Topline:
A refrigerated warehouse operated by Lineage Logistics has burned in Boyle Heights for nearly a week. But what exactly is in the smoky air is still unclear.
Why it matters: Air quality indexes may capture the concentration of particulate matter in the air, but not necessarily the specific pollutants in them.
Read on ... for more from air pollution experts.
A refrigerated warehouse operated by Lineage Logistics has burned in Boyle Heights for nearly a week. Public health officials are urging residents nearby and downwind to protect themselves from the smoky air.
But what exactly is in the air is still unclear.
Authorities say they’ve cleared the most hazardous materials — ammonia and lithium-ion batteries — from the fire zone. A spokesperson for the L.A. Fire Department said foam insulation, wood pallets of food, and solar panels on top of the 500,000 square-foot building continue to smolder.
Materials including plastics, electronics and even rotting meat are likely burning, which means the pollution particles emitted “tend to be highly enriched with toxic organics, toxic metals, that are above and beyond what just normal, day-to-day air pollution would look like,” said UCLA air pollution researcher Yifang Zhu.
She said air quality indexes may capture the concentration of particulate matter in the air, but not necessarily the specific toxins in them.
“You'll have almost like a double jeopardy in a sense that the levels [of particulate matter] are higher, and the toxicity is also higher,” she said.
Measuring heavy metals or volatile organic compounds requires special monitoring equipment, Zhu said.
“It’s very difficult to measure,” she said.
But she suspects at least some types of health-harming heavy metals are likely to be in the smoke.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado on Monday called for more specifics about what is in the smoke.
People “shouldn't have to guess about what they're breathing or rely on rumors, scattered information and updates, and incomplete information,” she said at a news conference. Jurado, whose council district includes Boyle Heights, added that data from regulators, such as the South Coast Air Quality Management District, should be released in clear, understandable language in English and Spanish.
The South Coast AQMD told LAist before Jurado spoke that the agency has monitors that measure particulate matter, ozone, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, but not other types of pollutants. The agency said it has set up additional monitors at Eastman Avenue Elementary and Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School. The agency added that the Environmental Protection Agency is also monitoring air quality at the fence line of the facility. LAist has reached out to the EPA for details.
Zhu added that even when the fire is eventually put out, the cleanup can kick up even more pollution — a lesson learned through her research after the L.A. fires.
“ I think people really need to take precautions,” Zhu said, emphasizing that those closest to the fire and downwind should avoid being outside as much as possible, keep windows closed, run a HEPA or MERV 13 air filter, and wear an N95 or similar mask otherwise.
Michael Kleeman, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, offered this advice if you're cleaning up ash:
UC Irvine toxicology professor Michael Kleinman said if thawed meat is also burning, that could lead to further toxic gases being released.
Experts urged precautions, especially if you smell smoke.
“ For people who are very close to the fire, like the firefighters themselves, they have exposure to both particulate matter and potential toxic gases, and that's why you'll see them wearing respirators,” said UC Irvine chemistry professor Suzanne Blum. “But once you're some feet away from the building, then the primary concern is the particulate smoke that is coming from this fire.”
Topline:
The California State University faculty union is asking its members to authorize a strike.
Why now: This summer, the California Faculty Association declared an impasse after 16 months of negotiation with the CSU. The union’s president said university officials negotiating with the union have “not been honest agents.”
Why it matters: The union, which represents 29,000 professors and other university employees, is seeking salary increases, changes to faculty workloads and protections related to the use of artificial intelligence.
The California State University faculty union is asking its members to authorize a strike, as negotiations with the California State University system remain stalled.
This summer, the California Faculty Association declared an impasse after 16 months of negotiation with the CSU. The union’s president said university officials negotiating with the union have “not been honest agents.”
If a majority of members approve the strike authorization, voting from Oct. 26 through Nov. 19, CFA leadership would be authorized to call a strike.
The union, which represents 29,000 professors and other university employees, is seeking salary increases, changes to faculty workloads and protections related to the use of artificial intelligence.
In recent weeks, CSU has reached tentative agreements with three unions: the Statewide University Police Association, the United Auto Workers Local 4123 and Academic Professionals of California. Together, the agreements cover 14,000 university employees.
The tentative agreements, which must be approved by union members and CSU’s Board of Trustees, include an 8% salary increase over two years, along with one-time raises negotiated by each bargaining unit.
Topline:
There's an international club for tall people that started in Los Angeles. It's also a little bit of a support group. And yes, it can be tough to be tall. I am 6 feet, hear me out.
Why it matters: Complaining about being able to see over a crowd may sound silly, but height can be a love-hate relationship for many people, particularly towering women and children who feel like they just don’t fit in.
Why now: Well, that’s where a worldwide social club for tall people comes in, but whether it'll survive to its 100th birthday is in question.
Read on ... to learn more, including how to join.
It can be tough to be tall. I am 6 feet, hear me out.
And yes, complaining about being able to see over a crowd may sound silly. But height can be a love-hate relationship for many people, particularly towering women and children who feel like they just don’t fit in.
Well, that’s where a worldwide social club for tall people comes in, but whether it’ll reach its 100th birthday is in question.
Tall Clubs International is an organization spanning more than a dozen states and several countries that offers tall adults a chance to connect and commiserate. The original chapter, founded in Los Angeles in 1938, is called the California Tip Toppers.
How to get involved
Tall Clubs International also does philanthropic work.
To get into the L.A. group, men have to be 6 feet 4 inches or taller, and women have to be at least 6 feet. One of the tallest members of the organization is 7 feet 2 inches, and honestly, I couldn’t help but perk up at the opportunity to feel short for once in my life.
At 13, I was still growing at 5 feet 10, towering over almost every kid in my freshman high school class. One of the first questions people still ask me is whether I played volleyball or basketball, and I’ve learned to laugh at the look they get when I say I preferred theater.
“People see how tall you are, they expect ‘Oh, you're going to be great on the basketball court,’” said Michele Cripps, a 6-foot-1 member of the California Tip Toppers, who joined in 1996. She's married to William Walter Wiseman II, a fellow member. “Well, I'm sorry, white girls can't jump sometimes, and I'm one of them.”
Some of the tall club members are generational, encouraged to join by their parents or older relatives, which has started to pose its own problems as the chapters get older.
The chapters became a way for tall people to trade practical tips, like which stores sold pants that actually covered your ankles or shoes that didn’t need to be specially made.
“I was always being kidded about my pants being too short or my clothes not fitting correctly,” said Wiseman, who's nearly 6 feet 9 and also wasn’t much of a basketball player. “And as I grew as an adult, people are a little bit afraid to approach people that are tall.”
Wiseman has a good sense of humor about his height, cracking jokes that I’ve added to my arsenal when answering “how’s the weather up there?” But he doesn’t gloss over the pain points either — Wiseman can’t fit into cars or roller coasters, hotel beds are never long enough, and airplanes can be an expensive nightmare.
“It's not just the socialization of being tall, but it's also the physicality of it,” he said. “It's almost a handicap to be tall.”
Cripps said she was a skinny kid, but she couldn’t help but feel “huge” growing up a head above everyone else, which hurt her young self-esteem and made dating more difficult.
The clubs gave them both a chance to see eye to eye with a room full of people for the first time, and potentially even find a partner. Wiseman’s parents met in the Dayton Altitudians tall club in Ohio, decades before Wiseman and Cripps met through their own California clubs.
“The people that married inside the club stayed married,” said Wiseman, who lives in Torrance with Cripps. “The people that married outside of the club got divorced.”
But now, the California Tip Toppers is having trouble bringing in new, younger members — a recruitment crisis that’s essentially dissolved groups in other areas, Wiseman said.
“We're facing the same challenges like all other clubs,” Cripps and Wiseman said, jumping in to finish each other’s thoughts. “Some of it could be generational. Some of it's that since COVID, the clubs have not been quite as active as they used to be. Some people [don’t have] homes to open up anymore … and we're all getting older.”
The club is at a crossroads: Get new members on board or fade away. The couple seems to have made it a mission to rejuvenate the California Tip Toppers, but Cripps was frank when she said they’re not sure how to get more people involved, whether it's fresh events or outreach opportunities.
At the end of the day, they’re hoping the club and the community it fosters can help others learn how to “stand tall” and be proud.
“It’s a challenge, but it’s something that was given to us,” Cripps said. “I say as I've aged, I should have listened to my mother, I should have stood up tall.”
Moms everywhere, mine included, rejoice.
“Everybody wants to be something different than they have,” Cripps continued. “So, try and embrace what you have. Life is too short, and it goes too quick.”
Topline:
Paranormal investigator David Kalbeitzer at an event Saturday night explores Pasadena's past, one where rocket science meets ritual magic and ghost stories echo through its grandest buildings.
The backstory: Kalbeitzer began digging into Pasadena’s unusual history after buying a Victorian home north of Old Town that he says is haunted by a benevolent spirit.
Wild stories: Kalbeitzer found the lore to include rocket pioneer Jack Parsons' ritual magic and muckraker Upton Sinclair's experiments in telepathy.
The event: The talk at Mesmer Mesmer in Old Town is currently full, but there's a wait list and Kalbeitzer plans to give more talks at the shop.
Beyond the Rose Bowl and historic bungalows, Pasadena has stranger tales to tell. David Kalbeitzer has been seeking out those stories where rocket science meets the occult and ghosts haunt the city’s grandest buildings.
For Kalbeitzer, a Disney executive who investigates the paranormal in his free time, his fascination with the city’s mysterious side started when he bought a Victorian north of Old Town.
He sensed a spirit at the open house a dozen years ago and took it as a reason to move his family to Pasadena. Then he started learning the city’s history.
“I realized, ‘Oh, this place called us just as much as we were looking for it,’” he said.
On Saturday night, he’s sharing the lore he’s collected at Mesmer Mesmer an Old Town shop and event space. While the event is full, there’s a waitlist, and more talks featuring Kalbeitzer are in the works.
Ask Kalbeitzer about haunted Pasadena, and the list stretches from alleyways to the Colorado Street Bridge to Castle Green, the turreted former hotel overlooking Central Park.
“The Pasadena Playhouse theater is, you know, very haunted,” he added.
He says theatergoers have reported hearing disembodied voices.
“And you look, and there’s no one there, or apparitions that have been seen sort of standing in the corner, and then you walk up, and they kind of disappear like shadowy figures,” he said.
As for the spirit that helped draw him to his current Pasadena home?
Kalbeitzer says she’s still around — and his psychic friend Michael Kouri shared her name: Dolores.
“It’s actually haunted by a very kind ghost that looks out for the house, protects my family and has been able to activate our alarm,” he said.
Having a Dolores in the house might send some people running, but Kalbeitzer said he grew up in a haunted house in Idaho Falls, Idaho.
And when his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a teenage Kalbeitzer started seeking out places known for paranormal activity.
Having lived in different neighborhoods in L.A., Kalbeitzer says there’s something uniquely otherworldly about Pasadena — and it goes beyond ghost stories.
He said the city has an energy that draws people exploring the unknown, perhaps most famously Jack Parsons.
The rocket pioneer who helped launch the Jet Propulsion Laboratory also practiced ritual magic at his Pasadena home with the likes of L. Ron Hubbard before he founded Scientology.
“Many people call it the occult," Kalbeitzer said. "I don’t know that I fully subscribe to that, but there is spiritualism and occult mixed in there."
Then there was Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle, whose interests while living in Pasadena extended to telepathy and séances.
In 1930, Sinclair published Mental Radio, a book about experiments in mind-reading. Albert Einstein provided a preface. Yes, that Einstein, who would spend the following winter at Caltech expanding on the theories of relativity and cosmology.
“It’s the craziest mixture of things that were happening at that time and all of it at the same time,” Kalbeitzer said.
The event couldn’t have found a more appropriate venue.
Since opening five months ago in Old Town, Mesmer Mesmer has embraced the dark and mysterious, offering tarot and crystal readings and hosting events on subjects such as hip-hop’s relationship with ghosts.
At that event, a medium told owner Tyke O’Brien she could sense a presence in the shop, which formerly housed a bridal store.
“She goes, ‘Do you ever feel it?’ And I’m like, ‘I am such a bummer,” O’Brien recounted. “I wish I could say yes."
The same can be said for this writer who’s lived and worked in and around Pasadena for years without so much as a brush with the otherworldly.
Kalbeitzer, on the other hand, reports supernatural encounters all around town.
“Everyone has the ability to have those experiences," he said. "But I do think how you see yourself in the world has a lot more to do with it, and whether you want to have those experiences."
When: Saturday, Oct. 24 at 7 p.m.
Where: Mesmer Mesmer, 65 E. Holly St, Pasadena
The event is currently full but there's a wait list and Kalbeitzer plans to give more talks at the shop.
Topline:
Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027. At a community meeting Thursday night at MacArthur Park Elementary School, officials said fence installation is now expected to continue through fall 2027, overshooting the previously announced spring 2027 completion date.
Why now: Thursday’s meeting highlighted the divide over the city’s plan to fence off MacArthur Park, with tensions rising during public comment. The Los Angeles Police Department says the fence will make drug enforcement easier, while some in the community who volunteer around the park questioned whether it will improve safety enough to justify the cost. The city has allocated $2.3 million for the project, but officials have not said whether that will cover the full cost.
What's next: Officials also outlined other planned improvements, including restoring access through the tunnels connecting the park’s north and south sides, making accessibility upgrades and providing free Wi-Fi for parkgoers. Residents who want to provide input on the fence’s decorative elements can email admin@themorcosgroup.com or call (310) 479-4727 for more information.
Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027.
At a community meeting Thursday night at MacArthur Park Elementary School, officials said fence installation is now expected to continue through fall 2027, overshooting the previously announced spring 2027 completion date.
Thursday’s meeting highlighted the divide over the city’s plan to fence off MacArthur Park, with tensions rising during public comment. The Los Angeles Police Department says the fence will make drug enforcement easier, while some in the community who volunteer around the park questioned whether it will improve safety enough to justify the cost.
The city has allocated $2.3 million for the project, but officials have not said whether that will cover the full cost.
Installation of the green metal fence around the park’s perimeter is expected to begin in November and take about a year. A second phase, adding decorative elements to the fence, is planned for fall and winter 2027. Officials said the schedule could change because of weather or other unforeseen circumstances.
The park is expected to remain open during construction.
Capt. Ben Fernandes with the LAPD’s Rampart Division said the fence would create a barrier along Alvarado Street and other areas where officers have seen people using narcotics. That would allow police to focus more of their enforcement efforts inside the park, he said.
“So if people are going deeper into the park to use, that’ll make it easier for us to go in and do enforcement on them and arrest them for that use,” Fernandes said.
“I’ve been an officer for 29 years, and I’ve always known I can go buy drugs there, and I did as a narcotics officer. So what I’m saying is, we are trying to make it not convenient,” he added.
Fernandes also said the city plans to enhance the park’s existing camera network. LAPD officers and Los Angeles Park Rangers will be able to monitor the cameras from their respective stations, he said. City officials are still evaluating whether additional cameras will be needed to address blind spots in the park after construction is complete.
Ariana Walker, who visits MacArthur Park every Saturday with a group of friends who pool their own resources to distribute food and hygiene kits, questioned whether the city had shown that the fence would improve safety and how much it would cost to maintain.
“The fence is a $2.3 million fence at the base level,” she said. “And they haven’t given us any indication of how much more it’s going to cost for upkeep, to keep anybody safe. There’s no conclusive evidence that a fence is going to stop crime the way that they’re suggesting.”
The meeting grew tense when John Alle, a local property owner whose family owns the building that houses Langer’s Delicatessen across the street from the park, objected to having his comments read from a written comment card rather than speaking directly to officials. Alle has been a vocal critic of the city’s response to drug activity and public safety concerns around MacArthur Park.
He was allowed to comment during the meeting and said the city needs to take a tougher approach to drug use and sales around the park.
“We see knife attacks at all hours of the day. It’s out of control. And it’s not gotten any better,” he said. “We want to bring it back to where it was 15 or 20 years ago.”
Alle pointed to public events at the park, including an upcoming Día de los Muertos celebration and a Labor Day weekend picnic hosted by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman as positive developments for the space. But he added those events do not reflect conditions throughout the park.
Officials also outlined other planned improvements, including restoring access through the tunnels connecting the park’s north and south sides, making accessibility upgrades and providing free Wi-Fi for parkgoers.
Residents who want to provide input on the fence’s decorative elements can email admin@themorcosgroup.com or call (310) 479-4727 for more information.
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