The Brief

The bear is back.

Her return in March has become as predictable as Daylight Saving Time, the Spring Equinox and green beer. This full-grown black bear arrives unannounced to pillage our backyard bird feeder and feast on the black oil sunflower seeds and, in the case of her return the other day, an added bonus of dried cranberries that we had sprinkled into the mix only hours earlier.

There you go, another shattered bird feeder headed for the landfill after getting the bear treatment!

As much as I lament the waste of metal and glass, I delight in 162's visits. That's the number on her ear jewelry, which is the green tag affixed by wildlife officials who tell me she's about 6 years old and likes to frequent the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in Altadena and La Cañada Flintridge.

If 162 has another name, she hasn't shared it with me. Instead of giving her one myself, like "Meatball" or "French Fry'' (actual local bears), I prefer to allow her the dignity of keeping her identity cloaked in the enigmatic three digits assigned when she was first captured in suburbia before being tagged and whisked off into the Angeles National Forest — the first of three times.

According to some publicity she received in 2021, she first turned up in springtime at a preschool in Altadena. "The California Department of Fish and Wildlife responded and deemed the female bear not aggressive and, in fact, wasn't really causing any problems," the Crescenta Valley Weekly reported. The wildlife biologists gave up trying to convince her to stay in her mountain habitat, as she had been fed by humans and, no surprise here, liked it.

Black bear 162, caught in the act, barely notices her audience of East Coast college students in March 2023.

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Susanne Whatley

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LAist

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This brings me to the birdfeeder(s). The last one to bite the dust at the claws and jaws of 162 was during a visit I summoned in March of last year, when my daughter and five girlfriends visiting from their Pennsylvania college were treated to a command performance by this gentle marauder. Mere hours after I'd admonished them to watch out for wildlife in the yard, including bears (boy did their eyes go wide at that notion), 162 paid an afternoon visit to the feeder. As she tore it to the ground and chomped away, these East Coast ladies marveled at the show. Out came the phones to chronicle it on video as living proof of how their California friend lives on the razor's edge, at danger's very door.

Our first bird feeder fell victim in October of 2021, at a time of year when black bears like to fatten up before their winter torpor. This untagged individual surprised me while I was broadcasting live from home during LAist 89.3's Morning Edition. Seconds before going on the air, I turned to see it through the window about 15 feet away as it mauled the feeder and chowed down on the contents. A social media-savvy colleague turned this encounter into a viral moment: This fall and next spring, I’ll make sure to put the bird feeding on hiatus.

Interesting how I could live some place my whole life and only recently experience the joy and wonderment of a close encounter with such a massive beast as Ursus americanus. But bear sightings are becoming more common because there are more bears. The US Forest Service notes on its San Bernardino website that "Black bears are being observed in areas where they were not seen 50 years ago along the Central Coast and Transverse mountain ranges of Southern California. Between 25,000 and 30,000 black bears are now estimated to occupy 52,000 square miles in California."

The black bear is also a game mammal. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife issues "bear tags" to allow the bruins to be hunted in the counties of Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside. Its Bear Management Program collects teeth from killed bears to determine their ages by counting the rings. I prefer not to think of such things.

162 may be huge with claws that could shred skin and sinew, but in my experience she is not scrapping for a fight. We've seen her (or her kind) sleep on our lawn, climb our fences, upend our trash can and terrorize our cat, but she acts without malice. Clapping and shouting "shoo, bear!" appears to be all it takes to send her on her way to surprise — and hopefully delight — someone else.

Inglewood Unified is one step closer to independence more than a decade after the state took over the school district amid a financial crisis.

A July report found the district has improved its financial and facilities management enough to operate independently. If Inglewood maintains this progress, the district could regain local control in 2027 with some guardrails.

“They've met the standards that really demonstrate we have strong systems in place, sound financial management, that the district is operating effectively so that students can learn and thrive and do well,” Debra Duardo, Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools, told LAist.

The county, which has authority over the 6,000-student school district, announced the news that the district had met 153 standards at a press conference Thursday at City Honors International Preparatory High.

James Morris, who has served as the county-appointed administrator for the district since 2023, said one example of a change the district has made is setting up a system to monitor utility bills.

“This is an achievement that was built by people, not just spreadsheets,” Morris said. “Our teachers, our classified staff, our labor partners, community partners, have all been working hard for 14 years.”

The backstory

In 2012, the Inglewood Unified Board of Trustees requested a multimillion-dollar loan from the state to balance its budget.

A state report said the district’s financial insolvency had been created by overstatement of attendance (which is the basis for state funding), understatement of salary costs, deficit spending and declining enrollment among other factors.

The district ultimately borrowed $29 million and became one of only 10 school districts in the state to enter receivership since 1990 as a condition of an emergency loan. Inglewood’s board lost the power to make decisions and an administrator was appointed, first by the state, and later by the L.A. County Office of Education.

Ernesto Castillo was a senior at City Honors when the district was placed under receivership.

“It was a really scary time, and it felt that I was leaving a sinking ship when I graduated,” Castillo, who’s now a member of the district’s board, said. “To see it still kind of flounder for years under state control was really disappointing and disheartening, especially as it affected my cousins, it affected the residents of my community.”

John Hughes has been an educator in the district for nearly three decades and is the president of the Inglewood Teachers Association.

“ When you have an outside entity's scrutiny, I think it creates a feeling among educators of a lack of autonomy,” Hughes said. “But also a lack of a voice to be heard with the real needs that they're experiencing day to day.”

Marcie Brown, vice president of the Inglewood Council of PTAs, said the most recent county-appointed administrator, has been more transparent with the community.

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Mariana Dale

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LAist

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Marcie Brown, vice president of the Inglewood Council of PTAs, said the receivership created a negative perception of the district that obscured the rich experience that her grandchildren had in the district.

“ We heard all the buzzwords, underdeveloped, underprivileged. I'm like, ‘We never accepted any of those words at all,’” Brown said. “Our children got to … live large regardless.”

Castillo, the board member, said it was challenging for the board not to have the final say on the decisions such as closing five schools in 2025.

“It created anxiety about who and what is being served with these decisions,” Castillo said. “ Now moving forward, the district and the community knows that the board is gonna make decisions on behalf of their voters, on behalf of their students or their families, and I think that's gonna help regain trust.”

Inglewood Unified’s road to recovery

Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), the California agency that supports public schools' financial and business practices, has evaluated Inglewood Unified across five areas since 2013:

• Community relations and governance 
• Personnel management
• Pupil achievement
• Financial management 
• Facilities management

The first step for the district to exit receivership is to meet 153 standards that touch on everything from budget development to data collection.

Michael Fine, FCMAT’s CEO, said most districts exit this phase within six years.

“ Inglewood's a bit unique in that it has been in phase one since inception,” Fine said.

The district cycled through several external administrators appointed by the state before a change in the law transferred oversight to the county in 2018.

“ Leadership turnover is really detrimental to a district,” Duardo, the County Superintendent, said. “You have to have leaders that are gonna stick around and know the community and know the staff and be able to do the work.”

The district met the FCMAT standards for community relations and governance in 2023 and personnel and student achievement in 2025.

The district met the standards in the last two areas— financial and facilities management— in the most recent report released this month.

What’s next

FCMAT will return to conduct another evaluation of the district next year. If Inglewood maintains or improves its scores, the county can return power to the board.

However, an assigned trustee will have the power to reverse board decisions until the district pays off the initial state loan and passes an external audit.

FCMAT’s most recent evaluation also outlines remaining challenges, including continued deficit spending and declining enrollment.

“ If in receivership, with all this extra assistance and focus, they're not balancing their budget, then what happens when those extra protections disappear?” Fine asked.

Los Angeles housing officials say they’ve averted a crisis that could have put thousands of families at risk of homelessness by the start of 2027.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of low-income Angelenos moved into apartments with the help of federally funded emergency housing vouchers. More than 4,300 households in the city and county still rely on those vouchers to subsidize their rents.

But L.A. officials have warned that federal funding to support this program will dry up at the end of December 2026, potentially leading to evictions and homelessness for tenants unable to pay the full rent on their units.

On Thursday, city and county housing authorities announced that increased federal funding and improved local budgets will now allow all emergency housing voucher holders to transition out of the temporary pandemic program and into the traditional Housing Choice Voucher program, widely known as Section 8.

“This is housing for the long term for these families,” said Marcie Vega, director of assisted housing programs for the Housing Authority of the City of L.A.

How many families are affected?

The city’s housing authority oversees leases for more than 2,700 emergency housing vouchers. The county’s housing authority oversees another 1,600.

Officials say as long as participants still qualify for federal housing aid, they will be able to stay in their current homes without having to complete an onerous amount of paperwork.

“The housing authority is doing the administrative work to transition these families over,” Vega said, noting that the plan is to complete the transition by September.

Tenant advocates who work with renters on the temporary program say the news will ease a lot of anxiety.

“Folks we've been hearing from are in desperate panic,” said Manuel Villagomez, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. “It's a huge relief.”

How voucher programs work

Participants use these vouchers to find apartments on the private rental market, which can be a challenge given how many L.A. landlords are reluctant to accept them.

Tenants typically pay about 30% of their income toward their rent, with vouchers covering the rest.

The number of renters with incomes low enough to qualify for a voucher is far larger than the amount of vouchers L.A. housing authorities can offer.

Cities rarely open their waitlists, and they often pick applicants by lottery for a spot on the list. Once tenants are on the list, they can wait for years before getting a voucher.

It’s hot out there, and it’s only going to get hotter.

National Weather Service forecasters issued a slew of alerts this week as a heat wave settles into Southern California with even hotter weather right around the corner.

A heat advisory is in effect until Tuesday for much of the region, with triple-digit temperatures expected in some places. Then, from Tuesday through Thursday, July 16, L.A. County and its neighbors to the north are under a more severe extreme heat watch.

An extreme weather warning is already in place for the Coachella Valley, where highs are expected to approach 115 degrees on Friday.

Southern Californians are no strangers to hot weather in the summer, but heat waves are getting hotter, longer and more frequent as the climate changes.

And the words forecasters use to describe these weather events has changed too. The NWS rolled out new heat alert language last year after the previous summer broke records for the hottest in U.S. history.

So, what exactly triggers these heat alerts? And what should you do about them? Here’s a guide:

Heat Advisory: Advisories are issued when temperatures are expected to be hot enough to cause discomfort and potentially lead to heat-related illnesses, especially for more vulnerable populations like young children and the elderly. During a heat advisory, consider staying in a cool place and limiting outside activity, especially during the day. For those who spend time outside, be sure to drink plenty of water and take breaks in the shade.

Extreme Heat Watch: Watches are essentially forecasts for upcoming periods of extreme heat. Forecasters say heat watches often cover wide areas and will be revised into more focused warnings and advisories as conditions become clearer over time. Watches are a good time to prepare for extreme heat by, for example, locating a nearby cooling centers if you don’t have access to air conditioning.

Extreme Heat Warning: Warnings are issued when heat levels are or will likely become extremely dangerous. Under extreme heat warnings, it's a good idea to avoid strenuous outdoor activity, stay hydrated and help loved ones and pets stay cool.

Not one-size-fits-all

Forecasters say it is important to keep Southern California’s diverse geography in mind when thinking about what these alerts mean.

L.A. County, for example, covers beaches, valleys, mountains and deserts. Some areas have tree cover, while others are mostly concrete and asphalt. Temperatures can vary a lot between those landscapes. It might be 80 degrees near the coast when it’s 100 degrees in the desert.

Not everywhere under a heat advisory, watch or warning will necessarily see the highest temperatures in the forecast either. But it is likely that some places within the alert area will.

Heat is also experienced differently from community to community. For someone accustomed to living in the desert, 100-degree heat may feel different than it would for someone who lives near the beach.

National Weather Service forecasters often consult with local emergency management, fire and public health authorities about the needs of their particular residents when deciding where and when to issue alerts.

When I was 16, my family moved to Madrid, where I got a crash course in Spanish culture — including a legal drinking age that happened to match my own. Lucky me. (For those wondering, it’s now 18).

In Spain, there’s a whole rhythm to drinking; it’s less about getting drunk and more about the intentionality of what you reach for and when. A vermouth before lunch to open the appetite. And after dinner, a gin tonic, (yes, that's gin tonic, the Spanish way — not gin and tonic) nursed slowly over a long conversation. And if things get loose, a kalimotxo: red wine and Coke, the drink Spanish teenagers have been mixing in plazas since before they were legally allowed to.

Over the last few years, a wave of Spanish drinking culture has been quietly making its way into L.A. Even José Andrés — the chef behind downtown's San Laurel, and probably the city’s most famous Spaniard — devotes a chapter of his new book, Spain, My Way, to how his countrymen drink, arguing it's inseparable from how they eat. It's a good match for L.A. too: like Spain, we have a Mediterranean climate — hot, dry summers made for chilled, low-ABV drinking.

You can now experience those rituals I first saw in Madrid — enjoying vermouth, kalimotxo, gin tonic — at spots around town. So why not get a taste of Spain… without booking a flight?

La hora del vermut

LAIE, a cava-based Spanish vermouth, served over ice with orange and an olive.

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Brook Olsen

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Courtesy LAIE

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Most of us will know vermouth as the splash in a good martini. But it can be so much more than that, if you know what to drink. "It's not just a mixer… it's something you can enjoy by itself," says Alex Cardona, co-founder of a Barcelona-based vermouth company, LAIE (pronounced El-ay-yeah) with California restaurateur Raj Nallapothola.

The traditional way to drink vermouth — or vermut — in Spain is the ritual known as la hora del vermut — the vermouth hour, a midday get-together to share the drink over a few snacks.

There are many different kinds of vermouth, from pale, dry blanco to sweet, dark rojo. LAIE is a rojo, light in color but finishing sweet, made by a longtime family producer just outside Barcelona. It drinks like a lighter-bodied wine, blended with more than twenty botanicals. If you've ever enjoyed an Italian amaro, you're almost there.

Serve it before lunch, over ice with an orange slice and an olive — and if you want to kick things up, a splash of gin.

Kalimotxo

Wine and Cola's five styles launched exclusively in L.A. this summer.

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Courtesy Wine and Cola

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In 1999, when I was a teenager in Madrid, I’d see young people in the evening filling the plazas in droves, corner-store box wine and two-liters of Coke in hand — and the municipal workers who'd hose it all down by morning, only for the scene to repeat the next weekend.

Yes, wine and Coke, known in Spanish as kalimotxo, apparently go very well together, and dates to the ‘70s Basque Country, where festival-goers mixed spoiled wine with Coke to save it. While my taste for wine wasn’t really developed at the time, I appreciated the ingenuity of the drink for what it was.

Now, a ready-to-drink, canned version is arriving in L.A., the straightforwardly named Wine and Cola. The brand is modernizing the kalimotxo for the U.S. market, according to CEO Dale Laflam, who works with beverage brands for a living and saw canned cocktails booming while wine sat flat. Putting a kalimotxo in a can, ready to grab from a cooler, was the obvious move.

It's a deliberate 50-50 wine-and-cola blend, built cola-forward so it lands even if you're not a wine drinker. The cola leads, with a dry wine hum underneath. It comes in five styles — Original, Diet, Cherry, Rosé, and a citrusy one that drinks like white wine and Sprite.

Most lean sweet, thanks to that cola-forward base; I'd have taken more cherry in the Cherry, but that's me. I found the citrus the most balanced.

If you need more convincing, the drink's got famous fans. Lady Gaga has said her go-to is red wine and Diet Coke — a kalimotxo by any other name — and soccer's GOAT, Lionel Messi, recently copped to loving red wine with Sprite, the lighter cousin behind the citrus can.

As Laflam puts it, the whole thing "sounds wrong, tastes right."

Gin tonic — and the art of the sobremesa

Bar manager Gerard Belmonte builds Telefèric's gin tonics, including the color-changing Ibiza.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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After a lovely Spanish dinner — a paella, maybe, or a chuletón with patatas and piquillo peppers — the meal doesn't really end. It eases into sobremesa, the long stretch of table time after the plates are cleared, and that's when the gin tonic arrives.

Yes, that’s right. Spain loves their gin tonics. It isn't Spanish by birth (it was actually started by British officers in India drinking quinine-laden tonic to beat malaria), but Spain adopted it and made it a national obsession, where the drink is poured over ice in big balloon glasses and loaded with botanicals.

At the Telefèric Barcelona resturant in Long Beach, at 2nd & PCH, with locations in California and Arizona, drinking gin tonics is a nightly ritual. It's owned by the Padrosa family, and the lineage traces back to their original location in Barcelona.

"We always do a gin tonic after dinner," bar manager Gerard Belmonte told me. "We keep it on the table for three, four hours, talk with people. It's a good digestive, too — that's in our culture."

Belmonte walked me through three of the house pours, each of which pays homage to a different corner of Spain. The Catalan is the driest — mostly gin and tonic, garnished with juniper, rosemary, grapefruit, and a touch of lemon for a clean, refreshing finish. The Galicia gets a blue stripe of Bombay Sapphire's edible paint brushed inside the glass, then builds on Nordés, a Galician gin with Atlantic notes, with cardamom and bay leaf. And the Ibiza — named, Belmonte says, for the island's party-and-good-vibes energy — starts with Bombay Premier Cru infused with butterfly pea tea and a touch of edible silver dust. As it's built, the drink shifts from blue to purple, shimmering like a magic potion out of Harry Potter.