The Brief

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Every school day, Vilma Armas watches her 16-year old daughter walk to Miguel Contreras Learning Complex from their apartment near the corner of Lucas Avenue and West Third Street.

It’s the same intersection where The Silver Platter, a historic LGBTQ+ Latino bar, wants to relocate. 

The mother is opposed to the proposal and she’s not alone as many of her neighbors and the Los Angeles Unified School District have raised concerns about opening a bar near six school campuses in the Westlake neighborhood.

“It’s just not a good decision to open that there,” Armas said. “We’re against it for the safety of our children and ourselves, too.” 

Westlake residents Silvia Samayoa, left, and Esperanza Lopez speak with Vilma Armas about a proposal to relocate The Silver Platter on July 27, 2026.

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Isaac Vargas

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The LA Local

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At a July 14 hearing, city staff with the Los Angeles Department of City Planning heard the proposal to relocate The Silver Platter after their longtime location on 7th Street was slated for demolition for a new housing development. 

Multiple neighbors were unable to speak up during the virtual hearing due to their work schedules, language barriers, age and difficulty navigating the online meeting’s comment system. The bar’s owners have applied for a permit to sell alcoholic beverages and install a 15-foot neon sign at the new location on West 3rd Street.

No decision was made at the hearing. Instead, the zoning administrator left the public record open for 30 days to allow additional written comments before issuing a decision.

City staff are balancing the bar’s cultural and historical significance against concerns raised by the Los Angeles Unified School District and residents about parking, noise, traffic and public safety. 

Supporters argue the bar is an irreplaceable cultural institution and a safe place for Spanish-speaking gay Latinos, transgender Latinas and working-class immigrants.

“This is not a new bar coming to the neighborhood,” said Martha Vasquez, who runs the bar with her mother, Margarita Xatruch. “It is an institution asking to keep its doors open in a neighborhood that it has belonged to for 60 years.” 

Residents say they’re not opposed to the clientele or the bar’s legacy but rather the proximity to where people live, work and where children attend school.

The department will weigh in on the conditional use permit at a later date. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles City Planning Department did not respond to requests for comment on the application’s status.

Why is The Silver Platter proposing to move? 

The Silver Platter has operated since 1963, becoming one of Los Angeles’ oldest and most enduring gathering places for queer and transgender Latinos in Westlake. 

But after more than six decades at 7th Street and Rampart Boulevard, the family-owned bar was forced to find a new home when the property was slated for redevelopment as a mixed-use housing project during the pandemic. News of the proposed development was first reported in Kim Cooper and Richard Schave’s newsletter, Esotouric’s Secret Los Angeles in May 2024.

Rather than leave the Westlake neighborhood, the owners spent months fundraising and searching for another location before settling on 1403 W. 3rd St., about a half-mile from the original location. 

Supporters say remaining in the neighborhood is essential to preserving the community the bar has served for generations. 

Preservation advocates have identified it as a culturally significant site, and in 2025 it was named one of the nation’s Endangered Latinx Landmarks, according to the Latinos in Heritage Conservation.

“The next best thing for this historic institution to remain the important cultural landmark that it is is to stay within the Westlake-MacArthur Park neighborhood,” said Jesi Harris, the applicant’s representative, during the virtual hearing. 

Why neighbors oppose the proposal 

Weeks after the virtual hearing, Roni Lopez stood in the lobby of his apartment building, surrounded by neighbors who gathered to talk about the proposal.

Lopez has lived in the building for more than a decade and was one of the few residents who spoke during the July hearing to voice his opposition. 

Like many of his neighbors, Lopez, a pastor in South Los Angeles, said he is not opposed to The Silver Platter or the community it serves. His concern, he said, is the proposed location. 

Residents remember the previous bar that occupied the ground-floor commercial space was a bad neighbor.

There was the late-night noise, people drinking or lingering on the front steps of the residential building, and bar patrons blocked access to the apartment parking entrance and loitered around the nearby DASH bus stop.

Tenants gather in the lobby of their Westlake apartment building to discuss concerns about a proposal to relocate The Silver Platter next door on July 27, 2026.

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Isaac Vargas

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The LA Local

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Several residents said the block became noticeably quieter after the business closed and worry another bar would bring back the same problems. 

“The city will be responsible for the decision it makes,” Lopez said. “As you can see, there’s a large community here that does not want that place to open.”

Applicants for The Silver Platter dispute the characterization, describing the bar as a quiet gathering place whose patrons have long depended on its low profile. 

The applicants also said they agreed to several operating conditions, including opening after the school day, installing security cameras, coordinating with nearby schools and other measures.

The LAUSD nevertheless opposes the proposal.

Julissa Hernandez, legislative liaison for the district, said LAUSD recognizes The Silver Platter’s history but is still concerned about a late-night, alcohol-serving establishment adjacent to multiple schools. Hernandez said the proposed site is near six LAUSD campuses.

Esther, Vilma’s 16-year-old daughter, shares those very same concerns. She even wrote a letter to her City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, urging the city to reject the Silver Platter’s proposal.  

“I think it’s really inconsiderate to open a bar that close to not only one school, but an elementary school, and then you have middle schools and other high schools around here,” she said in her letter.

Cleanup is just beginning for a contaminated industrial site in South Gate, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials who are leading the effort.

The small southeast L.A. city was built on industry — in the early 20th century it boomed with auto, chemical and other manufacturers.

That legacy also left it with three Superfund sites, areas designated by the federal government as highly contaminated with hazardous waste.

The three sites are all clustered on a large lot framed by Southern and Rayo avenues. A residential neighborhood is nearby.

“This site is less than 50 yards away from a home, so we want to make sure that we clean it to a point where we can feel confident,” said South Gate Mayor Joshua Barron.

South Gate is home to about 90,000 people, the majority of whom are Latino. The median household income is about $74,500 and the state has identified the city and surrounding communities to be disproportionately burdened by pollution and its health effects.

This site, dubbed the Southern Avenue Industrial Area, housed a screw manufacturing business for 30 years, then a carpet adhesive plant. Both businesses are now defunct and the site was designated by the federal government as a Superfund site in 2012.

The pollution at this property was compounded by pollution from companies next door.

One of the two adjacent Superfund sites was used by Cooper Drum Co., a steel drum recycling plant. A group of Cooper Drum’s former customers, including chemical manufacturers and oil companies, are paying for part of that cleanup. The other site, previously operated by an aircraft rivet and conveyor belt manufacturer, is still in the analysis and planning stages.

At the Southern Avenue site where the EPA broke ground Tuesday, analyses commissioned by the agency found widespread lead and other toxic contamination in the soil, as well as a plume of trichloroethylene, a carcinogen, in the groundwater.

Officials say the plume has not affected the deeper aquifer South Gate and other southeast L.A. cities rely on for drinking water.

In 1986, the city closed water wells contaminated by the neighboring Cooper Drum site.

EPA project manager Kelia Liang explains the cleanup effort in South Gate on Tuesday.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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“ The water is safe to drink,” said Mike Montgomery, superfund director for the EPA. “What we're trying to do is prevent it from becoming impacted.”

EPA officials estimate soil cleanup will take about two months. Groundwater cleanup planning will start in 2027 and could take a year or more. The whole effort is estimated to cost between $45 million and $60 million, primarily through federal dollars.

The summer heat may be sweltering at the moment in Southern California, but predictions about this winter’s El Niño show it could be the strongest on record.

So the LAist newsroom wants to know: What questions do you have? (You can submit below.)

We can tell you now that El Niño is a climate pattern that happens roughly every two to seven years, and is one of the most powerful drivers of the Earth’s weather.

During an El Niño event, the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America warms to above normal temperatures. The warm ocean adds moisture and heat to the atmosphere, influencing atmospheric circulation, temperatures and precipitation on a massive scale.

El Niño typically results in mild weather in the northern United States and wetter conditions in the southern part of the country.

In Southern California, we could start to see the effects of El Niño in the late fall or early winter. Generally, those effects include significant rain and high sea levels and the consequences that come with them, such as flooding, mudslides and coastal erosion.

Forecasters say there is a more than 90% chance of a powerful El Niño event this year, and a 70% chance that it’s record-setting.

That said, uncertainty remains around how exactly this winter’s El Niño will play out here.

So as you gear up for an El Niño winter, ask us your questions and we’ll do our best to get answers in the months ahead.

The company behind the Garden Grove hazardous waste scare earlier this year is planning to resume full operations in late September, subject to an independently monitored, court-approved safety plan.

GKN Aerospace employs 500 people at its Garden Grove facility.

What happened?

GKN Aerospace said in a news release that it had permanently decommissioned the tank that set off the hazmat scare in May and forced some 50,000 nearby residents to evacuate.

Removal of the tank is pending review and approval from state regulatory agencies, according to an emailed response from Salma Elshakre, a spokesperson for the Orange County Health Care Agency, which is overseeing the cleanup.

All of the toxic chemical, methyl methacrylate (also known as MMA), has been removed from nearby tanks as well, Elshakre said.

What about the compensation fund?

This week, the company also announced a forthcoming $100 million compensation fund for affected residents and businesses. GKN expects to release details on how to apply in the coming months.

What's next?

At least 39 lawsuits have been filed against the company in conjunction with the hazmat incident, according to a GKN webpage set up to track the fallout. The company pledged to explain the legal effect of participating in the compensation fund before it is launched.

What's the community reaction?

Garden Grove Mayor Stephanie Klopfenstein said in a statement that the city “welcome[s] this progress and will continue to expect GKN to address the broader effects on our community.”

A coalition of community groups called GKN Out of Garden Grove Coalition wants the city to shut down the GKN plant completely. The coalition plans to release a report documenting the company’s alleged history of hazardous waste failures at a news conference Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at 11300 Stanford Ave. in Garden Grove.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the United States. If it happens, the move would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history and would likely face legal challenges.

Unless challenged or revised, the State Department is expected to announce in the coming weeks the revocation of so-called B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026 whose holders have sought asylum or are now seeking asylum, according to State Department documents obtained by The Associated Press and two U.S. officials. The action will be taken in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.

“We are coordinating with DHS to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” said State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott.

He declined to comment on the number of visas that might be revoked, saying “as the process will be ongoing, the number of revocations remains dynamic and will be done on a rolling basis.”

The revocations would not necessarily result in their immediate deportation, the officials said. Most of those with asylum cases currently pending would be recategorized but would lose their status as business or tourism travelers, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the revocations are not final yet.

Since President Donald Trump took office for his second term last year, his administration has steadily ramped up restrictions on visa applicants — demanding more information about their social media histories, requiring the posting of expensive bonds for the processing of visas, and outright banning the issuance of visas to citizens of certain countries.

In a social media post on Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau called out people who he said try to use tourist and business visas to get into the United States and then apply for asylum.

“People in the US and all over the world are fed up with bogus asylum claims,” Landau wrote on X. “Asylum isn’t supposed to be a loophole to circumvent immigration law.” Landau cited the case of a Colombian citizen who came to the U.S. in 2015 on a tourist visa and then applied for asylum.

B1 visas are generally issued for business trips and B2 visas are generally issued for tourism, family visits or medical care. It was not immediately clear from the documents or the officials how many of these visa holders are seeking or have sought asylum in the United States and would be affected by the revocations.

Current applicants for B1 and B2 visas are asked to affirm that they will not apply for asylum in the United States and prove that they intend to return to their home countries.

In the past 18 months, the State Department has revoked about 175,000 visas for people who have been convicted or accused of crimes ranging from drunken driving to rape and robbery, as well as for people who have spoken out publicly against U.S. policies, particularly in the Middle East.

The administration has also moved to crack down on so-called birth tourism, a practice the administration claims is used by foreign pregnant women to come to the United States to give birth so that their child will benefit from birthright citizenship. Trump has tried several times to end birthright citizenship, but those challenges have been rejected by courts, including the Supreme Court.

The State Department documents obtained by the AP suggest screening of current B1 and B2 visa holders began after the State Department received information about asylum requests from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.