The Brief

In 1985, the Shaquille O'Neal of movie rental stores opened in Dallas, Texas, with an supersized inventory of 8,000 VHS and 2,000 Beta tapes and a computer system to keep track of checkouts.

In two decades, that one standalone Blockbuster Video in the Lone Star State had ballooned into a chain of 9,000 outlets, only to collapse over the course of the 2010s with just a single store currently remaining.

But the memories live on — of the Friday night visits, of strolling through displays upon displays of DVDs, of that distinct Blockbuster smell of popcorn and carpet cleaner and plastic cases. All that is to say, the memories of actually having to exert effort, darn it, to watch a rental from the comfort of your sofa.

"I think that people just remember when there was more 'third spaces' — places that weren't home or work that they can go and be with people, and the experience of actually being able to peruse things in a physical space. I think we've lost a lot of that from streaming," said Alyssa Kollgaard, a video game developer in Los Angeles. "I've heard that a lot from people that they feel like, oh, coming home from the bus, I'd be so excited to see what's new and to check out a movie and to grab a snack and to bring something back."

To pay tribute to that experience, Kollgaard and her husband built and installed a little pantry box, painted in the video store's signature blue and yellow, in front of their Sun Valley home near the corner of Wicks Street and Wealtha Avenue. Inside their Little Free Blockbuster are boxed candies, books, and more than 70 movies on DVD for the community to take, watch, share, and (maybe) return.

"Some things probably will never get returned, but that's totally OK," she said. "The [film] that is the most popular, that people have commented on a million times, is that I have the extended edition of Lord of the Rings in there, and Reefer Madness, surprisingly, is one that people are excited about also."

The majority of the DVDs on offer are from Kollgaard's vast personal collection, which she and her husband have been amassing for years. Others come from sources like her friends, or from her Buy Nothing group. Since the recent grand opening of the movie pantry, Kollgaard says she's already been getting fresh inventory.

"I've had a lot of drop offs and donations and swap outs," she said. "I have a back stock of people who have donated things that are ready to get circulated out there as things get taken."

Kollgaard's Little Free Blockbuster isn't the only one in the L.A. region. There's long been one in Los Feliz and she said she learned of a new entry in Reseda that opened just days before hers. These franchises are part of a larger national Free Blockbuster movement that started in 2019 in L.A. to bring movies to different communities, much like what Little Free Library did with books.

For Kollgaard, she's already thinking about expanding the experience. She is adding a guest book for people to note down what they rent out, and in the future, there could even be the ultimate in Blockbuster accoutrements.

"I'm going to try and print out membership cards for people who want them just for fun," Kollgaard said.

In the meantime, she's focused on keeping her DIY video store stocked and curated.

"I am trying to find things that aren't available on streaming or that are kind of cult classics and interesting that people maybe haven't experienced before," she said.

SANTA CLARA — The U.S. men's national team's ambitions of a deep run at the FIFA World Cup hang on something they have not accomplished since 2021: Beating a team from Europe.

In Wednesday's must-win round of 32 match at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, the Americans hope to finally climb that hill with a win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. A victory would mark the first World Cup knockout win for the U.S. since 2002.

Compared to powerhouses like France or Spain, Bosnia is a relative minnow of European soccer. Ranked No. 64 by FIFA ahead of the World Cup, the Bosnians fought their way into the tournament on an upset playoff win over Italy in March — then, they muscled into the knockout round after a 1-1 draw with Canada and a 3-1 win over Qatar.

The Americans are the favorites. But no knockout game is a sure thing, as Germany proved Monday when it fell to Paraguay on penalty kicks.

"For us, it's the final of the World Cup," said U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino on Tuesday. "If we don't think in this way, we are going to struggle."

The U.S. expects to field a fully healthy starting 11 for the first time in this World Cup, thanks to the return of star winger Christian Pulisic, who left the opening game against Paraguay at halftime after a calf injury was exacerbated when he was kicked by a defender. The U.S. went on to win that game 4-1 and their next one against Australia 2-0, with Pulisic sitting out.

U.S. fans have had many reasons to believe at this World Cup. The U.S. won its group and has moved on to the Round of 32.

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Ted S. Warren

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AP

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Pulisic returned as a sub in the Americans' third group stage match against Turkey. "I felt great in the game against Turkey, so I'm feeling good this week," he told reporters on Tuesday. "I'm definitely ready to go for tomorrow."

Playing for Bosnia is the American-born winger Esmir Bajraktarević, a 21-year-old native of Appleton, Wis., born to Bosnian parents who came to the U.S. in 2001 after fleeing conflict in their home country during the 1990s.

In Bosnia, Bajraktarević's parents and their families lived near Srebrenica, where some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in July 1995 in one of the only events in history formally deemed a genocide by the International Court of Justice. Multiple members of their families were killed.

Bajraktarević grew up speaking Bosnian at home, he has said, and stayed close with relatives who remained in Bosnia. Although he came up through MLS academies and U.S. Soccer youth national teams, Bajraktarević formally switched his national team to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2024.

Bajraktarević scored the game-clinching penalty that sent Bosnia to the World Cup in its March upset of Italy, which was then ranked No. 13 in the world. After his kick found the net, Bajraktarević tore off his jersey and held up the back of it, with his family name across the top, to the fans and cameras.

"He can feel the jersey he's wearing. It means very much to him," said Bosnian coach Sergej Barbarez on Tuesday. "He knows where he belongs. He knows which team he plays for. He knows where his parents come from."

It is Bosnia's second World Cup appearance after being eliminated in the group stage in 2014.

Watch parties in L.A.

Time: 5 p.m.
Locations:
Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park
25820 Vermont Ave., Harbor City

Sheldon-Arleta Park
12455 Wicks St., Sun Valley

Taper Auditorium (Central Library)
630 W. Fifth St., Los Angeles

Copyright 2026 NPR

West Hollywood will allow law enforcement to deploy drones as first responders under a new pilot program. As part of an update to the City Council on Monday night, officials say the program will launch by the end of July.

Under the program, the drones will be sent out ahead of law enforcement officers and will be used to gather information, including whether a suspect is on the move, changes clothes, and other details that could aid in an investigation.

West Hollywood, which does not have its own police department and contracts with the L.A County Sheriff’s Department for police services, is the first and only city so far to contract with the county to use drones as first responders.

The Los Angeles Police Department launched their own program in the city of L.A. in 2025.

The backstory and timeline  

• In February 2023, the West Hollywood City Council directed staff to explore a partnership with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for the development of an “advanced public safety technology” pilot program.

• In August 2023, the council and the city’s Public Safety Commission held a joint meeting where they reviewed different public safety technology options, including the potential use of drones as first responders.

• In July 2024, the council greenlit drone use for policing as a part of a $750,000, one-year pilot program, among other safety items aimed at faster response times and real-time crime detection.

• In June 2025, the council received an update from city staff regarding the need to pause the pilot program due to conflicts with L.A. County’s drone policy. The primary point of contention was that the city’s approved plan required West Hollywood personnel to record all missions, which contradicted the sheriff department’s existing policy. Council directed city staff to comply with the department's current policy while awaiting policy revisions.

• In April 2026, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department updated its drone policy to make exceptions for West Hollywood, including new recording procedures.

Now, West Hollywood is set to move ahead with its pilot program, which will launch at the end of July.

How the program will work

Under the latest approved policy, the drones will only respond to calls of service, where police presence is requested from a caller.

The drone will not record when flying to and from said location, but instead record from when it arrives to when it leaves, similar to body-worn cameras, according to Captain Fanny Lapkin of the West Hollywood Sheriff's Station.

The program will also have a public-facing dashboard where the public can see information including the number of calls for service and types of calls the drones responded to.

What the community says

Stephen Post, a resident and member of West Hollywood’s Public Safety Commission, spoke during public comment on Monday.

Post said he was concerned about the program’s use of data.

“In multiple cities, we have seen improper access and use of this data,” Post said. “In this moment of heightened ICE and DHS enforcement, we should not be a city leading the push for creating the digital infrastructure that an authoritarian leader could use to harm our communities.”

Steve Martin, member of the Eastside Neighborhood Watch, expressed support for the program during the meeting.

“As a person who does go out and exercises my first amendment rights freely, in some ways I would welcome having sheriff surveillance,” Martin said. “I think that we need to look at evaluating this as it goes and seeing how we can get the best possible benefit from it because I think we’re all just looking to make West Hollywood safer.”

How to keep tabs on the West Hollywood City Council

The West Hollywood City Council meets on scheduled Mondays. Meetings start at 6 p.m.
Here’s how you can follow along:

• Attend in person: The board meets at Council Chambers, 625 N. San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood
• Watch the live broadcast
• Here’s how to submit a comment or contact the council

At a Tuesday L.A. City Council committee meeting on the coming Olympics, a city-appointed civil rights expert skewered LA28's plans for protecting human rights, and some questioned the city's preparedness for how the Games might displace hundreds or potentially thousands of unhoused people.

The private Olympics committee's human rights strategy was submitted to the L.A. City Council at the end of last year, but wasn't made public until months later. Its contents had largely been left alone until Tuesday, when local experts and LA28 representatives addressed the council about the plan.

Pointed criticism

Courtney Morgan-Greene, who sits on the city's Human Relations Commission, lambasted the human rights strategy, and questioned how homelessness would be handled.

"Angelenos know unhoused individuals will be moved," Morgan-Greene said. "Who is in charge of relocating these Angelenos and how will their well-being be safe-guarded and prioritized?"

LA28's strategy said it will coordinate with local officials and providers who will be supporting unhoused people impacted by the Olympics. It also pledges to notify authorities as early as possible if an unhoused person needs to be relocated due to the Games.

Julieta Valls Noyes, LA28's senior human rights advisor, told the council that she believed the mass displacement of unhoused people that has occurred at past Olympics would not be as much of an issue for Los Angeles, because organizers are relying on existing facilities rather than building new venues.

What we know about the plans

But previous guidance issued by L.A. County indicates that efforts to remove people who are homeless would focus on the security perimeters around Olympic venues. City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said Tuesday that clearing security perimeters could mean displacing hundreds or potentially thousands of people living on the streets.

" Telling us that they're there isn't the same thing as helping us figure out how to get them housed," she said. "If we want this done right, we're gonna have to figure out how we pay for it."

Yaroslavsky suggested that the city and LA28 would need to seek state or federal support to relocate unhoused people ahead of the Games and provide them with a place to stay.

Questions about who will take the lead

Gita O’Neill, interim CEO of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, told the council that Olympics organizers should establish an interagency task force to manage how homelessness would be handled ahead of and during the Games. Her agency has come under intense financial pressure and scrutiny, including the county's withdrawal of hundreds of millions of funding and punitive federal action. She indicated that security plans could lead to displacement in areas with prominent unhoused populations.

"Current security maps for the Games show overlaps with large swaths of high-need areas, such as Skid Row, MacArthur Park and South L.A," she said.

O'Neill also warned that if local authorities did not take control of addressing homelessness around Olympic venues, the federal government could intervene.

"If the city does not address the encampment issues, there is no doubt in our mind that the federal government will come in and address it for the city on its own procedures and protocols," she said. "L.A. should retain control over the process as much as possible."

2028 Games loom over other discussions

The specter of the federal government's role in the 2028 Games loomed over other council discussions, including the role of the Department of Homeland Security, which is overseeing security for the Games.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez asked for an update about the potential presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Olympics, provoking a frustrated response from LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover, who is known for keeping his cool.

" I don't know what to tell you. You were yelling at me at the time, very disrespectful," Hoover said, referencing the last time Soto-Martinez asked him about ICE. " I fully expect that the federal government is going to be supportive of these games and will deliver the games and respect human rights in the process."

As the two continued to spar, Hoover said he'd seen the Olympics be pulled off successfully the other times the U.S. hosted, including 1996 in Atlanta and 2002 in Salt Lake City.

" Well, the difference is that this year it's Trump's Olympics, not a sane person in the White House," Soto-Martinez said. "Trump's Olympics are coming into the city of Los Angeles."

The meeting highlighted one shift in LA28's human rights plans. Hoover pledged to create a grant program to fund certain human rights-related initiatives, a move that some advocates have been pushing for. He did not say how much money LA28 would provide.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said the committee would continue to discuss human rights plans down the road. He wanted to wrap the meeting ahead of the much-anticipated Mexico-Ecuador World Cup match.

Growing up in Los Angeles, I spent plenty of time sitting in traffic and driving across town. I remember taking the 60 to the 10 from Walnut to Mid-Wilshire for elementary school and, later, when I lived in Burbank, spending weekends as a teenager hanging out by the clock at "The Gal" in Glendale, what my friends and I affectionately called the Glendale Galleria.

Today, Glendale is my home, where I’ve been for nearly a decade. And while much has changed, the sense of community is what keeps me rooted here.

I remember a time when Glendale was mostly tree-lined streets filled with Craftsman homes, mid-century apartment buildings and strip malls with mom-and-pop shops. There was Virgil's Hardware, where we'd get supplies and have our keys copied (it's now an Erewhon), and quaint Honolulu Avenue in Montrose, which still feels like a village in the way Larchmont does, with its boutiques and charming restaurants.

Since then Glendale has developed, and we now have The Americana at Brand, trendy restaurants and national retailers and even an AMC theater with an IMAX screen. But beyond the flashy lights are the places that keep me coming back: neighborhood institutions, family-run businesses and restaurants that tell the story of Glendale's many diverse communities.

Here's how I'd spend a day eating across Glendale for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Breakfast: Papillon Bakery

Papillon's bread boat, covered with two over-easy eggs and cheese.

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Courtesy Papillon Bakery

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One of the things I love most about Glendale is its vibrant Armenian community, which has shaped the city in countless ways. For breakfast, I'm heading straight to Papillon Bakery. The beloved Armenian bakery has since expanded to five locations, but I keep coming back to the one on Central Avenue.

Some of the best Armenian pastries I've ever had come from Papillon, which specializes in perashkis, borek, bread boats, churros, empanadas, Georgian khachapuri, Armenian pizza and ponchiks. In fact, I love their ponchiks so much that I named one of my cats Ponchik.

Tumang's love for ponchiks is so strong she even named her cat after the Armenian pastry.

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Courtesy Papillon Bakery

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If you've never had one, a ponchik is like the Armenian cousin of a beignet: fried, dusted with powdered sugar and filled with everything from custard and Nutella to fruit jam and dulce de leche. They're made fresh to order and arrive piping hot, crisp on the outside and pillowy inside.

My order is usually a ponchik and a bread boat, one of Papillon's specialties. Think of it as an open-faced calzone covered with two over-easy eggs and cheese, and you can top it off with basturma, a cured beef similar to pastrami.

Parking is limited, especially later in the day when a neighboring restaurant opens for lunch and valet service begins, so I often take my breakfast to go.

Lunch: Fish King

Fish King, a staple of Glendale since 1948.

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Patricia Tumang

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LAist

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Fish King on Glendale Avenue is almost always busy, with people lined up to order lunch or pick up seafood for dinner. That's how you know you're getting the good stuff.

Opened in 1948 as an independent fish shop, Fish King has been a Glendale institution for generations. The late Hank Kagawa began working there in 1952 before purchasing the business a few years later. His grandfather had immigrated to the United States from Japan in the early 1900s, building a grocery and produce business before losing everything when Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II. Under Kagawa's leadership, Fish King grew from a small storefront into the multi-storefront seafood market it is today.

You can have your seafood cooked to order however you like: grilled, fried, charbroiled or steamed. Get it with fries, white rice or coleslaw; as tacos, a bowl or a teriyaki plate. They're also known for their cioppino and poke bowls. For me, I'm ordering poke (I often dream about their spicy scallops and soy tuna poke).

Just head up to the counter and place your order, then grab a seat and wait for your buzzer to go off. Service is quick, but they never skimp on quality or freshness. The market also sells gourmet and specialty dry goods, sauces, house-made marinades, sushi and more. It's the kind of place that feels like a hidden gem, even though locals have been shopping and eating here for decades.

Dinner: Max’s Restaurant

Max's Restaurant's lumpiang shanghai, fried pork and vegetable egg rolls.

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Courtesy Max's Restaurant

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Just across from the Glendale Galleria on Broadway is a building that longtime Glendale residents may remember as The Phone Company, a restaurant known for its prime rib dinners and French onion soup, or as Cattleman's Ranch Steakhouse from the TV show Fresh Off the Boat. The exterior looks much the same today, but it's now home to Max's Restaurant, the Filipino chain known as "The House That Fried Chicken Built."

For me, Max's is more than just dinner. It’s one of the most beloved restaurant chains in the Philippines, and I grew up eating there during family visits where meals almost always included a platter of its famous fried chicken. Founded in 1945 in Quezon City, it has since expanded around the world. Seeing the Max's in Glendale always feels a little like finding a piece of home.

My order always starts with the fried chicken paired with banana ketchup. Beyond that, it's hard to go wrong. I usually add Filipino favorites like lumpiang shanghai (fried pork and vegetable egg rolls), crispy pata (deep-fried pork knuckles) and kare-kare (oxtail in peanut sauce). Always with rice.

Every bite takes me back.

Max's Restaurant, a legendary Filipino chain, is best known for their fried chicken.

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Courtesy Max's Restaurant

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It’s a core memory: the delight I’d get when the plate of fried chicken was placed on the table and I'd immediately reach for a chicken thigh, taking a bite of the crisp but tender meat, dipping it into banana ketchup and following it with a spoonful of rice. Decades later, that's still exactly how I eat it.

What makes this fried chicken different is that it's slow-cooked, rubbed with patis (fish sauce) and fried without batter, leaving the skin crisp and the meat juicy. It's simple, comforting and, as their slogan goes, "sarap to the bones" (delicious to the bones).