The Brief

Look skyward as you head north on surface streets toward Altadena, and sooner or later you'll see something a bit out of the ordinary at the intersection of Lake Avenue and Mariposa Street.

It's a billboard emblazoned with the famous wild parrots of Pasadena. And it looks and feels like no other billboard you can find in all of L.A.

"They're local to this space," said Amber Easton. "We wanted to create something that was representative of what we are doing. [It's] a local message to the community."

Easton is an art director of Craft Ads, a new Pasadena-based company that hand-paints billboards.

"It's very simple. We want to make billboards beautiful," Easton said.

Craft Ads seeks to do just that by harkening back to the roots of this commercial art form, owner and co-art director David Lawrence said.

Craft Ads took out two billboards in Altadena to advertise their new hand-painted billboard business.

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Fiona Ng

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LAist

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"There was a time when all of the ads were hand-painted and it made for a more delightful experience," he added. "We want to bring that back."

Billboards as art

Lawrence said he has long had a love affair with billboards. "I love that they are cinematic in scale with the impact of print advertising," he said. "You get this moment. And you can do really, really clever things with it. And I've always loved that."

Incidentally, the inspiration to get into the business came to him when he saw artist James Rosenquist's "F-111," a massive piece of artwork that itself was inspired by billboards and touches on concepts like advertising, consumerism and war.

"When I learned that he was a large scale commercial painter, I was like, I want to do that. And that kind of started the ball rolling," he said.

Lawrence went into the mural industry — which produces large scale advertisements on walls and the sides of buildings — focusing on studio art production and color mixing.

Commercial muraling, Lawrence said, can be physically demanding work.

"I noticed that nobody was doing hand-painted billboards. And it sounded like such a beautiful kind of synthesis of everything," he said.

Then, he met Easton in a couple years ago at the most Los Angeles of settings — a stand-up comedy class. The two got to talking, and Lawrence shared his idea for Crafts Ads with Easton after learning she was also in the professional muraling industry. In her case, she painted murals.

"I immediately knew that it was a wonderful idea," Easton said, who added she also admired the hand-painted process once used for billboards. "As our world becomes more digital, I have a desire to create in the physical space more and more."

David Lawrence and Amber Easton of Craft Ads

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Fiona Ng

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LAist

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A brief history of billboards

Large scale outdoor advertising — defined as those measuring more than 50 square feet — started showing up on American roadsides in the 1830s to entice circus goers, according to the industry trade group Out Of Home Advertising Association of America.

By the turn of the century, a standardized billboard structure was created, allowing retailers to produce ads that would fit any billboard space across the country. From there the industry has continued to grow.

For the longest time, these billboards were painted by hand — until about the 1990s, when new technology rendered the practice obsolete.

How billboards were once hand-painted

Richard Hamlin is a Los Angeles-based lawyer who for decades has worked in law governing billboards. He remembered when these giant advertisements were still being done by hand.

"They'd have a dark room, and it had a big copper mesh on it and they would unfold a white poster paper, and tape it up against the mesh," he said.

The workers would then project the image they were going to use onto the paper. "Then they would take an electric pen and touch the pen to the outline of the pictures, and that would burn holes in the paper," Hamlin said.

Once the paper was put up on a billboard, workers would "puff charcoal through the holes in the paper" to get an outline of the image for it to be hand-painted by somebody on a cherry picker.

It would take 30 days to paint a billboard, Hamlin added.

Hamlin also pointed out this factoid: Inside the entrance to the room where they hand-painted billboards at the Foster & Kleiser plant in Los Angeles — a pioneer outdoor advertising company — a sign stated, "Through these doors walk the greatest artists on earth."

"And that was pretty accurate," Hamlin said. "Imagine painting something like [that] now."

David Lawrence and Amber Easton at Craft Ads.

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Courtesy Craft Ads

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Taking the baton, but with a twist

It is that craftsmanship, imagination and delight that Lawrence wants to bring back. His first obstacle was how to do it cost effectively.

"I wanted to do full scale hand-painted billboards ... in a studio, at full scale, on a ladder. And the overhead was significant," Lawrence said. "I was stuck there for a very long time."

He then settled on another process that would preserve the bespoke quality by essentially hand-drawing a smaller scale of a billboard ad, then scanning it and blowing it up.

"That is where we can save so much money on a hand-painted ad that we can bring them back to the local business," Lawrence said.

Lawrence and Easton then took out two billboard spaces in Altadena a couple months ago to test their processes with ads featuring Pasadena's wild parrots.

"Our neighborhoods used to be filled with advertisements painted by other people who lived in that neighborhood," Lawrence said. "And everybody would be like, Bob painted that, or Sally painted that."

Lawrence noted that a large percentage of outdoor advertising, including billboards, are taken out by local businesses for local residents. He thinks Craft Ads fills a need in the market to help businesses in L.A. stand apart.

"We want to work with the Altadena companies. We want to work with Side Pie. We want to work with MIYA. I would love to do a Christmas board with Altadena Hardware," Lawrence said.

Easton is setting her sights further.

"I'd love to work with the billboard lawyers, personally. Their style is very different, right? Because it's about efficiency," Easton said. "But if any of those lawyers want a true art piece, please come see us."

Facing legal challenges, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has withdrawn a policy that Los Angeles-area homelessness officials say would have caused thousands of people to lose their subsidized housing.

Most federal funding for homelessness programs flows into the L.A. region through HUD’s Continuum of Care grant competition program. Last month, HUD changed its funding rules, limiting how much local governments can spend on permanent housing to 30% of their award totals.

The region currently spends about 90% of its more than $200 million budget covering people’s rent, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Why this matters

The HUD policy that was withdrawn Monday would have caused more than 5,000 households to lose their rental subsidies, officials said.

In recent weeks, California and other states sued HUD, claiming the new federal policies “guarantee that tens of thousands of formerly homeless individuals and families will be evicted back into homelessness.”

A U.S. district judge in Rhode Island was poised to consider an emergency request to block HUD’s controversial policy when the agency announced it would revoke it.

What's next

HUD authorities said they plan to issue a revised notice about the funding soon, according to a statement posted on the agency’s website.

LAHSA spokesperson Ahmad Chapman told LAist that the agency anticipates most of the HUD rule changes to remain in the revised notice. He also said LAHSA plans to keep moving forward with its funding application and reallocating more than $100 million away from permanent housing and toward other interventions. The submission deadline is Jan. 14.

“LAHSA will continue to monitor this situation closely and may extend or even cancel the process as circumstances warrant," Chapman said.

Sarah Mahin, director of L.A. County’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing, said the HUD policy would redirect funding from programs with proven track records and that have helped move people off the streets and into safe, permanent homes.

“We hope officials heed the warnings from countless homelessness and housing experts nationwide and continue to invest in what we know works: permanent housing accompanied by the supportive services that help people stay housed,” she said.

Raul Malo, the leader of the country band The Mavericks and one of the most recognizable voices in roots music, died Monday night, according to a representative of the band. The guitarist and singer had been battling cancer.

He was hospitalized last week, forcing him to miss tribute shows staged in his honor at the Ryman Auditorium over the weekend. He was 60 years old.

"No one embodied life and love, joy and passion, family, friends, music and adventure the way our beloved Raul did," read a statement released by his family.

Malo's group, The Mavericks, mourned the loss of their leader in a social post.

"Anyone with the pleasure of being in Raul's orbit knew that he was a force of human nature, with an infectious energy," the statement read. "Over a career of more than three decades entertaining millions around the globe, his towering creative contributions and unrivaled, generational talent created the kind of multicultural American music reaching far beyond America itself."

Over a career that lasted four decades, The Mavericks lived up to the band's name, challenging expectations and following a roadmap crafted by Malo's expansive musical upbringing as the son of Cuban immigrants in Miami.

"I grew up in a very musical household. There was all kinds of music around always," he told WHYY's Fresh Air in 1995. "We listened to everything from Hank Williams to Celia Cruz to Sam Cooke to Bobby Darin. It didn't matter."

In 1992, Malo told NPR that his widespread influences weren't always understood or appreciated in his South Florida hometown, but he said that his struggle to fit in taught him to trust his instincts. Malo had become the guitarist and lead singer for The Mavericks in 1989, alongside co-founders Robert Reynolds and Paul Deakin, and his roaring, sentimental voice defined the band's sound and remained its constant as the group's catalog moved from slow, tender ballads to full-throttle rock songs. In 1995, the band released its biggest hit with "All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down," a swinging country song featuring an assist from Tex-Mex accordion legend Flaco Jimenez.

As the band grew in members and devoted listeners, The Mavericks continued to push the boundaries of American music, weaving a richly layered tapestry of textures and stories. With more than a dozen studio albums, The Mavericks collected praise and recognition from the Academy of Country Music, the Country Music Association and the Recording Academy. Although they took a hiatus for several years, Malo never stopped making music — and returned to his bandmates with renewed inspiration.

Following its 30th anniversary, the group released its first full-length Spanish album in 2020, aptly titled En Español. The record reimagined Latin standards and folklore-tinged popular tunes; it also made an implicit political statement about Latin music's contributions to American culture.

"In our own little way, if we could get somebody that perhaps is on the fence on issues and hears us singing in Spanish and perhaps reminds them of the beautiful cultures that make up what this country is trying to be and what it should be, so be it," Malo told NPR at the time. "Yeah, I'm OK with that."

The following year, the Americana Music Association recognized The Mavericks with the Trailblazer Award. In 2024, the band released its last studio album, Moon & Stars. The release coincided with news of Malo's cancer diagnosis, which he discussed openly with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe.

Before being hospitalized last week, Malo had been scheduled to perform with The Mavericks at a pair of tribute concerts held this past weekend at the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Over 30 artists, including Patty Griffin, Jim Lauderdale and Steve Earle, still gathered to pay tribute to Malo, with some of the proceeds of the night going to the cancer prevention organization Stand Up To Cancer.

According to his spokesperson, though Malo was too ill to attend, the concert was streamed to his hospital room Friday night.

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The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has mostly blocked efforts to investigate misconduct within its ranks, according to the county inspector general, who announced his retirement Tuesday after 12 years on the job.

In an open letter, Max Huntsman cited examples of how the county has thwarted his efforts to watchdog the department, which in the past has been plagued with accusations that deputies use excessive force and lie on the job.

Huntsman said one example is former Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s misuse of criminal enforcement powers to discredit critics, such as opening an investigation into former County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl.

Villanueva was sheriff from 2018 to 2022.

“My requests for investigation were rejected,” Huntsman’s letter reads. “Even after receiving an official subpoena, the Sheriff’s Department has failed to turn over records regarding the improper surveillance.”

He added: “Sometimes members of the public wonder if frightening new surveillance techniques will be used for improper purposes under the guise of criminal investigation. Sadly, the answer is yes.”

Before becoming inspector general in 2013, Huntsman, 60, was a deputy district attorney who specialized in public corruption. He told LAist on Tuesday that the inspector general job wasn’t something he wanted initially.

“I didn’t want to go work for politicians,” he said. “But the need to provide some kind of independent reporting and analysis was significant.”

The Sheriff’s Department issued a statement saying it valued the Office of the Inspector General and all county oversight bodies and that it wished Huntsman and his family well in his retirement.

The department said it “continues to make great strides in advancing the department in a transparent manner.”

LAist also reached out to the county CEO and county counsel for comment, but they declined.

After George Floyd

In the letter, Huntsman says the state of California has come a long way in strengthening the power of local law enforcement oversight bodies, in part because of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.

After widespread protests — and lobbying by Huntsman — the state provided authority to inspectors general to enforce subpoenas requiring law enforcement agencies to hand over documents and authorized external investigation of police misconduct, including deputy gang conduct.

The Sheriff’s Department — backed by county lawyers — has resisted.

“Los Angeles County may not follow those laws, but it will not be able to avoid them forever,” Huntsman wrote. “The county refuses to require the photographing of suspected gang tattoos in secretive groups that the undersheriff has identified as violating state law.”

“Just a few weeks ago, we requested some information regarding an investigation, and a pair of commanders refused to give it to us,” Huntsman said in an interview with LAist.

Origin of the office 

The Inspector General’s Office was created by the county Board of Supervisors in 2013 in response to a scandal that included former Sheriff Lee Baca covering up the abuses of jail inmates.

Baca went to federal prison.

Since then, the office has issued dozens of reports with recommendations for improving living conditions inside jails that some have described as “filthy,” stopping abuses of juveniles inside juvenile halls and providing shower privacy for inmates as part of the requirements under the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

“All of these abuses were reported by the Office of Inspector General and recommendations were ignored,” Huntsman wrote. Often, it took court orders to enact change.

“When we first blew the whistle on the torturous chaining of mentally ill prisoners to benches for 36 hours at a time, it was only a court order that ended the practice,” he wrote. “Time and time again, this pattern repeated itself.”

Huntsman wrote the county has permitted the Sheriff’s Department to block oversight and defunded the Office of Inspector General by removing a third of its staff.

“It's not surprising the county has driven out two successive chairs of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission,” he wrote.

“Government always claims to value transparency and accountability, but shooting the messenger is still the most common response to criticism,” Huntsman wrote.

Despite setbacks, Huntsman values work 

Huntsman told LAist on Tuesday that he was proud of his career as a public servant.

“I’ve really enjoyed the work and I’m sad to have it end,” he said.

It’s a sentiment he echoed in his letter, adding that despite the setbacks and roadblocks, he was proud of the people with whom he shared the office.

“It has been my honor to work with a talented, brave and tireless group of public servants to ensure that the public knows what its government is doing,” he wrote.

He noted the inspector general’s reports are fact-checked by the office and public.

“When government abuses occur, they are sometimes kept secret, but that is no longer the case for much of what is happening in Los Angeles County,” Huntsman wrote. “What you do about it is up to you.,”

Huntsman’s last day is Friday.

Topline:

The backstory: Last month, the council's Transportation Committee voted to bring a proposal forward to implement a policy change that allows the city to impound and immediately destroy abandoned or inoperable RVs worth less than $4,000. The change is inspired by new state law AB 630, which was created to prevent previously impounded RVs from ending back up on the street.

The motion, authored by Councilmember Traci Park, reports that abandoned RVs pose as public and safety hazards.

What's next: Councilmember Nithya Raman requested that an implementation plan be presented to the council's public safety and housing and homelessness committees.

Go deeper: L.A. pushes policy to make it easier to remove RVs from city streets.