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The Brief

The most important stories for you to know today
  • Why a pending court order could change life in LA
    Farmworkers in wide-brimmed hats bend over rows of leafy crops in a field, with vehicles and utility poles in the background.
    Farmworkers in California's Central Valley in April 2025, the month an order from a federal judge put new restrictions on immigration officials arresting people without warrants. While that order is now on hold, a similar case is under consideration in L.A.

    Topline:

    A federal judge in Los Angeles is weighing whether to place new restrictions on immigration agents arresting people without warrants — a decision that could shape enforcement across Southern California.

    About the timing: That decision, expected any day, echoes a fight already playing out in the Central Valley, where farmworkers had won a court order that shielded them for more than a year. On Aug. 24, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel put that Central Valley injunction on hold.

    Where things stand: We visited farmworkers in Bakersfield to get understand how the now-on-hold injunction changed day-to-day life in an agricultural region dependent on immigrant labor and what they could mean if a similar order is issued in the L.A. area.

    A federal judge in Los Angeles is weighing whether to place new restrictions on immigration agents arresting people without warrants — a decision that could shape enforcement across Southern California. That decision, expected any day, echoes a fight already playing out in the Central Valley, where farmworkers had won a court order that shielded them for more than a year.

    On Aug. 24, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel put that Central Valley injunction on hold.

    That order had blocked Border Patrol from the race-based stops and warrantless arrests that swept through Bakersfield in January 2025, when agents fanned out through farm towns as part of "Operation Return to Sender."

    For Rosa, a 37-year-old farmworker from Oaxaca, Mexico, news of the raids arrived by text message. She was working a grape field near Bakersfield on Jan. 8, 2025, when word spread that immigration agents were sweeping the town. Her son was at school. She remembers wanting to go to her son and fear freezing her and other parents in place.

    "We just wanted to reunite with them and know they were OK," Rosa said in Spanish.

    She said her son called her asking if she was OK and he warned her: "... things are happening. The school has started telling the kids that [immigration agents are] everywhere, and I want you to take care of yourself.'"

    Editor's note

    Rosa, as well as other sources identified with one name in this story, agreed to speak with LAist using pseudonyms or first names only due to fears of drawing attention from immigration officials.

    What happened in Bakersfield matters in Los Angeles now because the same tactics — and some of the same lawyers — are at the center of the case pending before U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong. United Farm Workers and the American Civil Liberties Union, who won the Central Valley injunction, are also representing plaintiffs in the L.A. case.

    What happened in Bakersfield

    “Operation Return to Sender” took place before the new Trump administration even began, and it set the tone for immigration enforcement actions to come. Around 60 Border Patrol agents moved into the Central Valley in a show of force. After the three-day operation, Department of Homeland Security officials issued a statement claiming to have arrested 78 people.

    Of those arrested, all but one person had no criminal history, according to court documents filed in the case.

    In a Facebook post, Border Patrol called the operation an “overwhelming success.” Federal officials made statements signaling the agency intended to return to Bakersfield and deploy the same tactics throughout California.

    Lawyers representing several people caught up in the raids and the United Farm Workers called the operation disruptive and unlawful.

    In a lawsuit in February 2025, they asked the courts to put a stop to tactics used during “Operation Return to Sender” saying “agents indiscriminately arrested people…, including people with pending immigration applications, no criminal history, established residences in the community, steady employment, family in the United States, or other community ties mitigating any purported flight risk.”

    They argued those tactics violated the Constitution, immigration law and the Department of Homeland Security’s stated policies.

    The raids shook the Central Valley “to its core,” the plaintiffs argued. “Agricultural fields were deserted and school attendance dipped, as farmworkers and their families feared being profiled by Border Patrol Agents.”

    In April 2025, District Court Judge Jennifer Thurston, who serves the Eastern District of California, made two key findings: that the plaintiffs were likely to win their case, and that the practices described in the lawsuit threatened irreparable harm to people living in the district. To stop that immediate harm, she issued a preliminary injunction barring Border Patrol from using those tactics there until the lawsuit could be resolved.

    That order stood until the ruling late last month when, more than a year and four months after it was put in place, a panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals put the injunction on hold. The federal government did not defend Border Patrol’s conduct in the Eastern District, but instead argued the plaintiffs’ allegations did not describe an imminent threat of harm, so they lacked standing to call for an injunction. The 9th Circuit said the lower court must now address the issue of standing.

    The 9th Circuit’s decision strips the Eastern District of the injunction’s protections, but Mayra Joachin, an attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, said it does not give the government free rein.

    “The order itself does not give Border Patrol any license to violate the Constitution or federal law,” Joachin said. “The government does nonetheless still need to comply with the law when conducting stops and arrests.”

    The order also recognizes the lower court can issue new forms of relief in response to new allegations of harm, Joachin said. “We will be monitoring to see what happens, and we will be prepared to return to court in the event that we see any unlawful stops or arrests.”

    LAist asked DHS officials about the stay and how that might change their enforcement actions in Bakersfield. We also asked whether they'd challenge a similar injunction in the L.A. region.

    The emailed response did not directly address those questions but said:

    “ICE has authority for lawful arrests where authorized under 8 USC 1357. Law enforcement officers use ‘reasonable suspicion’ to investigate immigration status and probable cause to make arrests consistent with the statute and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court has already vindicated us on these practices.”

    How to reach us

    If you have a tip, you can reach Jared Bennett on Signal. His username is Jbennett.18.

    What this means for other litigation

    Similar lawsuits to the one being fought out in Bakersfield have been filed in districts across the country, including one in the Central District of California which covers Los Angeles and parts of Southern California. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in Los Angeles is now considering issuing a preliminary injunction setting limits on immigration officers' practice of arresting someone without a warrant.

    The case before Frimpong was brought in July 2025 by five people and three organizations: the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. The plaintiffs quickly secured a temporary restraining order that same month that barred immigration agents from stopping people without reasonable suspicion that they were violating immigration law and from relying on their race, spoken language or occupation as a basis for the stops. The U.S. Supreme Court voted to stay that order in September 2025.

    Joachin said the decision by the Supreme Court has, in part, led the court to speed up the discovery process, so the plaintiffs have been able to take depositions from federal immigration officials.

    “Through those depositions, as well as other evidence that we’ve uncovered through the government, it has confirmed what we understood to be the nature of these operations,” Joachin said. “Which is that they are indeed unlawful, lacking any information about the person that they're stopping before they proceed to the stop, and also unlawful with regards to conducting arrests without warrants and any assessments of escape risk.”

    Joachin and other attorneys on the case said they are hopeful Frimpong will issue an injunction regarding those warrantless arrests soon.

    Fear spreads through the Central Valley

    At the height of the raids in Bakersfield, Erika Navarrete, vice president of the United Farm Workers, said she heard stories of people across the Central Valley sleeping in fruit orchards to avoid contact with immigration authorities.

    “People would speak in hushed tones — 'Don't be scared, come out, they're gone, they're gone,’” Navarrete told LAist in Spanish. “But many people didn't want to come out; they waited because they didn't trust the situation — they just didn't trust it.”

    “People would speak in hushed tones — ’Don't be scared, come out, they're gone, they're gone.'
    — Erika Navarrete, vice president of the United Farm Workers, speaking in Spanish

    The lawsuit, which is ongoing, alleges Border Patrol agents subjected plaintiffs and people to three unlawful acts:

    • Stops based on race and occupation, rather than grounded in evidence of legal status, which violates the Fourth Amendment protecting people from unreasonable search and seizure.
    • Warrantless arrests conducted without an individualized determination that the person violated immigration law and was likely to escape before a warrant could be obtained, as required by immigration law.
    • Coercing people to accept voluntary deportations without fully understanding their right to an immigration court hearing, which violates the Fifth Amendment protections of due process.

    Those same tactics are described in the lawsuit against ICE and DHS in the Central District. UFW is also one of the plaintiff organizations in that lawsuit.

    Navarrete said that fear lingered for months after the January raids, slowing work in the fields and disrupting daily life throughout the region.

    “Our people didn't want to leave their homes; they didn't want to go to the store. I mean, they weren't living their daily lives,” she added.

    A woman with medium-light skin tone and dark hair that's pulled back into a ponytail is clad in a red t-shirt with a black emblem of an eagle. The t-shirt reads: "United Farm Workers" and "¡Sí se puede! in Spanish. She smiles gently while standing before a mural of a farm worker harvesting grapes.
    Erika Navarrete, vice president of the UFW, has been helping farmworkers and their families deal with the raids' aftermath.
    (
    Julia Barajas
    /
    LAist
    )

    Navarrete said she still gets goosebumps when she thinks about how the raids impacted children in the area.

    “If they saw any white van or white car . . . or vehicles that didn't have California license plates or whatever, they’d immediately ask, ‘Mom, is that la migra?’ Is la migra going to take us away?’"

    Other kids would tell Navarrete they had a backpack ready so they could go with their parents if they were deported.

    Preliminary injunction provides some relief

    In issuing the now-on-hold injunction in April 2025, Judge Thurston wrote: “The evidence before the court is that Border Patrol agents under DHS authority engaged in conduct that violated well established constitutional rights.”

    Despite public statements indicating they planned to come back to Bakersfield, Border Patrol never returned with the same kind of large-scale operation.

    In July 2025, when Border Patrol agents staged a raid at a Home Depot in Sacramento, the government was required under the court order to provide documentation to the plaintiffs.

    “Having carefully examined the entire record, including the recorded footage of the Sacramento action, the court finds that Defendants have again detained people without reasonable suspicion for doing so,” Thurston wrote in her order enforcing the preliminary injunction.

    Federal agents submitted 11 forms, known as I-213s, documenting the circumstances of the arrests in Sacramento. Thurston determined that those forms “rely on unsupported assumptions, hunches and generalizations.”

    During the proceedings, federal agents admitted to retroactively modifying at least two of the forms “to reflect descriptions of the circumstances that are flatly incorrect,” Thurston wrote in the order, which required immigration officials to improve the way they document arrests.

    The “clear lesson,” according to Joachin, “is that injunctions work.”

    “While one would expect federal agents to comply with the law, we know that they're not,” Joachin said. “When we see immigration agents asked to comply with the law, the number of stops and arrests significantly plummet.”

    The injunction, while it was in place, didn’t completely ease the fears of community members. Immigration officials have continued to arrest people in the months since. But in small, important ways, it did provide a return to some kind of normalcy for the people in Bakersfield.

    An adult woman with medium skin tone stands near swing set poles while a child swings nearby at a playground with a tree and fence in the background. Their backs are to the camera.
    Leticia, who's been a farmworker for over two decades, takes a break with her daughter at a park in Bakersfield.
    (
    Jared Bennett
    /
    LAist
    )

    Leticia, a 40-year-old mother of four, said she stayed home from work from January until May.

    Leticia has since returned to work harvesting carrots, a physically grueling job that requires her to be on her knees most of the day. She said that while parties were canceled last year, she now planned to celebrate a baptism with friends the weekend after speaking with LAist.

    Where things stand in Los Angeles

    In July 2025, attorneys representing five individuals and three organizations filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the Central District, which includes Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California, alleging a similar pattern to the raids seen in Bakersfield.

    “The tactics challenged here — including widespread racial profiling, suspicion-less stops, and warrantless arrests without determination of flight risk — bear the unmistakable hallmarks of ‘Operation Return to Sender,’” the complaint states.

    Lawyers representing plaintiffs in both cases say the issues in the case carry national implications.

    While the case continues to move through the Eastern District, the court recently ordered the federal government to turn over documents showing national DHS policies that plaintiffs argue informed the raids in Bakersfield and, by extension, Los Angeles.

    “We haven't seen what they've produced yet in response to that order,” said Bree Bernwanger, a lawyer with the ACLU who is representing plaintiffs in both cases. “We expect to see and be able to put into the record evidence of what we all know these agencies have been doing nationwide since the early raids in Bakersfield.”

    About two dozen people stand behind a man speaking at a podium on a public sidewalk. In the foreground, gaggle of reporters use their cameras and microphones to record the scene.
    In August, attorneys held a press conference ahead of a hearing for Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin, the lawsuit filed in the Central District of California.
    (
    Jared Bennett
    /
    LAist
    )

    Similar to the situation in Bakersfield, high-profile confrontations with large groups of immigration agents have died down in Los Angeles, but Joachin, who is also representing the UFW in the Central District case, said officials are still arresting people using tactics that violate the law.

    “There continue to be roving patrol operations,” Joachin said. “The only difference is that now they're stopping a fewer number of individuals, and they are still stopping individuals based on perceived characteristics of whom they presume to be undocumented.”

    A masked man in plain clothes pointed a rifle at Rev. Tanya Lopez, the senior pastor at Downey Memorial Christian Church, when she witnessed an arrest in her parish’s parking lot last June.

    Lopez said the threat of indiscriminate enforcement has spread fear throughout Los Angeles.

    “It’s been so heavy,” Lopez said. “Whether or not you’re undocumented, these raids, these stops have been without a doubt conducted to racially profile people.”

    Frimpong issued one preliminary injunction in the case in July 2025 barring immigration agents from stopping people without reasonable suspicion that they were violating immigration law, but the U.S. Supreme Court paused that order in September.

    Frimpong is now considering issuing another injunction, this one aimed at curtailing warrantless arrests.

    About a dozen people stand side-to-side on a public sidewalk. Many are golding signs that read: "ICE out of LA."
    (Third from the right) Rev. Tanya Lopez participated in a rally outside a federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles.
    (
    Julia Barajas
    /
    LAist
    )

    Lopez said she is now, like many other people in Southern California, eagerly waiting on the judge’s decision. Earlier this summer, she attended a hearing in federal court, clad in a clerical collar and stole.

    “While it doesn’t undo the harm and all of the trauma that’s already been inflicted, [the lawsuit] represents one step towards accountability and the long road towards justice,” she said.

    “I think we’re learning that it’s up to us as people, right? We, the people, have to essentially hold agencies — our government, even law enforcement — accountable,” Lopez said. “It has impacts for all of us.”

  • A local social club wants to help
    A large group poses in front of the Universal Studios globe sign under a partly cloudy sky.
    Attendees of the 2026 Tall Clubs International convention in front of Universal City Walk.

    Topline:

    There's an international club for tall people that started in Los Angeles. It's also a little bit of a support group. And yes, it can be tough to be tall. I am 6 feet, hear me out.

    Why it matters: Complaining about being able to see over a crowd may sound silly, but height can be a love-hate relationship for many people, particularly towering women and children who feel like they just don’t fit in.

    Why now: Well, that’s where a worldwide social club for tall people comes in, but whether it'll survive to its 100th birthday is in question.

    Read on ... to learn more, including how to join.

    It can be tough to be tall. I am 6 feet, hear me out.

    And yes, complaining about being able to see over a crowd may sound silly. But height can be a love-hate relationship for many people, particularly towering women and children who feel like they just don’t fit in.

    Well, that’s where a worldwide social club for tall people comes in, but whether it’ll reach its 100th birthday is in question.

    Tall Clubs International is an organization spanning more than a dozen states and several countries that offers tall adults a chance to connect and commiserate. The original chapter, founded in Los Angeles in 1938, is called the California Tip Toppers.

    Tall Clubs International

    How to get involved

    • You can learn more about Tall Clubs International here, including the original 1938 article that sparked the organization.
    • You can find your nearest chapter and contact information here.
      • California Tip Toppers have higher height requirements than some of the other chapters.
    • You can learn more about becoming a “member-at-large” or starting a new tall club in your town here.

    Tall Clubs International also does philanthropic work.

    • You can learn more about scholarship opportunities for tall students here.
    • Tall Clubs International raises money for the Marfan Foundation. Marfan syndrome is a genetic connective tissue disorder that club officials say typically comes with tall people. You can learn more here.

    To get into the L.A. group, men have to be 6 feet 4 inches or taller, and women have to be at least 6 feet. One of the tallest members of the organization is 7 feet 2 inches, and honestly, I couldn’t help but perk up at the opportunity to feel short for once in my life.

    At 13, I was still growing at 5 feet 10, towering over almost every kid in my freshman high school class. One of the first questions people still ask me is whether I played volleyball or basketball, and I’ve learned to laugh at the look they get when I say I preferred theater.

    “People see how tall you are, they expect ‘Oh, you're going to be great on the basketball court,’” said Michele Cripps, a 6-foot-1 member of the California Tip Toppers, who joined in 1996. She's married to William Walter Wiseman II, a fellow member. “Well, I'm sorry, white girls can't jump sometimes, and I'm one of them.”

    Some of the tall club members are generational, encouraged to join by their parents or older relatives, which has started to pose its own problems as the chapters get older.

    What’s the big deal anyways?

    Two people smile together on a red carpet in front of a backdrop styled like an awards show entrance.
    William Walter Wiseman II and Michele Cripps at the 2026 Tall Clubs International convention in Hollywood.
    (
    Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II
    )

    The chapters became a way for tall people to trade practical tips, like which stores sold pants that actually covered your ankles or shoes that didn’t need to be specially made.

    “I was always being kidded about my pants being too short or my clothes not fitting correctly,” said Wiseman, who's nearly 6 feet 9 and also wasn’t much of a basketball player. “And as I grew as an adult, people are a little bit afraid to approach people that are tall.”

    Wiseman has a good sense of humor about his height, cracking jokes that I’ve added to my arsenal when answering “how’s the weather up there?” But he doesn’t gloss over the pain points either — Wiseman can’t fit into cars or roller coasters, hotel beds are never long enough, and airplanes can be an expensive nightmare.

    “It's not just the socialization of being tall, but it's also the physicality of it,” he said. “It's almost a handicap to be tall.”

    A group in formal attire poses together at an event, with one person seated on a stool at the center.
    Members of the Tall Club of Orange County at the 2026 convention.
    (
    Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II
    )

    Cripps said she was a skinny kid, but she couldn’t help but feel “huge” growing up a head above everyone else, which hurt her young self-esteem and made dating more difficult.

    The clubs gave them both a chance to see eye to eye with a room full of people for the first time, and potentially even find a partner. Wiseman’s parents met in the Dayton Altitudians tall club in Ohio, decades before Wiseman and Cripps met through their own California clubs.

    “The people that married inside the club stayed married,” said Wiseman, who lives in Torrance with Cripps. “The people that married outside of the club got divorced.”

    A 1958 newspaper clipping shows tall teenagers standing beside a small sports car and being measured by club members for a height-based social club.
    A Dayton Daily News clipping of William Walter Wiseman II's father measuring tall teens in the Dayton, Ohio area from November 19, 1958. 
    (
    Courtesy William Walter Wiseman II
    )

    Future of the club in question

    But now, the California Tip Toppers is having trouble bringing in new, younger members — a recruitment crisis that’s essentially dissolved groups in other areas, Wiseman said.

    A group poses in formal attire on a red carpet before a Hollywood-themed backdrop, one person wears a tracksuit with a small 'Hollywood' sign held in front of it.
    Members of the California Tip Toppers at the 2026 convention.
    (
    Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II
    )

    “We're facing the same challenges like all other clubs,” Cripps and Wiseman said, jumping in to finish each other’s thoughts. “Some of it could be generational. Some of it's that since COVID, the clubs have not been quite as active as they used to be. Some people [don’t have] homes to open up anymore … and we're all getting older.”

    The club is at a crossroads: Get new members on board or fade away. The couple seems to have made it a mission to rejuvenate the California Tip Toppers, but Cripps was frank when she said they’re not sure how to get more people involved, whether it's fresh events or outreach opportunities.

    At the end of the day, they’re hoping the club and the community it fosters can help others learn how to “stand tall” and be proud.

    “It’s a challenge, but it’s something that was given to us,” Cripps said. “I say as I've aged, I should have listened to my mother, I should have stood up tall.”

    Moms everywhere, mine included, rejoice.

    “Everybody wants to be something different than they have,” Cripps continued. “So, try and embrace what you have. Life is too short, and it goes too quick.”

  • Sponsored message
  • Paranormal investigator digs in
    A black and white man sits with a device in both hands. He is wearing a suit and tie. He has wavy hair and a mustache. He is looking right of the frame.
    Jack Parsons used an area of the Arroyo Secco known as Devil's Gate as his rocket laboratory.

    Topline:

    Paranormal investigator David Kalbeitzer at an event Saturday night explores Pasadena's past, one where rocket science meets ritual magic and ghost stories echo through its grandest buildings.

    The backstory: Kalbeitzer began digging into Pasadena’s unusual history after buying a Victorian home north of Old Town that he says is haunted by a benevolent spirit.

    Wild stories: Kalbeitzer found the lore to include rocket pioneer Jack Parsons' ritual magic and muckraker Upton Sinclair's experiments in telepathy.

    The event: The talk at Mesmer Mesmer in Old Town is currently full, but there's a wait list and Kalbeitzer plans to give more talks at the shop.

    Beyond the Rose Bowl and historic bungalows, Pasadena has stranger tales to tell. David Kalbeitzer has been seeking out those stories where rocket science meets the occult and ghosts haunt the city’s grandest buildings.

    For Kalbeitzer, a Disney executive who investigates the paranormal in his free time, his fascination with the city’s mysterious side started when he bought a Victorian north of Old Town.

    He sensed a spirit at the open house a dozen years ago and took it as a reason to move his family to Pasadena. Then he started learning the city’s history.

    A middle-aged white man stands in front of a yellow Victorian house covered in Halloween decorations.
    David Kalbeitzer, a paranormal investigator from Pasadena, is giving a talk about the city's strange history Saturday night in Old Town.
    (
    Courtesy of David Kalbeitzer
    )

    “I realized, ‘Oh, this place called us just as much as we were looking for it,’” he said.

    On Saturday night, he’s sharing the lore he’s collected at Mesmer Mesmer an Old Town shop and event space. While the event is full, there’s a waitlist, and more talks featuring Kalbeitzer are in the works.

    A city of ghost stories 

    Ask Kalbeitzer about haunted Pasadena, and the list stretches from alleyways to the Colorado Street Bridge to Castle Green, the turreted former hotel overlooking Central Park.

    “The Pasadena Playhouse theater is, you know, very haunted,” he added.

    He says theatergoers have reported hearing disembodied voices.

    A warmly lit theater with people seated both on the floor level and in the balcony. Light shines on a red curtain with elaborate folds, and the ceiling is illuminated in blue. The ceiling features ornamental tiling.
    Theatergoers over the years have described hearing voices and seeing apparitions at the Pasadena Playhouse.
    (
    Jeff Lorch
    /
    Courtesy of Pasadena Playhouse
    )

    “And you look, and there’s no one there, or apparitions that have been seen sort of standing in the corner, and then you walk up, and they kind of disappear like shadowy figures,” he said.

    As for the spirit that helped draw him to his current Pasadena home?

    Kalbeitzer says she’s still around — and his psychic friend Michael Kouri shared her name: Dolores.

    “It’s actually haunted by a very kind ghost that looks out for the house, protects my family and has been able to activate our alarm,” he said.

    Having a Dolores in the house might send some people running, but Kalbeitzer said he grew up in a haunted house in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

    And when his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a teenage Kalbeitzer started seeking out places known for paranormal activity.

    Rocket science, ritual magic and mind-reading

    Having lived in different neighborhoods in L.A., Kalbeitzer says there’s something uniquely otherworldly about Pasadena — and it goes beyond ghost stories.

    He said the city has an energy that draws people exploring the unknown, perhaps most famously Jack Parsons.

    The rocket pioneer who helped launch the Jet Propulsion Laboratory also practiced ritual magic at his Pasadena home with the likes of L. Ron Hubbard before he founded Scientology.

    “Many people call it the occult," Kalbeitzer said. "I don’t know that I fully subscribe to that, but there is spiritualism and occult mixed in there."

    Then there was Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle, whose interests while living in Pasadena extended to telepathy and séances.

    A black and white photo from the 1930s of a white suited man and a white woman carrying her coat outdoors.
    Upton Sinclair, pictured with his wife Mary Craig Sinclair in 1935, several years after he published a book examining her reported telepathy.
    (
    Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons
    )

    In 1930, Sinclair published Mental Radio, a book about experiments in mind-reading. Albert Einstein provided a preface. Yes, that Einstein, who would spend the following winter at Caltech expanding on the theories of relativity and cosmology.

    “It’s the craziest mixture of things that were happening at that time and all of it at the same time,” Kalbeitzer said.

    A presence in the shop 

    The event couldn’t have found a more appropriate venue.

    Since opening five months ago in Old Town, Mesmer Mesmer has embraced the dark and mysterious, offering tarot and crystal readings and hosting events on subjects such as hip-hop’s relationship with ghosts.

    A white woman in a burgundy dress stands in front of a jewelry counter inside a shop.
    Tyke O'Brien opened her shop Mesmer Mesmer earlier this year to create a third space and offer books and esoterica alongside clothing.
    (
    Tyke O'Brien
    )

    At that event, a medium told owner Tyke O’Brien she could sense a presence in the shop, which formerly housed a bridal store.

    “She goes, ‘Do you ever feel it?’ And I’m like, ‘I am such a bummer,” O’Brien recounted. “I wish I could say yes."

    The same can be said for this writer who’s lived and worked in and around Pasadena for years without so much as a brush with the otherworldly.

    Kalbeitzer, on the other hand, reports supernatural encounters all around town.

    “Everyone has the ability to have those experiences," he said. "But I do think how you see yourself in the world has a lot more to do with it, and whether you want to have those experiences."

    Dark & Strange in Pasadena

    When: Saturday, Oct. 24 at 7 p.m.
    Where: Mesmer Mesmer, 65 E. Holly St, Pasadena

    The event is currently full but there's a wait list and Kalbeitzer plans to give more talks at the shop.

  • MacArthur Park project will take a year
    Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027.

    Topline:

    Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027. At a community meeting Thursday night at MacArthur Park Elementary School, officials said fence installation is now expected to continue through fall 2027, overshooting the previously announced spring 2027 completion date.

    Why now: Thursday’s meeting highlighted the divide over the city’s plan to fence off MacArthur Park, with tensions rising during public comment. The Los Angeles Police Department says the fence will make drug enforcement easier, while some in the community who volunteer around the park questioned whether it will improve safety enough to justify the cost. The city has allocated $2.3 million for the project, but officials have not said whether that will cover the full cost.

    What's next: Officials also outlined other planned improvements, including restoring access through the tunnels connecting the park’s north and south sides, making accessibility upgrades and providing free Wi-Fi for parkgoers. Residents who want to provide input on the fence’s decorative elements can email admin@themorcosgroup.com or call (310) 479-4727 for more information.

    Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027. 

    At a community meeting Thursday night at MacArthur Park Elementary School, officials said fence installation is now expected to continue through fall 2027, overshooting the previously announced spring 2027 completion date.

    Thursday’s meeting highlighted the divide over the city’s plan to fence off MacArthur Park, with tensions rising during public comment. The Los Angeles Police Department says the fence will make drug enforcement easier, while some in the community who volunteer around the park questioned whether it will improve safety enough to justify the cost.

    The city has allocated $2.3 million for the project, but officials have not said whether that will cover the full cost.

    Installation of the green metal fence around the park’s perimeter is expected to begin in November and take about a year. A second phase, adding decorative elements to the fence, is planned for fall and winter 2027. Officials said the schedule could change because of weather or other unforeseen circumstances.

    The park is expected to remain open during construction.

    Capt. Ben Fernandes with the LAPD’s Rampart Division said the fence would create a barrier along Alvarado Street and other areas where officers have seen people using narcotics. That would allow police to focus more of their enforcement efforts inside the park, he said.

    “So if people are going deeper into the park to use, that’ll make it easier for us to go in and do enforcement on them and arrest them for that use,” Fernandes said. 

    A rendering shows a proposed green metal gate at one of MacArthur Park's entrances
    MacArthur Park will close every night once an 8-foot-tall fence goes up around the green space, with Los Angeles police officers sweeping the park for encampments and people sleeping there before the gates shut. The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners approved the plan Thursday.
    (
    LA Recreation and Parks
    )

    “I’ve been an officer for 29 years, and I’ve always known I can go buy drugs there, and I did as a narcotics officer. So what I’m saying is, we are trying to make it not convenient,” he added. 

    Fernandes also said the city plans to enhance the park’s existing camera network. LAPD officers and Los Angeles Park Rangers will be able to monitor the cameras from their respective stations, he said. City officials are still evaluating whether additional cameras will be needed to address blind spots in the park after construction is complete.

    Ariana Walker, who visits MacArthur Park every Saturday with a group of friends who pool their own resources to distribute food and hygiene kits, questioned whether the city had shown that the fence would improve safety and how much it would cost to maintain.

    “The fence is a $2.3 million fence at the base level,” she said. “And they haven’t given us any indication of how much more it’s going to cost for upkeep, to keep anybody safe. There’s no conclusive evidence that a fence is going to stop crime the way that they’re suggesting.”

    The meeting grew tense when John Alle, a local property owner whose family owns the building that houses Langer’s Delicatessen across the street from the park, objected to having his comments read from a written comment card rather than speaking directly to officials. Alle has been a vocal critic of the city’s response to drug activity and public safety concerns around MacArthur Park.

    He was allowed to comment during the meeting and said the city needs to take a tougher approach to drug use and sales around the park. 

    “We see knife attacks at all hours of the day. It’s out of control. And it’s not gotten any better,” he said. “We want to bring it back to where it was 15 or 20 years ago.”

    The Los Angeles skyline rises above a blue lake in MacArthur Park.
    Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027.
    (
    Gary Coronado
    /
    The LA Local
    )

    Alle pointed to public events at the park, including an upcoming Día de los Muertos celebration and a Labor Day weekend picnic hosted by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman as positive developments for the space. But he added those events do not reflect conditions throughout the park.

    Officials also outlined other planned improvements, including restoring access through the tunnels connecting the park’s north and south sides, making accessibility upgrades and providing free Wi-Fi for parkgoers. 

    Residents who want to provide input on the fence’s decorative elements can email admin@themorcosgroup.com or call (310) 479-4727 for more information.

    The post MacArthur Park will remain open as the city takes a year to fence off the space appeared first on LA Local.

  • Service from South OC to Oceanside suspended
    A passing train along the coastline.
    Metrolink’s Orange County service between the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo and Oceanside stations will be temporarily suspended starting Monday, Oct. 26, through Friday, Oct. 30, due to high tide forecasts.

    Topline:

    Metrolink’s Orange County service between the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo and Oceanside stations will be temporarily suspended next week, starting Monday, Oct. 26, through Friday, Oct. 30.

    What lines will run? Orange County Line trains will operate only between L.A. Union Station and the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo Station. According to Metrolink, alternate transportation such as buses will not be available.

    Why now? A coastal flood warning is in effect for the entire Orange and San Diego coastline Sunday through Thursday. “Astronomical” high tides could create significant coastal flooding starting Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. Morning high tides could reach nearly 7 feet Saturday morning and are likely to exceed 7.5 or 8 feet by Monday.

    Officials said: “The temporary service adjustment is intended to minimize the potential for widespread delays and cancellations if coastal conditions disrupt rail operations,” Metrolink officials wrote in an announcement Thursday. “This shift will also reduce competing rail traffic and shorten potential weather-related delays for other carriers, including Amtrak Pacific Surfliner and freight trains, that operate along the beachfront corridor near San Clemente.”

    Background: The service suspension is along the troubled rail corridor from South Orange County to the San Diego County line. Erosion and landslides along the coastal rail have caused disruptions since 2021.

    Dig deeper … The OC Transit Authority is in the middle of creating its 30-year plan for the coastal rail.