The Brief

It's been said that real estate is one of Southern Californians' favorite past times. But one L.A. company has made the dangers that lurk beneath SoCal buildings into a booming business, while turning what they see on the job into social content.

"Steel. Concrete. Wood. Dirt. Anything related to that, if it's an existing building or slope, that's what we do," said Kyle Tourjé, executive vice president at the structural engineering firm Alpha Structural, which specializes in foundation construction and hillside repairs.

"That includes retaining walls collapsing, retaining walls that have already collapsed and went down 200 feet down a mountain, massive landslides, houses that are sinking, houses that are built of wood construction that have pervasive termite damage, houses that have maybe pervasive termite damage that may not be that bad," said Tourjé, who is part of the third generation of Tourjés at the family-owned and run business.

A big gaping hole in a balcony floor of a home from deferred maintenance.

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Courtesy Alpha Structural, Inc

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The company also tackles earthquake retrofits, modifies big steel structures, builds underground rooms, bigger yards, hillside decks, and more.

A giant crack running along the entire length of a foundation.

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Courtesy Alpha Structural, Inc

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Skulls, secret chambers, and other oddities

That line of work has exposed Tourjé and his colleagues to some strange discoveries in the subterranean world of crawlspaces and basements. He said he's found in these darkened corners Nazi war medals, a skull (not from a missing person, as confirmed by the coroner) that was at least a thousand years old, and a secret basement accessible only through a trapdoor behind a bookcase.

"We see so many weird things," he said.

The structural posts for the deck of this home are improperly secured.

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Courtesy Alpha Structural, Inc

)

For years, Tourjé and his team would share these finds with the rest of the staff, including the bread and butter of their business: jaw-dropping structural issues caused by everything from prolonged exposure to the elements, shoddy workmanship, deferred maintenance, to the fact that many houses and buildings in the region were constructed at a time when standards and codes simply lagged behind.

"Foundation and structural damages is not uncommon here with aging housing inventory," he said, which the company soon discovered made for popular content. "People love gaping cracks and sagging beams and landslides where the whole yard disappeared."

Making social content

Some eight years ago, Tourjé said Alpha started to share these photos of structural damage to members and clients on their email list — with respect to a client's privacy and without identifying the house.

A huge tree collapsed onto a house.

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Courtesy Alpha Structural, Inc

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Later, they expanded to social media in a feature called, "Things seen this week during structural assessments!"

The response has been tremendous, he said, with "tons of interactions" and engagement from viewers.

"Our content is primarily done for educational purposes to show various things, like structural distress, geotechnical damage. But it's also a form of entertainment," he said. "Different people that work here have like different fanbases now on Imgur."

Frequent visits to Rancho Palos Verdes

Tourjé said the company books more than 100 appointments a week. Of late, some of those calls have taken them to Rancho Palos Verdes, where persistent land movement has caused damage to many homes.

A house that's collapsing due to land movement in Rancho Palos Verdes.

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Courtesy Alpha Structural, Inc

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"It's a very sad situation," he said. "We're the people that are known to fix the impossible.... and there are some properties in this case, in the PV Peninsula, that are impossible to salvage."

In a profound way, that's just one of the many unimaginable worlds his work has brought him face-to-face with.

The world under L.A. buildings

"It just sounds kind of like a boring technical industry," he said. But, "the intersectionality of what we do [goes] across environmentalism, Los Angeles culture and history."

One of company's latest job, Tourjé said, is to waterproof and perform structural repair to a building in downtown L.A. with something largely unseen and unknown underneath — an abandoned underground subway tunnel network that are miles and miles long.

A DIY deck built without permits.

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Courtesy Alpha Structural, Inc

)

"People drive over the street and they have no idea that there's a giant subway tunnel that hasn't been seen for a hundred years, and people don't realize that there are hundreds of miles of abandoned tunnel networks under the city of L.A.," Tourjé said. "And you only know this if you do deep googling or you walk into it like we do."

And maybe, just maybe, the rest of L.A. would soon get to see photos or videos of it in our social feeds.

It’s been four years since James Oreste started Ubefest, a festival meant to highlight the purple yam that’s become beloved not just in the Filipino diaspora but across the country. In that time, the food festival has grown in the number of vendors and become a broader appreciation of Filipino cuisine.

The restaurant:

This year's event is happening Saturday April 11 and Sunday April 12 in Cerritos. One of the festival’s vendors, Emerson Baja, owner of Long Beach Lumpia, has been involved with the event for years, and he came into the studio to talk to host Austin Cross.

The food:

Baja’s pop-up menu was inspired by a variety of things, with the traditional aspects of his menu coming from his family and other aspects by food he experimented with while attending Long Beach State. He became a probation officer after he graduated college, but his heart was always with food, specifically lumpia, which he served at a potluck.

“People were like ‘you’re in the wrong business,’” Baja said.

For the segment, Baja brought in a variety of lumpias: traditional Shanghai; pork chile verde; veggie pancit pizza; and ube cheesecake turon.

The verdict: 

When Emerson mentioned the Shanghai lumpia being a homemade recipe, Cross added, “Home is delicious! You have a home like this?”

“It’s finger-licking good over here,” Cross said after his first bite of the ube cheesecake turon lumpia. He added: “It’s really special because it has an aftertaste of a very heartwarming pastry…feels very homey.”

Listen to the full conversation here:

President Donald Trump has endorsed Steve Hilton for California governor, a move that could possibly consolidate Republican voters ahead of the still wide-open primary election in June.

Hilton, a former Fox News host based in the Bay Area who previously served as a political adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron, has campaigned on the goal of improving California’s hostile relationship with the federal administration. He and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco are the only two Republicans among the 10 notable candidates in the primary field.

“I have known and respected Steve Hilton, who is running for Governor of California, for many years. He is a truly fine man, one who has watched as this once great State has gone to Hell,” Trump wrote early Monday on his social media site, Truth Social. “Steve Hilton has my COMPLETE & TOTAL ENDORSEMENT. He will be a GREAT Governor and, importantly, WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!!!”

With Democratic voters split, Hilton and Bianco have risen to the top of public polling in the race, threatening to leave the majority party in the state without a candidate in the top-two general election. Now, Trump’s endorsement could boost Hilton and allow a Democrat to overtake Bianco.

“It certainly increases the chances that a Democrat is going to make it into the top two,” said Tim Rosales, a Republican strategist. “The Bianco campaign has to reassess and reposition themselves in the wake of this, but the Democrats still don’t have a clear front-runner.”

In the most recent public polling, Hilton and Bianco have occupied a crowded top five alongside three Democrats: Rep. Eric Swalwell, investor Tom Steyer and former Rep. Katie Porter.

Hilton and Bianco often split the Republican Party’s support about evenly in polling, and a March primary election simulator created by Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., put the odds of a Republican-only general election at about 25%.

If that were the case, the state would have a Republican governor for the first time in more than two decades.

In an interview with KQED’s Political Breakdown, Hilton touted his relationship with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and vowed to work collaboratively with the Trump administration to boost California’s timber industry and manage forests.

“There’s a whole set of positive things we can do if we work more closely with the federal government on that issue,” he said.

While he told Politico that as of last week, he hadn’t spoken to Trump about the gubernatorial race, he’s repeatedly invoked the president’s own campaign slogan, saying that as governor, he would “Make California Great Again.”

Trump remains deeply unpopular in California, with just 30% of likely voters approving of the job he is doing as president, per a February poll from the Public Policy Institute of California. But that same survey found Trump’s support remains strong among California Republicans, with 76% approval.

“Republican voters still hold the president in pretty high regard,” Rosales said. “It certainly does make Hilton the front-runner amongst Republicans, and in a top-two primary like this, where you’ve got a crowded field, anything that a candidate can do that really solidifies a base of voters is critically important.”

The loyalty of the GOP base has allowed Trump to play kingmaker in past California primary elections. In 2018, he endorsed businessman John Cox, boosting Cox into the general election and dashing the prospects of an all-Democrat general election between Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Before Trump’s overnight endorsement, Bianco also seemed to have been courting the president’s support, launching a high-profile recount of ballots cast in last November’s special election, when California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50 to redraw congressional maps to favor Democrats. Last month, Bianco seized more than 650,000 ballots, calling the unprecedented investigation a “fact-finding mission” into potential voter fraud, which Trump has often called rampant despite a lack of evidence.

Many Republican strategists, however, believed that the party’s best chance to win both spots in the primary relied on Trump’s staying out of it. The state’s GOP also hasn’t weighed in, though it’s expected to decide whether to make an endorsement at its upcoming convention next weekend.

Now that celebrity bald eagles Jackie and Shadow have welcomed two new chicks, tens of thousands of fans are regularly tuning into the livestream of the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake for a peak at the fuzzy eaglets.

The chicks, which hatched Saturday night and Easter Sunday morning, will be referred to as Chick 1 and Chick 2 for now, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs the popular YouTube livestream.

The eaglets are still gaining strength in their first few days of life — learning to move neck muscles and pick up pieces of meat from mama Jackie and papa Shadow’s beaks. Those early feedings can be challenging or awkward, and the organization often refers to the chicks as “bobbleheads” at this stage.

Some fans worried about the second chick struggling to hold its head and getting enough food, but both eaglets are doing “great,” according to Jenny Voisard, Friends of Big Bear Valley’s media manager.

“Trust the process, trust the eagles, and settle in and enjoy these cute little fur balls because they change every day,” Voisard said. “And you don't want to miss this time, because they're just so precious.”

Sibling 'bonking'

The eaglets are tiny — each weighs about a few ounces — in a nest that’s estimated to be 6-feet deep. The nest sits near the top of a Jeffrey pine tree on the north side of Big Bear Lake.

Chicks multiply in size over the first weeks and months of life, establishing a pecking order along the way, according to the nonprofit.

Viewers may notice Chick 1 and Chick 2 headbutting each other, a sibling rivalry behavior that the organization calls “bonking.” Voisard said it’s “totally normal” in the nest, especially since the chicks can’t see very well at this stage.

“It won't last too long,” she said. “There is plenty of food for them to eat, and so they shouldn't be in competition with each other.”

Last season’s trio of chicks participated in bonking for a while.

Voisard said Sunny and Gizmo went on to be “best friends” before they flew away from the nest last June. One of last season’s chicks, which the nonprofit named “Misty,” didn’t survive a winter storm within weeks of hatching.

For Jackie and Shadow, everything now revolves around stocking up food and making sure the chicks are safe, warm and dry in the nest, Voisard said.

“They do a very good job, and we've been seeing fish deliveries and other prey the last couple of days and the chicks are hungrily gobbling it up,” she said.

Upcoming naming contest

Now that the chicks have hatched, many people are wondering what their names will be — and offering suggestions. The nonprofit said it’s seen hundreds of requests to name one of the chicks “Sandy” in honor of Sandy Steers.

Steers was an environmental advocate who helped launch the eagle livestream and the late executive director of Friends of Big Bear Valley. She died in February, a few weeks before the pair of eggs were laid.

But the organization said that’s not what Steers would have wanted. Voisard said Steers loved having Big Bear third-grade students select the eaglets’ names, and Friends of Big Bear Valley plans to keep the tradition going.

“We are working on a way to honor, memorialize Sandy in something that’s more permanent,” Voisard said.

The naming privileges are usually given to the third-graders because they study bald eagles in school, but last year was a bit of an exception. The fourth- and fifth -grade classes were invited to help select names because Jackie and Shadow didn’t have chicks in 2023 and 2024, when the students would've been in third-grade.

"We want to make sure we're doing it the way that [Steers] wanted to do it, and those kids live for being able to do this,” Voisard said. “It's a right of passage.”

Friends of Big Bear Valley is expected to launch a naming contest where the public can submit ideas for this season’s eaglets, and the details will be announced online. A random list of names will be pulled from the submissions and shared with Big Bear third-grade students for the final vote.

Chick 1 and Chick 2 will then be officially named based on the results of the students’ ballots.