By Alejandra Reyes-Velarde and Arfa Momin | CalMatters
Published September 5, 2024 2:10 PM
A tennis court is almost empty in Lancaster, where ground surface temperatures reached 150 degrees on Aug. 15, 2024. Lancaster is among California cities projected to have a fast-growing population and more than 25 high heat days a year by 2050.
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Ted Soqui for CalMatters
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Topline:
A CalMatters analysis shows that many California cities with the biggest recent population booms are the same places that will experience the most high heat days — a potentially deadly confluence.
Why it matters: The combination of a growing population and rising extreme heat will put more people at risk of illnesses and pose a challenge for unprepared local officials.
About the findings: California communities most at risk include: Lancaster and Palmdale in Los Angeles County; Apple Valley, Victorville and Hesperia in San Bernardino County; Lake Elsinore and Murrieta in Riverside County; and the Central Valley cities of Visalia, Fresno, Clovis and Tulare.
On a recent sunny afternoon in Lancaster, Cassandra Hughes looked for a place to cool down. She set up a lawn chair in the shade at the edge of a park and spent the afternoon with a coloring book, listening to hip-hop music.
Reaching a high of 97 degrees, this August day was pleasant by Lancaster standards — a breeze offered temporary relief. But just the week before, during a brutal heat wave, the high hit 109. For Hughes, the Mojave Desert city has been a dramatic change from the mild weather in El Segundo, the coastal city where she lived before moving in April.
Hughes, a retired nurse, is among the Californians who are moving inland in search of affordable housing and more space. But it comes at a price: dangerous heat driven by climate change, accompanied by sky-high electric bills.
A CalMatters analysis shows that many California cities with the biggest recent population booms are the same places that will experience the most high heat days — a potentially deadly confluence. The combination of a growing population and rising extreme heat will put more people at risk of illnesses and pose a challenge for unprepared local officials.
As greenhouse gasses warm the planet, more people around the globe are experiencing intensifying heat waves and higher temperatures. An international panel of climate scientists recently reported that it is “virtually certain” that “there has been increases in the intensity and duration of heatwaves and in the number of heatwave days at the global scale.”
CalMatters identified the California communities most at risk — the top 1% of the state’s more than 8,000 census tracts that have grown by more than 500 people in recent years and are expected to experience the most intensifying heat under climate change projections.
The results: Lancaster and Palmdale in Los Angeles County; Apple Valley, Victorville and Hesperia in San Bernardino County; Lake Elsinore and Murrieta in Riverside County; and the Central Valley cities of Visalia, Fresno, Clovis and Tulare.
By 2050, neighborhoods in those 11 inland cities are expected to experience 25 or more high heat days every year, according to data from researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of Colorado Boulder and UC Berkeley. A high heat day is when an area’s maximum temperature exceeds the top 2% of its historic high — in other words, temperatures that soar above some of the highest levels ever recorded there this century. (The projections were based on an intermediate scenario for future planet-warming emissions.)
Many of these places facing this dangerous combination of worsening heat waves and growing populations are low-income, Latino communities.
“We are seeing much more rapid warming of inland areas that were already hotter to begin with,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.
“There’s an extreme contrast between the people who live within 5 to 10 miles of the beach and people who live as little as 20 miles inland,” he said. “It’s these inland areas where we see people who…are killed by this extreme heat or whose lives are at least made miserable.”
Look up your neighborhood
While temperatures are projected to rise across the state, neighborhoods along the coast will remain much more temperate.
San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Long Beach, for instance, are not projected to experience significantly more high heat days.
San Francisco will average six days a year in the 2050s exceeding 87 degrees, compared to four days in the 2020s. In contrast, Visalia will jump from 17 days exceeding 103 degrees to 32 — more than a full month.
Unlike the growing inland populations, the cooler coastal counties, — where more than two-thirds of Californians now live — are expected to lose about 1.3 million residents by 2050, according to the California Department of Finance.
Cassandra Hughes sits in the shade in Lancaster on Aug. 15, 2024. The temperature that day reached 97 degrees — cooler than recent heat waves. She strategically cools her home to keep electric bills low. “I have air conditioning, a swamp cooler and two fans,” she said.
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Ted Soqui for CalMatters
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In California, extreme heat contributed to more than 5,000 hospitalizations and almost 10,600 emergency department visits over the past decade — and the health effects “fall disproportionately on already overburdened” Black people, Latinos and Native Americans, according to a recent state report.
City and county officials must grapple with how to protect residents who already are struggling to stay cool and pay their electric bills. Despite the warnings, many local governments have failed to respond.
A 2015 state law required municipalities to update their general plans, safety plans or hazard mitigation plans to include steps countering the effects of climate change, such as cooling roofs and pavement or urban greening projects.
But only about half of California’s 540 cities and counties had complied with new plans as of last year, according to the environmental nonprofit Climate Resolve.
The California dream or a hellish reality?
An exodus from California’s coastal regions is a decades-long trend, said Eric McGhee, a policy director who researches California demographic changes at the Public Policy Institute of California. People are moving away from the coasts, especially the Los Angeles region and Bay Area, to elsewhere in California and other states.
About 104,000 people moved from the Bay Area to the Sacramento area, the Inland Empire and the San Joaquin Valley in 2021 and 2022, and about 95,000 moved from Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange County to those same inland regions, according to data collected from the Census.
McGhee said most people moving inland are low-income and middle-income Californians looking to expand their families, find cheaper housing and live comfortably — and they’re willing to sacrifice other privileges, like cool weather.
California is “becoming more expensive, more exclusive in the places that are least likely to experience extreme heat,” Swain said. As a result, he said, “the people who are most at risk of extreme heat” — those with limited financial resources — “are precisely the people experiencing extreme heat.”
Explore high heat days
The San Bernardino County city of Victorville — which is 55% Hispanic and has median incomes far below the state average — is among California’s fastest growing areas, adding more than 12,500 new residents between 2018 and 2022. Nearby Apple Valley and Hesperia grew by about 3,000 and 6,000 people, respectively, while Lancaster, Palmdale and Visalia added between about 10,000 and 12,000.
In Victorville on an August day that reached 97 degrees, Eduardo Ceja wiped sweat from his forehead as he worked at Superior Grocers store, retrieving shopping carts.
The work is often grueling in this Mojave Desert town. He sometimes drinks five bottles of water to stay hydrated as he works, with the concrete parking lot radiating the heat back onto his skin. When he’s done pushing carts, he recovers in the air conditioned store.
The extreme heat “is noticeable. I don’t think there was a day under 100 in July.”Scott Nassif, apple valley mayorCeja, 20, moved to nearby Apple Valley about a year ago, around the same time the new grocery store opened. He used to sleep on his parents’ couch in the San Gabriel Valley town of Covina, east of Los Angeles, which is often more than 10 degrees cooler than Apple Valley on summer days. But he wanted a place to himself at a low cost, so now he pays $400 a month for a bedroom in his brother’s home.
Since he moved here, he’s observed many businesses, including his own employer, expand or open in Apple Valley.
“I notice a lot of people from L.A. are coming here,” he said. It makes sense to him. “Out here, the apartments have more space.”
Apple Valley Mayor Scott Nassif, who has lived there since 1959, said days over 100 degrees used to be rare. Now week-long heat waves above 110 degrees are commonplace.
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Ted Soqui for CalMatters
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Apple Valley Mayor Scott Nassif has seen his desert town grow and get hotter over his lifetime. When he moved to the area in 1959, only a few thousand people lived there. Now it’s home to more than 75,000 people.
Nassif remembers only a few days that would reach above 100 degrees and multiple snowstorms in the winter. Now, snowstorms are rare, and week-long heat waves above 110 degrees are commonplace.
The extreme heat “is noticeable,” he said. “I don’t think there was a day under 100 in July.”
Nassif attributes the town’s growing population to its good schools, a semi-rural lifestyle and affordable housing for families.
In the high desert town of Hesperia, growth is evident. Banners advertising “New homes!” are posted throughout the town, luring potential buyers to tract home communities. Residents are cautiously eyeing a new development, called the Silverwood Community, that has recently broken ground.
The massive, 9,000-plus acre development is authorized for more than 15,000 new homes, according to its website. A video on its website coaxes potential buyers: “True believers know the California dream is within reach.”
An aerial view of the Silverwood Community, a housing development under construction in Hesperia, on Aug. 16, 2024. The development could include as many as 15,000 new homes to the desert city, which currently is home to about 100,000 people.
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Ted Soqui for CalMatters
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Hesperia, which is almost two-thirds Hispanic and also has median incomes far below the state average, is anticipating continued growth as housing costs soar in other parts of California. Its planning includes rezoning some areas to allow for higher-density housing, which could bring more affordable housing, said Ryan Leonard, Hesperia’s principal planner.
“If people are willing to make a commute to San Bernardino, Riverside or Ontario — a 45-minute to an hour commute — they can afford to buy a home here when they might not be able to afford that same home down the hill,” Leonard said.
Summer electric bills soar to $500 or more
In the California towns at most risk of intensifying heat, people already are saddled with big power bills because of their reliance on air conditioning.
For instance, households in Lancaster, Palmdale and Apple Valley pay on average $200 to $259 a month for electricity, compared to a $177 average in Southern California Edison’s service area, according to California Public Utilities Commission data as of May, 2023.
In summer months, average power use in these communities nearly triples compared to spring months, so some people’s bills can climb above $500.
You can’t not run the air conditioner all day… You wouldn’t survive otherwise. The heat is too oppressive.
— Diane Carlson, Palmdale resident
Diane Carlson moved to Palmdale, north of Los Angeles, 30 years ago. The housing was much cheaper and she wanted to move where her children could attend school near where they live.
Over the years, she’s felt the temperatures in Palmdale rise.
Carlson said her electric bill during the summers used to average about $500, a significant chunk of her household budget. About four years ago, though, she had solar panels installed on their home, which cut her bill in half.
“You can’t not run the air conditioner all day, even if you run it low,” she said. “You wouldn’t survive otherwise. The heat is too oppressive.”
With multiple days in the summer reaching at least 115 degrees, Carlson is conscious that there may be a future where Palmdale isn’t livable for her anymore.
“Will it get as hot as Death Valley?” she wondered.
Death Valley, the hottest place on Earth, reached record temperatures in July, averaging 108.5 degrees; the high was 121.9, tying a 1917 record. In comparison, Palmdale by 2050 is projected to have 25 days where the maximum temperature exceeds 105, up from nine days in the 2010s.
Carlson said she’d consider moving to the East Coast, where she’s originally from. But she’d face hurricanes rather than the heat. It all comes down to making a decision: “Which negatives are you willing to deal with?”
Hughes, who lives in subsidized housing in Lancaster, said surviving the heat means constantly checking the weather forecast and strategically cooling her home to keep electricity costs low. “I have air conditioning, a swamp cooler and two fans,” she said.
On a day when the temperature doesn’t reach triple digits, the air conditioner might stay off; she opens the windows and turns on the fans instead.
Local leaders say they know more must be done to protect their residents.
Lancaster opens cooling centers in libraries for residents who need respite from the heat. During heat waves, residents ride buses for free, and city programs provide water and other resources to homeless people.
“Is it adequate? Of course it’s not adequate,” said Mayor R. Rex Parris. “If you’ve got people who don’t read or don’t get a newspaper sitting in a sweltering apartment, the information is not getting to them and we know it.”
Parris said air conditioning is necessary for families to stay cool in the hot desert summers, but with utility costs so high, it’s becoming a luxury.
With that in mind, he said the city is prioritizing hydrogen energy, which could lower electric bills in the long-term. A new housing tract will be powered by solar panels and batteries that store power, backed up by hydrogen fuel cells, which will be cheaper than if the homes drew energy entirely from the grid, said Jason Caudl, head of Lancaster Energy.
Nassif, the Apple Valley mayor, said his town helps residents finance costly rooftop solar panels that can cut their power bills.
“Educating our public on how to save on their electric bills is a big thing, because you can’t live up here without air conditioning,” Nassif said.
Cooling centers aren’t enough to protect people
On a Saturday morning in Visalia, as temperatures climbed to 99 degrees, Maribel Jimenez brought her 2-year-old son to an indoor playground to beat the heat. She sat at a kid-sized table with her son, Mateo, as he played with toy screws and blocks.
Jimenez, 33, has lived in Visalia her whole life. She grew up on a dairy farm and remembers playing outdoors for hours in the summers. But things have changed. She can’t imagine letting her son play outdoors under the scorching sun. She worries he’s not getting the outdoor playtime he should be getting.
“It’s definitely gotten much hotter,” Jimenez said. “You can’t even have your kids outside. We want to take him out to the playground but it’s too hot. By the time it cools down in the evening, it’s his bedtime.”
Other times, she and her family go to the mall for walks, or anywhere where there’s air conditioning.
“As long as he’s out, he’s happy,” she said. “We try our best to protect him.”
The effects of extreme heat on the body can happen quickly and can affect people of all ages and health conditions. Once symptoms of heat stroke begin — increased heart rate and a change in mental status — cooling off within 30 minutes is crucial to survival, said Tomás Aragón, director of the California Department of Public Health
Many municipalities react to extreme heat by following state or county rules, which often involve opening cooling centers in public places when temperatures rise above a certain level for multiple days in a row.
“You want people to be in a space where your body can control its core temperature,” Aragón said. “It’s safer to be in an air conditioned place (that) cools your body down. That’s what cooling centers are for. I tell people, go to the supermarket, go to the library, go to a cooling center, go and just let your body cool down.”
It’s not just about preventing deaths and other terrible outcomes of heat waves … It’s really about having livable communitieswhere kids can play outside and street vendors can run their businesses without risk of overexposure.
— Ali Frazzini, L.A. County’s Chief Sustainability office
But community advocates say cooling centers are ineffective because they’re underused. Many people are unaware of them, and others have no transportation to reach them.
“I think everyone is used to that being the answer for what we do when it gets extremely hot,” said Jonathan Parfrey, executive director of Climate Resolve. “We need to expand our imagination to figure out other ways of taking care of people.”
Victorville has complied with the 2015 state law requiring plans to handle climate change, and Hesperia is in the process of updating its plans.
But Los Angeles County is an example of a local government that has gone above and beyond to comply, Parfrey said.
The county has updated its emergency preparedness plans and is in the early phases of developing a heat-specific plan for unincorporated areas, which will include urban greening and changes to the built environment to make neighborhoods cooler, said Ali Frazzini, policy director at the county’s Chief Sustainability office.
“It’s not just about preventing deaths and other terrible outcomes of heat waves, although that’s extremely important,” Frazzini said. “It’s really about having livable communitieswhere kids can play outside and street vendors can run their businesses without risk of overexposure.”
Parfrey said the state plays a role, but “they’re not in charge of the roads or building codes or where you put a water fountain or how you build a local park. All of that has to be done at a local level.”
In 2022, the Newsom administration issued an Extreme Heat Action Plan outlining state steps to make California more resilient to extreme heat. That includes funding new community resilience centers where people can cool down as well as find resources or shelter during other emergencies, such as wildfires. It’s a model that some community advocates prefer over traditional cooling centers that are underutilized.
The state has granted almost $98 million for 24 projects so far, said Anna Jane Jones, who leads development of the centers for the state’s Strategic Growth Council.
It’s definitely gotten much hotter. You can’t even have your kids outside. We want to take him out to the playground but it’s too hot.
— Maribel Jimenez, Visalia resident
In Visalia, Jimenez said her family doesn’t have many options for cool spaces where her young son can be entertained.
At home, the family uses the air conditioner sparingly and keeps the blinds closed. During a heat wave, their power bill can climb to $250. If the bills were lower, she’d use the air conditioner all the time “We have to do what we have to do,” she said.
Jimenez and her husband have thought twice about expanding their family and have floated the idea of moving somewhere else, but many of the affordable options, like Texas or Arizona, are even hotter than Visalia.
“Global warming is a thing, and the heat isn’t getting any better anytime soon,” she said. “Everybody’s paying the price.”
Find a SoCal cooling center
In L.A., Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties, call 3-1-1 or call for a list of cooling centers. In the city of Los Angeles, you can also find a list of recreation centers, senior centers and libraries — all good choices for cooling off — online.
Tip: Call the center in advance to make sure seating is available.
Tip: If the center you want is at capacity, or non-operational, head to a local, air-conditioned library and cool off with a book about ice fishing in Antarctica.
You can get more details of cooling centers in Southern California:
Farmworkers drink water in the shade of a tent as they weed a bell pepper field in Southern California during a heat wave. A new study shows that rules designed to give the state's outdoor workers access to shade, water and rest on hot days has saved lives.
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Etienne Laurent
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Getty Images
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Topline:
It's long been understood that working outside in hot weather can be dangerous: Even ancient Egyptians worried about dehydration for workers building the pyramids. Now, a growing body of research is quantifying that danger — and suggesting ways to better protect workers.
Why it matters: A suite of new analyses has found that regulations that provide basic safeguards like water, shade and rest for workers in hot conditions can help lower the numbers of heat-driven injuries, workers' compensation claims and even deaths.
How have regulations helped? The most recent study, published in December in the journal Health Affairs, looked at California's rule protecting outdoor workers from heat, the oldest such rule in the country. Researchers found the regulations led to at least a 33% drop in heat-related deaths among workers after 2010 — an estimate of several dozen lives saved each year.
Read on ... to learn more about the ways the government can protect workers.
It's long been understood that working outside in hot weather can be dangerous: Even ancient Egyptians worried about dehydration for workers building the pyramids.
Now, a growing body of research is quantifying that danger — and suggesting ways to better protect workers.
The risks extend beyond obvious concerns like dehydration and heatstroke.
"Heat makes people slower to react and worse at making decisions," says Adam Dean, a labor economist at George Washington University. "That means farmworkers driving a tractor or a construction worker operating equipment are more likely to have a fatal accident on a hot day."
But a suite of new analyses has found that regulations that provide basic safeguards like water, shade and rest for workers in hot conditions can help lower the numbers of heat-driven injuries, workers' compensation claims and even deaths.
The studies all use different datasets and methods but come to a similar conclusion, says Barrak Alahmad, an environmental health scientist at Harvard University and an expert on occupational health risks.
"States with heat standards have lower risk of heat injuries, of heat fatalities and other outcomes compared to states that don't have these heat standards," Alahmad says.
The most recent study, published in December in the journal Health Affairs, looked at California's rule protecting outdoor workers from heat, the oldest such rule in the country. Researchers found the regulations led to at least a 33% drop in heat-related deaths among workers after 2010 — an estimate of several dozen lives saved each year.
The outcome "delivers a clear message," says Dean, the study's lead author. "Heat standards, if they're adopted and effectively enforced, can significantly reduce worker deaths."
The federal rules, first proposed under Biden, are now under review by the Trump administration. Their future is uncertain.
While the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has recognized for decades that heat poses risks to workers, there is active debate among worker advocates and business groups about how best to provide protections: via stringent, highly specific regulations, or with broader guidelines that allow employers to take the lead in crafting efforts specific to their own industries.
The new studies could help inform any new rules, says Jordan Barab, who was deputy assistant secretary of labor at OSHA under the Obama administration. Though the basic measures to protect workers have been well-known for decades, it's invaluable, he says, to "show that when a state actually implements these requirements that they actually have saved lives."
The California example
Federal regulators first noted that heat could put American workers at risk in the 1970s and '80s. But for years, OSHA prioritized regulating other workplace hazards. Heat issues were managed under the agency's more generalized rules, such as the "general duty clause," which required employers to maintain workplaces "free from recognized hazards."
But some states, like California, decided to go further. In 2005, after the highly publicized deaths of several farmworkers due to heat exposure, California passed the nation's first state-level regulations to protect outdoor workers from excessive heat. Requirements kicked off when temperatures exceeded 85 degrees Fahrenheit (the threshold has since been lowered further).
The rules set out to provide some simple protections: access to water, shade and rest on hot days.
For many years, California was the only state with such heat rules, setting up a natural experiment: Would heat-related worker deaths fall in California, compared to neighboring states with similar weather conditions but no such protections?
The new study suggests that, at first, the rules didn't make much of a difference. During the first few years, researchers did not find a decrease in heat-related death rates in California compared to neighboring states.
"When California first adopted a standard in 2005, it was ineffective," Dean says.
But that would soon change.
In 2010, the state strengthened the rule and deaths began to drop, the study found — eventually falling by more than 30%, with even more dramatic reductions in recent years.
The changes to the rule, Dean says, were critical. Though the initial rules required employers to provide water and shade, in practice, inspectors sometimes found problems — like undrinkable water.
So, the state clarified. Water had to be drinkable and free. And there needed to be enough shade for all workers during breaks. California also ramped up workplace inspections and launched an educational campaign to train the state's many outdoor workers about their rights.
"A critical lesson is that merely passing a heat standard is not enough," Dean says. "It was only after the state launched a statewide enforcement campaign that we started to see deaths decrease relative to the surrounding states."
The rules could have been even more effective with more consistent enforcement, says Garrett Brown, who until 2014 worked for Cal/OSHA, the state agency tasked with enforcing the rule. Even though the number of inspections increased, he says, limited staffing caused ongoing enforcement challenges.
It could have been "even more health protective for workers if there was an even more robust enforcement program," Brown says.
A growing body of evidence
The California study joins two other analyses with similar findings published in the past year.
Together, they provide important insights that could help in the design of future rules, says Alahmad. He led an analysis of heat-influenced worker injuries, published earlier this year, which found that states with heat rules had lower injury rates than those without.
Another recent study found workers' compensation claims were lower in states with heat standards compared to those without.
The next step for researchers is to suss out the most important parts of those regulations, Alahmad says: "What elements are actually most effective?"
That will be key information for regulators across the country. More than a dozen states and cities proposed new heat protection rules in 2025.
What movies are nominated? Sinners leads the way with a record-breaking 16 nominations, while Leonardo DiCaprio-led One Battle After Another has a hefty 13 nods. Both are also nominated for best picture.
Read on ... to see where you can watch the nominated movies and learn more about many of them.
Below, you can find details and coverage of the 14 films nominated in six major categories: best picture, best actor and actress, best supporting actor and actress, and best director. Dive in!
Sinners
The gist: Ryan Coogler's movie stars Michael B. Jordan playing twin brothers who open a 1930s juke joint. And opening night does not go as planned when a bloodthirsty menace appears outside. (Vampires — we're talking about vampires.)
16 nominations: actor in a leading role, actor in a supporting role, actress in a supporting role, casting, cinematography, costume design, directing, film editing, makeup and hairstyling, original score, original song, best picture, production design, sound, visual effects, original screenplay
The gist: Paul Thomas Anderson's action thriller stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a washed up ex-revolutionary whose past comes to haunt him. DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro and Teyana Taylor are all nominated for their performances.
13 nominations: actor in a leading role, actor in a supporting role, another actor in a supporting role, actress in a supporting role, casting, cinematography, directing, film editing, original score, best picture, production design, sound, adapted screenplay
The gist: Guillermo del Toro's take on the Mary Shelley classic. Jacob Elordi plays the creature and Oscar Isaac is the scientist.
9 nominations: actor in a supporting role, cinematography, costume design, makeup and hairstyling, original score, best picture, production design, sound, adapted screenplay
The gist: Timothée Chalamet plays a working-class heel aiming to become a table tennis champion in the 1950s.
9 nominations: actor in a leading role, casting, cinematography, costume design, directing, film editing, best picture, production design, original screenplay
The gist: Stellan Skarsgård is a filmmaker attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughters, proving that at the very least, the tension between art and parenthood is complicated. Skarsgård, Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning are all nominated for their performances.
9 nominations: actor in a supporting role, actress in a leading role, actress in a supporting role, actress in a supporting role, directing, film editing, best international feature film, best picture, original screenplay
Where to see it:In theaters. Rent or buy it on Prime Video, Apple TV and more.
The gist: A young English couple meets, falls in love, has children and suffers an unspeakable tragedy. One of them happens to be William Shakespeare, who goes on to write Hamlet. Jessie Buckley plays his wife.
8 nominations: actress in a leading role, casting, costume design, directing, original score, best picture, production design, adapted screenplay
The gist: Directed by Richard Linklater,Ethan Hawke plays lyricist Lorenz Hart on the worst night of his life — the opening of Oklahoma! on Broadway — after his long-term collaborator Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) has forged a new partnership with Oscar Hammerstein II.
2 nominations: actor in a leading role, original screenplay
The gist: Rose Byrne plays a therapist shouldering all the responsibility of caring for her ill daughter while her emotionally absent husband is away for work.
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Countless VHS tapes line the walls inside Whammy Analog Media in Echo Park.
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Whammy Analog Media
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Courtesy Erik Varho
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Topline:
Physical media has been making a comeback. Whammy Analog Media, an Echo Park storefront specializing in VHS tapes, has been providing a place for enthusiasts and newcomers to embrace the antiquated format.
Why now: Whammy hosts their first quarterly VHS swap meet of the year this weekend. Peruse VHS classics and rarities at this event in Echo Park.
The backstory: Whammy owner Erik Varho never stopped collecting VHS tapes. With an abundance of tapes in his possession he started selling them online in 2020, and in 2022 he opened a storefront to cater to the needs of all VHS enthusiasts.
Physical media has been making a comeback. Whammy Analog Media, an Echo Park storefront specializing in VHS tapes, has been providing a place for enthusiasts and newcomers to embrace the antiquated format.
From tape collector to curator
Whammy founder Erik Varho always wanted to open his own store — he just didn’t have a clue as what it would be. A die-hard videotape lover, Varho never stopped collecting them, even after major releases ceased printing in 2006.
Shelves full of VHS tapes inside Whammy Analog Media.
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Whammy Analog Media
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Courtesy Erik Varho
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In 2020, fresh out of work and with VHS tapes lining the walls of his studio apartment, he started selling his tapes via Instagram.
“I was pleasantly surprised that people were actually out there buying them,” Varho said.
With the success of his online sales, Varho was able to open a brick-and-mortar store in 2022. Varho intended it to just be a retail store, but the space, he thought, was perfect for an indoor screen.
“I just kind of dove headfirst into the microcinema aspect of it,” Varho said.
Whammy’s been hosting events celebrating that grainy quality of the Video Home System — or VHS — ever since.
A crowd watching a projected VHS film inside Whammy Analog Media.
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Whammy Analog Media
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Courtesy Erik Varho
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A small crowd gathers to watch a film inside Whammy Analog Media.
One regular event is the WhammyVHS Swap Meet. The quarterly meet-up brings together video vendors from across Southern California to showcase their wares.
Bad Taste specializes in lowbrow horror and cult films, whileCinefile Liquidations sells vintage posters, records and other film ephemera.
“It's just kind of a place for people to display their craziest, weirdest, rarest finds and just have a place to talk about them and hang out,” Varho said.
Those rare finds include Image of the Beast from 1981, the third installment in a Christian apocalyptic thriller series about the rise of the antichrist and an evil A.I.
Whammy recently projected the film as part of its “Stuck on VHS”series, which showcases works that were only released direct to video.
A rewinding renewal
Shoppers look through various stacks of tape inside Whammy Analog Media.
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Whammy Analog Media
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Courtesy Erik Varho
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Besides an entire store, Varho also owns a storage unit filled to the brim with VHS tapes. Those who RSVP to Sunday's swap meet get a free mystery VHS tape upon entry.
He says the most frequent question he gets is if they sell VCRs. They do, but they run out pretty quickly.
Varho takes it as a good sign and says lately customers have been skewing younger and younger.
"People who didn't even grow up with VHS who are just interested in exploring movies in that way. It's a fun time to be into VHS for sure,” Varho said.
Sunday's event includes a screening of a mystery VHS.
“I can’t reveal what we’re playing, but it’s always stuff that is going to be attention-grabbing and usually pretty silly,” Varho said.
Details
Whammy! VHS Swap Meet Location: 2514 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles (in the back) When: Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. Free admission, RSVP here
How it works: The annual competition invites filmmakers from around the world to reimagine often long-forgotten literary classics, films, cartoons, music, and visual art that are now in the public domain.
About the winner: Titled Rhapsody, Reimagined, the roughly two-minute video captures the King of Jazz's surreal quality: Cookie-cutter rows of musicians, showgirls, office workers and random furniture cascade across the screen as influential bandleader Paul Whiteman's winking face looks on.
One of the most unusual of the creative treasures to enter the public domain this month is King of Jazz. The plotless, experimental 1930 musical film shot in early Technicolor centers on influential bandleader Paul Whiteman, nicknamed "The King of Jazz."
In one memorable scene, the portly, mustachioed Whiteman opens a small bag and winks at the camera as miniature musicians file out one after another like a colony of ants and take their places on an ornate, table-top bandstand.
A new video based on clips from King of Jazz has won this year's Public Domain Film Remix Contest — an annual competition that invites filmmakers from around the world to reimagine often long-forgotten literary classics, films, cartoons, music, and visual art that are now in the public domain. This means creators can use these materials freely, without copyright restrictions. In 2026, works created in 1930 entered the public domain.
Titled Rhapsody, Reimagined, the roughly two-minute video captures the King of Jazz's surreal quality: Cookie-cutter rows of musicians, showgirls, office workers and random furniture cascade across the screen as Whiteman's winking face looks on.
"I wanted to transform the figures and bodies into more dream-like shapes through collage and looping and repetition," said Seattle-based filmmaker Andrea Hale, who created the piece in collaboration with composer Greg Hardgrave. For video artists, Hale said discovering what's new in the public domain each January is a thrill. "We're always looking for things to draw from," Hale said. "Opening that up to a bigger spread of materials is amazing. That's the dream."
A massive repository of content
The Internet Archive, the San Francisco-based nonprofit library behind the contest, digitizes and provides public access to a massive repository of content, including many materials used by contest participants. "These materials have often just been in film canisters for decades," said digital librarian Brewster Kahle, who founded the Internet Archive in 1996.
This year's submissions range from a reworking of the 1930 film The Blue Angel starring Betty Boop — another public domain entrant this year — instead of Marlene Dietrich, to an AI-generated take on the 1930 Nancy Drew book The Mystery at Lilac Inn.
Kahle said the Internet Archive received nearly 280 entries this time around, the highest number since the competition launched six years ago. "Things are not just musty, old archival documentation of the past," Kahle said. "People are bringing them to life in new and different ways, without fear of being sued."
The public domain in the era of AI
Lawsuits have become a growing concern for artists and copyright holders, especially with the rise of generative AI. Recent years have seen a surge in online video takedowns and copyright infringement disputes.
Media companies are trying to address the problem through deals with tech firms, such as Disney and OpenAI's plan, announced late last year, to introduce a service allowing users to create short videos based on copyrighted characters, including Cinderella and Darth Vader.
"On the one hand, these licensing agreements seem quite a clean solution to thorny legal questions," said Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. "But what's exciting about the public domain is that material, after a long, robust 95-year copyright term, is just simply free for anyone — without a team of lawyers, without a licensing agreement, without having to work for Disney or OpenAI — to just put online," Jenkins said.
Jenkins also pointed out an interesting twist for people who create new works using materials from the public domain. "You actually get a copyright in your remix," she said. "Just like Disney has copyrights in all of its remakes of wonderful public domain works like Snow White or Cinderella." (The Brothers Grimm popularized these two characters in their 19th century collection Grimm's Fairy Tales. But their roots are much deeper, going back to European folklore collections of the 1600s and beyond.)
However, this only applies to works created by humans — U.S. copyright law currently doesn't recognize works authored by AI. And Jenkins further cautioned that creators only get a copyright in their new creative contributions to the remix, and not the underlying material.
This year's Public Domain Film Remix Contest winner Andrea Hale said she's using a Creative Commons license for Rhapsody, Reimagined. This means the filmmaker retains the copyright to her work but grants permissions that allow other people to freely use, share, and build upon it. "I'm keeping with the spirit of the public domain," Hale said.
