The Brief

After a contentious summer of 2020 for the Magic Castle, Carly Usdin felt like they’d started to find their footing at the club again: They found a community of progressive members and was excited to apply for the Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

So when Carly got an emailed grievance claiming that their online criticism of Castle leadership and the environment, combined with “their obvious hate,” were grounds for removal, they wanted to fight back.

Carly Usdin in 2023.

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Part 3:  Carly Usdin is at risk of getting kicked out of the Magic Castle. Plus, after 2020, the Magic Castle makes changes to address issues of inclusion, including setting up a Diversity and Inclusion Committee. LAist Senior Producer Natalie Chudnovsky explores how the Castle’s promises to do better pan out, several years later. 

The Castle: Part 3

Part 3:  Carly Usdin is at risk of getting kicked out of the Magic Castle. Plus, after 2020, the Magic Castle makes changes to address issues of inclusion, including setting up a Diversity and Inclusion Committee. LAist Senior Producer Natalie Chudnovsky explores how the Castle’s promises to do better pan out, several years later. 

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The grievance process at the Castle is simple. For $50, any member can file a grievance against another. If the Grievance and Ethics Committee finds the grievance valid, the $50 is returned to the member. If the grievance is found invalid, their money is lost.

“I'm a stubborn person,” says Carly. “And when it comes to matters like this, I can be petty. I wanted nothing more than for them to lose $50.”

Carly spent the next month preparing for their hearing, taking screenshots of the different relevant social media posts and writing out responses to each grievance point in a 12-page document. Their argument rested on the idea that pointing out the flaws of an institution didn’t mean that you hated it — quite the opposite.

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“If you don’t do everything in your power to change the things you love to make them better, then how can you actually love those things?” Carly wrote in their response document. “So long as I am a member, I am committed to making the AMA [Academy of Magical Arts] and the Castle a place where all are welcome and all feel welcome.”

In Carly’s recollection, there were a dozen people at their hearing. It took place on Zoom, because it was still the thick of the pandemic. After an introduction, one of the members who filed the grievance spoke, and then it was Carly’s turn to state their case. In some ways, it was a moment that mirrored their Castle audition — a tricky performance for established magicians who would decide Carly’s fate. And once again, Carly walked away unsure whether they’d been deemed worthy.

The decisions: the Castle’s and Carly’s 

In December 2020, Carly got the phone call from the grievance committee and was told they could remain a member.

But they’d also gotten another piece of news from the Castle. Carly would not be included in the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, the committee they were most excited about seeing to fruition at the Castle.

Carly was satisfied they’d defeated the members who’d filed the grievance — the two men wouldn’t get their $50 back. But Carly was no longer interested in remaining a member of the Castle.

“The only thing that was gonna keep me in,” Carly says, “was if I knew I had a place to be heard. My pettiness was satisfied … those guys didn't get me kicked out, but now I'm going to leave.”

At the beginning of 2021, Carly chose not to pay the annual dues, effectively ending their Castle membership.

For Carly, the loss of the membership, and all the magic, hope and community that it represented, hit hard. But in some ways, it was also a relief.

“I don't have to have that ethical conflict of, ‘Why am I supporting this place?’” says Carly. “And like, sure, this is a place for magic. This is not a place for politics. But also, any space I enter, the people there, and me, we all have to reckon with who I'm perceived as, who I am. And the thing that became very clear to me over the last few years is that I won't go along with anything anymore.”

Another controversy for the Castle

 
In December 2020, the L.A. Times published an explosive investigation into allegations of sexism and racism at the Magic Castle.

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L.A. Times reporters spoke with 12 people — staff, members and guests — about their experiences. One woman guest described how she was called up to the stage by a performer who tried to touch her chest during his trick. A former cook said racial epithets were common in the kitchen.

One waitress alleged she was sexually harassed and then fired when she reported it to management.

Kayla Drescher, Carly’s friend and professional magician, was quoted in the piece, too, describing one infamous staircase where if you sat underneath, at the bar, you could see up someone’s skirt.

After a long summer of internal tensions and social media call-outs, it was a big deal for the Castle to receive bad press from L.A.’s biggest paper, and for its own members to share the secretive institution’s dirty laundry.

The Castle did take some corrective action after the L.A. Times article. They sent us a long list, which included an internal review, the hiring of a new general manager, the creation of a new human resources director position and a sensitivity and sexual harassment training for the board of directors, trustees and staff. The infamous staircase got some slats installed. One controversial painting was removed.

And then in May 2021, after more than a year of being closed for COVID, the Castle reopened.

The Diversity and Inclusion Committee

The Castle told us that of the 30 people interested in the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, 20 were interviewed by the board and ultimately nine selected, including Kayla Drescher.

Kayla Drescher performing magic.

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Kayla said that in the first year of the D&I Committee’s existence, she pushed through one victory: making the dress code gender-neutral.

“I personally rewrote the dress code,” Kayla says. “So men can wear dresses and skirts, women can wear pants and suits. And if you’re neither of those things, you can wear whatever the hell you want.”

Kayla says that otherwise, the first year was rough going. A lot of time was spent trying to convince other members of the committee that there were problems, she said, and ideas seemed to go nowhere.

“It just felt like we were banging our head up against the wall for nothing,” Kayla says.

Then in 2022, internal elections led to a shakeup in leadership and Kayla became the new head of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee. It was a moment when she thought she could turn things around, and she started by inviting new people to join, including magician Paul Draper.

Draper recalled that in its second year, the committee was working to define itself and prioritize which goals to bring up to the board. Kayla says she felt good about the new iteration of the committee, but when it came time to take action, they ran into a wall.

The problem, according to both Kayla and Paul, was that the D&I Committee didn’t have any real power. It was set up as an advisory committee, presenting recommendations to the people actually in charge of the Castle, the board of directors.

“And so it very quickly became, ‘Well the fire from the L.A. Times article has died down, do we really need to do any of this?’” Kayla says.

LAist tried contacting all the members of the Castle’s 2022 D&I Committee. Besides Paul and Kayla, no one wanted to speak on the record.

We also asked the Castle’s general manager, Hervé Lévy, who joined in 2021, about these issues.

Unlike the folks on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, Lévy is a paid employee of the Castle. He says he’s been working to create a better culture there, as well as clearer systems for people to report incidents. He is also openly gay and says that he felt embraced by the Castle right away.

When we asked why the D&I Committee’s recommendations were not implemented, Hervé said that the committee's vision lacked clarity.

“It was not presented the right way,” says Hervé. “So yes, they were turned down because the ideas weren’t that great. And you know what? You don't wanna implement bad ideas.”

When we asked which ideas he felt needed improvement, Hervé could not immediately provide an example.

The brick wall

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LAist was provided a list of priorities the D&I Committee drafted for the Castle’s board of directors in August 2022. Recommendations included the implementation of a DEI calendar, as well as goals for the future, like including more information about a more diverse array of magicians in its building tours.

One of the D&I Committee’s recommendations was that booked performers be required to take a training — according to Kayla, she wanted to require the same sensitivity and sexual harassment trainings that staff received. The document’s stated reason for the training is because “there have been many reports or issues surrounding sensitivity from magicians performing all over the Castle,” and also suggests an implementation plan.

Magician performers at the Castle are booked a week at a time, and are often coming from all over the country to perform in the space. Kayla felt that this kind of training was important to get different performers on the same page about appropriate language and interactions.

She felt this would help prevent problematic patter, sexual harassment and other incidents like the ones reported on in the L.A. Times, and that happened to her and Carly at the Castle.

Kayla was also going to get a rare chance to make a presentation to the Board of Directors in the fall of 2022 — but she and another D&I Committee member would get exactly 20 minutes, so she decided to focus on a few concrete recommendations, including the one about harassment and sensitivity training.

When she presented to the board, Kayla says she immediately felt dismissed. Following that presentation, Kayla decided not to renew her Magic Castle membership.

“Every time something happens, whether it be at the Magic Castle or in the industry, a layer of a brick gets put down, and for now you can just easily step over that layer of brick,” says Kayla of the prejudices she’s faced in the magic world. “And eventually the layers get taller and taller. You have to climb over it, or somebody has to help you. But eventually the wall gets so big, it's just not worth your time. And that is what happened with me and my Castle membership.”

When we asked Lévy about the training recommendation, he initially said that it would be “very complicated to do training for someone’s who’s here for only a week,” and that instead the Castle has a phone call with performers about language and not touching guests — not a “formal training,” but “setting expectations.”

General Manager/COO of the Magic Castle Hervé Lévy in the Magic Castle, on Oct. 13, 2021.

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When we asked in March 2023 whether Hervé would want to implement a formal training, he said he would and that it’s “definitely coming.”

When we checked in October 2023, the Castle told us they still hadn’t implemented a training for booked performers, but were working to roll out a training in January 2024. They also said they did not intend to require training for members. A Castle rep said that policies about appropriate behavior are “clearly defined” for members when they join and “reiterated from time-to-time in internal communications.”

Still on the D&I Committee

The last time we talked to Paul Draper in March 2023, he was still on the D&I Committee.

He said it was still slow going. For example, the committee wanted to get a spot in the monthly emailed newsletter, so they could tell other members about their work and highlight lesser-known magicians.

The first article was just going to be an introduction. He said it took 10 months of meetings, revisions and back-and-forths before the introduction was included in the emailed newsletter.

When we brought up the pace of change to Hervé, he said changes happen slowly in order to account for everyone’s opinions.

“So yes,” he said, “it's gonna be slow process, but we need to do it right.”

We asked to interview the new head of the D&I committee who replaced Kayla, but he declined.

We checked in with the Castle one last time in October 2023 to see if any new D&I Committee recommendations had been implemented. They had none to report.

A different perspective on the Castle 

While we spoke off the record to other former Castle members whose experiences of the Castle were similar to Kayla and Carly’s, we also spoke with several members whose interactions with the Castle were overwhelmingly positive and who felt that the Castle did make meaningful changes after 2020.

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Georgia Lyle is one of those members. Georgia is a retired physics teacher, magician and a trans woman. Like Carly, she initially came to magic by way of the Castle, when her friend invited her for a night out at the club.

Georgia was in her 50s and exploring her gender identity and starting to experiment with feminine gender expression. She still remembers what she wore that first night at the Castle — a silver dress that went just below the knee.

“I was very self-conscious,” says Georgia. “I would go to a showroom and I would very intentionally go to the back row because I didn't want to get called upon. And the thing that struck me was that at the Castle, everybody was very nice. Everybody treated me really well and nobody made a fuss over me.”

Georgia started going to the Castle more frequently, eventually taking lessons and finally passing her audition and becoming a member. The membership card held special significance, because it was her first piece of ID with her correct name.

Georgia is actively involved at the Castle now, performing, teaching and giving tours. And for Georgia, the Castle is a place of acceptance.

“I find that I have never been treated badly in the club,” says Georgia. “My feeling as a trans woman is that the club provided me the experience that I wanted, which was basically the ability to be myself. And I'm respected because of the things I do. I'm respected because I do magic.”

After the summer of 2020, Georgia felt that the Castle owned up to its issues. So did magician and mentalist Michael Gutenplan.

“I personally have never had problems with homophobia or being discriminated against because I'm gay in the magic world,” says Michael. “But I think the older members of our magic world sometimes need a reminder that the world has changed … I feel that there are people that want the world to instantly change for their benefits, and I wish it would, but the truth is, change takes time.”

When asked about other members’ experiences of sexism and racism, both Georgia and Michael said that they hadn’t personally had bad experiences at the club. During the summer of 2020, on that members-only Facebook group, there were other members who offered their experiences as counterpoints to members who said they’d had problematic ones.

We asked Hervé how he thought about how to prioritize feedback — how to take the bad experiences of the few seriously. He said that he takes everyone’s experiences very seriously.

We also asked Georgia about how she grappled with how Carly’s experience was so different from her own.

“That is a dilemma,” she says. “Because you know, I have my perspective, but it's the perspective of somebody who's older and I'm imposing, so I think there's a lot of people who would not do things with me that they might do with somebody who's younger and more attractive,” says Georgia. “I think most people who are or were members of the Magic Castle had a fairly major investment in becoming a member. You don't do it lightly. So if they are feeling uncomfortable, that definitely needs examination.”

Kayla and Carly today

Carly Usdin in 2023, with all their decks of cards.

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Kayla Drescher moved to Chicago and now performs at the Chicago Magic Lounge.

“There are posted signs everywhere that tell you what to do if you wanna report bad behavior,” says Kayla of her new performance space. “There's a team meeting every single day that reminds people to use non-binary gender inclusive language as a performer … then when something does happen, like we had a drunk guest who got a little bit handsy, and that guest was asked to leave.”

Kayla says she’s found a different, more progressive magic community, elsewhere.

Carly Usdin’s suitcase of magic stuff.

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Meanwhile, it’s been three years since Carly left the Castle. And even longer since they’ve done any magic tricks.

During the last interview for this story, in their home, Carly pulled out dusty boxes of magic materials: pieces of rope, sponge rabbits, white handkerchiefs, books on magic and over two dozen different decks of cards.

Carly said that enough time had passed between them and their Castle days that they mostly just felt nostalgic.

“I miss doing this a little bit,” says Carly, as they glance at the cards. “When I go to put all this away later, I'll maybe leave one deck out.”

This is a digital companion piece to Imperfect Paradise: The Castle. To listen to the audio version of this episode, click here. 

After three years of unprecedented closures that devastated California’s fishing industry, commercial salmon fishing is poised to reopen this spring.

The return comes with a catch: Regulators at the interstate Pacific Fishery Management Council will strictly constrain fishing dates and impose harvest limits for both commercial and recreational fishing to protect the threatened California Coastal Chinook. The council is set to finalize the details this weekend.

It’s not the season the fleet had hoped for after years of closures. But those who survived the shutdowns fear a graver threat: state and federal decisions could reshape California’s water systems and rivers.

“Water policy in California is about to change drastically and irreversibly, and nobody has the energy to pay attention to that,” said Sarah Bates, who fishes commercially from San Francisco. “I am concerned that salmon is going to be (commercially) extinct in our lifetimes.”

For the first time since 2022, Bates was preparing her century-old boat, the Bounty, docked at Fisherman’s Wharf. She ticked off the boat’s needs: an oil change, a hydraulics check, a run-through of the steering system, the anchor. Her fading fishing permit, now four years out of date, still clings to the outside of the cabin.

“Pay no attention to my paint job,” Bates said. “Try not to make my boat look bad.”

Looking at its cracking paint and tangled ropes, Bates — who wrestles waves and weather for a living and uses a fishing float dented by a massive shark bite — seemed a little daunted by the tasks ahead.

Without income from salmon, Bates allowed critical upkeep to lag. “There's been a lot of deferred maintenance,” she said. “I'm actually a little worried about everybody charging out into the ocean in May to go fishing.”

‘A tremendous, avoidable hit’

Salmon is king in California. It’s what keeps the markets and restaurants buying, the industrial-scale ice machines running, the tourists booking charter boats and visiting the coast.

“It’s iconic,” said retired charter boat captain John Atkinson. “We have people who will fish every week for salmon. And for the other species, they come out once.”

But dams, water diversions, low flows and poor ocean conditions have driven decades of decline.

California experienced its driest three year stretch in history from 2020 through 2022 — worsening that burden and causing populations to plummet. Interstate fisheries managers cancelled commercial salmon fishing for an unprecedented three years in a row, and barred recreational fishing for all but a handful of days last year.

The financial damage was severe. California estimated the closures cost nearly $100 million in lost coastal community and state personal income during the first two years alone.

The fishing industry says these numbers vastly underestimate the economic and human costs: Boats went to the crusher, tourists took their money to other states, suppliers went out of business and fishers fled California or the industry altogether.

“This was a tremendous, avoidable hit. We have survived droughts throughout recent history, but none had impacts this drastic,” Vance Staplin, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, said in an email.

First: Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on March 20, 2026. Last: Sunlight pours through a window of the Bounty, a commercial fishing vessel, on March 20, 2026. Photos by Jungho Kim for CalMatters Sarah Bates, a commercial salmon fisher, stands at the wheel of her boat, Bounty, at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on March 20, 2026. Photo by Jungho Kim for CalMatters California has requested disaster assistance from the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. But federal aid has come slowly, and fallen short. The U.S. government has released only $20.6 million, and only for the 2023 closure.

“The entire framework for fishery disasters has to be totally redone,” said U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee. “We need something that is much faster, that is less political, that doesn’t depend on all the vagaries of multiple federal agencies and congressional appropriations.”

Rain, but little respite

The rains returned in 2023 — bringing the flows and cool water young salmon need to survive and complete their ocean migration.

Now, the Pacific Fishery Management Council projects that roughly 392,000 Sacramento River fall-run Chinook salmon are swimming off the coast. These are the mainstay of California’s salmon fishery — and the forecasts are better than last year’s, though still a fraction of the millions that returned historically. But the limited fishing season is not the respite that the industry had counted on.

“We're happy to get some fishing this year,” Staplin, of the Golden State Salmon Association, said, “but if we want to preserve the businesses and families that define California's coastal and inland salmon economies, we need a little compromise and balance in prioritizing water during droughts.”

A plan or a patch?

Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom released a plan aimed at protecting salmon from climate change.

The plan received mixed reactions.

Some scientists and members of the fishing community credited state agencies and the Newsom administration with concrete efforts like hatchery upgrades and cutting-edge genetic fish tagging. One$58 million state and federal effort — the Big Notch Project — connected salmon and other fish to prime floodplain habitat in the Yolo Bypass through seasonal gates.

“Anything that can be done is a help right now,” Atkinson said.

But others say that the strategy papers over policies that rob salmon of the cold water they need. California is built around nature-defying engineering that funnels vast amounts of water away from rivers to supply cities and the state’s $60 billion agricultural economy.

“As soon as it stops raining or snowing, we’re going to be back in the same situation with the salmon season closing,” said Jon Rosenfield, science director at The San Francisco Baykeeper. “If we don’t protect river flows and cold water storage, then we’re not protecting salmon.”

Some of the fiercest fights are over the contentious Delta tunnel and Newsom’s controversial deal with major water users, backed by $1.5 billion in state funding, to overhaul how farms and cities take water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the rivers that feed it.

Carson Jeffres, a senior researcher at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, takes a more moderate view — the effect on salmon will depend on how California agencies manage these projects, but the status quo isn’t an option.

“I just don't see a world where the salmon are prioritized over human water needs — and I think we should plan for it,” he said. “Then that might be a more sustainable place.”

On top of state policies is a Trump administration that called for “Putting People over Fish” and adopted a plan in December to send more Northern California water to Central Valley farms.

State wildlife officials said at the time that President Donald Trump’s actions “run counter” to California’s efforts to improve salmon populations, “harming the California communities that rely on salmon for their livelihood."

California Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot acknowledged the state’s finite water supply can’t satisfy everyone’s priorities.

“There’s no shortage of finger pointing by some groups who argue that not enough water is remaining in our rivers for salmon and aquatic habitat, and other groups that suggest that not enough water is being diverted for California communities and agriculture,” Crowfoot said.

“Water management in California,” he said, “involves balancing water across these needs.”

Last year, the Newsom administration announced that nearly 70% of the salmon strategy’s action items were underway, and more than a quarter were already complete.

That’s “crazy math … What is your outcome measure?" said Bates. "For us, our outcome measure is enough fish to go fishing.”

Adapting to survive

In the absence of enough fish, the industry has been piloting new strategies to survive.

Back at Fisherman's Wharf, a few rows over from Bates, Captain Virginia Salvador was getting ready to take a group out to troll for halibut and striped bass. Her French bulldog, Anchovy, wandered the deck between the ropes.

Salvador started her charter boat business, Unforgettable Fishing Adventures, during the salmon shutdown — and had to quickly expand her offerings.

Now, she runs barbecue and barhopping cruises around San Francisco Bay and takes passengers to McCovey Cove during Giants games. She teams up with food influencer Rosalie Bradford Pareja to offer a chef experience. And she still holds down a second job working in a hospital pathology laboratory.

“When you rely on a natural entity for your income, you have to learn how to deviate, pivot, expand,” Salvador said.

Captain Virginia Salvador on her boat, Unforgettable, at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on March 20, 2026. Photo by Jungho Kim for CalMatters Where the front row of charter boats line the street like storefronts, Bates’ row at Fisherman’s Wharf has the feeling of a neighborhood. One fisherman clambered down the ladder to Bates’ boat, where they swapped great white shark stories. Bates hollered to another neighbor every time a tourist wandered down the dock, bucket in hand, looking to buy fresh crab.

This neighbor, a tattooed and lanky and exhausted fisherman named Shawn Chen Flading, had been out all night. His 12 hour mission to retrieve crab pots turned into a 26 hour ordeal when his throttle cable broke.

At the time Flading bought his boat, before the shutdowns, it looked like a pretty good living.

“A lot of people — the older generation — put their kids through college, bought their homes. And it just disappeared,” Flading said. “I lost basically half my revenue for the past three years straight.”

He tries to fill the gap by advertising on social media and selling Dungeness crab directly off his boat. But the crab season, too, he said, has been disappointing.

Now, salmon fishing is once again on the horizon.

“Whatever limited opportunity we have for salmon, at least we're getting the ball rolling,” Flading said to Bates across the water between their boats, over the San Francisco mix of cars, construction and seagulls. “Without that, we're just stuck.”

Bates, leaning on the railing of her own boat, agreed. “I really understand why people are upset,” she said. “But also, I'm so excited to catch some fish. Even though it's not enough. It’s not even close to enough.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The crew of NASA's Artemis II mission are safely back on Earth after a nine-day mission took them on a trip around the moon and back, sending humans deeper into space than ever before.

To come home safely, the crew — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — and its capsule had to endure near-record-breaking entry speeds and temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Orion spacecraft spent 13 and a half minutes falling through the atmosphere, hitting a top speed of more than 30 times the speed of sound.

Orion performed as designed. The capsule's heat shield protected the crew, and a series of parachutes helped the capsule gently splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.

With that landing, the mission came to a close, clocking more than 700,237 statute miles, said Artemis II entry flight director Rick Henfling.

Four members of the U.S. Navy Dive team pulled the crew from the capsule. Helicopters plucked them from a raft outside their spacecraft — called the porch — and within 24 hours of splashdown, they'll arrive at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We did it. We sent four amazing people to the moon and safely returned them to Earth for the first time in more than 50 years," said NASA's Lori Glaze, who leads the Artemis programs. "To the generation that now knows what we're capable of: Welcome to our moonshot."

The crew's flight path took them around the far side of the moon at around 4,000 miles above the surface.

The crew made a number of geological observations and took thousands of photos to help scientists better understand what the moon is made of – and where it might have come from.

But perhaps the most profound vantage point came from looking back at home.

"Trust me, you are special, in all of this emptiness," said Glover, "This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call The Universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together."

The Artemis II mission was a critical test flight for the Orion spacecraft, which will carry future Artemis astronauts, including those that will venture to the lunar surface.

The crew tested key systems of the spacecraft — its life support system, maneuverability, its heat shield, the toilet. What NASA learns from this flight will set future lunar missions up for success.

"Part of our ethos as a crew, and our values from the very beginning were that this is a relay race," said Koch "In fact, we have batons that we bought to symbolize physically, that we plan to hand them to the next crew, and every single thing that we do is with them in mind."

That next crew will come soon. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman accelerated the Artemis program, charging the agency with launching an Artemis mission each year.

Even before the Artemis II crew splashed down, work had begun at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to prepare for the next mission.

NASA engineering operations manager John Giles oversees the Crawler-Transporter, the massive vehicle that moves the mobile launch pad, and the SLS rocket that launches Orion, from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch site. His team is preparing to move the launch platform for Artemis II back into the Vehicle Assembly Building next week to begin putting together the rocket for Artemis III.

"We really haven't had too much time to relax and reflect on Artemis II, other than thinking what a perfect accomplishment it was," said Giles. "Moving right into Artemis III. No rest for the weary. It's moving on."

A key part of the Artemis III SLS rocket — the core stage fuel tank — is heading to Kennedy Space Center later this month. Parts of the solid rocket motors are already there.

Artemis III aims to launch next year. It'll stay in Earth orbit while testing spacecraft that are designed to land humans on the moon. The following mission, Artemis IV, could bring humans to the lunar surface, for the first time since 1972.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Coachella is the spring break of the music world: a pair of long weekends in the California desert, featuring over 100 acts across eight stages spanning too many genres to count, from vintage groups mounting reunions to the biggest pop stars on the planet to rising talents with viral hits. Nearly the entire event is streamed live via YouTube, starting Friday afternoon, which makes the prospect of catching more acts easier — you don't have to sprint across the grounds of Indio's Empire Polo Club to make it from one set to the next. But even if you're watching from home, the prospect of mapping your route through the weekend in order to catch the greatest possible collection of live experiences can be overwhelming.

To help, three members of NPR Music's team have sifted through the lineup to identify a day-by-day guide. Below, you'll find must-see acts and recommendations to ensure you catch the artists you should prioritize when set times conflict. (Note: All set times listed below are Pacific.)

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FRIDAY

Plan by Dora Levite

Must see:
"Young millionaire, man, I feel like Weezy," says fakemink on his recent EP The Boy who cried Terrified ., a ramp-up to his upcoming album. The 20-year-old London prince of SoundCloud rap has racked up enough well-deserved hype through a steady stream of excellent hyperpop singles and star-studded cosigns (SZA, Drake, Frank Ocean, Ecco2K) to sustain a massive North American tour bookended by Coachella on one side and Lollapalooza on the other.

Naturally, fakemink's hype has sparked a slew of online discourse, which has seemingly had the effect of splitting his fan base in two: day-one devotees who insist the rest of the world is late, and new appreciators who feel their precious attention is what brought him to the global sphere. Regardless of where you fall, this is the must-see set of the day — a chance to hear some of his very best music and to figure out, if you even care, where you stand in his fandom.

Day plan:
The best way to prepare yourself for a day at a music festival is to establish your stage loyalties early. Start with Doom Dave's DJ set at 1 p.m. at the Sonora stage, then release all your pent-up festival anxiety with a cathartic scream when Las Vegas screamo band Febuary takes over.

At 2:10 p.m., I'd watch the Cahuilla Bird Singers and Dancers at the Gobi tent, a Coachella staple for the past few years. At 2:50 p.m., the pop star of the hour, Slayyyter, comes on for her first show with a live band since her excellent new album WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA. Head back to the Sonora stage at 3:40 p.m. to catch the majority of Wednesday's set — the North Carolina band released one of the greatest rock albums of 2025 and is a guaranteed stellar live show.

After that, things get complicated. Start with Lykke Li on the Outdoor Theatre stage at 5:20 p.m.; last time she played Coachella in 2015, she was a festival highlight, and now with new music on the horizon, she's likely to feed the nostalgia the festival loves and bring some more sparkling pop. Head over to Mojave no later than 5:50 to hopefully see Central Cee close out his set with "Sprinter" (cross your fingers for a Dave cameo). Before Dijon starts at the Outdoor Theatre at 6:40 p.m., you'll have time to see the first bit of CMAT, a fresh face in country-tinged theatrical pop, on the Gobi stage.

Next, of course, is fakemink — the buzziest name of the day. 7:20 p.m. on the Gobi stage.

From there it all falls into place: Turnstile (8:05 p.m., Outdoor Theatre, bound to be a great energy boost), Sabrina Carpenter (9:05 p.m., Main stage, every person should see "Manchild" live once in their life), Ethel Cain (10:35 p.m., Mojave tent, the Coachella haunting experience), and finish the night with Blood Orange (11:55 p.m., Mojave — maybe recent collaborator Brendan Yates of Turnstile will skip over from the Outdoor Theatre to join the fun).

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SATURDAY

Plan by Sheldon Pearce

Must see: 
There is something thrilling about watching Alex G strap on an accordion mid-song for "June Guitar," from last year's Headlights, during a gig, and that alone might be worth the price of a Coachella ticket. (OK, probably not, but definitely worth seeing on a livestream for free.) The only thing preventing the DIY king turned major-label convert from being the can't-miss performance of Saturday is a last-minute addition: 2025 Rock Hall inductee Jack White, who joins the first weekend as a surprise set at the Mojave tent. He likely won't play "Seven Nation Army" — so what. You don't even really have to like his last few albums to appreciate him live. It's the one forum where his finicky guitar ways always pay off big — he will grab three to four axes, rotate through them across the set, and shred like he's playing to scrape together bus fare out of Indio.

Day plan:
To get the best Saturday experience, start your stream at 2:40 p.m. with the first 20 minutes of Blondshell's set at the Outdoor Theatre before flipping over to catch Jack White in the Mojave tent.

Stretch your legs, grab a bite, walk the dog, then tap in for Ecca Vandal, a South African-born, Melbourne-raised punk-rock rapper who plays the Sonora stage at 4:20 p.m. Hit Alex G (5:10 p.m., Outdoor stage) and the gripping (and polarizing) band Geese (6:15 p.m., Gobi) back to back.

You can opt in or out of best new artist Grammy shortlister Sombr's 7:05 p.m. set at the Outdoor theatre — maybe you want to see what all the hype is about or maybe you need to step away from the screen for a spell — before embracing the exuberant Afropop pioneer Davido (7:50 p.m., Gobi).

In the first major conflict of the day, catch PinkPantheress at 8:55 p.m. in the Mojave tent instead of The Strokes over on the main stage; sure, she's nostalgic for the era the band got famous in, but her time is now, post-Fancy That? and her Alysa Liu cosign. If you're really yearning for post-punk revivalists from NYC's aughts indie scene, have no fear: Interpol is on at Mojave right after. Then stay up late for whatever Swag hijinks Saturday headliner Justin Bieber has planned for the main stage.

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Matt Winkelmeyer

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SUNDAY

Plan by Anamaria Sayre

Must see: 

My friends: Little Simz. This something-for-everyone artist who retains her own unmistakable flair has graced the desert stage before, appearing in tiny print on the 2019 poster and making a guest appearance with Gorillaz in 2023. On Sunday, the U.K. rapper is back with space to release the full Simz flow on a much larger stage.

Simz has always had a gift for taking a live opportunity to hit you over the head with her rapid-fire flow. She unleashes venom with impressive control and is always certain to mix equal parts slam and R&B. In this late afternoon solo slot, she could have an opportunity to fill out her set with a tight live band or maybe sneak in some strings, all the better to represent a sound that gets bigger and brighter with each new record.

Day plan:

The desert is a marathon, not a sprint. You've made it to Sunday (whether on the ground or virtual) so you're well-versed in pacing. We have to start out slow and maybe a little sad, so first stop is Samia (playing the Mojave tent at 3:15 p.m.), leading directly into Little Simz on the same stage.

From there, keep the energy up by hopping over to Clipse (5:15 p.m., Outdoor Theatre) for what's sure to be a performance as gripping as their off-kilter beats. Do a quick flip halfway through to make it over to the Sonora stage by 5:50 p.m. for the last half of Los Retros. It's sure to be sonic whiplash, given that these young romantic crooners bring living room vibes, but it's worth the sprint, and anyway, by this point in the weekend you're a pro at juggling disparate sounds. When that's over, if you wanna lean into the mood shifts and go for one more heart-rate spike via hardcore cleanse, you can just make the last 15 minutes of Suicidal Tendencies back at the Mojave tent.

Take a little breather, get some sustenance, and hop back to it for some straight-from-Norway dance floor flair with Röyksopp. If you're watching the live stream, you may have to skip the Norwegian gathering (Yuma stage isn't currently included on the YouTube schedule) and trade it for a bumping party closer to home — Georgia-bred rapper Young Thug on the main stage.

Now we're sprinting to the finish: You'll split time at a pair of worthwhile overlapping sets by starting with avant-garde English singer FKA twigs (innovation is twigs' most tried and true mode of being, so there's certain to be something we've never seen before), and (if you can tear yourself away before the end) moving on to catch the end of Chicago's own French Police. Close out the night on the main stage, starting at 9:55 p.m. with the first Latina to ever headline Coachella, la bichota herself, Karol G.

Copyright 2026 NPR

It was the end of an era for a sign of the times.

On a rainy March day in 1999, a 70-foot billboard perched at the doorstep of the Sunset Strip was taken down and trucked away. That spot on Sunset Boulevard and Marmont Lane had long been the home of the rough-hewn, lasso-toting Marlboro Man — so much a fixture it became part of the glitz and glam of L.A.

"It was such an iconic ad — such a tall billboard with this very handsome image up there," said John Heilman, current and then-mayor of West Hollywood. "Right there by the Chateau Marmont and near a lot of music venues that we have up on Sunset."

Billboards along the Sunset Strip, including one for Marlboro, in December 1985.

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That's how I came to know about these larger-than-life Marlboro billboards, going to the Roxy and the Whiskey to see shows, and to the Sunset Tower Records for music in the 1990s. I didn't know it at the time, the image apparently changed every couple of years, but the vibe was so consistent it felt like one, long seamless spell.

 "When you came in on Sunset, that is what you saw," said Neil Ford, head of sales for central U.S. and the West Coast at Big Happy, a digital and mobile ad agency based in Chicago. "It really captured what out-of-home [advertisement] was at that moment, what it meant."

The Marlboro billboard on Sunset Boulevard.

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Ford said the campaign was groundbreaking — advertising at its most effective.

"You think about that image of the Marlboro Man. It was a different size, it had presence and it captured your attention," Ford said.

It was a gamechanger for Philip Morris. Sales for Marlboro hit $5 million in 1955, a more than 3,000%  increase a year after its debut.

In other words, it attracted more smokers.

 "It was obvious that the image of the rugged Marlboro Man encouraged generations of men to smoke," said Paul Koretz, a former West Hollywood council member who was at the sign on that March day to celebrate its fall.

The total pivot

Hypermasculinity aside, Marlboro was originally marketed to women as a luxury brand peddling a mild flavor when it was introduced in the 1920s.

The pivot came three decades later, when the company was looking for a way to sell men on filtered cigarettes, long considered effeminate and less flavorful.

Enter Chicago ad man Leo Burnett, who engineered what many consider one of the greatest brand reinventions of all time by creating a new series of mascots — not just butch cowboys, but tough-as-nail sailors, hunters, businessmen, sportsmen, writers.

At the end, the cowboy won out, becoming the brand's reigning Marlboro Man.

" They brought this masculine symbol — image, visual — and really re-created what Marlboro as a brand meant," Ford said. "And it just was one image, there was very little copy. It had the logo on it. It was its own creation at the time."

The campaign propelled Marlboro to the top of the domestic industry by the 1970s, even as the toll on public health from the use of tobacco products racked up.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that some 480,000 people in the U.S. die every year from cigarette smoking, including exposure to second-hand smoke. At least four actors who portrayed Marlboro Man died from smoking-related diseases.

In 1971, the U.S. banned cigarette advertising on television and radio. Brands then shifted to other mediums, in particular billboards.

The Sunset Strip

A street view looking west from the northern side of Sunset Boulevard near Chateau Marmont at night. In the background is the billboard for Marlboro.

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The 1.7-mile stretch of Sunset Strip in West Hollywood has never been a stranger to grabby billboards. In fact, it was where the medium became art.

"It's always been known for very creative advertising," Heilman, West Hollywood’s mayor, said.

Its golden era was arguably the 1970s, when giant, hand-painted rock ‘n’ roll signs lined the Strip, a veritable checklist of who’s who in the music world.

Various billboards on the Sunset Strip and Horn Avenue during a full moon in June 1980.

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The phenomenon started in 1967, with Elektra Records taking out a billboard to promote the debut album of a little-known local band called The Doors.

Two years later, The Beatles’ "Abbey Road" appeared, followed by Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen.

The era came to a close in the 1980s with the advent of MTV, which changed the playbook of music marketing, says photographer Robert Landau in his book, Rock 'n' Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip.

"Other types of billboards focusing on the entertainment industry were very popular," Heilman said. "A lot of the new movie releases, new album releases, new product releases."

And the Marlboro Man stood amid this hit parade in one of the most commanding spots on The Strip since at least the late 1970s.

"As I recall, at one point they actually had steam coming out of it to simulate smoke," said Heilman, who has lived in West Hollywood for more than four decades.

Night view of large billboards along Sunset Strip circa 1980.

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Roy Hankey

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Billboard ads along Sunset Strip in November 1985.

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The billboard predates the incorporation of West Hollywood as a city in 1984. Helping to lead the cityhood efforts was Koretz, who went on to become a City Council member for West Hollywood before serving on the state Assembly and the Los Angeles City Council.

"I actually lived near the Sunset Strip, so I thought about it every time I drove by," he said of the Marlboro Man ad. "It was one of the most effective symbols of tobacco marketing."

Both his parents, Koretz said, were heavy lifelong smokers who died from the addiction.  As a lawmaker, Koretz led a number of anti-smoking efforts, including a smoking ban in restaurants in West Hollywood — as well as a near total ban on tobacco advertising in the city.

Large billboard of the Marlboro Man, located on the Sunset Strip at Marmont Lane in West Hollywood, circa 1985.

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That ban was passed in the final months of 1998, just before a settlement agreement between the nation's biggest tobacco companies, including Philip Morris, and dozens of state attorneys general. The $206 billion deal settled lawsuits filed by the states to recoup health care costs for smoking-related illnesses. It also banned youth marketing, as well as outdoor advertising.

As a result, Los Angeles's most famous Marlboro Man stepped down on March 10, 1999 — about a month before the official removal deadline.

That day, Koretz held a news conference to send the sign off. He said not everyone was happy to see the landmark go. But the ban, among a slew of other anti-smoking policies, have made an impact.

Last year, the American Cancer Society reported cigarette smoking among U.S. adults dropped from  42% in 1965 to 11% in 2023.

" It was always controversial. There are always people that didn't like it," Koretz said of the billboard ban. "This is largely a success story."

Shortly after, a new billboard went up in the place of the Marlboro Man on Sunset.

It was still a cowboy, looking eerily similar to its fallen predecessor, but with a limp cigarette hanging from his mouth.

Instead of Marlboro, it read, "Impotent."