The Brief

Listen to Marketplace each weekday at 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on LAist 89.3-FM. This report originally aired on “Marketplace” on Feb. 11, 2025.

In renewable energy, the holy grail is a source of energy that is always available. Solar and wind power might be the most common, but there are times when they don’t work because the sun is down and the wind is calm.

Ocean waves, especially in Southern California, come in steady supply. One company is aiming to harness power from those waves with a pilot project at the Port of Los Angeles.

The star of the program is a blue, sedan-sized piece of metal sitting on the pier, waiting to get put in the water. Its whole purpose is to bob up and down on the ocean’s waves. When a bunch of these floats sit next to each other, they look like a series of piano keys that rise and fall with each wave.

AltaSea, a nonprofit that develops the sustainable ocean economy, is shepherding the program at the Port of Los Angeles.

“There’s this piston arm attached to the float that acts like a bicycle pump. So as the float goes up and down, so does this bicycle pump arm,” said AltaSea Chief Executive Terry Tamminen.

Instead of going into a bicycle tire, the air gets shoved into a series of what look like really long scuba diving tanks behind the floats.

“When you want the energy, you release the pressure from here, it spins the turbine, and now you have stored intermittent renewables without a battery,” Tamminen said.

The pistons attached to the floaters forces pressurized air into the red tanks on the right.

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Caleigh Wells

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Marketplace

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The floats are designed to attach to a breakwater or a jetty. They’ll be mounted to a concrete pier on the port’s main channel and brought online next month. There isn’t a penny of federal money going into the pilot project. In fact, it was paid for in part by a major oil company. The company supplying the floats is Eco Wave Power. Its founder, Inna Braverman, said most wave energy companies so far have failed because they’ve set up installations way out at sea.

“That was extremely expensive, because you need ships, you need divers, you need underwater mooring, you need cables. It was breaking down all the time, because in the offshore, you get extremely high waves,” Braverman said.

The ocean moves floats up and down, but it also jostles them side to side, and the salt water corrodes them.

“It is really, really difficult to work in the ocean, and to have things operate in the ocean, especially things that have to move,” said Samantha Quinn, program director with the climate solutions nonprofit Pacific Ocean Energy.

On top of all that, different states and countries have different environmental regulations. “You sometimes have to redesign parts of your devices to be able to go into a specific location,” she said.

So it’s expensive, it can only be built in specific spots and it’s prone to breaking. Plus, this pilot project will generate enough energy to power about 80 households. That’s not even close to competing with wind and solar.

But Quinn said that’s not a fair comparison. Those technologies are decades ahead in this race.

“Solar and wind didn’t just happen overnight. It really did take a long time for those to be developed, and we are following a very similar innovation path that solar and wind did,” Quinn said.

The Long Beach Unified Board of Trustees on Wednesday authorized the school district to end the employment of close to 600 employees, a move the LBUSD says is necessary to stabilize its ballooning deficit.

Board members approved two separate resolutions, the first of which does not renew the contracts of 515 certificated employees, who are on temporary contracts that must be re-upped annually. Though it is common for the district to choose not to renew some temporary contracts, the non-renewal of hundreds of TK-12 teachers, early childhood education teachers and social workers represents a massive change for the next school year from the current workforce of 10,000 total employees. While schools across the district will feel the cuts, Poly and Jordan high schools may be especially hard hit; 14 and 12 teachers at each site are listed on the district’s document of non-renewals.

The second resolution authorized the district to formally lay off 54 classified district positions: non-teaching staff members ranging from office support staff to instructional and recreation aides to library media assistants to parent liaisons.

The board votes come after months of warnings from the district that costs and spending have outpaced the district’s funding, saddling LBUSD with a $70 million deficit. The district is now attempting to shrink that deficit through a fiscal stabilization plan that “has prioritized preserving core instructional, wellness, and student support services,” the district wrote in an agenda item related to the cuts.

Prior to the vote, Superintendent Jill Baker framed the proposed cuts with the historical context of significant enrollment declines, the expiration of funds following the Great Recession and COVID-19 pandemic that had allowed the district to develop a healthy reserve, uncertain federal and state dollars and low attendance numbers, for which the district is penalized — “a really grave situation, fiscally,” she said, one that many districts across California are grappling with.

Baker walked board members through the significant efforts the district has made to manage costs, saving more than $47 million, including through significant central office reductions. Despite these efforts, it’s still not enough, Baker said.

“The release of temporary certificated contracts is one way of reducing the number of employees without impacting permanent certificated employees,” the district wrote in the agenda item.

For those 515 certificated employees who will be notified that their contracts will end, it’s a way that “the district can get away with letting teachers go without calling it a layoff,” said Peder Larsen, vice president of the Teachers Association of Long Beach, which represents certificated employees in LBUSD.

Some of them could be rehired, especially if their positions are in high demand, like science, math and special education teachers, Larsen said. Yet, it throws hundreds into a tailspin of uncertainty and fear, unsure if their jobs have definitively ended and how long they will have health coverage, he added.

While he said the district has not officially announced that no permanent certificated employees will be cut (they have until March 15 to do so), he said he is “reading the tea leaves” and predicting those permanent positions will be safe this year.

In his comment to the board during public testimony, Larsen advocated for examining the money spent annually on consultants and contracts and urged the board and district to re-examine their priorities and “choose to protect the people who serve students every single day.”

On both votes, School Board Member Maria Isabel López was the lone vote against the resolutions, voicing her opinion that some of these positions could have been saved if fiscal priorities had been different and major contracts had not been approved.

Other board members acknowledged that the votes will change lives. “There’s not one of us in this room that takes this lightly,” said Board President Diana Craighead before voting in favor of the cuts. Board Member Doug Otto said he was voting to adopt the resolutions “sadly, reluctantly and necessarily.”

It wasn't supposed to be a big deal. After all, it was just a diner.

Sure, Phil Rosenthal (creator of Everybody Loves Raymond and Netflix's Somebody Feed Phil) and Nancy Silverton (owner of Mozza and Chi Spacca) — two of Los Angeles' most iconic food voices — were teaming up on the project. Still, the concept was modest: fluffy scrambled eggs, turkey club sandwiches and coffee refills.

Named in memory of Rosenthal's late parents, Max and Helen — familiar faces to fans of his Netflix series — their unpretentious love of diner classics became both the menu's foundation and its guiding philosophy.

Yet within weeks of opening in November, Max & Helen's had eight-hour waits, viral hot chocolate and celebrity sightings, including Timothée Chalamet, Kylie Jenner and Selena Gomez. It came as a shock to the newly married couple running it all, Lily Rosenthal Royal, Phil's daughter and the diner's creative director, and her husband, Mason Royal, the director of operations, who oversees the kitchen. (They started working together a week after their wedding).

"We thought we were gonna be hot for Larchmont," Rosenthal Royal says.

Instead, Max & Helen's became a destination — the kind of place people plan their weekends around, wait four hours for and drive across L.A. to experience.

Lily & Mason

Rosenthal and Silverton were never going to run Max & Helen's themselves — the plan was always to build it and hand it over. Royal, who has 12 years of restaurant experience, caught Silverton's attention during tastings.

"Nancy was like,'I feel like Mason would be good as the guy running the show,'" Rosenthal Royal said.

The couple had been developing their own pop-up when the opportunity at the diner arose, and suddenly they were running the family business.

For Royal, working with Silverton has been a dream. For Rosenthal Royal, the project is deeply personal — a love letter to her grandparents and the diners her father grew up on.

"We opened it almost selfishly because we live in Larchmont," she said. "We wanted a diner for ourselves, for our friends, for our community."

Wood-paneled walls and vintage family photographs create a nostalgic atmosphere at Max & Helen's diner.

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Catherine Dzilenski

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Courtesy Max & Helen's

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Rosenthal is clear about their importance.

“Diners are democratic with a small D,” he told me last year when the project was still in development. Places where everyone is welcome, where community can flourish — something he felt was increasingly rare.

Worth the wait

The frenzy has now cooled slightly — while weekends still draw four-hour waits, midweek is much calmer.

When I visited with my family on a recent weekday morning, the wait was about 45 minutes. We were seated in the corner banquette area, accompanied by crocheted cushions bearing the name "Max & Helen's." Along with the wood-paneled walls and the black-and-white family photographs, it felt more like a cozy roadside diner you'd stumble upon on a drive up the coast than something nestled among the lifestyle boutiques and specialty stores that crowd Larchmont Boulevard.

Breakfast wins

The menu was simple, which made ordering easy, with breakfast and lunch options.

I tried Nancy's omelet ($18) with herbs and farmer’s cheese, which was thin and crepe-like, folded perfectly at the edges, and impossibly fluffy, offering bursts of freshness from the herbs.

I was particularly curious to try the waffle, which has been both widely lauded (for its taste) and lambasted (for the $17 price point).

It was transcendent, with golden, crisp ridges and deep pockets built to cradle syrup. Rosenthal Royal told me they use a three-day-fermented sourdough batter, a labor-intensive process that gives the waffle its distinctive texture and flavor.

The $17 waffle with whipped maple butter uses a three-day fermented sourdough batter

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Catherine Dzilenski

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Courtesy Max & Helen's

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What truly set it apart, for me at least, was the whipped maple butter: airy and lush, melting into every nook, both indulgent and unexpectedly light.

As for the price — it's a generous portion, and a comparable waffle at Mel's Drive-In in Santa Monica costs $13.50. Apparently, those extra few dollars equal rage bait these days.

I was less impressed with the turkey club ($19), well-cooked bacon, fresh vegetables and a spicy mayo. Nice nods to California diner cuisine. But the bread was a bit thin, without the heft needed to support the rest of the sandwich's company.

Max & Helen's turkey club sandwich served with a side of tallow French fries and Lily's hot chocolate topped with a brûléed marshmallow

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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Still, the tallow fries ($8) were exceptionally crispy, and the hot chocolate, $9.50, — another viral sensation — was stellar, thick and rich with a brûléed marshmallow on top.

I even took the liberty of dipping a few fries into the chocolate, which turned out to be a genius move.

Looking ahead

Royal hasn't taken a day off since opening — a fact his wife is quick to call out with a laugh. Their partnership works because their roles complement each other: His operational rigor meets her's warmth and joy.

"Mason runs a tight ship," Rosenthal Royal said. "But we want this to be warm and fun and lighthearted."

It's that balance — systems and soul — that they hope will define Max & Helen's beyond the viral moments.

The pair hope Max & Helen's becomes an institution like Apple Pan or Musso & Frank — a place where, as Rosenthal Royal put it, "Max and Helen would feel at home, where everyone feels loved and seen and warm."

The counter at Max & Helen's evokes classic American diners.

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Catherine Dzilenski

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Courtesy Max & Helen's

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A man recently came in with a gift, telling Rosenthal Royal he'd met someone at the counter she'd seated him next to. They're now dating.

"If we could have that happen over and over again," she said, "I'd be so happy."

Beyond the diner, Rosenthal Royal is also releasing a children's book this spring, co-written with her father — a fitting parallel to their collaborative work at Max & Helen's. Three months in, they've built something bigger than they imagined. Whether it stands the test of time depends on whether the hype fades into something more enduring: a neighborhood fixture that just happens to make a really good waffle.