The Brief

It’s a Wednesday morning at around 6:30 a.m., and people are streaming into Friendship Auditorium in Los Feliz — a spacious venue operated by the city typically used for weddings and other ceremonies. But this morning, what’s on the menu is a hearty breakfast, the chance to “flip the egg,” and an art lecture from Robocop himself, Peter Weller.

That is just one part of the weekly meeting at the Los Angeles Breakfast Club — a gathering that began 100 years ago for the city’s rich and famous to share a meal and have fun while learning something enriching along the way. Today, it remains one of Los Angeles' best-kept secrets.

Walt Disney on his initiation day with Guests and Mickey, September 28, 1932.

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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.

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Joe DiMaggio being initiated on Ham the Sawhorse, with Club Manager Harold Link and member Don Lake, August 18, 1943

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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.

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“The original founders, if they came today, would still recognize so much of what’s happening. Most of the traditions date back to the 1920s,” said Los Angeles Breakfast Club historian Rachel Skytt, co-author of the forthcoming book, The Los Angeles Breakfast Club: A Century of Hollywood, Hi-Jinx, and Ham & Eggs.

The club, Skytt and her co-authors say, started after a group of avid horsemen, including local banker Marco Hellman and merchant Maurice De Mond, finished their ride along the trails near Griffith Park.

“They were wealthy businessmen pretending to be cowboys,” said Sandi Hemmerlein, a co-author of the book. “Naturally, they worked up an appetite on horseback, so one of them arranged to serve breakfast out of a chuckwagon.”

Eventually, the group moved the festivities down to a nearby riding academy, hired a chef and some waiters, and built a picnic table in the shape of a horseshoe.

A postcard featuring exterior of The LABC's second clubhouse on Los Feliz Blvd (1937-1965) and cryptogram.

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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.

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A postcard with driving directions to The LABC's second clubhouse on Los Feliz Blvd (1937-1965).

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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.

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Initial membership consisted only of men, but women attended as guests and speakers at the club almost from the start, with opera singer Amelita Galli-Curci as the first honorary member in 1926.

“During that time, the Breakfast Club had two sister clubs, which were women-only,” Skytt said.

It wasn’t until 1981 when the men’s chapter — by that time known as the Los Angeles Breakfast Club — became officially co-ed.

Who’s who in L.A.

Calvin Coolidge and Grace Coolidge on their initiation day with movie star Mary Pickford and others, February 19, 1930

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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.

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Since the beginning, the club’s ethos was strongly nonpartisan and nonpolitical — and more about fun than networking and business. Hemmerlein mentions that bitter newspaper rivals Harry Chandler and William Randolph Hearst were photographed shaking hands and smiling here in 1926.

“De Mond and Hellman were both Jewish, and lots of the movie business members too: Jack and Sam Warner, Samuel Goldwyn, Jesse Lasky, Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, Sid Grauman,” Hammerlein says.

The club also had at least one Native American member, movie director Edwin Carewe.

Over the years, past members include Edgar Rice Burroughs, Joe DiMaggio, Ronald Reagan, Walt Disney, John Philip Sousa, Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, and Babe Ruth.

And every one of them has had their hand put onto a plate of fried eggs and learned the club’s special wrist-rotating handshake, a ritual known as “flipping the egg.”

A day at the club

The Los Angeles Breakfast Club's "Ham-and-Egg Cryptogram" is a coded chant recited at their weekly meetings.

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James Bartlett

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LAist

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Alex Evans, Co-Executive Director of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, puppeteers Bull the Frog for the Los Angeles Breakfast Club, February 17, 2021

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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.

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That special handshake has endured for decades. But today’s attendees — anywhere from 100 to 200 each time — are a much more diverse bunch. Some have colored dyed hair, while others wear big hats, tiki shirts, or breakfast-themed clothes, and there’s a man carrying a large squirrel hand puppet.

But first, the day starts with the bracing breakfast of ham and eggs and other food staples.

Then the lights go down.

The Roosters, regulars of the club, deliver a friendly heckle during a breakfast meeting in February 2024.

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Larry Underhill

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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club

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A breakfast meeting being held at Friendship Auditorium

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Larry Underhill

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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.

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On this particular morning, conductor of ceremonies Kahlil Nelson begins the proceedings by singing his version of “The Lambeth Walk” — the classic song from the musical Me and My Girl — with lyrics about Buckaroo Bonzai and Robocop as an affectionate preamble to the day’s guest lecturer, actor and art historian Weller.

Then everyone gets on their feet, doing some light stretching, led by exercise goddess Carole Nese, who is sporting multi-colored LED wristbands. Naturally, everyone groans melodramatically as they bend to touch their toes: This club loves a good ham.

Today, there is a new member initiation: A woman sits on Ham the Sawhorse, blindfolded, as Club President Mickey Corcoran asks her to repeat a specially written membership vow based around the initiate’s hobbies and interests.

The main course of the morning is the lecture, the subjects of which have ranged from Googie architecture and old-school restaurants to the city’s parrot population.

Today, Weller is holding court on Italian art throughout history.

The Los Angeles Breakfast Club podium with two fresh sunny-side-up eggs ready for initiations.

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Christopher Gibson

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LAist

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Judging by the audience reaction, the talk is a hit, and Weller concludes by saying:

“You guys are the warmest and strangest group of people I’ve ever met!”

Quite a compliment coming from the man who starred in the movie adaptation of William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch.

How to join and how to visit

Los Angeles Breakfast Club meets every Wednesday at 7 a.m. Fees and details on membership can be found at www.labreakfastclub.com

In a cozy dance studio in Garden Grove, dancers of all experience levels, ages and backgrounds flock to Queer Latin Dance OC to learn the steps to salsa, cumbia and bachata.

For many, the dance class is more than educational — it’s a place to get away from it all, to find community and to uplift one another through art.

When Rodrigo Marquez founded Queer Latin Dance OC at the beginning of this year, he said he was filling a gap in Orange County that often lacks safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community.

“I wanted to make creative communities for us to learn in a safe environment,” Marquez said. “Everyone's here to learn, and I want the pressure of whatever's going on in the world, just to forget for the next hour.”

Queer Latin Dance OC meets three times a week to learn the steps to salsa, cumbia and bachata.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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What are the dance lessons like? 

When creating his teaching plan, Marquez said he considers the range of experience his students might have. Everybody starts somewhere, he added, and the hardest part is showing up.

“It is scary, but if you're already showing up, then just jump in and just forget about the world. It's a great distraction, and dancing makes you feel better,” Marquez said.

Philip Lee, an elementary school teacher from Tustin, took his first class with the group Monday night, trying the quick steps of salsa.

“I had a stressful day. … All my stress that I had in my neck and upper back just kind of went away,” Lee said, adding that the high energy in the room is infectious. “It was nice just laughing with people in the community and meeting new people.”

Lee said the dance lesson gave him a space to be with community.

“The queer community specifically, and just kind of let my guard down and just be free and laugh and enjoy being me and celebrated for a love for the arts,” Lee said. “That's not a space that is always safe.”

Before taking lessons at Queer Latin Dance OC, Melba Rivera said she came in with zero dance experience.

“You come as you are. No matter what level you're at or how you identify or what your experience is, everybody's here and everybody's learning,” Rivera said. “It's a very encouraging and motivating space.”

Salsa and bachata are social dances, Marquez said, but one thing that makes his class unique to many is that regardless of gender identity, anyone can follow or lead.

Typically, the lead falls to the male dancer, and women follow. Marquez said it was important that no one feels pressured to be one or the other.

“That's why I created this, so people like me can just come and learn, not be expected to be in a gender role based on how they look,” Marquez said. “They want to dance how they feel.”

Why it matters

Taryn Heiner said, especially in Orange County, it’s challenging to find spaces that are queer-friendly and queer-open.

“That's really what makes this space so kind and warm and welcoming,” Heiner said. “We have all that base understanding of respecting one another, no matter who they are, who they love and what they do.”

Growing up in Orange County, not every room you walk into is a safe space, Rivera added.

“So walking into a room like this, where everybody's friendly, everybody's learning, everybody's just here for the same purpose to get better, to support each other, is really important,” Rivera said. “Not just in the class, but [in] the friendships we make outside of the classroom.”

Outside of dance class, Marquez’s students meet up for monthly hikes and other get-togethers. Marquez said it is a privilege and an honor to bring people together through his love for dance.

“I've seen people become friends since January, and I see them practice outside of practice,” Marquez said. “I've always had a dream to do my own dance classes, but to do it in a way where people can connect and just be themselves. It's far greater than that.”

Queer Latin Dance OC offers lessons to dancers of all experience levels and has created a new community hub in Orange County.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Want to dance? 

Salsa, cumbia and bachata classes are held three nights a week on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Classes are $20 per session, but Marquez also offers a free beginner salsa class every Monday.

You can register for the class of your choice here. Payments are taken in person.

Border Patrol agents have been roving from city to city over the last 15 months, far from their home bases in California and elsewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border, engaged in an unprecedented mass deportation campaign.

A collaboration between CalMatters, Evident Media and Bellingcat has tracked these agents, documenting their tactics on the ground and through mountains of video footage, since their first proof-of-concept raid in Bakersfield in January 2025.

Exactly one year later, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renée Good in Minneapolis, followed weeks later by the killing of Alex Pretti by a Border Patrol agent.

Our investigation shows that beyond those two shootings, immigration agents engaged in a pattern of force and questionable detention, aggressive tactics that courts have said likely violated the Constitution, as they moved from Bakersfield to Los Angeles, and then Chicago and Minneapolis.

In each city, federal courts stepped in to restrain them from violating civil liberties in that jurisdiction. Agents later deployed to another city. The video evidence suggests agents’ tactics became more brazen with each stop.

Under President Donald Trump, immigration agents have operated without typical public accountability. Many agents wear masks. Incident reports are largely hidden from the public.

“We are in a completely uncharted world now with these masked agents,” said John Roth, who served as inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security under Presidents Barack Obama and Trump.

“The first thing that you do when you give an agent a gun and a badge and the authority over American people is to make sure that they follow the Constitution, period,” he said.

In this new film, we focus on the activity of five agents from the US-Mexico border whose identities we’ve been able to confirm.

Watch the documentary

We are not aware of any disciplinary action taken against these agents. DHS did not respond to requests for comment; the individual agents either declined to comment or didn’t respond to calls or emails.

We showed the incidents to Roth and Steve Bunnell, former DHS general counsel. Both have testified before Congress, raising the alarm about what they see as a dismantling of the department’s accountability and credibility. Roth called the incidents “difficult to watch.”

“There are sort of two essential components of DHS and law enforcement generally being effective, and that’s trust and credibility,” Bunnell said. “And they have lost those things to the extent they had them.”