The Brief

In recent months there’s been a lot of focus on hotels for downtown L.A.’s most vulnerable residents. Through the statewide initiative Project Homekey, efforts have ramped up to convert underutilized hotels into homes, and nonprofit organizations have also purchased old residential hotels to create units for folks experiencing homelessness.

However, despite their vital work, controversies and problems have swirled around the many nonprofit SRO organizations.In April last year, all 29 properties operated by the nonprofit Skid Row Housing Trust were placed in receivership after falling into disrepair and becoming drug hubs.

In fact this discussion has been ongoing for over 140 years. Rooming houses, small residential hotels, tenements and what we now know as “single residency occupancy” residences have all played a vital role in providing housing to hundreds of thousands of Angelenos as downtown has transformed again and again.

Bare bones rooms

Los Angeles was founded in 1781, a tiny, dusty outpost centered around what we now know as Olvera Street and the historic La Placita Church. As it grew, agricultural fields lining the Los Angeles River (roughly bordering what we now know as the Arts District and Little Tokyo) brought seasonal migrants to the area. In 1876, the transcontinental railway arrived, and the Southern Pacific Rail Yard (now the Los Angeles State Historic Park) opened. In 1888, the Arcade Depot opened at Alameda Street, between 5th and 6th Streets.

Small residential hotels and boarding houses began to spring up in the area to house the countless single men who came to work the rail yards, the fields — and help build the Los Angeles we know today. These residences often offered cheap rent, bare bones single or shared rooms, communal bathrooms, and storage facilities near sites of agriculture and industry.

But as the Victorian era made way to the 20th century, these facilities would prove woefully inadequate in the face of Los Angeles’ unprecedented growth.

“Railway fare wars at the turn of the century brought the price of train tickets from the East Coast way down, making travel more affordable. The city was also heavily promoted as a place to recover and recuperate,” said planning historian Meredith Drake Reitan, associate sean at USC Graduate School. “Later, migrants were attracted by Hollywood, by jobs in the aerospace industry, and the port. The population of L.A. basically tripled between 1890 and 1900. The population doubled again between 1920 and 1930. I’ve always loved that Carey McWilliams’ quote about L.A.’s growth: it has been ‘one continuous boom punctuated at intervals by major explosions.’ All of those people needed somewhere to live.”

During the early 20th century, more and more residential hotels and subdivided boarding houses opened in areas including Skid Row, Little Tokyo, Boyle Heights, and what we now know as the Arts District.

“The people who lived closest to industry were those who were the lowest income and who had less healthful conditions for where they lived,” said Catherine Gudis, scholar-in-residence at the Los Angeles Poverty Department and director of the Public History Program at UC Riverside.

“The boarding houses were intended for those seasonal laborers and those working-class men who might have gone to different places following the work,” Gudis added. “There were also different scales of residential hotels to serve those people as well as families, because downtown was an urban enclave.”

While the nicer residential hotels had all the conveniences of a comfortable apartment, seasonal worker and transient accommodations were often shockingly substandard. Some were simply makeshift cubicles — larger rooms divided by plywood walls. Single rooms were not much better. According to Paul Groth’s masterful Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States, these accommodations often offered “only a dilapidated bed (sometimes with a straw mattress), one rickety chair, and a hook for clothes.”

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According to Groth, these residences had a (often unfair) poor reputation and were frequently targeted by the LAPD:

With its unprecedented growth, California did attempt to standardize living conditions at these hotels. “California’s 1917 hotel act showed the framers’ close familiarity with cheap hotel life,” Groth wrote. “They allowed existing cubicle rooms to remain, and they included guidelines for open dormitory rooms, however, they outlawed new cubicle hotels. Most important; the act set lasting bath-to-room ratios for the cheapest lodging houses: a separate water closet and shower on each floor for each sex, at the minimum ratio of 1 per 10 rooms of guests.”

Different classes of hotels

While more and more cheap hotels and boarding houses — often three- or four-story brick buildings — were opening in downtown LA, another type of “hotel” was being built to service middle- and upper-class visitors and residents. Some of these were “palace hotels” in western downtown like the Barclay Hotel (1896) Hotel Alexandria, The King Edward (both opened in 1906) and The Biltmore (1923), large edifices which provided luxury accommodations for visitors and well-heeled residents.

Then there were the mammoth middle-class hotels, which provided guest and living quarters to businesspeople and middle- class visitors like the Rosslyn (1914) and the Hotel Cecil (1924). “If the palace hotel was usually surrounded by some of the city’s most exclusive boutiques, the mid-priced hotel was usually close to the city’s best department stores and reasonably close to the financial district,” Groth wrote.

The need for affordable housing grew exponentially in the 1930s. “The depression increased the number of migrants to the city. We’ve all seen the Grapes of Wrath — the boosters got their way and California became a destination for millions who were pushed off family farms in the South and Mid-West,” Reitan said. “In the 1930s, downtown L.A. remained an important location for reasonably priced rent. And for those who bought the houses, having tenants was an important and steady source of income.”

Luckily, there were options. For working class singles and families there were ample accommodations on Bunker Hill, the once upper-class Victorian hillside neighborhood bordering the Western edge of downtown. Reitan explained:

Since square footage was at a premium, much of daily life was pushed outdoors.

“A lot of life happened out on the streets,” Reitan said. “If you had the money, you probably ate at least one meal in a café. On the top of Bunker Hill there was a collection of benches. We’ve seen a lot of photographs of these benches, it was obviously a place to meet friends and socialize. There were a lot of single people on the hill, especially widows.”

In nearby Little Tokyo, one iconic building also served as a home to countless Angelenos. According to Cecilia Rasmussen of the Los Angeles Times, a Chinese migrant named Look Mar Jung and his family opened the famed Far East Café (now Far Bar) at 374 1st Street. Above the café, the three-story building served as a 24-room residential hotel. “Over the years,” Rasmussen wrote, “the rooms housed Japanese immigrants: bachelors, dentists, workers in the bustling furniture and hardware industry, and even students of a chick-sexing school.”

But Los Angeles officials knew that these housing options could be better. In 1938, the Los Angeles Housing Authority, dedicated to providing affordable housing to Angelenos, formed. In 1949, the controversial Community Redevelopment Agency formed, dedicated to revitalizing, refurbishing, and renewing economically depressed areas of California (it was dissolved in 2012).

'Coded to death'

These organizations had their hands full — and a skewed perception of the lives of folks living in these spaces. According to Groth, in 1949 a sociologist described a rooming house in downtown Los Angeles as a “universe of anonymous transients.” In post-war downtown, middle class residents and businesses fled the area and headed west for the suburbs easily accessible by the shiny new freeways.

This meant the demographics living in residential hotels in DTLA dramatically shifted.

“Downtown residents in the 1930s and 1940s were well connected to jobs. They were clerks, plumbers, schoolteachers, actors, and beauticians. They also worked in the restaurants in and around downtown,” Reitan said. “As the 1940s became the 1950s, the number of elderly residents and retirees grew – I think living downtown gave them access to services and support that might not have been available elsewhere.”

L.A. businesspeople and city leaders interested in revitalizing downtown decided that the lower-income residents in the area need to go in the name of “progress.” During the 1950s and 1960s, affordable housing in downtown Los Angeles was decimated by “anti-blight” campaigns, and “slum clearance” plans.

“Policy makers began to send out crews of people to call out violations of zoning or code or other things, because they wanted the private property owners to abandon those properties because the cost was too great to repair them,” Gudis said. “So that's what starts to happen in the '50s and into the '60s. People are kind of coded to death.”

Civic leaders envisioned a downtown of shiny skyscrapers, leaving no room for the small hotels and rambling homes that served as a landing spot for working class and transient residents.

“[In Skid Row] there's a dramatic push to get rid of what looks like those horrible Victorians with multiple families living there and putting their laundry out on strings,” Gudis said. “That same kind of discussion takes place on Bunker Hill, and that removes the housing there.”

Clearing out

Reitan believes that the destruction of Bunker Hill in the 1950s and ‘60s forced displaced residents to move into the flats of downtown Los Angeles. “There's a lot of housing that's removed,” Gudis said. “And that puts additional pressure onto those residential hotels.”

Bunker Hill's destruction forced many to move into the flats of L.A.

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Increasingly, it was the former “palace hotels” and business oriented mega hotels, long out of fashion, which picked up the slack. “More and more migrants from central America… start settling in the once grand hotels like Barclay and business-oriented hotels like Cecil,” she said.

According to Groth, this trend was occurring in downtowns across the country. “Building owners … made rooming houses out of run-down palace or mid-priced hotels,” he wrote. “They eliminated service, repairs, and amenities until the rents matched rooming house levels.”

But the thousands of residences removed as part of “slum clearance” was a catastrophe from which downtown has never recovered. According to Gudis, it got so bad that there were ads boasting that you could buy a seat in a theater at Fifth and Main where you could spend the night, albeit sitting up. Or you could pay a little more for bunked rooms with access to a shower.

'Containment'

To deal with the increasing number of unhoused community members, many suffering from mental illness and substance use disorder, the 1970s’ city leaders adopted the controversial policy of “containment.” According to Gudis’ highly informative “The Green Paper,” the problematic “containment” defined the boundaries of Skid Row and made it possible to preserve “housing, community, and services” in the area.

In 1984, the CRA formed the SRO Housing Corporation, which purchased over 1,700 SRO units close together to offer government subsidized housing while fostering a sense of community.

“In 1989, Skid Row Housing Trust was formed as well, to expedite the process and with the aim of securing the housing on the western edge of Skid Row, along Main and Los Angeles Streets, among others,” Gudis wrote.

But over the last four decades, the affordable housing crisis in downtown Los Angeles has only intensified. Many nonprofit community organizations, dedicated to providing emergency, transitional and permanent housing to downtown residents, were severely affected by the dissolution of the CRA, which had provided crucial funds for SRO housing throughout the state.

Nonprofit organizations have tried to fill the gaps with help from other sources of government assistance, with mixed results. The SRO Housing Corporation operates 32 properties which provide housing to over 2,500 formerly unhoused and low-income individuals, which includes refurbished historic small residential hotels, new construction apartments, and the larger former commercial Hotels like the Rosslyn, which offers 264 studio apartments.

AIDS HealthCare Foundation’s Healthy Housing Foundation has also become a major player on the scene, managing 13 SRO hotels and motels like the Madison Hotel on 7th street, which offers single rooms with shared showers for $400 a month. Other properties include the Baltimore Hotel, the iconic King Edward Hotel, and Barclay Hotels (rent $400-$700). According totheir website, in March 2023, AHF purchased the historic 12-story Insurance Exchange Building at 318 West 9th St. They plan to turn it into an SRO with 251 affordable homes.

The Barclay Hotel in 2005.

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The economic revitalization and hipsterfication of DTLA in the past 15 years have also destroyed many remaining residential hotels and low-income housing options, as luxury condos and renovated market rate historic apartments have dramatically raised prices and brought middle and upper- class residents back to DTLA.

In an attempt to combat the housing shortage in DTLA and plan for an estimated around 150,000 more downtown residents by 2040, in spring of last year the controversial Downtown Community Plan, known as DTLA 2040, was approved by the city. Its passage may impact the future of thousands of residents in Skid Row and other parts of downtown.

While the DTLA 2040 plan attempts to preserve low-income housing in Skid Row, while also bringing more higher income residents and businesses to the area, community leaders and planners, including the grassroots coalition Skid Row Now, worry that without expanding the proposed IX1 Zone(Affordable Housing Only) throughout the boundaries of Skid Row, low-income housing opportunities will be lost.

“The battle is that if all of those odd parcels and other historic buildings get converted or adaptively reused at a market rate, it will put speculative pressure on everything else,” Gudis said. “If we can re-utilize the existing housing and ensure that when additional housing is built, it's also affordable as opposed to being luxury, then we have a chance of continuing a real sense of community and that's much more ethical.”

In the Green Paper, produced by the Los Angeles Poverty Department, Gudis wrote:

And so, the struggle for every sowntown resident to have a clean, well-lighted place to call their home rages on, as the stakes get higher and the situation more dire.

Brigitte Bardot, the international sex goddess of cinema in the 1950s and '60s, has died aged 91. Bardot's animal rights foundation announced her death in a statement to news agency Agence France-Presse on Sunday, without specifying the time or place of death.

Stylish and seductive, Bardot exuded a kind of free sexuality, rare in the buttoned-up 1950s. She modeled, made movies, influenced fashion around the world and recorded albums. She married four times. Her list of lovers famously included Warren Beatty, Nino Ferrer and singer-songwriter-producer Serge Gainsbourg, with whom she recorded the French hit Bonnie and Clyde.

Bardot's look was copied by women around the world, says Claire Schub who teaches French literature and film at Tufts University.

"Her fashion choices, her hair, her makeup, her pout ... She became this icon, this legend, all over the globe," says Schub.

But her image changed in her later years. Bardot was found guilty multiple times in her native France of "inciting racial hatred," mainly for comments attacking Muslims.

Bardot runs along the beach in Cannes, France, on April 28, 1956.

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As an actor, Bardot worked with some of France's leading directors including Henri-Georges Clouzot in La Vérité (The Truth), Jean-Luc Godard in Le Mépris (Contempt) and Louis Malle in Viva Maria!

Born Catholic to an upper-middle-class couple in Paris in 1934, Bardot studied ballet and modeled before becoming an actor. As a teenager, she appeared several times on the cover of Elle magazine, attracting the attention of Roger Vadim who was six years her senior. The two married in 1952. Bardot's parents made them wait until she turned 18.

Vadim, an aspiring director, has been credited with turning Bardot into the iconic sex symbol she became. In his 1957 film And God Created Woman, Bardot plays a provocative young woman on a quest for sexual liberation.

Bardot arrives at a Royal Air Force base in London in April 1959.

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Vadim wanted Bardot's appearances in his films to shake off sexual taboos. He once said that he wanted to "kill the myth, this odd rule in Christian morality, that sex must be coupled with guilt."

The New York Times panned the film but wrote that Bardot "moves herself in a fashion that fully accentuates her charms. She is undeniably a creation of superlative craftsmanship."

The media savvy Vadim made sure Bardot appeared often in the French press. Not that it took much convincing — Bardot's alluring images helped sell both magazines and movie tickets. "To be fair, if Vadim discovered and manufactured me," Bardot once said, "I created Vadim."

Bardot's liberating sexuality

While she was one of France's best known exports, she wasn't always beloved at home. She was often ridiculed by critics who derided her acting even as they gushed over her body.

Reviewing the 1959 film Babette Goes to War, in which Bardot does not bare all, one critic wrote, "In deciding not to reveal her body, Brigitte Bardot wanted to unveil only her talent. Alas, we saw nothing."

Bardot during a rehearsal of the TV program "Bonne année Brigitte" in which Bardot performed songs to ring in the new year in 1962.

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Despite the misogynistic comments and constant scrutiny of her private life, Bardot's popularity coincided with changing attitudes about sex. French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir took note of France's love-hate relationship with Bardot's sexual appetite.

"In the game of love, she is as much hunter as she is prey," de Beauvoir wrote in her 1959 essay for Esquire, "Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome."

Bardot was hounded by the paparazzi, suffered from depression and attempted suicide. "What I rejected the most during my life as an actress was the limelight," she wrote in her autobiography, "That intense focus...ate at me from the inside."

Bardot discusses a scene with director Louis Malle during the filming of <em>Viva Maria!</em> in February 1965.

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After starring in dozens of movies, Bardot retired from acting in 1973. She started an animal rights foundation.

Convicted for 'inciting racial hatred'

In her later years, Bardot became notorious for her racist and homophobic comments and her association with France's far right. Her fourth husband, Bernard d'Ormale, was an aide to Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front party.

In her 2003 book, Un Cris dans le Silence, she disparages immigrants, gays, French schools and contemporary art. She called Muslims "invaders" and railed against the killing of animals in the name of religion. She apologized in court in 2004 but also doubled down on what she called the "infiltration" of France by Islamic extremists.

In her biography of Bardot, author and French film scholar Ginette Vincendeau writes "the high priestess of freedom resents almost everyone else's rights to exercise it."

Bardot, the stunning, desirable beauty who once stood for sexual freedom for women, spent the latter part of her life at her home near Saint Tropez with her husband and a menagerie of pets.
Copyright 2025 NPR

A woman stands in front of Andy Warhol's "Brigitte Bardot" at Sotheby's auction house in London on May 12, 2012.

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There’s something about a library that’s inherently beautiful. Maybe it’s the silence or the history of the building. Maybe it's the idea of books being shared among countless readers.

Some of the most gorgeous libraries are reflections of their respective communities. Whether it’s seeing a mosaic from a local artist, or standing in awe simply from the architecture itself, these libraries hold countless stories and we become part of them whenever we walk through their doors.

The libraries listed here are just a small sample of SoCal’s offerings. Need a green space to unwind with your latest fiction read? Does being surrounded by art and color help ease the drudgery of a study session? Remote work with an ocean view?

We hope there’s something on this list for you.

East Los Angeles Library

• 4837 E. 3rd St., Los Angeles

West entrance of the East Los Angeles Library

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From its brightly-colored cylindrical towers to the mosaics that adorn the building’s entrance, the East Los Angeles Library is a tribute to Mayan designs, with a particular reference to their astronomical observatories.

Enter from the west — or parking lot — side, the red tower stands in for the sun. Above that entrance, visitors are greeted with a stunning mosaic mural by artist José Antonio Aguirre, carved out of limestone and comprised of Byzantine and Venetian glass. This exterior panel of the four-part mural shows an open book amid a sea of geometric shapes and images.

A view of the East Los Angeles Library’s east entrance adjacent to Belvedere Park Lake.

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Enter from the east or lakeside (yes, there’s a lake just steps away), the blue tower representing the moon.

East Tower, Mosaic Cycle Mural, “Our Legacy, Forever Presente”, “Arrival” movement by José Antonio Aguirre.

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The vast scope of Aguirre’s 2,000-foot-plus work unfolds as you continue your entry, and features prominent East L.A. figures such as Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Edward James Olmos and the late former First District County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who commissioned the artwork.

East Los Angeles Library interior featuring Mosaic Cycle Mural, “Our Legacy, Forever Presente”, “Departure” movement by José Antonio Aguirre.

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Outside, the library is surrounded by Belvedere Park — approximately 30 acres of greenspace and a recreation center. If you decide to take a stroll around the nearby lake, you’ll find ducks swimming and see artist Rude Calderón’s “Leaping Fish, Nature's Cycles” water features–two sculptures of fish, one leaping out of the water, and one diving back in.

A view of Belvedere Park Lake outside of the East Los Angeles Library.

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Billie Jean King Main Library

• 200 W. Broadway, Long Beach

Billie Jean King Main Library exterior on Broadway in Long Beach.

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The Billie Jean King Main Library in Downtown Long Beach is a study in modern architecture. From Broadway, this building looks like row after row of glass panes, white window frames and caramel-toned wood.

The structure was designed with sustainability in mind, and is made up of renewable timber that’s been reinforced where needed with steel and concrete.

The central atrium of the Billie Jean King Main Library.

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The focal point of the building is its central atrium, a large, open space on the first floor with light pouring in from all sides. This room can be used for events, workshops or exhibits, including an exhibition showcasing work from the city’s Professional Artist Fellowship, a grant program that honors living Long Beach artists who have affected local communities.

From left to right “Ethereal Queen” and “Unbreakable Spirit” by artist Stephanie Rozzo is displayed in the atrium of the Billie Jean King Main Library.

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Grab a desk overlooking the first floor to get another perspective of the expansive, light-filled interior space. Or catch a window seat with a view of Lincoln Park on Pacific Avenue.

View from the Billie Jean King Main Library overlooking Lincoln Park in Long Beach.

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Manhattan Beach Library

• 1320 Highland Ave., Manhattan Beach

A view of 14th street through the “Light Gate” sculpture by artists Mags Harries and Lajos Héder.

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The Manhattan Beach Library is a perfect example of how wonderfully spoiled we are by the weather here in SoCal. This two-story, 21,500-square-foot building on Highland Avenue offers panoramic views of the sun and the ocean of this beach city for all who enter.

View from the second story of the Manhattan Beach Library.

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The theme of ocean living is evident throughout, like an eye-catching sea kelp sculpture with 10-foot tall leaves that hugs the ramp to the library’s stairwell.

The sculpture consists of multiple elongated, organic forms arranged in a flowing, wave-like pattern across the surface.

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“Personal Archaeology” installation by Kathy Taslitz near the stairwell of the Manhattan Beach Library

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Or the row of jellyfish floating overhead when you climb the stairs.

“Prevailing Affinities” installation by Kathy Taslitz near the stairwell of the Manhattan Beach Library.

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Cerritos Library

• 18025 Bloomfield Ave., Cerritos

Exterior of the Cerritos Library.

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From its golden titanium exterior to the T-Rex fossil replica inside, the Cerritos Library offers its patrons an experience to remember with every visit. In fact, it was designed to be the first "Experience Library," with themed spaces like an “Old World” collegiate-style reading room, or its 15,000-gallon saltwater aquarium, which faces the entrance.

A view of the Cerritos Library’s 15,000 gallon aquarium, shot from the library’s children’s area.

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Like the rest of the libraries on this list, Cerritos regularly displays work from local artists. Its latest exhibition features Patrice Monteiro, who uses a technique called paper quilling, where strips of paper are placed together to create each piece. The exhibit will be on display until Dec. 30.

“Joy is a Revolution” by Patrice Monteiro, inspired by Nettie Beatrice’s digital art, on display in the Cerritos Library through December 2025.

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Perhaps the biggest draw to this library is its children’s area. Step through the passage of giant story books and you’re in an enchanted world that includes a rainforest tree, a space shuttle, a lighthouse and the aforementioned 40-foot long Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton replica named Stan.

The Cerritos Library’s children’s area features a lighthouse, rainforest tree and 40-foot long Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil replicas.

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After a decade of expanding health coverage and safety net programs, the Golden State took a sharp detour in 2025. As federal funding reductions and policy changes rippled through the health care system, California confronted service cuts, coverage losses and growing uncertainty.

During the summer, a congressionally approved spending plan slashed nearly a trillion dollars from the Medicaid program over the next decade. Funding cuts and new rules — such as work requirements — are expected to push 3.4 million Californians off their Medicaid coverage as changes take effect.

In Washington, a dispute over whether to renew enhanced premium subsidies that help keep Affordable Care Act marketplace insurance plans affordable prompted the longest shutdown in history. Absent federal action, hundreds of thousands of people could be priced out of Covered California insurance in 2026. More than 2,300 Dreamers in California have already lost access to the state marketplace: The Trump administration overturned a rule that had allowed undocumented people brought to the country as children to buy subsidized health insurance.

Federal immigration raids prompted undocumented people to skip care, and families reported worsening mental health, and federal anti-trans policies pushed providers to scale back on gender-affirming care.

Shifting federal policy forced the state the state to inject millions into Planned Parenthood to try to keep clinics afloat. Anticipating more restrictive federal immunization rules under U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, California advanced its own vaccine guidelines.

Federal changes weren’t the only reversal. State budget constraints and overspending in the Medi-Cal program led California to freeze new enrollment for undocumented people and cut some costly benefits, such as weight loss drugs.

On affordability, Gov. Newsom delivered on his promise to cut down the cost of insulin. In 2026, diabetics will be able to purchase long-acting insulin pens at pharmacies for $11 a pen. After CalMatters shed a light on disappearing birth centers, state lawmakers approved a new law improving access in underserved areas, streamlining licensure requirements so that birth centers can more easily contract with Medicaid.

2026 outlook

The Legislative Analyst’s Office projects that Medi-Cal spending will continue to grow. Paired with the uncertainty of federal funding cuts, lawmakers may again seek ways to control costs and weigh priorities.

As federal spending cuts phase in, they’ll have implications for hospitals and other providers, such as an uptick in uncompensated care.

California has been distributing $6.4 billion from a voter-approved mental health bond. Starting July 1, the Behavioral Health Services Act will also require counties to spend revenue received from a 1% tax on incomes over $1 million on services and housing for people who are homeless.

We made it. Happy (almost) 2026.

All year, the Explore L.A. team has brought you stories of discovery and connection.

As we leave 2025 behind, we've handpicked our favorites of the year.

We did a lot.

We went inside a Los Angeles institution that has been left untouched for more than a decade. We learned to make peace with our city's backyard urban critters. We marveled at street art painted decades ago, pulsing with contemporary relevance. We watched as old houses moved across the city to become new homes for fire survivors. We had a leisurely day — one of us at least — hanging out at a lilac garden to hear stories of love and devotion. We witnessed the closing of a family business in Chinatown — and how that loss ricocheted across the neighborhood. We became obsessed with a cola from Japan bearing our city's namesake and tried to find the connection.

And there are so many more stories that took us to different parts of the region this year — stories that brought us closer to this place, stories that we have brought back to you.

We hope you like them as much as we liked writing and producing them. Catch you again next year.

When Yue Wa Market closes this week, Chinatown will lose a neighborhood anchor

Yue Wa Market blends into the storefronts of Broadway in L.A.'s Chinatown.

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• Read and listen here 

"I got to spend the final days of Yue Wa Market with the family who runs it — watching them say goodbye to their customers and closing a chapter in a Chinatown that was transforming around them. It’s a story that stuck out for me this year because it showed, in a surprisingly intimate space, how every person leaves an imprint on their neighborhood."

– Josie Huang, Weekend Edition host and reporter

After two decades, one man's obsession with the lilac is coming to an end in Idyllwild

A small bundle of lilacs at the Idyllwild Lilac Garden.

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"My favorite story this year focused on flowers in bloom and the end of an era for the man who tended to them for over two decades. I particularly loved this story because it was one of the first where I was able to spend the entire day out in the field on my own. It was a nice little road trip where I crossed three county lines, drove into a mountain town, and shared an afternoon with lilac legend Gary Parton. It was an honor to catch the man at the end of his second career and an honor to tell his story."

– Dañiel Martinez, Explore L.A. producer

Go inside LA’s old General Hospital before it turns from a spooky Art Deco time capsule into new housing

The stairs to the old General Hospital.

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"For me, exploring L.A. means bringing readers and listeners into places they wouldn't normally have access to. It was an honor to get to go into a beloved building that thousands of Angelenos have a connection to, and learn about its future providing housing and mental health care. Oh, and decaying old art deco buildings are just cool and feel like a movie set."

– Robert Garrova, Explore L.A. reporter

These LA homes were about to be torn down. Now they’re getting new life in fire-ravaged Altadena

The top of the Saint George Street house.

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"Most of my reporting tends to stick in our region's convoluted, quirky history — but I love this story the most because it's about making something old new again. A group of fire-affected residents are reviving the mostly-forgotten process of house moving to get back on their feet. This showed me nothing is ever truly antiquated if you have enough drive. (As a bonus: check out what moving a home across L.A. County actually looks like.)"

– Cato Hernández , L.A. Explained reporter

When it comes to figs, it’s woman vs. squirrel

A squirrel daring you to make a move.

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“Here's my thoughts about squirrels: It seemed to hit a nerve — I got readers telling me their methods of deterring squirrels, and others offering their fig preserve recipes. One person said they were only left with one fig on their fig plant, which they cut up into four to share with their family.”

– Suzanne Levy, Explore L.A. editor

The story behind the Pico-Robertson mural depicting working-class Jewish history, painted by a Filipino artist

An image of Cesar Chavez, at the top of the photo.

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"There’s a mural in L.A.’s Pico-Robertson neighborhood that stands apart from other Jewish themed public art in L.A. in that it does not focus on the religious or national part of Jewish identity.

It’s called 'A shenere un besere velt - A Better and More Beautiful World,' in yiddish. It covers a roughly 60 foot long and 15 feet tall wall on a building occupied by the Worker’s Circle in Pico-Robertson, a mutual aid group founded by Yiddish speaking Jewish immigrants that opened an office in L.A. in 1908, not long after it started in New York.

I love this story because people I interviewed said the mural's message of identity based on working class solidarity with people of other races and ethnicities is just as relevant now as when it was unveiled in 1998."

– Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, Explore L.A. correspondent

We went looking for a Japanese cola named 'Los Angeles' — and found a story about home

Los Angeles Cola.

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Fiona Ng

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LAist

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“I love this story because I had no idea where it was going to take me. I wanted to write about this soft drink named ‘Los Angeles' and the circuitous journey ended with me speaking with someone who grew up as part of a Korean minority group called Zainichi Koreans in Japan. The coolest thing of all? Hwaji Shin's story has so much heart."

– Fiona Ng, deputy managing editor, Explore L.A. and Weekend