constructed and staff is actively working on designing, implementing or closing out another 22.

Jurisdictions that win the funds have to adhere to strict timelines to retain the money, which is allocated based on different phases of a capital project. Failing to meet the program’s deadlines can jeopardize a city or county’s likelihood of clinching future grants.

The program’s deadlines require the city to allocate funds for construction for the three projects in question by the end of June 2027. In its request for a time extension, the city said it would need an additional six years to get to that point.

Absent a time extension, it’s unclear what the path forward is for the three projects.

The city in June submitted its application for the next round of Active Transportation Program grants, though its ambitions were tempered by “staff resource limitations and the city’s existing grant commitments.”

The projects it submitted for consideration to the state include extending the LARiverWay bike path and enhancing mobility along Huntington Drive.