The Brief

Orange County can now arrest and fine unhoused individuals immediately for camping along flood control channels, in county parks or on other county-owned land. The new policy was approved by the O.C. Board of Supervisors on Tuesday by a 4-1 vote, despite concerns Santa Ana could be forced to contend with an increase in unhoused people booked and released from the county’s main jail.

It marks a shift in addressing homelessness that has been echoed in cities and counties across California and the West since a major Supreme Court ruling last year. That ruling, Grants Pass v. Johnson, reversed a ban on criminalizing people for sleeping in public places if no adequate shelter bed was available.

Orange County’s new policy also reverses some parts of a 2019 legal settlement, which has partially expired, that required the county to screen unhoused people for mental health and other needs and to offer shelter and services before arresting or ticketing them for violating anti-camping and loitering laws. That settlement triggered a major boost in the county’s inventory of shelter beds and permanent supportive housing since local officials had to prove shelter was available in order to enforce anti-camping rules.

What supporters say

O.C. officials who support the new approach say the county will not abandon its current policy of sending social workers out with sheriff’s deputies to offer shelter and other assistance to unhoused people camping on county property.

But, they say, the new ordinance gives them an additional tool to protect public safety.

“We are not trying to arrest our way out of this,” Supervisor Katrina Foley, who proposed the measure, told LAist. “We are just making sure that when we have situations where people are taking over public spaces and it's a danger to them and to others … that we are able to enforce anti-camping [rules].”

Foley said the new rules were largely prompted by repeated, failed efforts to clear encampments from areas along the southern end of the Santa Ana River and flood control channels, including Talbert Regional Park and the new Randall Preserve. She said the juxtaposition of multiple jurisdictions with different anti-camping rules has made it difficult to keep encampments from continually re-emerging.

“We wanted to create a uniform set of rules,” Foley said.

What critics say

Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento lodged the sole vote against the new ordinance, calling it a “departure” from the county’s 2019 settlement with unhoused individuals, and the investments made to get people into shelter and housing.

Sarmiento, whose district includes the county’s main jail in Santa Ana, also said he was concerned Santa Ana could, once again, be forced to contend with the entire county’s unhoused population if they are arrested elsewhere, then released outside the jail.

It’s a complaint that Sarmiento, the former mayor of Santa Ana, and other local officials repeatedly lodged during the long and contentious court hearings that led to the county’s 2019 settlement with unhoused individuals.

“ When folks were being detained and arrested and taken in for minor offenses, you started seeing a pattern,” Sarmiento said.

Arrestees were sometimes released “in the middle of the night, with no access to transportation,” Sarmiento said, then ended up living on the streets of Santa Ana.

Despite his “no” vote, Sarmiento said he had “trust and confidence and hope that our sheriffs will continue to enforce [the new ordinance] in a way that's humane and follows the law.”

Homelessness is up, despite county efforts on housing

Since 2019, the county has added some 730 beds and completed close to 1,400 affordable and supporting housing units, according to the 2024 annual Point-In-Time report. The first official count since then, in 2022, showed a decline in homelessness. But between 2022 and 2024, which is the last time Orange County counted, homelessness grew 28%.

Nearly half of the people surveyed in that 2024 count said they had become homeless for the first time over the previous year. Foley acknowledged it’s an “ongoing issue.”

“It's not going to get better because we have the federal government impacting our local government in a dramatic way right now,” she said, referring to the delay and cut in SNAP food benefits, as well as cuts to federal housing and homelessness assistance. “I anticipate us seeing a lot more need.”

She also acknowledged that Orange County still doesn’t have enough affordable housing to meet the need as the cost of living continues to outpace wages.

“ So, what do we do? We have to build more housing,” Foley said. “And we have to make sure that we're thoughtful about the process  so that people can live near where they work.”

Next Monday December 15, Los Angeles travels back in time. Well, sort of.

The Varnish, the famed speakeasy hidden behind a secret door at the back of Cole’s French Dip, will be reconstituted for one night only as part of a special pop-up at Firstborn in Chinatown.

(Meanwhile, Cole's itself will be open through the holiday season, with its last night of regular service planned for December 31.)

The iconic bar, which shuttered in 2024 after a 15-year run, holds a special place for many Angelenos, who believe it's where L.A.’s modern cocktail revival truly began. The event reunites three bartenders who all came up through The Varnish’s famously exacting school of cocktail-making. Kenzo Han (recently named Esquire’s Bartender of the Year) cut his teeth there before moving into roles that established him as one of L.A.’s most respected classic-cocktail technicians. Wolf Alexander and Miles Caballes emerged from the same pipeline.

One night only

Kenzo Han, bar director at Firstborn and former Varnish bartender, is hosting two fellow Varnish alumni for the Dec. 15 pop-up.

(

Ron De Angelis

)

Han is now Firstborn’s bar director, where he leads a tight, classics-leaning bar program. The restaurant sits inside Mandarin Plaza, where chef Anthony Wang turns out playful comfort dishes with Chinese and American influences. It’s a lively, unfussy neighborhood hangout just off Broadway, surrounded by neon, noodle shops, and family-style restaurants.

The Varnish connection

All three bartenders trace their lineage back to Sasha Petraske, who, in 2009, co-founded The Varnish with Eric Alperin and Cedd Moses, the owner of Cole’s French Dip.

Petraske traded '90s flash for pre-Prohibition craft: fresh citrus over sour mix, precise technique over bottle tricks, elevating cocktails from party fuel to art form.

Miles Caballes brings his Varnish training back to the bar for one night.

(

Courtesy Firstborn

)

Wolf Alexander, another Varnish alum, demonstrates the precise technique that defined the speakeasy's approach.

(

Courtesy Firstborn

)

The Varnish became the city’s clearest expression of Petraske’s cocktail philosophy, where his playbook of precision, restraint, and quiet hospitality took root on the West Coast. (Petraske passed in 2015).

Han, Alexander, and Caballes all trained in that environment, absorbing the Petraske rules of clean builds, tight technique, and no-nonsense cocktails.

What to expect

For one night only, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., the trio will channel that tradition through a Varnish-style menu: curated classics only, no custom builds, with all cocktails priced at $20. Two featured drinks nod directly to the bar's lineage. The Spring Blossom — created at The Varnish — combines mezcal, French aperitifs including Suze and Lillet Blanc, mole bitters and a grapefruit twist. Death & Taxes features scotch, gin, sweet vermouth, Benedictine (a herbal liqueur), Angostura and orange bitters, finished with a lemon twist.

On the food side, chef Anthony Wang is reviving his cult-favorite Blood Orange Chicken Sando ($20), served with radicchio, alongside a limited run of his Shanghainese-style McRib ($24) — a playful, sweet-and-sour riff built around tender ribs and “all the stuff” that made the original such a guilty pleasure.

The blood orange chicken sandwich at Firstborn from Chef Anthony Wang.

(

Ron De Angelis

)

Expect a casual, walk-in-only atmosphere where guests can grab a seat at the bar and let the cocktail nostalgia wash over them.

Whether you were a Varnish regular or only heard the stories, this pop-up is a rare chance to see that style alive again — familiar faces, bespoke cocktails, and the kind of muscle-memory bartending that defined an era of L.A. drinking culture. For newer drinkers, it’s a glimpse of the cocktail philosophy that shaped the city as we know it.

It’ll likely get busy early, and the food specials may run out fast — but that’s part of the charm. The Varnish’s legacy has always been about small rooms, sharp precision, and moments you catch only if you’re paying attention.

In the city of Los Angeles, neighbors or homeowner groups who choose to fight approvals of new housing are required to pay a fee when filing an appeal.

Right now, that fee is $178 — about 1% of the amount the city says it costs to process the appeal. But that fee soon will go up.

On Wednesday, the L.A. City Council voted to increase the fee to $229 but rejected a proposal by the city administrative officer that would have raised the cost for appellants to more than $22,800, or 100% of the cost.

Some advocates for making housing easier to build argued the city should have adopted the higher fee.

“Appeals of approved projects create delays that make it harder to build housing and disincentivize future housing from being proposed,” said Jacob Pierce, a policy associate with the group Abundant Housing L.A.

At a time when L.A.’s budget is strained, Pierce said, if someone thinks a project was wrongly approved, “They should put their money where their mouth is and pay the full fee."

The City Council unanimously approved another new fee structure put forward by the city’s Planning Department.

While fees will remain relatively low for housing project opponents, developers will have to pay $22,453 to appeal projects that previously had been denied.

A November report from the city administrative officer said setting fees higher to recover the full cost of processing would have aligned with the city’s financial policies. Generally, fees are set higher when applicants are asking for a service that benefits them alone.

“When a service or activity benefits the public at large, there is generally little to no recommended fee amount,” the report said.

Pierce said he hoped a City Council committee would reconsider the higher fee proposal next year. With the city falling far short of its goal to create nearly a half-million new homes by 2029, he said the city needs to discourage obstruction of new housing.

“Slowing down the construction of housing is expensive for all of us,” Pierce said.

Los Angeles could become the first city in the U.S. to ban ink cartridges that can be used only once.

The L.A. City Council unanimously voted Wednesday to approve the creation of an ordinance that prohibits their sale. The move comes after more than a year of debate over the terms.

Why the potential ban

This builds upon the city’s effort to reach zero waste, including phasing out single-use plastics. You’re likely familiar with some of those efforts — such as only getting plastic foodware by request and banning single-use carryout bags at stores. Multiple plastic bans have been suggested, like for single-use vapes and bag clips, but now it’s ink’s turn.

The cartridges are tough to dispose of because of the plastic, metal and chemicals inside, according to the city. They’re also classified as regulated waste in the state because they can leach toxic substances into the environment, such as volatile organic compounds and heavy metals.

That poses a problem. L.A.’s curbside recycling program can’t recycle the cartridges, and while its hazardous waste program can take them, a significant portion end up in landfills.

Major printer manufacturers and some ink retailers have take-back programs for used cartridges so they can get refilled. However, L.A. Sanitation says there are certain single-use cartridges that don’t have recovery programs. These are usually cartridges that work with a printer but aren’t name brand.

How outlawing them could work

LASAN has spent months figuring out what a ban would cover — and it hasn’t been without pushback. The city’s energy and environment committee pressed the department back in September on how effective a ban would be.

Ultimately, the committee moved it forward with a promise that LASAN would come back with more details, including environmental groups’ stance, concrete data to back up the need and a public education plan.

The department’s current recommendation is that the ordinance should prohibit retail and online establishments from selling any single-use ink cartridge, whether sold separately or with a printer, to people in the city. Retailers that don’t follow the rules would get fined.

So what does single-use mean here? The ban would affect a printer cartridge that:

• is not collected or recovered through a take-back program
• cannot be remanufactured, refilled or reused
• infringes upon intellectual property rights or violates any applicable local, state or federal law

Any cartridges that meet one of these points would fall under the ban, though you still could get them outside L.A.

The proposed ordinance will go to the committee first while LASAN works on a public education plan.

If it ends up getting approved by the full council, the ban likely would go into full effect 12 months later.