The Brief

It’s nighttime in Beverly Hills in the swinging 1960s. As commuters speed by on Santa Monica Boulevard, they probably don’t even notice the squat, windowless building with a single entrance.

But on any given night, Hollywood legends like Frank Sinatra, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, George Raft, Don Rickles, Jack Lemmon, Gregory and Veronique Peck, Kirk Douglas, Sammy Davis Jr., Jimmy Stewart, Anthony Quinn or Henry Fonda may be dining inside, away from the paparazzi, drinking scotch and swapping stories in slick red leather booths, while eating hearty red sauce Italian meals served by discreet waiters in sharp tuxedos.

This was La Dolce Vita, which the LA Time’s Jean McMurphy once called “a neighborhood restaurant for the rich and famous.” A clubby, tiny eatery where reservations were essential — even Sinatra occasionally had to wait. For over five decades, new generations of high-flying insiders would frequent La Dolce Vita, including George Clooney, designer Tom Ford, Tom Hanks, Charlize Theron, editor Graydon Carter, and former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush.

But during the pandemic, like so many L.A. area restaurants, the lights went out at La Dolce Vita. In 2023, after a three-year closure, it was reopened by international dynamos Marc Rose and Med Abrous of hospitality group Call Mom, who also own L.A. staples The Spare Room and Genghis Cohen.

“The first day Med and I walked in here with the actual keys, I looked at him and was like, ‘Well, it's ours to f— up,’” Rose says.

And true to La Dolce Vita’s A-list atmosphere, the new owners are keeping the restaurant’s secrets they have heard from old-timers to themselves.

“We get a lot,” Rose says. “We tend to want to keep those stories internal and share them with people when the times are right, because that's what it's for. When you build a clubhouse, you kind of want those stories to be here permanently.”

In many ways, Rose and Abrous are a throwback to La Dolce Vita’s original founders. There have been many celebrity mainstays over the years — The Brown Derby, Chasen’s, The Formosa, Perino’s, Romanoff’s, Ma Maison, Musso and Frank — and few are left. But La Dolce Vita survived, perhaps because it served up nostalgia to celebrities who had already become past-their-prime legends themselves and were tired of the rat race — they were looking for a bit of home.

Marc Rose (left) and Med Abrous, the owners of La Dolce Vita.

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Shelby Moore

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George Smith and Jimmy Ullo were second and third generation Italians — East coast transplants who had spent decades working in the upscale eatery industry in Los Angeles. According to a 1976 profile by the LA Times Lois Dawn, they met at the popular Italian restaurant Villa Capri, where Smith was a bartender and Ullo was maître d’hotel. When Smith and Ullo decided to start their own Italian restaurant, they went to two Villa Capri regulars, 1930s movie star (and known Mafia associate) George Raft, and old blue eyes himself, Frank Sinatra.

“[They] went to Frank and said, ‘we're going to open our own place,’” Rose says. “So, I think Mr. Sinatra agreed to become an investor and a backer of the place. I think — this isn't written anywhere — it was like, ‘well, I'm going to do it, but I want it to be my clubhouse too.’ And I think that when you see a building … that has no windows, it's an easy place to make your clubhouse and to do things behind closed doors.”

Frank Sinatra in 1968

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Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection

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Los Angeles Public Library

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La Dolce Vita opened in 1966 at 9785 Santa Monica Blvd. In true Hollywood fashion, the interior was designed by Jerry Wunderlich, an Oscar-nominated set decorator for TV shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and the film The Exorcist. “La Dolce Vita is designed with seeming simplicity. Brick walls, wine bottles, straight, uncluttered lines, a marvelous use of glasses on the back bar,” Lois Dawn wrote in a review. Little did she know- the brick was fake.

“The layout was also something that really had this clubhouse feeling,” Rose says. “It's all booths. There's no loose seating or anything. It was really built for groups in a certain kind of dining, this kind of familial dining that is associated with American Italian restaurants.”

La Dolce Vita's dining room is known for its charm and atmosphere.

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Shelby Moore

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La Dolce Vita soon became a Rat-Pack era staple, where the Hoboken, New Jersey-born Sinatra felt right at home. The expansive menu featured entrees with names like “Steak Sinatra” and “Veal Fellini” which was a “marvelous melting combine of eggplant, prosciutto and mozzarella.” The mozzarella was a guest favorite, with tomato sauce as “fresh as a garden.”

The chefs were also glad to whip up anything patrons desired, even if it was off menu. And when Chef Gino Giglio found himself an ingredient down, he improvised. “Film producer Robert Evans wanted rigatoni one night when they were out of ricotta cheese,” The Los Angeles Times reported in 1976, “so they made up a dish with bechamel and parmigiana and now serve it often.”

Beloved, longtime maître d’ Reuben Castro started working at La Dolce Vita in 1974 when he was 21 and became an expert at knowing what his celeb clientele wanted. '[Sinatra] always pasta or steak, nothing else,” he told Piers Morgan of The Mail on Sunday in 2013. “He loved veal Milanese or rigatoni pomodoro, and arugula salad with shaved parmesan ... Red wine, like a Sassicaia, if he was with his wife. But if it was a boys' night then Jack Daniels all the way. It was always Daniels, and always on the rocks.”

Try the veal.

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Shelby Moore

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Celebrities like the Reagans, Don Rickles, and Sinatra had their preferred booths, and the telephone was always ready to be whisked to a table for important industry calls. “Frank Sinatra would hold court at booth No. 1 and tip royally, announcing to anybody that the staff at the restaurant was family,” Castro told The Los Angeles Times in 2004. When a kitchen worker’s watch broke, Sinatra gave him a Rolex.

Another time, the Times reported that George Raft “put the keys to his white 1974 Coupe de Ville on the table and told Castro he was too old to drive. ‘It’s over,’ he said.’ I’m giving you my car.’”

Things were perhaps too comfortable at La Dolce Vita. Castro remembered one uncomfortable moment when President Ronald Reagan suffered from gas. “He once stood up and farted very loudly,” Castro told The Mail on Sunday. “I couldn't ignore it, so I stood to attention and said, ’Salute, Mr. Presidente!’ And he laughed so loudly I thought he would fall over!"

But an air of menace occasionally swirled around La Dolce Vita. Sinatra, his daughter Tina (who is a part of the restaurant’s current ownership group) recalled, refused to sit with his back to the door.

“We once had a hoodlum shoot up the outside of the door after an argument over a reservation,” Castro recalled. “Frank heard about it, and a few weeks later he came in and said to me, ‘Don't worry about that guy again, we took care of it.’ I never found out what that meant, but that guy never came back to shoot at my door again!'”

The old timers would patronize La Dolce Vita until their deaths. Some of its mystique and popularity died with them. "Here was a piece of real Hollywood history that was at risk of going away forever. It was criminal," film producer Alessandro Uzielli told Town and Country in 2013.

New owners

In 2003, Uzielli and his producing partners Ben Myron and David Simmer purchased La Dolce Vita. They refurbished it and honored the past by putting plaques up at departed regulars’ favorite booths. All was going well, until the pandemic hit.

That’s where Rose and Abrous stepped in. “Med and I grew up together and we grew up in New York City,” Rose says. “We grew up going to restaurants very much like this… These are the restaurants I've been going to with my dad who was also in the business, which I swore I would never be. And here I am. But these are the restaurants that I remember seeing my dad walk in and tip every single person on the way to the table. And I'm like, ‘how do you even know that that guy's going to be your table?’ And one time he said to me, he goes, ‘I don't, but I guarantee you my bread's going to come out warm.’”

For Rose and Abrous, reviving La Dolce Vita was a no-brainer. “We like to amplify the richness of history, both architecturally design wise and in a city in which we live,” Abrous says. “Our families are here; our kids go to school here. Why not do something kind of small and special? And that does give us all that kind of nostalgic feelings that really sparked our passion for hospitality in the first place.”

The duo worked with designer Victoria Gillet of We Are Dada to enhance the restaurant’s interior. Without changing the clubby layout, they gave it a modern twist — adding stained glass windows depicting cheetahs in empty coves, a cheetah carpet, pearly wood walls, and a revamped bar.

The bar at La Dolce Vita.

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Shelby Moore

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“The words sexy and chic came up a lot, which you don't always associate with spaghetti and meatballs, but we felt that they could be because we felt that way when we went into those restaurants,” Rose says.

“We always make the joke that when we first walked into the restaurant, it looked like it was right out of Goodfellas and now it looks like it's in Casino,” Abrous says.

They focus on locally grown produce and have curated a small red sauce menu which includes spaghetti and meatballs, tuna tartare, Caesar salad (made tableside), Veal Parmigiana, Clams Oreganata, and Bucatini al Limone — which can appeal to the health conscious and hearty eaters alike.

“We understand that people's palates have changed, the way they eat has changed. Even the way in California versus New York is different- the way people eat. And we paid attention to that,” Rose says. “Of course, there's a veal parm on the menu that is amazing and incredible … but there's also the most beautiful branzino piece of fish that you could eat.”

In the 10 months since it reopened, La Dolce Vita has proved that Angelenos are eager to see their history saved, and to savor the intimacy of a service-forward, secretive spot. It’s also a wonderful place for people watching, where grizzled rock stars sit in a booth next to sunny starlets, and old timers talk to friendly waiters at the bar while serious men in designer suits streak past to their booths. But it doesn’t feel pretentious, but rather like an upscale hole-in-the-wall that happens to be in the middle of Beverly Hills.

“It’s arguably the most famous zip code on the planet,” Abrous says. “And you think about the Rodeos of it all and the tourism and all, and you forget, it's a real neighborhood. There's so much residential up and down the streets here. People have a restaurant to go to where they feel good and they feel safe and they feel- I hate to say it, this sounds like an ad for Olive Garden — like you're at home. It's a special feeling.”

A slew of Medicare Advantage plans are disappearing for next year, leaving seniors in many areas with fewer options. In 193 counties across the country, no plans are offered at all.

Medicare's annual open enrollment period kicked off October 15 and runs until December 7, and seniors enrolled in those privatized Medicare plans that are closing in certain markets should carefully review their options.

Medicare Advantage means private insurers run Medicare for older Americans who choose it over traditional Medicare, where the federal government itself administers the program. More than half of the 70 million Americans in Medicare choose Medicare Advantage. It's popular because it covers services like vision and dental, often with lower premiums than traditional Medicare. It also often folds in the "Part D" drug benefit, simplifying that decision.

But a downside of Medicare Advantage is that companies can pick and choose where they offer plans. If a certain community is not profitable, a company can leave that market. And that has been happening on an increasingly large scale the last three years, according to research published in JAMA.

Who is affected

Big swaths of rural America are losing Medicare Advantage choices and so are some major metro areas.

Last year, 2.9 million seniors were in Medicare Advantage plans that closed up shop, according to JAMA. This year, an analysis of insurance company announcements by An Arm and A Leg podcast, shows at least 2 million people will be affected. Other preliminary estimates range from 3.2 million to 5 million seniors. About 35 million people are enrolled in Medicare Advantage.

According to an analysis of federal data by the health policy research organization KFF, the 193 counties that will have zero Medicare Advantage plans are mostly rural. Last year that number was about 120 counties without a plan offered.

KFF's numbers also show that there will be far fewer plans offered in some metro areas. Dallas, Minneapolis, Seattle, Houston and Portland all have between a quarter and a third fewer Medicare Advantage plans for seniors.

What happens next

If your plan is ending, and you don't choose another, the insurance company will assign you to another Medicare Advantage plan or the government will enroll you in traditional Medicare — but without a supplemental or drug plan.

If you want to switch from Medicare Advantage to traditional Medicare and your plan is ending, you can enroll in a Medicare supplemental plan — also known as Medigap — without the same restrictions that you would normally have. If you have a pre-existing condition that has prevented you from enrolling in Medigap before, that could be good news.

Another wrinkle this year is that insurance companies can cap enrollments on some of the Medicare Advantage plans that they do offer.

Which means: If you wait to sign up, a plan you want might already be full.

The companies are supposed to enroll people on a first-come, first-serve basis — and not cherry-pick customers based on health conditions, age, or demographics.

Another reason not to delay is that with so many people on the hunt for new plans, it may take longer than usual to get help.

How and where to find help

Here are some tips for navigating Medicare open enrollment this year:

• Find out if your plan is still offered: First, check your mail. Medicare Advantage plans that are closing should have sent letters the first week in October. You can also log in to your account on Medicare.gov to check your plan's status for next year.
  
• Try calling your SHIP: There's a State Health Insurance Assistance Program — known as a "SHIP" — in every state to help seniors with Medicare. The name's not easy to remember or particularly descriptive, but it's free, mandated by the federal government, and the staff and volunteers are required to give you unbiased information on all available options. Find your state in the directory at shiphelp.org. Your county may have a specific number that you can find on your state's SHIP website.
  
• Look for local Medicare counseling services: Friends, family, leaders at your place of worship, and the constituent services of your local elected officials may have the scoop on where you can get one-on-one help. The nonprofit Medicare Rights Center also has a national helpline, and a well-organized library of online guides.
  
• Brokers can be helpful, but be savvy: You want a broker who's going to talk with you about all your options — including switching to traditional Medicare and a supplemental plan. Ask if they sell plans from all available insurance carriers. And ask if they answer questions about your plan year-round, because insurance never stops being confusing.
  
• Double check what you see on Medicare.gov: Medicare's Plan Finder allows you to search plans online. But lists of doctors and drugs that are covered can sometimes be wrong. To be safe, double check with your doctor's office or a SHIP counselor, broker, or other Medicare assistor.
  
• Don't share your personal information with services you find online: Be careful where you share your personal information like your phone number. Some online agencies will sell your information, leading to spam calls and potentially even scam artists.
  
• Be mindful of the deadlines: Open enrollment for Medicare runs October 15, 2026 through December 7, 2026. The coverage starts January 1, 2027. If your plan is ending, you qualify for a "special enrollment period" to give you a little more time — until February 28, 2027. (For coverage that starts January 1, 2027, enroll by December 31.)

Emily Pisacreta is the senior producer for An Arm and a Leg, a podcast about the cost of healthcare produced in partnership with KFF Health News and distributed by KUOW, Seattle's NPR member station. 

Copyright 2026 NPR

Federal prosecutors sent letters to county registrars across California on Friday demanding that local officials set aside and verify ballots that the Department of Justice said may belong to noncitizens, according to the Los Angeles County registrar and a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

The letters are the latest escalation in a legal battle between California and President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, which has recently focused on the state in its efforts to root out noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections. Data shows illegal voting by people who aren’t U.S. citizens is incredibly rare, difficult to prove and has not been shown to change the outcome of races.

Earlier this month, the federal government targeted Los Angeles County and the California Secretary of State’s office in a lawsuit that aimed to block them from counting the votes of roughly 20,000 people who are “likely” noncitizen voters. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Tuesday.

The Trump administration asked the 9th Circuit court of appeals to rule on the lawsuit barring a decision from the district judge assigned to the case. They set a deadline for Saturday.

Now, according to the LA County registrar’s office, at least 18 counties across the state have received similar letters. They have been given a 48 hour deadline to provide identifying information corresponding with ballots that the federal government believes were sent to noncitizens illegally registered to vote. The letter requests that county officials also sequester any ballots where citizenship cannot be verified.

“Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.

The Justice Department is asking counties to send information about the voters it suspects are noncitizens including social security numbers, ID information, a copy of their registration and more.

That information can help the government and state quickly assess each person suspected of illegally registering to vote, said the letter sent to San Bernardino County voting officials. The letter says the government’s list of suspected noncitizen voters includes 1,133 people from the inland Southern California county.

California’s secretary of state and the Los Angeles County registrar have opposed the federal government’s demands. In legal filings, lawyers for California say the request threatens to delay the certification of the vote and undermine the legitimacy of the November midterms. They have also argued that the federal government’s data is unreliable and that their demands risk disenfranchisement of citizens.

Voting is underway in California, with the state’s more than 23 million registered voters receiving ballots in the mail earlier this month. The state said in legal filings that over 330,000 mail-in ballots have already been counted.

The letters on Friday came on the heels of statewide sweep by federal authorities earlier in the week, where 28 people from the list of 20,000 were charged with illegally registering to vote. Some were also charged with illegally voting and lying on naturalization paperwork. Those charges could lead to years in prison.

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.

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.

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.

What’s the big deal anyways?

William Walter Wiseman II and Michele Cripps at the 2026 Tall Clubs International convention in Hollywood.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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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.”

Members of the Tall Club of Orange County at the 2026 convention.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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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.”

A Dayton Daily News clipping of William Walter Wiseman II's father measuring tall teens in the Dayton, Ohio area from November 19, 1958. 

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Courtesy William Walter Wiseman II

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Future of the club in question

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.

Members of the California Tip Toppers at the 2026 convention.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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“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.

The clubs crown a new Miss Tall International at a formal pageant held during the annual convention. The former Miss Tall Clubs International that were at the 2026 convention from left to right: Susan Hopkins, 2019, from the Tall Club of Orange County, Martine Whitford, 1959, from the Los Angeles Higher Ups, Norma Forrest, 1996, from the Tall Club of Toronto and Mary Eleman, 2022, from the Central Arizona Tall Society.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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Members of the Tall Clubs International convention committee.  From left to right: Barry Umbs from Milwaukee, William Walter Wiseman II from the California Tip Toppers, Jim Nelson from the Paramount Tall Club-Chicago and Michele Cripps from the California Tip Toppers.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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“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.”