Topline:
Christmas Tree Lane residents and volunteers have begun putting up holiday lights on the trees along the famous Altadena landmark.
Why does it matter: Residents debated whether to continue the century-old tradition this year after the devastations of the Eaton Fire.
What's next: A tree lighting ceremony is scheduled to take place Dec. 6.
For 105 years Christmas Tree Lane in Altadena has been bringing holiday spirit to locals and countless tourists who make their way to Santa Rosa Avenue for a glimpse of its famous holiday lights.
In January, when the devastating Eaton Fire rolled through the tight-knit community, lights were still wrapped around the Deodar cedars on each side of the mile-long pathway.
Now this weekend, residents have gathered once again to get started on the work to bring back the more than 100-year-old tradition.
"Some of the lines were burned but not many, for as big of an event this was in terms of fire damage," said Scott Wardlaw, president of the Christmas Tree Lane Association.
In a typical year, all the lights usually come down in February, after the rainy season, to make sure it's safe to scale the trees. This year, the fire and recovery efforts pushed back removal to mid-Spring. To ensure safety, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health provided volunteers with hazmat suits.
"We had a really good turnout, actually. We got it done way quicker than we usually do. They came from hither and yonder to come out and help us," Wardlaw said.
After the Eaton Fire, there were questions as to whether or not the lights would even go back up this year, given safety concerns. A county assessment alleviated initial concerns of toxic ash.
Then, there was the question of whether it was too quick of a return to the tradition given the devastation of the fire. Members had lengthy discussions on timing.
"A number of the board members lost their homes. We almost lost our house. We want to be sensitive to the community," said Rob Caves, a board member of the Christmas Tree Lane Association.
Ultimately they moved forward.
"It's just been an overwhelming amount of support that people want the lights on, they want one of the last things that Altadena is known for that didn't burn down," Caves said. "So we want to keep the tradition going."
Over the next 10 weeks volunteers will continue their work to outfit more than 150 trees along the lane. Wardlaw said damaged lights have been replaced, in part with donations from Disney.
" We will be adding lights to these trees as we go along," Wardlaw said, "which we've always wanted to do, but we couldn't do without that help."
The group is also seeking more volunteers.
The association's winter festival and tree lighting ceremony — scheduled to take place Dec. 6 — will include a special ceremony memorializing what was lost in the Eaton Fire, along with their usual slate of carolers, hot chocolate and free pictures with Santa Claus.
The group hopes the winter tradition will bring a return to normalcy for the community — and light its way for a brighter future.
Christmas Tree Lane Association lights hanging
Santa Rosa Avenue, Altadena
Every Saturday and Sunday through Dec. 6
8 a.m. to 12 noon
Find out how to volunteer here
Topline:
The $360 million effort to turn Exposition Park’s largest parking lots into green space won’t be completed in time for the 2028 Olympics.
The backstory: State leaders announced the multi-million dollar investment into the park in 2024, planning to prep the park for an Olympic close-up by replacing the warren of asphalt lots on Expo Park’s southern edge with an underground lot and green park land.
What's next: But park officials now say the 6-acre project now won’t break ground until 2028, after the Olympic torch is extinguished.
The $360 million effort to turn Exposition Park’s largest parking lots into green space won’t be completed in time for the 2028 Olympics.
State leaders announced the multi-million dollar investment into the park in 2024, planning to prep the park for an Olympic close-up by replacing the warren of asphalt lots on Expo Park’s southern edge with an underground lot and green park land.
Now park officials say the 6-acre project now won’t break ground until 2028, after the Olympic torch is extinguished.
Expo Park and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum will be a centerpiece of L.A.’s Olympic image in the summer of 2028. But for residents of the surrounding South L.A. neighborhoods, the park and its facilities help fill a serious need for recreation and green space.
Andrea Ambriz, general manager of the state-run park, said the park hasn’t had an investment of this kind since the 1984 Olympic Games, but that the inspiration and funding for the park project go beyond the 2028 games.
“Whatever we do now is intended in full to support the community. It’s not just for these games,” Ambriz said.
Ambriz said park officials hit pause on project planning after realizing it would not be completed before the Olympics.
State leaders are still angling to get at least some of the park freshened up in time for the Olympics, with officials announcing in January that Gov. Gavin Newsom planned to earmark $96.5 million in proposed funds for renovations in the park.
The funding, according to the governor’s proposed budget, will be used for “critical deferred maintenance” to meet code compliance and accessibility requirements.
Ambriz said the lion’s share of the money will go to rehabbing roadways, sidewalks and ramps throughout the park to ensure safe pedestrian and vehicle access.
“This is a part of what we know we need,” Ambriz said. “It is a really significant downpayment from the state.”
John Noyola is a 42-year resident of the Exposition Park neighborhood who sits on the North Area Neighborhood Development Council. For him, any major overhaul of the park still feels like an abstract concept.
He’s seen news reports about the proposed changes, but heard little more.
“It hasn’t really affected us or the community,” Noyola said.
The 150-year-old Expo Park has one of the densest collections of cultural institutions in Los Angeles, said Esther Margulies, a professor of landscape architecture just across the street from the park at USC.
Four museums, including the under-construction Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, will soon share the park with the BMO Stadium and the Coliseum.
Margulies said Grand Park, in downtown Los Angeles, has begun to fill a role as a “living room for the city” in recent years, but that Expo Park is falling short of its potential.
“People should see Expo Park as a place to begin their journey of visiting Southern California and Los Angeles,” Margulies said. “This is where you should come and there should be this energy of, like, ‘Wow!’”
Changing Expo Park, Margulies said, starts with building a space that serves its community.
In its current design, the park’s best-kept green spaces sit behind the fences of its museums, Margulies said, and large asphalt expanses act as heat sinks. Major events often come at the community’s expense.
“There’s tailgating, day drinking in the park,” Margulies said. “People don’t come to the park on those days.”
Noyola, the Expo Park resident, said his family and others in the community frequent the park recreation center, pools and fields near the intersection of Vermont Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. He worries that construction could block parking or other access to the park spaces that are available.
He remains wary of the unintended consequences of a park remodel, especially after watching traffic spike in Inglewood when SoFi Stadium and the Intuit Dome were built.
“It would be nice,” Noyola said of the remodel. “Looking at the greater vision of LA 28, it’s needed. But at what cost?”
Topline:
Southern California is in for a wet week, with the potential for what the weather service is calling "widespread" impacts.
Evacuation warnings: Ahead of the heavy rain, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has issued an evacuation warning for the Palisades, Sunset and Hurst burn scar areas due to the potential for mud and debris flows. The warning is in effect at 9 p.m. on Sunday until 9 a.m. on Tuesday.
Read on ... for details on potential impact and to find out what you need to know ahead of the what's expected from the rainy week.
Southern California is in for a wet week, with the potential for what the weather service is calling "widespread" impacts.
Ahead of the heavy rain, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has issued an evacuation warning for the Palisades, Sunset and Hurst burn scar areas due to the potential for mud and debris flows.
The warning is in effect from 9 p.m. on Sunday until 9 a.m. on Tuesday.
Rain is expected to arrive in Ventura and Los Angeles counties Sunday night, according to the National Weather Service.
Moderate to heavy rain is expected early Monday, with significant snow and damaging winds starting at about 3 a.m. Heaviest impacts, including the possibility of widespread flooding and thunderstorms, are expected to last until around 9 p.m.
Light rain is expected to continue Tuesday through Friday.
Topline:
Finding a book you need at a library is usually quick and easy, but that wasn’t the case about 100 years ago. It changed largely because of an energetic L.A. city librarian named Everett Perry.
Who was he? Perry moved here from the East Coast in 1911 to become L.A.’s top librarian. During a time of rapid growth, the city’s library services were struggling — and its main branch was inside a department store.
Revamping the system: Perry wanted to change that and more. He had progressive ideas about how books should be stored and used by the public. So when he took over, Perry pushed for a Central Library to be built that fit his idea of how these institutions should work. That Art Deco building still exists today. Some of his ideas spread nationwide, including a decision to form subject departments.
Read on ... to learn more about Perry’s novel ideas.
Today, millions of Angelenos use the Central Library downtown (which turns 100 this year) and over 70 branch locations to access the Los Angeles Public Library’s collection of over 8 million books.
But this juggernaut wasn’t created overnight. What started with just 750 books in 1872 was transformed in part because of city librarian Everett Perry, a visionary who wanted books to be easy to access. Here’s a look at how his influence can still be felt today.
Perry got the job as top librarian in L.A. after working at the New York Public Library, which opened a main building during his tenure. He was accustomed to growth.
But when he arrived in 1911, the Los Angeles Public Library was struggling. With no permanent location, it had moved several times into different rented spaces, the most recent being in the Hamburger's Department Store, where patrons had to ride an elevator to check out books in between women’s clothes and furniture.
Perry aired his grievances in a 1912 library report.
“The modern library aims to be a vital force in a community,” he wrote. “It can not perform this function, if its usefulness is limited by an inaccessible location.”
This is an early look into his ethos as librarian. Perry was part of a progressive crop of librarians, whose ideas were shifting about how books should be stored and used by the public.
His goal was to create a library system focused on great service and that rivaled the very best on the East Coast. With others, he pushed for a central library to be built, funded by a $2 million bond measure. Voters passed that in the 1920s, which led to the creation of the impressive Art Deco building that still stands downtown.
But what was perhaps even more impressive was how he infused the building with novel ideas about how to make reading more accessible.
One key example was his decision to set up subject departments. For decades prior, libraries stored books on fixed shelves (these couldn’t be adjusted), so they were usually sorted by size or acquisition date. Libraries had only recently moved to the not-very-user-friendly Dewey decimal system.
By grouping books under subjects, Perry made it much easier for people to find what they wanted. His idea was so successful that it eventually spread to other libraries across the country.
Another innovation was where you could read the books. Perry put the circulation and card catalog area in the center of the floor, which was surrounded by book stacks and reading rooms along the edges. That meant they were next to the windows and full of natural light, which according to LAPL, wasn’t customary at the time.
Perry earned a reputation as a fair, iron-fist leader who wanted top-notch library practices.
He issued a rulebook for staff that covered everything from the janitor’s responsibility to make brooms last longer to requiring librarians to go with patrons to find books.
But Perry’s legacy also includes the next generation of librarians. In 1914, he revamped an aging LAPL librarian training program into a full-fledged, accredited library school that was known as the best in California.
He aimed to professionalize librarianship by encouraging men to apply (it had commonly been women), urging all applicants to have at least some college-level education, and creating a formal internship program. The program covered technical librarian skills, as well new coursework that compared how other libraries functioned across the country.
Perry served for over two decades until his death in 1933.
His achievements were numerous. Aside from getting the Central Library built, he grew the staff from 98 to 600, helped the 200,000-book collection balloon to 1.5 million, and added dozens of more branch libraries.
In 2018 he was inducted into the California Library Hall of Fame.
Topline:
Federal immigration agents have left a U.S. Coast Guard facility that's been a key staging area for them in the Port of L.A., according to Congress member Nanette Barragan, who represents the area.
The backstory: Since last summer, agents have been using the base on Terminal Island as a launch point for operations.
Go deeper: ICE sweeps spur citizen patrols on Terminal Island — and troubling World War II memories
Federal immigration agents have left a U.S. Coast Guard facility that's been a key staging area for them in the Port of L.A., according to U.S. Rep. Nanette Barragan who represents the area.
Since last summer, agents have been using the base on Terminal Island as a launch point for operations.
In a statement to LAist, Barragan, a Democrat, says she confirmed with the Coast Guard last night that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol have vacated the base. She says it's unclear at this time whether the move is permanent or if agents are moving to another location in L.A. County.
Local officials and community groups are celebrating the agents' departure from Terminal Island. Volunteers with the Harbor Area Peace Patrols have been monitoring agent activity for months, tracking vehicles and sharing information with advocacy networks.
Earlier this week, the group said it received reports of the department.
