The Brief

Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani made his first public appearance as a Dodger on Thursday after signing a megadeal earlier in the week.

Keeping the No. 17 he wore with his last team, the Los Angeles Angels, Ohtani put on a white and blue jersey with his number at an introduction event at Dodger Stadium Thursday.

"I can't wait to join the Dodgers," Shohei said, speaking through his interpreter Ippei Mizuhara. "They share the same passion as me, have a vision and history all about winning, and I share the same values."

It was the first time the former Angels player has spoken publicly since signing a 10-year, $700-million contract after becoming a free agent in the offseason. The previous largest deal was inked in 2019 by Ohtani's now-former teammate Mike Trout on the Angels, which was for $426.5 million over 12 years.

What the move means for LA's Japanese diaspora

Ohtani's move to L.A. is seismic news across Dodgerland, but his arrival carries special excitement for the area's large Japanese diaspora.

The fact that a Japanese athlete is now the highest-paid player in major league baseball — well, in any U.S. sport — isn't lost on Greg Toya. He told LAist he’s bursting with pride as a third-generation Japanese American and life-long Dodgers fan. So is his 92-year-old father, who Toya now plans to take to a Dodgers game so he can see Ohtani.

Greg Toya (l.) poses with friends at Angel Stadium in Anaheim while wearing No. 17 on his cap — Shohei Ohtani's number.

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Courtesy of Greg Toya

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Greg Toya (l.) and his friend LAist Senior Editor George Kiriyama enjoy a Dodgers-Angels game at Dodger Stadium on July 8, 2023

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Courtesy of George Kiriyama

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"Shohei Ohtani being Japanese is an important and vital part of our Asian American diaspora that needs to be celebrated and I definitely celebrate," Toya said.

The Dodgers organization has had ties to Japan going back decades. Ohtani is the eleventh in a line of Japanese-born players to wear Dodger blue, starting with Hideo Nomo in 1995. The two-way talent will play for manager Dave Roberts who was born in Japan to an Okinawan mother and U.S. Marine father.

Ohtani’s importance to Japanese and Japanese Americans was evident at a media-only introduction ceremony on Thursday for Ohtani at Dodger Stadium. Japanese-language outlets from both Japan and the U.S. had a large presence in the centerfield plaza watching Ohtani take off his blazer to don his new jersey.

Aspiring to be Shohei

Toya, a dean at Santa Ana College, said growing up, Asian American role models in professional sports were few and far between. But now everyone aspires to be Shohei. In the first 48 hours after his No. 17 jersey dropped, sales surpassed those for soccer star Lionel Messi.

Fans of the Blue Crew are hoping more stars from Japan will join Ohtani on the mound. Ohtani's contract is for a blockbuster $700-million dollars over 10 years. However, he is deferring all but $2 million a year to free up the Dodgers to court top talent like Japanese free agent Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Yuma Asakura reported from the introduction ceremony for Ohtani. He covers the Japanese American community in Orange County and said there's sadness that Ohtani left the Angels. But he said fans want the two-time MVP award winner to secure a title.

"He wanted to win. Yeah, so I think that is the best," Asakura said.

Tatsuo Mori, president of LaLaLa, a Japanese-language publication holds up a recent front page.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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The throughline to Hideo Nomo

Tatsuo Mori, another Japanese-language journalist at the introduction event, said that the Dodgers hold a special place among Japanese baseball fans because Los Angeles is where Nomo debuted.

“We remember how the Dodgers took care of Nomo,” Mori said.

Toya, the college dean, said Nomo broke ground for all Japanese players in the U.S. — walking so Ohtani can run.

“Shohei is in his own class,” said Toya who thinks the player has already outpaced Babe Ruth. “In the future, people will be saying ‘Oh, he's like Shohei.'”

The impact of HBO Max queer sports romance show Heated Rivalry continues its blaze across pop culture. Last month, the show’s co-stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie were the torchbearers for the Winter Olympics and presented the best supporting actress award at the Golden Globes. Later this month, Storrie is slated to host Saturday Night Live.

The show’s impact has also hit the ice.

In January, the ticketing platform Seatgeek reported a rise in National Hockey League ticket sales that coincided with the release of the show. In that span, the ticketing site saw a 9% increase in single-ticket sales, which the site reports is the highest it's ever been for the NHL. Stubhub, another ticket platform, reported a 40% interest in hockey tickets since the show first aired.

LA Kings keep the hype going

In an attempt to tap into the moment the show is having, LA Kings music director Dieter Ruehle has been playing music from the show live at the games. Fans took to Instagram and TikTok sharing videos of t.A.T.u.'s hit “All the Things She Said” and Wolf Parade’s “I’ll Believe in Anything” at the games. It’s a trend that multiple teams in the league are tapping into, including the Seattle Kraken.

“I've been a hockey fan since I was a kid, and I've noticed the growth of the game,” Ruehle said. “However…in recent times whenever I click on social media, there's posts about, ‘oh, we're going to our first hockey game.’ And I think that's so awesome.”

Ruehle says he finds “tremendous joy” in seeing the crowd’s reaction when he plays the songs at the games.

"I'm glad that the show is bringing that to hockey,” he says. “It's pretty phenomenal quite frankly, and I'm just glad to be part of it when I [play] some of the songs from the show."

The show’s creators, Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady, also collaborated with the Kings in a video where they were live mic’d for two periods of a January 16th game against the Anaheim Ducks.

Since the show came out, Kings senior manager of social content Alec Palmer says there’s been an uptick in influencers coming to the Kings games.

“The fact this [show] was about hockey or set in this hockey world was like the greatest gift to hockey,” Palmer says. “It has gotten so many people exposed to the sport.”

An icy environment that still needs thawing

The impact of the show is also felt through people who play the sport.

Since the show’s release, former hockey player Jesse Kortuem publicly came out and, in part, credited Heated Rivalry for his decision. Kortuem played in the Cutting Edges, an LGBTQ+ hockey association in Vancouver.

“I loved the game, but I lived with a persistent fear,” Kortuem wrote in a Facebook post. “I wondered how I could be gay and still play such a tough and masculine sport.”

Fans have long criticized the sport for not being a safe space for queer folks. In 2023, the NHL created controversy with their decision to ban rainbow-colored “pride tape” on the rink and a separate ban on Pride-themed jerseys during warmups.

“ I think this show has really brought all of those things back up to light and forced people to look in the mirror and have those conversations,” Palmer said, speaking in a personal capacity.

Palmer says the real work comes with engaging with the community through workshops with coaches on inclusive language, hosting community pride nights and supporting LGBTQ+ friendly teams like the Los Angeles Blades.

“ That's where you're making that impact in real life,” he says, “and how we're setting the next generation up to be successful.”

The logic behind electric vehicles benefiting public health has long been solid: More EVs means fewer internal combustion engines on the road and a reduction in harmful tailpipe emissions. But now researchers have confirmed, to the greatest extent yet, that this is indeed what’s actually happening on the ground. What’s more, they found that even relatively small upticks in EV adoption can have a measurably positive impact on a community.

Whereas previous work has largely been based on modeling, a study published in January in the journal Lancet Planetary Health used satellites to measure actual emissions. The study, conducted between 2019 and 2023, focused on California, which has among the highest rates of EV use in the country, and nitrogen dioxide, one of the gases released during combustion, including when fossil fuels are burned. Exposure to the pollutant can contribute to heart and lung issues or even premature death. Across nearly 1,700 ZIP codes, the analysis showed that for every increase of 200 electric vehicles, nitrogen dioxide emissions decreased by 1.1%.

“A pretty small addition of cars at the ZIP code level led to a decline in air pollution,” said Sandrah Eckel, a public health professor at USC’s Keck School of Medicine and lead author of the study. “It’s remarkable.”

The group had tried to establish this link using Environmental Protection Agency air monitors before, but because there are only about 100 of them in California, the results weren’t statistically significant. The data also were from 2013 through 2019, when there were fewer electric vehicles on the road. Although the satellite instrument they ultimately used only detected nitrogen dioxide, it did allow researchers to gather data for virtually the entire state, and this time the findings were clear.

“It’s making a real difference in our neighborhoods,” said Eckel, who said a methodology like theirs could be used anywhere in the world. The advent of such powerful satellites allows scientists to look at other sources of emissions, such as factories or homes too. “It’s a revolutionary approach.”

Mary Johnson, who researches environmental health at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and was not involved in the study, said she’s not aware of a similar study of this size, or one that uses satellite data so extensively. “Their analysis seems sound,” she said, noting that the authors controlled for variables such as the COVID-19 pandemic and shifts toward working from home.

The results, Johnson added, “totally make sense” and align with other research in this area.

When London implemented congestion pricing in 2003, for example, it reduced traffic and emissions and increased life expectancy. That is the direction this latest research could go too.

“They didn’t take the next step and look at health data,” she said, “which I think would be interesting.”

Daniel Horton, who leads Northwestern University’s climate change research group, also sees value in this latest work.

“The results help to confirm the sort of predictions that numerical air quality modelers have been making for the past decade,” he said, adding that it could also lay the foundation for similar research. “This proof of concept paper is a great start and augurs good things to come.”

Eckel hopes that, eventually, advances in satellite technology will allow for more widespread detection of other types of emissions too, such as fine particulate matter. That could even help account for some of the potential downsides of EVs, which are heavier and could therefore kick up more tire or brake dust than their gasoline counterparts. On the whole, though, she believes the picture overwhelmingly illustrates how driving an electric car is better not just for the planet but for people.

Research like this, she says, underscores the importance of continued EV adoption, the sales of which have slumped recently, and the need to do so equitably. Although lower-income neighborhoods have historically borne the brunt of pollution from highways and traffic, they can’t always afford the relatively high cost of EVs. Eckel hopes that research like this can help guide policymakers.

“There are concerns that some of the communities that really stand to benefit the most from reductions in air pollution are also some of the communities that are really at risk of being left behind in the transition,” she said.

Previous research has shown that EVs could alleviate harms such as asthma in children, and detailed data like this latest study can help highlight both where more work needs to be done and what’s working.

“It’s really exciting that we were able to show that there were these measurable improvements in the air that we’re all breathing,” she said.

Another arguably hopeful finding was that the median increase in electric vehicle usage during the study was 272 per ZIP code.

That, Eckel says, means there is plenty of opportunity to make our air even cleaner.

As water agencies across California grapple with the increasingly extreme effects of climate change, they’re also facing another problem: the incoming “silver tsunami.”

That’s the phrase coined by the industry to illustrate the fact that much of the workforce — largely baby boomers — that keeps our water flowing and safe are getting ready to retire.

Nationwide, about a third of the nation’s water workforce is eligible for retirement within the next decade, “the majority being workers with trade jobs in mission critical positions,” the Environmental Protection Agency wrote in a 2024 report.

Climate resilience needs a workforce

To deal with how pollution in our atmosphere is driving longer, hotter droughts, as well as increasingly intense rain when it does come, water agencies across Southern California are working to boost aging infrastructure and invest in more diverse water supplies, such as recycled water.

The lack of people to staff those changes is a problem for pretty much every water agency, urban and rural.

L.A. is the second-largest city in the nation and is spending billions on water recycling and stormwater capture, for example, but it has been struggling to fill needed positions at its four wastewater treatment plants.

The city of L.A. plans to clean all wastewater that flows to the Hyperion plant.

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Eric Garcetti via Flickr

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The city plans to treat nearly all of the Hyperion wastewater facility’s water to drinkable standards in the coming decades. To support that massive expansion, Hi-Sang Kim, the operations director at Hyperion, told LAist in 2022 the facility will need to boost its workforce by at least 30%.

For less urban water agencies, the challenge is even greater. The Eastern Municipal Water District serves close to 1 million people (and growing), as well as agricultural customers in western Riverside County and northern San Diego County.

They estimate as much as half of their workforce could retire within five years.

“Not only are we investing in new infrastructure, but we have aging infrastructure, so we are in dire need of technical skill sets to operate, maintain everything from treatment plants to pipelines, to pump stations,” said Joe Mouawad, the water district's general manager.

Jobs in the water industry — potable water and wastewater treatment operators, engineers, managers, skilled maintenance, public relations and more — are well paid and secure, Mouawad said, but it’s hard to fill the needed positions.

“We are finding it more challenging to backfill retirees,” he said. “It's not so much a lack of interest — I think it's a lack of awareness.”

Building a pipeline for water jobs

Those job gaps are why Eastern Municipal has become a leader in building the water workforce pipeline. For decades, the water district partnered with local schools to provide education about water conservation and what they do. But over the last decade, as the retirement forecast grew more dire, the agency has shifted to prioritize skills-based programming and partnerships with local high schools.

Local high school students tour Eastern Municipal Water District facilities in Perris.

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Courtesy Eastern Municipal Water District

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In 2013, they launched the Youth Ecology Corps program, for young adults between 18 and 24. Many who went through the program and paid internships are now full-time employees, said Calen Daniels, a spokesperson for the agency, who himself went through the program.

In recent years, the water agency has focused on younger potential future employees through a variety of Career and Technical Education programs at local high schools, including in automotive tech, engineering, agriculture, construction and information systems, said Erin Guerrero, Eastern Municipal’s public affairs manager overseeing its education programs.

“We're starting earlier and getting these kids real world experience,” Guerrero said.

Michelle Serrano teaches a two-year pre-apprenticeship Environmental Water Resources program at West Valley High School in Hemet. Students leave the program equipped to take the state-level certification exam for a job as a water treatment operator or water distribution operator once they turn 18.

Clayton Gordon, GIS mapping administrator at EMWD, talks to West Valley High students in the GIS Engineering certification summer program.

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Courtesy Eastern Municipal Water District

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Already more than 200 students have gone through the program since it launched last year. While local community colleges have similar Career and Technical Education programs, this is the first program of its kind targeting high schoolers in the region. Eastern Municipal hopes to expand to other area schools as well.

“Once the kids get out of the program, they're set if this is the direction they want to go,” Serrano said. “We have these students set for a job or a career for the rest of their life.”

She said the program is a gamechanger for students who don’t see themselves going to college or who are unsure of their future career path.

“We really are pushing hard for college, and that's a good push,” Serrano said. “However, we have kids who don't see themselves going to college.  It's opening up an amazing path for students who otherwise may not see a job direction.”

They’re not only finding a stable career path, she said, but fulfilling roles necessary to our society, Mouawad said.

“It's working for us,” he said, “and we want to see this serve as a model for the rest of the industry.”

It takes an icon to know an icon. If you haven’t seen the new Harry Styles video, check it out and you’ll recognize downtown’s Westin Bonaventure in a starring role. The hotel has been in plenty of movies — including True Lies — and now it’s the stage for Styles’ music video for his new single, “Aperture.” Fiona Ng takes you behind the scenes.

Speaking of cool movie settings, Kristen Stewart bought the abandoned Highland Theatre and plans to restore it to its original grandeur. Good news for film lovers.

On tap in the music space this week, Licorice Pizza recommendations include new wave goddess Dale Bozzio and her Missing Persons at the Whisky, rock goddess Melissa Etheridge at the Canyon Club in Agoura or Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera in conversation onstage at the Roxy — all on Wednesday. Thursday, experimental hip-hop group Clipping is at the Observatory, Atmosphere is at the Novo, UK singer-songwriter Erin LeCount plays the Roxy and Long Beach Dub All Stars & Bedouin Soundclash hit the stage at the Wayfarer. Plus, Aloe Blacc kicks off the first of four nights at the Blue Note.

Elsewhere on LAist, you can find out about the push to make local beaches into a national park, read up on Sinners producer Sev Ohanian’s rise in Hollywood and find the best spots for a fun Galentine’s Day.

Events

Game Night

Tuesday, February 10, 7:30 p.m.
Cheerio Collective
5917 N. Figueroa Street, Highland Park 
COST: $25; MORE INFO

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Nik

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Channel family game night with new friends over drinks in Highland Park at this classic board game night with Cat Darling Agency and Asian American Collective. Play Connect Four, Jenga and Uno while meeting some folks and enjoying a free drink!

Concert reading of Dogfight

Through Sunday, February 15
The Morgan-Wixson Theatre 
2627 Pico Plvd., Santa Monica 
COST: $23; MORE INFO 

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Joel Castro

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Morgan-Wixson Theatre

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Before there was The Greatest Showman, there was Dogfight. Benji Pasek and Justin Paul’s musical about a group of young Marines in San Francisco on the eve of the war in Vietnam is presented in a concert reading at Santa Monica’s Morgan-Wixson Theatre. Dogfight “explores themes of love, loss, and coming of age.”

OXY LIVE! with Robin Coste Lewis in conversation with Alexandra Grant

Tuesday, February 10, 7 p.m. 
Thorne Hall 
Thorne Road, Occidental College 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

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Courtesy Oxy Arts

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National Book Award winner and former Poet Laureate of Los Angeles Robin Coste Lewis visits Occidental College for poetry and conversation with Oxy Live's host, celebrated visual artist and cultural collaborator Alexandra Grant (you may recognize her from excellent grantLove series… and her red carpet photos with beau Keanu Reeves). A book signing hosted by beloved Pasadena bookstore Octavia’s Bookshelf will follow, and attendees will have the opportunity to have their books signed by the author.

Dance at the Odyssey

Through Sunday, February 15
2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A.
COST: $28; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy of Dance at the Odyssey

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Next weekend is the last weekend of Odyssey Theatre’s six-week-long Dance at the Odyssey festival, which features two world premieres: Silent Fiction from Intrepid Dance Project in Odyssey 2, and One World from choreographer Hannah Millar and her Imprints company in Odyssey 3.

Author Lindsay Jill Roth with Dr. Laura Berman

Thursday, February 12, 6 p.m. 
Zibby’s Bookstore
1113 Montana Ave., Santa Monica 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

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Courtesy Zibby's

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It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and author Lindsay Jill Roth has the questions that will make your new (or long-term!) relationship last. Her new book, Romances & Practicalities, lays out 250 questions you should ask each other to make your love a time- and challenge-tested success — alongside Roth’s own long-distance love story and interviews with couples of all stripes. She’s in conversation with love, sex and relationship therapist Dr. Laura Berman at Zibby’s in Santa Monica.

An evening in conversation with Silversun Pickups’ Brian Aubert & Producer and Musician Butch Vig

Wednesday, February 11, 7 p.m. 
Sid the Cat 
1022 El Centro Street, South Pasadena
COST: $32.75; MORE INFO

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Sid the Cat

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Hometown heroes Silversun Pickups are back with a new album and tour — catch them this week for free at Amoeba’s in-store show on Monday. Then dive deep at this conversation at the new Sid the Cat venue between singer Brian Aubert and producer and musician Butch Vg about the making of their new album, Tenterhooks. Plus, Lyndsey Parker of Licorice Pizza (friend of Best Things to Do) will moderate the chat.

Stronger Together: Nurturing Mind, Body, and Spirit

Monday, February 9, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
St. Monica Catholic Community Grand Pavilion 
725 California Ave., Santa Monica
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy St. John's Foundation

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Recovery is an ongoing process, and the medical and spiritual communities of L.A. are reminding you they're here to help. Providence Saint John’s Health Center and St. Monica Catholic Community are marking the anniversary of the Palisades and Eaton fires with an evening of community, commemoration and healing.