The Brief

When Ariel Pittman thinks about the Eaton Fire, she said she thinks about the person with a disability who died waiting to be evacuated, and about the importance of knowing who’s in the area.

“We need to have a sense of responsibility for each other,” Pittman said.

And she thinks about how to get relief money to survivors immediately, Pittman said, “rather than making them fill out mountains of paperwork and drive all over town trying to get resources.”

Pittman, owner and founder of the art gallery Official Welcome in Westlake, is among a group of five women art workers and artists — including Kathryn Andrews, Andrea Bowers, Olivia Gauthier, and Julia V. Hendrickson — who created the mutual aid fund Grief and Hope.

Mutual aid refers to individuals pooling resources to help one another. This collective action can build new social relationships but can also represent a shared understanding that existing relief systems often fail to help everyone.

After the Palisades and Eaton fires a year ago, there was an outpouring of giving for artists and art workers who experienced loss. In small and large gestures, this aid created connection, served as recognition of this shared moment, and suggested new ways of relating to one another.

But those who received aid have ongoing needs beyond what those homegrown efforts have provided, and those who manage aid told LAist that more needs to be done to improve relief systems ahead of the next disaster.

Supporting the art community after the fires

The Grief and Hope fund was intended to draw attention to the economics of working in culture and to the art workers who go unrecognized. It was among a number of initiatives to support artists and art workers after the fires; it raised approximately $1.6 million, much of that already distributed to 271 people.

“I think we all had this shared sense too of just not wanting to see our art world disappear here. And that felt very prescient when the fires happened,” gallery director Gauthier said.

A recent survey about artists in the labor force found more than half of the artists reported being “somewhat or very worried” about being able to afford “food, housing, medical care, or utilities” and around 10% “juggled three or more jobs.”

While some artists do well financially, Pittman said, she has seen art workers living on the edge: self-employed workers, underpaid gallery and museum employees, people who are underemployed or managing multiple jobs.

A disaster only makes their situations more precarious.

The organizers of the mutual aid fund Grief and Hope. From left standing, clockwise: Olivia Gauthier; Ariel Pittman; Kathryn Andrews, Julia V. Hendrickson. Not pictured: Andrea Bowers.

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Grief and Hope’s organizers were already active in supporting artists before the fires, so it came naturally to continue to do so. They quickly set up a fiscal sponsor through The Brick nonprofit to manage the money and researched the minimum requirements needed to distribute aid.

Hendrickson, a small business owner of the arts agency Verge, checked applications for false information, but overall the group aimed to cut red tape — an example they hope bureaucracies can learn from.

The most dominant response Grief and Hope’s organizers heard from aid recipients in a survey was their gratitude for “how little information and hoops we required people to jump through,” Pittman said. She pointed out “the number of people who were just like, ‘thank you for not asking me to quantify my suffering to receive support.’”

Recipients also reported in the survey that they felt more connected.

With its organizers bearing close ties to the community, Grief and Hope was also a hub for information, channeling requests from people wanting to help and sharing opportunities like temporary housing, access to studio space and free art supplies.

In their efforts to distribute funding quickly, members of Grief and Hope recognized that they missed a lot of older people who weren’t on social media or connected to those that are. To remedy this, Grief and Hope organizers were able to distribute funding to those who were less online at a later date.

Pittman said this is another reason why there needs to be data for those distributing resources after a disaster, so that resources could be brought to people, rather than people having to find them or rely on an algorithm to learn about them.

Pittman said her group plans to make one more payment to applicants, but speaking for herself, she doesn’t see Grief and Hope being revived unless they’re uniquely situated to help.

“I hope that the people who saw what we did would do the same for us, that there would be another group like this in the future, for the next thing that needs it, you know?” she said.

And better data would mean future aid groups could get a head start. This group shares an understanding that with climate change, disasters will inevitably become more frequent.

One of Pittman’s collaborators, Andrews, an artist and founder of the gender equality nonprofit Judith Center, has now lost her home twice (first to the Bobcat Fire in 2020, second to the Palisades Fire).

She recognized this is a unique opportunity where people can come together and think about a different future, on how to construct a community anew, but also how to prepare for a different disaster response.

“I don't think a solution after the fact is the right approach because there's just not enough we can do. We need to reengineer it on the front end,” Andrews said. “And I think collectively we should make demands that the government does step up differently, that insurance performs differently.”

Needs after a disaster

Margaret Ross Griffith learned from her neighbor’s car camera that the Eaton Fire had made it to her Altadena home.

She also lost her and her husband’s art studios, their art storage, and also the period of time, the “soft space” she called it, that her family of four shared before her eldest daughter would go off to college.

When various relief efforts sprung up in the aftermath, the last thing she could imagine doing was driving anywhere to pick up anything.

“You're like, ‘I have to drive where?’” she recalled. “I mean, you're just in such a state of shock that driving anywhere is a hardship.”

Margaret Griffith learned from her neighbor’s car camera that the Eaton Fire had made it to her Altadena home.

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Griffith and her husband lost their art studios and their art storage in the Eaton Fire.

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Friends showed up for her and her family. At least two rented trucks to bring items to fill their empty rental home. One day five of her husband’s friends came with shovels and screen to remove and filter debris. The friends who took Griffith and her family in after the Eaton Fire said they could stay as long as they needed.

It also helped that she could receive funds quickly from Grief and Hope. There were immediate costs to cover, including paying for a security deposit and rent for a place that cost twice as much as their mortgage.

Even before having furniture for their rental, Griffith said with some amusement, she used aid from art groups to invest in a laser cutter. Griffith, an artist who makes intricate sculptures by cutting repeated patterns through metal and other materials, said it was an essential need for her art practice.

The value of having a space to create

At 72 years old, veteran artist Coleen Sterritt had retired from her teaching career, with plans to focus solely on her art practice and life in her community. She said that this has now been erased. The materials gathered for future projects have burned, along with her house and two art studios. The people in her former Altadena community who consider themselves too old to rebuild or who rented do not plan to return.

“It was like one day you had your life and the next day you did not,” Sterritt said. “It was just gone.”

After the Eaton Fire, Sterritt, her husband, and their two dogs have moved five times. She said it helps to be around people who understand what they went through. There is a sense of isolation among others, including family.

“They don't really understand that it's with us all the time. It's with us all the time,” she said.

Going to art galleries today is a reminder of the art she has lost: sculptural art in the last 15 years, and the works on paper that went back nearly 50 years, her notebooks, and her sketchbooks.

Sterritt received mutual aid from a GoFundMe a former student created for her. Sterritt was initially reluctant, but was persuaded that the GoFundMe was a connection to others who wanted to give, regardless of how much someone could contribute.

But as the one-year mark approached, she said she has noticed that the attention has begun to fade. Sterritt points out, for example, businesses that were so quick to offer discounts at the time of the fires, did not continue much past early 2025. By summertime, businesses appeared to have moved on, she said.

Recovery has been a full-time job — between working to create an inventory of all that was lost and participating in the lawsuit against SoCal Edison, Sterritt has not been able to make art.

Sterritt misses having a studio and the privacy it affords. The loss of a physical place for an artist isn’t the same as it is for a person whose profession isn’t so tied to having a space for creativity, Sterritt said. And space in Los Angeles is hard to come by.

Griffith, too, has found it challenging to make art since the fire. She said to do so, she needs to have three components — time, money and space. She recently was given access, however, to a temporary studio for her eight-week art residency with Arts at Blue Roof. There she seemed to relax.

“There're no distractions here. I'm not, you know, dealing with the burdens of the house rebuild when I come into this room,” she said in an interview at her Blue Roof studio. 

She is not expecting her new home to be ready until 2027, so she hopes that organizations continue to offer studio space to those affected by the fires.

And she hopes people do not forget how long recovery takes.

Funding for this story was provided by UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, as part of its "Spreading Love Through the Media" initiative, supported by the John Templeton Foundation.

Lawmakers on Thursday killed a controversial plan that could have allowed grizzly bears to one day return to California.

The Assembly Appropriations Committee spiked Inglewood Democratic Sen. Laura Richardson’s Senate Bill 1305. The measure would have tasked the California Department of Fish and Wildlife with creating a “roadmap that evaluates whether, and under what conditions, reintroduction of the grizzly bear is feasible and advisable.”

As is typical with the Legislature’s appropriations committees, lawmakers didn’t discuss the bill; nor did they take public testimony before the committee’s chairperson, Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks of Oakland, announced the decision.

Wicks later told reporters that before intentionally reintroducing grizzly bears, the state must figure out how humans can best coexist with predatory wildlife. She pointed to the controversial return of gray wolves to California and the subsequent loss of cattle.

“The state needs to really invest in how we are actually addressing and dealing with those conflicts,” she said.

Grizzlies once lived across most of California. As many as 10,000 may have roamed before the Gold Rush. They were so prevalent that when California settlers tried to form their own nation, they called it the Bear Flag Republic. A grizzly bear is memorialized on California’s flag.

Settlers systematically exterminated the animals. They were gone by the 1920s, leaving the smaller black bear as California’s only surviving native bear species.

Two Native American tribes consponsored the bill, and several animal welfare and environmental groups supported it. They argued that bringing the second largest land predator back to America’s most populated state would right an ecological wrong and help restore California’s degraded ecosystem.

Opponents included ranchers, hunting associations and rural communities. They argued California is far too populated with people to sustain another apex predator. Rural communities are already overwhelmed with conflicts with mountain lions, black bears and wolves that attack livestock and wander into their towns, opponents said.

The measure set aside no funding for the study, but it allowed for a future Legislature or an outside group to do so.

Yue Stella Yu contributed reporting.

Irvine opened a new pedestrian bridge this week that lets you pedal, scoot, or walk over the 5 Freeway.

I threw my bike in the car and went to check it out.

I parked at Cypress Community Park in Irvine and was soon biking over the 5. The bridge is only for pedestrians, bikes, and scooters — so no cars to worry about.

A new bridge in Irvine opened this week. It stretches across the 5 Freeway and connects to other trails in the city.

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The bridge, which opened on Aug. 11, is a key link in Orange County’s network of trails that can take cyclists and pedestrians all the way from the hills to the Pacific Ocean.

“It looks like they nailed it. This is great," said James Connolly, who was on a scouting trip from his home in Costa Mesa.

“ I wanna take my e-board, which can go about 30 miles, and go all the way to here and then turn around and go back, you know? It looks like that's feasible now," he continued.

The new bridge in Irvine opened this week.

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Sadia Kahn was trying to keep up with her two young boys, who were on scooters.

“ It's our first time here. We've been watching the construction for a while, so yeah, we're excited," she said.

Khan said she has come to really appreciate Irvine's network of parks and trails.

“Prior to having kids, it would just give me like the heebie-jeebies by how like manicured it is and then you have kids and you're like, "Oh, I get the hype," she said. "We've drank the Kool-Aid is what I'm trying to say.” 

There’re plenty of skate parks in the region — skateboarding, after all, got its start in Southern California. But a skate park of another kind has risen on the banks of the L.A. River.

It’s for fingerboarding.

The L.A. River Fingerboard Skatepark is four feet tall and sits atop a bank of dirt barriers installed by the Army Corps of Engineers about a decade ago to control floods.

The view from the back end of the L.A. River Fingerboard Skatepark.

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If you know, you know

There’s no exact address, finding it for yourself is part of the experience.

A group photo of fingerboarders at the the L.A. River Fingerboard Skatepark.

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“ The whole purpose of it is for you to get out and to use your brain and to discover the world, it just makes things fun,” said Ryan Diaz, who manages social media accounts dedicated to the fingerboard skatepark.

No one knows who built it or when it was built, but videos of people doing tricks on miniature ramps and rails started showing up on social media in March.

Diaz instantly recognized the location and decided to check it out. At that time, it was six by six feet — that’s before he started to add to it.

Others joined in and Diaz began documenting the expansion.

The park is about 90 feet long.

“Everyone does say if it wasn't for me, none of this would be happening,” Diaz said. “I was just happy to motivate people, bring out their creativity.”

Skate therapy

Levi Hernandez and his fingerboard.

Levi Hernandez performs a trick with his fingerboard.

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Levi Hernandez shows off his fingerboard.

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Levi Hernandez is from El Monte. It was his fourth time visiting on a recent Wednesday in July, but he’s been fingerboarding for nearly a decade, including at local events like ShredderMania.

He said he’s learning something new at the park.

“ It actually almost feels like real skateboarding in a way," Hernandez said. "Where your fingers end up sliding and where you're popping, it's just a lot of practice.”

Jimmy Tran of Chinatown is a regular that stops by the park on his way home from work every day. He used to skateboard – the real kind – regularly but had to stop after a bad injury.

Jimmy Tran performs a trick with his fingerboard.

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“ I could do the same tricks as skateboarding, but I don't have to get hurt at all, honestly. And I still have the satisfaction of landing a really clean trick,” Tran said.

Tran says it’s a place he can relax, be himself, and feel like a kid again.

Saturdays are for building

Gilbert Medrano (left) and Ryan Diaz (right) co-manages the park.

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Build days to expand the park are on Saturdays.

“We have kids that come from the neighborhood, and we teach them how to pour concrete and stuff like that, kind of like a big brother role,” Diaz said.

Besides the usual skatepark obstacles like ramps and rails, the crew also add art, including a large “LA” sign in Dodger Blue and requisite graffiti like the shark Diaz painted as a tribute to Jaws on a quarter pipe ramp.

Darren Mojica performs a trick on the quarter pipe ramp.

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Diaz’s dream is for the park to be recognized by the city as a local landmark.

“I want the spot to last, and for years to come for people to come and visit,” Diaz said.

Saturday build days include decorating the park with graffiti and art.

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A hardware store isn't where you’d expect to find a drawing class, a matcha pop-up or plant sales. Unless you're at Anzen Hardware, an 80-year-old staple that nearly disappeared from Little Tokyo in 2023.

The business reopened in November, and it’s been trying to find its groove in a neighborhood where legacy businesses are moving out — such as Suehiro Cafe and Rafu Shimpo — while navigating a different world from when it first opened.

“We're noticing the need for hardware tools is declining,” said Philip Hirose.

Jo Ann Maehara Hirose, along with her son Philip Hirose, are the new owners of Anzen Hardware. They are also the daughter and grandson of the founder.

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Philip Hirose is bringing new programming, from matcha pop-ups to drawing classes, to the reopened Anzen.

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Hirose and his mom, Jo Ann Maehara Hirose, are the new owners — the grandson and daughter of the founder. With the help of trusted family friend Rockett Ito Wong, Anzen is carrying on its legacy as it becomes something new.

"None of the three of us have that much experience with running retail stores," said Wong, a college student. "It's been quite a bit of trial and error."

Eight decades on First Street

Tsutomu Maehara opened Anzen Hotel Supply, a precursor to Anzen Hardware, after being incarcerated at Tule Lake during World War II.

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Tsutomu Maehara — Jo Ann Maehara Hirose’s father — settled in Los Angeles after being incarcerated at Tule Lake during World War II.

In 1946, he founded Anzen Hotel Supply on First Street to sell provisions to nearby single-room hotels.

Anzen Hardware from its early days in Little Tokyo.

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"As soon as I could hold a broom, we were sweeping the streets or the sidewalks outside," Maehara Hirose said.

Anzen eventually pivoted to selling American hardware and imported Japanese tools and goods — including bamboo garden rakes and handcrafted knives from a company that once made samurai swords.

Twenty-year-old Rockett Ito Wong is a longtime family friend and runs the floor.

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“It's always a discovery,” said Mike Okamura, president of the Little Tokyo Historical Society and a patron since Maehara was behind the cash register.

Maehara Hirose remembered Anzen imported one of the first rice cookers from Japan. “A National. That one-button one,” she said. “They were flying off the shelves.”

These days, tariffs are making it harder to keep and find suppliers. Still, Wong has just brought in a shipment of knives and chisels.

“I don't even think it's been a question that we would source any of this stuff not from Japan,” he said.

The shop still sharpens knives. In fact, Wong is the guy responsible for the job.

A reluctant homecoming

In 2023, then-owner Nori Takatani, a distant relative of Maehara who had worked at Anzen since he was a teen, put the store up for sale. He was in ill health and asked Maehara Hirose and her husband to take over.

She was hesitant, having opened the restaurant Azay several years earlier. She worried about taking on a second business. Besides, there were two prospective buyers, both invested in preserving Anzen's legacy.

But one day, Takatani told her the deals fell through because the landlord was jacking up rent.

Wong was able to find a new supplier from Japan for an order of new wood chisels.

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“You gotta buy it,” he told her.

Anzen Hardware returned two years later at one of its previous locations, 200 E. First Street.

“It was great news and great joy,” Okamura said when the community found out who the new owners were.

More than a hardware store 

On a July evening, about a dozen people, pencils and paper in hand, were at Anzen to learn how to draw.

Their subjects were Patty and Carrie — friends in their 70s — who ended up regaling the participants, some decades younger, with stories of their lives and community advocacy work.

The “Memory Capsule Drawing” class was taught by Kris Chau, an artist and loyal patron. She still brings in the knife she bought a decade ago for sharpening.

In July, Philip and artist Kris Chau organized a drawing class at Anzen Hardware. The models were two 70-something community activists.

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She said she was inspired to start the drawing class after Hirose said he was noticing that some elders were losing confidence and purpose.

"Even though you could see the light within Carrie and Patty, they were like, 'Why would anybody wanna draw us?'" Chau said. "The young students were just, like, in tears at the end of class."

That, along with the store’s matcha pop-ups, plant sales and artist collaborations, may just be what a legacy neighborhood business needs to survive.

“Philip [Hirose] is taking it forward, but keeping in mind the history and paying tribute to it,” said Okamura, who has been helping out at both Anzen and Azay since he retired as a banker.

“I see the old Anzen — the same counters and some of the hardware too,” he continued. “But then I see other things — the programming inside the store, which has never been done before.”