The Brief

The story of Vidiots is really the revival of not one iconic movie spot, but two. Yes, the beloved Santa Monica video store has been reborn in Eagle Rock, but that rebirth included a massive makeover of the nearly 100-year-old Eagle Theater, which had been left derelict before Vidiots bought it in 2019.

These days, Vidiots is screening movies most nights in the theater while renting titles in its collection of 60,000 DVDs and Blu-ray discs on site. Not to mention selling swag, snacks and libations to the movie-going public.

The beginnings

Vidiots first opened on the corner of 3rd Street and Pico Boulevard in 1985, and it was an immediate fan favorite. You could find anything there, from popular hits to the classics, and titles that were just impossible to find elsewhere.

People wait in line outside of Vidiots for an event with David O. Russell.

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Courtesy Vidiots via Facebook

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Courtesy Vidiots via Facebook

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Longtime Vidiots devotee, actor and director Noah Segan, credits the founders, Patty Polinger and Cathy Tauber, with carefully curating its inventory and being creative with what they made available.

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Neon! Mullets! Video stores! Relive the 80s with us as part of How to LA's "Revival House" series.

Revival House: Vidiots Brings 60,000 DVDs and a New Theater to a Historic Space

Neon! Mullets! Video stores! Relive the 80s with us as part of How to LA's "Revival House" series.

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“From its earliest inception, they put so much care and effort into ensuring that they were stewards for queer and female and punk rock and outsider cinema,” Segan said, adding that Vidiots took advantage of the VHS format of the time, which could be dubbed and shared easily.

“You could have people donate bootlegs and student films and stuff that did not get traditional distribution,” Segan said.

“Vidiots was so famous, and it was on everybody's list of places to visit if you really want to be an Angeleno,” added Vidiots executive director Maggie Mackay. “I was blown away by it as a film lover and just a citizen of the city.”

Technology eventually surpassed the store, and it struggled. The VHS tapes that once helped Vidiots stay hip became obsolete and DVDs were dying as streaming services took off.

The shop still had a devoted following, and patrons worked hard, donating money to keep it afloat. But it became clear the business model was no longer sustainable and in 2017, the Santa Monica store closed.

A second life

It was during this time that Mackay joined the team. The founders were already hatching a new plan, trying to figure how they could reopen … somewhere … in Los Angeles, and brought in Mackay, a former film festival programmer who self-describes as “the crazy video store lady,” to help.

“The first time I met Patty and Cathy, we talked about access … about how important places like Vidiots are for children and for inspiring new generations,” Mackay recalled. “When I walked out, I knew there was absolutely no way I could walk away from it … even if I was jumping on with gusto to the deck of the Titanic.”

To try and stay afloat, Vidiots had switched to a nonprofit model in the mid-2010s. But to reopen in a new space, they’d need a new plan, and a lot of help.

“When I found out I had to write a business plan, let me tell you, it was not the best day of my life,” Mackay said. “I was like, 'I'm a film programmer. I don't know how to write business plans.' But I knew enough people who I could surround myself with who would get me where we needed to be.”

Mackay had some basic criteria when looking for a new home for Vidiots, and she had a sense that the northeast side of L.A. might be the best place to look, as it was known as a “movie theater desert.”

Still, it was a stroke of luck that led her to the Eagle Theatre.

Vidiots in Eagle Rock.

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Julie Leopo

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LAist

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In 2019, Mackay drove by a building in her neighborhood and noticed a “for lease” sign. The landlords turned out to be former Vidiots customers.

“That was luck,” said Mackay.

“When we found the movie theater was when everything kind of changed,” she added. “Because now we were bringing back two very important film hubs to the city of Los Angeles.”

The Eagle

The Eagle Theatre has been a fixture on the corner of Yosemite and Eagle Rock Boulevard since 1929. It opened as the Yosemite Theatre, and was dubbed the New Eagle Theatre in 1937.

Like many cinemas during the Depression, seeing a movie at the New Eagle came with games of chance, door prizes, and even dish nights — evenings where your movie ticket came with a dish, or plate, you could take home.

The Eagle Theatre, circa 1972

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Courtesy Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation

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Decades later, in the 70s, the incentives to get people in the door of a movie theater looked a little different.

Vincent Miranda, the owner of the Pussycat Theater, a famous west coast adult film house chain, purchased the Eagle in the mid-70s.

But according to theater historian Ross Melnick, a group called STOP: Stamp Out Pornography, pledged to shut down the theater, sending daily groups of picketers.

The theater changed hands again not long after, and stopped showing adult films. It ran as a cinema until the beginning of the 21st century, becoming a church in the early 2000s and remaining as such until 2019.

The stress of reopening

When Vidiots decided to move forward on renovating the Eagle, they needed money. A lot of money. The pandemic hit four months after signing the lease, prolonging renovations. Mackay said Vidiots had already launched a campaign for capital that then “increased pretty exponentially because of all of the things that you can imagine.”

Maggie Mackay, Vidiots executive director, looks through a collection of over 11,000 VHS tapes, including some rare titles, on Feb. 27, 2024.

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Julie Leopo

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LAist

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Donations came pouring in from founding members (that’s folks donating $5,000 or more) like Noah Segan, the Duplass Brothers and director Rian Johnson. There were also and corporate sponsors like MUBI, Alamo Drafthouse, and GKIDS, which meant Vidiots raised more than $2 million to reopen. Still, that monetary support didn’t relieve some of the pressure Mackay was feeling.

“I knew leading a project like this in a very male-centric industry, that if it wasn't perfect … I would always think, they don't think a girl can run a movie theater,” she said.

Mackay added that she surrounded herself with experts, and “almost in tears,” called up Jules McLean, the theater manager at the New Beverly Cinema. She said McLean’s recommendations became an invaluable resource in shaping the theater.

Paying it forward

Vidiots has been up and running in its new location since last summer and by all accounts, movie fans are delighted with the space. The people keep coming and Vidiots will be one of the theaters hosting screenings as part of the new Los Angeles Festival of Movies this coming April.

In thinking about this project as she was building it, Mackay said, “I was very certain that people would come to the movies. I was pretty certain that they would come back to the video store. I did not anticipate that we would just be sellouts multiple times a week on the movie theater and that we would have, by now, rented over 30, 000 titles on DVD and Blu-ray.”

Over the course of the reopening process, Vidiots found some support in small grant organizations, and the Golden Globe Foundation and the National Association of Theater Operators. But they didn’t have the bandwidth — or the connections — to tap into resources at larger organizations.

That challenge is informing what Mackay called “the next phase” of Vidiots.

“The dream is that we can be a generator for places like this, and in every city, state, and town, there is someone like me who sees the gap, wants to fill it, and has the blind faith to do it,” Mackay said of the impact project Vidiots hopes to launch. “I would like to support those people, and I would like to give them whatever resources we have available.”

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

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

Thousands of immigrants who are lawfully in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.

The new restrictions stem from H.R. 1 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which Congress passed last year.

The changes remove eligibility for certain noncitizens, including people with refugee status and victims of trafficking. It also applies to immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan who have special immigrant visas for helping the U.S. government overseas.

 ”These are folks … many of whom have large families that we have a commitment to as a country because we welcomed them and invited them here to find a place of refuge,” said Cambria Tortorelli, president of the International Institute of Los Angeles, a refugee resettlement agency. “They’re authorized to work and they’ve been brought here by the U.S. government.”

The federal spending bill, H.R. 1, made sweeping cuts to social safety net programs, including food assistance and Medicaid. In signing the bill, President Donald Trump said the changes were delivering on his campaign promises of “America first.”

Officials estimate 23,000 people in Los Angeles County will be affected. The state estimates about 72,000 immigrants with lawful presence will be affected across California.

CalFresh is the state’s version of the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Undocumented immigrants have not been eligible to receive CalFresh benefits.

State officials say noncitizens who are currently receiving benefits will continue to get them until it’s time to renew their benefits — adding that people might be able to receive benefits again if their legal status changes to lawful permanent residents.

Who the changes apply to:

• Asylees
• Refugees
• Parolees (unless they are Cuban and Haitian entrants)
• Individuals with deportation or removal withheld
• Conditional entrants
• Victims of trafficking
• Battered noncitizens
• Iraqi or Afghan with special immigrant visas (SIV) who are not lawful permanent residents (LPR)
• Certain Afghan Nationals granted parole between July 31, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2023
• Certain Ukrainian Nationals granted parole between Feb. 24, 2022, and Sep. 30, 2024

Nearly every student in the California State University system has used artificial intelligence tools, but most don’t trust the results, are worried about how AI will affect their future job security and want more say in systemwide AI policy.

That’s according to results of a 2025 survey of more than 80,000 students enrolled at CSU’s 22 campuses, plus faculty and staff — the largest and most comprehensive study of how higher education students and instructors perceive artificial intelligence.

Nationwide, university faculty struggle to reconcile the learning benefits of AI — hailed as a “transformative tool” for providing tutoring and personalized support to students — and the risks that students will depend on AI agents to do their thinking for them and, very possibly, get the wrong information. Educators want a say in how and which AI tools are used. Students across the CSU system want to be included in those discussions.

Some professors teach students how to use AI and encourage students to use it, while others forbid its use in the classroom, said Katie Karroum, vice president of systemwide affairs for the Cal State Student Association, representing more than 470,000 students.

“Both of these things are allowed to coexist right now without a policy,” she said.

Karroum said that faculty practices are too varied and that what students need are consistent and transparent rules developed in collaboration with students. “There are going to be students who are graduating with AI literacy and some that graduate without AI literacy.”

In February 2025, the CSU system announced an initiative to adopt AI technologies and an agreement with OpenAI to make ChatGPT available throughout the system. The system-wide survey released Wednesday confirms that ChatGPT is the most used AI tool across CSUs. The system will also work with Adobe, Google, IBM, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft and NVIDIA.

Campus leaders say the survey and accompanying dashboard provide much needed data on how the system continues to integrate AI into instruction and assessment.

“We need to have data to make data-informed decisions instead of just going by anecdote,” said Elisa Sobo, a professor of anthropology at San Diego State who was involved in interpreting the survey’s findings. “We have data that show high use, but we also have high levels of concern, very valid concern, to help people be responsible when they use it.”

Faculty at San Diego State designed the survey, which received more than 94,000 responses from students, faculty and staff. Among all responding CSU students, 95% reported using an AI tool; 84% said they used ChatGPT and 82% worry that AI will negatively impact their future job security. Others worry that they won’t be competitive if they don’t understand AI well enough.

“Even though I don’t want to use it, I HAVE TO!” wrote a computer science major. “Because if I don’t, then I’ll be left behind, and that is the last thing someone would want in this stupid job market.”

Faculty are divided about the impact of AI on teaching and research. Just over 55% reported a positive benefit, while 52% said AI has had a negative impact so far.

San Diego State conducted its first campuswide survey in 2023 in response to complaints from students about inconsistent rules about AI use in courses, said James Frazee, vice president for information technology at the campus.

“Students are facing this patchwork of expectations even within the same course taught by different instructors,” Frazee said. In one introductory course, the professor might encourage students to use AI, but another professor teaching the same course might forbid it, he said. “It was a hot mess.”

In that 2023 survey, one student made this request: “Please just tell us what to do and be clear about it.”

Following that survey, the San Diego State Academic Senate approved guidelines for the use of generative AI in instruction and assessments. In 2025, the Senate made it mandatory that faculty include language about AI use in course syllabi.

“It doesn’t say what your disposition has to be, whether it’s pro or con,” Frazee said. “It just says you have to be clear about your expectations. Without the 2023 survey data, that never would have happened.”

According to the 2025 systemwide survey, only 68% of teaching faculty include language about AI use in their syllabi.

Sobo and other faculty who helped develop the 2025 survey hope other CSU campuses will find the data helpful in informing policies about AI use. The dashboard allows users to search for specific campus and discipline data and view student responses by demographic group.

The 2025 survey shows that first-generation students are more interested in formal AI training and that Black, Hispanic and Latino students are more interested than white students. At San Diego State, students are required to earn a micro-credential in AI use during their first year — another change that was made after the 2023 survey.

Students in this year’s survey said they want training that will be relevant to their careers. “I want to learn AI tools that are actually used in my industry, not just generic chatbots,” a mechanical engineering student responded. “Show me what engineers are actually doing with AI on the job.”

The California Faculty Association, which represents about 29,000 educators in the CSU system, said in a February statement that faculty should be included in future systemwide decisions about AI, including whether the contract with OpenAI should be renewed in July.

“CFA members continue to advocate for ethical and enforceable safeguards governing the use of artificial intelligence,” the CFA said in the statement, asking for “protections for using or refusing to use the technology, professional development resources to adapt pedagogy to incorporate the technology, and further protections for faculty intellectual property.”