The Brief

Suehiro Cafe has been a Little Tokyo staple for half a century, surviving the pandemic, the founder’s death and the current owner’s bout with cancer.

Ultimately, it will be the landlord who will end the restaurant's run.

After a months-long threat of eviction by Anthony Sperl who wants to make way for a new tenant, Suehiro’s owner Kenji Suzuki on Tuesday agreed in court to leave by January 16. He had at least wanted to stay open through the holidays for the sake of his employees.

His struggle to stay in Little Tokyo has become emblematic of the changes facing the historic neighborhood. Neighborhood activists say rising rents and land values have only been accelerated by the arrival of a new Metro station.

They’re calling on the city to help preserve legacy businesses like Suehiro, which they say give the neighborhood its character. A rally in support of Suehiro will be held Sunday at 2 p.m. outside the Little Tokyo Metro station.

Suzuki said at first he stayed quiet about his eviction woes. But as patrons and activists expressed outrage and concern about the loss of Little Tokyo businesses like his to the pandemic and gentrification, he changed his mind.

“Now I think I need to rock the boat and create some waves to let everybody know about what's happening and that Little Tokyo needs everybody's help,” Suzuki said.

The beginning of the end

Suzuki, whose mother opened the restaurant in 1972 with her sister and died of COVID-19 in 2021, found himself in a vulnerable position because he had been on a month-to-month lease for the last 10 years or so.

Suzuki said he saw trouble on the horizon when Sperl last year asked for $100,000 to enter into a long-term lease, which Suzuki could not afford, and raised the monthly rent from $6,400 dollars to $10,000 which Suzuki felt he had not choice but to pay.

But then Suzuki's lawyer Clifford Jung said that Sperl stopped cashing rent checks and started eviction proceedings, alleging nonpayment of rent. When that claim was dismissed, Sperl initiated a legal end to the landlord-tenant relationship with Suzuki, Jung said.

"(Sperl) just decided he didn't want to work with us anymore," Jung said.

Suzuki expected to be evicted by law enforcement as early as this week but during a court hearing Tuesday, the judge asked the two sides to confer and Jan. 16 was chosen as the date that Suehiro would vacate. Jung said the other option was to take the case to trial.

"If (Suzuki) wanted to go all the way, I would have done it," Jung said. "But he just wanted to try to find a way to get to the end."

Jung said that Suzuki reserves the right to file a separate action against Sperl if he wants. Neither Sperl nor his attorney Dennis Block could be reached for comment.

The lunch crowd at Suehiro Cafe enjoys specials like curry rice and miso-flavored pork.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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The community rallies

For months, the Little Tokyo community has been rallying to save the restaurant, which has been serving miso-flavored pork and curry rice, affordable to local seniors and downtown workers alike, in its current location for more than 35 years.

A pegboard at Suehiro Cafe lists the lunch specials.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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Recent days have seen Japanese American activists gathering signatures from patrons outside Suehiro calling for a stop to the eviction.

Kristin Fukushima, managing director of the Little Tokyo Community Council, said Monday that dozens of legacy businesses have been lost in recent years.

A coalition of Japanese American activists asked the public to support Suehiro's fight against its eviction.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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“We are at a point where Little Tokyo is facing an existential threat as to what our future is,” Fukushima said.

Reports that Sperl will replace Suehiro with a marijuana dispensary have been especially worrying.

Longtime Suehiro patron David Palos, holding his daughter, Lola, signed a petition to keep Suehiro Cafe in Little Tokyo.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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A coalition of Japanese American organizations said they would organize a boycott of a dispensary or any replacement that's not a fit for the neighborhood.

Mark Masaoka of the social justice group Nikkei Progressives said that Sperl's late mother, from whom he inherited Little Tokyo properties, had been a friend to local businesses and lived in the neighborhood herself.

Suehiro Cafe, opened 49 years ago by Junko Suzuki, is at a crossroads.

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Courtesy of Suehiro Cafe

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"She would have been horrified at the thought that he was tossing out all these Japanese American long-standing institutions here to replace them with what he is doing right now," Masaoka said.

Advocates say there need to be more ways to save struggling legacy businesses through efforts such as the Little Tokyo Community Impact Fund, which has raised about $750,000.

New faces in the neighborhood

Neighborhood advocates say that Sperl had already pushed out a neighboring Japanese American business, Family Mart. It's been replaced by Space City Vintage which moved its clothing store from the second floor to the first.

Several new tenants have moved into the upper-level space once occupied by Space City, including tattoo artist Stefan Farrera.

Farrera, who specializes in "American and Japanese traditional" art at Black Sun Tattoo, said that he had not even known that he shared a landlord with the restaurant, and he bemoaned its departure and potential replacement by a dispensary.

He declined to comment on Sperl and his history with other tenants but said the landlord had rented him an affordable space that he shares with a multicultural mix of creatives: a leather worker, plant seller, streetwear vendor and upcycle store. Together, he says, the new tenants have helped to bring a “charge” to Little Tokyo.

Stefan Farrera, owner of Black Sun Tattoo, shares the same landlord as Suehiro Cafe.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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“The space offers us an opportunity as small, small business owners to make our living doing what we want to do and I think that brings a DIY element to Little Tokyo, which is very big in our punk scenes,“ Farrera said.

What's next

As for Suzuki, in September, he opened a new Suehiro location downtown on Main Street in anticipation of being evicted.

He is also running a smaller restaurant in Chinatown — a juggling act that's tough on his shaky health. Suzuki, 61, is in remission from leukemia. Then in August, he was struck while in his car by a motorist in a stolen vehicle, a crash that's left his legs aching as he serves customers.

Despite the collision of challenges, Suzuki says he will fight to be able to serve his mother's dishes again in Little Tokyo.

“I know someday we will return,” Suzuki said. "We have to return. That’s almost a non-issue for me.”

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.

David Kalbeitzer, a paranormal investigator from Pasadena, is giving a talk about the city's strange history Saturday night in Old Town.

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Courtesy of David Kalbeitzer

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“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.

A city of ghost stories 

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 playgoers have reported hearing disembodied voices.

Theatergoers over the years have described hearing voices and seeing apparitions at the Pasadena Playhouse.

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Jeff Lorch

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Courtesy of Pasadena Playhouse

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“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,” 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.

Rocket science, ritual magic and mind-reading

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. I don’t know that I fully subscribe to that, but there is spiritualism and occult mixed in there,” Kalbeitzer said.

Then there was Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle, whose interests while living in Pasadena extended to telepathy and séances.

Upton Sinclair, pictured with his wife Mary Craig Sinclair in 1935, several years after he published a book examining her reported telepathy.

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Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons

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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.

“Like it’s the craziest mixture of things that were happening at that time and all of it at the same time,” Kalbeitzer said.

A presence in the shop 

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.

Tyke O'Brien opened her shop Mesmer Mesmer earlier this year to create a third space and offer books and esoterica alongside clothing.

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Tyke O'Brien

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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?’” O’Brien recounted, “And I’m like, ‘I am such a bummer. I really wish I could. How wonderful would that be to be able to?’”

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.

“I think that how you see yourself in the world has a lot more to do with it, and whether you want to have those experiences,” he said.

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. 

MacArthur Park will close every night once an 8-foot-tall fence goes up around the green space, with Los Angeles police officers sweeping the park for encampments and people sleeping there before the gates shut. The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners approved the plan Thursday.

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LA Recreation and Parks

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“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.”

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027.

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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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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