The Brief

When Carly Usdin started inviting friends to the Magic Castle, they always sent them a link ahead of time — the Castle’s dress code guidelines.

The club’s website lists a full breakdown of acceptable attire — “tie and suit,” “ravishing dresses” — and lists restricted choices: “all denim,” “skorts.” Back in 2015, the site presented a gendered breakdown of the dress code, asking men to “think business attire” and women “elegant attire.”

(

Samanta Helou Hernandez

/

LAist

)

Carly included the link as a joke, but it was also a warning.

“We could have a laugh,” says Carly. “And also, I think probably subconsciously to prepare them for stepping back in time in this space a little bit.”

Screenshot of Magic Castle dress code from its website, from March 2023.

Carly is trans and non-binary. Back in 2015, Carly identified as a woman, and they say that throughout their gender journey, their appearance at the Castle was always the same: gender neutral, short hair and a suit. Carly says they were usually read male in the Castle.

“It is like you are back in time in the ‘50s and anyone in a suit is a guy, anyone in a dress is a gal, and the guys should hold the door open for the gals,” says Carly.

For Carly, complicating this binary worldview meant dealing with discomfort.

“When I would be in that space, I would actively try to make myself smaller,” says Carly. “And when I brought people, there was that mix of pridefully showing them around, but also knowing that most of the people that work here are gonna call me sir.”

Carly's disillusionment

Initially, Carly accepted their discomfort as a trade-off of being a Castle member. But as they spent more time at the Castle, the gender dynamics of the club began to feel less tolerable.

One year, for their wife’s birthday, Carly booked a small-group experience at the Castle called the Houdini séance. Their friends would spend two hours with a magician who would summon the ghost of Harry Houdini.

“It's a little cheesy in a Disney's Haunted Mansion sort of way,” Carly says, “but so fun.”

The Houdini Seance Room at The Magic Castle on October 24, 2008.

(

Angela Weiss

/

Getty Images North America

)

They specifically requested a woman magician to lead the performance.

“And we get there and it's just some dude and no one told us about the switch,” says Carly. “And we had a group of like queer people, trans people, Black people. And this guy trying to talk to us was like misgendering everybody in our group. Saying ma'am to people who are trans men. [Making] assumptions of heterosexuality, like, ‘Who's your husband? Who's a handsome man in your life?’”

Carly was starting to realize that the old-timey atmosphere they’d initially been so charmed by had drawbacks.

“You're like, first of all, this person's queer. Second of all, what does that have to do with Houdini?”

Carly noticed the way sexism was baked into performances and casual conversation at the club. They’d invite friends to shows, and then watch as male magicians filled their patter with jokes at the expense of women.

“I just started worrying that I was bringing people into a space where they might not be safe and I couldn't do that anymore,” says Carly. “I felt complicit and accountable.”

First, Carly stopped bringing their friends. Then they stopped learning magic. And they completely let go of their aspirations to start a club for queer magicians.

Carly Usdin, in their Magic Castle days.

(

Courtesy of Carly Usdin

)

“I guess I never really felt welcome enough to try to make it better,” says Carly. “I was definitely not advocating, trying to make my voice heard in a way that like I would normally do in my career. And I don't know if that's the difference between a career and a hobby. I didn't want everything in my life to be that struggle.”

After five years as a member of the Castle, Carly stopped going altogether.

They say it wasn’t a conscious decision. They still paid dues, but they let life get in the way.

'A little lady doesn’t do any magic'

Casual misogyny has always been part of Kayla Drescher’s experience in magic.

“I've been doing magic since I was 7 and the very first day I walked into a magic club, the other kids told me magic isn't for girls,” says Kayla. “And one kid offered that if I wanted, I could stay and be his assistant.”

Kayla became a professional magician nonetheless, specializing in mentalism, bar magic and comedy-based magic. She joined the Castle around the same time as Carly, but as a performer and teacher rather than a hobbyist magician.

As a booked performer, Kayla was experiencing the same unsavory aspects of the Castle as Carly — but from a much closer vantage point.

Kayla Drescher as a teenager doing a card trick.

(

Courtesy of Kayla Drescher

)

One evening when she was getting ready to do her bar magic act, she says a member came up to her and asked her for a drink. When Kayla pointed him in the direction of the bartender, she remembers him responding, “How are you not the bartender?” When she told him she was the magician, he said, “A little lady doesn’t do any magic.” When Kayla started her show, he left.

Kayla wanted Castle leadership to understand they’d created an environment where sexism was tolerated. She decided to start with their booking practices. She wanted to quantify the Castle’s exclusion of woman magicians. So she and another member created a spreadsheet.

She found that between 2016 and 2019, the percentage of women performers grew from about 6% to about 9% — which tracks with national numbers on women in magic. But Kayla’s spreadsheet also looked at where performers were booked, which theaters and times, and she found that women tended to get less prestigious slots: brunches and early shows.

In 2019, Kayla presented these findings to the Castle’s Board of Directors.

When asked about whether this presentation had any effects, the Castle told us that as a result, they've made an effort to book at least one woman per week, as well as magicians from underrepresented backgrounds. They didn’t address time slots or locations.

Why Kayla doesn't go to the Castle alone

Kayla says that early in her time at the Castle she was physically assaulted by two different magicians, and a third magician harassed her and followed her out to her car.

She was a young magician in her early 20s, and felt too uncomfortable to speak up — afraid she wouldn’t be believed or that it would have consequences for her career. She also remembers that the staff who observed these incidents didn’t intervene.

“It was in that moment,” she says, “I realized, 'I’m not safe here.' To this day, I will not enter the building alone.”

When we contacted the Castle about Kayla’s experiences, they said if she wanted to talk with management now, she would be listened to and taken seriously.

Kayla said for her, it wasn't about calling out any specific members or staff — but about conveying how the environment of the Castle made her not want to speak out in the first place.

Magician Kayla Drescher practices with gift cards before her performance at the Magic Castle, on October 13, 2021

(

Valerie Macon

/

AFP via Getty Images

)

“Magic is still this microcosm of the world, but of the world in like the ‘50s and ‘60s. It's a world of secrets,” she says. “It's a world of ‘don't tell anyone.’ It's really easy for stuff to just breed within the community and there's no outside checks and balances.”

A schism among members

In the spring of 2020 the Castle closed its doors due to the COVID pandemic. Then, that summer, the murder of George Floyd roiled Los Angeles. Carly Usdin joined many in the city to protest. Their friends clashed, at times violently, with police. Carly had journalist friends shot at with rubber bullets.

At home, Carly diligently followed the news online. One day, they saw a tweet shared into their feed — a screenshot of a Facebook post made by the Magic Castle.

Screenshot of Magic Castle Hotel post on Facebook from the summer of 2020.

(

Courtesy of Carly Usdin

)

Amid the protests, the Magic Castle Hotel — the property adjacent to the Magic Castle — had let the LAPD and the National Guard set up in their empty parking lot. In the photo, a Castle Hotel staff member was giving candy bars to the National Guard.

Carly honed in on the caption: “Tonight our hearts are with the business owners and employees whose livelihoods have been destroyed.”

For Carly, it felt like the Castle had chosen a side. The parking lot move was a vote in favor of the police, and against the protesters who were being attacked.

Screenshot of Carly Usdin’s tweet, calling out the Magic Castle, June 2, 2020.

(

Courtesy of Carly Usdin

)

So they wrote a tweet, calling out the Castle on Twitter. And then they went to the Magic Castle members-only Facebook group — and everything that they’d been holding in about the Castle, spilled onto the page. “I felt like I’d been really quiet and essentially complicit in some of this garbage for a while,” Carly says, “and I hit a breaking point.”

Carly’s post was long and wide-ranging. They wrote about how they weren’t comfortable bringing their friends to the Castle because of the sexism they encountered there. They wrote about the treatment of their friends at the protests, about what it meant for the Castle to give its parking lot to law enforcement and shared links to different resources — for example, a primer on white privilege.

The post ended like this: “I'd love to see the [Magic Castle] turn over a new leaf and become a progressive institution dedicated to raising up newer voices of magic voices that are not all male, not all white.” Carly offered their commitment to helping with such efforts.

“There's definitely a part of me that was like, ‘This is a teachable moment and maybe they'll listen,’” Carly says, now. “Although the tone I took was very dismissive.

“I had good intentions — at least 50% good intentions. And then I think 50% chaotic screaming and just having hit a wall and feeling powerless.”

Carly’s post got 105 comments. Some members commented that they’d never personally experienced anything unsavory at the Castle, or if Carly was unhappy, they should leave.

People argued about the Castle’s environment and the nature of that summer’s protests.

The Magic Castle, in Hollywood, California on October 13, 2021.

(

Valerie Macon

/

AFP via Getty Images

)

Others responded with stories about racism and sexism, discomfort with the orientalist artwork and other problematic aspects of the Castle’s old-boy’s atmosphere.

The Magic Castle is supposed to be a non-political organization, so Carly had never explicitly heard the views of its members. And suddenly, they were all out in the open.

A turning point  

By late summer 2020, leadership at the Castle shut down conversations on the official Facebook group, so an unofficial Facebook group popped up — and for Carly, this was a window into a different world.

“It's like the moment they go to Toon Town in Who Framed Roger Rabbit,“ says Carly. “That's how it felt. There's like this Facebook group with all these progressive, interesting people that are at the Magic Castle.”

In Zoom meetings, members shared their stories and frustrations about the Castle — and also, came up with suggestions and solutions, talking about how they might put pressure on the club.

While the Castle did not apologize for the parking lot situation, after a small protest outside the Castle, they did put out a statement saying that Black lives matter. The Castle’s Board announced that they would create a Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

The Castle wasn’t alone in announcing its intentions to do better — institutions nationwide created DEI committees. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, DEI-related job openings spiked by 55% in the immediate month after George Floyd’s murder.

(

Samanta Helou Hernandez

/

LAist

)

“It definitely felt like a turning point,” says Carly. “Is the Castle going to move forward into the future? Are we going to be on the right side of history as so many industries, as so many groups have faced those moments of reckoning?”

In 2020, Kayla Drescher joined the nascent Diversity and Inclusion Committee — and Carly wanted in, too. They saw it as a chance to fulfill the dreams they had for the Castle when they first joined — to build a community and make it a more inclusive, more progressive institution.

“My anger and frustration with the situation had started to give way to optimism, excitement, hope. Like, I don't know where this is going, but maybe someone will listen,” says Carly.

And then that hope was punctured, by a single email from the Ethics and Grievance Committee.

When Carly joined the Magic Castle, they’d signed a Member code of conduct, agreeing not to disparage the Castle. Two members felt that Carly had done so, when posting on Twitter and Facebook.

They’d filed a grievance, asking that Carly be kicked out.

Find out what happens next, on Part III. Coming Dec. 13.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is warning the public of a potential measles exposure from someone who traveled through Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles earlier this month.

What happened

The unvaccinated passenger arrived at Union Station on Saturday, Sept. 12, by Amtrak train just after 7 a.m. and departed about four hours later on an Amtrak Thruway bus bound for Bakersfield.

People at Union Station during the exposure window of 8 a.m. to noon may be at risk of contracting measles seven to 21 days after exposure. The last day to monitor for symptoms is Oct. 3.

State health officials say the passenger was traveling on buses and trains through L.A. and at least five other California counties before leaving the state.

"This case, along with previous measles outbreaks in California this year, serve as reminders of the importance of vaccination against measles," said Dr. Rita Nguyen, assistant state public health officer. "Measles is one of the most contagious infections that can lead to severe lifelong consequences, including permanent brain damage, and can also be fatal, especially for children."

What to watch for

Symptoms of measles include fever, red, watery eyes, and a rash that usually develops several days after other symptoms and typically starts on the face.

As of Sept. 14, a total of 59 measles cases have been reported in California this year. In most cases, patients were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status.

Imagine a sprawling network of roomy bike lanes, generously landscaped to calm relentless traffic. Think Amsterdam with newer buildings and fewer waterways. That’s been Long Beach’s goal anyway.

Instead of wide post-war boulevards, roads would become slower and leaner, transforming Long Beach into a top-five global cycling city, said former city traffic engineer Paul Van Dyk. “Some of that is tongue-in-cheek, but if you shoot for the moon you land in the stars.”

Long Beach has been working toward this vision since it adopted its bicycle master plan 25 years ago, now with mounting urgency as auto-related fatalities rise. The biggest project so far – the Studebaker Road Transformation Project – is bringing this vision to the doorstep of Studebaker Road residents.

It has drawn mixed reviews.

'The intent of the design is malicious'

“The intent of the design is malicious — it’s immoral,” said Joey Schilling, who drives the road six days a week and wrote a social media post criticizing the project that drew almost 1,000 comments. ”It’s people who do not use the road trying to tell other people how to use the road.”

Amid red cones and barriers, a woman and her dogs navigate the construction zones at Studebaker Road and Willow Street in Long Beach on Friday, Sept. 4, 2026. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.The $65 million project runs over five miles from Second Street all the way up to Carson Street. It includes bike lanes, greenways and stonescape with fiber-optic cable running underneath. It is crucial to the city’s long-term plan of knitting together 300 miles of bikeways by 2040 to bring bicycle culture to Long Beach, as well as create safer streets.

The massive project funded from 13 federal, state and local agencies, gives a glimpse of what’s to come for Long Beach thoroughfares. The Clark Avenue work is in progress. Pacific Avenue and Orange Avenue “backbone” plans are on deck. Now Studebaker Road, the biggest, longest and most expensive, is well underway, spending the most dollars and, arguably, drawing the most resident anger.

Schilling, who lives near Studebaker Road actually does ride his bike to work in Seal Beach and said he is OK with bike lanes in general. However, he says the project is not practical in a community where he says most drive to work. “It’s not a reasonable solution. It’s not even for the greater good, that would be to appease the 95 percent who use their cars. The cost and the benefit do not match up. The cost is too high, the benefit too low.”

Wider lanes, sturdier medians

The Studebaker project features raised bus stops and wider bike lanes than have been seen previously. No more flimsy bollards separating bikes from cars, said Van Dyk, the city traffic engineer who helped usher in the bikeway and traffic-calming street plan before he went on to consult on other urban bike projects.

The green bollards seen on Bellflower Boulevard and Studebaker before the redo often get hit by cars and can resemble thick blades of stomped grass. “People do not like the way they look, and I agree with their frustrations,” said Van Dyk. “That’s why we moved towards those concrete medians.“ He said planners “learned a lot of lessons along the way.”

Studebaker will feature roomier bike lanes – 9 feet wide compared with the old 6-foot-across version. Wider lanes will allow riders to travel two abreast for a better ride, Van Dyk said. It also makes them easier to clean. Debris-filled lanes are a sore spot with bikers.

The old bike lane sweeper the city used to clean narrow paths was notoriously difficult to move and use. (Fourth District Councilmember Daryl Supernaw joked that sightings of the small sweepers were less frequent than Bigfoot.) But a regular street sweeper can get into the broader lanes where it can’t on Broadway and Bellflower south of Atherton. (They actually set a street sweeper in a bike lane before planning and pouring the concrete to make sure it would fit.) Still, protected bike lanes are harder to clean than lanes merely separated by paint and “swept” by passing cars.

David Raslevich, a 41-year-old cyclist who frequently rides on the new lanes on Clark, said he has noticed branches, leaves and other debris. “I feel safer riding with the traffic, because they (cars) move debris out of the way for you.”

Buses stop in traffic, not turnouts

One new component of Studebaker and the other newer lanes are raised bus stops. The new stops designed to accommodate bikes and buses are about five inches off the ground and separated from the road by a curb. Buses will stop in the No. 2 lane, halting traffic behind them, and pick up passengers, instead of easing out of a bus turnout.

Van Dyk said that change evolved from talks with Long Beach Transit, which revealed that buses would sometimes get hit when pulling into traffic. Planners reasoned it’s better to have cars waiting for a bus to pick up passengers instead of forcing a bus waiting to pull into the No. 2 lane.

“It’s math my second grader can do: What’s better, 40 people on a bus wait or four people in cars,” Van Dyke said. “Which is the greatest cost to society? The bus is going to be more efficient.” He also contends the new system is safe; there is less ambiguity as a bus will slow down in front of a car, so the car would be more likely to stop instead of zipping around a protruding bus bumper.

It is too early to know how this plan will play out – the new bus lane curbs on Clark show missing chunks already from drivers that likely didn’t see them. Raslevich said he has seen cars turn into the curb by the raised bus stop. “They don’t know that there’s an island there, so they’re hitting that island, pretty much daily.”

Councilman Supernaw, whose district encompasses the $65 million project, had reservations about the price tag before ultimately supporting it.

'All anyone asked for is a repave'

“All anyone asked for is a repave, to get rid of potholes and have a smooth surface to drive on,” Supernaw said. “Should we just forgo the bike lanes and do a straight repave? The answer was no, we wanna use the grant money for the bike lanes.”

The city saw it as a grander vision, weaving together a puzzle of state and federal grants along with $8.5 million in local sales tax money for new transit stops, sidewalks and curb ramps that improve how all people can move through the city.

“It’s not just ‘I wanna ride a bike for fun.’ People need it to get to work,” said Jocelin Padilla, a spokesperson for the city’s Public Works Department.

'Communication via spraypaint'

A series of community meetings were held in 2024, drawing limited feedback. But when residents later saw painted pavement markings showing the planned curbs and bike lines, “they got involved in a big way,” Supernaw said.

“We call this communication via spraypaint,” said Supernaw. “Constituents see lines marked out and contact the council office.”

Aside from the cost and the bus islands, some residents are frustrated by the execution. Leslie Goldman, who lives near Studebaker and Stearns, said large piles of dirt – at times higher than cars – have blocked residents from crossing the street or seeing oncoming traffic. Some concerns were addressed, including a bus shelter that was added due to feedback from residents.

“We’re not saying we don’t want construction done ever, that’s life in the big city,” she said. But Goldman contends the “assembly line” construction approach, as opposed to the work done in shorter phases, is leading to more “noise, vibration, dust, traffic, blind spots, trash, roadblocks, … All at sporadic intervals unknown to residents. It’s not just an inconvenience, it’s a hardship.”

A 'once-in-a-generation' timeline

Padilla of Public Works acknowledged the hardship, but said the benefits would outweigh the short-term pain. She said doing the work in shorter segments would increase costs and project timelines – not a good thing when it needs to be finished by the Olympics. “This is a once-in-a-generation project,” she said.

Not all residents are wary. “Studebaker is gonna be awesome when it’s done,” said Dan Olsen, who lives near Studebaker and Atherton. “It’s new, it’s fresh, the neighborhood is going to benefit. It’s been a total pothole disaster for so long. … Even though there are catches and hooks, it’s still worth it.”

Long Beach still isn't Amsterdam

Long Beach is not yet Amsterdam; it’s still a patchwork of protected lanes and unprotected ones of varying degrees of newness. But Studebaker should be done in 2027. Pacific Avenue and Orange Avenue are next. The bike lanes and streets won’t uniformly connect, but there will be more of them – Artesia Boulevard to service Jordan High, Clark Avenue near Long Beach City College and now Studebaker. “Long Beach’s cycling network is reaching critical mass,” Van Dyk said.

Van Dyk and other bike proponents say it’s a long game. Amsterdam itself was car-dominated until the 1970s when the Stop de Kindermoord movement was launched in response to the high number of child deaths. “It’s a generational effort; it took multiple generations to give us the infrastructure we have today,” he said.

Will any of this make the streets safer?

Will they help make transportation safer for cars and bikes? The city racked up 53 traffic deaths in 2025, the highest in a decade, and 32 bike/pedestrian and e-scooter deaths. This year has seen 36 traffic deaths through mid-September. The city is also trying other tools; speed cameras are being installed, and tickets will go out this fall.

It’s not yet any safer to ride through Long Beach than it was 10 years ago, “but it’s not safer to do anything in Long Beach,” said Kurt Canfield, a cyclist and organizer for Car Lite Long Beach, a bike advocacy organization. He often rides the Broadway bike path, which he considers a success despite debris in the lane and other issues.

“They wanna bike, they wanna walk, people are driving 300 horsepower crossovers. We’re in conflict for the same space,” he said. “But this infrastructure gives us the ability to be safer.”

A grand piano, hauled in on a Ford F-350, will make its way next weekend to Griffith Park.

Then, right below the Hollywood sign, the flatbed will unfold into a stage for a recital by pianist Hunter Noack, who has played everywhere from Yosemite Valley to Joshua Tree National Park.

His Sept. 26 and 27 performances are all part of In a Landscape: Classical Music in the Wild, organized in partnership with the nonprofit Trust for Public Land. (The show is sold out, but you can sign up for the waitlist.)

For a decade, Noack has hauled his Steinway — the same model used at Carnegie Hall — through rough terrain to perform in unusual places: 370 concerts and counting.

The piano has survived fire, wind and 112-degree heat

"We've had the piano lid be ripped off by the wind. We've had the piano trailer tires catch fire on Highway 1. We've almost driven off the side of Mount Bachelor. We've played in 112-degree heat and negative 2 degrees in the winter," Noack said. And the piano has come out unscathed, including after it was towed down the washboard gravel along Schweitzer Mountain in Idaho — the only thing that happened was that it went out of tune.

How the show actually works

Among the pieces on the program at Griffith Park is "Nature Boy," the song Eden Ahbez wrote while living outdoors under the first L of the Hollywood sign. The song was later made famous by Nat King Cole.

Audiences at the Griffith Park show will be provided with wireless headphones for concert-hall quality sound, he said. "Some people just set up their picnic chairs or blankets right near the stage. Other people lay down," Noack said. "When there's so much else that's happening visually ... the music kind of automatically becomes a soundtrack, and we all get to experience that together."

The philosophy behind the series' name

The series is named after "In a Landscape," a piece by John Cage, who believed any sound could be music — even "somebody crinkling on a bag of chips," Noack said.

During his first show in 2016 at the Columbia River Gorge, Noack was midway through a soft Schumann piece about a delicate flower when 40 Harley-Davidsons on a memorial ride rolled up and circled the piano.

Rather than pack it in, he answered with Frederic Rzewski's "Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues," a piece built to mimic the aggressive clatter of a cotton mill. "It was a conversation between the piano and these roaring Harleys," he said.

California saw the largest share of immigration arrests of people from Asian countries during the first 18 months of President Trump’s second term, a new tracker shows.

More than 25% of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took place in California, home to the country's largest Asian population, followed by Texas and New York.

The findings come from the new Asian and Pacific Islander ICE Tracker launched by Stop AAPI Hate.

These communities are often missing from the national debate over immigration enforcement, said Cynthia Choi, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate during a briefing on the tracker.

“Asian and Pacific Islander communities deserve better than to be an afterthought in this crisis," Choi said. With the tracker, "we are aiming to ensure we cannot be ignored any longer."

The data shows that ICE actions targeting Asian immigrants rose much faster than enforcement against groups overall between January 2025 and August 2026.

Arrests were up 436% compared to a similar time period during the Biden administration; detentions up by 512%; deportations up by more than 1,100%.

The number of arrests peaked this past July with 1,950 recorded nationwide.

In California, there have been more than 5,300 arrests of Asian immigrants and more than 11,400 detention stints, which includes separate stays at different facilities during a single detention.

As for deportations, they were not broken down by state.

The largest numbers involved people from India and China, the countries of origin for the largest Asian immigrant populations in the U.S.

Stephanie Chan, Stop AAPI Hate’s director of data and research, noted that a rise in anti-Indian rhetoric centered on H1-B visa holders and truck drivers.

"You see a lot of elected officials saying things like, 'Indians are coming to take the jobs,'" Chan said.

Researchers also found that people from smaller communities — such as those from Laos and Uzbekistan — were arrested at rates far disproportionate to their share of the Asian noncitizen population.

The tracker draws from ICE records obtained through public-records requests by the Deportation Data Project at UCLA and UC Berkeley.

Leaders at Stop AAPI Hate said the Trump administration's immigration crackdown is not only harming the people being swept up by ICE. Chan said the group’s annual survey of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders found more than half have felt the effects.

“That includes things like fearing that their status will be questioned,” Chan said. “That they will be arrested, detained, or deported.”

Choi drew parallels with how Asian Americans were scapegoated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who joined the briefing on the tracker, said the findings felt "very personal" because of the state’s large share of arrests.

A member of the Republican-led congressional China Committee focused on U.S. competition with the Chinese government, Khanna predicted Democrats would win the mid-terms and shift the tone of that panel.

"It's going to be much more about a celebration of Asian Americans — and documenting that — than the demonization of other countries," Khanna said.