The Brief

L.A. is known for a lot of unique things: Our people and communities, our food, our entertainment scenes, our beautiful hikes and access to nature.

But one thing we're not really that known for — or may know about — is our rich historical architecture.

Yes, we have a nice list of Victorian and Queen Anne homes in Angelino Heights, beautiful examples of art deco in downtown and craftsman homes in Mid City, but a lot of beautiful buildings have been knocked down and paved over, largely in the name of progress (i.e. 10 Freeway, L.A Civic Center).

But many of our earliest streetlights still stand; actually they may be the oldest thing in any neighborhood.

“When you're standing here and you're looking at an old streetlight from the 1920s, there's a really good chance that it's the oldest thing in your field of view,” says writer, historian and streetlamp enthusiast India Mandelkern. “It's older than the road, older than the buildings. They really do connect us to the past.”

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When it comes to historical design, Los Angeles doesn't top a lot of people's lists. Compared to a San Francisco or New York, L.A. can feel a lot... newer. But we do have those cities beat in one category: our streetlights.

LA's Streetlights Are Kinda A Big Deal

When it comes to historical design, Los Angeles doesn't top a lot of people's lists. Compared to a San Francisco or New York, L.A. can feel a lot... newer. But we do have those cities beat in one category: our streetlights.

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Mandelkern wrote a book centered about the city’s streetlights: Electric Moons: A Social History of Street Lighting in Los Angeles.

We have a special history and diversity of designs for our streetlights that go back to the late 1800s.

“There is something that's almost a little bit sacred about an old streetlight,” she says. “They're these modern totems that represented the collective aspirations of our communities.”

Exploring L.A.'s streetlights

Mandelkern began her journey into her “streetlight safari” — what she calls the exploration of streetlamps — during her time as a fellow at LACMA. She created a zine that highlighted Chris Burden’s “Urban Light” public art, which led her to more research about the city’s street lighting. She also credits the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting as helpful in all her history gathering.

In her book, before digging into the actual lamps and architecture, she notes that the Chumash and Tongva tribes have always looked to the lights of the sky — the sun and the stars — to guide them, already making the Los Angeles region a unique place.

As the region became more urbanized and more populated around the turn of the last century, there’d sometimes be no buildings or paved roads — but at least there’d be light.

“If you look at these early advertisements for various subdivisions around L.A., they'll often call out the fact that they have streetlights in addition to … concrete paved roads,” Mandelkern notes. “Streetlights were very much part of the advertisement as a modern residential neighborhood.”

Before lamps went electric, they were gas powered and unreliable. They had to be turned on manually and would blow out with gusts of wind.

The first electric lights hit the L.A. streets in 1882. The progress of electricity was “important in making L.A. a quintessentially modern and progressive city,” Mandelkern says.

And, of course, there was a shift in street lighting in L.A. as cars became the dominant mode of transportation. You might notice some lights point toward the road instead of centering the pedestrian experience on the sidewalk. Other lamps might have light in both directions.

MacArthur Park’s streetlights 

Just near MacArthur Park alone, there is variety in the streetlights. Mandelkern says wandering this area is “urban archaeology at its finest.”

The Wilshire Lantern in McArthur Park was installed throughout the city in 1928.

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On the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Park View Street, there are at least four different types of streetlights. One iconic example is the “Wilshire Lantern.”

This particular streetlight from 1928 is a metal pole with a four-sided light box. Its fixture and decor is regal, with four topless women perched at each corner. (Mandelkern notes she doesn’t know whether they're supposed to be “classical Greek figures or flapper dancers.”) They were part of a project to improve Wilshire, to make it more similar to a Fifth Avenue or a Champs-Élysées.

“In order to make that believable, we needed to have really awesome street lights too, in addition to the landscaping and the paving and the road widening and all of these other improvements,” Mandelkern says.

These lanterns, at one point, lined the street all the way to Fairfax Avenue.

Why there's so much variety here

Mandelkern emphasizes that L.A. doesn’t have the most streetlights (there are 223,000 of them), but there are over 400 designs in the city — not counting other cities in the county like Pasadena, or Inglewood.

One industry factor that helped foster different designs was that a few manufacturers, like Marbelite, were L.A.-based companies. And those businesses specialized in different materials, such as concrete or metal. You might spot some of their names stamped on the side or bottom of the light fixtures, by the way.

Behind a decorative streetlight is the Koster House circa 1965, a Queen Anne-style residence at 507 W. Second St. on Bunker Hill. Various apartment buildings, parking lots, the Los Angeles Times building, and City Hall are seen in the distance on the right.

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The way streetlights were set up in previous decades also tell us about the haves and have nots.

“Most of the [historic] streetlights that survive are often tend to be in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods, where there are more people who actually own homes instead of rent because paying for streetlights is the decision of the homeowner,” Mandelkern says.

Oftentimes, one block or group of homes would be illuminated while the next group would remain dark.

“It tells you who wanted to be seen, who wanted illumination, and who either couldn't afford it or … wanted to be left in the dark,” adds Mandelkern.

Maybe next time you’re out on a walk or on the way to work, check out the nearest streetlight and see what kind of story it might depict to you.

Streetlights “can mean progress. But they can also mean romance and nostalgia. They can mean policemen that you didn't really have to pay for. They can mean community, but they can also mean loneliness. And I think that it all depends on context and what we project onto these lamps,” Mandelkern says.

Producer Evan Jacoby contributed to this report.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

If you were stopped by an LAPD gang unit officer in 2023, officers may have searched you or your property without consent, photographed you without a clear legal reason or failed to record the encounter.

An inspector general audit found failures to follow department protocols during traffic stops and other interactions the unit had with the public, including rules designed to protect people’s constitutional rights. 

“The review identified several areas in which compliance was not consistent,” Inspector General for the Los Angeles Police Commission Matthew Barragan reported. “These include consent searches, activation of body-worn and digital in-car video, photographing detainees, and maintaining gang photo books.”

The findings were presented Tuesday to the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, where commissioners and community advocates questioned how the department can address the failures and repair public trust. The questions are particularly important for the gang unit, which works directly with community members and other organizations.

Department representatives noted that training has improved and complaints have declined since the data was collected in 2023.

What LAPD policy requires and what the audit found

Pretextual stops: Officers generally cannot use a minor traffic violation as a reason to investigate a more serious crime. Traffic stops are to enforce the vehicle code and to protect public safety. Officers are required to collect detailed data about traffic stops.

• What the audit found: Officers reported 60 of 300 stops as pretextual. The inspector general found a legitimate reason for all but four. The report found officers may have incorrectly recorded some additional stops inaccurately. 

Consent to search: Officers generally must get permission to search a person, property or vehicle without a warrant and tell people that consent is voluntary.

• What the audit found: Officers did not get consent in about 20% of encounters and failed to inform people that interactions were voluntary in about 75% of encounters.

Body and dash camera: Officers must activate their body cameras when starting or stopping an investigation, with some exceptions. 

• What the audit found: Body cameras were not properly activated in about 28% of encounters. Dash cameras were not activated in 40% of encounters. 

Gang investigations photos: Officers cannot force people to be photographed if they are not arrested or legally detained.

• What the audit found: About 83% of photos violated policy: 14 people were handcuffed, eight were threatened and eight did not consent. 

Detaining people: Officers must accurately record information about when they detain someone.

• What the audit found: Officers failed to record 61 detentions and incorrectly labeled 35% of recorded detentions as “curbside” when they were not.

Business card identification: Officers are required to give business cards to people they detain. 

• What the audit found: Officers failed to offer business cards to 97% of people who had no other way to identify the officers after an encounter.

Commissioners press LAPD over report

Commissioner Heather Aubry acknowledged that the report “details significant and some troubling deviations from department policy” that need to be addressed for the community to retain trust in the police department. 

“Commitment to future meaningful progress is essential not just to maintain and strengthen community police relations in neighborhoods particularly affected by gang activity but to ensure compliance with critical department policies and procedures, accountability and constitutional policing,” Aubry said. 

Commissioner Jeffrey Skobin expressed frustration over why the audit, conducted in 2024 on stops made in 2023, has taken so long to reach the commission and be presented publicly.

“We’re sitting here in September now of 2026 and we really don’t know what things look like today,” Skobin said.

How the audit was conducted

The inspector general reviewed a sample of 300 documented traffic stops from 2023 to see whether they involved any policy or procedure violations. 

The team searched more than 10,000 body-cam and dash-cam videos and found six encounters where stops were not reported at all by officers, a violation of policy. 

It also interviewed current and former members of the unit to learn more about how it operates. 

Police are required by California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act to report detailed information about stops and detentions. Some of the encounters reviewed for the study extended beyond the stop’s original legal basis and resulted in a search. Others did not result in a citation. In almost all cases, officers did not provide a business card when they were required to.

A captain from the LAPD’s internal affairs department also told the commissioners that in 2023, the study year, there were 28 sustained complaints against gang unit officers due to body-cam and search policy violations.

The inspector general also questioned the unit’s practice of photographing suspected gang members and how those records are stored and shared. In 2020, the department ordered officers to stop submitting such photos to a state database after the submissions were accompanied by false information and reports.

History of scrutiny 

The LAPD temporarily disbanded the gang unit at its 77th Street Division earlier this year while investigating allegations that some officers there and at another division had failed to activate body-worn cameras and properly report traffic stops, both required by policy. 

Hamid Khan, an advocate with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, emphasized that misconduct among the police department’s gang units has happened for decades. 

He referenced the Rampart scandal from the late 1990s and 2000s, in which officers were found to have planted evidence and used excessive force against members of the public, leading to more than 100 criminal convictions being overturned.

For Khan, audits and reports by the commission can’t undo the irreparable harm that misconduct has done to the community’s trust in the police. 

“Recommendations are recommendations, they’re on paper,” Khan said, adding, “we have to acknowledge that the department is flawed by design.” 

Grace Zhang, another advocate with the coalition, echoed that skepticism. 

“I think that ultimately the OIG does not actually have any power in changing the ways that LAPD fundamentally operates, which is to cause harm in our communities, to criminalize Black and Brown people, to target poor people, to stalk women,” Zhang said.

LA Documenter Martin Romero contributed reporting to this story.

LA Documenters trains and pays LA residents to take notes at local government meetings around Los Angeles. You can find meeting notes and audio at losangeles.documenters.org

"Who here loves Bikini Kill?" asked the feminist organizer Sonya Passi on-stage at Olivia Rodrigo's Daisy Chain Fields festival in Irvine, Calif., on Saturday. Under a merciless, 94-degree sun, the crowd roared.

Passi had just identified herself as the founder of FreeFrom, a non-profit working to end gender-based violence by providing survivors with material support. It's one of 10 organizations benefitting from the $20 million raised by the inaugural edition of Rodrigo's one-day, women-led concert, which brought together the likes of Chappell Roan, The Breeders, Stevie Nicks and Doechii for an intergenerational audience of about 45,000. "Bikini Kill helped teach an entire generation that you don't wait for permission to be loud about what matters," Passi said of the '90s feminist punk icons, who now faced thousands of girls for whom the band's galvanic anthems, like "Double Dare Ya" and "Rebel Girl," were designed.

Frontwoman Kathleen Hanna didn't waste a second cutting through to them. "A lot of us feel like this government f****** hates us and wants us dead," she said before Bikini Kill played a note. "They don't give a s*** about anybody's healthcare. They don't care if we die in parking lots of curable illnesses. They don't care if our rights are taken away. They're ripping people off the streets. It makes it hard for me in my body sometimes to have a good time 'cause it's hard to turn it off. And I was thinking on the way here, what a gift to be able to play for you. What a gift Olivia has given all of us to do this festival." Then Bikini Kill instigated its intervention of Revolution Girl Style Now! as young women in T-shirts proclaiming "Girls to the Front" and "F*** AI" screamed.

With proceeds going to organizations like Center for Reproductive Rights and National Women's Law Center, the first Daisy Chain was an extension of Rodrigo's consistent outspokenness about both abortion access and her musical heroes, who've influenced the pop star's emotional clarity and ripping sound. For the artist's Guts tour in 2024, Rodrigo donated ticket proceeds to abortion funds and advocacy groups passed out emergency contraceptive pills to concertgoers. On the Daisy Chain grounds, branches of a Yoko Ono "Wish Tree" were tagged by attendees with hopes for universal healthcare and a free Palestine; one tag simply read "Girlhood is healing." A concrete walkway was painted with quotes from Angela Davis, Audre Lorde and Maya Angelou, a literal path paved by the achievements of historic women.

Two stages — the rock-oriented "Marigold," where flower crowns, crochet and at least one mohawk swirled in gentle circle pits; and the bigger "Dandelion," which leaned pop — were both visually framed by giant buttons evoking the aesthetic of 1970s women's liberation, bearing slogans like "Bans Off Our Bodies" and "Reproductive Rights Are Human Rights." Tattooed mothers with pink-haired daughters sprawled on blankets. A shockingly long line formed for a sparkly Rodrigo-branded Taco Bell pop-up thing ("You Look Pretty Pink for a Baja Blast"). T-shirts abounded honoring the late Dolly Parton, patron saint Fiona Apple and the campaign for Dykes Against Deportation, not to mention Lilith Fair, the hugely successful, all-women touring fest of the late-'90s that served as an explicit inspiration to Daisy Chain. Over on Dandelion in the early afternoon, Santigold played her spiky 2008 classic "L.E.S. Artistes," then beamed: "I can't believe she pulled this s*** off!"

Two stages were both visually framed by giant buttons evoking the aesthetic of 1970s women's liberation, bearing slogans like "Bans Off Our Bodies" and "Reproductive Rights Are Human Rights."

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By mid-afternoon the $250-a-ticket festival began to feel perilously overcrowded, with unmanageable lines for food and a concerning lack of shade in extreme heat — that the collective electric mood seemed to prevail anyway was a testament to the sure-mindedness of this women-and-girl-dominated setting. I wondered too going into Daisy Chain whether its stated political mission would feel sidelined or effectually woven into the day, and I was moved to see the latter in action. Attendees could brave yet another long line to enter the expo of booths for the fest's benefiting nonprofits, earning free merch if they visited every table. Organizers took the stages between most sets. "Where a woman lives should never determine if she lives," stated a rep from women's health nonprofit Jhpiego before introducing pop-rock singer-songwriter Rachel Chinouriri. The executive director of Black Mamas Matter Alliance explained the org's mission to end maternal mortality before declaring, "everybody deserves healthcare and it is our human right," then joyfully proclaimed: "Now give it up for Doechii!" Daisy Chain's mission clearly incited artists to speak out onstage, too — the young, heavy rock band Die Spitz (its drummer in corpse paint) succinctly punctuated its set, growling, "Free Palestine, f*** ICE, thank you Olivia!"

During Bikini Kill's blazing set, Kathleen Hanna directly addressed the young people at Daisy Chain and told them to keep teaching the older people in their lives — "We have so much that we can learn from one another," she insisted — and to keep their diaries, which constitute their art, and which will create the world. A participatory spirit was stoked, too, by an exhibition, "Grrrl Germs: Punk feminism goes viral 1991-2026," curated by the artist Astria Suparak, presenting artifacts of DIY feminist punk with blown-up flyers, manifestos, zines, and listening stations (it also functioned as a desperately needed defacto cooling center). I spoke with two young women who were learning about riot grrrl's history for the first time and pointed out its relevance in an age of social media self-commodification and Ozempic. "Younger girls need to be exposed to this," said Claire Hendrick, 24. "You can read about empowerment, but it's so different when you're with people in community, actually doing it and being it."

When Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan guested during Rodrigo's headlining set, it felt like a kind of act of historical justice, too — like a continuum strengthened. "Without Lilith Fair there would be no Daisy Chain," said Rodrigo, who was filmed for a 2025 Lilith documentary about a year before she began plotting to revive it in her own image. Rodrigo and McLachlan harmonized radiantly on "Building a Mystery" and "Angel," the latter of which McLachlan dedicated to Parton, who she called "the biggest philanthropist in the history of country music." Rodrigo reminded the crowd that McLachlan created Lilith during an era when the music industry insisted that two women could not co-headline a show or be played back-to-back on the radio; the tour's overwhelming success upended those bigoted notions.

During Bikini Kill's blazing set, Kathleen Hanna directly addressed the young people at Daisy Chain.

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Lilith was a festival that Sinead O'Connor called "very healing," that Emmylou Harris called "heaven," that Erykah Badu likened to a shared frequency changed. But after its run from 1997 to 1999, the misogynist backlash was instantaneous. Like Parton, Lilith Fair endured years in which its legacy was diminished to a punchline by some in the media (and maybe I would have written Lilith off as too mainstream in its day, too, when certain intellectual DIY bands would never have shared space at a festival with Starbucks-backed singer-songwriters). I personally came of age among a patriarchal, 2000s music industry that seemed hellbent on siphoning women's power. In hindsight, measuring the scale of the blowback to '90s cultural feminism feels like a reminder, in a sense, that equity for women at any level of our world, when not rigorously defended, risks disappearing.

Exiting the festival, I noticed the enormous number of girls carrying copies of the pink, stapled Daisy Chain Fields Zine. It was available at the merch stands for a suggested donation, filled with interviews, essays, and archival ephemera — a scan from Breeders bassist Josephine Wiggs' 1992 journal; a treatise from writer Rayne Fisher-Quann about female friendship that critiques pop-feminism and quotes Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci — plus instructions on how to create your own pocket-sized pamphlet. An intro letter from Rodrigo credits Hanna with inspiring the zine and thanks her for contributing all of the questions posed to the artists, like "What is your favorite protest song or song about women's power?" (Mitski wrote a whole list, including Malvina Reynolds' brilliant "It Isn't Nice") or, "What is something you like about yourself?" I liked imagining young people posing these questions back onto themselves, leaving with something tangible, with the manifold futures of this imperfect gateway and with power in their own hands.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Gloria Steinem, a trailblazing journalist and activist who devoted her life to fighting for women's rights, died on Wednesday. She was 92.

Her passing was announced in a statement posted on her Instagram. It did not give a cause of death.

"Gloria Steinem passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her," the post read.

Starting in the 1960s, at a time when women were largely limited to domestic roles, Steinem challenged gender stereotypes and championed feminist ideals like equality, sisterhood and reproductive freedom. In doing so, she inspired generations of women to do the same. Today, she's a household name that is synonymous with the women's rights movement.

"Because of her work, across America and around the world, more women are afforded the respect and opportunities that they deserve," then-President Barack Obama said when he awarded Steinem the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her commitment to activism in 2013. "She also changed how women thought about themselves."

President Barack Obama awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Gloria Steinem in the East Room at the White House on Nov. 20, 2013.

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An early impact

Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1934. She graduated from Smith College in 1956 with a bachelor's degree in government studies. After Steinem finished school, she spent two years in India on a fellowship, where she traveled with people organizing against caste violence and wrote for Indian publications — an experience that she said shaped her activism in the U.S.

When Steinem returned home, she was briefly involved with a CIA-backed organization that sent American students to Soviet-sponsored youth festivals to promote pro-American principles. This would become a point of contention for some feminists later in Steinem's career. She defended her role, asserting that the CIA never attempted to alter the organization's policies.

Steinem then went on to become a freelance journalist in New York during the 1960s — when newsrooms were largely run by men and female reporters were typically restricted in the topics they were allowed to cover.

"I and lots of women could not write about political subjects for the existing magazines," Steinem recalled in an interview with NPR in 2020. "We were thought to be the experts on, you know, food, makeup, babies and celebrities."

Still, she did not allow those limitations to stop her from pursuing hard-hitting investigative stories. And in 1963, Steinem gained national attention for going undercover at one of Hugh Hefner's nightclubs. Her exposé for Show magazine, "A Bunny's Tale," revealed the sexism and low wages endured by cocktail waitresses, challenging Hefner's claim that his Playboy empire was a sexual revolution, beneficial for men and women alike.

Steinem appears in New York on Feb. 17, 1970.

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Steinem went on to serve as a founding editor and writer at New York magazine and, a few years later, in 1972, launched her own publication, Ms. magazine, which was named after the honorific title given when a woman's marital status is unknown. It was widely regarded as the first national magazine run by and written for women.

"The women's magazines that are around, most of which all of us who work on Ms. have worked for, are really talking about women in their roles as wives and mothers," she told NPR at the time.

Steinem added that while those magazines served a purpose, she felt they missed the full picture of women's lives.

"I think that all of us, when we read those magazines, get a sense of dishonesty," she said. "It doesn't help you to change your life. And it's not really allowing women to tell the truth about their daily experiences."

The magazine boldly addressed topics that were considered off-limits, such as abortion, lesbianism, domestic abuse and gender roles. Its 1977 cover story about sexual harassment forced the long-silenced issue into the national spotlight and later became the basis of the 1980 hit movie 9 to 5 starring Dolly Parton.

An activist and political organizer

Beyond journalism, Steinem was an activist and political organizer. In 1971, months before she established Ms. magazine, Steinem helped form the National Women's Political Caucus, which focuses on recruiting, training and endorsing more women in politics.

"Women have been running the political campaigns in this country for generations. But by running means that they've been doing all the menial work, you know, addressing envelopes and driving cars and having fundraisings," Steinem told NPR in 1971. "We're not going to do that anymore. Let the male candidates do their own typing."

When the caucus began, there were 15 women elected to Congress, 363 women state legislators, and only seven women city mayors. Today, those numbers have grown to 150, 2,476 and 428, respectively.

Gloria Steinem (left) and presidential assistant Midge Costanza sit near one another at a July 1978 meeting of the House Judiciary Committee in Washington. The panel voted in favor of a time extension for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.

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Among the legislative issues that mattered most to Steinem was reproductive freedom — driven by her own experience of having had an illegal abortion at age 22. In her 2015 memoir My Life On The Road, she dedicated her book to the English doctor who performed the procedure.

Referring to herself, Steinem wrote: "Knowing only that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, you must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life … I've done the best I could with my life. This book is for you."

Gloria Steinem speaks onstage during The Women's Media Center 2015 Women's Media Awards on Nov. 5, 2015, in New York City.

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In 2022, a few weeks before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion, Steinem told NPR that even if the decision were reversed, she did not think her and others' work on reproductive justice was in vain.

"It will not change the basic fact that we either have decision-making power over our own bodies — women and men — or there is no democracy," she said.

Steinem added that over the years, she learned that real change is "like a tree."

"Too often we think the tree grows from the top, from Congress. Trees grow from the bottom," she said, adding that what mattered most was the work being done by everyday people and communities.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and challenger Nithya Raman will each have a chance to lay out their plans for tackling L.A.’s biggest environmental issues, and share their longer-term vision for a cleaner and healthier Los Angeles.

And LAist will be asking the questions.

You can listen live from 6 to 8 p.m. here on LAist 89.3 FM and it will also be on our YouTube channel if you prefer to watch live — or watch later.

Just don’t expect finger pointing and empty sound bites: the event will take on a fireside chat-style format so that each candidate will have the opportunity to lay out their proposals for making the environment a top priority if they win the election on Nov. 3.

Each candidate will have 45 minutes with LAist’s award-winning climate and environmental senior reporter Erin Stone.

Stone said the evening’s format will allow voters to get a sense of how each candidate feels about crucial environmental issues, such as emergency preparedness and response, oil drilling, the city’s transportation policy, L.A.’s unique water challenges and efforts to transition to clean energy sources — all while trying to maintain affordable utility bills.

“The world’s top scientists are clear that this decade is a critical moment in history to take action to protect future generations from worse climate and environmental harms,” Stone said. “I hope the conversations help voters make the decision that is right for them.”

The event is organized by a coalition of local environmental and environmental justice groups including the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters, SCOPE-LA, the Sierra Club, Clean and Healthy California, the Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance and Communities for a Better Environment.