The Brief

During a recent lunch, seniors at Cabrillo High School in Long Beach streamed into a grassy area on the north side of campus. A DJ played grupera songs on one end of this quad, a few students tossed bean bags playing cornhole nearby, while others stamped their hand prints in various colors on a large sheet of paper with the words “Class of 2024.”

“I’m going to [Cal State] Dominguez Hills, my major is going to be criminal justice,” said Arturo Magaña.

He’s one of a couple hundred seniors here today to celebrate their education plans after high school, feasting on pizza, chips, and snow cones.

The celebration was organized and paid for by the USC College Advising Corps. The organization trains and assigns at least one recent college graduate to work with all seniors at dozens of L.A. County high schools, with the goal of making college a reality for more students.

Where some students run into problems

Magaña is a member of a key demographic for USC CAC — he's a young man of color, who California’s colleges and universities have struggled to keep enrolled, especially young Black and Latino men. Male-female enrollments among Black and Latino students is lopsided, as much as a 60-40 split of women to men.

When Magaña thinks of the future, he thinks about his older brother, he said, because their family struggled financially when they were younger.

"We took care of my little sister when she was little, me and my brother, so my mom and dad stepped up and worked,” he said.

The older brother, Magaña said, enrolled at Cerritos College to fulfill his goal to become an engineer, but dropped out after one year because of financial problems.

“He told me, don’t make the same mistake I did, to leave college,” Magaña said.

What's an approach that might work?

USC College Advising Corps leaders say they’re making inroads by turning perceived deficits into strengths.

Of California’s nearly 6 million public school students, 56% are Hispanic/Latino and nearly 5% are Black. At Cabrillo High the proportions are much higher: 76% are Latino and nearly 10% are Black.

Cabrillo High School seniors celebrated their post secondary education plans on campus.

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The corps sends advisors to nearly 50 other high schools with similar demographics. The group trains its advisors on strategies to change what the group’s leaders say is a deficit approach most adults use to talk to the young men, approaches that send the message that, “I need to fix you, this is how you're wrong, this is the problem in you, this is how you're being the wrong way,” said director Ara Arzumanian.

Arzumanian has studied the challenges young men of color face when they consider post-secondary education. He says it’s a problem in the United States and in other countries.

One of the hurdles is the belief by high school males that college will be a lot like high school.

“If they didn't enjoy that experience, they're not going to be as interested in engaging with it at all,” said Benjamin Robles, assistant program director of USC’s College Advising Corps. “One of the things that we actually focus on is helping students understand that higher education can look like a classroom, can look like a lecture hall, but it could also be a mechanic shop, it could also be learning to be a machinist."

What does it look like on the ground?

There are over 400 seniors at Cabrillo High School this year. The corps says its advisors use various means to meet with students, including classroom presentations, and issuing call slips to excuse a student from a class to talk to an advisor. Advisors persist even if a student says they’re not interested in hearing about post-secondary education.

“Most of my friends, they were drawn into the military… I feel like they were distracted with video games,” said Sebastian Ramirez, one of the two advisors at Cabrillo High School and a recent graduate from California State University, Dominguez Hills.

Monique Bravo (right) and Sebastian Ramirez are college advisors at Cabrillo High School in Long Beach.

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He graduated from nearby Lawndale High School, a school with demographics similar to those at Cabrillo High. Those friends, he said, didn’t think going to college was “cool” and tuned out when counselors and teachers talked about college.

One of his strategies, he said, is to turn some of the students’ ideas to work in a trade and help them understand how college can help with that goal.

That’s why Cabrillo High senior Richard Mendoza is going to Long Beach City College for auto-tech.

“As a kid, I would really enjoy cars and I really thought it was like something I would enjoy doing and my dad also works in that similar kind of area,” he said.

But is it working?

The corps says it collects a lot of data about how often advisors talk to students and what those students end up doing after their senior year.

According to a 2021 report, the latest available, the program helped over 55,000 students enroll in college in the program’s first eight years. The report says an independent analysis conducted in 2018 found that students who met with program advisors were 18% more likely to apply to college. Program officials say their approach is helping more young men of color with post-secondary education but the report did not speak to that.

Cabrillo HS graduates celebrated the end of the year by printing their hands on a sheet of paper.

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Administrators said female students turn out in higher proportions to college advising programs in public schools.

Arzumanian shared data that suggests that of the total one-on-one interactions between advisors and students at all the program schools, 45% of the turnout was male students. And 43% of the male students who met with an advisor filled out at least one college application, just two percentage points below female students — meaning the gap between male and female students seeking college help is narrow, Arzumanian said.

A ripple effect

The benefits of the college advising appear to be having a ripple effect within these students’ families.

Advisors at Cabrillo High School helped convince Arturo Magaña to enroll in college on his way to a career in law enforcement. He holds his older brother’s advice to stick with his college goals as he’s shared the college advisor’s tips with his 16-year-old sister, who’s attending another high school in Long Beach.

“She wants to be like my brother, she wants to be an engineer,” he said.

Topline:

The backstory: Once a year, dozens of sound artists converge on the hill with views of the harbor below to perform their audio art, which can range from serene to “beautifully weird.”

What to expect: This year includes a performer bending a bar of tin with his bare hands to get it to emit what’s called a "tin cry" and synthesizer-based soundscapes that take inspiration from both the ocean and the industrial space below.

When to go: Soundpedro is free and lasts from 7-10 p.m. Saturday.

More info at the Soundpedro website.

You may know about Union Station as an L.A. landmark or as a transportation hub — but how much do you know about its rich architectural history?

To foster that interest and knowledge, Metro created a series of public tours of the station this spring.

“There's so much that you might just walk by without really having the opportunity to delve deeply into,” said Zipporah Lax Yamamoto, deputy executive officer of Metro’s art program. “[The tours are] a really wonderful opportunity to be able to spend time with the station, learn more about the historic landmark, which belongs to all of us.”

Union Station in Los Angeles

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Architectural style

It’s called Union Station because when it opened in 1939, it connected the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway.

While it was designed by father-and-son team Donald and John Parkinson, the architects who gave us L.A. City Hall, its style is very different. Union Station’s interior and exterior mixes art deco, Spanish colonial and other styles into a hybrid dubbed Mission Moderne.

As you begin the tour, entering from Alameda Street, tour guides ask you to look up at the decorative elements in the high ceilings. The beams and geometric patterns may look like wood — but they’re actually just painted to look that way.

A community destroyed by development

Along the way, the tour gives background on pieces created more than 30 years ago. These include "City of Dreams/River of History" by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt in 1995. Sun’s piece uses remnants of the Chinese American homes torn down to build the station, a reference to the high price that community paid for this building’s construction.

Detail from "City of Dreams/River of History," created by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt at Union Station.

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“It was an enormous price. Chinatown ceased to exist in this area. … The families that lived here during that time are still around and maintain archives of that time period and the original Chinatown here, and we've worked with those families to have those objects on display,” Lax Yamamoto said.

Meanwhile, Wyatt’s large-scale mural includes the face of a Chinese man, along with nine other people of different races, ethnicities and ages; a nod to the diversity of the city since its founding in the late 1700s.

There are also stops to see new art installed for the World Cup.

A mural by Richard Wyatt at Union Station

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There are three tours left in the series but the RSVPs have reached their maximum; however, Lax Yamamoto said Metro will decide whether to continue them based on what people have thought about the tours.

Meanwhile, Union Station is set to swell with people in the next couple of months as L.A. hosts World Cup games. The station is the site of an official FIFA-sponsored Fan Zone from June 25-28.

When I first came to the states many years ago, if I’d mentioned Arsenal, people would have thought I was referring to the U.S. military or something. But all that has changed. You can now watch U.K. premier league games in sports bars, most kids play soccer, and Ted Lasso is must-watch TV.

To which I say — welcome. We English are proud of the fact that soccer began with us more than 150 years ago. And every World Cup, we think, surely this will be the year that the trophy returns home — the year that we’ll win!

Queen Elizabeth II awarding the Jules Rimet World Cup Trophy to Bobby Moore after England won the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley.

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I mean it did happen … once… back in 1966. It’s such a long time ago the game was televised in black and white and shillings were still being used. My mother was nine months pregnant with my brother, and got so excited jumping up and down she went into labor and had him the next day. World Cup Willie they called him. Actually his name is David, but never mind.

Since then, every four years everyone in the U.K. watches the games with bated breath. And then something stupid will happen, and we’ll lose, like that time in 1998 when David Beckham (who played for England before he came to L.A. Galaxy) lost his temper and was sent off, and we’ll sit there, gloomy and despondent. I know because I was there in my friend’s living room in London, gloomy and despondent, thinking just once, just once, maybe could we please have a win?

David Beckham's infamous 1998 red card in the England vs. Argentina game.

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The last World Cup, I went to Ye Olde Kings Head in Santa Monica to watch England play. At 7 a.m. it was full of people already on their third pint of beer. And when the team got through to the next round, the gentle men of England ran outside the pub, whipped off their shirts and started weaving through traffic, singing football chants and acting like hooligans. I really couldn’t decide if I was embarrassed or if it felt like home.

Anyway, this time, since I’m now an American citizen, it’s in my contract that I need to support Team USA. I’m a dual citizen, though, so I’ll also be cheering for England. If by any chance Team USA and England play each other, my two selves will be watching, with a cup of tea in one hand, and a cold brewski in the other, and the polarities will explode, or something. But what will probably happen is that both teams will be eclipsed by Brazil or France playing the beautiful game… beautifully. Cheers.

Stereotypes die hard. Los Angeles actually has a massive public transport system serving the region, which boasts the world's longest light rail line in the form of the 58-mile long Line A (or for old-timers, the Blue line) and tons of buses.

But if you opt to engage in the gladiator sport that is L.A. driving — a reminder you're going to need to park that thing too.

Here's where we come in.

Curb parking

No surprise, our curbs are painted in different colors with different restrictions.

Heads up: Red, White and Blue curb regulations are in effect 24/7, unless otherwise noted. And additional restrictions could apply if posted on a sign, according to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.

Red Curbs — Nope

• No stopping, parking or standing 
• Doesn't matter if there's a driver or passenger inside the car

Yellow Curbs — Depends

• For commercial loading only
• Vehicles with a commercial license plate can park here, but only if they are actively loading or unloading stuff, for a maximum of 30 minutes
• Restrictions are in effect Monday through Saturday 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. unless otherwise posted on signs
  
  • That means you can park in yellow zones after 6:00 p.m. with no restrictions, unless otherwise noted
• Vehicles without a commercial license plate may load and unload passengers or baggage, for a maximum of 5 minutes

White Curbs — You gotta get going fast

• Passenger loading only for a maximum of 5 minutes

Blue Curbs (Accessible Parking Zones) — If you have the placard

Those famous 'clashing' L.A. parking signs

Before we move on to other facets of parking in Los Angeles. We want to take a moment to address a persistent complaint about confusing parking signs that are often clustered together.

When you encounter this phenomenon, we suggest patience. You don't need a degree in math, probably just a pen and paper.

For the sign in the video, here's when you can and cannot park (we think):

• No parking on Mondays between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. because of street cleaning
  
  • all other days you can park between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., but please be aware there's a 2 hour parking limit
• Every night, you can stop your vehicle for 10 minutes only for passenger loading between 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.
  
  • If the curb is not white, then you can park outside of the 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. window without that restriction
• You can park for 2 hours:
  
  • Between Tuesdays and Saturdays between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.
  • But remember on Mondays, parking is prohibited from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. because of street cleaning
  • On Sunday, you can park for 2 hours between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m.

Heads up: When in doubt, find somewhere else to park.

Meter parking

LADOT says it operates some 38,000 parking meters in the city. Sometimes it feels as if there are as many meter enforcement people out there.

There are different ways to pay — coins, credit cards, and via text or an app at a number of meters.

Heads up: If a meter is broken, meaning it cannot accept coins or a credit card, then you can only park for free up to the posted time limit.

Other no-no's

Here are several other no parking rules, pulled from this list from LADOT

• In alleys, except for to unload things or passengers
• Within 15 feet of a fire station driveway or fire hydrant
• No double parking
• In a center median strip, unless signs indicate otherwise

Parking on a federal holiday

Certain city parking regulations are not enforced on national holidays. They are enforced on state holidays.

• Time Limit
• Parking meters
• No Parking with specified days and times only
• No stopping with specified days and times only
• Street sweeping (also not enforced the day after Thanksgiving and after Farmworkers Day)

If a national holiday falls on a Saturday it will be observed by the city on a Friday. If it falls on a Sunday it will be observed by the city on a Monday. Parking restrictions are not enforced on both the holiday and the observed holiday.