The Brief

Set builder Greg Gilday has worked on some of Disney’s big Star Wars shows, building spaceships for the franchise’s Ahsoka series. But during the Hollywood strikes that dragged on for months this year, he was busy doing something a bit more down to earth.

He organized swap meets where out-of-work entertainment industry pros could sell their stuff to make ends meet.

Now that the actors have ratified a new contract, have the jobs come back? For Gilday, not yet.

“SAG-AFTRA reaching a deal hasn’t had any impact as of this moment,” he said recently, noting that the end of the calendar year is usually a slow time for productions. “Come January, I’m sure it will be a feeding frenzy.”

Set builder and welder Greg Gilday outside Walt's in Eagle Rock.

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The dual Hollywood strikes that began with the Writers Guild of America in May, followed by the start of SAG-AFTRA picketing in July, were the heart of the hot labor summer in Los Angeles. The strikes, which together lasted more than six months, brought the writers and actors gains in their new union contracts, including guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence, wage and residual increases and more.

Now it’s time for thousands of actors, writers, costume makers, set builders and other entertainment industry professionals to get back to work. But experts say a return to business as usual will take time, and that the industry probably won’t get back to the peak employment seen after the pandemic when there was a glut of productions driven by streaming platforms.

Production stoppages that affected movies, TV shows and streaming programs are estimated to cost the economy about $7 billion, with about half of that in California, according to Kevin Klowden, chief global strategist at the Milken Institute. And when the final figures are in, that number is expected to grow.

What recovery might look like

While some of the roughly 160,000 actors guild members continued to raise concerns about artificial intelligence protections until the ratification vote deadline, the performers union ended up sealing the deal with more than 78% approval.

Striking writers and actors rallied in front of Amazon Studios in Culver City in support of a bill that would provide unemployment benefits to striking workers.

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“This is a golden age for SAG-AFTRA, and our union has never been more powerful,” SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said in a statement following the ratification of the contract.

Gilday, the set builder, said he’s happy with many of the wage increases and protections writers and actors gained after the strikes, and he’s hopeful the new year will bring him an abundance of work.

Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA president and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union's chief negotiator, address the press on Nov. 10, 2023.

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Previous strikes have shown that a return to normal could take as long as a year, according to Klowden. But, he said, mass spending from streaming companies on large numbers of high-quality shows — during what’s known as “peak TV” — is not likely to come back.

He said streaming services are moving away from the big spending days when they were searching for the next Game of Thrones or Ted Lasso, that would bring more eyes to their platforms.

“And that means that even as production numbers recover, they’re going to recover in a way that just won’t come back to quite that heady level we were seeing say in late 2021 or early, mid-2022,” Klowden said.

According to a new study from Otis College, the Hollywood strikes came at a time when the industry was seeing a downward trend in employment. Since reaching a “post-pandemic employment high” in August 2022, employment shrunk by 26% in October 2023, the study points out.

The report estimates that nearly 25,000 Hollywood workers have lost their jobs since April.

‘They just can’t survive’

Recent numbers from FilmLA, the nonprofit tasked with coordinating filming permits, show on-location permits were down about 57% during the second week of December compared to the same time last year. That was after the actors guild strike order was lifted.

But it’s still a considerable improvement over mid-November, when permits for feature films and television projects were down 83% compared to the same time in 2022.

Klowden said it’s important to note that just because productions can get back to work doesn’t mean they’re ready. Things like coordinating trailers and craft services and other support staff take time.

And he said it’s possible some of those workers might not come back at all after getting pummeled by the pandemic and the dual strikes.

“The combination of these multiple shutdowns has led to a situation where they just can’t survive,” he said.

‘Ready to work’

Actor Renée Threatte was a strike captain during the SAG-AFTRA strike.

“I’m ready to work,” Threatte told LAist. “It’s been a long couple of months. While I’m really proud of the union and for all of the volunteers and all the people that showed up on the picket line... I’m disappointed that it took so long.”

Still, Threatte said she is happy with her union’s new contract. And while auditions are slow at the moment, she’s hopeful the floodgates will open in January.

But even if the work comes back, it doesn’t mean the struggle to afford to live in L.A. will be over.

“I hope that not only can this contract inspire people to fight for a fair and working wage ... but I hope it can also inspire our politicians to make sure that they’re doing what they can to keep an effective and viable way of life here in Los Angeles,” Threatte said.

Klowden agrees that the cost of living in L.A. should be a major concern. He said Hollywood has always touted itself as a gateway to a sustainable middle class life, not just for writers and actors, but everyone who makes the dream factory run.

“That’s important. And that sense of maintaining that concentration of talent and concentration of skilled workers is a big deal in terms of Hollywood’s attractiveness,” Klowden said. “And if that goes out the window, then there is a real problem.”

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”