The Brief

That iconic shape. Those vivid colors. The super affordable price! As we bid goodbye to Thrifty ice cream counters amid the Rite Aid chain shutdown, we wanted to take a moment to allow people to process their very deep feelings about this fateful event.

Many of you have cherished childhood memories of cold ice cream in hot summers, family visits, bygone birthday treats, or more recent must-have drop-ins. So we've gathered together what people have been saying in different places, online, on LAist 89.3's AirTalk, and among the LAist staff as a form of farewell.

“Back in the 80s and 90s, the whole store was called Thrifty. My local Thriftys were converted to Rite Aid in 1996, but the Thrifty ice cream counter was kept.”
- Carlos Gonzalez on Instagram @relicsofretail

"Thrifty Ice Cream was part of Thrifty Drug stores, originally started in Los Angeles but spread to Northern California. My grandfather always shopped at Thrifty Drugs. He had frugal sensibilities but was always good for a scoop of ice cream. I always got a scoop of Black Cherry or Coconut Pineapple. Today was a day of nostalgia and at 10am I got a scoop of Cherry and Chocolate Chip (no Black Cherry available 😞 ).”
-Julie F on Instagram @jflo_in_ca

“They actually opened a Thriftys ice cream counter in my hometown gas station…super random but the rite aid location closed YEARS ago so it was a miracle walking into the gas station and seeing my favorite ice cream lol.”
-Foreverbeccatake2 on Reddit

“Someone gave us a Thrifty ice cream scoop for Christmas and omg I swear the shape makes any ice cream taste better”
-Skski on Reddit

“Thrifty has hands down the BEST ice cream and has always stayed affordable!!! The pistachio has so many pistachios.... the malted crunch!! And my favorite is the mint-chip!!! I love the tiny slivers of chocolate.. WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO????”
-T-ThatsMe on Reddit

"Thrifty was such a huge part of my childhood birthday cake, ice cream, you will be missed. RUN TO RITE AID BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE”
- Brook & Haley on Tiktok

"I think the three things that make it really unique is the shape that it came in. That cylindrical scooper was extremely unique and weird, and it made you feel like you were getting something special for a pretty affordable price. Two, the colors are extremely bright and vivid and appealing to not just kids.... And the third thing was that they shaved their chocolate which makes it so much easier to eat, where it just melts on your tongue as opposed to crunching big, huge pieces of chocolate, which always turned me off.
-Ivy in Burbank on AirTalk

"You could even get a single scoop if you brought in an old telephone book. When the telephone books were changed out, you could go in and get a single scoop for your kid, and my daughter would go around the neighborhood and collect old telephone books so she could turn 'em in."
-Belinda on AirTalk

" I used to work for Rite Aid and I scooped ice cream all the time. You used to be able to pay for us to scoop you a pint. That was more expensive than buying it outta the freezer, but customers always swore it was better. I thought that was so strange. It didn't taste any different to me, but all the customers swore by it. They also said that if you got a nut ice cream [scooped by us], that it had more nuts than the ones in the boxes."
-Adriana in Cerritos, on AirTalk

The iconic Thrifty ice cream counter

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Steve Holtzman/LAist

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LAist staff

"Chocolate malted crunch was everything!"
-Libby Rainey, Reporter, Early Childhood

"I was always vanilla or chocolate chip, I grew up in HP ( Huntington Park, not Highland Park lol) and the Thrifty on Gage and Pacific was where we went...for 10 cents a scoop my mom could never say no to getting ice cream when everything else I asked for was a no."
-Cynthia Covarrubias, Senior Human Resources Generalist

"I walked down with my cousins to Rite Aid one time in the summer, and we grabbed one 15-qt tub of strawberry cheesecake to share with little plastic spoons. That tub didn't even last halfway the walk back to their home. It was gone. It was pretty tasty! That was probably the first time I tried it (I usually get chocolate chip cookie dough)."
-David Rodriguez, Partnerships Producer

"Thrifty mint chocolate chip is the ONLY mint chocolate chip. I used it every year in my signature birthday dessert. It's an icebox cake! I used to use Famous Chocolate Wafers, but they were discontinued, so now I make my own. And I've tried many other mint ice creams (used in place of whipped cream), but Thrifty is the best. I've been having the same cake for about 30 years now."
-Lucie Russo, Development Events Manager

"I fondly remember my parents treating us to some Thrifty ice cream at a Rite Aid in Anaheim. But over time, it started to feel like you were really inconveniencing the Rite Aid employees if you wanted a scoop. The workers also had to ring up shoppers, stock the shelves and take care of other drug store duties. It may be the haze of childhood nostalgia, but I recall a time when you didn't need to flag someone down. There always just seemed to be someone waiting at the ice cream station to help. A similar thing happened when drug stores started locking so many products behind glass: sales declined. Short staffing at Rite Aids turned Thrifty ice cream from a treat into a hassle."
-David Wagner, Housing Reporter

"I don't remember Thrifty so much as a kid, BUT, early on in college, walking through DTLA on a hot day, I decided to grab some ice cream at Rite Aid. I ordered two scoops on a cone, having no idea about the size/shape of the scoops (big cylinders), and my ice cream cone was taller than me...."
-Sarah Steinman, Membership Manager

"I grew up in South Gate. Every Friday, my dad took me and my three sisters to Thrifty on Otis and Missouri. It didn't matter if we'd behaved. It was tradition. We were only allowed to get one scoop. I always got a chocolate chip on a sugar cone. To this day, no other chocolate chip ice cream can compare."
-Julia Barajas, Higher Ed Reporter

Los Angeles’ regional homelessness agency is working to find ways to keep thousands of people in their homes, while complying with new federal funding restrictions on permanent housing.

The governing board for the L.A. Homeless Services Authority voted Monday to start the process of reallocating about $130 million in federal funding currently being spent on permanent housing to other projects meant to serve unhoused Angelenos.

Because of new funding restrictions from the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development, known as HUD, about 5,000 households in the county will lose their rental subsidies, according to several LAHSA officials who spoke at a commission meeting Monday.

Those changes, along with state and county funding shortfalls for homeless services, threaten to drastically worsen the region’s homelessness crisis, they said.

"The fact of the matter is there’s going to be a tremendous and terrible impact on people, on agencies, on landlords,” said Nathaniel VerGow, LAHSA’s chief program officer.

Officials said they’re scrambling to maximize federal funding under the new guidelines while also advocating against the new HUD policy.

“It is a cliff and it feels catastrophic, but I think it forces us as a region to figure out how to save ourselves,” LAHSA Commission Chair Amber Sheikh said.

The funding challenge

Most federal homelessness dollars flow into the L.A. region through the Continuum of Care program, managed by HUD.

The Los Angeles region is eligible for more than $260 million in federal funding under that program in the coming fiscal year, including $217 million for existing projects.

But no more than 30% of those funds can go toward permanent housing projects, according to a “notice of funding opportunity” HUD issued last month.

That’s a challenge for L.A. County, because 90% of regional HUD funds currently cover people’s rent, according to LASHA officials.

Instead, L.A. and other cities and counties must spend the bulk of their federal funds on other interventions, including transitional housing and street outreach.

HUD officials have said the policy is meant to encourage self-sufficiency.

At Monday’s meeting, Commissioner Justin Szlasa urged his colleagues to consider larger funding trends.

“ There's actually a 23% increase in available funding from HUD, the federal government,” he said. “It just doesn't work with the way that we normally have done things here.”

“We need to find, in this crisis, a way to be constructive about this,” Szlasa added.

HUD policy changes

HUD released its new notice of funding opportunity last month and rescinded a previous two-year funding agreement.

Opponents have concerns with the federal housing department’s move away from “housing first” approaches. They also said HUD rolled out the changes without providing enough time to prepare service providers and clients for disruptions.

Last week, 21 states, including California, sued HUD, claiming the new federal policies “essentially guarantee that tens of thousands of formerly homeless individuals and families will be evicted back into homelessness.”

This week, a group of cities and homelessness organizations also sued over the changes. Plaintiffs include the city and county of San Francisco. The Continuum of Care for San Francisco was awarded $56 million in federal funding for Fiscal Year 2024.

Approximately 91% of that funding supports permanent housing projects, according to the complaint.

What’s next?

The LAHSA Commission voted Monday to approve its request for applications for existing and new projects.

Providers must submit applications to LAHSA over the next two weeks, and LAHSA has until Jan. 14 to craft and submit a new application to HUD.

The agency is now talking with 130 contractors about the transition.

LAHSA is also working with some permanent supportive housing providers to convert their programs to transitional housing instead, officials said.

People who were in permanent housing projects aren’t eligible for transitional housing under HUD’s guidelines because they're not considered unhoused, VerGow said.

The commission also reviewed a policy for ranking project applications and prioritizing them for federal funding. Officials said that policy has to be approved at a LAHSA Commission subcommittee on Dec. 10.

Funds are expected to be awarded in May 2026.

LOS ANGELES — As the season of Advent begins, many Christians turn toward quiet reflection and preparation for Christmas. But in several Southern California congregations with large immigrant communities, that sacred anticipation is shadowed by a looming sense of fear.

For worshippers like Mike, an Iranian asylum-seeker who attends a West Los Angeles church, the weeks leading up to Christmas feel less like a spiritual refuge and more like a time of apprehension. He asked that only the anglicized version of his Farsi name be used because he fears speaking publicly could affect his immigration case. He fled Iran after converting to Christianity.

"I kept this secret, my faith as a secret, for like 12 years," he said.

Mike arrived in Los Angeles 18 months ago and says he has tried to build a life rooted in community and respect for his new home. But a series of immigration enforcement actions in the region — including the June arrests of two men outside a nearby church with a large Iranian membership — has shaken him.

"Even church is not safe because it's a public place," he said. "They can get there and catch you."

The Department of Homeland Security says enforcement actions at churches require secondary approval and are expected to be rare. Still, the concern is real inside Mike's congregation, where church leaders asked that the name of the church not be published.

A significant number of Iranian parishioners worship there, and the pastor often invites them to pray in Farsi during services. Lately, fewer take her up on the offer.

"It's part of the heartbreak of these days," the pastor said. "They feel like they have to be apprehensive about it — not even wanting to speak in their own language here."

She said the fear is especially painful during Advent, a season she describes as a time to prepare to "give thanks for this God we have who wants to be with us."

Room at the inn, despite fears

East of Los Angeles, at Baldwin Park United Methodist Church, Pastor Toña Rios unzips a red tent pitched in the middle of the sanctuary. For years, the church took in newly arrived immigrants, providing a place to sleep while they looked for work and housing.

The tent remains as a reminder of that welcome — and of the fears many congregants now carry. Rios estimates that about 80% of her church members are immigrants and says many don't have legal status.

"A lot of them say, 'Don't open the door. Just close the door,'" she said.

Rios urges a different posture, especially during Advent. She uses the tent to help her congregation imagine being the ones who offer shelter, not shut others out.

"It is very hard," she said. "But Jesus is going to be born in our heart. That's why we need to be prepared."

For longtime church member Royi Lopez, the sense of vulnerability goes beyond immigration status. Lopez is a U.S. citizen but says she often feels targeted because she is Latina. Many of her relatives are undocumented, and she worries constantly about them.

"What if on my way to church, they catch us?" she said. "On a daily basis, we're scared of going to the school, to work, to church, to even the grocery store."

Lopez says that during Advent, these fears remind her of the Christmas story itself — of Mary and Joseph searching for somewhere to stay, turned away again and again until somebody finally took them in.

"Even though so many doors were closed, somebody opened a door," she said.

That theme of welcome runs through the hymn chosen for every Sunday of Advent at Baldwin Park United Methodist Church, "All Earth is Hopeful." Its lyrics speak of a world longing for liberation, where people labor to "see how God's truth and justice set everybody free."
Copyright 2025 NPR

The Supreme Court today is hearing a billion-dollar case about whether internet providers can be liable for their users' committing copyright violations using their services.

The legal battle pits the music entertainment industry against Cox Communications, which provides internet to over 6 million residences and business.

A coalition of music labels, which represent artists such as Sabrina Carpenter, Givēon and Doechii, sued Cox alleging that company should be responsible for the copyright violations of internet users that Cox had been warned were serial copyright abusers.

The coalition argues Cox was sent numerous notices of specific IP addresses repeatedly violating music copyrights and that Cox's failure to terminate those IP addresses from internet access means that Cox should face the music.

In its briefs, the coalition argued many of Cox's anti-infringement measurements seem superficial and the company willingly overlooked violations.

The coalition points out that Cox had a 13-strike policy for potentially terminating infringing customers, under which Cox acted against a customer based on how many complaints it received about a particular user. The Cox manager who oversaw the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the law at issue in this case, told his team to "F the dmca!!!"

"Cox made a deliberate and egregious decision to elevate its own profits over compliance with the law," the coalition asserts.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and a jury agreed with the coalition, with the jury awarding the coalition more than a billion dollars in damages.

Cox argues it should not be liable for its customers' actions as it never encouraged the copyright infringements, its terms of service prohibit illegal activities, and it does not make additional money when customers use its internet to infringe on copyrights.

In its briefs, Cox specified that less than 1% of its users infringe on music copyrights and that its internal compliance measures "got 95% of that less than 1% to stop." It asserts that if the Supreme Court does not side with them, then "that means terminating entire households, coffee shops, hospitals, universities and even regional internet service providers (ISPs) — the internet lifeline for tens of thousands of homes and businesses — merely because some unidentified person was previously alleged to have used the connection to infringe."

A decision in the case is expected this summer.

Copyright 2025 NPR