The Brief

A place to discover Latin artists and dance salsa or bachata all night, the Conga Room, founded by entrepreneur Brad Gluckstein, became a Los Angeles institution, backed with some major star power.

Jennifer Lopez, Sheila E., Jimmy Smits, and Paul Rodriguez were among the initial investors and at least two of them occasionally performed in the space.

Conga Room founder Brad Gluckstein stands between early investors in the nightclub, actor Jimmy Smits and comedian Paul Rodriguez

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Eddie Sakaki

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Conga Room

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The backstory

Other Latin music clubs existed in L.A., but the vibe of the Conga Room was new to the city in the late 90s. The L.A. Times described it as having “two things most [salsa clubs] didn’t: money and taste.”

It first opened on Wilshire Boulevard in 1998 with Celia Cruz headlining the intimate venue with the hit “Que Le Den Candela.”

Celia Cruz performs at the Conga Room

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Courtesy of the Conga Room

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Attendees over the years could catch acts ranging from Tito Puente to Ivy Queen to Bad Bunny, and performers of other genres also came across the stage. The venue shifted from salsa club to pan-Latin and world music.

In the 90s, you might have seen South African trumpeter Hugh Masekala, as well as Prince play the Conga Room. Private events included the post-Grammy win party for Carlos Santana, where a dinner of 125 attendees sang “Las Mañanitas” to Edward James Olmos for his birthday.

The space was “old Havana for the new millennium,” Gluckstein says.

By 2008, the Conga Room had outgrown its Miracle Mile location and moved to a larger space, downtown, at LA Live. More artists, including Black Eyed Peas rapper and producer will.i.am were brought on as investors. The new venue was nearly three times as large, with a VIP area, and a lot more parking. Food was “nueva Latina” cuisine and the “pan-Latin” interior was designed in collaboration with artists Jorge Pardo and Sergio Arau.

The venue was all the rage.

“You get 1100 people in a room listening to some beautiful Latin sounds…It's going to be more than lively,” says actor and Conga Room investor Jimmy Smits with a laugh.

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#257: Today, we’re saying goodbye to a space with a storied legacy in this city — the Conga Room. The Latin nightclub opened in 1998, and brought in artists ranging from Celia Cruz and Tito Puente to Maluma and Bad Bunny.  The club’s star studded list of investors included Jennifer Lopez, Sheila E., comedian Paul Rodriguez, and actor Jimmy Smits.  This week, the Conga Room is closing its doors. 

Jimmy Smits Says Goodbye To LA's Conga Room

#257: Today, we’re saying goodbye to a space with a storied legacy in this city — the Conga Room. The Latin nightclub opened in 1998, and brought in artists ranging from Celia Cruz and Tito Puente to Maluma and Bad Bunny.  The club’s star studded list of investors included Jennifer Lopez, Sheila E., comedian Paul Rodriguez, and actor Jimmy Smits.  This week, the Conga Room is closing its doors. 

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The Conga Room was a place to be in L.A. LAist’s Cynthia Covarrubias, senior human resources generalist, says she would go to the Wilshire location as “a young, professional Latina trying to find [her] place in the club world.”

Besides, her roommate at the time “really wanted to meet Jennifer Lopez.”

Why it's closing

The reasons this beloved venue are closing are two-fold.

As Gluckstein puts it, some of the reasons behind the venue’s closure are obvious — the effects of the pandemic and the economy. Rising rents at LA Live coupled with changes in music booking trends also meant the Conga Room wasn’t seeing the numbers it was used to.

“A staple of our venue was being able to attract international artists in a small venue,” says Gluckstein. But post pandemic, Gluckstein says, “royalties and other means of survival for the artists were tougher.” Artists who would normally stop by the Conga Room couldn’t afford a smaller stop on a tour, and there weren’t enough private events coming through the space to make it profitable.

The venue will be closing up in style, however, with a friends and family celebration on March 27th, hosted by Smits and Paul Rodriguez. The music-filled event will include performances by Salsa legend Gilberto Santa Rosa, and a jam session led by Jerry Rivera, Andy Vargas, and Reggaetón sensation BLESSD.

“I opened the Conga Room because I was a salsa aficionado, you know, I lived and died for it,” says Gluckstein.

Tito Puente performs on stage at the Conga Room

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Courtesy of the Conga Room

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Despite the sadness and nostalgia conjured up around the closure, Gluckstein is still finding joy in salsa, and in bringing music to classrooms around Southern California.

There’s a passing of the torch with the non profit Conga Kids, also founded by Gluckstein in 2016.

“We're into this thing called the Conga Kids, which is serving many Los Angeles schools with bringing music and culture to young people,” Smits says. “So it's like another generation passing down to another generation.”

LA students that are part of the Conga Kids program

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Eddie Sakaki

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Courtesy of the Conga Room

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What's next

Conga Kids brings music and dance from the African diaspora, where Latin music has roots, to 18 school districts across Southern California. That includes dances and genres like merengue, cumbia, salsa, and hip-hop. It’s got programs specific to 4th and 5th grades but includes school assemblies and family workshops for students in both elementary and middle school. Schools can request the Conga Kids program online through its website.

Working with the dancers, musicians, and artists in the Conga Kids program means “it's hard to be sad,” says Gluckstein.

And Smits adds that the Conga Room will "live on because music lives on, and music transcends everything.”

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Companies backing data center construction are flooding Sacramento with cash, hoping to stop or defang seven bills that would regulate the facilities as they head toward approval in the California Legislature this week.

The pro-data-center spenders include Big Tech companies like Amazon and AI titan Anthropic. But they are led, dollar-wise, by old school utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric, which earlier this year clocked its second biggest lobbying quarter since 1999.

The financial push comes a year after four bills that attempted to regulate data centers died or were diluted after lobbying from the industry. But as artificial intelligence fuels an unprecedented facility buildout, public backlash is transforming data center construction into a major issue for candidates in upcoming elections.

A May Gallup poll found seven in 10 Americans oppose data center construction in their communities, while a Public Policy Institute of California poll in July found similar opposition statewide. Rising public anxiety over utility costs, water use, and grid strain has driven California lawmakers to propose strict new data center rules — igniting a high-stakes lobbying push by the industry.

Hundreds of cities have considered or passed project bans this year, including in Monterey Park, where voters passed a ballot measure to permanently ban data centers, and Bay Area cities like Pittsburg, which backtracked on approvals following public outcry.

State law requires businesses and groups that engage in lobbying to report their overall quarterly spending, but does not require a breakdown of exactly how much is being spent on each bill. An analysis by CalMatters of lobbying activity for the first six months of 2026 found that utilities, tech companies and their proxies have spent millions of dollars lobbying state lawmakers, with data center bills emerging as a primary focus.

By Monday, it will be clear which bills made it out of the Legislature and onto Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for signature or veto by the end of September.

The fate of the measures could have far-reaching consequences, affecting not only data center development but environmental regulation, utility rates, and how freely California’s tech giants can operate in the state. Nationally, advocates and lawmakers agree that California’s regulation around data centers could be an important bellwether for how similar fights will play out elsewhere.

“The level of awareness is through the roof, and the level of concern and sensitivity is through the roof — it's bipartisan, it's national, and it's across the board,” California Sen. Steve Padilla, a Democrat from Chula Vista who is author of two pending data center bills, told CalMatters.

Who is lobbying on data centers?

During the first half of 2026, Amazon paid more than $500,000 to lobby lawmakers on 33 pieces of legislation, including several data center bills and matters related to antitrust and artificial intelligence. Amazon spent more than $1.7 million lobbying in California last year.

Meanwhile, AI company Anthropic, which sent its first lobbyists to Sacramento last year, has spent nearly $90,000 to influence decisions made by the California Legislature so far this year and, according to the Financial Times, nearly tripled its federal lobbying spend in the same time period. Last year, Anthropic spent over $200,000 lobbying in the state.

Although Anthropic paid a lobbyist to influence lawmakers decisionmaking on data centers, a spokesperson said the company does not support or oppose any specific bills in California. The company, the spokesperson said, is also interested in working with lawmakers “on AI safety and other relevant issues." Representatives for Amazon did not respond to a request for comment from CalMatters.

Utility giant PG&E’s latest filing shows that it spent $2.86 million lobbying in California between April and June — its second highest quarter since 1999 (only surpassed since then by 2018, the year of the deadliest wildfire in state history, later linked to its equipment). A spokesperson for PG&E said the company has engaged on a “broad scope” of issues facing the industry during this legislative session, adding that “less than 5% of our spending was on data-center related issues,” amounting to approximately $143,000.

Groups acting as proxies for data center operators and tech companies have been especially active this year in California’s capitol, critics say. Business interests say they are trying to ground policy conversations in reality.

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Fred Greaves

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CalMatters

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Other utilities, like Southern California Edison, and unions representing utility workers, like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, have also invested in lobbying efforts on the bills.

Utilities providers are particularly motivated to influence bills because the development of new data centers represents a historic opportunity for expansion and grid upgrades, according to Matthew Freedman, senior staff attorney for The Utility Reform Network. Under the current regulatory framework, he said, the cost of expanding transmission lines is spread across all grid users, which means everyday consumers foot the bill.

But several of this year’s data center bills would change that, shifting costs back toward data center operators. “The groups that have been the strongest opponents of the bills this year include the proxies for the data centers and the tech companies,” Freedman said, referring to industry groups such as the Data Center Coalition, Silicon Valley Leadership Group and the California Chamber of Commerce. “They serve as a mouthpiece for the tech industry.”

Filings do not show that tech giants like Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft are lobbying lawmakers directly on data centers this session. Instead, the business groups Freedman referenced, which represent the Big Tech firms, carry the weight.

Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which represents companies including Apple and Amazon, has so far spent over $100,000 lobbying on bills including the various data center measures this year and is on track for its highest annual lobbying spend since tracking began in 2005.

The Data Center Coalition, which counts companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI among its members, has logged its second and third highest-ever spending quarters so far this year. It has spent roughly $60,000 lobbying state lawmakers and the governor’s office to voice opposition to nearly every bill that would regulate data centers.

The bills and the backlash 

The measures before the Legislature this session include:

• Bills to shift electric infrastructure costs toward data center operators and away from residential customers: SB 1168, SB 886 and AB 2383.
• Bills mandating disclosures or estimates of water usage (and sometimes usage of other resources): AB 2619 and two bills that cleared the Legislature Thursday, AB 1577 and AB 2469.
• SB 887, which would require all data center projects to undergo environmental reviews and offer fast-tracked approval for facilities that meet standards for water and energy conservation.

Business interests opposed to the bills argue they would stifle tech companies’ ability to innovate and compete, tie up critical infrastructure in red tape and unfairly burden the construction of data centers versus the construction of other types of projects.

Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Ahmad Thomas told CalMatters that he sees public debate over data centers as fueled by “strong anti-AI sentiment,” and that industry groups like his aim to “ground the conversation in reality” about the ways consumers rely on data center infrastructure for everyday services.

Advocacy groups counter that transparency is vital to protect the environment and public resources, and that everyday consumers should not be affected by increased infrastructure and utilities costs.

Britt Smith, who is part of a community group organizing against a controversial $2 billion Amazon data center project in Gilroy south of San Jose, said corporate opponents of the bills are “spending so much because there’s so much at stake,” adding, “Our future, our safety, is not for sale.”

This robust fight stands in stark contrast to last year, when the only bill signed into law was stripped down to just a requirement for state energy regulators to publish an environmental impact study on data centers’ electricity demand. Newsom also vetoed a water usage disclosure bill, citing concerns that regulation could stifle AI growth.

Whether this year's intensified lobbying will yield similar results remains uncertain, but lawmakers say shifting voter sentiment heading into the midterms has altered the political landscape.

“When you're looking down the barrel of public outcry that says we don't want [data centers] at all, and you've got localities that are saying they’re going to ban them, then you know the atmosphere has changed,” Assemblymember Diane Papan, a San Mateo Democrat who authored two of the bills, told CalMatters. “We are in a totally different environment this year.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Topline:

Why oysters? Oysters filter and improve water quality … and can help prevent coastal erosion. Yet native species have been nearly wiped out since the Gold Rush era sparked overharvesting and coastal development. The nonprofit Orange County Coastkeeper has been working to restore oysterbeds along the OC coast for more than a decade.

What to expect: Oysterpalooza will feature speakers highlighting the group’s restoration efforts, as well as local food, beer and sustainable product vendors. Of course, there will be oyster tasting too!

The details: You can join a beach cleanup beforehand at 9 a.m., or just get straight to the party, which starts Saturday at 11 a.m. and runs until 4 p.m. at Sunset Beach Community Center in Huntington Beach. Sign up for the beach cleanup and get full festival details here.

Go deeper: Your shucked oysters could help shore up the Orange County coast

After opening a modern Korean pub called Yi Cha in 2025, chef Debbie Lee decided to pay homage to her heritage with Mokja, this time serving Korean goods and convenience.

Lee sat down with AirTalk Friday host Austin Cross to talk about her vision for gourmet Korean style snacks in L.A.

Grab-and-go convenience with a twist

Lee says the idea behind Mokja was to take the model of American convenience stores and blend it with Korean flavors.

It’s a place for people who want to grab something for the road, stop by for a quick snack or even meal prep for the week. The store also partnered with Frank and Michele La, creators of Be Bright Coffee, to offer Korean-style coffee drinks to pair with the snacks.

Daru Yu, Frank La, Debbie Lee and Michelle La

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Stan Lee

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Courtesy Mokja

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The Korean word Mokja translates to "let's eat."

“If your mom or your grandma was calling you over the table, they'd say, ‘Bali Mokja,’ which means, ‘Hurry, let's eat’”

What you’ll find at Mokja

One of the quick, to-go items you’ll find is Lee’s northern style mandu dumplings, stuffed with fatty pork and shrimp and inspired by her grandmother’s recipe.

Build your own ramen tray

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Stan Lee

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Courtesy Mokja

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Build your own Ramen station

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Stan Lee

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Courtesy Mokja

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Grab n' Go Banchan

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Stan Lee

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Courtesy Mokja

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For optimal convenience, the king-sized dumplings are offered in the grab-and-go fridge. Lee recommends popping them in the microwave at the store and enjoying them with a coffee.

Mokja also features a make-your-own ramen station, which Lee says has become incredibly popular for families with kids.

Korean hand pies with southern flair

One of the highlights on the menu is the oxtail hand pie, which features a braised Korean-style oxtail known as kkori-jjim. It’s inspired by southern soul food influences her parents picked up on.

Braised Oxtail aka “Gori Jjim” Hand Pie

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Stan Lee

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Courtesy Mokja

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“My mom learned how to cook from the Black cooks in Jackson, Mississippi, and she learned good old soul Southern food.”

Kimchee Cheese Biscuits

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Stan Lee

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Courtesy Mokja

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Yuja Cha Ice Box Pie

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Stan Lee

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Courtesy Mokja

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Lee said Mokja is all about telling the story through food.

The restaurant also features other Korean/Southern fusion, including a Yuju cha ice box pie and Kimchi cheese biscuits.

State lawmakers have reached a deal that would provide school districts some relief from the costs of childhood sexual abuse lawsuits filed after a 2020 law allowed victims to sue for abuse by public employees going back decades, EdSource has learned.

It was not immediately clear Thursday afternoon whether the last-minute deal, brokered days before the legislative session is set to end on Aug. 31, has enough support to reach Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

At issue is Assembly Bill 218, a law that lifted the statute of limitations to sue for childhood sexual abuse and enabled a blitz of costly litigation against schools and public agencies. In some cases, victims have received tens of millions of dollars for sexual assaults and abuses they say took place decades ago at the hands of teachers and other public employees.

Details of the deal are included in amendments made to Senate Bill 577 co-authored by Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz. According to the amended bill text, the deal would raise the legal standard required for people who are 40 years or older to sue for sexual assaults that occurred before Jan. 1, 2024. It also calls for schools and other agencies to have sexual assault prevention plans and codes of conduct.

“California stands with survivors, whose voices have shaped this process every step of the way, and the Legislature is taking action to defend and preserve survivors’ path to justice — that is not negotiable,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, said in a statement. “With this solution, the state is safeguarding schools and public services, while investing in prevention and protecting against future abuse. California is committed to the safety of every child.”

The amendments do not appear to address a limit or cap on jury awards or settlement amounts for childhood sexual abuse cases in the state. Caps were a major demand from public agencies, including schools, counties and obscure agencies called joint powers authorities that serve as insurance pools for school districts.

Laird, who had attempted to pass an AB 218 reform bill last year, said in a phone interview Thursday evening that the negotiations that led to the compromise were difficult. Putting a complete cap on settlement amounts “was a bridge too far” for many lawmakers, Laird said.

Troy Flint, spokesperson for the California School Boards Association, said the group was grateful for lawmakers’ efforts, but added that it’s “highly questionable” whether the deal would do enough to prevent school districts from getting slammed with seven-figure settlements.

“We’re grateful to Speaker Rivas and Pro Tem (Monique) Limón for their efforts to address this issue,” Ben Adler, director of public affairs for the California State Association of Counties, said in a statement. “It’s clear the status quo is broken, and the unintended consequences have grown out of control.”