The Brief

This article was originally published by the Long Beach Post, a nonprofit news organization.

After months of silent speakers and empty aisles, one of Long Beach’s favorite record stores is spinning back to life, giving music lovers and vinyl collectors the renewed thrill of flipping through records and rediscovering forgotten favorites.

Long cherished as a cornerstone of the local music scene, Bagatelle Records plans to reopen in April, bringing back thousands of vinyls to be sold at its shop at 260 Atlantic Ave. in downtown Long Beach.

For five decades, the store was a hub for music enthusiasts, offering rare records and guidance to both collectors and casual shoppers. Much of that reputation came from owner Steve Mintz, whose knowledge of vinyl and genuine care for everyone who walked through his doors kept customers coming back.

The store closed its doors when Mintz died late last year, disappointing regulars who had come to depend on it. Now, Mintz’s close friend, a longtime DJ and record collector who goes by the name Mike Vague, has taken over as owner.

After Mintz’s death, he’d been helping clear out the shop and was surprised at people’s reaction to seeing him inside.

“While I was in here cleaning up, people were pounding on the glass, saying, ‘When are you opening? Please open, please open,’” Vague said. “I’m 57 now, not 20. I started talking to people, and they made the transition simple and easy. We cut a deal, and I said, ‘OK, hold my nose and bite in.’”

While the shop will reopen with the Bagatelle signage still in place, it will operate legally under the new name Mike Vague Records. However, Vague said he is committed to preserving the store’s spirit, in part by keeping prices that longtime customers remember.

“There are probably around just 250,000 records to be sold in the shop,” he said. “That means I’m going to be friendly. I’m not going to gauge if someone is asking $30 for a record. I’ll probably have it for $18. I’m going to keep the price point buyer friendly.”

Michael Vegh holds up a Maxwell album in Long Beach on March 10.

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Right beside Vague will be Gary Page, an employee of the shop since the 1970s. In that time, Page has seen firsthand how much joy customers took in discovering rare records they sold.

“Record collecting is an amazing hobby and sometimes you have a copy that nobody has and all of a sudden everybody loves it,” Page said. “It’s a part of your history as you’re growing up, you’re listening to that stuff.”

For Page, the shop has always been about more than records; it’s about the culture and history of music. That connection to the past and the community is part of what makes the store’s return so meaningful.

“Thirty years later, you go back and you want that stuff again. You want to relive the better times that you had,” Page said.

Gary Page helps to sort and clean stacks of vinyl records in Long Beach on Monday, March 10, 2026.

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As for Vague, he said he understands the care and attention Mintz brought to every customer at the shop and knows he can’t replicate it. Still, he hopes to honor that example by talking with regulars, tending the records and welcoming everyone who walks through the door as best he can.

“Steve was a very personable person. He always handed them water and liked to tell stories and listen to people’s stories. I have a little of that in me. I’m not shy,” Vague said.

L.A. is one step closer to seeing speed cameras installed throughout the city. The Los Angeles City Council today unanimously adopted two reports from the Department of Transportation, which decided where those cameras will go.

A 2023 state law allows some cities, like Los Angeles, to pilot cameras that detect speeding drivers and help generate citations. L.A. is authorized to install these cameras in 125 locations. These cameras are already set up in some cities, including San Francisco and Oakland.

City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said at Tuesday’s meeting that the city is missing out on potential revenue that these cameras could generate.

“L.A. is the last to implement it, and frankly, that's embarrassing and unfortunate,” Yaroslavsky said. “Just want to note how often we talk about how we don't have money to make street safety improvements or fund HLA mandates. This is a meaningful source of funding for projects that are going to save lives, and we're just leaving it on the table.”

Why it matters 

Yaroslavsky said speeding cars are the leading cause of death of children in Los Angeles.

“That should stop all of us in our tracks,” she said. “This program gives us a tool to prevent those deaths and protect people in every neighborhood. L.A. should lead on pedestrian safety.”

In L.A., traffic collisions killed 290 people last year, and more than 150 fatal collisions involved pedestrians, according to the LAPD.

Damian Kevitt, the executive director of Streets Are For Everyone, on Tuesday urged the council to support implementing and expediting the program.

“I am proud of how this program has been crafted with safety as its primary and foremost purpose. I love that the revenue from this program can only be used for road safety improvements across L.A.,” Kevitt said during Tuesday’s public comment. “I also love that it is not allowed to be run by law enforcement but instead is administered by LA DOT.”

Where will the cameras go? 

The Department of Transportation proposed installing cameras on streetlight poles throughout the city, with cameras evenly distributed across districts.

One amendment made to the map is that in Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s District 1, made up of parts of northeast and northwest L.A., the camera system will be installed on Figueroa Street, instead of on Venice Boulevard.

LADOT’s map below does not reflect Tuesday’s amendment but does show the other locations:

Proposed location of speed cameras. Click to see an interactive version.

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LADOT

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What’s next? 

Tuesday’s vote approves LADOT’s plan to launch a 60-day public information campaign to inform residents and drivers about where these cameras will be installed.

LADOT will also expand its Community Assistance Parking program to allow people who are unhoused or low income to do community service instead of paying a citation. The department is also expected to provide annual reports on its efforts to support people with low income.

Once installed, drivers will have a 60-day grace period, during which, if they are caught speeding by the cameras, they will get a warning. But after that grace period is up, speeding drivers will be ticketed.

Kavish Harjai contributed to this story.

Los Angeles County leaders voted Tuesday to rename the upcoming César Chávez holiday to “Farmworkers Day” and develop a process to remove the name of the now-disgraced civil rights icon from county facilities, parks, streets and monuments.

In a unanimous vote, the Board of Supervisors directed the county CEO and county counsel to create a “community-driven” process and report back to the board within 21 days.

It would include a plan to conduct “multilingual and culturally competent outreach across impacted communities, including residents and nonprofit organizations,” according to the motion.

The move came in the wake of allegations uncovered by a New York Times investigation that Chávez sexually assaulted at least two girls and a woman in the 1960s and 1970s.

Chávez, who died in 1993, was head of the United Farm Workers union and is widely recognized as one of the most influential labor leaders in U.S. history, known for founding the union and for leading national boycotts of grapes to improve working conditions for farmworkers.

Union co-founder Dolores Huerta, now 95, told the Times she was raped by Chávez and that those incidents resulted in pregnancies. Huerta said she gave the children up for adoption after they were born.

She said she kept the rape and sexual assault secret for decades to protect the farm worker movement.

Comments from the supervisors

The motion was introduced to the board Tuesday by Supervisor Hilda Solis, and co-authored by Supervisors Janice Hahn and Lindsey Horvath.

L.A. County's Farmworkers Day will continue to be observed on the last Monday of March.

“The County of Los Angeles has a firm responsibility to ensure any public recognitions reflect our shared values of justice, dignity, and respect, and today’s actions uphold those values,” Solis said in a statement.

“By centering the experiences of survivors, highlighting the contributions of farmworkers past and present, and acknowledging the courage of women and community leaders who built this movement, we can honor the true legacy of the farmworker movement while confronting difficult truths,” she continued.

Hahn acknowledged that the revelations about Chávez and the details the women who spoke out shared publicly had been “heartbreaking.” She said that in the days that followed, she’d heard many people suggest changing the name of the holiday.

“The abuses of one man should not diminish the extraordinary sacrifices and accomplishments of the Farm Worker Movement,” she said during the board meeting. “And renaming this holiday acknowledges that.”

She also noted that the issue also serves as a reminder that men were only half the story.

“We know that women were at the core of all of our great civil rights movements.”

Horvath noted that leaders aren’t movements, people are.

“No matter the struggle, the outcome, the worthy gains fought for, the reality is that those came at a cost to women and girls,” she said, before reciting some of the names of the women shared in the New York Times article, including Huerta.

“Centering survivors isn’t just the right thing to do in this situation,” Horvath continued. “It is the only thing to do.”

Supervisor Holly Mitchell said she supported the motions considered Tuesday, but that they were a first step. She said she hoped county government and the broader community would consider a new way of naming public property to honor private people.

Mitchell said she wanted, at some point, to consider establishing a “thoughtful protocol to really justify to the public … our rationale for the naming of a public asset for a private resident.”

What’s next?

Acting County CEO Joseph Nicchitta said the office is still working to complete an inventory of all county assets that bear Chávez’s name or likeness.

“We do not have a central inventory of every property with every name attached to it,” Nicchitta said. “But the process is well underway. We think we have a relatively good handle on things like buildings, signage, civic art and even programs.”

He said county staff need a few more days to make sure the inventory is complete. One complicating factor, he added, is that there are city and school district buildings that bear Chávez’s name that the county occupies.

That requires the separate government entities to work together and avoid duplicating efforts.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass signed a proclamation last week renaming the city’s Chávez holiday “Farmworkers Day.” The city recognizes the holiday on the last Monday of March.

The state holiday is recognized on March 31, Chávez's birthday. The state Assembly on Monday approved a bill to rename the holiday for farm workers. If it passes a vote by the state Senate, it's expected to head to the governor's desk later this week.

Earlier Tuesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board voted unanimously to rename two campuses named after Chávez by fall 2026 and to fund the removal of murals and any other commemorations in his name at other schools.

Coming into the first major mayoral debate, Los Angeles city resident Sapna Suresh wanted to understand how the potential alternatives to incumbent Mayor Karen Bass diagnose the problems the city is facing.

For the three candidates who attended the debate Monday, one diagnosis was clear: L.A. isn’t the city it could be.

• Adam Miller, founder of a homelessness nonprofit and self-described lifelong Democrat, said the city is “broken,” physically and figuratively.
• Nithya Raman, an L.A. city councilwoman, said the city is “challenged.”
• Rae Huang, a Presbyterian minister, community organizer and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, said L.A. needs “new and fresh leadership.”

The candidates, among 40 to qualify for the June primary, answered questions about housing and transportation over the course of about an hour and a half in downtown L.A. The debate was organized by groups Streets for All and Housing Action Coalition. Streets for All founder Michael Schneider and Housing Action Coalition’s Southern California Director Jesse Zwick moderated.

Bass declined the invitation to participate. Spencer Pratt, another candidate surfacing high in polling, was invited but did not attend. The debate came on the heels of a poll released Sunday from UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times that showed her leading the crowded field, even while many voters say they view her unfavorably.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass delivers her State of the City address from City Hall in Los Angeles on April 15, 2024.

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The poll found Bass had about 25% of support from likely voters. Raman, who entered the race just two months ago, is polling at 17%. Pratt, a former reality TV star, has 14% of support from those polled. Huang and Miller are each polling below 10%.

Takeaways from attendees

Truman Segal and Jacob Wasserman, whom LAist interviewed together, said they admired Huang’s passion, grassroots campaign and community-focused policies.

Ultimately, Suresh, who'd come to hear the candidates take on the state of the city, left the debate feeling confident about her pre-existing preference for Raman.

Councilmember Nithya Raman photographed in her home.

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“She was able to identify the problem, diagnose it, articulate a vision for how she would solve it, and point to specifics she’s done in her legislative career,” Suresh said.

Annika Wines said she appreciated the values Huang shared, but concluded that she’s “running on buzzwords.”

“I felt Nithya was running on a campaign platform with actual realized goals … and an actual plan about how she was going to attain more affordable housing, more housing in general, safer streets, more access to transportation,” Wines said.

Watch the full debate

Top issues covered

Measure ULA

A majority of city voters in 2022 approved Measure ULA, which taxes high-value real estate sales. The goal of the tax, commonly referred to as the “mansion tax,” is to raise funds for renters’ aid and development of affordable housing, though studies from academics and researchers have shown it has reduced multi-family housing production in the city.

The tax has been a high-profile subject in L.A. City Council, which earlier this month voted to form an ad hoc committee to explore reforms to Measure ULA.

When asked about their positions on the initiative, Raman invoked the reforms she tried, but failed, to get on the June ballot. She argued those reforms, including an exemption from the tax on apartment buildings built in the last 15 years, would still retain most of the revenue funding for eviction defense and affordable housing production.

“This is where Nithya and I disagree greatly,” Huang said, alleging that Raman, in concert with Bass, is “dangling the idea that developers will get a tax break” and supported revisions to the law without community input.

Raman pushed back on Huang, saying she worked with the tax’s proponents, labor groups and developers to come up with reforms.

Rae Huang is among those running for mayor of Los Angeles

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Miller said the law needs to be “greatly reformed” and has caused developers to shy away from investing in the city.

LAX management

The candidates also differed on management of Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency responsible for LAX. The agency has been criticized for pursuing a major roadways project with one of the developers working on the embattled Automated People Mover, which has suffered years of delays and nearly a billion dollars in budget overruns.

Raman faulted “disinterest from the leadership in City Hall” for the issues facing Los Angeles World Airports and said she’d use her position as mayor to make changes to airport leadership when projects aren’t done on time.

Immediately, Huang asked why Raman hasn’t pushed for changes in her time on council.

Raman retorted with a list of initiatives she pushed “over the areas that [she has] real control over.” Raman, who heads the city council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, specifically spoke about lowering annual rent increases.

Traffic fatalities

In 2025, 6% fewer Angelenos died in traffic fatalities than the year prior. Still, with 290 traffic deaths in the city last year, according to police data, L.A. is far from the goal it set a decade ago to reach zero such deaths.

When asked about their support for cameras that automatically issue tickets to drivers who run red lights, Huang was at first stumped but eventually said she doesn’t support technology that surveils the community.

Raman and Miller disagreed with Huang, saying L.A. should reinstate a red light camera program, which local leaders canceled back in 2011.

Tech entrepreneur Adam Miller is among those running for mayor of Los Angeles

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“Speeding kills, and automated enforcement is one tool in our toolkit to be able to address this,” Raman said. “ I would make sure that any automated enforcement tool that we're using will not share data, will not add to surveillance, but merely increase safety, and that's totally possible to do.”

Housing crisis

All three of the candidates largely fell on the same page about:

• The need to increase housing production
• Shortcomings of Bass’ signature homelessness program, Inside Safe,
• The need to boost the budget for street and sidewalk-focused city departments.

Huang and Raman emphasized how they’d both use the city’s four Metro Board seats to shepherd through timely regional transit projects. Huang committed to appointing transit riders rather than politicians as decision makers for the countywide transportation agency.

“ We need to ensure that our Metro Board is going to be actually driven by people who ride it,” Huang said.

Huang and Raman both also emphasized the need for multi-year budget plans to ensure infrastructure projects have dedicated funding to get done.

Other topics covered include congestion pricing, Executive Directive One and LADWP-related housing delays. You can watch the entire debate here.

Where was Mayor Bass?

A Bass campaign spokesperson said last week that the mayor “can’t participate in every debate invitation” but is “eager to discuss her record of changing L.A. and her vision for the future of Los Angeles."

The spokesperson did not answer follow-up questions about the reason for Bass’ absence. A regular Friday email from Bass’ communications office that details the mayor’s public events said she would be traveling out of state Monday and returning Tuesday morning.

For debate attendee Mikey Reid, the mayor’s absence could be seen as a positive.

“ We want to have multiple candidates taking her to task for certain shortcomings, but I felt it ultimately worked in the candidates’ favor in a way that they were able to just articulate their vision without necessarily only centering it on negatives,” Reid said.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California sued the Trump administration Monday to block what it says is an unprecedented power grab: using emergency authority to force the restart of an offshore oil operation shut down more than a decade ago.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, argues a March 13 order by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright oversteps his authority under the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era law.

“No matter how much President Trump may claim there's a so-called national energy emergency — it's just not true,” Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters. “The U.S. already produces significantly more oil and gas than we use — it's a completely fabricated claim intended to curry favor with the oil industry.”

The legal fight pits the Trump administration and Sable Offshore Corp. against California officials and environmental groups — and comes as fuel prices jump in the wake of the Iran conflict. Sable, which bought the system from ExxonMobil in 2024, has told investors that production could increase from about 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to more than 50,000 if it restarts, sending oil to refineries in Los Angeles, Bakersfield and the Bay Area.

California argues the emergency powers law is meant to prioritize contracts during emergencies — not to override state law or force a pipeline restart. The state says the administration failed to meet the law’s basic requirements, including showing an actual energy shortage.

Wright’s order marked the most aggressive federal intervention yet in a yearslong dispute. A March 3 legal opinion from the U.S. Justice Department had laid the groundwork, concluding that the emergency order could preempt state law — and even override a 2020 federal consent decree requiring approval from the California State Fire Marshal before the pipeline can restart.

Environmental groups and experts have argued that forcing the pipeline back into production would not lower gasoline prices but would put coastal wildlife at risk and set a troubling precedent for federal power over state law. The Trump administration has long sought to expand offshore oil leasing along the West Coast, which has drawn fierce opposition in California.

Sable is facing mounting legal pressure on multiple fronts. In December, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration ruled that the infrastructure qualifies as an interstate pipeline and issued an emergency permit approving a restart plan — a move environmental groups and the state of California challenged. That case is pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In February, a Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge ordered the pipeline to remain shut down, ruling that earlier federal intervention was not enough to override an injunction requiring Sable to obtain state approvals before restarting.

Representatives for Sable, the Energy Department and the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

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