The Brief

When James Beard Award-winning Chicago food reporter Steve Dolinsky wrote his book Pizza City, USA he chronicled his mission to find the best pizza in his hometown of Chicago and, perhaps more importantly, to disprove the idea that all Chicagoans only like to eat thick, deep-dish pizza.

After tallying the 101 region's best pies in his 2018 book, Dolinsky took things further by creating an event that showcased all the different styles of pizza, and launched Pizza City Fest in 2022 in Chicago. Soon after, he brought the festival to Los Angeles, which is now in its second year and happening this weekend at L.A. Live in downtown L.A.

Pizza City Fest LA touches down this weekend to celebrate all things pizza. Tickets get you unlimited eats and drinks and desserts.

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Bailey Holiver

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Courtesy of Pizza City Fest LA

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Why L.A.? According to Dolinsky, Los Angeles currently has one of the nation’s most exciting pizza communities thanks to the robust pop-up scene, much of which was born during the pandemic. (That's not exactly news to us here in L.A., but we appreciate the recognition from a Chicagoan.)

Here's everything you need to know about Pizza City Fest LA, where a ticket gets you unlimited pizza eats and drinks, including beer, wine and cocktails, and desserts.

Who: Pizza City Fest Los Angeles celebrates all things pizza by bringing together over 40 pizzerias from Southern California, stretching from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

What: Pizza Fest also provides the opportunity to discuss concepts such as "crust and crumb" and see how comfortable you are using terms "undercarriage' with a straight face in public. In addition to all the great tastings, the event will feature a series of panel discussions and demonstrations from chefs, authors, and content creators.

When: 1 to 5 p.m., this weekend, April 27 - 28

Where: L.A. Live, 800 W Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles

Why: Pizza Fest is about bringing people together. Los Angeles can sometimes feel fragmented, with traffic making it difficult to get from one end of town to the other. At Pizza Fest, pizza enthusiasts can try lots of different slices all in one place.

Dolinsky said the festival emphasizes showcasing small, mom-and-pop, independently-owned businesses. It's also about giving back. A portion of the proceeds from City Pizza Fest will go to C-CAP (Careers through Culinary Arts Program), which provides culinary, job, and life skills to more than 25,000 middle and high school students nationwide.

Cost: General admission tickets start at $125, which gets you unlimited pizza and drinks, including beer, wine, cocktails, and desserts. VIP tickets, $200. Details at LALive.com

Heading north up the coast from L.A. soon? Plan to stop in wine country’s Santa Maria Valley to try something different: the region’s own BBQ style.

Order a plate at restaurants like Shaw’s Famous Steakhouse in Santa Maria, or the Hitching Post in Casmalia, and it will arrive with red-oak grilled top sirloin or tri-tip, pinquito beans (a miniature cousin of the pink bean, grown only in the Santa Maria Valley), macaroni and cheese, a green salad, toasted French bread and salsa. And there's no barbecue sauce. It’s dry rub all the way.

It’s so specific to the region that “Santa Maria Barbecue” has been trademarked by the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce to stop nearby imitators.

The defining feature is the pit that's used. The grate lifts and lowers on a crank or pulley, so the cook controls heat by changing the distance from the red oak coals: closer to sear, higher to cook through. There’s no lid. Local pitmaster Nicholas Priedite calls it neither grilling nor smoking, but something in between.

How it became a style 

In the 1830s and ’40s, what's now California belonged to Mexico. The government granted settlers huge cattle ranches (ranchos) and gave away even more land when it broke up the missions in 1833.

Ranchers raised cattle mainly for hides and tallow, so beef was plentiful. According to Santa Maria Style Barbecue by R.H. Tesene, at roundups and fiestas, cooks dug pits and filled them with local red oak, which grows abundantly in the coastal climate and has a mellow smoke. Once the fire burned down to hot coals, the beef was strung on willow branches and hung to cook.

A crank-operated grill at the Santa Maria BBQ & Music Fest. Cooks raise and lower the grate over the coals, a method one pitmaster described as neither grilling nor smoking but something in between.

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Wylie Withers

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Courtesy Santa Maria BBQ & Music Fest

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By the 1920s, locals had made the method their own: beef strung on skewers over red oak coals had become a common sight at community gatherings. In 1920, Ed Craig, a founder of the Santa Maria Club, a social club for local businessmen, built a large pit to serve similarly sized groups, according to Tesene. In 1931, the club began a monthly stag barbecue, serving plates for $1.25 plus tax.

Prime rib was originally the preferred beef, followed by thick top sirloin suited to skewers and rods. According to Lompoc butcher Bruce Nix, the style began shifting toward tri-tip in the late 1960s, when cooks moved to metal screens and a smaller, cheaper cut took off.

A new generation

Though the technique is more than 150 years old, a new generation of pitmasters is carrying the technique forward today. At the Santa Maria BBQ Festival in September, I tried plates from local pitmasters, each with their own spin. Angel Ibarra of Santa Maria Grill Masters leads a group of longtime friends who have competed in local barbecue contests for 20 years. He uses a family recipe — a dry rub of garlic, pepper, onion and salt — and lets the fire do the rest.

Tri-tip cooks on a raised grate above an oak fire at the Santa Maria BBQ & Music Fest.

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Wylie Withers

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Courtesy Santa Maria BBQ & Music Fest

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For Jesse Carlon of Oakie Smokie BBQ in Santa Maria, the key to tender meat is keeping the temperature consistent through the cook. He runs a microenterprise home kitchen operation, or MEHKO, where he serves thinly sliced tri-tip in a Philly cheesesteak-style sandwich.

Priedite runs Priedite Barbecue out of a truck in Los Alamos, where the menu is brisket, pork shoulder and ribs with pinquito beans on the side. For him, cooking Santa Maria-style keeps local tradition alive.

“I feel like I can help carry the culture a little bit,” Priedite said.

Federal officials on Thursday announced new funding to explore the medical potential of ibogaine, a controversial psychedelic drug championed by veterans, conservative lawmakers and podcasters aligned with President Donald Trump.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his department is awarding up to $4.9 million to prepare for the first U.S. studies of ibogaine for post-traumatic stress disorder, a hard-to-treat condition linked to higher suicide and substance abuse rates among veterans.

The money will not go directly to patient research, Kennedy said, but to lay the groundwork needed to manufacture, dose and design studies of the drug.

Ibogaine is made from a shrub native to West Africa. It can cause intense hallucinations, nausea, vomiting, tremors and sometimes deadly irregular heart rhythms. Ibogaine is currently illegal, in the same ultra-restrictive class as LSD, ecstasy and most other psychedelic drugs.

Veterans organizations and psychedelic advocates contend that ibogaine has great promise for intractable conditions such as PTSD, severe depression and opioid addiction. U.S. research on the drug has essentially been frozen for decades due to ibogaine’s restricted status.

Kennedy said the government will receive data and treatment guidance from Beond Inc., a Texas-based company that has treated more than 3,000 patients with ibogaine in Mexico, where the drug is not illegal.

“That is going to allow us to dramatically accelerate the clinical trial process,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to have, I think, a record drug approval process.”

Additional funding awards may explore ibogaine’s use for addiction, he said.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, who joined Kennedy for the announcement, said the collaborative effort would focus first on safety and “best-in-class research.”

“For veterans living with PTSD, we owe them both urgency and the best science we can produce,” Collins said.

Kennedy and Collins have previously voiced support for the potential of psychedelics, citing the experiences of veterans who have traveled abroad for therapy with ibogaine and other mind-altering substances.

Thursday’s announcement was previewed in April, when Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to speed up review and research of psychedelics that could help with mental health conditions.

Three applications for psychedelics are pending review at the Food and Drug Administration. They include the first potential medicines made from psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, and MDMA, also called ecstasy. Decisions on those drugs could come within weeks or months.

Because of its safety risks, ibogaine research has moved more slowly.

The little data currently available mostly comes from patients who have traveled to Mexico or other countries where ibogaine is not heavily regulated. Ibogaine clinics typically charge $10,000 to $20,000 for one course of treatment, which often involves monitoring of a patient’s heart readings while emergency medical workers are on standby.

Trump’s order on psychedelics came after podcaster Joe Rogan said he texted Trump about ibogaine, which he repeatedly has discussed on his show. According to Rogan, the president quickly responded: “Sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let’s do it.”

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A coalition of online safety and consumer advocacy groups on Thursday sued five of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies to halt further development, alleging the tech giants can’t prevent their own creations from causing “catastrophic” harm.

The lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court follows a midterm election that could bring a moment of reckoning for the fast-moving AI industry, as Democrats who won back control of Congress stress the need to regulate the technology.

The filing, first reported on by The Associated Press, asks a judge to stop Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI and SpaceXSI from developing or deploying new AI models, pointing to documented examples of cyberattacks and other harmful actions by AI systems and the companies’ own alarming acknowledgments that their technology has the potential to someday destroy humanity.

“No other industry is allowed to treat its own development of unsafe products — much less ones that could kill us all — as inevitable,” reads the complaint from the Irreplaceable Education Fund, Public Citizen, Heat Initiative and the Alliance for Secure AI. “Plaintiffs bring this suit to stop Defendants from continuing their unlawful path to disaster.”

The AI industry has generated excitement and stock market gains, but also deep fears that the technology could go rogue and escape human control. Recent incidents of AI agents hacking government websites and companies — including when OpenAI’s ChatGPT hacked into another AI company on its own in July — have accelerated those concerns.

President Donald Trump, a proponent of rapid AI development to keep the U.S. ahead of foreign competitors like China, has so far encouraged the companies to police themselves on matters of safety, though he has expressed openness to more guardrails. Congress also has stopped short of regulating the technology, but that may change with its Democratic takeover.

Some CEOs of major AI companies, meanwhile, have voiced support for slowing development of the technology to give safety measures a chance to catch up. They also haven’t held back in recognizing the risks. Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, for example, last year said he thinks there’s a 1 in 4 chance AI’s future goes “really, really badly,” compared with a 3 in 4 chance it goes well. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, told Fox News in 2023 that AI could lead to “civilization destruction.”

The plaintiffs, all nonprofits, allege that the companies named in the lawsuit have violated a California unfair competition law by endangering public health and interfering with the use of property such as computer systems. They claim they’ve had to divert resources away from other planned work to address the acute harms threatened by each of the companies’ advancing AI models.

They also warn that the companies’ goals of creating AI systems that are broadly as smart as humans and can increasingly manage tasks and learn things autonomously could result in a permanent loss of control of the technology and heighten existential risks to humanity.

The companies named in Thursday’s lawsuit didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

What does it mean to rebuild your life, friendships and community after a disaster?

For Palisades Fire survivors, it means everything.

Many people had to leave their neighborhoods, where 6,837 structures were destroyed, while they work to rebuild their homes.

They’ve also had to work at forging new friendships and connections.

Friends in unexpected places

Workers gather near the foundation where the Zetlin home stood after it was destroyed in the Palisades Fire.

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Barry Zetlin

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Who is considered a friend?

For Barry Zetlin, it’s not only the people he’s known his whole life or who were his neighbors. It’s also the people who have helped him and his wife, Andrea Zetlin, after the Palisades Fire.

“They are my architects, my contractor,” he said. “Maybe I spent an hour with them a week, a couple of hours a month. Yet, when I'm with them, they feel like friends because we're working together and we feel for each other.”

The Zetlins had been living in Playa Vista as they rebuilt their home in the Palisades. By the end of October, Zetlin and his wife are one step closer to moving in. Their new home is surrounded by empty lots and homes under construction. They will be the first house on their block to be completed.

The Zetlin home before the Palisades Fire.

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Courtesy of Barry and Andrea Zetlin

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Barry Zetlin is excited to return to the Palisades in a newly rebuilt home.

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David Rodriguez

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LAist

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The avid readers and book collectors are excited to return to the area and move into their new home with custom bookshelves.

Zetlin shared with LAist a short story he wrote in a writing group with other fire survivors about what new friends meant to him as they were rebuilding their home.

Share your story

With the second anniversary of the L.A. fires approaching, we still want to hear from survivors because we know everyone who was affected has a story to tell. So: What does it look and feel like rebuilding your life after the disaster?

Some of you have shared how you felt a deep connection with gardens or trees that survived on your lots. We’ve heard from current and former renters who want to return home.

Share your story and photos using the form below, and we may include them in an upcoming article. (We won’t publish anything you share without your permission.)

Building a community

Kathy Katims and her family lived in the Pacific Palisades for about three decades, most recently in a blufftop house they bought in 2023.

After the fire destroyed the house and displaced the Katimses and their neighbors, the community's dispersal was the hardest thing for Kathy Katims. Longtime friends moved to other parts of Southern California or out of state. The Katimses have moved a couple of times too.

Today they’re living in Venice while the home on the bluff is rebuilt.

They’re also rebuilding community.

“A lot of our community is not here,” said Katims, who invited neighbors over for a game night. “We wanted to really reach out and try to make some community.”

Kathy Katims, bottom left, joined a group of neighbors in Venice to play Paddle Tennis.

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Kathy Katims

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She also found a community playing paddle tennis. That experience was a relief from the rebuilding process, which many survivors say feels like a second job.

“I was focused on the ball and movement, and I let go of a lot of things like worrying,” she said.

Katims also runs writing groups through Saved By a Story, including groups specifically for fire survivors, where Barry Zetlin is also a participant.

She has a word of advice for fire survivors that has brought her joy.

“Be bold,” she said.