Topline:
An iconic stretch of Mulholland Highway has reopened with little fanfare, seven years after the Woolsey Fire shut it down.
Why it matters: Nicknamed "The Snake," this 2.4-mile stretch is notorious for its hairpin turns that bring out a constant stream of motorists to test their skills.
Read on ... to learn the history of the thoroughfare — and why the hush with the reopening of The Snake.
It's the ultimate road for the ultimate driving machine, known for its coiling, hairpin turns that have lent a 2.4-mile stretch of Mulholland Highway the sobriquet of "The Snake."
On Tuesday, this famous squiggle etched through the Santa Monica Mountains finally reopened, seven years after it was shut down by the Woolsey Fire.
Here’s the catch: People who live in the area and enthusiasts who frequent the route wish you didn’t know. More about that later. But first, let’s take a short drive down memory lane.
The Mulholland corridor, all 50-some miles of it, has long lured motorists chasing speed against a scrolling backdrop of the city. In fact, when the thoroughfare carrying the name of the man who brought water to modern Los Angeles first opened in 1924, the prediction was that it'd become "one of the best known scenic roads in the United States."
The project, backed by landowners who wanted to bring development to the Hollywood Hills, was conceived to link the burgeoning city to the mountains and the sea.
The road has inspired art, film — and since its earliest days, movie stars. Before World War II, it was Gary Cooper and John Carradine taking their Duesenbergs there for a spin. In the 1950s, James Dean used its turns and switchbacks as a training course of sorts.
"All I've been doing is driving around Mulholland Drive," said the actor, according to lore, after placing second overall in the Palm Spring Road Races.
A decade later, it was Steve McQueen, taking The Snake on his Jaguar or Triumph, before making a pit stop at the Rock Store, the nearby biker hangout.
As legends of the road grew, so too did the crowd, including thrill-seekers — locally and from all corners of the world — looking to strut their stuff.
For years, a YouTube channel documented these rides and wipeouts, with cameras set up at the unofficial end of The Snake, dubbed Edwards Corner.
Those videos stopped in 2018 after the Woolsey Fire and mudslides a year later caused major damage to The Snake.
Now, those 2.4 miles finally have reopened. But instead of fanfare, it’s been met with controversy and a hope that outsiders don’t notice.
That’s because a debate was raging about whether the stretch should be reopened at all to the public.
On the one side, you have homeowners and residents who have long been turned off by the noise and the open exhaust pipes — not to mention the crashes — from a constant stream of motorists.
On the other, you have the riding clubs and Mulholland regulars wary of the same thing: that overuse will bring the callous riders, complaints and crashes of the before times.
“Sadly, irresponsible riders will have it closed again before you know it,” a poster in a Facebook thread said of The Snake’s reopening.
The question was even addressed by L.A. County Public Works officials in an FAQ issued this year, where they said the roadway did not meet the criteria for a permanent closure and that closing it permanently would cut off a key access point for residents.
LAist reached out to a number of riders for the story, to no avail. Same with our request to the CHP division that oversees The Snake.
So there you have it. The famed route is now open. Just don’t expect any welcoming waves if you venture through.
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As the one year anniversary of the Palisades fire approaches, a group of volunteers and Scouts with Scouting America are headed back to the beloved Camp Josepho for the first time since it was lost in the blaze.
An historic site: The 110-acre site nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains has welcomed thousands of Scouts since the 1940s.
What happened: A change in the direction of the wind during the Palisades Fire meant it would never look the same again. Pretty much everything was lost in the blaze, save for a concrete pool house.
How you can help: Organizers said they are looking for support from the community as they breathe new life into the camp. You can visit their website to learn how you can help.
Read on... to learn about the unique history of the camp.
As the one year anniversary of the Palisades fire approaches, a group of volunteers and Scouts with Scouting America are headed back to a beloved camp for the first time since it was lost in the blaze.
The 110-acre site nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains known as Camp Josepho has welcomed thousands of Scouts since the 1940s. But a change in the direction of the wind during the Palisades Fire meant it would never look the same again. Pretty much everything was lost in the blaze, save for a concrete pool house.
“It’s a bit of a gut check, it almost doesn’t feel real, 85 years of camp... was just decimated that fast and that suddenly,” Nathan Erlandson, chief operating officer of Scouting America’s Western Los Angeles County Council, told LAist.
Listed as a Los Angeles Historical Cultural Monument, the land was gifted to the organization by the Josepho family. Ganna Josepho was a silent film star. Her husband, Anatol Josepho is credited with inventing the photo booth, which was coined the ‘Photomaton.’
For decades, Scouts young and old have made the pilgrimage back to the place.
“Some of the older generation, a lot of them are no longer with us, they absolutely loved their experiences down there. It was just such a beautiful location,” said Lee Harrison, Scout executive for Western Los Angeles County Council. He’s been involved with his local council since he was 15, nearly four decades ago.
Harrison remembered Camp Josepho before the fire, when it was complete with the towering Malibu Lodge, which was built with redwood by aircraft manufacturer Donald Douglas and resembled a hangar.
Harrison used to love throwing his sleeping bag down in front of the lodge’s towering stone fireplace.
“It is irreplaceable and had a tremendous amount of history in it. And that’s the saddest part is that you would walk into that cavernous space, you could look at all the names that were written on the walls... And all of that’s gone,” he said.
Many famous and notable people visited Camp Josepho over the years, at least one of them uninvited.
There was the time Adam Sandler buzzed onto the historic grounds.
“He drove his gold cart down into the camp one day, and the site manager who was there had no idea who he was and chased him out of the camp. And he [Sandler] said ‘I’ll never come back here again,’” Harrison recalled.
This weekend, Scouts and members of the community will start to bring the place back to life, weeding out non-native plants and invasive species that have sprung to life around the ruins.
Harrison said the hope is to build the camp back with a lighter footprint, blending it more with the surrounding nature.
“People were -- and are -- very passionate about this place. And I think primarily because we’re able to bring lots of kids who don’t necessarily get access to the outdoors... in a very easy and quick way,” he said.
Harris and Erlandson said they are looking for support from the community as they breathe new life into the camp. You can visit their website to learn how you can help.
Topline:
Inspired by the found-footage style of the "Paranormal Activity" film franchise, the stage production takes place in a two-story house so the audience feels like they’re watching someone in their home.
How it got so scary: Director Felix Barrett told LAist that he and Tony Award-winning illusionist Chris Fisher worked on the illusions first. Later, they built around them so the effects are integrated into the set. “We knew that we wanted the illusions, the sort of haunting, to be so baked into the core of the piece,” Barrett said.
What to expect: The audience is pretty vocal due to all the jump scares and special effects, so the vibe is closer to a scary movie than a traditional play.
The audience: Barrett says his team’s approach appears to be attracting new and younger theatergoers. “I think we're getting a huge amount of audience who wouldn't normally go to a theater to see a play,” Barrett said. “My favorite thing is people saying, 'Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna go and see more plays,' because we've got them hooked from this one.”
How to see it: Paranormal Activity, A New Story Live on Stage is at the Ahmanson Theatre through Sunday.
For more ... listen to our interview with Barrett above.
Topline:
A Trump administration official today signaled a potential rollback of the racial and ethnic categories approved for the 2030 census and other future federal government forms.
Why it matters: Supporters of those categories fear that any last-minute modifications to the U.S. government's standards for data about race and ethnicity could hurt the accuracy of census data and other future statistics used for redrawing voting districts, enforcing civil rights protections and guiding policymaking.
What are those changes?: Among other changes, new checkboxes for "Middle Eastern or North African" and "Hispanic or Latino" under a reformatted question that asks survey participants: "What is your race and/or ethnicity?" The revisions also require the federal government to stop automatically categorizing people who identify with Middle Eastern or North African groups as white.
A Trump administration official on Friday signaled a potential rollback of the racial and ethnic categories approved for the 2030 census and other future federal government forms.
Supporters of those categories fear that any last-minute modifications to the U.S. government's standards for data about race and ethnicity could hurt the accuracy of census data and other future statistics used for redrawing voting districts, enforcing civil rights protections and guiding policymaking.
Those standards were last revised in 2024 during the Biden administration, after Census Bureau research and public discussion.
A White House agency at the time approved, among other changes, new checkboxes for "Middle Eastern or North African" and "Hispanic or Latino" under a reformatted question that asks survey participants: "What is your race and/or ethnicity?" The revisions also require the federal government to stop automatically categorizing people who identify with Middle Eastern or North African groups as white.
But at a Friday meeting of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics in Washington, D.C., the chief statistician within the White House's Office of Management and Budget revealed that the Trump administration has started a new review of those standards and how the 2024 revisions were approved.
"We're still at the very beginning of a review. And this, again, is not prejudging any particular outcome. I think we just wanted to be able to take a look at the process and decide where we wanted to end up on a number of these questions," said Mark Calabria. "I've certainly heard a wide range of views within the administration. So it's just premature to say where we'll end up."
OMB's press office did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.
Calabria's comments mark the first public confirmation that Trump officials are considering the possibility of not using the latest racial and ethnic category changes and other revisions. They come amid the administration's attack on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, a push to stop producing data that could protect the rights of transgender people and threats to the reliability of federal statistics.
In September, OMB said those Biden-era revisions "continue to be in effect" when it announced a six-month extension to the 2029 deadline for federal agencies to follow the new standards when collecting data on race and ethnicity.
Calabria said the delay gave agencies more time to implement the changes "while we review."
The first Trump administration stalled the process for revising the racial and ethnic data standards in time for the 2020 census.
The "Project 2025" policy agenda released by The Heritage Foundation, the conservative, D.C.-based think tank, called for a Republican administration to "thoroughly review any changes" to census race and ethnicity questions because of "concerns among conservatives that the data under Biden Administration proposals could be skewed to bolster progressive political agendas."
Advocates of the changes, however, see the new categories and other revisions as long-needed updates to better reflect people's identities.
"At stake is a more accurate and deeper understanding of the communities that comprise our country," says Meeta Anand, senior director of census and data equity at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "I am not concerned if it's reviewed in an honest attempt to understand what the process was. I am concerned if it's for a predetermined outcome that would be to ignore the entire process that was done in a very transparent manner."
Edited by Benjamin Swasey
Copyright 2025 NPR
Topline:
A large black bear that was relocated earlier this year after being found under a house in Altadena is up to his old tricks again.
Why it matters: The bear, nicknamed Barry by the neighbors, was found last week under a different Altadena home, and wildlife officials are using a caramel- and cherry-scented lure to entice the roughly 550-pound male bear out of his hiding spot.
Why now: Cort Klopping, information specialist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told LAist the bear seems to be spooked by increased activity around the home, including media crews outside and helicopters overhead.
Go deeper ... for more about black bear sightings in SoCal.
A large black bear that was relocated earlier this year after being found under a house in Altadena is up to his old tricks again.
The bear, nicknamed Barry by the neighbors, was found last week under a different Altadena home, and wildlife officials are using a caramel- and cherry-scented lure to entice the roughly 550-pound male bear out of his hiding spot.
So far, they’ve been unsuccessful.
Cort Klopping, information specialist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told LAist the bear seems to be spooked by increased activity around the home, including media crews outside and helicopters overhead.
“It seems as though in this case, this bear has found this poor guy's crawlspace as a comfortable, safe-seeming, warm enclosure for denning purposes,” he said.
He said the space is “somewhere for this bear to kind of hang its hat when it's relaxing.”
Wildlife officials can tell it’s the same bear who was lured out from under an Altadena house after the Eaton Fire because of the tag number on his ear.
The bear was trapped and relocated about 10 miles away to the Angeles National Forest in January, but Klopping said he’s been back in the Altadena area for around five months.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife fitted the bear with a temporary GPS collar so officials could keep track of it. The collar came off a couple months later while the animal still was living in the forest.
The bear is believed to have been spotted around the home last Tuesday, Klopping said, and the owner reached out to wildlife officials a few days later for help.
“I’ve seen pictures of this bear, and I’m shocked to be under that house,” homeowner Ken Johnson told LAist media partner CBS LA.
Officials said they were hopeful the bear would move along on its own. They encouraged the homeowner to set up a camera on the crawlspace and line the area with ammonia soaked-rags or a motion-activated wildlife sprinkler system to deter the bear from returning, Klopping said.
“These are all actions that would not harm the bear, not harm people, but they would make it less comfortable for the bear to be there,” he said.
But the bear stayed put.
“Right now, it seems like it's stressed,” Klopping said. “It seems like it's scared, and therefore, it's not really wanting to leave the security of where it is at the moment.”
A pair of wildlife officials stopped by the home Thursday to set up the sweet-smelling lure and camera so the department can keep an eye on the bear’s activity remotely.
Barry didn’t take the bait immediately, Klopping said, but officials are hopeful the animal will feel more comfortable leaving the crawlspace once activity around the home dies down a bit.
Klopping also is warning people in the area to secure access points on their property so the bear just doesn’t move in there next.
“If I were in that neighborhood, I would be doing everything in my power to make sure that my crawlspaces would not be accessible,” he said, including covering it with something stronger than the wire mesh the bear got through before.
Bears also are extremely food motivated, and Klopping said they can smell your leftover chicken in trash cans on the curb from 5 miles away.
He encouraged residents to be mindful of trash that could be an easy meal for wildlife, as well as pet food and hummingbird feeders, which Klopping said biologists have seen bears drink “like a soda.”
You can find tips on how to handle a bear in your backyard here and resources from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife here.
