The Brief

Yes, you are seeing double in Sherman Oaks! Residents in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood were greeted to a peculiar but familiar sight earlier this month when a brand new Trader Joe’s opened directly across from another Trader Joe’s — one that’s more than 50 years old.

A familiar face in the neighborhood

The new kid on the block at 14140 Riverside Drive has a larger floor plan, newer carts and underground parking. The old one, well, it’s got seniority and age.

LAist visited the neighborhood recently to talk to residents about these dueling Trader Joe’s.

Out with the old, in with the new

Claudio has been a customer of the OG Trader Joe’s at 14119 Riverside Drive for 15 years. But so much for that loyalty, as he recently made the switch.

The new shop, he said, “definitely it's more spread out... The floor is brand new. The carts are brand new, so nothing wrong with the wheels and anything like that.”

Sherman Oaks resident Kathy said she prefers the new TJs because of its sizable, underground parking lot. The lack of available spaces at the old location — a common complaint against many Trader Joe’s — had made it harder to shop there.

“People keep saying it’s very strange that we have two. Well, we don’t think so,” she said.

Kathy said she’ll only go back to the old location if she's in a rush since she wouldn't have to deal with the underground parking structure that requires a ticket to enter and exit.

Why mess with a good thing

Outside the old Trader Joe’s were fans who vow eternal love to their location.

Victoria told us that the new TJs means fewer people — and more parking — at the old TJs.

“ I'm really enjoying coming here now because it's not as crowded and the parking is great,” She said. “It’s great that people are going to the new one so I can still go to the old one.”

Twice the fun

For those wondering about the fate of the old Trader Joe's, fear not.

“We’ve had a great relationship with our customers in Sherman Oaks for 52 years,” said Nakia Rohde, the grocer’s public relations manager. “And we plan to keep both stores open.”

So if you’re headed to the Trader Joe’s in Sherman Oaks, make sure to specify old or new.

SAN DIEGO — Josiane Valsaint has lived and worked legally in the U.S. since 2010. But she and hundreds of thousands of other Haitian nationals are set to lose their legal status as soon as Monday, opening the door for federal immigration agents to round them up for deportation.

The question that sends tears streaming down Valsaint's face is: If that happens, what will happen to her 10- and 12-year-old children, born in San Diego, who attend public school here?

"Who's going to take care of my kiddos?" she asked. "They're not adults yet. They were born here." Taking them to Haiti, much of which is now controlled by heavily armed gangs, is not an option, she said.

The Supreme Court last month allowed the Trump administration to kick 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians out of the Temporary Protected Status program that has allowed them to live and work in the U.S. because of unsafe conditions in their countries. There are many uncertainties now agonizing these communities, including how aggressively immigration agents — who have their addresses — will seek to detain them, and what will happen to their children, many of whom are U.S. citizens.

Guerline Jozef is executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a San Diego-based nonprofit that supports Haitian immigrants. She said if the government begins rounding up Haitians whose Temporary Protected Status has been revoked, family separations are likely because most parents can't fathom taking their children back to a country largely controlled by armed gangs.

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By one Princeton researcher's estimate, there are 50,000 children who've been born in the U.S. to Haitian parents with TPS. The loss of those protections means a large new population of mixed-status families are vulnerable to being split apart by the Trump administration's mass deportation drive.

In deciding to strip Haitians of their temporary legal status, the Trump administration has said it's no longer justified because "conditions in Haiti have improved sufficiently to support the return of Haitian nationals' safely. It's also said allowing Haitian migrants to remain is "contrary to the U.S. national interest."

Haitian migrants and advocacy groups have disputed those conclusions. In fact, they say, Haiti is more dangerous now than when the Obama administration first granted TPS to Haitians after the 2010 earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Haiti's president was assassinated in 2021. Today, armed gangs control vast swaths of the island nation's territory, infrastructure and economy, and restrict the movement of citizens.

Almost invariably, Haitian TPS holders say taking their children there is unfathomable.

"They cannot take those children back to Haiti," said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the San Diego-based Haitian Bridge Alliance, which advocates for Haitian immigrants. "Not because Haiti is not beautiful. Not because there's no hope. But because right now, in July 2026, it is impossible for them to be safe there."

In late June, Haitians in the U.S. with Temporary Protected Status attended an information session at the Haitian Bridge Alliance, in San Diego, about what the loss of their legal status could mean for them and their families — and how to prepare.

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Many Haitian TPS holders, Jozef said, are just beginning to consider the impossible decisions they'll soon face. Leave their children in someone else's care? Take them back to Haiti? Try fleeing to another country?

"I think family separation is more likely," Jozef said. "To take them back with them is not even a choice."

Valsaint, whose 10 and 12-year-olds speak perfect English and sing in a church choir in San Diego, said about her plans only that, "families stick together." And then, her voice catching, she added: "We can't go back to Haiti." She said she's hoping for a miracle.

Sandra, a Haitian woman with TPS who asked NPR to use only her first name because she fears deportation, said her teen son came to her after the Supreme Court ruling and expressed suicidal thoughts over the prospect of being sent to Haiti, a country he's never been to but whose troubles he's kept up with online.

"I cried," said Sandra, who works as an in-home caretaker in San Diego. "I'm supposed to protect them, and I feel like I'm failing."

It's not clear how aggressively Immigration and Customs Enforcement will move to detain and deport Haitians newly stripped of TPS protections, or how much capacity Haiti has to receive deportation flights. Haiti's top migration official told local reporters that based on a conversation with the U.S. embassy in Haiti, he expects about a thousand deportees to arrive on flights from the U.S. each month.

NPR asked the Department of Homeland Security how it plans to handle the U.S.-born children of Haitians it seeks to detain. In an emailed statement, an unnamed spokesperson wrote, "ICE does not separate families. Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administration's (sic) immigration enforcement."

Haitian flags at the offices of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a San Diego nonprofit.

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The statement stressed the administration's longstanding position that Temporary Protected Status was always meant to be temporary.

"For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program," the statement said. "The Trump administration is restoring integrity to the immigration system by ensuring that individuals who no longer qualify for TPS either pursue another lawful immigration status, voluntarily depart using the Department's available return assistance, or face removal in accordance with federal law."

In some states with large Haitian communities, such as Massachusetts, officials have published guides to help parents who want to designate temporary guardians for their U.S. citizen children. Jozef, of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, said advocates are scaling up other support systems to help Haitians make plans to protect themselves and their children in the weeks and months ahead.

On Monday, a lower federal court in D.C. is expected to implement the Supreme Court's ruling allowing TPS for Haitians to end. That would allow immigration agents to begin arrests. Advocates are exploring other legal options and urging Congress to pass a bill that would extend TPS protections for Haitians. It passed the House with support from some Republicans in April, but was blocked by Senate Republicans this week.

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 9 8 8 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Copyright 2026 NPR

For the past nine years, if you’re the kind of person who nerds out on Star Wars, Marvel, Game of Thrones, or any nerd franchise that exists in the galaxy, you’ll have found your community at Scum and Villainy Cantina in Hollywood.

While the exterior looks like just another unassuming business on the often bustling street, walking in reveals a highly curated space honoring every facet of nerd culture down to the last detail. The design honors the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Custom cocktails allude to different fandoms with names like “Sauron Sour” and “Harley Quinn.”

Scum & Villainy Cantina's bar may look familiar.

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Most importantly, the people enjoying the space are openly expressing their love for these stories and universes, whether that be through intricate costumes or lively debate. It’s a scene one might find after (or before) a sci-fi convention, which is exactly what J.C. Reifenberg, co-owner of Scum and Villainy, intended.

“We wanted to create the post-convention bar experience every night of the week,” Reifenberg said.

As a veteran of such conventions, he’s seen Mark Hamill (who played Luke Skywalker) speak numerous times, but he doesn’t remember any of the speeches. He does remember the people he met at the bar when the long day was over.

Revel in nerd culture (costumes encouraged) at Scum & Villainy.

"The best part about fandom is the community. That’s what people crave,” Reifenberg said. “This geek world has grown up with the kids that fell in love with it and continues to offer comfort, companionship, friendship and opportunity.”

Scum & Villainy Cantina in Hollywood.

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Reifenberg is now taking that concept and doubling down, hoping to create not just another gathering place, but a community hub for makers and creators to learn the craft.

Expanding to Burbank

For the past eight months, he and his wife, Jen Smith, who designed the interior of both establishments, have been crowdsourcing to raise $1 million for Scum and Villainy: Rendezvous, which they hope to open in Burbank, steps below the AMC 16. It’s certainly attracting interest; so far the pair have raised more than $600,000 toward the goal.

Scum & Villainy, open to people of all galaxies.

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Reifenberg said he can’t confirm an official launch date because they’re waiting on their permits from the Department of Planning in Burbank. But they are shooting to open by the time Avengers: Doomsday comes out on Dec. 18.

“My goal is for people to watch Avengers and walk down the steps to Rendezvous with everybody in the movie theater,” Reifenberg said. “We’ll have ‘No spoilers’ signs up until the last showing of the night is over.”

The new space is 5,200 square feet over two floors. The bottom floor is for the post-convention hangs, similar to the current Scum and Villainy. Upstairs, there will be private dining and a professional podcast and livestreaming studio. Reel Rejects, the movie and television commentary channel on YouTube, is partnering with Rendezvous for live events and recording.

There’s also a multi-purpose room hosting classes taught by entertainment professionals, for which they’ll be tapping some industry heavy hitters. After running Scum and Villainy and working in film and television, including many projects with fellow super nerd Kevin Smith, Reifenberg and Smith have come to know Marc Bernardin (who wrote episodes of Batman: Caped Crusader and Eyes of Wakanda), Fon Davis (who worked at George Lucas’s visual effects company, Industrial Light & Magic), and many more professionals behind geek franchises.

“I’m connected to all these wonderful makers, and these people love to share what they learned,” Reifenberg said, noting that when he grew up in Chicago, not only was there not nearly as much of an industry for this kind of work, but any time he would share his big ideas, his peers would shoot them down as impossible. Not here in Los Angeles.

“Los Angeles is a city of dreamers,” Reifenberg said. “I remember how magical and untouchable these things were. What can I do to help inspire the next kid to do an impossible thing?”

Fundraising for it

The first five investors of $5,000 in the WeFunder campaign for Rendezvous will get to shoot their short films there, and there are plenty of bigger perks as well. Individual tiers go as high as $100,000, offering everything from lifetime discounts to being in a commercial for the space directed by Kevin Smith. (Smith invested $10,000, and has hosted numerous episodes of his podcast Fatman Beyond at the original Scum and Villainy). Then, if the total goes over $750,000 or reaches the total goal of $1 million, everyone who contributed gets extra benefits, such as 20% off merch.

The $1 million amount may seem ambitious, but in 2017, the original Scum and Villainy was just a weekend pop-up instead of a year-round establishment. After announcing it, they sold more than $1 million in tickets from April to July 2017, and they realized they needed to keep it open for the community.

The pair told me so many stories about how Scum and Villainy has changed people’s lives. Some are about couples meeting there on May 4 (yes, May the Fourth, the internationally recognized Star Wars holiday) who then proposed on a later May 4. Others are about people who came to every weekend of the pop-up in costume because it was the first place in their entire lives they felt truly safe to express who they are.

“I have worked in bars and restaurants for 20 years, and I have seen restaurateurs who don’t believe in their concept. They’re not willing to put the time and effort into massaging it to appease the community,” Smith said. “This whole place exists because the community is like ‘Please don’t close.’”

Reifenberg added: “If we build it, they will come.”

A bloodless bullfight is taking place in Artesia today, part of a centuries-old religious tradition known as the Festa do Espírito Santo — or Festival of the Holy Spirit.

The performance features matadors and horsemen using Velcro-tipped darts to try to stick them onto a Velcro pad worn by the bull.

"It's Velcro on Velcro. It, most of the time, sticks. Sometimes it doesn't," said Paul De Medeiros, one of the organizers. "We don't want to injure the animals."

The show's taking place at Artesia D.E.S. (Divino Espírito Santo, or Holy Spirit) — a community hall built in 1927 by Portuguese immigrants who landed in the area.

"In Artesia, it used to be called Dairy Valley," said De Medeiros, who's president of Artesia D.E.S. "A lot of them were involved in either agriculture or dairy business. They built churches, but they also built social halls."

The diaspora also settled in Chino and San Diego, both with their own cultural event venues.

The community hall in Artesia has something special — its own bullfighting arena built in 1976.

"Both of my grandfathers — they have passed — they were actually the ones that built the bull arena, along with a couple of gentlemen," said Joey Martins, a longtime coordinator of the event. "Today [that] would probably never fly, and it's been grandfathered in."

Born and raised in Artesia, Martins grew up watching this style of bullfighting. Before the arena, he remembered the shows taking place at a local park.

The bullfight typically lasts around two hours, and De Medeiros described it as "a full-on professional show" with spectators coming from around L.A. and as far as away as Bakersfield and San Diego to pack the 1,000-seat arena.

"We have a matador coming from Mexico. And then we have the horse riders — what they call the cavaleiros — and there's one from Portugal that has arrived here last week," Martins said.

There are also the forcados, De Medeiros explained,  who will attempt to catch the bull toward the end.

And the bulls — they will arrive a couple of hours before showtime, with their owners or handlers in tow.

"They don't want to leave a bull in a foreign, unfamiliar area, because the bulls, they have routines," De Medeiros said.

Right below Foothill Boulevard in Sylmar, the second-oldest cemetery in the San Fernando Valley has sat since the 1870s on a plot of land that’s gone from forgotten and overgrown to a cherished place where the living commune with the dead.

Now, the San Fernando Pioneer Memorial Cemetery has become not only a place to remember the deceased, but also a favorite spot for locals who like to celebrate Summerween with a classic film screening.

That tradition continues Saturday night with an annual screening of Ed Wood’s 1957 classic, Plan 9 From Outer Space, which has a special relationship to this place.

From trampled to cherished 

I walked beyond the cemetery gates to meet up with Stefanie Garcia, the chairperson of the San Fernando Pioneer Memorial Cemetery. She explained that while this might be a peaceful place and an L.A. Historic-Cultural Monument now, it wasn’t always so revered.

Members of the surrounding neighborhood, a longtime horse community, would even ride onto the grounds.

“Back in the day, they would trample through here,” Garcia said. “We’ve heard stories of people using the headstones to learn how to lasso and then they would rip them off their foundations.”

Garcia said this place took a turn for the better thanks to the San Fernando chapter of a nonprofit group called Native Daughters of the Golden West. The all-women organization worked to preserve the history of the cemetery beginning in the late 1950s.

Now Garcia keeps that effort going.

With the help of a ground-penetrating radar study done in 2010 and death certificates found over the years, Garcia said, the group learned that there were at least 500 people buried here at some point, including five Civil War veterans.

“We found the most concentrated amount of people are in that back corner where we have our movie night,” Garcia said.

Speaking of movie night, parts of Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space were shot here. The film is beloved both for its so-bad-it’s good-charm and for being Bela Lugosi’s last on-screen film appearance.

“It’s not scary or creepy, it’s a vibrant celebratory event,” actor and comedian Ben Jacob said, adding that he may come sporting a vampire's cape for the screening. "We love being here when the community is here.”

Jacob will emcee tonight’s screening along with Monique Ramirez, his co-host on the podcast, “Who’s Dead From Your Favorite Movie?”

Unmarked graves

“There’s a lot of Latino culture here,” Ramirez explained. “And there’s a lot of, specifically, Mexicans — I’m Mexican — that are buried here that are unmarked. And I feel like that’s an important and honorable part of our history here.”

One of the curious things about the cemetery is that there aren’t that many gravestones and markers. And most of the ones that do remain are to remember wealthier locals.

That’s because, as Garcia tells it, the cemetery became the final resting place for many of the region’s poorest residents.

“The majority of the people that are buried here are actually Hispanic. About 70 percent,” Garcia, who also runs local tours under the name SFV ROCKS, said.

Ticket sales from the Saturday night movie will go toward Garcia and her colleagues' biggest project: working to identify who is here so they can place markers and properly honor people.

“It tells a bigger story of what was going on in that time,” Garcia said, tearing up. “It makes me emotional... because of the fact that the poor were so underrepresented here... that the Hispanic community was so underrepresented here.”

“So, we’re here to tell their story. And that’s my favorite part of it,” she said.