Topline:
This week we put the call out for Southern Californians to share their favorite gardens to visit, and we shared some of our own.
Every style and size: From the 150 acres of Descanco Gardens to Long Beach's carefully manicured Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden, there's a huge variety to choose from.
Why now: Several gardens are featuring native California plants to celebrate Earth Day.
Spring is springing, and California’s flora are outdoing themselves. In honor of Earth Day, we invited Southern Californians to share their favorite gardens in the area.
We took calls from listeners of our daily news program, AirTalk, which airs on LAist 89.3. Here’s what they came up with, mixed in with some favorites from the LAist team:
Larry Mantle’s been the host of AirTalk for 39 years and grew up in L.A. He says one of his favorite spots is Descanso Gardens.
Location: 1418 Descanso Drive, La Cañada Flintridge
Phone: 818-949-4200
Hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily
No discussion of favorite gardens would be complete without mentioning the botanical gardens at The Huntington in San Marino. Manny Valladares, an AirTalk producer, said, “I recall the summer of 2020 having a chance to go. It was nice seeing a beautiful array of plants at a really depressing time for folks.”
Location: 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino
Phone: 626-405-2100
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily (closed Tuesday)
Larry also mentioned the “hidden” Arlington Garden in Pasadena. "It was a vacant lot that they had and they turned into this incredible garden," he said.
Location: 275 Arlington Drive, Pasadena
Phone: 626-578-5434
Listener Michael in West Adams recommended the “beautiful meditation garden” behind the Velaslavasay Panorama at West 24th and Hoover streets. According to their website, “Central features of the garden are the variety of intoxicating flora, carnivorous plant life, and poisonous euphorbia within the garden's exquisitely wrought gazebo.”
Location: 1122 West 24th Street, Los Angeles
Phone: 213-746-2166
Alex from Long Beach shouted out the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden at Cal State Long Beach for its beautiful gardens and koi pond.
Location: 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach (on Cal State Long Beach campus)
Phone: 562-985-8420
Hours: Reservations are required
Cindy in West Hills highlighted the Los Angeles County Arboretum, “There's history, there's peacocks, and there are lots of activities for families,” including goat yoga.
Location: 301 N. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia
Phone: 626-821-3222
Hours: Daily 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The South Coast Botanic Garden was a pandemic refuge for Jillian in Redondo Beach. The SCBG was reclaimed from a landfill starting in 1961.
Location: 26300 Crenshaw Boulevard, Palos Verdes Peninsula
Phone: 424-452-0920
Hours: Daily, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Monica in Glendale said that if you’re up for a bit of a drive, the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden is “absolutely stunning, and you can spend the whole day there.”
Location: 1212 Mission Canyon Rd, Santa Barbara
Phone: 805-472-3851
Hours: Daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Reservations can be made up to two months ahead of visit)
Bonnie in Whittier has another Santa Barbara area recommendation: Lotusland in Montecito. “It's a little hard to get reservations there because of the limited parking, but it's well worth the wait.”
Location: Cold Spring Road, near Sycamore Canyon Road (exact directions provided on reservation)
Phone: 805-969-3737
Hours: By reservation only, tickets are released on a schedule
According to listener Steve from Venice, the Gottlieb Native Garden is an “absolutely gorgeous terraced one acre property full of birds and wildlife.” It’s “a must see if you're thinking of converting your yard to California Natives!” (There is also a virtual tour.)
Location: Private home
Hours: Reservations are required
Correction: A previous version of this article identified the lead photo as a Japanese-style tea house in the caption. It is a Chinese-style pavilion. We regret the error and have updated the caption to accurately reflect the style of the structure in the photo.
Topline:
Art from the renowned Golden State Mutual collection, including Richard Wyatt, Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White, are on view at four libraries and four community centers in L.A. County.
Why it matters: L.A. County acquired about 120 works from the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance after the L.A. company shut down nearly 20 years ago. Over two decades, William Pajaud, the company's art director, built a pre-eminent collection of Black art. County officials chose four public libraries and four community centers to show the work, keeping it accessible and free of charge.
Why now: The L.A. County arts department created a new website with a map in March to help people find and see the pieces.
The signature work: A two-foot-tall sculpture made from one piece of mahogany, "The Embrace" by artist Elizabeth Catlett. Her work is in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, among many other institutions. It can be seen at the Carson Library.
Read on… To see photos of the art.
Walk through the automatic doors at the Carson Library and you’ll see on your left a 1973 painting called "Dominoes" by John Riddle.
Riddle, a prominent Black artist, has worked in the L.A. County Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, and has been collected by Jesse Jackson and Roberta Flack.
Riddle's work was previously owned by the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in West Adams. Over two decades, the company’s art director, William Pajaud, an L.A. artist himself, carefully collected hundreds of pieces of Black art. Each piece in the collection, Pajaud said, would be a chapter telling the story of African Americans in the U.S. The collection included oil paintings, watercolors, and sculptures in clay, wood and metal.
When Golden State Mutual Life Insurance shut down, the company sold most of the best pieces at a private auction in 2007, with some selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. L.A. County was able to acquire about 120 works, including Riddle's piece.
To keep the works accessible to the public and free of charge, county officials chose four public libraries and three community centers to show the work. Earlier this year, the county arts department created a new website with a map to make them easier to find. The locations include the Golden State Mutual historic building in West Adams, plus:
:
“All of these are county-owned spaces that are available, accessible to the public and to patrons to be able to live with the works, learn about the works, see the works, learn about the works,” said Kristin Sakoda, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.
As you walk past the checkout desk at the Carson Library, toward the teen section, you’ll see another remarkable piece from the county’s holdings. It’s a two-foot-tall sculpture made from one piece of mahogany. It’s called "The Embrace" by artist Elizabeth Catlett, whose work is in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, among many other institutions. Catlett depicted two people hugging, their faces and bodies fused together, their eyes looking at the viewer.
In the auction catalogue for the Golden State Collection, Catlett wrote: “I still work figuratively, trying to express emotion through abstract form, color, line, and space. I attempt to reach out to ordinary people who have little or no experience or understanding of art principles, and extend to them what I may feel about a subject."
Meanwhile at A.C. Bilbrew Library, north of Compton, there’s a piece by Charles White, who lived in L.A. County for decades and mentored many artists in the region. His paintings and drawings in the 1960s took on the issues of the Black Civil Rights Movement, and that led well-known Black Americans like Nat King Cole and Eartha Kitt to buy his art.
County officials are hopeful that the communities around these neighborhoods enjoy the art’s benefits, including “mental health, in our education, our youth development, our sense of inclusion and belonging,” Sakoda said.
Topline:
Do you know what birds are singing in your backyard? LAist editor Suzanne Levy got to know an entire orchestra of SoCal birds when she found a life-changing app.
What's in a name: The Merlin bird ID app, from Cornell University's Ornithology Lab, opened up Levy's ears to a whole new universe of bird calls. With names like dark-eyed junco, she wondered if they knew they were in SoCal rather than Georgian England.
Who else was out there? Mixed in with raucous crows were birds like the spotted towhee and the orange-crowned warbler. Or the gorgeous chartreuse Swinhoe's white-eye, a relative newbie to the neighborhood.
When I lived in the UK, I worked on a BBC television show about birding. It was a strange experience as I couldn’t exactly book guests — “Hello Mr. Sparrow, could you be on location for an interview at 2 p.m.?”
So instead I spent a lot of time with the crew climbing up mountains with a large tripod on my shoulder. Did you know there’s a bird in the Scottish Highlands whose plumage turns white in winter to blend in with the snow? (It’s called a ptarmigan. Don’t pronounce the p.)
But it did mean I was attuned to British bird calls. I could hear something and pronounce solemnly: “Ah yes, that’s a lark. And that one's a chaffinch."
When I moved to the U.S., however, it was a whole other story. I really didn’t recognize any of the bird calls. They were all so different. I just shrugged and figured they were part of the backdrop. But one day recently, a woman told me about a free app and said it was life-changing. "Hmm, I’ll see about that," I thought.
It’s called Merlin, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and it’s kind of like Shazam for bird calls. As in, you click it, and it tells you what bird song you can hear around you. When I opened it in my backyard for the first time, a whole orchestra of bird sounds opened up around me. I admit: it was kind of life-changing.
Of course it first picked up a crow, which I know only too well, given its loud, raucous sound. But then it identified a house finch. Huh. Who knew they were in my backyard? And as I listened closely, I realized … I knew that sound! It’s the first thing I hear when I wake up at dawn, lovely and melodic.
So now when I open my eyes in the morning, I say, "Good morning, house finch, communing with fellow beings alive on a vibrant California morning!" It kicks off my day, although I guess I’ve been reading too much Mary Oliver.
But then other birds I didn’t know would pop up on my phone during the day, with names as intriguing as their calls: the spotted towhee, the orange-crowned warbler, or Cassin’s kingbird.
I mean, they do realize they’re in a backyard in Los Angeles, not some estate in Georgian England? My favorite for a while was the dark-eyed junco. Now we’re talking romantic heroes. Imagine him slyly popping across the apple tree limbs to call to you. Dark-Eyed Junco, at your service.
And then there’s Swinhoe’s white-eye. Which sounds a little like an eye ailment, but there you go. It’s a tiny bright yellow bird with a white ring around each eye. So cute! I first noticed them when there were a bazillion of them in a tree outside my house. It was such an unusual sight that I mentioned it to a woman walking her dog, and we stood there, oohing and aahing, until we both realized we’d oohed a little too much, and it was time to go.
When I researched them, I was surprised to find they’re not native to SoCal. They’re actually pretty new to the area. There were just a handful in Orange County 20 years ago, probably having been brought over from Asia as pets and escaped. And now, they’re thriving and have spread everywhere from Baja to San Luis Obispo. Who knows where they’ll end up next? If anyone sees a chartreuse cutie in New York, let me know. It'll probably be very tired.
Yes, you can see I’ve become slightly annoying with my newfound bird interest. I’ll be asking my family what they want for dinner, and I’ll say, “Wait, is that the spotted towhee?” and turn to my phone, and my teenager will wrest it out of my hand and say, “Mom, be in the present!” Which is right. But my morning serenade as the birds come online one by one and greet the new day — well, that’s as present as you can be.
Topline:
During a life cut short at 34, musician Elliott Smith left traces of his legacy in many cities, perhaps most-notably in Los Angeles.
Why now: Writer Jamie Fisher spoke with some 140 people for her new book Nobody Broke Your Heart: An Intimate Biography of Elliott Smith.
Los Angeles spots: We spoke with Fisher to spotlight five places in L.A. where Smith's legacy lives on.
During a life cut short at 34, musician Elliott Smith left traces of his legacy in many cities, perhaps most notably in Los Angele
Writer Jamie Fisher spoke with some 140 people for her new book Nobody Broke Your Heart: An Intimate Biography of Elliott Smith.
Even though some of Smith’s painful struggles with addiction and mental health took place in L.A., Fisher said his time in the city wasn’t all bad.
“He was always very suspicious of artifice and then I think he found himself enjoying it more than he thought he would,” said Fisher, who worked as a researcher at the New York Times Magazine for a decade. “He liked how big and expansive the city was: you can just kind of vanish into L.A.”
Smith moved to L.A. in the summer of 1999. He died here about four years later. But in that time he cut some deep grooves into the city, in places from Los Feliz to the San Fernando Valley — if you know where to look.
Snow White Cottages
2906 Griffith Park Blvd., Los Angeles, CA
Take the Snow White Cottages in Los Feliz, lovingly named for their fairytale-like architecture, where Smith once lived.
Fisher said the cottages were run down when the musician moved in. One of her sources said a raccoon threw a roof shingle at Smith’s head.
“It was more of an apartment than a house really. And it was this little community that was tight knit at the time,” Fisher said.
The Roost Cocktails
3100 Los Feliz Blvd., Los Angeles
On Los Feliz Boulevard, just across the 5 Freeway, is the beloved dive bar The Roost in Atwater Village, a joint Smith memorialized on his album Figure 8 — as a fade out on the track "In the Lost and Found (Honky Beach)/The Roost."
“It’s just this little nod,” Fisher said. “He was always folding the places and people he loved into his music.”
Back in the ‘90s, the place was more of a working-class joint, and one of the more overlooked bars Smith had a penchant for, Fisher said.
“One of the bartenders there who really loved Elliott owns it now,” Fisher said.
Largo at the Coronet
366 N La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles
Then, of course, there’s Largo at its old Fairfax location. Fisher said it was a huge part of Smith’s life starting in the late ‘90s, when he spent late nights playing piano with fellow musician Jon Brion.
New Monkey Studio
Van Nuys
Motor on over to Van Nuys for New Monkey, a music studio Smith founded where artists are still recording to this day.
Fisher said you can also find equipment that was used to record his final album, From a Basement on the Hill.
Fisher said Smith put the studio together at a point when he was struggling with addiction, in the last years of his life.
“It was really hard for him to write music, but buying broken equipment and repairing it and putting the studio together was something he could focus his energy into,” she said.
Smith wanted New Monkey, Fisher said, to be a place where musicians could affordably access some of the best recording equipment available.
As Smith lived with addiction and other personal issues, he was mentoring younger musicians and making a lifelong impression on artists such as Jim Fairchild from Modest Mouse and Grandaddy, and Aaron Espinoza from Earlimart.
“He was so generous with his time,” Fisher said. “He would show up to Earlimart shows and stand right in the front row and make them all extremely nervous.”
Fisher said she’d braced herself for writing the last chapters of the book about the final years of Smith’s life.
In 2003, Smith died from two stab wounds in his chest — and the case is still open.
Fisher said that despite his addiction and mental health struggles, she was surprised by the many “moments of light” during his time in L.A., from his love of cooking to his mentorship of other musicians and his work on New Monkey.
Figure 8 wall
4334 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles
The go-to spot for fans to remember Smith is still standing in L.A. — the Figure 8 wall in Silver Lake.
The mural of bending red and black lines famously became the cover art for the Figure 8 album.
More than two decades after his death, the wall is still alive with new memories.
“There’s always new notes from people saying, like, Elliott saved their life or quoting their favorite lyric or saying they wished he was still here,” Fisher said.
Topline:
President Donald Trump is canceling nearly $1 billion in spending approved by Congress, the White House announced on Friday, using a rare and contested power to axe funding for immigrant services and diversity-focused initiatives.
What the White House said: Most of the cuts are focused on services for immigrants, including nonprofits that serve refugees and unaccompanied minors accused of being in the country illegally. The administration says the funds are no longer necessary because illegal border crossings have diminished considerably. A White House press release announcing the funding rescissions notes that some of the organizations are led by people who worked in the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama.
What the response was: Trump’s move was condemned by Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican in a tough re-election campaign and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Collins said in a statement that the action came without warning or consultation. She also said she would work to address with colleagues “these illegal actions.”
What's next: Typically, Congress can review the president’s proposed spending cuts before they take effect. But Trump made that all but impossible by announcing them with just five days left in the federal fiscal year. The Government Accountability Office says the maneuver, known as a “pocket rescission,” is illegal.
President Donald Trump is canceling nearly $1 billion in spending approved by Congress, the White House announced on Friday, using a rare and contested power to axe funding for immigrant services and diversity-focused initiatives.
Trump’s Office of Management and Budget described the funding cut as focused on “the most harmful government spending.”
Most of the cuts are focused on services for immigrants, including nonprofits that serve refugees and unaccompanied minors accused of being in the country illegally. The administration says the funds are no longer necessary because illegal border crossings have diminished considerably.
A White House press release announcing the funding rescissions notes that some of the organizations are led by people who worked in the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama.
Trump’s move was condemned by Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican in a tough re-election campaign and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Collins said in a statement that the action came without warning or consultation. She also said she would work to address with colleagues “these illegal actions.”
“Not only is the delay itself an impoundment that was not reported to Congress, but also it is a usurpation of Congress’s appropriations powers,” Collins said. “OMB is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs are worth funding.”
Typically, Congress can review the president’s proposed spending cuts before they take effect. But Trump made that all but impossible by announcing them with just five days left in the federal fiscal year. The Government Accountability Office says the maneuver, known as a “pocket rescission,” is illegal.
Collins called it the latest attempt by OMB to “undermine Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse.”
