The Brief

When 12-year-old Wilber “Wilpower” Urbina saw two kids breakdancing for the first time in MacArthur Park back in 1982, he knew he had to get involved.

“It was the coolest thing I had ever seen, but I didn't know what it was because I had never seen it before,” Urbina recalls. “The music sounded very strange, but interesting. From then on, I was just trying to copy the moves that the kids were doing.”

About a year later, Urbina heard from other kids about a new place across the street from MacArthur Park where kids could breakdance for hours for less than 75 cents.

It was called the Youth Break Center, Inc. or better known as Radiotron.

The first Radiotron graphic painted for the 1984 movie Breakin'

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Carmelo Alvarez

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Carmelo Alvarez

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A space for LA’s nascent hip-hop scene

Before Radiotron opened itself to neighborhood youth, it was an avant garde, underground space called Radio Club. In Jonathan Abrams’ The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop, rapper and actor Ice-T recalls Radio Club originally being a punk rock space where people would get on stage and practice their new work. Then the owner started bringing in hip-hop artists from the East Coast.

As New York City’s foundational hip-hop presence continued to develop, more people started experimenting with electro-music, funk and R&B as well as dance forms like popping and locking in Los Angeles. Radio Club became integral to that new movement in the city. It became a place for emerging artists to bring what they saw from the East Coast to the West.

LA Bazar Girl and DJ Antron were regulars at Radiotron

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Carmelo Alvarez

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Carmelo Alvarez

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At the same time, these culture innovators were mixing the East Coast style with the West Coast environment, aesthetics and attitudes, says Jonathan Calvillo, a sociology professor at Emory University, and author of the forthcoming book In The Time of Sky Rhyming: How Hip Hop Resonated In Brown Los Angeles.

Calvillo says when the owners brought in Ice-T as an emcee at Radio Club, it solidified the spot as a hip-hop space, and ushered in more people of color.

Before he was the original gangster rapper and before he became Detective Odafin Tutuola on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Ice-T appeared in early 1980s L.A. breakdancing films as an emcee and dancer — the documentary 'Breakin ‘n’ Enterin’ and the now classic movies Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, which were all set in Radio Club.

“Ice-T brought in more local street credibility,” Calvillo says.

Kurtis Blow and Kid Frost also visited Radio. DJ Chris “The Glove” Taylor, who frequently deejayed there, wrote about how Michael Jackson recruited some of his dancers for Thriller from Radio. It was a place where even celebrities like Madonna would go to check out the latest trends.

Then in 1983, Carmelo Alvarez, a young Mexican American dancer who had dreams of opening up a performance arts center in his childhood neighborhood of MacArthur Park, decided to rent out office space from the owner of the building Radio occupied. As Alvarez tells it, the owner then asked him to manage the building. It was his opportunity to create that performance space for kids.

Radiotron begins

Alvarez was raised in the MacArthur Park area where he was influenced by gangs. He recalls an art teacher pushing him to try out dancing at the Barnsdall Art Center and Junior Arts Center. There he met veteran artistic director and choreographer Chester Whitmore, who invited Alvarez to be in his tap troupe. He was also a part of the L.A. Inner City Cultural Center and toured with Lula Washington in a dance company.

He recalls seeing breakdancing in New York City in 1980 as a pivotal time for him. “Hip-hop is the vehicle,” Alvarez explains. “The main important thing was the youth.”

Carmelo Alvarez, founder of historic hip hop youth center Radiotron, holds a photo of Radiotron in its former space near Park View and 7th in MacArthur Park.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Alvarez says he originally had a whole other game plan for the youth center, but the kids had seen what was happening in Radio Club. The kids were itching to breakdance.

Radio was reborn into Radiotron in 1983 when the producers of Breakin’ approached Alvarez. They named the club in the movie “Radiotron'' and it stuck.

So did the art. The crew left behind the graffiti that was part of the film's set design. Alvarez thought it brought color and light to the space, so he kept it. “I said ‘no, no, no. Leave it alone’. Before that it was all dark and black,” Alvarez recalls.

Photograph caption dated July 5, 1985 reads, "Graffiti art decorates Radiotron's walls, adding to the atmosphere of this no-age-limit nightclub, where kids 6 on up can do their thing and prove their stuff till 3 in the morning."

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James Ruebsamen

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Herald Examiner Collection/ L.A. Public Library

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Tino Montelongo, then 18, of Fillmore's Radiotron Wizards break-dancing troupe dancing outside the Coliseum during the Olympics in the summer of 1984.

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Chris Gulker

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Herald Examiner Collection / L.A. Public Library

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A photo from June 1985 identifies the man spinning records at Radiotron as DJ Tony.

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James Ruebsamen

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Herald Examiner Collection / L.A. Public Library

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Then came the kids.

“So I get a knock on the door and it was a little kid and he said ‘Hey mister, can we break in there?’” Alvarez recalls. “And I said 'sure.’ And they said, ‘Hey! the man said we can break in there!’ And they called a bunch of kids together and they went in there and they started breakdancing.”

“It went from an after-hours nightclub to an after-school youth center,” Alvarez says.

Calvillo says when Radio Club did not agree to the conditions Carmelo requested, its managers moved the club to another location downtown.

A 'safe haven' 

When Radiotron opened, it quickly became viewed as a safe space for kids; a place where young people could fully express themselves and stay away from drugs and gangs.

“Radiotron presented an opportunity for young people to experiment and learn from folks who have been expressing themselves through the hip-hop elements,” Calvillo says. “For a whole generation, early West Coast innovators were being acculturated into hip-hop culture at Radiotron.”

Lifelong breakdancer Wilber “Wilpower” Urbina was one of them.

“All the kids wanted to go to this place,” Urbina recalls. “They knew that you could see some of the best kids, and when you see kids who are more advanced than you are, that makes you get better, you get inspired.”

Wilber 'Wilpower' Urbina as a kid circa 1984 Los Angeles

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Courtesy of Wilber 'Wilpower' Urbina

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Wilber 'Wilpower' Urbina

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He recalls Alvarez being kind and welcoming to all kids who wanted to do graffiti and breakdance at the center.

“He was kind of like a father figure,” Urbina says. “ In barrios or hoods, most people just grew up with just a mom. To see and hear a kind person say good things, that’s great. He didn’t want anything in return. He wants you to do good, to stay away from trouble. To do art. In this place, you could do graffiti, it was really a safe haven.”

The rise of L.A. hip-hop

Many people know about the day that hip-hop supposedly jumped off. Two teen siblings from the South Bronx — DJ Kool Herc and Cindy Campbell — held a back-to-school party in their neighborhood in 1973 and Herc tried something new on the turntables, dropping what many historians say was the first hip-hop beat. But there were other elements that came to define hip-hop.

It wasn’t just the MCing or DJing or the graffiti — it was also the movement, the breakdancing. While young people in New York were b-boying and doing more street dances on the floor, in L.A. and other California cities, Black and brown kids were creating more funk-style dance moves that were placed in a larger umbrella category called “breakin’."

Even before hip-hop took off, California was the place where both popping and locking were created by young people in the 1970s. For example, a 20-something-year-old Soul Train dancer named Don Campbell created locking, an early street dance that influenced breakdance moves in L.A., back in the funk era.

In MacArthur Park, young people from all different background were getting in on it.

“At the time, MacArthur Park was not a particularly safe place to be. But it was a place that was experiencing a lot of growth, a lot of movement, a lot of migration,” Calvillo says. “A lot of the early practitioners that were learning hip-hop culture, and experimenting and adapting it to their surroundings, many of them were Central American.”

The end comes too quickly 

In Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, the dancers team up together to do a benefit show to save their endangered community center.

Calvillo says the fictional story isn’t far from the truth.

“Much of the plotline of that story was based on what was happening with Radiotron,” Calvillo says. “The youth center was going to be closed, it was being threatened in terms of its location."

Radiotron eventually closed in 1985 due in part to development. The building was torn down for the construction of the Park View Mall. According to news reports, the developers needed a parking lot — right where the Youth Break Center stood. Before that, Radiotron's weekend dances, which brought in revenue, were shut down for code violations. Doctors across the country started pointing out the dangers of breakdancing.

“Kids get hurt in football,” Alvarez says. “Kids get hurt playing on the playground. You don’t take the playground out. No, you go fix it. You tell them to be careful.” Alvarez and the Radiotron kids protested in front of City Hall to get the attention of city council members in order to keep the building but, Alvarez says, there was no luck. The building was lost. Radiotron was only in existence from 1983 to 1985.

Alvarez was heartbroken.

“I purposely had it underage, because the kids didn't have anything,” Alvarez says, reflecting on the importance of the youth center. “They were dancing in the street for money and they were getting tickets. And this is the era of crack and gangs and drive-bys. They needed something.”

Urbina said that after Radiotron closed there was nowhere else to go.

“Sometimes friends would invite us to go there to their lobby... but sometimes the lobby was small and it was carpet,” Urbina says. “So it was like ‘F---! We really miss Radiotron.’”

Alvarez says he’s opened a dozen youth centers since 1978, but it’s been hard to sustain them. The now 66-year-old Alvarez is retired and is working on a project called Community Action for Peace.

Radiotron’s lasting impact 

Alvarez says there’s one major aspect of the Radiotron story that shouldn’t be missed:: just like there were kids that held a back-to-school party that launched hip-hop culture in the South Bronx, young people were also important in the hip-hop movement in L.A.

“Those kids were innovators,” he says. “They were the ones that created it.”

Radiotron launched the careers of a long list of dancers and artists. Alvarez says some of the graffiti artists he shepherded at Radiotron have had work featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art and in LACMA. He points out artists like Prime (who is known to be the founding father of stylized L.A. graffiti lettering), Shandu One and Zender, who all made names for themselves.

Carmelo Alvarez walks near a mural painted by fromer Radiotron memebr RETNA near Park View and 7th in MacArthur Park.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Salvadoran American breakdancers like Urbina (aka Wilpower) and Cesar “Lil Cesar'' Rivas were a part of the trendsetting Air Force Crew, which was founded at Radiotron. After the youth center physically closed, Rivas helped Radiotron become a traveling dance competition. In the 1990s the Air Force Crew danced with Kurtis Blow, and became an inspiration for Korea’s b-boying scene.

“We don't often hear their stories in the same way as when folks talk about West Coast rappers because we think of the West Coast as mostly a movement of rappers,” Calvillo said. “But these are dancers that were actually going international.”

At 53, Urbina is still hungry for more. He wants to get the moves he had in his 20s and 30s. It’s hard work, but it’s fun. There’s just one caveat.

He’s not battling people anymore. He’s battling age.

Decades after Radiotron's closing, Wilber 'Wilpower' Urbina, now in his 50s, still finds time to breakdance.

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Wilber 'Wilpower' Urbina

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Wilber 'Wilpower' Urbina

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“You’re battling not getting injuries because breakdancing is very physical,” Urbina says. “Over 50, to be doing 20, 30, 40 headspins…it’s not so easy. I’m also a realist. There’s some moves where I’m like nah…my wrists aren’t the same any more.”

Practicing once a week is enough to keep him fit.

In June, Alvarez hosted a 40-year anniversary party for Radiotron. Urbina performed with the Air Force Crew.

“I want to battle myself to get better and get better in my last years,” Urbina says. “I want to go out hardcore.”

“It makes you feel like a kid again.”

The city of Irvine is one step closer to adopting an ordinance to protect grocery workers from being laid off during a store ownership change.

The City Council voted 5-2 on Tuesday night (Aug. 11) to direct city staff to draft the ordinance. Councilmembers James Mai and Mike Carroll opposed the move.

The law would apply to grocery stores that are less than 15,000 square feet and employ more than 300 employees nationwide, according to memo from the council to the city manager. If a store is sold, new management would be required to keep employees for at least 90 days. Businesses that don’t follow the law could face fines.

Irvine’s proposal extends protections in place in California since 2024 for grocery store employees who work at markets larger than 15,000 square feet. For example, under Irvine's proposal workers at stores with smaller footprints like Trader Joe’s would qualify for these protections.

What officials had to say

Councilmember Melinda Liu said the city has a responsibility to protect residents.

“This is a protection of local workers and not an anti-business proposal,” Liu added. “This is not something that is going to turn any business away from the city of Irvine.”

Carroll, one of the two council members opposing the ordinance, said it seemed like local overreach.

“The way I look at it, my job is to focus on parks, police, public works, and property land use,” Carroll said. “This feels like something that needs to be taken up by the state.”

What’s next? 

City staff will draft an official ordinance for a first reading at the next Irvine City Council meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 22.

Where: City Council Chamber, Irvine City Hall
Address: 1 Civic Center Plaza, Irvine
When: 4 p.m.
How to participate: Visit the ICTV page for information on remote viewing and how to submit public comment

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Pedal boats are expected to return to MacArthur Park next year, bringing back a longtime attraction as the city looks to draw more families and activity to the park. 

The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks aims to have the watercraft on the lake before fall 2027, and possibly sooner, General Manager Jimmy Kim said. A firm opening date has not been set as the department determines what infrastructure needs to be repaired or built at the park.

“We want to make sure that all of the compliance requirements are in place, because we haven’t had boating there in such a long time,” Kim said.

Unlike in the past, the department would not run the rental operation and the city is negotiating with a vendor interested in operating the service, Kim said.

The city would handle some repairs, including making sure the existing dock is usable. Absent from the park is an adequate boathouse, so a new rental stand or similar structure would need to be set up for the operation. Other upgrades to the park are also in the works, including an iron fence that would encircle the green space.

Kim said he would like the boats to reflect the surrounding community, much like Echo Park’s swan boats and Hansen Dam’s duck boats have their own unique designs.

“I would love to have some type of cultural design, like Aztec, Latin inspired pedal boats there just because of what MacArthur Park represents and the community it represents,” Kim said.

The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks aims to have the pedal boats on the lake before fall 2027.

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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The city does not yet have a cost estimate for the infrastructure work needed to bring the boats back, but Kim does not expect the boat operation itself to have a major financial impact on the department.

The department plans to seek community input after an agreement with the vendor is signed, including on what the boats should look like.

Officials will also work through water-quality testing and boating safety requirements before the boats can return. Kim said weekly water-quality testing will be required and that the vendor would have to have someone trained in lifesaving techniques on site during operating hours.

“If somebody falls in accidentally, then having somebody there, they’ll be able to respond to it quickly,” Kim said.

The need for a lifeguard is not completely out of the realm of needed resources at the park. Officials estimate the lake is about 14 feet deep and in December a person drowned in the water.

For Jerry Young, 53, who was sitting near the lake with his bicycle recently, the water itself gives him pause.

“In this water? Nasty,” Young said. “Boy, this water is nasty.”

Trash and debris are visible along the edge of the lake at MacArthur Park. The city plans to bring pedal boats back to the lake before fall 2027.

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Hanna Kang

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The LA Local

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Young said he has been coming to MacArthur Park since his early 20s and remembers when boats were still on the lake. He now lives on the Eastside but returns about once a week.

“The park was cleaner when it had the boats,” he said.

Asked whether bringing them back could help make the park feel that way again, Young was skeptical.

“They got a lot of work to do,” he said.

Young said he enjoys spending time at MacArthur Park because he likes being outside, but he wouldn’t bring his children there now.

“First of all, they have to get rid of the drugs,” Young said. “That’s first of all. They’re making the park look really bad.”

Boating has a long history at MacArthur Park, dating to when it was known as Westlake Park. The pedal boats have disappeared and returned several times over the decades. In 1997, 30 boats were brought back after roughly a decade away, with supporters arguing that recreation could help bring families back to a park struggling with drugs and crime. Recreation and Parks ultimately discontinued its city-run pedal boat operations in 2009 after years of financial losses, according to a 2011 department report.

The city sees the latest return of boating as one part of a broader effort to bring more people and activity to MacArthur Park.

“It’s not only boating, but it’s any type of activity,” Kim said. “We’re endeavoring to activate that park a lot more, working with our community members.”

Long Beach is taking feedback on its plans to enshrine a major symbol of the city’s contribution to hip-hop.

Anyone interested in the look and feel of the future VIP Records Park is being asked to participate in a workshop at 6 p.m. Aug. 13 at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center at 1950 Lemon Ave.

The 90-minute workshop will include a presentation and discussion on the park’s design process. There will also be an update on the refurbishment of the “World Famous VIP Records” sign, the longstanding symbol of the city’s contributions to West Coast rap, which will be displayed at the park.

Conceptual designs will likely be shown in a second workshop this fall, with final designs unveiled by next spring ahead of construction meant to be finished by that fall.

This comes as the latest installment in the storied saga surrounding VIP Records, a venerable record shop that vaulted the careers of artists like Snoop Dogg, Warren G and the late Nate Dogg. Despite its past success, VIP had to move from its original location in 2018. The sign remains in city storage.

Ahead of the 2028 Olympics, the city has chosen the VIP sign to be among its cadre of capital projects meant to showcase the best examples of its local culture and pride, approving money for the sign’s refurbishment in January and setting out a plan to honor the store’s history.

The new park, a grassy, quarter-acre lot at the southwest corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway, sits across the street from the famous record store’s former location, now a 7-Eleven. A weathered fence wraps around it, with small hills running through its center.

The vacant city-owned lot that Long Beach plans to turn into a park that includes the VIP Records sign at the southwest corner of Anaheim Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. Photo by John Donegan.

Ideas for the new park are up to the public but also proposals by contractors. On the project’s bidding page, city officials have budgeted $235,000 for the sign’s restoration, installation and site improvements. They must also replace fencing as needed and remove the “Long Beach Poly Tech” sign that’s already at the park.

As a designated historic landmark, officials say the sign will undergo restoration that meets federal standards, which may include “repainting, electrical repair, repair of acrylic, replacement of globes, repairs for rust and other damage, and other similar work.”

Another $500,000 is set aside for the redesign of the park and its plaza. Its redesign, once complete, will act as an extension of the store’s legacy and be used as a communal space for parties, gatherings and other events.

VIP founder Kelvin Anderson has spent years raising awareness about the importance of his shop, making several pitches to donors and officials to help create a state-of-the-art museum with room for a recording studio, printing space, restaurant and live music.

Before its time in storage, the sign accompanied the VIP Records store in Long Beach — the flagship of 14 locations across Los Angeles County. Snoop Dogg, Warren G and the late Nate Dogg recorded their first four-song demo at VIP. After he signed his first label deal, Snoop Dogg recorded part of his “Who Am I? (What’s My Name)” video on the store’s roof.

Today, a majority of VIP’s customers — nearly two-thirds, according to Anderson — are tourists traveling to Long Beach. It’s now at 1028 E PCH, a smaller storefront just a few doors down from the original spot.

As part of the approval for the sign’s repairs, the City Council in January OK’d a $170,000 licensing agreement with VIP Records to display the sign on city property for five years.

It looks like a cross between a Day of the Dead fever dream and a heavy metal album cover: skeletons in Mesoamerican garb seated around a dining table, with the one wearing an Aztec headdress in the center, holding up an ear of corn like an offering to the gods.

It's the poster for Disciples of the Corn, Evil Cooks' annual dinner honoring Mexico's regional cuisine. Now in its fourth year, the dinner taking place Sept. 12 at Cal State L.A. puts 32 courses spanning 32 Mexican states on the table, paired with seven drinks, for $250 a ticket.

Organizing the event is Alex Garcia, the chef and co-owner of Evil Cooks, the heavy metal-inspired taqueria and James Beard semifinalist he runs with his wife and business partner, Elvia Huerta, in El Sereno.

The mission

Garcia's reasoning for the dinner was to push past the idea of Mexican food being simply tacos, burritos and tortas — spotlighting instead a series of dishes from each of Mexico's 32 states.

The format has steadily evolved. Originally conceived as a fixed roster of "12 disciples" — or chefs — it now rotates them each year. This year, 80% are new, each bringing their own interpretation of a regional dish.

Not every chef is Mexican-born, but all have roots there. Garcia says the dinner is less about strict authenticity than each chef's own interpretation.

This year's Disciples of the Corn IV poster promises "32 bites of Mexico" — and a full table of L.A. chefs to deliver them — on Sept. 12 at Cal State LA's Diablo Grill.

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Courtesy Disciples of the Corn

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The lineup

The slate of chefs represents a who's who of local L.A. restaurant talent. Returning are Danielle Duran of Amiga Amore (Highland Park) and Garcia, alongside Huerta.

New additions include Ray Garcia of Broken Spanish Comedor (Culver City), Thomas Ortega of Amor y Tacos (Cerritos), Luis Navarro of Lola's (Long Beach), Rachel Verharst of Idyllwild Tavern (Burbank), and Ellen Ramos of Santa Canela (Highland Park) handling desserts.

"We're all part of different regions of Mexico that actually build the whole thing up," Duran said. "It's about highlighting where we're from."

Alex Garcia and Elvia Huerta, the organizers of the Disciples of the Corn dinner, plate dishes at last year's dinner.

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Liz Luna

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Courtesy Disciples of the Corn

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The venue

This year's move to Cal State L.A.'s Diablo Grill brings Garcia and his team a full kitchen, 50-plus seats and a bigger production team — a welcome shift from last year, when the dinner was squeezed into the compact kitchen at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes near Olvera Street. The dinner also landed in the middle of a summer of heightened ICE enforcement and protests in downtown L.A., a climate Garcia described as a nightmare.

Garcia doesn't hold back: This, he promises, will be "the most amazing dinner you're gonna have" all year.