The Brief

When he made the move last year to evict a beloved Little Tokyo restaurant, landlord Tony Sperl went from relative obscurity to Public Enemy No.1 with neighborhood activists.

Hundreds of people petitioned or rallied against the displacement of Suehiro Cafe, which has been dishing up Japanese comfort food from its 1st Street perch for decades.

Community leaders threatened Sperl with a boycott of any new tenant that could harm a historic community already under gentrification pressures, and poised to see major future development.

Worrying them was a 2018 business filing with the state that listed Sperl as one of several managers for a marijuana dispensary to be located on the second floor of his building, above Suehiro.

The former dining space for Suehiro Cafe.

(

Josie Huang

/

LAist

)

The former Suehiro kitchen.

(

Josie Huang

/

LAist

)

Sperl said he had considered the “Tokyo Greens” idea pitched to him by a former tenant, but the proposal has been dead for several years.

“There is not a dispensary opening — and that's the truth, OK?” Sperl said.

Rather, Sperl says he’s on the cusp of entering into a lease with another Asian restaurant, more than three months after Suehiro was forced to leave.

Sperl said two different groups have leases in hand, noting that one of them already owns a restaurant in Little Tokyo.

Sperl, whose family has owned the building since 1882, said there are three backup offers from other groups on the table as well.

Which begs the question: If Sperl wanted a restaurant as a tenant, why not just keep Suehiro?

Sperl won’t say, his only response being: “Why don’t you ask him?”

The backstory

The “him” in question is Suehiro’s owner, Kenji Suzuki. It was his mother and aunt who founded the restaurant in 1972 at its first location on 2nd Street before relocating to 1st Street in the mid-1980s.

More than a decade ago, the restaurant’s lease with Sperl expired. Suzuki had previously told LAist that Sperl would not give him a new lease without a $100,000 negotiation fee.

The restaurateur continued to pay month-to-month and said he absorbed a rent hike to $10,000. Then Sperl stopped cashing the rent checks and last spring, started to pursue eviction, Suzuki said.

Passersby look at signs posted on the window of the former Suehiro Cafe.

(

Josie Huang

/

LAist

)

The signs posted on a window outside the former Suehiro Cafe read "Fake News. No Dispensary. No Marijuana. Someone Lied?"

(

Josie Huang

/

LAist

)

In the months that elapsed while the eviction was pending, community activists with the Little Tokyo Against Gentrification coalition mobilized to save the restaurant, part of a dying breed of legacy businesses they said had been felled by the pandemic, rising rents and the lack of successors to aging proprietors.

The last year has seen Shabu Shabu House’s aging owners close its doors after decades of operation in Japanese Village Plaza. A few storefronts down from Suehiro, the owner of Little Tokyo Arts and Gifts, which was founded after WWII, announced it was shuttering last December.

Suehiro’s Suzuki had said he almost closed during the pandemic but stuck it out to honor his mother’s legacy.

Community reacts

Suehiro will be irreplaceable, said David Monkawa, a member of the anti-gentrification coalition that includes his group, Save Our Seniors Network as well as J-Town Action & Solidarity and Greater LA Japanese American Civic League.

But the coalition took satisfaction in knowing that their protests had an impact. Last month, Monkawa received a message from Sperl promising there’d be “no dispensary, strip club, McDonald’s or franchise.”

“We were able to put up a strong picket line and embarrass Tony Sperl into agreeing to no inappropriate business,” Monkawa said.

David Ikegami, president of the Little Tokyo Business Association, said he was pleased to hear that a new restaurant was going into the former Suehiro location.

Little Tokyo Arts & Gifts, another legacy business a few doors down from the former Suehiro Cafe, announced it was closing last December.

(

Josie Huang

/

LAist

)

“We are Little Tokyo and it'd be nice if it's a Japanese restaurant but if it's not, that's OK, too,” said Ikegami, noting that everything from pizza joints to Chinese restaurants have fared well in the neighborhood.

Suzuki, who has since opened a new location downtown on Main Street, could not be reached comment by deadline. But his lawyer Clifford Jung said they wished nothing but the best for the new restaurant.

“I hope that they'll be an asset to the Little Tokyo community like Suehiro was,” Jung said.

Suehiro may be out of the neighborhood for now, but there are plans for it to return. The restaurant’s Instagram account announced that it expects to be back in 2026 as a tenant of a new mixed-use development being built by the Little Tokyo Service Center.

Talk of Melrose

Sperl shared a desire to move forward with a new tenant but also expressed bitterness over protests that vilified him. Some activists branded him as a gentrifier, and also attacked him for his time working as a police officer when 41 years ago, he shot dead a young boy after mistaking his toy for a gun.

Asked to comment on his law enforcement past, Sperl said he wasn’t “interested in that.” But he railed against the perception he was for gentrification, noting that he opposes development projects on the Westside and Little Tokyo that he said would negatively affect Japanese American communities in those neighborhoods.

He also disputed the claim that he wanted Little Tokyo to resemble Melrose.

“What?” Sperl snapped. “Was I like standing in the middle of 1st Street screaming, ‘I'm turning this place into Melrose?’ It never happened.”

His current tenant, Zac Vargas, owner of Space City Vintage, said that Sperl has been supportive of independent businesses like his and is building something good at his 1st Street property with a racially diverse group of creatives operating ventures such as an upcycle shop and leather works store.

“I mean, he's a good guy,” Vargas said. “They made him like he's an ugly person.”

Vargas said that Sperl is involved in rescuing strays and beautifying the neighborhood by getting rid of graffiti and cleaning the sidewalks.

Zac Vargas owns Space City Vintage, next to the former Suehiro Cafe.

(

Josie Huang

/

LAist

)

With the relationship between Sperl and community activists frayed to bits, Vargas acts as a go-between, passing messages between the two parties.

He’s also been in charge of showing the former Suehiro space to potential tenants and is eager for it to be occupied.

“All I want is peace,” said Vargas, who recalls the protests spilling onto his storefront. “I want everybody to make a living and move on.”

When Alma Mendoza Tlachi’s work permit expired while she waited for the federal government to process her renewal, she had to stop teaching her high school students and could not return to work over the summer or prepare her classroom for the new school year.

As a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipient, Mendoza Tlachi relies on an employment authorization document, or work permit, to legally work in the United States.

Mendoza Tlachi has paid to renew her work authorization every two years, as required, since she first applied for DACA in 2017 at age 16. But this year, processing delays caused her work permit to expire before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reviewed her renewal application, even though she filed nearly six months before it was set to expire. She said her previous renewal applications had all been processed in under one month.

Alma Mendoza Tlachi is a Spanish language and literature teacher at a high school in Los Angeles and a DACA recipient. This year, she had to stop working after a prolonged delay in the renewal of her work authorization document.

(

Alma Mendoza Tlachi

)

“I constantly found myself wondering: ‘Will I be able to continue teaching? Will I be able to support my family? Will I be able to finish school?’ ” said Mendoza Tlachi at a press conference Thursday morning. She is a third-year Spanish language and literature teacher completing her master’s degree in education at Cal State Fullerton.

The delays prompted California lawmakers to call on the federal government to act. Assemblymember José Luis Solache, Jr., D-Paramount, introduced House Resolution 124, which the state Assembly recently approved unanimously. The resolution urges federal agencies, including USCIS, which oversees DACA renewals, to expedite work authorization renewals for DACA recipients.

The resolution passed after months of uncertainty over prolonged delays and a lawsuit seeking information from the federal government on DACA processing times.

Over a quarter of the nation’s roughly 506,000 DACA recipients live in California, and thousands of them are educators in the state’s K-12 and higher education systems.

“Immigration cases are often delayed. That is not unusual,” said Tess Feldman, a supervising attorney at Loyola Law School’s Immigrant Justice Clinic, at Thursday’s news conference. “But what we’re talking about today for DACA renewals are unprecedented delays impacting a very sensitive group of students and teachers and educators that this program is designed to protect, not cause further harm to.”

One of Feldman’s clients, a 10th grade teacher, cannot return to work this school year because of renewal application delays, Feldman said. “By comparison, one of her applications in the past was renewed and approved on the same day.”

The DACA program was created by the Obama administration in 2012 to provide temporary protection from deportation and work authorization to certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. The program grew out of years of organizing by undocumented immigrants seeking protection and a pathway to citizenship.

DACA has since faced a series of legal challenges. A federal court order currently prevents the government from approving new applications to the program while still allowing renewals to be processed.

Pablo Villavicencio, CEO of Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, said the delays cause a domino effect of disruptions that affect many people beyond the individual DACA recipient.

“For our students, that disruption matters. It can affect their academic progress and preparation for college. Many of our students will be the first in their families to graduate from high school and to attend college and, at such a critical point in their education, losing a teacher who knows them, believes in them, and is helping prepare for what comes next in their life has a lasting impact,” Villavicencio said. Educator Mendoza Tlachi teaches at one of the 25 sites in the Los Angeles-based network of public charter schools that he leads.

The delays can also disrupt an educator’s financial stability as well as the larger communities that depend on their work, said Jacob Sandoval, state director with civil rights organization League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC.

“Employers lose workers, families lose income, the federal government loses taxes and communities lose economic activity. This is why processing timely applications is not simply a matter of immigration policy, it’s about civil rights, workforce stability, family stability and our economy,” he said.

Feldman, of Loyola Law School, said some DACA recipients whose work permits have expired are relying on savings while waiting for their cases to be processed. Others are being supported by employers who are holding their jobs open while they wait.

“They’re very much living day to day. They’re checking their status on their case when they wake up and when they go to bed at night, and they’re living off savings, and they’re living in a space of hope,” Feldman said.

Faculty at California State University are also working on legislation to support students awaiting their renewal applications to be processed.

“What we see happening many times is students leave halfway through the semester and then, without any date of return, they actually have to start all over again to apply to the university,” said Theresa Montaño, a CSU faculty member and president of the Los Angeles County Board of Education.

The legislation would allow students facing disruptions such as delayed DACA renewals to temporarily pause their studies and return without having to start the process over, Montaño said. Once they can return, “they would be able to start where they left off,” she said.

For Mendoza Tlachi, the wait finally ended a few days ago. She was brought to the United States at age 7, first received DACA in 2017 and has renewed it about five times. Her latest renewal was approved about six months after she applied.

It meant that, instead of spending her summer working and preparing for the new school year, she spent that time checking the USCIS website for any update on her renewal application until, finally, it arrived.

“I hope we can create a process where educators like me do not have to wonder whether a process and delay will keep us from our classrooms, and where our students do not have to wonder whether their teachers will come back the next day,” she said.

Leo Jeong, chef-owner of Ho Tok Korean Pocket Pancake, originally started their pop-up as a way to bring a California take to Korean street food. Their spin on Hotteok, a pancake filled with fillings like bulgogi or chicken, has been popular with customers and allowed him to make vending his full-time job.

About the owners

Photo of Lisa Park (L) and Leo Jeong (R).

(

Courtesy Lisa Park

)

Jeong, along with his wife and co-owner Lisa Park, had quite the journey that led them to open a pop-up. The couple had been in a long-distance relationship, with Park in Canada and Jeong in California. They tied the knot about a year and a half ago, and cite their months-long IVF treatment journey as an inspiring force for their cooking.

For six months, they cooked extensively together, with their favorite dish being traditional Korean Hotteok. This led Jeong to eventually conceptualize the idea for Ho Tok as a pop-up, bringing their love of street food to folks in Southern California.

Jeong and Park sat down with Austin Cross, who hosts AirTalk every Friday, to share their story, and how they put a California spin on the Korean food they love.

What makes for the ideal Ho Tok experience?

The couple noted that they have seen the interest in Korean food grow over the years alongside the surge in popularity of K-pop music and media like K-Pop Demon Hunters, although most folks tend not to be familiar with the culture's cuisine.

So they typically run through the basics with new customers, explaining how their pancake dough is made through a 10-hour fermentation process, and then giving a rundown of each filling option.

At that point, they let customer customize as they'd like, so they can best enjoy their handheld treat while they walk around any street market they're vending at that day.

Pop-up details

• Their first attempt began at Tustin Farmers Market in October 2025, with more than a dozen folks from his local church coming by to support. Since then, they have been vending at places like 626 Night Market and the Culver City Farmers Market.
• Along with their Ho Tok, they’ve also been selling more traditional items like kimbap and fusion items like their takes on burritos and hot dogs.

Menu items we tried

• Bulgogi (Korean BBQ Beef) Ho Tok
• Jeyuk (Spicy Pork) Ho Tok
• Dakgalbi (Spicy Chicken) Ho Tok

What should we try next?

Drivers in the city of Orange could receive a $500 rebate for new vehicles, or $250 for used models, under a program approved by the City Council. But there’s a catch: the rebate would only go into effect if voters approve a one-cent sales tax in November.

Councilmembers John Gyllenhammer and Arianna Barrios opposed the agreement at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

They argued that the rebate benefits a handful of dealerships and uses public money to promote those dealers.

City Manager Jarad Hildenbrand said the goal is to incentivize Orange residents to shop locally and offset revenue pains that may be felt by the auto businesses as a result of the proposed sales tax.

What car buyers should know

Orange residents and businesses qualify for the rebate only on new or used vehicles purchased from the city’s five major dealerships — Mazda, Selman Chevrolet, Nissan, Toyota and Villa Ford of Orange.

The purchase price for the vehicle must be more than $15,000. The program would last for 13 years, mirroring the timeline for the sales tax.

Where is the rebate coming from?

Rebates are paid with the city’s general funds. This agreement is expected to cost the city $1.6 million annually — about $1.5 million earmarked for rebates and an additional $50,000 for marketing. More than $20 million is earmarked for the rebates throughout the 13-year deal.

It will be the city’s responsibility to market the program to residents, Hildenbrand said.

“The whole premise of the program is to influence purchasing behavior,” Hildenbrand added. “So if Orange residents don’t know the program exists, they might go shopping elsewhere.”

The city anticipates earning more than $118,000 annually from car sales, according to a staff presentation.

“This provides a very unique incentive to give taxpayers in Orange their money back for shopping in the city of Orange,” Councilmember Denis Bilodeau said. “I think it’s an important incentive to give our Orange residents to live and shop in Orange.”

What do opponents say? 

Opponents of the deal took issue with the focus on just the five big car dealers and the use of tax dollars to essentially market for these businesses.

The deal helps a certain group of residents, Barrios said, “It doesn’t hit the people who are going to be hardest hit by paying extra in the city.”

Gyllenhammer took issue with using public funds to benefit only a concentrated number of residents and car dealers.

“In this case, we’d redistribute tax money that everyone will pay, at every income level within the city,” Gyllenhammer said.

He added that those tax dollars under the rebate would go to five dealers, and if “we don't apply it to any other dealers within the city, there will be impact.”

And car buyers who purchase a used vehicle for less than the $15,000 threshold are also left out of the deal, he added.

“There’s absolutely no rebate for anyone else that’s buying any other car outside of these five dealerships,” Gyllenhammer said. “So it truly does create a situation where we are subsidizing and picking a specific industry that we have just created duress because of a sales tax increase.”

Gyllenhammer previously opposed a rebate program with the same five businesses back in 2024, when voters were considering a sales tax measure that ultimately failed.

Orange resident Chip O’Neal told the council the agreement doesn’t benefit taxpayers.

“I would like the City Council to explain why they would ask the citizens of Orange to approve a 1% sales tax and then use city funds to subsidize the very industry most affected by said tax?” O’Neal said. “The same industry that previously helped defeat the last sales-increase measure, which I imagine is why we’re looking at this measure now.”

What’s next? 

The deal will only go through if residents approve the sales tax hike in November. In recent years, the city of Orange has faced increasingly dire budget constraints.

Just days before the start of school, some California State University students were still waiting to find out how much they’re getting in grants and loans, and university officials are blaming the federal government for those delays. But despite a flurry of social media complaints about the delays, student leaders and university officials point to no major abnormalities

Every summer brings fresh confusion to some students whose financial aid is less than they anticipated or who didn’t notice an important email, but this summer added a new hardship: Not knowing how much actual aid they’d get.

The culprit is a change implemented in April by the U.S. Office of Federal Student Aid to update its fraud protections. The move was in response to the 2025 Republican-approved One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Some universities, including Cal State, received federal files on how much aid students would receive five to six weeks later than usual.

The delay meant that an unknown number of students got their precise financial aid amounts mere weeks before the start of the school year. Some students didn’t find out what their aid amounts were until after the deadline to pay tuition. Cal State campuses had provisions in place to keep students enrolled who didn’t pay if their financial aid awards were pending.

That this occurred in the middle of the financial aid cycle “is very unusual,” said April Grommo, an assistant vice chancellor for strategic enrollment management at the California State University Chancellor’s Office.

The delay in receiving information about aid amounts is separate from actually getting federal grants and loans. Federal rules prohibit students from receiving their actual financial aid until within 10 days of the start of the school year. Cal State classes begin this month.

The student experience

A handful of users of the social media tool Reddit posted about their FAFSA delays at Cal State. One user from Cal State Fullerton wrote on Aug. 1 that “I'm very concerned because the semester begins the 22nd of August … and I do not want to be dropped from any courses.” Other redditors at Fullerton echoed that worry. Similar posts were found at subreddits for San Jose State, Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Northridge.

The delay didn’t affect students who applied using the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, by the state’s priority deadline of March 2, Grommo said.

But the sheer volume of aid going to students at Cal State is immense — some $5.5 billion was   disbursed last year to more than 385,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Campus financial aid employees worked overtime to compensate for the federal delays, Grommo said. Several Cal State schools are shortstaffed, compounding the delay in getting information to students.

Another change in the 2025 federal law placed lower caps on how much students and their parents could borrow for college. Those caps went into effect this year, likely catching off guard some students who relied on loans. Still, some 65% of undergraduates who earn a bachelor’s degree at Cal State graduate without loan debt.

The system’s undergraduate student government, the California State Student Association, hasn’t detected a major uptick in student complications, despite the confusion, said Joe Nino, the association’s executive director. “At this time, CSSA is not aware of this being a widespread issue,” he wrote by email. “To our knowledge, there are protections in place to ensure students won't be dropped from their classes due to FAFSA delays.”

Sydney Yee is the vice president of Cal State Fullerton’s student government. The rising senior and finance major said the student government office hadn’t received any complaints from students about nonresponsive campus officials. She too had questions about her financial aid package and called the school’s financial aid office over the summer to receive guidance she found useful.

Redditors also advised frustrated students to call their campus financial aid office and be persistent.

“Something I think that the financial aid (staff) has done very well here has been staying very proactive with these delays,” Yee said in an interview, pointing to explanatory emails as well as Instagram posts that explained why some students received dropped course notifications on their accounts and why those holds were lifted.

Grommo explained that the notification was meant to give students peace of mind. If the drop hold was lifted and they’re still enrolled, that means the campus concluded the student is in good financial standing.

Jessicca Barco, associate vice president for strategic enrollment management at Cal State Fullerton, added that normally returning students would learn their financial aid amounts between May and June. The information is provided near the end of the academic year to ensure students meet federal grade requirements to continue receiving aid. The federal delay meant some 23,000 returning students received their aid information last Friday. The campus moved back the deadline to pay for tuition to Aug. 19, Barco added. For many students it’s typically in mid-July.

Reasons for getting financial aid late

As for why some students may get their federal financial aid late — some students in the past received theirs as late as October — Grommo cited several factors.

One may be that those students applied for financial aid well into summer rather than in late winter. Another may be that they were selected to undergo an audit of their family finances to ensure they’re eligible for financial aid. Or their grades are too low to continue receiving aid and they must appeal to the school to restore their eligibility. Other students may experience a sudden loss of personal or family finances that isn’t captured in the income data they filed in their aid applications.

“The majority of students go through the process just fine, but of course, the small group that does not go through the process fine, those are the really major issues,” Grommo said.

Her advice to students: Make sure their school email account is set up in case the campus is only emailing them there rather than their personal account and to keep calling their school’s financial aid office.

Cal State Fullerton students got their financial aid disbursements Wednesday.

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