The Brief

When Dave Pidancet's third son was born early last year, he knew something had to change.

With now three children under 6, he struggled with feelings of isolation and loneliness as a stay-at-home dad in Mar Vista. He found himself going long stretches of time surrounded by kids, not interacting with another adult.

“For men especially, it's a little embarrassing to admit that we're lonely or that we need a friend,” Pidancet says. “We might invent some reasons for why we're not reaching out and getting out of the house, like we’re too busy, our kids need us, the house is falling apart.”

But as research about the nationwide loneliness epidemic mounted, he decided to take action and “push through the awkwardness,” as he put it. He attempted to talk about these feelings with other dads.

It was within these conversations that he realized nearly every man he spoke to was, to some extent, in the same pain.

“It's almost like an unspoken ache that we might have,” he says. “Men really value their independence and their ability to take care of other people. In general, men are reluctant to ask for help.”

How, and to what extent, are men struggling?

In the midst of a loneliness epidemic, many Americans are lonely. But men — though hard for them to admit it — tend to be the loneliest.

“Many men, and especially younger men, feel disconnected and very often uncertain of their purpose in life,” said Richard Reeves, writer, professor and president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. “They have fewer friends, they're less likely to be in a romantic relationship, and they're unclear about their path.”

A 2023 report from the organization Equimondo found that two-thirds of surveyed men between ages 18 and 23 say “no one really knows me.” According to a 2021 report by the Survey Center on American Life, one in seven men say they have no close friends. For comparison, 30 years ago, more than half of men surveyed reported having at least six close friends. (Some have called it a “friendship recession.”)

This isn’t limited to one subgroup of men either. While the root causes may differ, these feelings of loneliness are felt across different age groups as well as racial, ethnic, cultural and sexual identities: Black men report feelings of isolation as do Latino men and men who identify as LGBTQ. And 15% of young men under the age of 30 say they don’t have a single close friend.

Such feelings can lead to other mental, psychological and physical challenges: alcohol and/or drug abuse; depression. Men are four times more likely to take their own lives compared to women, according to the Centers for Disease Control. (Men over the age of 85 are 17 times more likely to take their own lives than women of a similar age).

“Although a lot of men will put a brave face on it when you really talk to them about it, what you'll find is that face is very often masking a lot of uncertainty and isolation,” Reeves says. “Which put together can lead to a real loss of purpose.”

What's underneath male loneliness

So why are men so lonely these days?

The answer is complex and somewhat amorphous. But some point to one simple trend: The dwindling number of places for men to make friends with other men.

“A lot of those places we used to hang out or congregate at have kind of eroded,” says Shannon Carpenter, author of The Ultimate Stay-At-Home Dad.

As a stay-at-home dad of three, Carpenter struggled to find advice for fathers of all walks of life who wanted to be more involved with their families. After joining a local dads group — which he’s now been a part of for 16 years — he saw that fathers were all yearning for some direction and companionship in a new era of gender dynamics.

As women have become more independent and social norms have changed — “which is a good thing,” Carpenter emphasizes — some men have been left feeling adrift, unsure of how they now fit in, he says.

“And this is not a problem for women to fix,” he says. “It’s a problem for men to fix.”

Over the past several decades, the spaces that once anchored men’s lives — church, work, male-only social clubs, etc. — have become less central, or in some cases, obsolete. Disconnected from these institutions that once provided naturally borne friendships with other men, many men are now struggling to find connections.

“We have underestimated the extent to which the institutions of the workplace and the family, maybe even some religious institutions have actually provided spaces where male friendships were formed almost automatically,” Reeves says. “To some extent the male loneliness crisis is a reflection of a kind of broader institutional crisis that faces many men.”

Research shows that men do in fact have a harder time making friends and deep connections compared to women. Reeves adds that historically, friendships have been seen as “women’s work,” with women traditionally acting as a sort of social organizer for the family.

“As that's becoming less and less true, that has exposed the fact that maybe many men lack the skills or the institutions or the habits that are required to sustain those friendships,” he says. “What you're seeing is just this whole period in which men are having to figure this out for themselves in a way that we just haven't in previous generations.”

Rise of men's groups

In the midst of this epidemic within an epidemic, one thing is clear: Men need other men.

Given the troubled, sexist history of some places where men have historically fraternized, it’s easy to scoff at the idea that men need more spaces to gather to be around other men, Reeves warns.

But men really do need help. “We have to address the root causes or things don’t change,” Carpenter says. “And that’s a hard thing to do, because then you have to convince men to be vulnerable.”

For many, help looks like joining a men’s support group.

Pidancet, who is now co-organizer of L.A. Dads Group, which meets several times a month for outings with other local dads like museums, movies, play dates at a park with the kids or a “guy’s night out,” says the group has helped him feel less isolated in his role as a stay-at-home dad.

“Getting involved with the dad group helps me realize that I have something to offer the fellow parents in my life, going beyond just providing for my family,” he says. “It's brought kind of an extra layer of purpose.”

For dads and other men out there who may be struggling, Pidancet encourages them to be intentional — and “a bit bolder than you’re comfortable with” — about building relationships.

Members of L.A. Dads Group out with their kids.

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David Pidancet

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L.A. Dads Group

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“Actually reach out to send that text message to your friend you haven't heard from in a long time, or to strike up a conversation with that dad that you saw at the pickup,” he urges. “That other person is probably looking for the same thing that you are. He's also looking for connection.”

Beyond making a point to reach out to others, men must also be careful to not hyperfocus their lives on work, Carpenter says, “which is easy for them to do.”

“Work is honorable, it gets you where you want to be, but you cannot neglect yourself when you do it,” he adds. “Carve out time for yourself and go find your people.

The importance of fostering male friendships goes beyond just benefitting the men involved, Reeves says. These connections are where men can learn the emotional skills to be good partners, parents, employers and thrive in other roles that are crucial for a healthy society.

“There's a real danger that we're missing some of the fragile beauty of male friendship,” he says. “Male friendships perhaps require a little bit more work and a little bit more support, but by God, is it worth it.”

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is warning the public of a potential measles exposure from someone who traveled through Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles earlier this month.

What happened

The unvaccinated passenger arrived at Union Station on Saturday, Sept. 12, by Amtrak train just after 7 a.m. and departed about four hours later on an Amtrak Thruway bus bound for Bakersfield.

People at Union Station during the exposure window of 8 a.m. to noon may be at risk of contracting measles seven to 21 days after exposure. The last day to monitor for symptoms is Oct. 3.

State health officials say the passenger was traveling on buses and trains through L.A. and at least five other California counties before leaving the state.

"This case, along with previous measles outbreaks in California this year, serve as reminders of the importance of vaccination against measles," said Dr. Rita Nguyen, assistant state public health officer. "Measles is one of the most contagious infections that can lead to severe lifelong consequences, including permanent brain damage, and can also be fatal, especially for children."

What to watch for

Symptoms of measles include fever, red, watery eyes, and a rash that usually develops several days after other symptoms and typically starts on the face.

As of Sept. 14, a total of 59 measles cases have been reported in California this year. In most cases, patients were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status.

Imagine a sprawling network of roomy bike lanes, generously landscaped to calm relentless traffic. Think Amsterdam with newer buildings and fewer waterways. That’s been Long Beach’s goal anyway.

Instead of wide post-war boulevards, roads would become slower and leaner, transforming Long Beach into a top-five global cycling city, said former city traffic engineer Paul Van Dyk. “Some of that is tongue-in-cheek, but if you shoot for the moon you land in the stars.”

Long Beach has been working toward this vision since it adopted its bicycle master plan 25 years ago, now with mounting urgency as auto-related fatalities rise. The biggest project so far – the Studebaker Road Transformation Project – is bringing this vision to the doorstep of Studebaker Road residents.

It has drawn mixed reviews.

'The intent of the design is malicious'

“The intent of the design is malicious — it’s immoral,” said Joey Schilling, who drives the road six days a week and wrote a social media post criticizing the project that drew almost 1,000 comments. ”It’s people who do not use the road trying to tell other people how to use the road.”

Amid red cones and barriers, a woman and her dogs navigate the construction zones at Studebaker Road and Willow Street in Long Beach on Friday, Sept. 4, 2026. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.The $65 million project runs over five miles from Second Street all the way up to Carson Street. It includes bike lanes, greenways and stonescape with fiber-optic cable running underneath. It is crucial to the city’s long-term plan of knitting together 300 miles of bikeways by 2040 to bring bicycle culture to Long Beach, as well as create safer streets.

The massive project funded from 13 federal, state and local agencies, gives a glimpse of what’s to come for Long Beach thoroughfares. The Clark Avenue work is in progress. Pacific Avenue and Orange Avenue “backbone” plans are on deck. Now Studebaker Road, the biggest, longest and most expensive, is well underway, spending the most dollars and, arguably, drawing the most resident anger.

Schilling, who lives near Studebaker Road actually does ride his bike to work in Seal Beach and said he is OK with bike lanes in general. However, he says the project is not practical in a community where he says most drive to work. “It’s not a reasonable solution. It’s not even for the greater good, that would be to appease the 95 percent who use their cars. The cost and the benefit do not match up. The cost is too high, the benefit too low.”

Wider lanes, sturdier medians

The Studebaker project features raised bus stops and wider bike lanes than have been seen previously. No more flimsy bollards separating bikes from cars, said Van Dyk, the city traffic engineer who helped usher in the bikeway and traffic-calming street plan before he went on to consult on other urban bike projects.

The green bollards seen on Bellflower Boulevard and Studebaker before the redo often get hit by cars and can resemble thick blades of stomped grass. “People do not like the way they look, and I agree with their frustrations,” said Van Dyk. “That’s why we moved towards those concrete medians.“ He said planners “learned a lot of lessons along the way.”

Studebaker will feature roomier bike lanes – 9 feet wide compared with the old 6-foot-across version. Wider lanes will allow riders to travel two abreast for a better ride, Van Dyk said. It also makes them easier to clean. Debris-filled lanes are a sore spot with bikers.

The old bike lane sweeper the city used to clean narrow paths was notoriously difficult to move and use. (Fourth District Councilmember Daryl Supernaw joked that sightings of the small sweepers were less frequent than Bigfoot.) But a regular street sweeper can get into the broader lanes where it can’t on Broadway and Bellflower south of Atherton. (They actually set a street sweeper in a bike lane before planning and pouring the concrete to make sure it would fit.) Still, protected bike lanes are harder to clean than lanes merely separated by paint and “swept” by passing cars.

David Raslevich, a 41-year-old cyclist who frequently rides on the new lanes on Clark, said he has noticed branches, leaves and other debris. “I feel safer riding with the traffic, because they (cars) move debris out of the way for you.”

Buses stop in traffic, not turnouts

One new component of Studebaker and the other newer lanes are raised bus stops. The new stops designed to accommodate bikes and buses are about five inches off the ground and separated from the road by a curb. Buses will stop in the No. 2 lane, halting traffic behind them, and pick up passengers, instead of easing out of a bus turnout.

Van Dyk said that change evolved from talks with Long Beach Transit, which revealed that buses would sometimes get hit when pulling into traffic. Planners reasoned it’s better to have cars waiting for a bus to pick up passengers instead of forcing a bus waiting to pull into the No. 2 lane.

“It’s math my second grader can do: What’s better, 40 people on a bus wait or four people in cars,” Van Dyke said. “Which is the greatest cost to society? The bus is going to be more efficient.” He also contends the new system is safe; there is less ambiguity as a bus will slow down in front of a car, so the car would be more likely to stop instead of zipping around a protruding bus bumper.

It is too early to know how this plan will play out – the new bus lane curbs on Clark show missing chunks already from drivers that likely didn’t see them. Raslevich said he has seen cars turn into the curb by the raised bus stop. “They don’t know that there’s an island there, so they’re hitting that island, pretty much daily.”

Councilman Supernaw, whose district encompasses the $65 million project, had reservations about the price tag before ultimately supporting it.

'All anyone asked for is a repave'

“All anyone asked for is a repave, to get rid of potholes and have a smooth surface to drive on,” Supernaw said. “Should we just forgo the bike lanes and do a straight repave? The answer was no, we wanna use the grant money for the bike lanes.”

The city saw it as a grander vision, weaving together a puzzle of state and federal grants along with $8.5 million in local sales tax money for new transit stops, sidewalks and curb ramps that improve how all people can move through the city.

“It’s not just ‘I wanna ride a bike for fun.’ People need it to get to work,” said Jocelin Padilla, a spokesperson for the city’s Public Works Department.

'Communication via spraypaint'

A series of community meetings were held in 2024, drawing limited feedback. But when residents later saw painted pavement markings showing the planned curbs and bike lines, “they got involved in a big way,” Supernaw said.

“We call this communication via spraypaint,” said Supernaw. “Constituents see lines marked out and contact the council office.”

Aside from the cost and the bus islands, some residents are frustrated by the execution. Leslie Goldman, who lives near Studebaker and Stearns, said large piles of dirt – at times higher than cars – have blocked residents from crossing the street or seeing oncoming traffic. Some concerns were addressed, including a bus shelter that was added due to feedback from residents.

“We’re not saying we don’t want construction done ever, that’s life in the big city,” she said. But Goldman contends the “assembly line” construction approach, as opposed to the work done in shorter phases, is leading to more “noise, vibration, dust, traffic, blind spots, trash, roadblocks, … All at sporadic intervals unknown to residents. It’s not just an inconvenience, it’s a hardship.”

A 'once-in-a-generation' timeline

Padilla of Public Works acknowledged the hardship, but said the benefits would outweigh the short-term pain. She said doing the work in shorter segments would increase costs and project timelines – not a good thing when it needs to be finished by the Olympics. “This is a once-in-a-generation project,” she said.

Not all residents are wary. “Studebaker is gonna be awesome when it’s done,” said Dan Olsen, who lives near Studebaker and Atherton. “It’s new, it’s fresh, the neighborhood is going to benefit. It’s been a total pothole disaster for so long. … Even though there are catches and hooks, it’s still worth it.”

Long Beach still isn't Amsterdam

Long Beach is not yet Amsterdam; it’s still a patchwork of protected lanes and unprotected ones of varying degrees of newness. But Studebaker should be done in 2027. Pacific Avenue and Orange Avenue are next. The bike lanes and streets won’t uniformly connect, but there will be more of them – Artesia Boulevard to service Jordan High, Clark Avenue near Long Beach City College and now Studebaker. “Long Beach’s cycling network is reaching critical mass,” Van Dyk said.

Van Dyk and other bike proponents say it’s a long game. Amsterdam itself was car-dominated until the 1970s when the Stop de Kindermoord movement was launched in response to the high number of child deaths. “It’s a generational effort; it took multiple generations to give us the infrastructure we have today,” he said.

Will any of this make the streets safer?

Will they help make transportation safer for cars and bikes? The city racked up 53 traffic deaths in 2025, the highest in a decade, and 32 bike/pedestrian and e-scooter deaths. This year has seen 36 traffic deaths through mid-September. The city is also trying other tools; speed cameras are being installed, and tickets will go out this fall.

It’s not yet any safer to ride through Long Beach than it was 10 years ago, “but it’s not safer to do anything in Long Beach,” said Kurt Canfield, a cyclist and organizer for Car Lite Long Beach, a bike advocacy organization. He often rides the Broadway bike path, which he considers a success despite debris in the lane and other issues.

“They wanna bike, they wanna walk, people are driving 300 horsepower crossovers. We’re in conflict for the same space,” he said. “But this infrastructure gives us the ability to be safer.”

A grand piano, hauled in on a Ford F-350, will make its way next weekend to Griffith Park.

Then, right below the Hollywood sign, the flatbed will unfold into a stage for a recital by pianist Hunter Noack, who has played everywhere from Yosemite Valley to Joshua Tree National Park.

His Sept. 26 and 27 performances are all part of In a Landscape: Classical Music in the Wild, organized in partnership with the nonprofit Trust for Public Land. (The show is sold out, but you can sign up for the waitlist.)

For a decade, Noack has hauled his Steinway — the same model used at Carnegie Hall — through rough terrain to perform in unusual places: 370 concerts and counting.

The piano has survived fire, wind and 112-degree heat

"We've had the piano lid be ripped off by the wind. We've had the piano trailer tires catch fire on Highway 1. We've almost driven off the side of Mount Bachelor. We've played in 112-degree heat and negative 2 degrees in the winter," Noack said. And the piano has come out unscathed, including after it was towed down the washboard gravel along Schweitzer Mountain in Idaho — the only thing that happened was that it went out of tune.

How the show actually works

Among the pieces on the program at Griffith Park is "Nature Boy," the song Eden Ahbez wrote while living outdoors under the first L of the Hollywood sign. The song was later made famous by Nat King Cole.

Audiences at the Griffith Park show will be provided with wireless headphones for concert-hall quality sound, he said. "Some people just set up their picnic chairs or blankets right near the stage. Other people lay down," Noack said. "When there's so much else that's happening visually ... the music kind of automatically becomes a soundtrack, and we all get to experience that together."

The philosophy behind the series' name

The series is named after "In a Landscape," a piece by John Cage, who believed any sound could be music — even "somebody crinkling on a bag of chips," Noack said.

During his first show in 2016 at the Columbia River Gorge, Noack was midway through a soft Schumann piece about a delicate flower when 40 Harley-Davidsons on a memorial ride rolled up and circled the piano.

Rather than pack it in, he answered with Frederic Rzewski's "Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues," a piece built to mimic the aggressive clatter of a cotton mill. "It was a conversation between the piano and these roaring Harleys," he said.

California saw the largest share of immigration arrests of people from Asian countries during the first 18 months of President Trump’s second term, a new tracker shows.

More than 25% of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took place in California, home to the country's largest Asian population, followed by Texas and New York.

The findings come from the new Asian and Pacific Islander ICE Tracker launched by Stop AAPI Hate.

These communities are often missing from the national debate over immigration enforcement, said Cynthia Choi, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate during a briefing on the tracker.

“Asian and Pacific Islander communities deserve better than to be an afterthought in this crisis," Choi said. With the tracker, "we are aiming to ensure we cannot be ignored any longer."

The data shows that ICE actions targeting Asian immigrants rose much faster than enforcement against groups overall between January 2025 and August 2026.

Arrests were up 436% compared to a similar time period during the Biden administration; detentions up by 512%; deportations up by more than 1,100%.

The number of arrests peaked this past July with 1,950 recorded nationwide.

In California, there have been more than 5,300 arrests of Asian immigrants and more than 11,400 detention stints, which includes separate stays at different facilities during a single detention.

As for deportations, they were not broken down by state.

The largest numbers involved people from India and China, the countries of origin for the largest Asian immigrant populations in the U.S.

Stephanie Chan, Stop AAPI Hate’s director of data and research, noted that a rise in anti-Indian rhetoric centered on H1-B visa holders and truck drivers.

"You see a lot of elected officials saying things like, 'Indians are coming to take the jobs,'" Chan said.

Researchers also found that people from smaller communities — such as those from Laos and Uzbekistan — were arrested at rates far disproportionate to their share of the Asian noncitizen population.

The tracker draws from ICE records obtained through public-records requests by the Deportation Data Project at UCLA and UC Berkeley.

Leaders at Stop AAPI Hate said the Trump administration's immigration crackdown is not only harming the people being swept up by ICE. Chan said the group’s annual survey of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders found more than half have felt the effects.

“That includes things like fearing that their status will be questioned,” Chan said. “That they will be arrested, detained, or deported.”

Choi drew parallels with how Asian Americans were scapegoated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who joined the briefing on the tracker, said the findings felt "very personal" because of the state’s large share of arrests.

A member of the Republican-led congressional China Committee focused on U.S. competition with the Chinese government, Khanna predicted Democrats would win the mid-terms and shift the tone of that panel.

"It's going to be much more about a celebration of Asian Americans — and documenting that — than the demonization of other countries," Khanna said.