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  • A story of love, sweat and repertory films.
    REVIVAL-HOUSES-GARDENA-CINEMA
    Inside the letter room of the theater, Kim searches for the letters she needs to complete the updates for the marquee.

    Topline:

    The single-screen Gardena Cinema has been owned by the Kim family since 1976, and has always figured out ways to serve its community — even through some very difficult financial times.

    Why it matters: This isn’t a story of stylish renovations, or of celebrity filmmaker intervention. This is the story of one family who fell in love with a movie theater and did (and even lost) everything to keep it up and running. Gardena Cinema is one of the last family-run movie theaters in L.A. Gardena Cinema is one of the last family-run movie theaters in L.A.

    Why now: After struggling through a pandemic and ill-fated efforts to bring people back through its doors, Gardena Cinema finally hit some recent success after it stopped dealing with first-run releases and pivoted to repertory films. Many nights at this South Bay theater, you can catch a newish — or oldish — classic, from La La Land to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

    Listen:

    How To LA logo (graphical text) with LAist Studios logo (graphical text) with 6th street bridge in the background; with red to orange vertical gradient as background color
    Listen 22:39
    #250: As we continue our series "Revival House," How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro is taking us to the South Bay of LA. We're checking out the Gardena Cinema, which pivoted to revival screenings relatively recently. The theater has been owned by the Kim family since 1976, and is now a non-profit run by Judy Kim and a team of 40 volunteers. Kim's saved the cinema from closures a handful of times now, and has also built up an incredible community of folks dedicated to keeping the cinema running.
    Revival House: The Gardena Cinema's Fight to Stay Open
    #250: As we continue our series "Revival House," How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro is taking us to the South Bay of LA. We're checking out the Gardena Cinema, which pivoted to revival screenings relatively recently. The theater has been owned by the Kim family since 1976, and is now a non-profit run by Judy Kim and a team of 40 volunteers. Kim's saved the cinema from closures a handful of times now, and has also built up an incredible community of folks dedicated to keeping the cinema running.

    Go deeper:

    This isn’t a story of stylish renovations, or of celebrity filmmaker intervention. This is the story of one family who fell in love with a movie theater and did (and even lost) everything to keep it up and running.

    The single-screen Gardena Cinema has been owned by the Kim family since 1976, and has always figured out ways to serve its community — even through some very difficult financial times.

    After struggling through a pandemic and ill-fated efforts to bring people back through its doors, Gardena Cinema finally hit some success after it stopped dealing with first-run releases and pivoted to repertory films. Many nights at this South Bay theater, you can catch a newish — or oldish — classics like La La Land and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

    The Kim family

    The Gardena Cinema has always been a movie theater. It opened in 1946 as the Park Theatre, and operated consistently through the years showing first and second run feature films until it went up for sale in the 1970s.

    That’s where the Kim family comes in. John and Nancy Kim immigrated from South Korea and had the goal of operating their own business. They dabbled in a few different industries when Nancy found the theater.

    “My mom fell in love with it as soon as she came and saw it,” says current Gardena Cinema owner Judy Kim.

    It's an incredible space, tucked between a gym and a Superior Grocers on Crenshaw Boulevard. It’s way bigger inside than it looks — at 800 seats, it’s easily one of the biggest theaters in the city. For comparison, The Chinese in Hollywood seats 932.

    How To LA logo (graphical text) with LAist Studios logo (graphical text) with 6th street bridge in the background; with red to orange vertical gradient as background color
    Listen 22:39
    #250: As we continue our series "Revival House," How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro is taking us to the South Bay of LA and the Gardena Cinema. The theater has been owned by the Kim family since 1976, and is now a non-profit run by Judy Kim and a team of 40 volunteers. Kim has saved the cinema from closures a handful of times now, and has recently pivoted to showing repertory films at the theater.
    Listen to the How to LA episode
    #250: As we continue our series "Revival House," How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro is taking us to the South Bay of LA and the Gardena Cinema. The theater has been owned by the Kim family since 1976, and is now a non-profit run by Judy Kim and a team of 40 volunteers. Kim has saved the cinema from closures a handful of times now, and has recently pivoted to showing repertory films at the theater.

    There are still fireproof window covers in the projection room, a holdover from old film screening safety practices. And there are “cry rooms” upstairs from the 1940s, balcony seating with speakers and a glass window where patrons could sit with a crying baby and not interrupt their viewing experience.

    People always comment on how nicely preserved the theater is as it was from 1946, and I tell people it's only preserved because my parents never had enough money to upgrade it.
    — Judy Kim, owner of Gardena Cinema

    Now it's got that vintage hue.

    “Now it's cool! It's really cool!,” says Kim. “Now that I have dreams of trying to raise money to make changes, people are like, don't change anything!”

    The early days

    When the Kims bought the theater, they saw an underserved audience in Gardena. There was a drive-in theater nearby in Torrance called the Roadium that played Spanish-language movies every Wednesday, and the place would be packed.

    One day, Judy Kim says, her parents decided to change the format of the theater from English speaking second-run movies from Hollywood to second-run Spanish language movies. In the 1970s and the 80s, the Kims named the theater Teatro Variedades — “variety theater” in Spanish — and focused on Spanish-language films and live events with Latino filmmakers and actors. If the Torrance drive-in was ever rained out, or if folks wanted to catch a movie in Spanish on another day of the week, they’d head to the Gardena.

    “It was meant to be like a neighborhood theater that was typical in the post-war era,” says Kim. “There was always a neighborhood movie theater that you could walk to from your home, just a few blocks away … all of those theaters are now gone.”

    The Kims held on to their theater and in 1995 renamed it the Gardena Cinema. Judy Kim and her brother helped run the theater and neighborhood kids showed up too, offering to clean or help out in other ways in exchange for a movie ticket.

    It served as a community hub.

    We were almost kind of like a Boys and Girls Club,” recalls Kim. After the movie, kids “would hang out in the lobby, and we would play video games, or talk about what was cool and what was not and, as an adult at that time, I made sure that all the kids that were here did their homework.”

    “I tutored them,” she adds. “I made sure that they were doing OK in school.”

    Kim always expected them to go to college.

    Trouble sets in

    Despite the joy found in the theater, like most teens, Judy Kim wanted to get away from her parents and spread her wings, so to speak. She left for college out east and had dreams of moving to New York and becoming a Broadway producer.

    Then the calls started coming — a lot of calls from her parents. Sometimes twice a day, begging her to return to L.A. She didn’t really understand what the urgency was all about, but she came home and found her parents — and the theater’s — finances in disarray.

    “I realized that they were under extreme financial hardship, and they were embroiled in lots of legal problems,” she says.

    Kim explains that her parents had been defrauded multiple times. The Kims lost their house, their car. To help, Judy Kim went to law school, became a lawyer and dug in to help untangle them. It took almost 15 years to get everything sorted. “We were basically surviving off of, like, 99 cent hamburgers,” she says.

    The upside in all of this — and the part of this story that might be the reason Gardena Cinema is still around — is that about five years ago, Kim negotiated the purchase of a parking lot.

    It was a big-time play. Gardena is one of very few independent theaters in L.A. with its own parking and, says Kim, “it saved our butt when the pandemic came.”

    “Nobody was open and I had this big parking lot that I could show movies outdoors where people could sit in their car, safely, away from other people and watch a movie,” she says. “All they had to do was tune into the FM station that I told them to tune into.”

    A bumpy road to recovery

    As theaters in the city started welcoming folks back inside, the Kim family then had to navigate another major loss. “That time period is when my mom was fighting cancer,” says Kim. Nancy Kim died in 2022.

    A photo of an older Asian woman with gray hair is surrounded by flowers and trinkets as part of a shrine.
    An altar of Kim's mother, Nancy Soo Myoung Kim, is placed in the lobby of the theater in remembrance of her beloved mother.
    (
    Zaydee Sanchez
    /
    LAist
    )

    John and Judy Kim closed the theater and took a few months to grieve. Judy Kim sold her condo and moved in with her father, putting that money towards the cinema.

    “And then I said to my dad, we’re running out of money.”

    The Gardena Cinema reopened with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, expecting it to be a huge hit. But only 10 people showed up to the first screening. Reopening the cinema with first-run movies meant that Kim was actually losing money.

    New releases are “loss leaders” for movie theaters. Most of the ticket price is going straight back to the film’s distributor, and contracts mean that new films have to be shown for a certain number of weeks. If a theater isn’t bringing in enough audience members to turn a profit on concessions, theater owners are spending more than they’re making by running a first run film.

    “So 2023, I’m running out of money,” says Kim. She says her father was ready to retire and use his “senior citizen card for all the national parks.” Why not sell the theater? Neither Kim nor her brother have children, so “there’s nobody to leave the theater to,” she says.

    The theater hit the market, but didn’t sell.

    Judy Kim made another last ditch pivot and came up with another plan: “I’m going to set up a nonprofit organization.”

    With her father’s blessing, Kim began the process in April of 2023. The theater got official recognition as a nonprofit in July. Between that and the success of summer films like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Barbie, the Gardena Cinema had a future.

    Volunteer 'grandchildren'

    Judy Kim was now running a theater and a nonprofit entirely on her own. But, as she learned years earlier, you can’t underestimate the number of people willing to trade work for a free movie. It took months, but Kim now has a team of 40 volunteers who help her run the theater.

    “I’ve got a really good core group of people that are very supportive.”

    It’s those volunteers who convinced Kim to move away from first-run movies and start programming repertory screenings. Without the strict scheduling and tiny profit margins of a first-run movie, Kim suddenly had a lot more flexibility. If she needed to step away and take care of her father, or just close the theater on a slow night, those options were now on the table.

    A collage of vintage movie posters cover a wall that is set against an unlit background.
    Movie posters adorn the lobby walls of the Gardena Cinema.
    (
    Zaydee Sanchez
    /
    LAist
    )

    The Gardena Cinema volunteers are invaluable to the space. They run concessions, clean the theater, sell tickets, run the projector — and this past November, Kim left the theater in their hands entirely to take a trip with her father. “They did a fantastic job … it’s still standing,” she says.

    If you care about something, you gotta go the extra mile.
    — Conor Holt, a volunteer at the Gardena Theater

    Cifen, a local filmmaker, helps organize events in the theater. He put together a singles’ night and a screening of his independent film, Age of Embellished Relic, this past February. He calls the theater a “safe haven.”

    Conor Holt makes the drive to Gardena from East Hollywood. A former ArcLight Cinemas employee, he says he cares about making sure cinemas stay open. “If you care about something, you gotta go the extra mile.”

    Adela Tobon used to manage a single-screen movie theater in Northern California. A friend told her about the Gardena Cinema and she says, “I just lost it. I’m like, this is exactly where I belong.”

    And Bill DeFrance has taken over a lot of John Kim’s duties in the cinema — cutting trailers, ripping tickets at the box office, building the show in the projector.

    It’s a family affair for DeFrance too. On Valentine’s Day, he programmed Wild at Heart — his and his wife’s favorite movie. “I programmed it for Valentine’s Day so I could be at the theater and on a date at the same time.”

    A sign his daughter made hangs on the side of the ticket booth, and boldly states in red crayon: “NO PRANK CALLS!”

    “For a long time, my dad was like, well, we don’t need to leave a legacy. There’s no grandkids,” says Kim. But the volunteers pipe up with a chorus: “We can be your grandchildren!”

    An Asian woman with her hair pulled back and wearing a black t-shirt sits alone in a theater auditorium with hundreds of empty seats. She leans forward with a slight smile and rests her arm on the seat in front of her.
    Gardena Cinema owner Judy Kim.
    (
    Zaydee Sanchez
    /
    LAist
    )

    Judy Kim is now planning on leaving an endowment for the theater, so it can continue after she and her family have moved on. And intentional or not, the Gardena Cinema now has a legacy of community building and a fighting spirit.

    Keep an eye on the Gardena Cinema’s calendar. You can catch anything from a karaoke party screening of La La Land to Dawn of the Dead in 3D to film festivals featuring shorts from local filmmakers.

  • Netflix jilted, paving way for Paramount takeover

    Topline:

    The Warner Bros. Discovery board announced late Thursday afternoon that Paramount's sweetened bid to buy the entire company is "superior" to an $83 billion deal it had struck with Netflix for the purchase of its streaming services, studios, and intellectual property.

    What's next: Netflix says it is pulling out of the contest rather than try to top Paramount's offer. "We've always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance's latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid," the streaming giant said in a statement.

    The context: Warner had rejected so many offers from Paramount that it seemed as though it would be a fruitless endeavor. Speaking on the red carpet for the BAFTA film awards last weekend, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos dared Paramount to stop making its case publicly and start ponying up cash.

    The background: Paramount previously bid for all of Warner — including its cable channels such as CNN, TBS, and Discovery — in a deal valued at $108 billion. Earlier this week, Paramount unveiled a fresh proposal increasing its bid by a dollar a share.

    Read on... for more on what to expect.

    The Warner Bros. Discovery board announced late Thursday afternoon that Paramount's sweetened bid to buy the entire company is "superior" to an $83 billion deal it had struck with Netflix for the purchase of its streaming services, studios, and intellectual property.

    Netflix says it is pulling out of the contest rather than try to top Paramount's offer.

    "We've always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance's latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid," the streaming giant said in a statement.

    Warner had rejected so many offers from Paramount that it seemed as though it would be a fruitless endeavor. Speaking on the red carpet for the BAFTA film awards last weekend, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos dared Paramount to stop making its case publicly and start ponying up cash.

    'If you wanna try and outbid our deal … just make a better deal. Just put a better deal on the table," Sarandos told the trade publication Deadline Hollywood.

    Netflix promised that Warner Bros. would operate as an independent studio and keep showing its movies in theaters.

    But the political realities, combined with Paramount's owners' relentless drive to expand their entertainment holdings, seem to have prevailed.

    Paramount previously bid for all of Warner — including its cable channels such as CNN, TBS, and Discovery — in a deal valued at $108 billion. Earlier this week, Paramount unveiled a fresh proposal increasing its bid by a dollar a share.

    On Thursday, hours before the Warner announcement, Sarandos headed to the White House to meet Trump administration officials to make his case for the deal.

    The meetings, leaked Wednesday to political and entertainment media outlets, were confirmed by a White House official who spoke on condition he not be named, as he was not authorized to speak about them publicly.

    President Trump was not among those who met with Sarandos, the official said.

    While Netflix's courtship of Warner stirred antitrust concerns, the Paramount deal is likely to face a significant antitrust review from the U.S. Justice Department, given the combination of major entertainment assets. Paramount owns CBS and the streamer Paramount Plus, in addition to Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other cable channels.

    The offer from Paramount CEO David Ellison relies on the fortune of his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. And David Ellison has argued to shareholders that his company would have a smoother path to regulatory approval.

    Not unnoticed: the Ellisons' warm ties to Trump world.

    Larry Ellison is a financial backer of the president.

    David Ellison was photographed offering a MAGA-friendly thumbs-up before the State of the Union address with one of the president's key Congressional allies: U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican.

    Trump has praised changes to CBS News made under David Ellison's pick for editor in chief, Bari Weiss.

    The chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, told Semafor Wednesday that he was pleased by the news division's direction under Weiss. She has criticized much of the mainstream media as being too reflexively liberal and anti-Trump.

    "I think they're doing a great job," Carr said at a Semafor conference on trust and the media Wednesday. As Semafor noted, Carr previously lauded CBS by saying it "agreed to return to more fact-based, unbiased reporting."
    Copyright 2026 NPR

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  • How to see a gorgeous vista in Riverside County
    A close up of a dense outdoor area with orange and purple native flowers. In the background is the lake water.
    California poppies and other wildflowers blanket the hills surrounding Diamond Valley Lake in 2019.

    Topline:

    Calling all people who love to snap pictures of nature: this year’s wildflower bloom at Diamond Valley Lake in Riverside County is starting a little early.

    What’s there? The ecological reserve around the lake grows a lot of colorful native flowers, like California poppies and red bush monkeyflowers. The 1.3-mile trail loop takes you through the wildflower bloom and gives you a peek at the drinking water reservoir.

    How can I see it? The wildflower trail at the lake reopens Friday, Feb. 27. You can visit it Wednesdays through Sundays, from 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Hours will be extended in about a week.

    Know before you go: You will have to pay to use the wildflower trail. Access is $4 per person. If you drive, parking costs $11 (or $5 if you meet certain requirements).

    Read on…. to learn about etiquette practices to keep the flowers safe.

    Each spring, the land around Diamond Valley Lake in Riverside County bursts into a vibrant array of native wildflowers. This year, it’s happening earlier than expected because of the recent rains.

    The lake’s wildflower trail is scheduled to reopen this Friday, Feb. 27. Here’s what you should know before you go.

    What the trail has to offer

    The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which manages the body of water in Hemet, says wildflower blooms are already dotting the hillsides around the ecological reserve at Diamond Valley Lake.

    Think of a bright color wheel — that’s the kind of colorful blooms you’ll see. The hills grow orange California poppies, baby blue eyes, red bush monkeyflower and yellow tidy tips, to name a few. You’ll also get a peek at SoCal’s largest drinking water reservoir.

    Known as the Judy Abdo Wildflower Trail, the 1.3 mile loop extends from the Lakeview Trail, close to the trail head and parking area. You can see a map here. The hike has some rugged terrain, but it’s rated as easy-to-moderate.

    • Address: 2615 Angler Ave., Hemet
    • Hours: Wednesdays through Sundays, 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

    When you visit, don’t go too late! No entry is allowed after 3:30 p.m. Starting March 8, it’ll be open until 5:30 p.m. (with no entry after 4:30 p.m.).

    You’ll have to pay $4 per person to use the wildflower trail. Parking costs $11 (or $5 if you’re: 62 years and older, a military member or a veteran).

    Observe safely

    Wildflower blooms are very popular in Southern California because of how beautiful (and Instaworthy) the scenery is, but you should tread cautiously.

    About 10 years ago, Diamond Valley Lake’s trail had to be closed because crowds of visitors trampled the wildflowers. So when you visit, make sure to follow these etiquette tips so the bloom can be enjoyed by everyone.

    Best practices

    Here's guidance from the California Botanic Garden on how to responsibly view the state's spectacular flower blooms:

    • Stay on designated trails: real trails — not those newly blazed by the person before you.
    • Take photos only; leave wildflowers where they are.
    • Plant your own super bloom by sowing seeds from reputable nurseries such as the Grow Native Nursery at CalBG or Theodore Payne Foundation.
    • Volunteer with organizations to help maintain native ecosystems.
    • Avoid visiting the most vulnerable parks with high visitation (i.e., those that you may be hearing about on the news or social media). Instead, spread out to other areas. There is a lot to see in California!
    • Share these guidelines with others: your friends, family, people you see violating them.

  • Farmers back major project in central CA

    Topline:

    A mammoth solar farm is moving forward in the heart of California. If built, which seems increasingly likely, it would cover 200 square miles of land and generate 21,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power entire cities.

    Farmers back the project: Farmers don't have enough water to grow crops on big chunks of their land, and they're looking for new uses for it. Westlands Water District, a farmer-run organization, is a key player in this effort, negotiating with solar companies and government regulators on behalf of its members.

    About the solar farm: A solar developer called Golden State Clean Energy presented Westlands Water District with a master plan for a collection of vast solar projects. Patrick Mealoy, a partner at Golden State Clean Energy, says they had to propose a solar farm that would generate an enormous amount of power to make the case for new multibillion-dollar power lines to carry electricity from the San Joaquin Valley to Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. Mealoy says smaller proposed projects have stalled because they weren't big enough to justify building those power lines.

    What's next: Getting the managers of California's electrical grid to approve construction of those transmission lines could be the project's biggest remaining hurdle. If built, the cost of those power lines, along with the benefits of greater electricity supply, eventually will show up in consumers' electricity bills.

    A mammoth solar farm is moving forward in the heart of California. If built, which seems increasingly likely, it would cover 200 square miles of land and generate 21,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power entire cities. Huge batteries will store some of that power until it's needed most.

    Farmers are among the project's backers. They don't have enough water to grow crops on big chunks of their land, and they're looking for new uses for it.

    "We're farmers, and we would rather farm the ground," says Ross Franson, president of Woolf Farming and Processing, his family's business. "If we had the water to do it, we would farm it. But the reality is, you don't. You have to deal with the cards you're dealt."

    Franson is on the board of the Westlands Water District, a farmer-run organization that's a key player in this effort, negotiating with solar companies and government regulators on behalf of its members. Westlands is an agricultural power and has long represented the interests of farmers in a large swath of land on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley, between the towns of Firebaugh and Huron. Decades ago, it helped persuade the federal government to build a giant canal to deliver irrigation water to this area from rivers far away in Northern California.

    A man with a beard wearing eyeglasses, a white baseball cap and a dark vest and shirt underneath stands in the middle of a green field
    Jose Gutierrez, assistant general manager of Westlands Water District, on land that could become a solar farm.
    (
    Dan Charles
    )

    Yet these farmers are now facing a new water crisis. The canal has been delivering less water in recent years because of droughts and competing claims on that water. Until recently, the farmers had a backup water supply: They could pump water from aquifers a thousand feet underground. Now, though, a new state law is coming into force that bans overpumping from the aquifer.

    So farmers in Westlands have been leaving large chunks of land unplanted. Another large piece of land, now owned by the Westlands Water District itself, has been fallowed because irrigating it could release high levels of a mineral called selenium that can poison wildlife or people. The farmers, and the district, have been looking for new ways to put that land to use.

    A solar developer called Golden State Clean Energy seized the opportunity. Several years ago, it presented Westlands Water District with a master plan for a collection of vast solar projects.

    Developers say scale will justify new power lines 

    Patrick Mealoy, a partner at Golden State Clean Energy, says they had to propose a solar farm that would generate an enormous amount of power to make the case for new multibillion-dollar power lines to carry electricity from the San Joaquin Valley to Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. Mealoy says smaller proposed projects have stalled because they weren't big enough to justify building those power lines.

    "In order to actually have solar be productive, you need size and scale, a mass of projects that support the necessary investment in high voltage transmission lines to collect the electrons and move them," Mealoy says.

    Getting the managers of California's electrical grid to approve construction of those transmission lines could be the project's biggest remaining hurdle. If built, the cost of those power lines, along with the benefits of greater electricity supply, eventually will show up in consumers' electricity bills.

    Franson says his immediate reaction to the proposal was "Yes, we need to do this." Negotiating the details and completing an environmental review took several years, but in December, the Westlands Water District's board voted to move ahead.

    Golden State is the plan's architect, but other solar developers will build sections of it. Construction could take a decade. Even though the Trump administration has abolished some financial incentives for solar projects, Mealoy says it's still a solid business opportunity.

    "The state needs it. It's permitted. It's the right place for it. I'm excited about this," he says.

    Grace Wu, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says "this is a fantastic place for solar" because the fallowed farmland isn't high-value habitat for wildlife.

    Farmworkers wonder if they will also benefit

    About 150 farmers within the Westlands Water District, including Jeremy Hughes, have signed up to put solar on some of their land. "We look at it as a new crop. We're harvesting electricity," Hughes says. The guaranteed income from those acres makes it possible to keep farming the rest of his land.

    "Because of solar, we can continue farming in Westlands. It'll keep the farming community alive," says Jose Gutierrez, assistant general manager of Westlands Water District.

    In the small towns nearby where many farmworkers live, however, there are worries that local residents won't see many benefits from the project. Among those towns is Huron, home to about 6,000 people. Rey León grew up here, working in his family's restaurant. Now he's the town's mayor.

    A man wearing a beige fedora hat and black long sleeved shirt stands in front of a car with the driver's side door opened.
    Rey León is the mayor of Huron, Calif., home to many farmworkers who aren't yet sure what they will get out of solar coming to the region.
    (
    Dan Charles
    )

    "I'm worried about Huron," he says. This solar deal may be great for the landowners of Westlands, he says, but less farming means fewer jobs for people who worked in the fields and orchards. León wants some of the solar revenue to flow to this community for education and training, to help people find jobs in this new solar industry.

    "We are shareholders," he says. "We kept these communities alive, these economies robust. There's no excuse to leave us out."

    Westlands and Golden State Clean Energy have been discussing what they call a community benefits package, but officials haven't released any details.

    A possible model for other parts of California

    Caity Peterson, at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), says other farming communities in California may try to imitate what Westlands is doing. Because they, too, will have to stop pumping so much water from the ground as the new state law comes into force. "There's going to be some kind of right-sizing of agricultural land in the San Joaquin Valley," she says.

    According to a study that PPIC carried out, farmers in the valley will have to stop growing crops on between 500,000 and 1 million acres. There will be a lot of dry, sunny land in California, just waiting for a solar developer.

    Copyright 2026 NPR

  • How you can help decide in a March Madness twist
    An intersection in Hollywood, California packed with cars at various stop lights. A man wearing a light blue baseball cap and t-shirt is walking through the cars to cross the street.
    A pedestrian is surrounded by traffic at Sunset Blvd and Highland Avenue in Hollywood on February 24, 2026.

    Topline:

    A truly Los Angeles twist on March Madness is back, but this year, Angelenos are invited to weigh in on the worst intersections in greater L.A.

    Why it matters: Whether you feel personally victimized by the Virgil Avenue, Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards intersection by the Los Feliz border, which a city official called a “‘nightmare,” or break into anxious sweats every time you get in line for the Burbank Boulevard Costco — you can soon channel some of that frustration into a social media match-up.

    The backstory: After Koreatown was voted as having the city’s worst parking last year, the latest competition run by Americana at Brand Memes on Instagram is upping the stakes with infamous intersections.

    Why now: The anonymous account holder, who goes by Mr. Glen Dale, told LAist that the “One Bad Intersection After Another” bracket is designed to be a democratic process for people to collectively crown the worst in L.A. once and for all.

    What's next: “No matter who wins, it's all bad,” Mr. Glen Dale said.

    Read on ... for more on the March Madness-style bracket.

    A truly Los Angeles twist on March Madness is back, but this year, Angelenos are invited to weigh in on the worst intersections in greater L.A.

    Whether you feel personally victimized by the Virgil Avenue, Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards intersection by the Los Feliz border, which a city official called a “‘nightmare,” or break into anxious sweats every time you get in line for the Burbank Boulevard Costco — you can soon channel some of that frustration into a social media match-up.

    After Koreatown was voted as having the city’s worst parking last year, the latest competition run by Americana at Brand Memes on Instagram is upping the stakes with infamous intersections.

    The anonymous account holder, who goes by Mr. Glen Dale, told LAist the “One Bad Intersection After Another” bracket is designed to be a democratic process for people to collectively crown the worst in L.A. once and for all.

    “No matter who wins, it's all bad,” Mr. Glen Dale said.

    Voting kicks off this weekend, and the winner will be crowned by April.

    How it works

    The competition is divided into four rounds based on the general geographic area, with nine intersections in each round.

    Starting Sunday, @americanaatbrandmemes will post the competitors on Instagram with a poll attached around 11 a.m. each day throughout March.

    The polls will be open for 24 hours, and the intersection with the most votes will move on to the next round to face off against the others.

    To complete this year’s lineup, Mr. Glen Dale again started with a list of his personal worst before turning to his followers for some suggestions.

    The intersection of Harvey Drive and East Broadway toward the Glendale In-N-Out was a popular proposal, for example, but Mr. Glen Dale said he felt that may be too niche for the bracket.

    “I tried not to narrow in too much on one area,” he said. “And then tried to use my own experience to be like, ‘Oh yes, these ones feel like hallmarks.’”

    If your personal worst isn’t in the competition, you can also suggest an intersection in the comments by writing “WILDCARD: (your suggestion).” The suggestions with the most likes will be added to the competition, with a wildcard slot in each of the four rounds.

    Some popular wildcard suggestions include the Cypress Park roundabout at Riverside Drive and San Fernando Road, the Glendale Boulevard and Riverside Drive intersection with the wonky left-turn lanes in Silver Lake, and for another year in a row — all of Koreatown.

    “I always put [wildcards] in there because I'm always like there's something I'm not thinking of that someone's going to suggest,” Mr. Glen Dale said. “This is a fluid list, we could change it.”

    The intersection voted as L.A.’s worst of the worst will be crowned on Americana At Brand Meme’s account by April 1.

    The East Side-ish Round

    The first round focuses on the “East Side-ish” of L.A., including Silver Lake, Highland Park, East L.A., Echo Park and Eagle Rock.

    The rounds are broken up by “side-ish” so people can focus their debates on the intersections, not the geographic boundaries of the bracket, according to Mr. Glen Dale.

    The options include:

    • Virgil Avenue / Sunset Boulevard / Hollywood Boulevard vs Sunset Boulevard / Sanborn Avenue / Santa Monica Boulevard
    • Stadium Way / Academy Road vs Glendale Boulevard / Fletcher Drive / Silver Ridge Avenue
    • Telegraph Road / Atlantic Boulevard / Triggs Street / Ferguson Drive vs wildcard vs Huntington Drive / Garfield Avenue / Atlantic Boulevard
    • York Boulevard / N Avenue 50 vs Glendale Boulevard / Alvarado Street vs Avenue 42 / Eagle Rock Boulevard

    Mr. Glen Dale said Avenue 50, which came up often in followers’ suggestions, could get its own bracket because the intersections in the area don’t seem to communicate with each other.

    “You'll be sitting at a red light and seeing a green in front of you and being like, oh, when I get to that one it's going to be red,” he said. “But, you know, I ended up with York and 50 … [it] felt like a good representation of that street as a whole.”

    The West Side-ish Round

    The competition heads to Beverly Hills, Culver City, Westchester, Venice, Westwood Village and Brentwood for the second, “West Side-ish” round.

    The options include:

    • Beverly Hills 6 way stop vs Pacific Coast Highway / Chautauqua Boulevard / West Channel Road
    • Washington Boulevard / Culver Boulevard vs Exposition / Robertson / Venice Boulevards
    • Sunset Boulevard / Bellagio Drive / Bellagio Road / Bellagio Way vs wildcard vs Abbot Kinney Boulevard / California Avenue
    • La Cienega Boulevard / Centinela Avenue / La Tijera Boulevard vs Wilshire / Westwood Boulevards vs San Vicente Boulevard / Montana Avenue

    “It will be the Beverly Hills 6 stop,” one Instagram commenter wrote. “It is known.”

    The Central LA-ish Round 

    The third, “Central LA-ish” round takes us into the heart of Hollywood, West Hollywood, the border of Miracle Mile and Carthay Circle as well as the border of Wilshire Center and the Dayton Heights neighborhood.

    The options include:

    • Hollywood Boulevard / Highland Avenue vs Highland / Franklin Avenues
    • Fairfax Avenue / La Cienega Boulevard vs Fairfax Avenue / Olympic / San Vincente Boulevards
    • Jefferson Boulevard / La Brea Avenue vs wildcard vs La Cienega / Sunset Boulevards
    • Franklin Avenue / Vine Street / 101 Freeway vs Virgil Avenue / Beverly Boulevard / Temple Street vs Santa Monica Boulevard / Western Avenue

    The Los Angeles Times released a report this week ranking L.A.’s worst intersections based on traffic data, with the troublesome top spot going to Highland and Sunset in Hollywood.

    The Valley-ish Round

    Last but not least, the “Valley-ish,” which includes intersections in North Hollywood, Burbank, Studio City and Sherman Oaks.

    This round also features my personal nemesis — Barham and Cahuenga boulevards.

    I take this route relatively often to get from Burbank to West Hollywood and have to give myself a pep talk every time. The seemingly-constant congestion over the hill, driver confusion about what lanes lead where and people cutting into lines of cars just before a turn makes the experience feel like it takes years off my life.

    The options include:

    • Lankershim Boulevard / Vineland Avenue / Camarillo Street vs Burbank / Lankershim Boulevards / Tujunga Avenue
    • Victory / Burbank Boulevards / Victory Place / 5 Freeway / Costco vs Ventura Place / Radford Avenue / Trader Joe’s / Sephora parking lots
    • Harvey / W Broadway vs wildcard vs Sepulveda / Burbank Boulevards
    • Mulholland Drive / Coldwater Canyon Avenue vs Barham / Cahuenga Boulevards vs Vineland Avenue / Magnolia Boulevard

    Mr. Glen Dale agreed with my assessment, describing the Barham Boulevard intersection as his “white whale.”

    “I hate going through that intersection, and it's not even that it's scary like other ones where you don't know what's happening,” Mr. Glen Dale said. “No matter which way you're going, everyone is converging onto Barham, and it just creates this madness.”

    But Lankershim / Vineland / Camarillo appears to be an early follower favorite, as one commenter wrote, it “takes 2-3 business days to get through” and another added, “I’m rioting if [the intersection] doesn’t win.”