The Brief

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It was history in the making Thursday night as Star Garden reopened as the only currently unionized strip club in the U.S. — and the second ever in the country. (The very first, the now defunct Lusty Lady in San Francisco, unionized in 1996.)

It was part union rally, part sidewalk party, part reopening celebration at Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in North Hollywood. Customers were lined up outside waiting for its doors to open at 8 p.m. A group from the United Farm Workers chanted, “Si, se puede!” Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine played union songs on acoustic guitar to the sidewalk scene.

Among the crowd, in bikinis, corsets and crop tops, were some of the strippers who used to dance inside this bar. After almost a year and a half of being on strike, much of it on this same sidewalk, these dancers were finally going back inside.

“I've been on strike 17 months and now I'm going back in. It's very surreal,” said one Star Garden stripper, whose stage name is Wicked. (For safety reasons, we are using stage names for all the strippers in this story.)

Five dancers — Charlie, May, Wicked, Sinder and Velveeta — gather outside the Star Garden strip club on opening night to celebrate their successful unionizing efforts.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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Even though the dancers and their supporters are celebrating, their work isn’t over.

The club was reopening under an interim contract, but negotiations for the more permanent contract are still underway. Dancers say they want more say over scheduling, protection against retaliatory firings, as well as security protocols to protect dancers from aggressive customers and anti-discrimination provisions in hiring.

“Bargaining’s not over. Nothing is done yet,” Wicked said. “So it's a little uncomfy to be going in under less than ideal circumstances. But my friends have reminded me that you have to take your little victories where you find them. We fought for it, we worked for it, we bled for it, we cried for it. We made history.”

An Nguyen Ruda, Star Garden management’s chief labor negotiator, said club management was “happy to have its customers there to support it and its employees.”

“We continue to negotiate in good faith with the Union as we continue to rebuild business,” Ruda said in a written statement. “We look forward to a continued and successful weekend reopening, and to continued productive discussions with the Union.”

A tense opening night

Inside the club on reopening night, the tensions between management and the dancers were palpable. The bar previously did not have a cover charge but was charging $40 per person on opening night, about four times more than other strip clubs in the area. The drink prices were also significantly increased. And the lap dance booth was not open since workers and management have not come to a financial agreement yet on that aspect of the workplace.

On this opening night, patrons wait to get in and celebrate the unionization.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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In another surprising move, the club was also going cashless, unusual for a strip club where customers normally tip dancers by throwing money onstage.

A dancer named Reagan came prepared with her own stack of singles and walked around the club breaking up larger bills for customers. There was no DJ, so the dancers played their own songs.

Also present in the crowd was Kate Shindle, president of Actors’ Equity, the union representing the Star Garden strippers. She reflected on what she called the “unpleasant surprises” of the night.

“It seems to me consistently baffling that management does not see a path for everyone to come out of this a hero and for everyone to make a lot of money,” said Shindle.

Ruda, Star Garden management’s representative, said the cover charge and cashless systems were “a business decision which is lawful and not retaliatory.”

Wicked said she hopes management will find value in the club’s new era.

“We want to prove to them how things are different now in a great way," she said. "Being a union club makes us notorious. It makes us really something special. Something people will come from other places to go to.”

Shindle said she was proud of the Star Garden dancers' ability to carry on.

“They've hung in there for so long and have been so tough and supportive of each other. It’s consistently felt like their solidarity is the thing that's kept this together,” she said. “We got this part done. Now we still have some serious ground to cover.”

At one point, while onstage, dancer Reagan led the customers in a chant that they previously used on the picket line:

“Whose club?”

“Our club!”

Sinder, one of the strippers at Star Garden, who worked to unionize the club.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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Charlie and Wicked pose together on the reopening night of Star Garden after unionization.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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The backstory

The Star Garden strippers’ fight for a union started in 2022 when they had various workplace health and safety concerns, including unsanitary bathrooms, broken equipment and assault from customers. The dancers were also unhappy with the cut management was taking of their tips. The dancers delivered a petition to management demanding better working conditions. The club owners responded by locking the dancers out.

This set off eight months of the strippers picketing outside the club with the support of an advocacy organization called Strippers United.

A turning point in the battle came in August 2022, when Actors’ Equity, a union that represents over 51,000 live theater performers and stage managers, announced that they would be representing the Star Garden strippers.

The dancers went on to cast their ballots to vote for union representation.

The union vote was challenged by Star Garden management, so the National Labor Relations Board set a hearing on the matter. In the meantime, the club declared bankruptcy and closed for several months.

But right before the NLRB hearing date, Star Garden dancers told us, management reached out and decided to close the bankruptcy case, sit down with the dancers to negotiate and recognize them as unionized employees.

Which brings us to this week.

What now?

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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The strippers we spoke with on the scene are hopeful that things can become less tense.

“Hopefully we can prove to [the management] that there's a future where employees and employers can all have equitable contracts and systems. And everyone makes the money that they deserve,” said a dancer who goes by the stage name Charlie.

In this so-called “hot labor summer,” the Star Garden dancers have also brought their pole out to dance on the WGA and SAG picket lines in support of those ongoing strikes.

And they're supporting another unionization effort by dancers at Magic Tavern strip club in Portland, Oregon. The Magic Tavern dancers have been on strike since April. In June they announced they, too, will be joining Actors’ Equity.

“Once we have it set up, others will follow,” Wicked said. “It will be something that people can take up and be like, this is solid. This can be implemented. There is a pathway.”

Her dream? That other clubs will follow Star Garden’s lead, leading to "more union strip clubs where strippers are safe and well paid.”

What’s happened since reopening over six months ago?

Since Star Garden reopened in August 2023, tensions have persisted between dancers and management as they’ve continued to negotiate their first union contract – a process that often takes more than a year.

In the meantime, dancers told us they felt management was taking steps to weaken their position at the bargaining table, inhibiting customers with the high cover charge cost and by not providing cash change.

Recently, Star Garden has reinstalled an ATM, lowered its cover charge from $40 to $25 and hired an human resources consultant.

The dancers also said they felt the club’s management was trying to undermine them by writing up dancers for various HR infractions they felt were unfair.

Dancers sent us copies of written warnings they’ve received from HR, which included write-ups for “simulating a sexual act.”

“We're not allowed to touch ourselves on stage. Lots of girls have gotten written up for that,” said Star Garden dancer Wicked (stage name). “And I'm like, do you not understand what this performance art is?”

Star Garden management declined our request for an interview, but in an email, their attorneys wrote that the rules are there for “general safety” and that the club’s goal is to get the business to “cost neutral, rather than unprofitable as it has been since reopening.”

In the months after reopening, Actors Equity union filed several Unfair Labor Practice charges (ULPs) with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that the club was bargaining in bad faith, had gotten in the way of strippers’ earning tips, that management was taking undue disciplinary actions toward the dancers, and had refused club entry or charged higher fees to some union supporters.

In December 2023, the strippers went on a weekend long picket to draw attention to the charges.

In a news release sent to LAist, the club’s attorney alleged that it was the dancers who were disrupting business and making it unprofitable and that "Star Garden denies engaging in any unfair labor practice."

The NLRB has yet to rule on the charges. Since the strike, dancers and management have resumed bargaining over the union contract.

The Los Angeles mayor’s office says it has chosen a plan for a hotly debated road safety project on Forest Lawn Drive, but it won’t say how the plan will slow speeding cars on the deadly thoroughfare.

In a statement Friday to LAist, the mayor’s office said L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ plan for the busy road near Griffith Park will “improve traffic, cycling and pedestrian safety, and keep traffic flowing."

The office said the plan includes adding a protected left-turn lane and protected bike lanes to the 1-mile stretch of Forest Lawn Drive and maintains the roadway's four existing lanes.

The mayor’s office did not respond to additional questions from LAist, including whether Bass’ plan will reduce speeding on the road, whether there’s a timeline for implementation and how soon the community will be informed about specifics.

A city official who spoke to LAist on condition they not be named because they weren't authorized to speak on the record confirmed that the safety design approved by the mayor includes widening portions of the road. Road widening was first proposed by a consultant for Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mortuaries.

Forest Lawn Memorial Parks operates a chain of cemeteries, including one in the Hollywood Hills that can only be accessed along Forest Lawn Drive. The company was a longtime opponent of a prior proposal to reduce lanes on the roadway that Bass halted in May.

City transportation officials had said the lane reduction would slow cars down and make the thoroughfare safer.

Forest Lawn Memorial Parks worked to block that plan due to concerns that it would increase traffic congestion and impede access to its Hollywood Hills cemetery.

The company spent nearly half a million dollars lobbying against the lane reduction at the state and local levels between 2025 and 2026, according to an LAist review of lobbying activity.

The exact price tag for Bass’ latest plan announced Friday is unclear.

City transportation department records obtained by LAist show a proposal to widen the road developed by a consultant for Forest Lawn Memorial Parks would cost nearly five times more than the plan to reduce lanes on Forest Lawn Drive.

City transportation staff said in an analysis that the consultant’s road widening plan would have “low” potential to slow speeding cars, according to the public records.

The L.A. Department of Transportation said in a statement that it is “coordinating with the Bureau of Engineering on advancing the Mayor's direction.”

The main goal of the Forest Lawn Drive Safety and Mobility project is to slow speeding cars on the road, and it also aims to protect bike lanes with plastic posts.

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Details of the original plan Bass halted in May

The proposal that almost went ahead before Bass halted it would have cut the number of lanes from four to three, transforming the road into two through-lanes and one center turn lane. The bumpy, cracked, pothole-ridden road would also have been resurfaced.

The goal was to slow cars and address the nearly 100 traffic collisions, including four deadly ones, the road has seen since 2013.

Brian Taylor, a research professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA, told LAist that research on how so-called road diets improve safety is “unequivocal,” adding that there is a significant reduction in crashes and injuries when lanes are reduced.

The plan to reduce lanes came with a $618,000 price tag that would have covered the costs of repainting new lanes on the road and installing plastic posts to fortify the bike lanes. Those costs would have been covered through the city’s existing resources for road improvements, according to the city’s transportation department. 

The road has become an issue in L.A.’s tight mayoral race

The future of Forest Lawn Drive has become a touchpoint in the L.A. mayor’s race, where Bass is facing L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, whose district includes this portion of Forest Lawn Drive and whose office initiated the project in 2022.

At an August campaign event about Forest Lawn Drive, following a fatal collision on the road, Raman said one reason she’s running for mayor is so “lifesaving street safety improvements are not stymied and are not politicized.”

The road is the sole point of entry to two major cemeteries, the Hollywood Hills locations of Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mount Sinai Memorial Parks.

The cemeteries, neighborhood groups and state legislators opposed the lane reduction plan, citing concerns about traffic congestion, especially during funeral processions, and ease of access.

In a joint statement to LAist in August, the cemeteries praised Bass’ decision to find a new approach for the road, saying it “demonstrated responsive leadership and a willingness to get this right.” The cemeteries did not respond to LAist’s requests for a follow-up.

After the mayor paused the lane-reduction plan, the city delayed resurfacing Forest Lawn Drive.

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Kavish Harjai / LAist

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The one-mile stretch of road is covered with cracks, potholes and bumps.

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The state’s involvement

State legislators representing L.A. had pressed the mayor in a letter in April about the project, saying traffic lane reductions would be “disastrous to the operation of key cemeteries” in the area and calling for more review of alternatives.

In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that makes it more difficult to reduce lanes on Forest Lawn Drive.

Streets for All, which has advocated for reducing Forest Lawn Drive from four lanes to three, said that the original plan for the road could still move forward if Raman becomes L.A.’s next mayor.

“We will get the extra bureaucratic hurdles done and get the project in the ground anyway under Mayor [Raman],” the transportation advocacy group said in September in an Instagram post, referring to the additional steps the state legislation signed by Newsom requires.

In September, Streets for All announced its political action committee is contributing $1.2 million to get Raman elected.

The board that oversees the California High-Speed Rail Authority voted Friday to rein in Chief Executive Ian Choudri's contracting authority following a state investigation that showed consultants billed the agency $600,000 in questionable travel expenses.

The investigation by the office of inspector general for the high-speed rail project found that some consultants flew first class, hailed luxury rides and traveled to a night club, a cigar lounge and numerous restaurants, bars and residences, sometimes after hours, on taxpayers’ dime.

Investigators looked at travel expenses submitted by four consulting firms over a two-year period and found that most of the trips were unauthorized, poorly justified — at times at the agency’s top executives’ request — and that agency staff failed to sufficiently vet the requests before approving them. In some cases, agency staff didn’t even know about the trips until they received invoices.

The board on Friday voted 7-2 to strip Choudri of his sole authority to sign and manage contracts under $25 million and to require the agency’s in-house attorneys to approve or change any new or existing contracts. The board already has to vote to award any contracts over that amount.

Board chair Steve Kawa told reporters afterward that the decision “adds additional eyes and ears and authority” over issues exposed by the investigation.

“We are not just gonna sit back and ignore that we had this travel issue,” he said. “Not one dollar of California taxpayer dollars should be misused.”

“I am outraged that we would be treated like a piggy bank for these kinds of expenditures.”

Several board members slammed the consultants for the travel expenses. Lynn Schenk, who has served on the board since 2003, said the spending suggests a troubling pattern and deserves a deeper dive.

“I am outraged that we would be treated like a piggy bank for these kinds of expenditures,” she said during the board meeting. “And it says to me that there are other expenditures that are being treated this way.”

Board member Henry Perea suggested the travel payments are so egregious that the state should end its contract with the firms right away, something Gov. Gavin Newsom has also floated. However, Perea said he worried that doing so could set back the long-delayed rail project even further.

“I’d terminate these four [contracts] tomorrow or today, but I understand there’s a question of operational needs that we have with these folks,” he said.

But the board did not grill the authority’s top executives for failing to catch the behavior, even though the probe revealed that consultants told agency staff many times that they were traveling at the request of the agency’s top officers, including Choudri.

In response to the investigation, the authority paused all travel payments to the four consulting firms in question and has started reviewing their claims and training staff, executives and consultants on travel policies, said the authority’s Chief Financial Officer Jamey Matalka.

One legal consultant was paid $40,800 in travel reimbursements and an additional $86,500 in “travel time” for 30 trips between Denver and Sacramento in a year. When questioned about whether he needed to attend the meetings in person, he said Choudri had requested his presence so he did not need to justify it and that it would not be appropriate for him to question Choudri’s direction, “as other consultants in other Authority offices are learning the hard way.”

In response to the investigation, the authority paused all travel payments to the four consulting firms in question and has started reviewing their claims and training staff, executives and consultants on travel policies, said the authority’s Chief Financial Officer Jamey Matalka. The firms are: KPMG LLP, a global financial consulting firm; Nossaman LLP, a national law firm; AECOM-Fluor Joint Venture, which manages and coordinates the authority’s projects, and SYSTRA/TYPSA Joint Venture, which provides tracks and systems design.

The agency is seeking to recoup all questionable travel payments, he said Friday.

“We remain committed [and] we take full responsibility and accountability to fix if there was something broken in the system,” Choudri told the board.

Choudri also told board members that the agency has taken “disciplinary actions” against some consultants but did not clarify what they were. Choudri did not speak to reporters following the meeting.

Assembly Minority Leader Alexandra Macedo, a Visilia Republican, called for Choudri’s firing in a Thursday letter to the board. She accused him of demonstrating a “pattern of misuse of taxpayer dollars and abuse of public trust.”

“At a time when California families face unbearable financial pressures to cover essential household needs including rent, utilities and transportation, the routine approval of improper consultant expenses represents a severe breach of fiduciary responsibility,” she wrote.

‘They should all be here’

Of the four consulting firms investigated, only one sent representatives Friday.

Veronica Siranosian, an executive at AECOM-Fluor Joint Venture, told the board the company reviewed its travel invoices and found “no substantive departures from the established public processes.”

The inspector general’s investigation found nearly $380,000 in travel expenses by the company’s consultants that were not allowed under state regulations or the company’s contract with the state.

Nevertheless, another AECOM executive, Mike Burns, said the company has identified only about $1,000 in expenses it overbilled the state, including for an Uber ride, parking in a garage that charged a higher rate than surrounding buildings and a flight that was on an international carrier instead of an American airline.

Steve Kawa, chair of the board of directors of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, speaks during a special board meeting at the California Natural Resources Agency in Sacramento on Oct. 9, 2026

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Fred Greaves

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CalMatters

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In some cases, Burns stressed, the dollar difference was small. He said the company’s consultants once took an $86 Uber ride in an electric vehicle whereas the standard policy would require an $84 Uber X instead. “It was a $2 differentiation,” he said. “There’s some nominal incidences like that.”

Schenk gasped.

“Surely you are not saying that we are sitting here for these hours going through this … for a $2 difference,” she said. “And surely you will at least acknowledge that these instances show a disregard at the very least for state and high-speed rail requirements.”

“It’s gonna take a lot of $2 differences in Uber rides to get to the $380,000 that you guys billed the state of California,” said Vice Chair Anthony Williams.

Board member Emily Cohen slammed the consulting firms that did not appear Friday.

“They should all be here. Unbelievable.”

Authority to step up training, improve policy

Matalka said the authority would implement all the fixes the inspector general’s office recommended. He said the authority would, by the end of the year, create a new travel approval form requiring more details.

By the end of March, he said, it would establish a “consistent, uniform process” for advance travel approvals, ramp up training, create a list of approved office locations for consultants, recoup misspent state funding and use AI to flag travel requests that potentially violate policies.

But much of the steps seems like “basic oversight,” Schenk said. “Why weren’t we doing this at the outset?” she asked. “What is the root cause?”

Matalka said some questionable travel requests slipped through the cracks because staff did not review them deep enough.

“Training needs to be done so that we make sure you are not just looking at the labor hours, you are not just looking at the lodging rate,” he said. “You need to actually Google the address, look at the timestamp, look at some of the very small print on the fare class.”

The authority frequently approved expenses with vague justifications, such as “typical M-F week” trips, and approved travel at the request of executives without asking why. One consultant flew to California from Denver 20 times during the two-year period to “meet with the executive team” or attend executive meetings, without explaining why the meetings couldn’t have been remote, the investigation says.

The high-speed rail project is already long delayed and over its projected budget: In 2008, voters approved a $10 billion bond to build a high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2020 for an estimated $45 billion. The project is now estimated to cost between $126 billion and $231 billion, with a full buildout expected by 2040, according to the authority’s latest business plan. Current plans call for building a first leg linking Merced to Bakersfield.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

It’s that time of year when black bears are beefing up, often on trash, in Southern California’s foothill communities.

From fall to early winter, bears quadruple their food intake in preparation for the cooler months — bears here don’t really hibernate given our mild weather and plethora of resources, but they do slow down during the winter (as we all should). And right now, mother bears are looking to find a safe place to den and have their cubs.

Bears aren’t just roaming the roads of mountain towns either. They’re in suburban neighborhood streets along the 210 Freeway corridor — including Altadena, Sierra Madre and Monrovia — and even in Encino and Tarzana.

A black bear walks along an Arcadia street earlier this month.

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Courtesy Wild Neighbor

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This time of year is when humans and bears might come into conflict more frequently, says a former biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“You're going to see those bears just eating ravenously, foraging all day for food, and then also they're going to start looking for these potential denning sites under our crawl spaces, unfortunately,” said Jessica West, a human-wildlife conflict specialist who over the last five years worked for the state on bear coexistence efforts from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

Nearly 60,000 black bears are estimated to live in California. Here in Southern California, the estimate is around 2,000, according to the latest count by the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife.

State resources to help communities coexist with bears have been cut. That includes West, who was the sole wildlife conflict biologist serving Southern California counties. Gov. Gavin Newsom just signed a bill into law that aims to bring some of those resources back, but in the meantime, the need remains.

“More than ever, people and bears are sharing space,” West said.  "The fact is that they're here and they're not going anywhere, and we're here as humans and we're not going anywhere.”

Neither did West’s passion for wildlife coexistence when she was laid off. That’s why she just launched her own business to help fill the resource gap: Wild Neighbor.

Jessica West, a bear biologist, installs an "unwelcome" mat at a home. The electrified mat helps keeps curious bears away.

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Courtesy Wild Neighbor

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An "unwelcome" mat with bear prints outside of a home in Ojai.

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Courtesy Wild Neighbor

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She offers detailed property assessments and recommendations for $150. She focuses primarily on prevention, such as strategically placing electric wiring and “unwelcome” mats to secure crawl spaces, trash and other vulnerable areas, which can cost $350 to around $900 depending on the home. She also rents such equipment if residents prefer. West works with manufacturers of electric bear-resistant tools that have been vetted for fire safety and bear conflict.

“We really want to avoid potentially orphaning those cubs,” she said.

It’s best to avoid allowing a bear to get into your crawl space or trash in the first place, West said. When bears become too accustomed to humans and eating human food, the risk of injury to people and pets rises. And the bears themselves are more likely to be euthanized.

In 2023, California hit a tragic milestone: It was the state’s first documented killing of a human by a black bear, in Northern California. In Southern California, foothill communities such as Sierra Madre have seen several bear-related injuries in recent years (more on that in our 2024 podcast on this topic). Several bears, including a well-known one in La Cañada Flintridge, have also been euthanized in recent years.

In the vast majority of cases, this is preventable, West said, if residents take a little responsibility for securing their own properties. That can also save thousands of dollars in damage caused by a bear.

Since West is no longer with the state, she can’t trap bears that have risen to the point of becoming a problem — for example, those that learn how to regularly get into homes or cars, or have lost their fear of humans. She does encourage her clients to share sightings and any concerning conflicts with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, but she doesn’t share anything herself without clients’ permission. (Learn how to report bear sightings or human-bear conflict here.)

West said that in lieu of state resources, companies like hers may become more common.

“What [clients] can expect is someone who is going to listen to them, and someone who is passionate about their job and really wants to help them,” West said. “Because at the end of the day, I'm a bear biologist by training. I love bears, but my whole goal in all of this is to help people. Because if we help people, we're also helping bears.”