Asako Tomita, 88, dances during the San Fernando Valley Obon Festival on June 29, 2024.
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We spent the weekend at an Obon festival, hosted by the San Fernando Valley Hongwanji Buddhist Temple. What follows is a visual and audio tour of the weekend, from the chopping veggies to dancing at sunset.
The backstory: Obon is a joyous summer holiday dedicated to remembering and honoring ancestors. It’s a bit like the Japanese version of Día de Muertos, with a distinctly Japanese American twist. Festivals take place at temples and community centers from June to August and include carnival games, home-cooked food, and traditional Japanese dancing.
Why the Obon is important: All of the work that temple and community members put into each Obon festival is something that you can feel right when you walk in. There’s a warmth to the food and the laughter of friends reuniting that surrounds you.
Read on... for more on the immersive guide.
Summer weekends at SoCal Japanese Buddhist temples fill with carnival games, Japanese food and dancing as people of all generations come together to celebrate Obon, a joyous holiday dedicated to remembering and honoring ancestors.
Growing up Japanese American, attending an Obon festival evokes instant nostalgia — I remember being a kid eating peanut butter mochi and shaved ice during breaks between dancing. Learn more about Obon.
What is Obon?
Obon — one of SoCal’s biggest Japanese American celebrations — is a joyous summer holiday dedicated to remembering and honoring ancestors. It’s a bit like the Japanese version of Día de Muertos, with a distinctly Japanese American twist.
Festivals take place at temples and community centers from June to August and include carnival games, home-cooked food, and traditional Japanese dancing.
What it’s like to visit an Obon festival in SoCal, from spam musubi to dancing
For audio listeners: I recorded part of the audio story using binaural sound, so grab a pair of headphones for the full experience.
The setup starts at dawn
Priscilla Mui, Doreen Kushida, and Judy Matsuzaki slice and bag oranges as garnishes for the chicken teriyaki.
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Preparations for the San Fernando Valley Obon Festival start early. For temple members organizing the festival, Obon is an all-day affair, where everyone pitches in.
Some people arrive as early as 6 a.m. to start preparing food. Some won’t leave until clean up is done around 11 p.m.
By 10 a.m., the room is buzzing with people helping out with food prep. Long tables fill a room where people chop onions and lettuce for soups and salads and slice oranges for teriyaki beef plates. San Fernando Valley Hongwanji Buddhist Temple president Linnae McKeever weaves between the assembly lines offering instruction, answering questions, and directing volunteers to their stations.
“We're all atoms in motion,” says McKeever. “We have to do food prep for thousands of people that are coming in.”
Kari Nishimura is part of a large assembly line to prepare boxes of chirashi.
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In another room, Kari Nishimura adds bright pink ginger to boxes of chirashi.
“Honestly, I grew up here,” says Nishimura. “My grandparents and my great grandparents were actually the people who built our temple.”
She notes that Obon is often a reunion, where she runs into friends she has known since middle or high school. She also now sees the younger generation of her nieces and nephews enjoying the same traditions she did growing up.
You can't help but feel nostalgic and just be in a good mood.
— Kari Nishimura, temple member
At another table, a spam musubi assembly line is in full swing. Four temple members press rice and spam into large rectangular molds. They cut each rectangle diagonally so that when it’s arranged in the container, it looks like a heart. “So that when people get it, they can see it was made with love!” says Nishimura.
Rolling large slabs of spam musubi.
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Chirashi ready to serve.
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These popular foods sell out early at the festival.
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“We are so busy with our own Obon that we can't dance at ours, usually,” jokes Priscilla Mui, who is slicing and bagging oranges. “So we go to all the other ones so that we can dance.”
Obon festivals in Southern California are staggered on different weekends throughout the summer to allow people to attend multiple festivals a year. Mui says she usually tries to go to a handful of festivals each year. One year she went to six or seven.
All of the work that temple and community members put into each Obon festival is something you can feel right when you walk in. There’s a warmth to the food and the laughter of friends reuniting that surrounds you.
“You don't have to be a Buddhist, you don't have to be Japanese, to come out to an Obon festival and enjoy it,” says Jason Fenton, San Fernando Valley Hongwanji Buddhist temple first vice president. “Our community is made up of so many diverse religions and cultures. And building friendships and understanding is the key to what makes a community thrive.
So much food! Teriyaki beef, udon, Okinawan andagi, and more
In the late afternoon, the festivities begin. People slowly start to trickle in and set up camping chairs to save their spot close to the dancing circle, drawn with chalk around the perimeter of the festival. It’s the middle of summer in the San Fernando Valley and the heat is just starting to fade into that thick warmth of early evening.
Teriyaki BBQ is grilled during the San Fernando Valley Obon Festival on June 29, 2024.
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Students from the San Fernando Athletics serve up teriyaki platters for guests.
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When you enter, the first thing that hits you is the smell of teriyaki beef. It’s the hottest spot in the festival, with San Fernando Athletics parents at the grill and students serving up platters.
Udon is garnished for customers during the San Fernando Valley Obon Festival.
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There are home-cooked foods everywhere. Many of the foods you see at Obon festivals are Japanese American fare, like spam musubi, Okinawan sata andagi, and chili rice.
Japanese cold noodles, Somen, was just one of the many Japanese dishes sold at the San Fernando Valley Obon Festival on June 29, 2024.
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Lennon Toled, 8, eats sata andagi, an Okinawan donut, during the San Fernando Valley Obon Festival on June 29, 2024.
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Freshly fried sata andagi is a specialty of Okinawa.
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For the kids: Games, activities, and tradition
For families, one highlight of the festival is the games. Various temple and community center groups run the booths, which line the perimeter of the festival. Kids walk up to try their hand at winning prizes by tossing ping pong balls into glass balls, fishing for colorful wooden fish, and throwing metal rings around coins on a table. Many groups have been running these games at the festival for years, passing on the know-how to the next generation of families each year.
Yurika Yamaguchi and her daughter, Kaori Lopez, play fish bowl pitch.
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For many Japanese Americans of my generation, Obon festivals are a chance for fun memories and also, a little bit of tradition.
“We've been coming here since my oldest daughter was four. That's how we actually started having them come to the Japanese school here,” says parent Yurika Yamaguchi, adding that as an educator, she knows it’s important for her kids to know their culture.
Children fish for prizes at the festival.
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“Our kids are fifth generation. Over time, obviously, you lose tradition and culture,” says parent Justin Yoshizawa, who is working the teriyaki and shumai booth this year at the festival. “This is one of those events every year that we do consistently that helps remind them of their culture.”
This is one of those events every year that helps remind [our kids] of their culture
— Justin Yoshizawa, Parent
One place to escape the heat is in the bingo room at the San Fernando Valley Japanese American Community Center. The hall is packed with tables, where people try their luck at bingo while they eat their food.
Dominque Torres, 24, jumps up as he wins a round of bingo.
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The perimeter of the hall is lined with crafts and secondhand Japanese tableware and artwork for sale.
Attendees check out rows of bonsai trees, also for sale.
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Japanese housewares for sale. If you’re looking for rice bowls, this is your spot.
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Ruby Yamaoka, 87, from San Fernando Valley, performed ukulele at the festival.
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The festival also showcases performances from groups at the San Fernando Valley Japanese American Community Center, like ukulele and taiko drumming. Many friends and family cheer on performers from camping chairs they’ve brought from home.
Takashi Kubota, 7, plays the drums with the San Fernando Valley Taiko group on June 29, 2024 during the Obon Festival.
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Adrian Louie, 8, drums to the song "Renshu" with his peers from the San Fernando Valley Taiko group.
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Dancing to honor loved ones passed
Each Bon Odori song tells a story in a series of simple movements. All join in, regardless of experience.
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As the sun begins to set, the main event begins: Bon Odori, or traditional Japanese folk dancing, with the whole crowd participating.
“I want to begin to invite people to come to the circle,” says MC and temple member Traci Ishigo. “Are you ready to dance?”
She reminds the crowd that no experience is necessary and that most folks are also just remembering the moves like they are.
Taiko drummers atop the yagura keep time to traditional Japanese music for Bon Odori dancing.
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Festival-goers, young and old, in yukata and happi coats, form a huge circle around the yagura, a central, elevated platform decorated with paper lanterns.
From left, Jae Opiana, 24, and Mieko Kim, 23, wear yukata to the the Obon Festival in San Fernando Valley on June 29, 2024.
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Joanne Tokeshi, 64, fixes the bow on a Yukata during the June 29, 2024 San Fernando Valley Obon Festival.
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From left, Leah Heap, 73, and Freeman Baldwin, 67, wear happi coats during the San Fernando Valley Obon Festival on June 29, 2024.
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Kira Matsuno, 25, left, Sarah Hankins, 26, right, dance during the San Fernando Valley Obon Festival.
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As the folk music blasts from the speakers, taiko drummers keep a steady rhythm. Don. Kara-kara. Don. Kara-kara. Don. And the crowd of strangers, most watching the instructors and their neighbors for cues, slowly begins to move in step, at first unsure, then slowly with more confidence.
Chuko Akune, a dance instructor, leads the Obon dancing during the community festival.
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It’s hard to explain the feeling of dancing in unison with a large group of joyful strangers. Each dance tells a story in a handful of simple, repetitive movements: Fishermen casting nets into the sea, coal miners pushing carts, hands to forehead to wipe away sweat. It’s like honoring something ancient and bringing it into the present.
Reverend Yukari Torii opens the dancing with a welcome and some words about the significance of Obon.
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“Obon is a time to remember your ancestors and thank them for the life you have now,” says Reverend Yukari Torii. She says that in Japan, celebrating Obon is much more akin to Thanksgiving, where people travel home to spend time with family members.
In the U.S., as immigrants could not return to their hometowns, they instead took the opportunity to gather at Buddhist temples (or churches, as they’re often called here), which became hubs for Japanese American culture and community.
Go deeper: The history of Obon in the U.S.
Credit often goes to Reverend Yoshio Iwanaga for introducing Bon Odori on the mainland in 1930. As a music instructor, he infused into the celebrations music and dances from all over Japan, which are now central to Japanese American Obon celebrations.
During World War II, when the U.S. government incarcerated Japanese Americans, Obon celebrations didn’t stop. People celebrated in camp. Emily Anderson, historian and curator at the Japanese American National Museum, says: “There's something really powerful to me that despite all the circumstances, they still celebrated.”
Joanne Tokeshi is the lead Obon dance instructor for the temple and she coordinated this year’s dances. Though every year the Buddhist Churches of America Southern District selects a short list of songs that become the standard dances at all of the festivals, each temple adds their own favorites. She always adds one pop song into the mix. This year dancers apply the moves from the traditional dance Itsu Tatsu Ichi to Dua Lipa’s Dance the Night.
Some of the dances involve props to tell the story. Tokeshi’s red lacquer kachi kachi, or wooden castanets, are worn down from years of dancing.
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Dancers use tenugui, a traditional lightweight towel, for Honen Bon Uta, a dance that describes the story of sake making.
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Tokeshi has a background in Japanese Odori, which made her a natural fit to take the lead on her temple’s Bon Odori lineup. She has memories of three generations of her family dancing Bon Odori — her mom, her, and her daughter.
“I did lose my mom a couple of years ago,” says Tokeshi. “So, Obon became even more special for me to remember her — and celebrate with joy.”
Joanne Tokeshi wears a yukata that her mother hand-sewed for her.
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Joanne Tokeshi wears a yukata that her mother hand-sewed for her, with a fan honoring her parents tucked into her obi.
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I did lose my mom a couple of years ago. So, Obon became even more special for me to remember her — and celebrate with joy.
— Joanne Tokeshi, Lead Obon Dance Instructor
Jason Fenton says that some of his most joyful memories have been watching his children grow up and dance Bon Odori. One song, Gassho Ondo, features a moment where dancers bow to each other in thanks.
“And at that point in the song, my daughter turned to my wife and they bowed to each other. To me, that was beautiful,” he said.
Yoshikuno Torii, husband of San Fernando Valley Hongwanji Buddhist Temple’s minister, Reverend Yukari Torii, performs two classic Obon songs at the festival.
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Magic hour at the festival
Families, community members, and Obon dance instructors form a circle in dance during the San Fernando Valley Obon Festival on June 29, 2024.
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After the sun goes down, the dancing continues. The festival takes on a more relaxed and comfortable energy. People go back for seconds of their favorite food or look for dessert. Lights illuminate the booths of food and games, with the steady drumming of taiko to music in the background.
People place dollar bills on the colors where they think the basketball will land at the dough ball game booth, run by the Japanese American Citizens League.
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Inside the hall, blackout Bingo is in full swing, and things are picking up. At a desk on the stage, temple president Linnae McKeever counts the cash coming in from Bingo tickets. Bingo host Jean-Paul deGuzman makes a pitch to the audience to buy tickets for last call for Bingo tickets and a flurry of hands go up in the crowd. It’s like the attendees don’t want the night to end.
Jean-Paul deGuzman eggs on the crowd to buy more Bingo tickets in the last round of the evening at the closing of the festival on June 30, 2024.
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My two kids don’t want the night to end either. They wander around looking for one last game to play, one last sweet treat to eat. It’s these little moments that I hope they’ll remember as they grow.
Children take home bouncing balloons and other goodies at the end of the night.
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This year marks the San Fernando Valley Hongwanji Buddhist Temple's 103rd anniversary. Many of the Japanese American Buddhist temples boast similarly long histories. McKeever hopes that this community, and celebrations like Obon, continue to carry on into the future. “I'm hoping that [the next generation] will pick up where we left off and they'll carry on that strong tradition,” she says.
The yagura, illuminated by lanterns, at the end of the night at the San Fernando Valley Obon.
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Diane Hope provided coaching and feedback on the audio story.
Bonnie Ho
is a freelance writer and former reporter for LAist.
Published January 8, 2026 5:00 AM
Coleen Sterritt had plans for her art practice and life in her community. She said that has been erased, and many of the people in her community do not plan to return.
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Topline:
Fire survivors who received aid have ongoing needs beyond what those homegrown efforts have provided, and those who manage aid say more needs to be done to improve relief systems ahead of the next disaster.
Lessons learned from one mutual aid group: The Grief and Hope fund was intended to draw attention to the economics of working in culture and to the art workers who go unrecognized. It was among a number of initiatives to support artists and art workers after the fires; it raised approximately $1.6 million, much of that already distributed to 271 people.
The takeaway: The most dominant response Grief and Hope’s organizers heard from aid recipients in a survey was their gratitude for “how little information and hoops we required people to jump through,” Pittman said. She pointed out “the number of people who were just like, ‘thank you for not asking me to quantify my suffering to receive support.’”
“We need to have a sense of responsibility for each other,” Pittman said.
And she thinks about how to get relief money to survivors immediately, Pittman said, “rather than making them fill out mountains of paperwork and drive all over town trying to get resources.”
Pittman, owner and founder of the art gallery Official Welcome in Westlake, is among a group of five women art workers and artists — including Kathryn Andrews, Andrea Bowers, Olivia Gauthier, and Julia V. Hendrickson — who created the mutual aid fund Grief and Hope.
Mutual aid refers to individuals pooling resources to help one another. This collective action can build new social relationships but can also represent a shared understanding that existing relief systems often fail to help everyone.
After the Palisades and Eaton fires a year ago, there was an outpouring of giving for artists and art workers who experienced loss. In small and large gestures, this aid created connection, served as recognition of this shared moment, and suggested new ways of relating to one another.
But those who received aid have ongoing needs beyond what those homegrown efforts have provided, and those who manage aid told LAist that more needs to be done to improve relief systems ahead of the next disaster.
Supporting the art community after the fires
The Grief and Hope fund was intended to draw attention to the economics of working in culture and to the art workers who go unrecognized. It was among a number of initiatives to support artists and art workers after the fires; it raised approximately $1.6 million, much of that already distributed to 271 people.
“I think we all had this shared sense too of just not wanting to see our art world disappear here. And that felt very prescient when the fires happened,” gallery director Gauthier said.
A recent survey about artists in the labor force found more than half of the artists reported being “somewhat or very worried” about being able to afford “food, housing, medical care, or utilities” and around 10% “juggled three or more jobs.”
While some artists do well financially, Pittman said, she has seen art workers living on the edge: self-employed workers, underpaid gallery and museum employees, people who are underemployed or managing multiple jobs.
A disaster only makes their situations more precarious.
The organizers of the mutual aid fund Grief and Hope. From left standing, clockwise: Olivia Gauthier; Ariel Pittman; Kathryn Andrews, Julia V. Hendrickson. Not pictured: Andrea Bowers.
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Grief and Hope’s organizers were already active in supporting artists before the fires, so it came naturally to continue to do so. They quickly set up a fiscal sponsor through The Brick nonprofit to manage the money and researched the minimum requirements needed to distribute aid.
Hendrickson, a small business owner of the arts agency Verge, checked applications for false information, but overall the group aimed to cut red tape — an example they hope bureaucracies can learn from.
The most dominant response Grief and Hope’s organizers heard from aid recipients in a survey was their gratitude for “how little information and hoops we required people to jump through,” Pittman said. She pointed out “the number of people who were just like, ‘thank you for not asking me to quantify my suffering to receive support.’”
Recipients also reported in the survey that they felt more connected.
With its organizers bearing close ties to the community, Grief and Hope was also a hub for information, channeling requests from people wanting to help and sharing opportunities like temporary housing, access to studio space and free art supplies.
In their efforts to distribute funding quickly, members of Grief and Hope recognized that they missed a lot of older people who weren’t on social media or connected to those that are. To remedy this, Grief and Hope organizers were able to distribute funding to those who were less online at a later date.
I hope that the people who saw what we did would do the same for us, that there would be another group like this in the future, for the next thing that needs it, you know?
— Ariel Pittman, Grief and Hope organizer
Pittman said this is another reason why there needs to be data for those distributing resources after a disaster, so that resources could be brought to people, rather than people having to find them or rely on an algorithm to learn about them.
Pittman said her group plans to make one more payment to applicants, but speaking for herself, she doesn’t see Grief and Hope being revived unless they’re uniquely situated to help.
“I hope that the people who saw what we did would do the same for us, that there would be another group like this in the future, for the next thing that needs it, you know?” she said.
And better data would mean future aid groups could get a head start. This group shares an understanding that with climate change, disasters will inevitably become more frequent.
One of Pittman’s collaborators, Andrews, an artist and founder of the gender equality nonprofit Judith Center, has now lost her home twice (first to the Bobcat Fire in 2020, second to the Palisades Fire).
She recognized this is a unique opportunity where people can come together and think about a different future, on how to construct a community anew, but also how to prepare for a different disaster response.
“I don't think a solution after the fact is the right approach because there's just not enough we can do. We need to reengineer it on the front end,” Andrews said. “And I think collectively we should make demands that the government does step up differently, that insurance performs differently.”
Needs after a disaster
Margaret Ross Griffith learned from her neighbor’s car camera that the Eaton Fire had made it to her Altadena home.
She also lost her and her husband’s art studios, their art storage, and also the period of time, the “soft space” she called it, that her family of four shared before her eldest daughter would go off to college.
“You're like, ‘I have to drive where?’” she recalled. “I mean, you're just in such a state of shock that driving anywhere is a hardship.”
Margaret Griffith learned from her neighbor’s car camera that the Eaton Fire had made it to her Altadena home.
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Griffith and her husband lost their art studios and their art storage in the Eaton Fire.
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Friends showed up for her and her family. At least two rented trucks to bring items to fill their empty rental home. One day five of her husband’s friends came with shovels and screen to remove and filter debris. The friends who took Griffith and her family in after the Eaton Fire said they could stay as long as they needed.
It also helped that she could receive funds quickly from Grief and Hope. There were immediate costs to cover, including paying for a security deposit and rent for a place that cost twice as much as their mortgage.
Even before having furniture for their rental, Griffith said with some amusement, she used aid from art groups to invest in a laser cutter. Griffith, an artist who makes intricate sculptures by cutting repeated patterns through metal and other materials, said it was an essential need for her art practice.
The value of having a space to create
At 72 years old, Coleen Sterritt had retired from teaching at a community college and had plans for her art practice and life in her community. She said that this has now been erased. The materials gathered for future projects have burned, along with her house and two art studios. The people in her former Altadena community who consider themselves too old to rebuild or who rented do not plan to return.
“It was like one day you had your life and the next day you did not,” Sterritt said. “It was just gone.”
Listen
0:44
For survivors of Eaton Fire, recovery has been a full-time job
After the Eaton Fire, Sterritt, her husband, and their two dogs have moved five times. She said it helps to be around people who understand what they went through. There is a sense of isolation among others, including family.
“They don't really understand that it's with us all the time. It's with us all the time,” she said.
Going to art galleries today is a reminder of the art she has lost: sculptural art in the last 15 years, and the works on paper that went back nearly 50 years, her notebooks, and her sketchbooks.
Sterritt received mutual aid from a GoFundMe a former student created for her. Sterritt was initially reluctant, but was persuaded that the GoFundMe was a connection to others who wanted to give, regardless of how much someone could contribute.
But as the one-year mark approached, she said she has noticed that the attention has begun to fade. Sterritt points out, for example, businesses that were so quick to offer discounts at the time of the fires, did not continue much past early 2025. By summertime, businesses appeared to have moved on, she said.
Recovery has been a full-time job — between working to create an inventory of all that was lost and participating in the lawsuit against SoCal Edison, Sterritt has not been able to make art.
Sterritt misses having a studio and the privacy it affords. The loss of a physical place for an artist isn’t the same as it is for a person whose profession isn’t so tied to having a space for creativity, Sterritt said. And space in Los Angeles is hard to come by.
Griffith, too, has found it challenging to make art since the fire. She said to do so, she needs to have three components — time, money and space. She recently was given access, however, to a temporary studio for her eight-week art residency with Arts at Blue Roof. There she seemed to relax.
“There're no distractions here. I'm not, you know, dealing with the burdens of the house rebuild when I come into this room,” she said in an interview at her Blue Roof studio.
She is not expecting her new home to be ready until 2027, so she hopes that organizations continue to offer studio space to those affected by the fires.
And she hopes people do not forget how long recovery takes.
Shabana Azeez, Noah Wyle and Supriya Ganesh in a scene from the first season of 'The Pitt.'
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Topline:
The second season of the medical drama The Pitt premieres today on Max. The show has been lauded for its authenticity (including by medical professionals) and also for its casting, which the show’s Emmy-winning casting directors see as connected.
The context: Their number one directive in casting The Pitt, casting directors Cathy Sandrich Gelfond and Emma Berger say, was always showing the truth of working in an emergency department, which meant putting together a diverse cast.
Read on ... for more about the process of casting The Pitt.
The acclaimed Max series The Pitt returns for a second season today.
The Pitt centers around Dr. Michael Robinavitch (aka “Dr. Robby”) played by Noah Wyle — probably best known for his 13 season run as a doctor on another medical drama, ER — and a large cast of other doctors, nurses, patients and hospital staff.
The series has a unique format: a season spans just one day, with each episode representing an hour in the emergency room of a fictional Pittsburgh hospital. It’s been lauded for its authenticity (including by medical professionals) and also for its casting, which the show’s Emmy-winning casting directors see as connected.
Cathy Sandrich Gelfond and Erica Berger, who took home an Emmy for their work casting The Pitt’s debut season, say their main directive from the show’s producers was showing the truth of working in an emergency department.
‘If they’ve got the goods, they’ve got the goods’
“ I think the great gift of this show for both of us is that everybody [from the] top down agreed — We didn't need ‘names.’ We had Noah. And that we could just go discover,” Gelfond says. “Best person wins and [it] doesn't matter if they've never done anything. If they've got the goods, they've got the goods. Cause everybody has to have a first job.”
Gelfond and Berger cast a wide net, and got three to five thousand submissions for each character. They narrowed that down to 20 to 40 candidates to read for the role (and more for series regulars), and then submitted five to eight of their favorites to the producers.
Gelfond says considering and casting a lot of newcomers also contributed to the show’s authentic feel. “Part of why this worked is a lot of these people [Erica and I] didn't know either, so they fell into the parts. You have no baggage and you have no expectations, and then they just suddenly become the character.”
‘There can’t be two of us’
The directive for realness also led to a diverse cast, including a Filipino doctor and nurses who sometimes speak Tagalog, and multiple South Asian doctors.
“At the end of the day, what we're trying to do is show the truth of who works in these hospitals,” casting director Gelfond says. “And guess what? There are more than two South Asians.”
But it was something that Gelfond says surprised even the South Asian actresses cast on the show. Similar to what Brooklyn Nine-Nine actresses Stefanie Beatriz and Melissa Fumero described experiencing back in 2019, The Pitt actresses Supriya Ganesh (who plays med student Victoria Javadi) and Shabana Azeez (who plays Doctor Samira Mohan) told the casting directors they thought, “There can’t be two of us.”
‘The climate hasn’t changed what we’re up to’
Their assumption, rooted in their experiences auditioning for other roles, is also reflected in the data on casting in Hollywood. The most recent Hollywood Diversity Report from UCLA that focuses on streaming shows from 2024 found that among the most watched streaming comedies and dramas that year, 79.6 percent of lead actors were white.
And while BIPOC actors “fared much better as co-leads than they did as leads,” they were still underrepresented as co-leads, filling only 29.7 percent of the roles in that year’s top streaming comedies and dramas.
That’s despite continued evidence that shows with diverse casts get good ratings, and that rolling back representation gains comes with substantial financial risks.
“We're fortunate that we can be open on a lot of parts [...] the role goes to the person who gave the best performance, kind of regardless of anything else,” Berger says. “The climate hasn't changed what we're up to over here.”
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Libby Rainey
is a general assignment reporter. She covers the news that shapes Los Angeles and how people change the city in return.
Published January 8, 2026 5:00 AM
Group purchasing can save significant money, fire survivors are finding. But the tradeoffs are in efficiency and time. .
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Mario Tama
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Getty Images North America
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Topline:
A year after L.A. went up in flames, survivors are looking to rebuild quickly and affordably. As just one person, the costs of rebuilding add up fast. But by pooling their purchasing power, neighborhoods — or what's left of them — are working together to curtail rebuilding costs.
Why it matters: Many face an issue that some fire survivors refer to simply as "the gap" — the financial hole between what insurance will give and what it will actually cost to rebuild. Working together could be the difference that allows some people to return home.
L.A. isn't the first: Jennifer Gray Thompson, who leads the advocacy organization After the Fire, said that since her group launched in 2017, she has seen communities in California, Colorado and elsewhere purchase goods and services together to bring costs down.
How bulk purchasing can work: Unlocking this type of coordination depends on a number of factors, including how tight-knit the recovering community is, how close together homes are, and how affluent the disaster zone is.
Read on ... to hear from fire survivors banding together to rebuild.
If you need a new refrigerator, you go to a hardware store. But what if you need a thousand refrigerators?
This is a math problem in the era of urban mega-fires. A year after L.A. went up in flames, survivors are looking to rebuild quickly and affordably.
As just one person, the costs of rebuilding add up fast. But by pooling their purchasing power, neighborhoods — or what's left of them — are working together to curtail rebuilding costs.
It turns out needing a thousand fridges could be a good issue to have. In Altadena, fire survivors are working together to buy things in bulk. And they're trying to find the most efficient and fair way to do it.
" When you see that deal on the shelf: 'Buy four, get the fifth for 20% off,' all you have to do is consult your wallet," said Michael Tuccillo, whose home was damaged in the Eaton Fire. "But when you're bulk purchasing, it becomes complicated because you have to make a choice that's right for the entire community."
Morgan Whirledge first tried the group approach when he needed a land survey of his property. He's an Eaton Fire block captain, meaning he coordinates with neighbors and other block captains on all types of issues related to fire recovery.
" If you're bringing out survey equipment to an area … why not knock out a few properties at the same time in one day, as opposed to coming out over and over again?" Whirledge said.
A lot of other neighborhoods had the same idea.
This process allowed block captains like Whirledge to try out their negotiating skills — and understand the limits of their leverage. He made a deal for a handful of plots, including his own.
"The surveyor we ended up with was saying, 'Hey, there's kind of a threshold where it stops being more economical for me,'" Whirledge said.
It also revealed the challenges of making big financial decisions with other homeowners. Tuccillo scored a great deal for himself and two dozen neighbors: around $1,700 a lot for a land surveyor, compared to a one-off price of $5,000. But someone had to go first, and someone had to go last.
" It took like two months, maybe three months for some of these people to get service, which is a big deal," said Tuccillo, who is also a block captain. "And people were upset at me."
A house under construction in Altadena in June.
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Myung J. Chun
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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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'The gap'
Land surveying is simple compared to the decisions that lie ahead for most people rebuilding in Altadena and the Palisades.
Many face an issue that some fire survivors refer to simply as "the gap" — the financial hole between what insurance will give and what it will actually cost to rebuild.
Working together could be the difference that allows some people to return home.
Elizabeth Campbell has been thinking a lot about this problem. She negotiates bulk purchases for a living, and has worked as a buyer for companies like Saks Fifth Avenue and the North Face. When she lost her home in the Eaton Fire, she found a new arena for her expertise.
"Asking a vendor for a discount is not always the best way to get the best price," she said. "When you're purchasing a large amount of goods, you're thinking a little bit more broadly. Where are they manufacturing? Is it something that they need to manufacture six months in advance?"
In the first year of recovery, a lot of these logistical questions were playing out on Discord and in WhatsApp groups. Seeking a bigger fix, some fire survivors have teamed up with David Lee, a software developer.
Lee launched Buildnotes — an online platform to help more people do group purchasing with less logistical and interpersonal hassle. The site is a wholesale marketplace for materials and services needed for rebuilding. Right now, a big goal is to get homeowners and vendors to sign up.
" We try to line up homeowners and projects along three primary dimensions. One is geography. Two is chronology. What's the start date of your project and do the phases of your project line up with other homes? And then third is style of home," Lee said.
Some homeowners in Altadena scored great deals with other neighbors to pay for things such as a land surveyor. The cost went from $5,000 for a one-off price for one property to $1,700 for two dozen neighbors each.
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Libby Rainey
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LAist
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The biggest group purchase: a home
The largest group purchase fire survivors can make is the home itself.
That's the route Brad Sherwood took after losing his house in Santa Rosa to the Tubbs Fire in 2017. He quickly realized that his insurance payout wasn't enough for him and his wife to rebuild a custom home, and they started talking with neighbors about rebuilding together.
In the end, Sherwood and around 20 other families in his neighborhood went in on the same builder: Stonefield Development of Orange County.
"They allowed neighbors to get into different focus groups, and based on how many bedrooms you wanted or your lot size, they allowed you to develop a floor plan," he said. "If we got enough people to do this particular floor plan, then we could do an assembly production of our homes. And that really benefited us in terms of construction costs, timeline, labor costs."
Sherwood said initial estimates were $700 a square foot. By purchasing his home alongside his neighbors, he spent $400 a square foot.
" The group buy was kind of like therapy in a way," Sherwood said. "Because we all were doing this together, and you didn't feel alone or scared."
Sherwood said custom finishes and small details made sure the neighborhood he returned to wasn't "cookie cutter" compared to the pre-fire hodgepodge of custom, older homes.
A familiar approach
Fire survivors in L.A. aren't the first to try out group purchasing after a large-scale disaster. Jennifer Gray Thompson, who leads the advocacy organization After the Fire, said that since her group launched in 2017, she has seen communities in California, Colorado and elsewhere purchase goods and services together to bring costs down.
In Maui, where the Lahaina Fire destroyed thousands of homes in 2023, many residents need trusses — structures made of wood or steel that form the base of a roof. It's inefficient to order them separately, especially in a place as hard to reach as Maui. So Gray Thompson said community members are working on placing a bulk order.
In Altadena, fire survivors are working together to buy things in bulk. And they're trying to find the most efficient and fair way to do it.
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Libby Rainey
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LAist
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"Trusses are really hard to get on Maui," she said. "So what you have to find is what in the market is the barrier, and then you can often unlock that barrier by group buying."
But this type of coordination depends on a number of factors, including how tight-knit the recovering community is, how close together homes are, and how affluent the disaster zone is.
The collective decision making seen after the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa was harder to pull off in more rural communities destroyed in the 2021 Dixie Fire in Northern California, according to Gray Thompson. People lived farther apart and were scattered to the winds after their town was destroyed.
Still, she said, the idea that it's better to work together, as a community — the ethos of group purchasing — applies to all fire survivors.
" Nobody can walk through this alone. It's an inefficient way to do it. It's not healthy — emotionally or financially or politically or socially," she said. " All of rebuilding is a group project.”
That's what Morgan Whirledge is finding in Altadena.
" If you are a survivor, being able to turn that corner from dread ... that's like a huge part of this effort," he said. " We're all looking for those steps in this process that give us the resiliency and the optimism to carry forward."
Wherever they may fall in the spectrum, engaging in the idea of group purchasing has given some fire survivors something that's in even shorter supply than building materials: hope.
Do you have a question about the wildfires or fire recovery?
Check out LAist.com/FireFAQs to see if your question has already been answered. If not, submit your questions here, and we’ll do our best to get you an answer.
Gov. Gavin Newsom outlines his proposed 2025-2026 state budget during a news conference at California State University, Stanislaus, in Turlock on Tuesday.
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Rich Pedroncelli
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AP
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Topline:
In his final year in office, Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to go after large investors buying and owning California housing — in the same week that President Donald Trump also took rhetorical aim at Big Landlord.
Regulating big investors: Newsom plans to say during his State of the State address to lawmakers on Thursday that he wants to work with them to regulate the practice of investors buying up large stocks of housing to rent out, forcing California residents to compete with them to afford buying a home, according to the governor’s office. Proposals could include “enhanced state oversight and enforcement and potential changes to the state tax code,” according to the governor’s office.
Newsom and Trump agree: That sounds similar to a proposal President Donald Trump made on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday. The two previously closely aligned on policy related to clearing of homeless encampments. It’s an unlikely meeting of the minds of two political foes who, in a race to head off the electorate's concerns about affordability, have landed upon the same populist message: Blame Wall Street.
In his final year in office, Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to go after large investors buying and owning California housing — in the same week that President Donald Trump also took rhetorical aim at Big Landlord.
It’s an unlikely meeting of the minds of two political foes who, in a race to head off the electorate's concerns about affordability, have landed upon the same populist message: Blame Wall Street.
Newsom plans to say during his State of the State address to lawmakers on Thursday that he wants to work with them to regulate the practice of investors buying up large stocks of housing to rent out, forcing California residents to compete with them to afford buying a home, according to the governor’s office.
Proposals could include “enhanced state oversight and enforcement and potential changes to the state tax code,” according to the governor’s office.
“When housing is treated primarily as a corporate investment strategy, Californians feel the impact,” a source in the office said. “Prices go up, rents rise, and fewer people have a chance to buy a home.”
“I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes,” the president wrote, sending stock prices of major publicly traded residential investment firms plummeting. He urged Congress to put the proposal into law and promised to unveil additional housing policy proposals at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland later this month.
Newsom is stopping short of calling for an outright ban on institutional investors’ ownership, though the source said he will seek to “curb” it with the goal of making home ownership more affordable for California residents.
He hasn’t yet proposed anything concrete. Whatever Newsom seeks to do, he’ll need the approval of the state Legislature.
Trump, for his part, did not offer any details about his proposal, such as how institutional investors would be defined under the proposed law or why he targeted single-family homes in particular. The White House’s press office did not respond to an email with those questions.
The twin announcements come after years of long-shot efforts by California progressives to address a surge in companies buying up single-family housing stock in the wake of the Great Recession. The issue has been the subject of renewed anxiety in post-fire Los Angeles, where a recent report by RedFin showed investors (loosely defined as any buyer with a name that includes “LLC,” “Inc” or “Corp”) have purchased 27 of 61 burned vacant lots that sold in Altadena — more than 40%.
Asked about that report in an interview on MS Now this week, Newsom said he had signed an executive order last year seeking to protect homeowners who find it too expensive to rebuild from falling for “predatory” lowball offers for their properties. But he acknowledged “the broader market conditions are challenging.”
The proposals mark new territory for Newsom’s housing affordability platform. The governor, now in his final year in office, has spent most of the past seven years focused on boosting construction. It’s a pivot toward populism for the governor, who is widely expected to run for president in 2028.
Blaming deep-pocketed investors for the nation’s housing woes has become an increasingly ideological-spanning exercise in recent years, with politicians as diverse as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vice President J.D. Vance championing the cause.
Shortly after Trump’s post, Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio, an enthusiastic supporter of the president, promised to introduce legislation in his own post on X.
Is this actually a problem in California?
Many housing industry professionals, economists and policy researchers are skeptical.
“It’s really hard to buy a house right now so people are looking for someone to blame for that, but I think (institutional investors) are more of a symptom of the affordability crisis than they are a perpetuator of it,” said Caitlin Gorback, a University of Texas at Austin economist who has studied investors’ effect on local real estate markets.
Research on the topic is mixed, though most analyses have found that by taking owner-occupied homes and converting them into rentals, these companies tend to increase the supply of rentals. That puts downward pressure on rents, while taking away purchasable homes, leading to higher prices.
Fewer than 3% of all single-family homes in the state are owned by companies that own at least 10 properties.That also takes away opportunities for would-be homeowners to buy a coveted single-family home. But even that comes with an under-appreciated upside, said Gorback: They provide more priced-out renters the opportunity to live in single-family homes — typically in wealthier, whiter and higher-resourced neighborhoods — something historically reserved for those who can afford to buy.
While apartment buildings are commonly owned and managed by large financial companies, single-family rentals weren’t seen as Wall Street-worthy money-making opportunities until the aftermath of the Great Recession. Since then, companies like Invitation Homes, Blackstone, Progress Residential and AMH Homes have typically focused on markets with relatively low prices and rapidly growing populations.
That doesn’t describe California. As a result, larger investors — however defined — make up a relatively small share of single-family landlords in the state. Fewer than 3% of all single-family homes in the state are owned by companies that own at least 10 properties, according to an analysis by the California Research Bureau, which conducts research for state lawmakers. A mere 20,066 are owned by firms with portfolios of 1,000 units or more. The largest of those owners is Invitation Homes, which owns over 11,000 homes in the state and reached a settlement with Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office last year over allegations it price-gouged tenants and illegally raised rents on more than 1,900 properties.
There are more than 16 million rental units across the state, according to Census data.
Though attacking big monied investors for the high cost of housing is a “huge distraction,” it has obvious political appeal, said Stan Oklobdzija, a UC Riverside public policy professor. “Attacking institutional investors is the latest iteration of appearing to do something without actually doing anything. …It's just kind of archetypical cheap talk.”
For nearly a decade, Democrats in the state Legislature have proposed bills to track or ban the practice. Former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 vetoed a bill to create a registry of institutional investors that own 100 or more single-family homes, noting that “collecting the data would not stop the purchase of these homes by private investors.”
In 2024, lawmakers proposed banning investors that own at least 1,000 single-family homes from buying more houses and renting them out, prohibiting institutional investors from buying single-family homes for any reason and banning developers from selling entire new single-family subdivisions to investors to rent. All three bills died in committees.
Assemblymember Alex Lee, author of the first proposal, revived the bill last year. It passed the Assembly and awaits a hearing in a Senate committee.
Lee, a Democratic Socialist who has long critiqued the role of big money in the state's real estate market, said he was "flabbergasted" to find himself on the same page with Trump, whom he described as a "far-right fascist." Though he expressed doubts that the Trump administration would follow through with the promises the president made in his social media post, he said that "Democrats need to wake up to this populist, but righteous, position."
"We can’t let the far-right capture the housing positions that the people care about," Lee said.
