The Brief

Charging an electric vehicle in Southern California often involves conditions that are less than ideal — like sitting in your hot (or cold) car in an empty parking lot. Now some companies are trying to reimagine the experience.

The company Rove recently opened a charging station off the 5 Freeway in Santa Ana that includes a 24-hour indoor lounge with bathrooms, a car wash, and a Gelson’s mini market. Kristi Ochoa, the company’s vice president of marketing, said the idea was borne out of company leaders’ own public charging woes.

“And then we just kept problem solving,” she said. “What were the challenges people were having where they were finding chargers that didn't work well? How do we fix that? And how do we make it easy to pay and how do we make them as fast as possible and how do we reduce the line?”

Rove’s Santa Ana station has 40 fast chargers, and attendants who can help newbie EV drivers figure out how to charge and address problems onsite rather than via telephone, like at most other charging stations.

And they have smaller amenities that are gas station norms but usually absent from charging stations, like squeegees to clean your windshield. “They’re kind of an underrated piece,” Ochoa said.

This reporter’s charging woes

My family entered the brave new world of electric vehicle ownership when we bought a used Nissan Leaf in 2018. We were lucky — our landlord split the bill with us to install a Level 2 charger (a typical home or work charger that takes 4-10 hours to fully charge a vehicle) in the garage of our apartment.

It was mostly great. We could charge up overnight, get to work, where I could usually find an available charger nearby, and get home to charge again. We felt like we were saving money by not buying gas and doing our part to try and usher in a cleaner energy future.

But then we moved to a place where we couldn’t charge at home and our EV journey got significantly more complicated. Charging in the wild — aka, on the streets of Southern California, outside of home and/or work — could be exasperating. There were only a few charging stations within several miles of our home. The closest one, just a block away, only had one charger that we could use for our particular vehicle and it was almost always busy.

Sometimes, I’d check the charging company’s app (charging in the wild required us to have multiple apps for different companies, and a third app to find nearby charging stations), see that the charger was open, and rush over there only to find that someone had beat me to it.

Other times, chargers would be out of service — just when I desperately needed one. I once took my 9-year-old daughter to a movie on a rainy night, planning to charge at the parking garage adjacent to the theater while we watched the film. One of the garage’s two chargers was out of service and the other was busy.

The competition for a charge can be fierce.

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Justin Sullivan

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Getty Images

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After the movie, I found a charger at a nearby shopping center only to find that it was also out of service. It was now pouring and we wouldn’t make it home without charging. We finally begged a car dealership to let us use their only available Level 1 charger (the slowest) for enough time to get us home. I sat in the fogged-up car for 20 minutes trying to stay awake while my daughter dozed in the back.

We eventually gave up and sold our EV. I hope to try again when we can buy a car that gets more miles to the charge and when the public charging infrastructure for EVs, other than Tesla, is better developed. (The Tesla Supercharger network is already robust.)

More full service stations coming

The Rove-style station — if there were enough of them — seems like an answer to some of the problems we faced.

On a recent afternoon, Nick O’Malley and Caleb Ostgaard were lounging at an outdoor table at the Santa Ana station, waiting for O’Malley’s car to finish charging before heading back to L.A. O’Malley said he’d like to see more stations like Rove’s, “where it's less of just a random parking lot in the middle of nowhere.”

Tico Brown stopped at the Santa Ana station to charge up his new Tesla. “This is nice that I can grab something to eat real quick and then get back on the road,” he said.

Rove's EV charging station in Santa Ana has an indoor lounge, Gelson's mini market, and outdoor seating.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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Rove plans to open 10 similar stations in Southern California by 2026, including in Costa Mesa, Torrance, Long Beach, and Corona.

Other companies are also trying to improve EV owners’ experience with public charging. Electrify America opened its first indoor charging station with a lounge in San Francisco in February.

“I think that and the Rove model are a reflection of charging stations realizing we need to provide a better experience when it comes to charging,” said Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the state Energy Commission.

Not to be outdone, Tesla is currently building a charging station in Hollywood that will include a diner and drive-in theater. And a new Tesla Super Charger station — with 112 fast chargers, a 7-Eleven, and a lounge — is expected to open in late 2025 near the Grapevine section of the I-5.

California’s big EV plans

The state has 10 years to reach its goal of having zero emission vehicles make up 100% of all new vehicles sold. The outgoing Biden administration approved California’s mandate to phase out gas-powered cars via a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But the incoming Trump administration is likely to challenge the waiver in court.

Currently, about one in four new vehicles sold in California are zero emission.

The state also recently began tracking the number and distribution of EV charging stations. Currently, there are more than 152,000 public and shared private chargers, according to the state Energy Commission. Shared private chargers are located at workplaces or in parking garages that charge a fee to park while charging.

The state’s goal is to have 250,000 chargers installed by the end of 2026. Buckley, the agency spokesperson, said California is on track to reach that goal “in the next couple of years.”

Buckley said the state is also “laser focused on reliability” — the Energy Commission is in the process of developing standards to make sure chargers are working 97% of the time. Those standards will apply to chargers that get some amount of public funding, which Buckley said applies to about half of the state’s installed chargers.

In December, the Energy Commission announced plans to invest $1.4 billion over the next four years on new infrastructure for refueling electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles. Buckley said the bulk of that investment will be directed toward communities where chargers are even more scarce than I experienced during my years of EV ownership.

“We’re giving a little more love to rural areas and low-income areas,” Buckley said, “going where the market is not going.”

After copper wire theft left the Sixth Street Bridge in darkness for years, the city of Los Angeles has hired a Pasadena-based engineering firm to restore the lighting, a move aimed at improving safety for Boyle Heights and the surrounding neighborhoods.

City officials contracted Tetra Tech to relight the bridge, which has been plagued by copper wire theft since its opening in 2022. The outages have frustrated residents and commuters who use the bridge to walk, run, bike and drive between downtown LA and the Eastside.

Aging infrastructure, copper wire theft and delayed repairs led to nearly 2,000 streetlight service requests in Boyle Heights in 2024. Nearly seven miles of copper wire have been reported stolen from the Sixth Street Bridge.

Tetra Tech began working on the project’s design in January and is scheduled to restore the wiring to all lights along the bridge, including along roadways, barriers, ramps, stairways and arches before the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games come to Los Angeles that summer, according to a Feb. 18 news release from Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office.

The firm – which was selected by the city’s Bureau of Engineering – will fortify the pull boxes, service cabinet and conduits to protect against copper wire theft. Tetra Tech will also install a security camera system to deter vandalism and theft.

“When our streets are well-lit, our neighborhoods feel safer and more connected,” Jurado said in the news release. “The Sixth Street Bridge plays a vital role in connecting Angelenos between the Eastside and the heart of the City.”

Jurado – who pledged to look into fixing the Sixth Street Bridge lights when she was elected in 2024 – said the partnership with Tetra Tech “moves us one step closer to restoring one of the City’s most iconic landmarks as a safe, welcoming public space our communities deserve.”

According to officials, the total contract value with Tetra Tech is $5.3 million, which includes work on the Sixth Street Bridge as well as the Sixth Street PARC project, which encompasses 12 acres of recreational space underneath and adjacent to the bridge.

The PARC project will make way for sports fields, fitness equipment, event spaces and a performance stage. PARC’s grand opening is anticipated later this year.

Because the work for the PARC project and the bridge is connected, the Board of Engineers recommended using the existing PARC contract with Tetra Tech to ensure completion ahead of the 2028 Games, officials said.

The cost for the design work on the bridge alone is roughly $1 million.

On Thursday, Jurado announced that her streetlight repair crew had restored lighting and strengthened infrastructure for more than 400 streetlights across her district, including Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, and El Sereno. Next, they plan to tackle repairs in downtown L.A.

For the last 70 years, the  27th Street Bakery hasn’t just been the go-to place for people who want to spend less time in the kitchen — it’s become a staple in South Central, providing jobs and security for people living in the neighborhood.

The bakery is Black-owned and in its third generation as a business. It’s co-owned by sisters Denise Cravin-Paschal and Olympic gold-medalist Jeanette Bolden-Pickens, as well as her husband Al Pickens.

“My grandfather employed a lot of people around here as he was growing his business and so have we,” Cravin-Paschal told the LA Local. “They feel that this is a safe place to come. We have the respect of being here for 70 years and so we enjoy it.”

The bakery sits on Central Avenue, the focal point of Black Los Angeles between the 1930s and 1960s. As segregation laws were struck down, Black people in LA began to move elsewhere and took their businesses with them. The bakery, though, is still Black-owned and operating 70 years later.

Today it is considered the largest manufacturer of sweet potato pies on the West Coast, the bakery’s website states. Last year, the city and District 9 Councilmember Curren Price Jr. presented the bakery with a plaque that reads: “A Walk Down Central Avenue — A legacy of community: powered by the people and its places.”

It hangs on the wall in the bakery’s lobby along with several other photos and recognitions they’ve received over the years.

“Our goal is to keep this legacy alive and we’re celebrating 70 years of being here in business. We are so grateful to the community,” Bolden-Pickens said.

In celebration of its anniversary, a sign in the bakery says it is offering one slice of sweet potato pie for 70 cents on Saturdays starting this weekend through Oct. 31.

The bakery was a restaurant at first bringing Southern flavor to LA

The bakery began as a restaurant in the 1930s on Central Avenue founded by Harry and Sadie Patterson, according to the family and Los Angeles Conservancy. Back then, Central Avenue was the epicenter of LA’s Black community and Patterson, who came from Shreveport, Louisiana, decided to bring his Southern recipes to life in Los Angeles.

The restaurant later became a bakery in 1956, according to the bakery’s website. Patterson’s daughter Alberta Cravin and her son Gregory Spann took over the bakery in 1980. After Spann passed away, Cravin’s daughters — the sisters who are current owners — took over the family business. Five other relatives also help them out, Cravin-Paschal said.

These days, the bakery is open Tuesday through Saturday each week and the bulk of their customers are other businesses. They serve nearly 300 vendors including convenience stores like 7-Eleven, Ralphs grocery stores, Smart & Final, ARCO gas stations, restaurants and other mom-and-pop stores. Louisiana Fried Chicken has been a customer since 1980, Cravin-Paschal said.

An average delivery today is usually 45 dozen pies and they also ship orders out of state, Cravin-Paschal said.

She also told The LA Local they have six full time employees and most of them have worked for the bakery at least 25 years.

“I like working here, I like the people,” Maximina “Maxi” Rodriguez, a longtime employee, told The LA Local. After 32 years at the bakery, she said she plans to retire in June. “I’m going to miss it.”

Rodriguez said working at the bakery is a family affair for her, too. Her sister, Guadalupe Garibaldi, has worked at the bakery for over 40 years and her niece, Yoselin Garibaldi, is now a cashier and driver.

Patterson’s lessons inspired 3 generations to keep the business running

For Bolden-Pickens and Cravin-Paschal, running the bakery is a labor of love. Both told The LA Local that their grandfather taught them to stay true to the fresh ingredients they use and not to cut corners.

These lessons helped Bolden-Pickens in her life before taking over the family business. She won a gold medal as part of the U.S. 4×100 meter relay team in track and field during the 1984 Olympics.

“What I learned from being an Olympian is that it takes a lot of hard work. I learned that from my grandfather,” she said.

Bolden-Pickens said it hasn’t been easy running the business, but they’ve been able to stay afloat because of the lessons learned from their grandfather.

“I remember during the pandemic, we actually had to go to the egg farm and stand in line for a couple of hours just to get the eggs that we needed,” Bolden-Pickens said. “We use the best spices. We make our own vanilla.”

Cravin-Paschal said after the death of their brother Gregory Spann, who was the main baker for nearly two decades, they struggled for a few years to keep the recipe and taste consistent. But eventually they figured it out.

“We had a little rough spot because we all know the recipes but you have to put it together (correctly),” Cravin-Paschal said. “Now we’re back to the original taste.”

As marijuana use among teens has grown in the past decade, researchers have been trying to better understand the health risks of the drug. Now, a new longitudinal study finds that cannabis use among adolescents increases risks of being diagnosed with bipolar and psychotic disorders, as well as anxiety and depression, years later.

"This is very, very, very worrying," says psychiatrist Dr. Ryan Sultan at Columbia University, a cannabis researcher who wasn't involved in the new study published in the latest JAMA Health Forum.

Strong study design

Researchers analyzed health data on 460,000 teenagers in the Kaiser Permanente Health System in Northern California. The teens were followed until they were 25 years old. The data included annual screenings for substance use and any mental health diagnoses from the health records. Researchers excluded the adolescents who had symptoms of mental illnesses before using cannabis.

"We looked at kids using cannabis before they had any evidence of these psychiatric conditions and then followed them to understand if they were more likely or less likely to develop them," says Dr. Lynn Silver, a pediatrician and researcher at the Public Health Institute, and an author of the new study.

They found that the teens who reported using cannabis in the past year were at a higher risk of being diagnosed with several mental health conditions a few years later, compared to teens who didn't use cannabis.

Teens who reported using cannabis had twice the risk of developing two serious mental illnesses: bipolar, which manifests as alternating episodes of depression and mania, and psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia which involve a break with reality.

Now, only a small fraction — nearly 4,000 — of all teens in the study were diagnosed with each of these two disorders. Both bipolar and psychotic disorders are among the most serious and disabling of mental illnesses.

"Those are the scarier conditions that we worry about," says Sultan.

Silver points out these illnesses are expensive to treat and come at a high cost to society. The U.S. cannabis market is an industry with a value in the tens-of-billions — but the societal cost of schizophrenia has been calculated to be $350 billion a year.

"And if we increase the number of people who develop that condition in a way that's preventable, that can wipe out the whole value of the cannabis market," Silver says.

Depression and anxiety too

The new study also found that the risk for more common conditions like depression and anxiety was also higher among cannabis users.

"Depression alone went up by about a third," says Silver, "and anxiety went up by about a quarter."

But the link between cannabis use and depression and anxiety got weaker for teens who were older when they used cannabis. "Which really shows the sensitivity of the younger child's brain to the effects of cannabis," says Silver. "The brain is still developing. The effects of cannabis on the receptors in the brain seem to have a significant impact on their neurological development and the risk for these mental health disorders."

Silver hopes these findings will make teens more cautious about using the drug, which is not as safe as people perceive it to be.

"With legalization, we've had a tremendous wave of this perception of cannabis as a safe, natural product to treat your stress with," she says. "That is simply not true."

The new study is well designed and gets at "the chicken or the egg, order-of-operations question," says Sultan. There have been other past studies that have also found a link between cannabis use and mental health conditions, especially psychosis. But, those studies couldn't tell whether cannabis affected the likelihood of developing mental health symptoms or whether people with existing problems were more likely to use cannabis — perhaps to treat their symptoms.

But by excluding teens who were already showing mental health symptoms, the new study suggests a causal link between cannabis use and later mental health diagnoses. Additional research is needed to understand the link fully.

'Playing with fire'

Sultan, the psychiatrist and researcher at Columbia University, says the study confirms what he's seeing in his clinic — more teens using cannabis who've developed new or worsening mental health symptoms.

"It is most common around anxiety and depression, but it's also showing up in more severe conditions like bipolar disorder and psychosis," he says.

He notes that mental health disorders are complex in origin. A host of risk factors, like genetics, environment, lifestyle and life experiences all play a role. And some young people are more at risk than others.

"When someone has a psychotic episode in the context of cannabis or a manic episode in the context of cannabis, clinicians are going to say, 'Please do not do that again because you're you're you're playing with fire,'" he says.

Because the more they use the drug, he says the more likely that their symptoms will worsen over time, making recovery harder.

"What we're worried about [is if] you sort of get stuck in psychosis, it gets harder and harder to pull the person back," says Sultan. "Psychosis and severe mood disorders, particularly bipolar disorder are like seizures in your brain. They're sort of neurotoxic to your brain, and so it seems to be associated with a more rapid deterioration of the brain."

Some electric bikes in California could soon require license plates under a proposed state bill aiming to address the rise in electric bike related injuries.

AB 1942 or the E-bike Accountability Act, would apply exclusively to Class 2 and Class 3 electric bikes.

Class 2 bikes can be operated without peddling until it reaches the speed of 20 mph.

Class 3 bikes reach a max speed of 28 mph; motor assist could only kick in with peddling.

The bill would also require owners to carry proof of ownership and would direct the Department of Motor Vehicles to establish a registration process. It was introduced by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan of Orinda in Contra Costa County earlier this month.

E-bike injuries spiked 18-fold between 2018 and 2023, according to state traffic data.

The bill may be heard in committee March 16.