The Brief

Seeing her 24-year-old son dip his feet in the ocean water at the beach fills Mayra Garcia with joy.

“There is so much sensory stimulation that happens with the sand, the waves and the water,” she said.

Her son, Jared Garcia Cortez, was born with Dandy-Walker Syndrome, a brain malformation that leads him to use a wheelchair and severely limits his vision and hearing. She lives in Long Beach and has taken her son to the beach dozens of times this year.

“More than 30, I think, and we continue going because of the sensory stimulation. Going to the beach and being near the ocean helps him a lot,” she said.

Three years ago, Long Beach installed mats at three beaches to help people who use wheelchairs and walkers enjoy city beaches. But there’s a problem.

“They don’t reach the ocean,” Garcia said, and that limits her son’s ability to fully use the public beach. She shared a photo that shows the mat stopping about 30 feet from the tide line.

The beach mat goes near the ocean — but not all the way.

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Courtesy Mayra Garcia

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LAist reached out to the city of Long Beach to see if it plans to lengthen the mats but has not received an answer.

Other people who are disabled, as well as organizations that advocate for their access to beaches, say public agencies have made strides in recent years, but full access to beaches remains out of reach for the estimated one in 25 Californians who use a wheelchair or walker.

Here’s what’s available and how to get it

In California, there is no one body overseeing all public beaches. City governments, county governments and state government are all in charge of different beaches. And that creates a hodgepodge of policies and access accommodations that is difficult to navigate.

“It would be cool if somebody put together a website that listed all the beaches that were the most accessible,” said Jesse Billauer.

Billauer knows Southern California beaches well. He grew up surfing up and down the coast until he broke his neck in a surfing accident in 1996.

An event for people with disabilities organized by Life Rolls On at La Jolla.

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Cliff Schumacher

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Courtesy Jesse Billauer

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“Now I continue to surf and travel and do competitions. I'm a four-time adaptive surfing world champion,” he said.

He creates his own access for others by laying down beach mats and using other technology for Life Rolls On, an organization that takes people with disabilities surfing, among other activities.

In the absence of a single website, LAist looked at different sites to see what information was available. Here’s what we found:

Statewide list

This California government website lists beaches statewide that provide specially adapted beach wheelchairs, with large wheels that make it easier to roll on sand.

The website includes a map with dozens of pinned locations that offer information about beach wheelchairs up and down the California coast.

The number of beach wheelchairs at different beaches in SoCal varies. For example, there are six at Dockweiler State Beach, one at Hermosa Beach and one or two at each of Santa Monica’s four beach sites.

The site also has information about the hours wheelchairs are available, the ID you need to bring and telephone numbers to call.

Santa Monica

This website lists the places north and south of the Santa Monica Pier that make beach wheelchairs available.

Huntington Beach

Years ago, Huntington Beach built a number of concrete paths from public walkways into the sand to improve beach access for people with disabilities. The paths are called Spencer Ramps.

This website shows the location of Spencer ramps at city of Huntington Beach beaches. The ramps don’t reach the edge of the ocean.

The city updated its list of wheelchair beach accommodations this past summer and includes a list of the parking lots that provide wheelchair access to the sand.

San Diego

This list gives information about which San Diego beaches provide beach access mats, as well as manual and power beach wheelchairs.

At Mission Beach in San Diego, the city provides technology made by Freedom Trax that allows a wheelchair to rest on top of, and be driven by, a track system that looks like those on military tanks.

Progress and a ways to go

Advocates for people with disabilities say agencies need to make it easier to access public beaches by creating more visible information about what’s available, making more beach wheelchairs available and improving access to the ocean water.

“Orange County beaches have made some strides in accessibility, but there is still work to do before they can be considered fully accessible for all people with disabilities,” as well as older adults and military veterans, said Brittany Zazueta by email.

She’s the executive director of the Dayle McIntosh Center, a disability access nonprofit. The organization, she said, was key in the creation of the Spencer Ramps in Huntington Beach.

People like Billauer and Garcia are often frustrated when access falls short and call on other advocates to reach out to public agencies to tell them they want better access because the rewards are worth it.

“Our hope is that this message serves as a call to action for communities to continue removing barriers and creating spaces where everyone can fully participate and enjoy,” Zazueta said.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Across from an auto shop on Venice Boulevard and Albany Street sits a narrow, sunken strip of land lined with overgrown shrubs and cacti. It’s mostly filled with trash — from plastic bags and cups to containers, straws, chip bags and aluminum foil.

It’s original purpose was to capture and filter storm water runoff, helping reduce flooding and keep pollutants from flowing into the ocean. But neighbors in Pico Union say that this bioswale and many others across the city have become dumping grounds.

The sidewalk features were installed during former Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Complete Streets program around 2018. The initiative aimed to improve streets, add greenery and better manage stormwater along key corridors across the city.

Local resident Aurora Corona — a longtime Pico Union community organizer involved in local environmental and cleanup efforts — said in some instances it looks like the bioswales were not fully installed.

Citywide, there are about 23 bioswales that appear abandoned, Corona said. Many are located in central and South Los Angeles and spread across at least eight council districts.

In some cases, the concrete structures were installed but left without vegetation for years, Corona said, raising concerns that they were never able to function as intended.

Heberto Portobanco, owner of the Nicaraguan restaurant Portobanco in Pico Union, first noticed the bioswale outside his business about eight years ago, but it became hard to ignore about two years ago when it became a hazard.

“We had an accident, one of the people who does maintenance for us came and fell into it,” he said.

The bioswale was deeper and not fully finished, Portobanco said. After multiple people reported what happened to the city, Portobanco said the city added more soil to level it out.

“The idea might be nice, but if it’s not maintained, it’s a problem,” Portobanco said.

The biggest concern for Portobanco remains safety, especially as he said that people continue to use the space improperly or fail to notice it altogether.

He would be willing to help maintain the bioswale outside his restaurant if the city created a formal program to do so.

For him, keeping the space clean is also about pride and perception.

“I don’t want people to think that Latinos are careless and that we don’t take care of our surroundings,” he said, adding that a well-kept space could encourage others to take better care of the neighborhood.

Corona, the local organizer, has experienced similar issues to the ones Portobanco described. 

She lives near two bioswales, including the one near Portobanco’s restaurant.

She first encountered them while organizing a cleanup around 2024 and said she didn’t initially know what they were. What she did know was that they were not being taken care of.

“I was tired of seeing this being a dumping ground, they would just throw trash here all the time,” she said.

That frustration pushed her to take action. She thought of what she had already done with other public spaces in her community.

In 2024, she helped transform a neglected dirt space on Venice Boulevard and Union Avenue into a small community green area — also known as a median — using local grant funding. With the help of volunteers, they removed contaminated soil and planted drought-tolerant greenery.

“It’s only been here since November and it’s grown a lot,” she said about the green belt, pointing to plants that started as small pots and are now taking root.

Corona continues to organize cleanups and, through the city’s “Adopt-a-Median” program, works with neighbors to maintain the space. She said she’d like to see a similar model applied to bioswales — essentially an “Adopt-a-Bioswale” program that would allow residents to take ownership of the ones near them.

“I think people would step up if they were given the chance and the support,” she said.

Across from an auto shop on Venice Boulevard and Albany Street sits a narrow, sunken strip of land lined with overgrown shrubs and cacti. It’s mostly filled with trash — from plastic bags and cups to containers, straws, chip bags and aluminum foil.

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Marina Peña

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The LA Local

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The program for the bioswales, as she envisions it, would involve planting California natives such as dudleya edulis, dudleya pulverulenta and other species that can withstand the weather. It would also call for improving their visibility by painting the bioswale borders in colors that reflect the neighborhood.

That idea has already been discussed at the city level.

Steve Kang, president of the city’s Board of Public Works, agrees that many bioswales now sit “barren” and are treated as “more of a trash repository.” 

He said his office is now working to create a program similar to “Adopt-a-Median” that would allow community members and organizations to formally maintain bioswales.

“My intention is to make the process as seamless and easy as possible,” Kang said, adding that the goal is to launch the program sometime in 2026.

Under the proposal, participants would enter into agreements with the city, with support from the Office of Community Beautification, which can provide tools like gloves, trash bags and gardening supplies.

For residents like Corona and business owners like Portobanco, that kind of partnership could turn what are now neglected strips of land into something more useful. 

“If we take care of these spaces, they can become something people are proud of,” Corona said. “It changes how people see the neighborhood and how they treat it.”

Big Bear’s famous bald eagles — Jackie and Shadow — appear to be welcoming a new chick into the world.

The first pip, or crack, was spotted in one of the feathered duo’s two eggs around 10 a.m. Friday, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs a popular YouTube livestream of the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake.

More than 26,000 people were watching the livestream shortly after the organization confirmed a pip had been spotted, which signals that an eaglet is starting to poke its way out of the egg shell.

“Yesterday afternoon, evening and throughout the night we heard little chirps coming from the chick,” Friends of Big Bear Valley wrote on Facebook to more than a million followers. “This indicates that the chick was able to break the internal membrane and took its first breath of air.”

As of Friday, the first egg is around 38 days old and the second egg is about 35 days old. Jackie and Shadow's usual incubation timeline is around 38 to 40 days, according to the nonprofit.

There’s still time for the second egg to show signs of hatching, and a pip could be confirmed in the coming days.

What we know

Jenny Voisard, the organization’s media manager, told LAist earlier this week that hatching is an arduous process for chicks that takes some time.

For example, last season, the first chick hatched more than a day after the initial pip was confirmed, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley records. The second chick hatched about a day after pipping as well, and the third chick worked its way out into the world about two days after the first crack was confirmed.

The chicks may look like little blobs of gray fluff at first, but they grow quickly, as fans saw with Jackie and Shadow’s eaglets last year. One of last season’s trio of chicks, believed to be the eldest and most dominant sibling, died during a winter storm within weeks of hatching.

In March 2025, Jackie and Shadow welcomed two eaglet chicks with one remaining egg in their nest.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Jackie and Shadow's three chicks on March 7, 2025. One of the chicks later died, while Sunny and Gizmo successfully fledged a few months later.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Jackie and Shadow's eaglets during a feeding of fish in April 2025.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Sunny and Gizmo in Big Bear's famous bald eagle nest on Friday, April 18, 2025.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Viewers watched as the surviving eaglets, Sunny and Gizmo, grew from a few ounces to several pounds in a matter of months before fledging, or taking their first flight away from the nest, last June.

But any chicks arriving this season will have to learn how to feed before they can fly.

The initial meals may be a bit awkward while the chicks learn to sit up straight. Jackie and Shadow could start feeding the chicks the same day they hatch, typically tearing off pieces of fish or raw meat and holding it up to their beaks.

Bald eagles don’t regurgitate food for their young, unlike other birds. But the feathered parents do pass along a "substantial amount of saliva” full of electrolytes and antibodies to their chicks during feedings, according to the nonprofit.

Voisard said new life coming to the nest is a reminder “why it’s so important to conserve their lands.”

Big Bear fundraiser

Friends of Big Bear Valley is trying to raise $10 million by the end of July to purchase land pegged for a planned housing project that some say would harm rare plants and wildlife in the area, including bald eagles.

You can learn more about the fundraiser here.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta provided guidance this week to childcare providers on new legal requirements to protect children and their families from immigration enforcement activities.

Under a new law that went into effect this year, childcare providers are not allowed to collect information about a child's or family member’s immigration status, unless necessary under state or federal law. Bonta’s office says there currently is no such requirement, though that could change with federal programs like Head Start.

“Childcare and preschool facilities should be safe and secure spaces so children can grow, learn and simply be children,” Bonta said in a statement.

His office says daycare centers also should not keep information about a formerly enrolled child longer than is required by state law.

The new law also requires facilities to inform the attorney general’s office and the state’s licensing agency if they get any requests for information from law enforcement related to immigration enforcement.

Facilities also must ask families to regularly update a child’s emergency contact information to make sure someone can be reached in case a parent is detained by federal immigration officials.