Fiona Ng
is LAist's deputy managing editor and leads a team of reporters who explore food, culture, history, events and more.
Published January 3, 2026 5:00 AM
Kevin Cooley and his family's lot in Altadena. They lost their house in the Eaton Fire a year ago.
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Kevin Cooley
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Courtesy Kevin Cooley
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Topline:
Photographer Kevin Cooley takes photographs of wildfires for a living. A year ago, he and his family lost their home in the Eaton Fire.
The story: LAist has been following Cooley's life in the year since the January fire, as he ponders the long road ahead. The photographs he has taken in Altadena have helped to keep him anchored. He'd drive up to the neighborhood as many as several times a week to shoot anything that caught his eyes.
The context: It began with wildflowers and plants that pushed out from the fire rubble. And recently, Cooley has turned his lens on some of the folks who are living on their lots in makeshift dwellings. They call themselves, he said, "the homesteaders."
Read on ... for the story and to see the photographs that have led Cooley home.
The pull of Altadena has never let up for Kevin Cooley and his family — through fire, debris and the long, current stretch where the lot that once held their house on El Molino Avenue has sat barren.
"There's no more fire debris. It's all gone. I mean, there's certainly a reminder of the fire everywhere," Cooley said. "It's just all construction ... and lots that are for sale."
A rock denoting Kevin Cooley's home in front of his lot in Altadena. Cooley lost his house in the Eaton Fire a year before.
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Fiona Ng
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LAist
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The Altadena lot where Kevin Cooley and his family's house once sat before the Eaton Fire.
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Fiona Ng
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LAist
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Kevin Cooley sitting next to his cleared lot in Altadena.
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Fiona Ng
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LAist
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'Like a rollercoaster'
"It's been a lot of fluctuation, like a rollercoaster," Cooley said of the decision-making process. "Just not knowing what the right thing to do is."
The January fire wiped out nearly a decade's worth of life he and his family built in Altadena, confronting them with what Cooley called a "blank slate."
In a whirlwind year of trying to put their lives back together, the thought of whether it's just easier — and less costly — to start anew elsewhere has crossed their minds.
"It's daunting but also kind of interesting to think about all the possibilities that you could have," Cooley said.
Along the way, Cooley, a photographer, turned to his art to make sense of all that was lost — and ended up forging an even deeper relationship with this place.
A picture of roses found growing on a lot on Calaveras Street in Altadena. Cooley says this photo best encapsulates his intention for the series.
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Kevin Cooley
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He told me about his first impression of Altadena — how it seemed "impossibly far away." How the interminable drive that day up Lake Avenue deposited him on the Echo Mountain trail — "one of the most beautiful hikes I've ever been on." How the neighborhood quickly became their entire world after he and his wife bought the place on El Molino, some eight years later.
" I walked my kid to school. My wife, Bridget, she would ride her bike to work," he said. " I mean, that's not what you think of as living in Los Angeles, but yet, it's so close in a lot of ways to everything in L.A."
Home sick
Since the fire, Cooley has been coming up to Altadena, sometimes as many as several times a week. He would drive around the neighborhood, over and over again, to take pictures of whatever might catch his eyes.
His route always begins at his lot on El Molino.
Aloe on Harriet Street.
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Kevin Cooley
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Courtesy Kevin Cooley
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" It seems like a natural starting point and also a place to reflect on coming back, to seeing if it's really a place that I want to rebuild my life again," Cooley said.
About six months ago, he told me he was photographing flowers and plants that rose out of the fire's impossible ruins and burnt trees that managed to sprout new growth.
A redwood palm on Palm Street.
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Kevin Cooley
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Courtesy Kevin Cooley
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A ponytail palm on Athens Street.
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Kevin Cooley
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Courtesy Kevin Cooley
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The 'homesteaders'
Since Thanksgiving, he started to fix his lens on some of the folks living in temporary dwellings on their lots.
"They call themselves the 'homesteaders,'" Cooley said.
Homesteader Tom in Altadena.
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Kevin Cooley
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Courtesy Kevin Cooley
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Cooley took me on a drive, pointing out an Airstream on one block ... then a tiny box of an ADU down another ... then a trailer the size of a school bus ... then a tent ... then a giant RV. A sign in front of it says, "My entire life burned in Altadena and all I got was a stupid sign."
"They're all intending on coming back in a permanent way, but in the meantime, they have many different reasons for being here," Cooley said.
For some, they simply could not stay away.
An Airstream in Altadena.
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Kevin Cooley
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Courtesy Kevin Cooley
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"Being elsewhere has been really hard on them," he said. " They want to feel a connection to this place. They want to be back in Altadena."
Cooley photographed the homesteaders the same way as the wildflowers and the trees, with strobe lights illuminating his subjects against a darkened backdrop at dusk.
Homesteaders Michael and Brooke in Altadena.
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Kevin Cooley
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Courtesy Kevin Cooley
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" Those homesteaders are like the human equivalent of what the plants are doing," he said. " My idea was to have them match conceptually and visually."
As we drove around, with the majestic mountains sporting a dense coat of Kelly green as our constant North Star, it's impossible to miss the new phase Altadena has entered — as debris and wreckage gave way to neat, empty lots and "For sale" signs to now the wooden frames sprouting into shape on many blocks, all within a year's time.
A fact of life
And these in-between moments of resiliency — be it the plants or the homesteaders — are disappearing quickly.
"People are building so fast and some people have already built, finished and have moved in. Photographing people in these temporary conditions is almost, again, a race against time," he said.
But their resolve, their longing to be rooted, has reaffirmed his own decision to stay.
A rusted, beat-up VW bus in Altadena
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Kevin Cooley
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Courtesy Kevin Cooley
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Cooley and his wife still will rebuild. They now need to settle on one of the two companies on their shortlist for the job.
This time, the family will have a home tailored to their needs. For Cooley, that means a proper art studio space, instead of working out of the garage like he did before.
Above all, their new house will be built with the next fire in mind.
" Wildfires are a fact of life in California," he has told me every time we meet. "That would mean building the most fire-hardened house possible."
27th Street Bakery co-owner Jeanette Bolden-Pickens removes sweet potato pies from the oven Feb. 12.
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LaMonica Peters
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The LA Local
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Topline:
For the last 70 years, the 27th Street Bakery hasn’t just been the go-to place for people who want to spend less time in the kitchen — it’s become a staple in South Central, providing jobs and security for people living in the neighborhood.
The history: The bakery sits on Central Avenue, the focal point of Black Los Angeles between the 1930s and 1960s. As segregation laws were struck down, Black people in LA began to move elsewhere and took their businesses with them. The bakery, though, is still Black-owned and operating 70 years later.
Read on ... for more on the local landmark.
For the last 70 years, the 27th Street Bakery hasn’t just been the go-to place for people who want to spend less time in the kitchen — it’s become a staple in South Central, providing jobs and security for people living in the neighborhood.
The bakery is Black-owned and in its third generation as a business. It’s co-owned by sisters Denise Cravin-Paschal and Olympic gold-medalist Jeanette Bolden-Pickens, as well as her husband Al Pickens.
“My grandfather employed a lot of people around here as he was growing his business and so have we,” Cravin-Paschal told the LA Local. “They feel that this is a safe place to come. We have the respect of being here for 70 years and so we enjoy it.”
The bakery sits on Central Avenue, the focal point of Black Los Angeles between the 1930s and 1960s. As segregation laws were struck down, Black people in LA began to move elsewhere and took their businesses with them. The bakery, though, is still Black-owned and operating 70 years later.
Today it is considered the largest manufacturer of sweet potato pies on the West Coast, the bakery’s website states. Last year, the city and District 9 Councilmember Curren Price Jr. presented the bakery with a plaque that reads: “A Walk Down Central Avenue — A legacy of community: powered by the people and its places.”
It hangs on the wall in the bakery’s lobby along with several other photos and recognitions they’ve received over the years.
“Our goal is to keep this legacy alive and we’re celebrating 70 years of being here in business. We are so grateful to the community,” Bolden-Pickens said.
In celebration of its anniversary, a sign in the bakery says it is offering one slice of sweet potato pie for 70 cents on Saturdays starting this weekend through Oct. 31.
The bakery was a restaurant at first bringing Southern flavor to LA
The bakery began as a restaurant in the 1930s on Central Avenue founded by Harry and Sadie Patterson, according to the family and Los Angeles Conservancy. Back then, Central Avenue was the epicenter of LA’s Black community and Patterson, who came from Shreveport, Louisiana, decided to bring his Southern recipes to life in Los Angeles.
The restaurant later became a bakery in 1956, according to the bakery’s website. Patterson’s daughter Alberta Cravin and her son Gregory Spann took over the bakery in 1980. After Spann passed away, Cravin’s daughters — the sisters who are current owners — took over the family business. Five other relatives also help them out, Cravin-Paschal said.
These days, the bakery is open Tuesday through Saturday each week and the bulk of their customers are other businesses. They serve nearly 300 vendors including convenience stores like 7-Eleven, Ralphs grocery stores, Smart & Final, ARCO gas stations, restaurants and other mom-and-pop stores. Louisiana Fried Chicken has been a customer since 1980, Cravin-Paschal said.
An average delivery today is usually 45 dozen pies and they also ship orders out of state, Cravin-Paschal said.
She also told The LA Local they have six full time employees and most of them have worked for the bakery at least 25 years.
“I like working here, I like the people,” Maximina “Maxi” Rodriguez, a longtime employee, told The LA Local. After 32 years at the bakery, she said she plans to retire in June. “I’m going to miss it.”
Rodriguez said working at the bakery is a family affair for her, too. Her sister, Guadalupe Garibaldi, has worked at the bakery for over 40 years and her niece, Yoselin Garibaldi, is now a cashier and driver.
Patterson’s lessons inspired 3 generations to keep the business running
For Bolden-Pickens and Cravin-Paschal, running the bakery is a labor of love. Both told The LA Local that their grandfather taught them to stay true to the fresh ingredients they use and not to cut corners.
These lessons helped Bolden-Pickens in her life before taking over the family business. She won a gold medal as part of the U.S. 4×100 meter relay team in track and field during the 1984 Olympics.
“What I learned from being an Olympian is that it takes a lot of hard work. I learned that from my grandfather,” she said.
Bolden-Pickens said it hasn’t been easy running the business, but they’ve been able to stay afloat because of the lessons learned from their grandfather.
“I remember during the pandemic, we actually had to go to the egg farm and stand in line for a couple of hours just to get the eggs that we needed,” Bolden-Pickens said. “We use the best spices. We make our own vanilla.”
Cravin-Paschal said after the death of their brother Gregory Spann, who was the main baker for nearly two decades, they struggled for a few years to keep the recipe and taste consistent. But eventually they figured it out.
“We had a little rough spot because we all know the recipes but you have to put it together (correctly),” Cravin-Paschal said. “Now we’re back to the original taste.”
A person prepares a marijuana cigarette in New York City on April 20, 2024.
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Leonardo Munoz
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Getty Images
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Topline:
As marijuana use among teens has grown in the past decade, researchers have been trying to better understand the health risks of the drug. Now, a new longitudinal study finds that cannabis use among adolescents increases risks of being diagnosed with bipolar and psychotic disorders, as well as anxiety and depression, years later.
What was the study: Researchers analyzed health data on 460,000 teenagers in the Kaiser Permanente Health System in Northern California. The teens were followed until they were 25 years old.
What was the result: They found that the teens who reported using cannabis in the past year were at a higher risk of being diagnosed with several mental health conditions a few years later, compared to teens who didn't use cannabis.
Read on ... for more on what the study found.
As marijuana use among teens has grown in the past decade, researchers have been trying to better understand the health risks of the drug. Now, a new longitudinal study finds that cannabis use among adolescents increases risks of being diagnosed with bipolar and psychotic disorders, as well as anxiety and depression, years later.
Researchers analyzed health data on 460,000 teenagers in the Kaiser Permanente Health System in Northern California. The teens were followed until they were 25 years old. The data included annual screenings for substance use and any mental health diagnoses from the health records. Researchers excluded the adolescents who had symptoms of mental illnesses before using cannabis.
"We looked at kids using cannabis before they had any evidence of these psychiatric conditions and then followed them to understand if they were more likely or less likely to develop them," says Dr. Lynn Silver, a pediatrician and researcher at the Public Health Institute, and an author of the new study.
They found that the teens who reported using cannabis in the past year were at a higher risk of being diagnosed with several mental health conditions a few years later, compared to teens who didn't use cannabis.
Teens who reported using cannabis had twice the risk of developing two serious mental illnesses: bipolar, which manifests as alternating episodes of depression and mania, and psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia which involve a break with reality.
Now, only a small fraction — nearly 4,000 — of all teens in the study were diagnosed with each of these two disorders. Both bipolar and psychotic disorders are among the most serious and disabling of mental illnesses.
"Those are the scarier conditions that we worry about," says Sultan.
Silver points out these illnesses are expensive to treat and come at a high cost to society. The U.S. cannabis market is an industry with a value in the tens-of-billions — but the societal cost of schizophrenia has been calculated to be $350 billion a year.
"And if we increase the number of people who develop that condition in a way that's preventable, that can wipe out the whole value of the cannabis market," Silver says.
Depression and anxiety too
The new study also found that the risk for more common conditions like depression and anxiety was also higher among cannabis users.
"Depression alone went up by about a third," says Silver, "and anxiety went up by about a quarter."
But the link between cannabis use and depression and anxiety got weaker for teens who were older when they used cannabis. "Which really shows the sensitivity of the younger child's brain to the effects of cannabis," says Silver. "The brain is still developing. The effects of cannabis on the receptors in the brain seem to have a significant impact on their neurological development and the risk for these mental health disorders."
Silver hopes these findings will make teens more cautious about using the drug, which is not as safe as people perceive it to be.
"With legalization, we've had a tremendous wave of this perception of cannabis as a safe, natural product to treat your stress with," she says. "That is simply not true."
The new study is well designed and gets at "the chicken or the egg, order-of-operations question," says Sultan. There have been other past studies that have also found a link between cannabis use and mental health conditions, especially psychosis. But, those studies couldn't tell whether cannabis affected the likelihood of developing mental health symptoms or whether people with existing problems were more likely to use cannabis — perhaps to treat their symptoms.
But by excluding teens who were already showing mental health symptoms, the new study suggests a causal link between cannabis use and later mental health diagnoses. Additional research is needed to understand the link fully.
'Playing with fire'
Sultan, the psychiatrist and researcher at Columbia University, says the study confirms what he's seeing in his clinic — more teens using cannabis who've developed new or worsening mental health symptoms.
"It is most common around anxiety and depression, but it's also showing up in more severe conditions like bipolar disorder and psychosis," he says.
He notes that mental health disorders are complex in origin. A host of risk factors, like genetics, environment, lifestyle and life experiences all play a role. And some young people are more at risk than others.
"When someone has a psychotic episode in the context of cannabis or a manic episode in the context of cannabis, clinicians are going to say, 'Please do not do that again because you're you're you're playing with fire,'" he says.
Because the more they use the drug, he says the more likely that their symptoms will worsen over time, making recovery harder.
"What we're worried about [is if] you sort of get stuck in psychosis, it gets harder and harder to pull the person back," says Sultan. "Psychosis and severe mood disorders, particularly bipolar disorder are like seizures in your brain. They're sort of neurotoxic to your brain, and so it seems to be associated with a more rapid deterioration of the brain."
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Teenagers ride electric motorcycles along the La Jolla coastline at sunset Dec. 27, 2025, in San Diego.
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Kevin Carter
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Getty Images
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Topline:
A proposed bill in the California legislature would require certain electric bikes to register with the Department of Motor Vehicles and to carry license plates.
Why does it matter?: This proposal would make it easier to identify people involved in dangerous incidents.
Why now?: E-bike related injuries increased 18-fold between 2018 and 2023, according to data from the Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System.
Read on for more details …
Some electric bikes in California could soon require license plates under a proposed state bill aiming to address the rise in electric bike related injuries.
AB 1942 or the E-bike Accountability Act, would apply exclusively to Class 2 and Class 3 electric bikes.
Class 2 bikes can be operated without peddling until it reaches the speed of 20 mph.
Class 3 bikes reach a max speed of 28 mph; motor assist could only kick in with peddling.
The bill would also require owners to carry proof of ownership and would direct the Department of Motor Vehicles to establish a registration process. It was introduced by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan of Orinda in Contra Costa County earlier this month.
E-bike injuries spiked 18-fold between 2018 and 2023, according to state traffic data.
NASA could launch four astronauts on a mission to fly around the moon as soon as March 6th.
The backstory: The Artemis II test flight will send four astronauts on an approximately 600,000-mile trip around the moon and back. It will mark the first time that people have ventured to the moon since the final Apollo lunar mission in 1972.
What's next: There's still some pending work that remains to be done out at the launch pad, and officials will have to conduct a multi-day flight readiness review late next week to make sure that every aspect of the mission is truly ready to go.
NASA could launch four astronauts on a mission to fly around the moon as soon as March 6.
That's the launch date that the space agency is now working toward following a successful test fueling of its big, 322-foot tall moon rocket, which is standing on a launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"This is really getting real," says Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator of NASA's exploration systems development mission directorate. "It's time to get serious and start getting excited."
But she cautioned that there's still some pending work that remains to be done out at the launch pad, and officials will have to conduct a multi-day flight readiness review late next week to make sure that every aspect of the mission is truly ready to go.
"We need to successfully navigate all of those, but assuming that happens, it puts us in a very good position to target March 6th," she says, noting that the flight readiness review will be "extensive and detailed."
The Artemis II test flight will send four astronauts on an approximately 600,000-mile trip around the moon and back. It will mark the first time that people have ventured to the moon since the final Apollo lunar mission in 1972.
When NASA workers first tested out fueling the rocket earlier this month, they encountered problems like a liquid hydrogen leak. Swapping out some seals and other work seems to have fixed these issues, according to officials who say that the latest countdown dress rehearsal went smoothly, despite glitches such as a loss of ground communications in the Launch Control Center that forced workers to temporarily use backups.
Members of the Artemis II crew — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — are starting their roughly two-week quarantine to limit their exposure to illnesses before their flight.
Glaze says she spoke to several of the astronauts during the recent test fueling, as they were in Florida to observe the preparations. "They're all very, very excited," she says. "They are really getting a lot of anticipation for a potential launch in March."
