The Brief

Now, let’s check in to the Overlook Hotel.

That’s the fictional place Stanley Kubrick brought to life in his 1980 film The Shining, loosely based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name.

A local architect who hails from South Pasadena meticulously crafted a 3D model of the iconic space so Shining fans everywhere never have to check out.

‘I just couldn’t stop’ 

At his day job, architect Anthony Chieh mainly works on residential and boutique commercial spaces. But over the course of five months, he spent his nights meticulously recreating a virtual replica of the Overlook Hotel from the film that first scared him when he was 12.

Of course he started with the deeply haunted Room 237. That’s where Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, has a terrifying encounter with a ghostly woman.

Chieh's 3D rendering of Room 237

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Anthony Chieh

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“But once I started, I just couldn’t stop,” Chieh told LAist.

“I ended up modeling the Colorado Lounge, and then after that I was thinking maybe I should make the lobby and then arriving to the Gold Room, and then Grady’s bathroom.”

“It’s like a rabbit hole,” he said.

Users who download Chieh’s free 3D model can fly through all of those spaces, immersed in atmospheric sounds and music from the film.

“It’s interesting to dive into these kind of fictional environments and try to make sense of it,” Chieh said. “And the hope is people will get a different perspective once they’re in there.”

Kubrick’s take on the Overlook was famously inspired by real hotels like the Timberline Lodge in Oregon and the Ahwahnee in Yosemite. But the interiors you see in the film were created on sound stages in England.

“Real architecture, physical buildings, are built for people to live. And for movies, these are more meant to express the emotional aspect of things. It’s a psychological construct,” Chieh said.

In a recently published video essay on YouTube, Chieh dives deep into those psychological constructs and how, as he puts it, “Kubrick designed the Overlook Hotel not as a backdrop, but as the film's true villain.”

How spaces scare 

Chieh said during the monthslong process he was reminded of the power of architecture and design in the real world too – whether it’s an uncomfortably repetitive carpet design or a claustrophobic hallway.

“A physical construct can affect your emotion,” Chieh said.

“You can use it in a way to make people feel comfortable and you can also use it in a way to create fear.”

Chieh's 3D rendering of the Torrance's apartment in 'The Shining'

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Anthony Chieh

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What’s next for this architect moonlighting as a 3D modeler?

Chieh says he’s thinking about giving the spaceship from “2001: A Space Odyssey" the virtual treatment next. Or maybe turning to a local non-fictional space, like the Stahl House.

That is, of course, if he can ever escape the Overlook.

Los Angeles changes fast, and oftentimes that means some of the architectural relics of our shared past get swept up and paved over in all the "progress." (RIP Garden of Allah.)

But there are still places where you can find ruins that tell a tale, like a long-forgotten speakeasy reputedly for old Hollywood near La Crescenta.

The ruins are still there 

On a recent afternoon, author and local historian Mike Lawler led me just beyond the boundary of Crescenta Valley Park. Joggers like me might have seen an old, towering stone arch shrouded by bushes there — and wondered what lies beyond.

Turns out there was once a place called the Verdugo Lodge back there and Lawler has spent years excavating its history.

A car speeds away from the lodge onto New York Avenue. The stone archway that still stands can be seen in the background.

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Kadletz Family Archives)

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“It was a very high-end speakeasy for a time,” Lawler, who also helps run the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley, said. “An amazing thing. And all the ruins are still here, just like this arch.”

Lawler said we don’t know exactly when the lodge was built, but we do have some of the picture starting in the late 1920s. The place was set up kind of like a timeshare where people bought 10 x 10 foot ‘tent lots’ that gave them access to on-site amenities. There was a golf course, stables, trout stream, a swimming pool — and a lodge with gambling and alcohol.

“The Crescenta Valley in the teens and '20s was a hotbed of moonshine, prostitution, all that stuff," Lawler said. "It was a quiet little community. But in all these canyons up here, stuff was going on. Illegal stuff!”

We don’t have a full guest list, but Lawler said it’s likely at least a few Hollywood types had gone up to the lodge to circumvent Prohibition era laws.

In some ways, it was kind of like the original glamping. Lawler said patrons probably weren’t doing much sleeping, though.

“They might have been unconscious!” he said with a chuckle.

Lawler led me to a road that swooped around a meadow. We passed by a massive swimming pool nestled into the hillside.

Once known as the “Crystal Pool,” it’s now empty and fenced off, with pitch black locker rooms below.

The exterior of the locker rooms for the old Crystal Pool.

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Robert Garrova / LAist

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We continued our journey up the hill and eventually arrived at a cascading stone stairway.

And at the top, the big show: overgrown with orange monkey flowers and goliath agaves lies the foundation of the old Verdugo Lodge, with lofty stone fireplaces the only guardians keeping the surrounding oak trees at bay.

Lawler takes out a floorplan that one of the former owners drew up for him.

“This is what it was laid out like on the inside. So a dancehall, and band stand on that side... And then upstairs was the gambling,” Lawler said.

Lawler had in hand a copy of a Los Angeles Times article from 1933 he found. The headline reads: “Revelers Flee in Lodge Raid.”

“The police that raided it were here at 3 o'clock in the morning. And there were still 500 people here. And they said it was the classiest joint they had ever raided... Anyway, people were diving out of windows and everything,” Lawler explained.

In a ruin like this, covered with moss and overgrowth, the imagination can run wild, too.

The archway that still stands outside of what's now known as Mountain Oaks.

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Lawler pointed out a questionable door jam below the old dancefloor that’s been cemented over.

“That is a door. So what is behind there? So there’s a room in there that got walled in for some reason,” he said.

What we do know is that, sometime after the raid, the tawdry Verdugo Lodge and the surrounding land were purchased and then renamed Mountain Oaks by the Kadletzes — an entrepreneurial family who had run everything from a Turkish bath to a mini golf course. Over the next few decades, the family would rent the place out to local groups for recreational retreats.

The future of Mountain Oaks 

After they sold it in the ‘60s, Lawler said Mountain Oaks faced a “nightmare” of development threats. Over the years, some of the subdivided "tent lots" had been combined and sold off, Lawler said. A dozen private homes now stand on these pieces of land, next to the ruins of the Verdugo Lodge.

A map showing the Mountain Oaks public property acquired by The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA).

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Last year, with help from the City of Glendale, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant among other funding sources, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) put up $6.1 million to acquire 33-acres of the land — not including the private lots where the homes stand — so the public can continue to roam the meadow and ruins.

Paul Edelman, MRCA's director of natural resources and planning, said his group will continue to manage the land, doing things like brush clearance, trash pickup and sign maintenance. And he said there are no current plans to remove the ruins or make any major changes to the property.

“If somebody comes up with a grand idea where they can find some funding for us to do something to enhance it, we’re always open to it,” Edelman said.

The purchase was good news for local preservationist Joanna Linkchorst.

“I grew up directly up the hill. But I always saw the sign that said ‘private property’ and didn’t really think about it until several years ago when I finally asked Mike. And he said, ‘Oh yeah, we got a resort speakeasy down the street,’” Linkchorst said standing among the oaks and overgrowth.

Linkchorst, who founded the group Friends of Rockhaven to preserve another nearby historic site, said it’s been amazing to see all of the decaying structures that were still hiding out at Mountain Oaks.

“There’s almost like these little ghosts in your head as you imagine what it was like when there was a beautiful wood floor and there was a second floor that people came jumping out of,” Linkchorst said.

Music fans are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with AI songs, according to a recent report published by the music and entertainment insights company Luminate. The decline is especially notable with young listeners who are part of Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

The study compared attitudes towards AI use in music creation from May to November of 2025. It found that overall interest dropped from -13% to -20% during that time period.

"Across the board, what we found is that consumers are net negative," says Audrey Schomer, a media analyst and research editor at Luminate who authored the report, titled "Generative AI in Entertainment 2026: Examining Changes in Industry Strategies, Legal Challenges & Consumer Attitudes." "All that means is that people are more likely to feel uncomfortable than to feel comfortable with AI use."

The results include partial AI usage (like for writing lyrics or creating vocals) as well as fully AI generated compositions or performances, though the latter is viewed in a more negative light. A significant portion of the people surveyed — about a third — feel indifferent towards AI music altogether. Schomer notes that the decline in interest is marked by people who changed their outlook from positive to negative from May to November.

The Luminate report coincides with a rise in generative AI content across social media and streaming platforms. Last year, the French company Deezer implemented an AI detection tool to track and label how much "synthetic content" is uploaded to its streaming platform. Earlier this month, Deezer reported that approximately 44% of daily uploads are now AI generated tracks. But when it comes to listening behaviors, there's no sustained uptick to match; Deezer found that AI songs account for less than 3% of total streams on the platform, and a majority of those streams have been deemed fraudulent, meaning they're likely driven by bots rather than human listeners. (Deezer says it demonetizes these streams).

In recent months, artists and advocates have raised concerns about how a spike in AI content on streaming services can affect how much real musicians get paid. That's because Spotify, Apple Music and several other companies rely on a pro rata model: if an artist's catalog accounts for a certain percentage of total streams on the platform, that's the percentage of total royalty payouts they receive. In February, several artists' rights groups from around the world published an open letter called "Say No To Suno" — a reference to one of the largest AI song generators — in which they claimed that AI content "dilutes the royalty pools of legitimate artists from whose music this slop is derived."

Still, the hype around AI music isn't entirely fake. Several self-disclosed AI projects, including Xania Monet and Breaking Rust, have already landed on the Billboard charts. Monet is the artificially created avatar behind Mississippi poet Telisha "Nikki" Jones, who uses Suno to turn her words into R&B compositions and performances. According to Billboard, Monet signed a multimillion dollar record deal with Hallwood Media in the fall.

For some singers, these developments raise serious concerns about the state of the industry. In March, R&B singer SZA told the magazine i-D that she feels "at war" with AI and the kind of content being created with it.

"It's happening disproportionately with Black music," SZA said. "Why am I hearing AI covers of Olivia Dean, when Olivia Dean just came the f*** out? She can't even collect the streams. I'm also really offended by the type of Black music that's coming out of AI. Weird, stereotypical struggle music."

Although Luminate's study did not ask listeners why their outlook on AI has shifted, Schomer suggests that musicians speaking out against AI could be moving the needle.

"If people have any sort of affinities towards specific artists who have been active in some of those artist rights campaigns, then perhaps that rising awareness would lead people – particularly young people — to be more anti AI," she says.

She also says that as AI becomes more common in everyday life, AI fatigue or brain fry (mental burnout from excessive AI use) could also be playing a role in changing attitudes, particularly for younger generations that have more anxieties about entering a rapidly changing workforce shaped by AI.

"There's more and more concerns about jobs, and I think that Gen Z are probably among the biggest receivers of some of that messaging around contraction of job opportunities [and] entry level jobs," Schomer says.

When it comes to music, Luminate's report found that sentiments are particularly negative towards new songs created by AI in the style or sound of an existing artist. Major AI song generators including Suno and Udio have faced copyright lawsuits for training their models on artists' music without authorization — but several labels and publishers, including Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, have struck licensing deals with these same AI tools. The agreements would compensate artists and songwriters for opting into having their likeness, voice or style used in AI creation. Last month, Taylor Swift became the latest artist to file several trademark patents that could be meant to protect her voice or image from being used in this way by AI tools.

Looking ahead, several music generators and streaming services like Spotify have indicated that they'd like to create interactive ways for fans to remix and alter existing songs using AI. Given Luminate's findings, which indicate that people are least comfortable with AI usage to create new music that mimics the sound or style of existing artists, Schomer says building audience trust in those new features could pose a real challenge.

"If the biggest decline among young users is on that particular kind of activity, it's the very thing that's being proposed to happen in these services," Schomer says. "I think that poses a potential uphill battle for the services to actually attract users and demonstrate that this is a good thing for the industry."

Jazz maestro and Afro-Cuban music legend Arturo Sandoval's obsession with sound began at the age of 13 in the small town of Artemisa in western Cuba.

Now 76, Sandoval boasts a history that includes being mentored by Dizzy Gillespie, winning 10 Grammys and a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and collaborating with towering figures like Stevie Wonder and the "Queen of Salsa" herself, the late Celia Cruz.

But on his 49th studio album, "SANGÚ," Sandoval turns inward, with a little help from his family. His son, Arturo "Tury" Sandoval III, and daughter-in-law, Melody Lisman, helped conceive and produce the album.

"They came one day to my house and said 'you know what? We have an idea,'" Sandoval says. "'You need something different. You need to refresh your repertoire.' And I said okay."

During the pandemic, when live music venues were shut down, Sandoval's frustration at being stuck at home led to a burst of creativity.

"I started composing new tunes and making videos every day. For two and a half years, I was doing that, and I wrote a few hundreds new songs,"

Sandoval III and Lisman selected 100 of those songs and then came back to the older Sandoval and told him to choose just 12 to record for the new album.

Sandoval's famous trumpet peppers the entire album with classic bebop, funk and Afro-Cuban stylings that made him famous, but it also sounds unmistakably modern, as if he's reaching back into his history and plucking notes specifically to pass on to future generations.

What is 'SANGÚ'?

One might be tempted to try and translate the album's title, but you won't find it in any Spanish/English dictionary. The elder Sandoval says the title is funnier, and more personal than that.

"My English, my pronunciation is very funny," Sandoval explains.

After recording the first track on the album, he turned to his son and daughter-in-law and said, "It sounds good."

"They started laughing so hard," Sandoval recalls. " I said, 'what is funny about it?' I said 'it sounds good.'"

"They said 'no, you didn't say that. You said S-A-N-G-U with an accent.' SANGÚ."

A surprisingly common language

Perhaps the oddest part of the "SANGÚ" story is that even though Sandoval III has never considered himself a musician, helping to produce his father's latest project was incredibly natural.

"It's been quite a journey," Sandoval III says. "To some degrees music was the common language, was the lingua franca that my dad and I could really speak unexpectedly even though it's not my natural language."

Sandoval III calls collaborating with his father "magical," but admits there might have been some discomfort when he wanted to give his father some notes.

"It's really funny because he prides himself that no one has ever told him to make music this way or the other. So, for someone who is basically music-illiterate to tell him to try it some other way, was quite shocking for him, as you can imagine," Sandoval III says.

"But we had a really clear vision and we really wanted to jar him back into maybe some of the stuff that he was even doing in the early 80s that was so inspiring to so many people."

Like Lazarus, hope springs eternal

One of the most recognizably Cuban songs on "SANGÚ," and one of the only tracks that features Arturo Sandoval's speaking voice, is called "Babalu Ayé." It's dedicated to the Catholic Saint Lazarus, or San Lázaro in Spanish – a man Jesus rose from the dead.

"We are very devoted to San Lázaro," Sandoval says. "We light candles,we pray, and we ask San Lázaro for health."

Though, he notes, he's not one to go to church every Sunday.

"When I need to communicate with God, I make a direct call."

Connecting with his audience

"I try to be sincere when I'm playing, to really express what I am feeling inside of me," Sandoval says. "That experience to play in front of an audience and see the people appreciate it … is kind of like a unique experience, man."

"That's the most important thing. It's like you're winning the lotto every night … sometimes you see a couple of ladies in the audience with tears in their eyes and I say 'thank God, thank God, thank God.' I get to their soul."

Hope for his homeland

Sandoval fled Cuba and then became an American citizen with the help of his mentor Dizzy Gillespie back in the late '90s, but thoughts of the island and its people are never far from his mind. And even though he says he tries to stay away from politics, he also admits he can't keep quiet when it comes to the suffering of the Cuban people.

"The word hope is the last thing you should lose in your life, but I'm going to tell you it's been 67 years and a half," Sandoval says. "It's way too long because the people have reached the bottom already. The people are desperate and hopeless."

"I would love to before I die to go and visit if the conditions get according to a principle of freedom. Otherwise I'm going to die dreaming."

Arturo Sandoval's latest album "SANGÚ" is out now.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is one of the most revered —and controversial — women in South African history, but to her grandchildren the anti-apartheid icon was always just their beloved 'Big Mommy.'

Now two of Mandela's granddaughters are reexamining her divisive legacy in a new Netflix documentary series called The Trials of Winnie Mandela, currently only available in Africa.

In the trailer for the series, sisters Princess Swati Dlamini-Mandela and Princess Zaziwe Mandela-Manaway acknowledge they have set themselves a hard task, asking, "How do you ask your grandmother, are you a murderer, are you a kidnapper?'"

But they think they managed to present an unbiased portrayal of Winnie in the series.

"I'm so proud of this work, because it is not just a myopic view of a person that we love, but also who is complex, and has had a complex history," says Dlamini-Mandela, 47.

While Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first Black president and a global icon — having spent 27 years in jail for his role in the fight against apartheid — his wife Winnie, who was arguably just as instrumental in that fight, has been widely maligned.

That's because Winnie is accused of encouraging some of the worst Black-on-Black violence in the townships during apartheid in the 1980s.

A gang of youths associated with her, called the Mandela United Football Club, were responsible for vigilante abductions and killings of those suspected of being government informers – even children.

In 1997, she appeared in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established by the new government to investigate crimes committed during apartheid.

After being pressed by the Desmond Tutu, who led the commission, she said: "Things went horribly wrong…for that I am deeply sorry." The commission found her "politically and morally accountable" for the crimes committed by her gang of bodyguards.

Even though the Netflix show is only being released now, filming of the documentary started before Winnie's death in 2018 aged 81. So she gets to answer for herself.

"Our grandfather's painted as a saint, and our grandmother's painted as a sinner," Dlamini-Mandela says.

"And we ask her that question…what do you think about that? And she says, well, who is anyone to say, whether you're saint or a sinner, that's between me and my God."

What is clear is that Winnie's commitment to the struggle came at great personal cost.

When Mandela was imprisoned, she was left not only to raise their children alone, but to carry on his activism – which she did fearlessly.

She became such a thorn in the side of the apartheid state that she was regularly targeted.

In 1969 she was put in solitary confinement for 491 days and tortured. She says in the documentary of that time: "The 18 months in solitary confinement, it left scars nothing can heal."

She was jailed numerous times in the decades that followed, with her Soweto home frequently raided in the dead of night. Ultimately, she was exiled to the remote town of Brandfort, in the Free State, in a harsh attempt to stifle her influence and activism.

Despite the brutal treatment and constant humiliations, she never gave up.

But she was criticized for her increasing militancy, even within her African National Congress party. Especially for a speech she gave in 1986 appearing to condone the brutal township punishment of "necklacing" used on alleged police collaborators.

In South Africa, "necklacing" was a brutal form of killing in which a car tyre was forced over a person's chest and shoulders and set alight.

She was also villainized for alleged romantic affairs while her husband was in jail. When Mandela was released, their marriage faltered, ending in a divorce in 1996 for which she was mostly blamed.

Reassessing Winnie through a feminist lens

"I wholeheartedly don't believe that a male comrade would've waited 27 years for a wife's return. The alleged affair feels like something they used against her in order to vilify her," says Momo Matsunyane, who directed a recent play in Johannesburg, "The Cry of Winnie Mandela," which sought to rehabilitate her image.

In recent years, a new generation of young South Africans like Matsunyane have begun to reassess Winnie's legacy from a feminist perspective.

When she died in 2018, thousands mourned all night outside her home. There are now t-shirts with her face on them, street murals, and a major Johannesburg road named after her.

"It's true to say that she may have been involved in some events that occurred that made her seem ruthless," Matsunyane says.

But she adds it doesn't have to be a false dichotomy.

"It's also true that she was fiercely resilient in the face of a greatly violent and inhumane system. She put her life and body on the line for the fight for freedom."

Aside from her renewed status as a revolutionary icon, what are her granddaughters' most cherished memories of her?

"God, there's so many," says Mandela-Manaway. "I mean, her cooking for us in the kitchen on Sunday lunches … giving me hugs, giving me advice, talking to her about anything."

Despite growing up in turbulent times, the sisters — now both in their late forties — weren't that politically aware until they were young adults.

"We were kids, so we didn't realize that we were Nelson and Winnie's grandchildren," Mandela-Manaway says. "Not like...we knew that these were political figures who were known across the world. We had no idea."

But much as their mother Zenani – Winnie and Nelson's first daughter – tried to normalize things for them, it was an unusual childhood.

"And we literally were like, we only had each other, because no one wanted to be associated with us," the sisters say. "Being cool... Mandela became cool after."

When she died, the hashtag #SheDidn'tDieSheMultiplied trended on South African social media.

"There are a lot of young women who identify with the spirit of Mama Winnie," says theater director Matsunyane.