The Brief

This story is a collaboration between LAist and The LA Local. Agya K. Aning and Alain Stephens are freelance reporters.

On a clear winter night in 2019, Gerardo Gaona drove a white Ford Expedition to a homeless encampment in Pico-Union, stepped out, entered a tent and fired six rounds from his 9mm handgun.

Hector Valey, 24, was hit twice. Court records say he managed to make it out of the tent, dying nearby soon after midnight Feb. 23. Jorge Perez was struck in his right shoulder — his life likely spared only because the Smith & Wesson aimed at him ran out of bullets. Gaona got back into the SUV and sped off.

Two weeks earlier, on Feb. 9, police had responded to a shooting at the same encampment that left one person wounded. The same Expedition was spotted at the scene, and bullet casings were eventually linked back to Gaona’s pistol.

Gaona, now 30, was convicted of first-degree murder and premeditated attempted murder in 2022. He was sentenced to a minimum of 82 years in prison. The court described him as “a borderline serial killer who hunted homeless people in his neighborhood.”

He's not the first person in Los Angeles to target the city's most vulnerable. Unhoused people living here have been strangled, stabbed, set on fire and bludgeoned with baseball bats — often in plain view.

An investigation by LAist and The LA Local found that at least 278 of the city’s unhoused residents have been shot and killed since 2015, according to an analysis of data from the Los Angeles Police Department. Once rare, gunfire is now the primary means by which killers take the lives of unhoused people in the city.

However, our analysis of records from the L.A. County Medical Examiner shows that’s an undercount. We found an additional two dozen fatal shootings from 2024 and 2025 that do not appear to be included in LAPD data. Medical examiner records are not exhaustive either — the office estimates that about 20% of deaths among the county’s unhoused population aren’t reported to their department.

In 2014, the earliest year analyzed in this investigation, there were no killings of this kind. In 2022, there were 60. This surge reflected a national peak in gun violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, which experts have attributed to fewer social supports, rising gun sales, and an increase in joblessness, mental illness, and substance abuse. Following a decline, LAPD data show that fatal shootings of unhoused people stayed nearly the same between 2024 and 2025, even as overall homicides in the city last year fell by 19%.

The oldest shooting victim found in the medical examiner’s records was a 69-year-old man who, in 2024, was shot six times in an alley near the intersection of Interstates 105 and 110. The youngest was shot seven times, mostly in the back, during a drive-by in Florence-Graham that same year. He was 15 years old. Neither victim appears in LAPD data.

The LAPD didn’t return a request for comment about the gaps in its shooting data.

“This data underscores why Mayor Bass is so zealous about bringing people inside from the street and encampments,” reads a statement from Mayor Karen Bass’ Office. “When people are left on the street — which was the de facto City policy before Mayor Bass was elected — they are exponentially more likely to encounter violence.”

Drug overdoses, coronary heart disease, and traffic accidents remain overwhelmingly the most common causes of death among L.A.’s unhoused population. But fatal shootings have become a persistent danger facing the “unsheltered” portion of this population — the nearly 27,000 men, women and children who sleep on sidewalks, in tents or cars, under bridges, and other places not meant for permanent human habitation. It’s the biggest population of its kind found anywhere in America.

Unhoused people are both the perpetrators and victims of homicide. But LAPD homicide data shows they are far more likely to be the victims of violence: From 2015 through 2025, unsheltered people accounted for 16% of all murder victims in the city, despite making up less than 1% of Angelenos.

“Homeless people face, arguably, the highest victimization levels of virtually anyone in society,” said Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

Among homicides in 2025 with unhoused shooting victims, the LAPD made arrests in all 16 cases, according to our analysis of department data. This is a dramatic change from 2023 — before the department changed its data collection methods — when the LAPD cleared just 48% of such cases by arrest for unhoused victims, and 74% for housed victims.

The LAPD did not return a request for comment about this significant change in arrest rate.

Court records and people who spoke with LAist and The LA Local attributed these shootings to gangs and the dangers of the underground drug economy. Other sources and legal proceedings point to a rise of “predators,” “outsiders,” or “vigilantes” — people who kill because they view unhoused people as easy targets and less than human.

There are “people who actually go out and target the homeless as some kind of badge of honor,” Levin said.

“As the numbers of people who are homeless rise, the number of vigilante activities have risen with it,” said Andy Bales, who ran the Union Rescue Mission shelter on Skid Row for nearly 20 years.

Throughout most of the country, a person’s housing status isn’t collected upon their death, which means that national data on the shootings of unhoused people is currently unavailable. However, advocates say this kind of violence is on the rise around the U.S. And with a growing share of Americans losing shelter, more people are at risk.

Predators and self-styled vigilantes

For decades, individual news stories have revealed the violence facing unhoused Angelenos. A UPI story from 1986 begins:

LOS ANGELES – Thousands of homeless street people are being urged to spend their nights in Skid Row missions or 'huddle together for safety' against a killer who has shot four men as they slept in lots and alleys.

The shooter, dubbed The Skid Row Slayer, would kill a total of 10 unhoused men before dying by suicide nine days after the story was published.

Years later, two elderly women took out life insurance policies worth millions of dollars on two unhoused men — before killing them in staged hit-and-runs in 1999 and 2005.

“They went out of their way to target men who had nothing,” said Bobby Grace, a deputy district attorney who prosecuted their case.

The perpetrators of the so-called Black Widow Murders were sentenced to life without parole.

Gaona went on his shooting spree in 2019, according to court documents, “without any apparent provocation or reason other than ridding his community of its most vulnerable members.”

More recently, the LAPD arrested two people in May 2022 for allegedly shooting and killing a 69-year-old unhoused double amputee while he slept in his wheelchair outside of a McDonald’s in Gramercy Park. A jury found one of them not guilty at trial in 2023. The second person, Rubi Anguiano-Salazar, shot a 67-year-old unhoused woman, who survived, at a bus stop in the same neighborhood four days later. In 2025, Salazar was sentenced to 42 years to life in prison for one count of first-degree murder with a gun and one count of willful, deliberate, and premeditated attempted murder.

Over a span of 72 hours in November 2023, Jerrid Joseph Powell allegedly prowled the nighttime streets of Los Angeles, sneaking up on unhoused men and shooting them. One man was asleep on a couch. Another was pushing a shopping cart. The third was resting on the sidewalk. They all died. During that period, Powell allegedly killed another man in L.A. County who was not unhoused. Beverly Hills police arrested Powell a few days later in connection with that shooting after his car was identified from surveillance footage.

Powell has pleaded not guilty to four counts of murder. Criminal proceedings have been suspended while his case works its way through hearings to establish if he is mentally competent to stand trial, according to the district attorney’s office.

Last August, authorities say Vincent Wolf approached an RV parked outside his apartment building in Sylmar and shot and killed Travis Harker, 29. Wolf has pleaded not guilty to murder and is awaiting trial. Police said Wolf, 23, had vented frustration on social media earlier that month about homelessness and “corrupt politicians” failing to address the issue.

Benyamin Sadeh, an LAPD detective who investigated Harker’s killing, said he worked on a different fatal shooting in 2023 that seemed motivated by a similar sort of resentment.

“The victim wasn’t homeless, but he appeared to be,” Sadeh told LAist and The LA Local.

Sadeh said he’s not surprised LAPD data shows shootings of unhoused victims have remained consistent as homicides in the general population decrease.

“It’s a big problem for us,” Sadeh said. “A lot of people focus on the impact [of gun violence] to our communities, but it's also affecting people that are experiencing homelessness.”

Gisselle Espinoza is an LAPD commander and the department’s homeless coordinator. She disagrees.

“I don't have anything to suggest that there's a trend or a pattern with people pulling weapons on [unhoused people],” she said.

Numerous people living outdoors who spoke with LAist and The LA Local described having guns pulled on them as a regular occurrence.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman’s office doesn’t track the housing status of victims or people accused of crimes, an office spokesperson said in an email. “Our more than 800 prosecutors remain deeply committed to seeking justice and supporting every victim impacted by crime,” the statement added.

Most suspected shooters are housed

Jeff Wenninger spent 33 years in law enforcement, much of it with the LAPD, and he sees things differently from Espinoza. His résumé includes a stint in the department’s Rampart Division, which encompasses MacArthur Park, a hub of homelessness in L.A. He estimates that half of the attacks on unhoused people he saw there were of the predatory sort — but that applies only to instances where the assailant was caught, allowing their identity to be known.

“For lack of a better term, I’ll just call them ‘outsiders’ that are victimizing the homeless and seeing them as less human,” said Wenninger, who now provides expert witness testimonies and security consulting.

His estimate tracks with LAPD data, which includes the housing status of suspected criminals. An analysis of department records by LAist and The LA Local shows that in the killings of unhoused people, 83% of suspected shooters from 2015 through 2025 were housed.

“That's pretty concerning. I think law enforcement would want to say otherwise, that it's homeless on homeless,” Wenninger said.

Between 2015 and 2025, the number of unsheltered people in Los Angeles increased from roughly 18,000 to nearly 27,000, a rise of about 52%. The city is the epicenter of America’s homelessness crisis: It encompasses roughly 10% of the nation’s entire unsheltered homeless population, even though only about 1% of people in the country live here.

Local, county, state and federal levels have poured billions of dollars into addressing homelessness in the L.A. area, but progress has been minimal. Homeless advocates acknowledge that the persistence of this crisis has led to compassion fatigue, resignation, resentment, and dehumanization among some Angelenos. This loss of patience has at times expressed itself as protests, angry local council meetings and anti-homeless Facebook groups.

Jeremy Rosenprinz is a member of the volunteer-led homeless outreach group Ktown For All, and he’s familiar with such negative sentiments. “The problem is that when you live your life in public, there is nowhere for you to go. And so we're seeing people at their absolute worst,” he said.

Jeremy Rosenprinz, a member of Ktown For All, stands outside of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown on Jan. 10. The all-volunteer group meets most Saturdays to deliver supplies to unhoused people in the neighborhood

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Academic research shows that some people believe their unhoused neighbors deserve to suffer, and a 2024 study in Los Angeles County provides a glimpse into their struggles: 32% of homeless respondents said they experienced discrimination daily in the past month, while 16% said they had experienced violence. To be clear, these kinds of indignities can come from other unhoused people. They also come from housed individuals who’ve slashed tents and thrown their possessions into dumpsters.

“Being unhoused — it's like exile, basically,” Rosenprinz said. “When people are marginalized and demonized in the media and by our government, then it sets off a certain type of person who thinks that, 'Oh, like, maybe I'm even doing a community service to do violence against these people,'” he said.

“I think there's entire portions of the population who do not see the unhoused or people living in poverty as human beings,” said Soma Snakeoil, the co-founder and executive director of The Sidewalk Project, a street-based harm reduction organization.

Snakeoil co-founded the group in 2017. It’s led by and lends aid to unhoused, drug-using, sexual assault survivor, and sex worker populations. The Sidewalk Project operates a drop-in center on the southern edge of Skid Row, where there’s always someone standing watch behind a heavy rolling gate. With its cozy couches and multi-colored murals, the interior resembles an easygoing hostel. It serves as a haven for cisgender and trans women, offering them meals, hygiene kits, self-defense classes and a place to simply rest.

The Sidewalk Project helped Reilly, who was previously unhoused and preferred not to give her first name, get housing in 2021. They brought her on as an employee the year before that, and as the group’s community ambassador her roles include harm-reduction outreach, wound care, and violence interruption.

Reilly said she left an abusive household in the 1980s and made her way as a sex worker, living out of various hotels. She’s been attacked numerous times, she said, including a drive-by pellet gun shooting to her ankle that required 106 stitches. From the 15 intermittent years Reilly spent unhoused, she said she’s known several dozen unhoused people who’ve been shot and killed.

“If they have this need or desire to kill people, then this is the place to come,” Reilly said. “Because we're expendable.”

Reilly, who was formerly unhoused, stands before a mural at The Sidewalk Project, a drop-in shelter for unhoused cisgender and trans women in Skid Row on Jan. 9. The organization brought her on as its community ambassador and helped her get housing.

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Gang threats in encampments

The Union Rescue Mission is a shelter that operates a faith-based recovery program in Skid Row. Men and women receive aid there in various forms, including detox, therapy, parenting classes, vocational training, and help finding housing.

Andy Bales watched the population of Skid Row rise dramatically during his 20-year tenure, which ended in 2023. Over the years, he said he witnessed countless acts of violence, including being within earshot of a fatal shooting. He said he also saw gangs set people’s tents on fire for crossing them or failing to pay debts.

“Skid Row is the worst man-made disaster in the US,” Bales said.

A great deal of being unhoused revolves around simply staying safe, so those living outside often band together to look after one another. However, homeless encampments can be ripe for violence and exploitation, including being used as cover for drug-dealing operations.

Detective Sadeh said “a lot” of the violence he’s seen was related to the drug trade, including gangs who wanted unhoused drug users to buy from them exclusively.

Eunisses Hernandez, a City Council member representing parts of Los Angeles with large unhoused populations, said she’s aware of violence in and around encampments.

“I have certain encampments where there's regular [gang] shootings,” Hernandez said.

Identifying the exact degree of gang involvement in these crimes is difficult. In 2020, the LAPD withdrew from CalGang, a statewide database used to track gang affiliations, after an internal audit found that officers were falsifying records. Other law enforcement agencies in the state are still prohibited from using records generated by the LAPD, which made up about a quarter of the data.

Court records show that assumed rival gang affiliations can be a significant factor in violence against unhoused people.

On a late night in early 2018, two members of the Avenues gang were out looking for rivals and eventually made their way to a homeless encampment in Montecito Heights. They entered a tent where they found Daniel Duarte and Douglas Garido. The intruders asked the two men where they were from, meaning, What gang do you belong to? Duarte said he was from Pasadena, and Garido said he had no affiliations. Suddenly, one of the men shot Duarte, 31, in the back of the head. He died at the scene, while Garido, 34, was shot twice and survived. According to court records, neither of them belonged to any gang.

A year later, Bradley Hanaway was sleeping under bleachers in North Hollywood when three members of MS-13 approached him, asking to see his tattoos. Mistaking one for the symbol of a rival clique, court records state, one member shot Hanaway almost instantly, killing him. He was 34 years old.

Guns on the street

California’s gun laws, long considered the country’s strongest, require proof of residency to legally own a firearm — a difficult task for anyone living on the streets of L.A. Further, federal law prohibits gun possession for anyone convicted of a felony or involuntarily committed to an institution for a mental disorder or severe substance use. During the city’s 2025 point-in-time count — an annual tally of unsheltered people — 26% reported having a serious mental disorder, while 30% said they had a substance abuse disorder.

Still, there are plenty of ways to obtain a firearm illegally, such as stealing, bringing them in from states with less restrictive gun laws, and straw purchasing, which involves buying a gun on someone else’s behalf.

“Everybody has a gun, mostly people who are not supposed to have guns,” Detective Sadeh said. “They’re out there, they are easily obtained, and they change hands very quickly.”

From 2015 through 2025, the LAPD seized more than 80,000 illegal firearms, according to its annual crime report. Last year, it recovered 8,650, over a thousand more than in 2024. The department has reportedly recovered guns from encampments, among other locations.

Sadeh said that ghost guns — untraceable firearms manufactured at home, assembled from kits or some combination of both — are also prevalent in the city. Last year, the LAPD recovered 876 of them, down from a peak of 1,921 in 2021.

LAist and The LA Local spoke to an unhoused woman living in Koreatown, who said that gun ownership among people on the streets was common in her neighborhood.

“On this street alone, on the average, there's four or five guns, right here from that block to that block,” said the 57-year-old woman, who said she was an Army veteran and former police officer. She said there were gunshots almost every night, mostly coming from gang activity.

“Between Alvarado [Street] and Vermont [Avenue], what, there’s four active gangs right here? Well, five if you include LAPD,” she said.

The veteran, who wasn’t comfortable giving her name, already knows her way around firearms.

“Even though we're not supposed to [have guns],” she said, “I'm considering one, ya know?”

Zackery "Turdle" Melton was shot and killed in Venice in April 2025.

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Solving the murders

On April 2, 2025, Zackery Melton, 28, was shot and killed in Venice while defending a friend from her abuser in Westminster Dog Park. Melton, known to most as “Turdle,” was unhoused and beloved by the wider Venice community.

Melton’s heroism apparently made quite the impression: His father, Mark Melton, said detectives told him they were going to solve his son’s case because he was “one of us.”

Detectives spent more than five weeks tracking down Melton’s killer. LAPD arrested Tyrone Jones, 46, on May 9, 2025. Just over a year later, at the end of a 16-day jury trial, Jones was convicted of first-degree murder and seven other charges. His probation and sentencing hearing is June 18.

Given that about half of the fatal shootings in our data went unsolved, the response to Melton’s death appears to be an exceptional one.

Coming soon: Melton’s story in Part 2

Unhoused Angelenos say getting justice in general, much less for serious crimes, is difficult. Their personal anecdotes about interacting with the LAPD often include being ignored, not believed, disrespected or treated like a criminal.

Current LAPD detectives and Wenninger, the former lieutenant, said that unhoused people’s reluctance to come forward can make it difficult to solve their murders. They also pointed to staying in touch with unhoused people throughout the legal process, which can take months or years, as another complication. These factors may partially explain why the department’s clearance rate of fatal shootings of unhoused people can be substantially lower than that of housed victims — but only partially.

Wenninger said that officers would sometimes treat unhoused people as a nuisance, wishing not to interact with them because of their lack of cleanliness. Some also didn’t see the point in helping unhoused people.

“The department answer is that ‘every life matters,’” he said. “But in reality there's a finite amount of resources, and determinations have to be made on where those resources are going to be spent.”

When investigating homicides with unhoused victims, Wenninger said officers would sometimes say “no human involved.” The infamous phrase came to light during the Rodney King saga of the early ‘90s, when transcripts of chatter between LAPD officers revealed that they used the shorthand “N.H.I.” to refer to crimes with both Black victims and perpetrators. It’s been used for crimes involving sex workers as well.

Espinoza, the LAPD homeless coordinator, said she had never heard of that phrase. “And if somebody ever did say that, then they would be held accountable.”

She said the department takes all crime victims seriously.

“We provide the best service, whether the person lives in an affluent area, or whether it's someone that lives in Skid Row,” Espinoza said.

Wenninger also remembers LAPD officers questioning why they should care about delivering justice for unhoused victims if their families don’t care.

Karen Webb, Melton’s mother, has heard such comments many times. “And every time, it stabbed me in the heart,” she said. “Like, he was 28. What was I supposed to do?”

After his death, she reached out to the press and took to social media, commenting under numerous and sparse local news stories about her boy.

“I had to change that narrative,” Webb said, “because though he was homeless, he was so much more than just that.”

Additional reporting by Jordan Rynning

Long Beach is famously surrounded by a breakwater to protect its harbor, but that massive barrier hasn’t been able to shield homes on the city’s Peninsula from hurricane-charged swells recently.

Over the last few weeks, strong waves have repeatedly stripped away sand, broken through a boardwalk bulkhead and threatened to collapse beachside homes by clawing away the sand underneath them. All of this keeps happening in a narrow stretch of homes along the Peninsula, mostly between 62nd and 69th places.

Those few blocks are vulnerable to swells coming from the south because of an opening in the breakwater and jetty that allows boat access to Alamitos Bay.

In order to protect those homes, Long Beach typically builds a sand berm to block waves. When waves rip it away, the breakwater keeps it from washing out to sea, and it instead piles up to the west near downtown (a phenomenon called littoral drift.) The city spends $1 million to $1.5 million a year on trucking that sand back to the Peninsula and rebuilding the beach.

This year, it hasn’t been enough.

El Niño’s warm waters have supercharged high tides. That, combined with hurricane-driven waves coming up from the south, has stripped so much sand away from the Peninsula’s beach that the wooden bulkhead under the coastal boardwalk has been exposed.

At high tide, breakers now slap directly against the wood, repeatedly splintering it.

The city is hoping to soon start a $11.4 million dredging project to gather enough sand to rebuild the beach and protect the boardwalk, but that can’t happen while it’s getting pounded by the surf.

There may be some relief soon. Hurricane season in the eastern Pacific runs from mid-May through November. Hurricanes later in the year are much more likely to form in the western Pacific — as opposed to the southeast — and the federal breakwater that shields Long Beach’s harbor blunts the swells that originate from the west. That’s why much of California’s western coast may still see dangerous waves through the winter, though Long Beach is usually safe.

To bolster the Peninsula’s defenses, Long Beach is now considering a $6.8 million plan to build a rock revetment — a wall of boulders that would sit behind the beach as a backup.

This aerial view of the Peninsula was included in a city report on ways to replenish its sand.

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City of Long Beach

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But for a long-term solution, officials say it may cost $150 million to $350 million for a full habitat and shoreline restoration — funded partly by state mitigation credits.

It’s the kind of project that would take massive amounts of approvals and planning and likely some delays. The city council, for now, has approved $30,000 to look into it further.

Not only has Gov. Gavin Newsom vocally opposed the proposed California billionaire tax, but he also wants to prevent the state from ever passing a wealth tax in the future.

On Friday he endorsed Proposition 42, a ballot measure that would cancel out Proposition 40, the proposed billionaire tax. Prop. 42 would prohibit retroactive taxes like the one-time 5% tax on assets that would apply to any billionaire who lived in California on Jan. 1, 2026, if Prop. 40 passes.

But Prop. 42, funded and placed on the ballot by billionaire and Google co-founder Sergey Brin to defeat the billionaire tax, also would go further, by banning any new taxes on personal property.

That includes pensions and 401K accounts before retirees start drawing retirement income from them. It also includes other investments, financial assets, business holdings, art collections and all other forms of personal wealth that would be affected by the billionaire tax or any future wealth tax.

Newsom’s decision to support Prop. 42 runs counter to his own Democratic Party and some labor unions. It also aligns him with some of the wealthy tech donors with whom he’s maintained longstanding relationships dating back to his days as mayor of San Francisco.

Proponents primarily argue that middle-class workers’ retirements and pension accounts should never be taxed as assets before the gains are later taxed a second time as income, even though there is no such proposal. Lawmakers have in the past proposed asset taxes but those bills went nowhere in the Legislature and any tax would require a two-thirds majority to pass. The proposed billionaire tax also exempts many kinds of retirement accounts.

“We all agree that Californians deserve to have their retirement and life savings protected from new state taxes so those savings are there when they need them,” Newsom said in a statement released by the proponents, who also include police and fire unions.

Proponents of the tax criticized his Prop. 42 endorsement as “in lock step with his billionaire backers.”

“By voting yes on Prop 42, he’s showing California his true colors,” said Debru Carthan, vice president of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West in a statement. “He’d rather millions of children and families lose their healthcare than ask a couple hundred billionaires to finally pay their fair share.”

Newsom has not yet taken a position on Prop. 41, another Brin-backed, anti-billionaire measure that would nullify Prop. 40 by subjecting the tax revenues to certain state spending limits and audits, said spokesperson Izzy Gardon. The billionaire tax measure, funded by one healthcare union, would put 90% of the money it collects toward the state’s healthcare program for low-income residents, Medi-Cal.

Newsom, along with many other leading California Democrats and most Republicans, has vocally opposed the billionaire tax and tried to negotiate to keep it off the ballot. In general during his two terms as governor he has opposed state-level taxes on assets, out of concern the wealthy will leave the state and deprive the state of their income tax revenue.

But he has also sought to take advantage this year of a populist upswing and frustration toward tech billionaires ahead of his decision on whether to run for president after he leaves office. The California Democratic Party endorsed the billionaire tax and polling shows a slim majority of likely voters support it.

In response to the billionaire tax, Newsom this summer announced a proposal to impose a national tax on the wealthy, including a minimum tax rate on anyone with a net worth of more than $100 million. He also wants to undo corporate tax cuts that President Donald Trump and Congress approved in 2017, boost inheritance taxes and close loopholes the wealthy use to borrow from unrealized capital gains without paying income taxes.

Critics from the left have tried to use his Prop. 40 opposition against him. Last weekend as he rallied for the billionaire tax, Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna, another possible 2028 presidential contender, said donor relations were the “only reason” for Newsom’s opposition.

“You can’t be anti-Trump and then do the bidding of Trump donors,” Khanna said in a video with progressive former congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti.

Khanna pointed to Brin, who has never donated to Newsom but has had a relationship with the governor for years. Newsom and Brin attended each other’s weddings. The tech magnate has recently also turned rightward, courting Trump’s favor.

Newsom announced his endorsement of Prop. 42 on Friday along with his positions on most of the 14 ballot measures Californians are deciding on.

He endorsed most measures on the ballot, but opposes Proposition 39, the Republican-backed voter ID measure; Proposition 43, a measure to make it more difficult to pass most local taxes; and Proposition 44, a health union-backed measure to dictate how much money clinics serving low-income patients must spend on patient care.

He hasn’t yet taken a position on Proposition 45, the business-backed measure that puts time limits on the environmental review process for new developments.

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

There's a new film club in town. Think burlesque, with a dose of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the vibe of a Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight screening — and you’ve got Sh—ty Movie Club.

Kinda.

Founder Shadie Elnashai calls his epic hangs “movie parties.” They began as get-togethers among friends in 2019, where drinking games or movie bingo are part of the experience. Since then, screenings have been held in Cairo, Tokyo and Sydney. In Los Angeles, ticketed events started in late August at venues like Clifton’s — all in celebration of films with a certain flavor.

Gems like The Apple, the over-the-top sci-fi biblical musical from 1980 where an evil music label controls the world — in the futuristic year 1994.

Or Ninja Terminator, a Hong Kong martial arts flick that its director stitched together using original footage and those from another existing film. No one at his screening, Elnashai said, was any the wiser, until he stopped the movie midway and told them.

"We actually don't use the word 'bad'. Sh—ty movie to me is awesome. It's entertaining, it's earnest, it's genuine," said Elnashai, who studied film in college. "Some people still hate it, don't get me wrong.  "

Audience members showing off their "Niu Lai"-inspired outfits.

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What a Sh—ty Movie Club screening is like

I got a taste of that joy and reverence, along with some 200 people at Clifton’s in downtown L.A., at a recent screening of the viral Chinese animated film Liu Nai.

The coming-of-age tale of a baby cow was made by a mother and son with zero film or animation experience — and it looked it. Those very bush-league qualities helped it go viral. The film went on to gross $9 million at the Chinese box office against a budget of under $200.

A hand-drawn poster advertising the film "Niu Lai", which translates to "Here Comes the Cow", is seen at a cinema in Beijing on August 21, 2026.

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Before the movie: Posters, jokes and a cow striptease 

I had read about the movie, but was never curious enough to try and see it, until I saw a social post for the screening.

At Sh—ty Movie Club, the film is the main course, with a full menu built around it. First comes a preshow that features a show-and-tell of homemade film posters by audience members (a nod to what happened in China), a call-out for bovine jokes, and, between gags, cow-related video clips (including a McDonald’s infomercial from Hong Kong) Elnashai compiled runs in the background. The indisputable climax belongs to the long, slow striptease by a woman dressed in a full cow costume.

“Each screening's a little different,” said Elnashai, whose day job is curating entertainment for private and corporate events, adding that he typically readies a few dozens assets — clips, jokes, gags — for each club screening. “There’s so much prep that goes into it.” 

Founder Shadie Elnashai designed a drinking game specifically for the screening of the viral Chinese cow movie "Niu Lai."

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Fiona Ng

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Talking back to the screen is encouraged 

The Chinese viral cow movie itself is screened from a bootleg probably taped inside a movie theater (the film isn't in U.S. theaters or on streamers) — with jagged angles and a Chinese QR code that ricochets across to boot. Somehow, it all feels very on point.

Audiences are encouraged to talk at the movie, to chant “rewind” for an instant replay, and to abandon themselves to the film — odd but uniquely singular in its aesthetics — in the good-natured company of so many others.

“There's no rule book,” Elnashai said of many of the films screened at the club. “Each one is completely, beautifully different. Experiencing that all together is so fun for me to watch.”

Vicki Rodriguez and her family gathered at Central Library in downtown Los Angeles in September — blocks from where they lived more than half a century ago — to see their lives on Bunker Hill portrayed by a famous painter they called “Mr. Politi.”

In the 1960s, Caldecott-winning artist Leo Politi painted the historic Bunker Hill neighborhood. Thousands of people were forced by eminent domain to relocate for the modernization plan known as the Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project. Politi, who had once lived there himself, took it upon himself to sketch, then paint, some of the houses that were soon to be demolished.

“I saw these beautiful mansions being torn down,” Politi told an interviewer at KCET in 1987, “and I says, ‘I just got to start drawing them and recording them,’ so I did a lot of studies up there, and when I finished, I did the book.”

"The Veranda" by Leo Politi in "Bunker Hill, Los Angeles: Reminiscences of Bygone Days". The drawing features Ruby and Julie.

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A scan from the book.

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In 1964, he published a selection of what he captured in a book, Bunker Hill Los Angeles: Reminiscences of Bygone Days. The beloved childhood home of Vicki and her family was featured in those paintings.

Watching Mr. Politi at work

Vicki, her sister Ruby Besing, and their cousin Julie Lendt remember playing outside the house they all lived in at 221 S. Bunker Hill Avenue and watching Politi sketch.

They didn’t know then that the friendly man with an easel and paints was a lauded artist. When they saw the finished product, they were thrilled to find that Politi called them “the last children on Bunker Hill.”

Photo taken in 1960 of 221 S. Bunker Hill Ave., where the Bruce family lived.

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Historic American Buildings Survey

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Courtesy Library of Congress

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How Politi's art ended up at the library

In 1965, after displaying some of Politi’s paintings from the book, Central Library acquired 44 of his sketches and drawings for $3,000. Though collecting art isn’t typically part of the library’s mandate, librarians deemed the pictures of the now-leveled neighborhood to be of important historical value.

Vicki and her family — who relocated to Echo Park after being forced to move — learned a few years ago that several of the artworks had been put on display in the library’s children’s section.

But the picture of their family home at 221 S. Bunker Hill Avenue wasn’t one of them. It was housed in the library’s Special Collections.

The Bruce family has had a copy of Leo Politi's book on Bunker Hill for decades.

A copy of Politi’s book signed to Vicki and Ruby’s family is a prized possession.

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Courtesy Ruby Besing

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How the Bruce family came to Bunker Hill

Though Politi refers to the house in the book as belonging to their grandmother, it actually belonged to Vicki’s parents, Byron and Vaden Bruce, who’d grown up poor in Kentucky and moved west in the mid-1940s to Los Angeles in search of a better life.

Byron’s aunt, a preacher named Statia Mobley who ran a mission on Skid Row, married the couple in May 1946. They celebrated their wedding with a dinner at Clifton’s Cafeteria, a special treat that they indulged in on their anniversary each year after.

Vaden and Byron Bruce on their wedding day at Clifton’s Cafeteria in May 1946.

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Courtesy Ruby Besing

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Byron Bruce was a musician whose sight was limited. Since he couldn’t drive, Bunker Hill was the perfect launch point from which he could walk to the many bars and clubs that dotted the downtown landscape. He was also a smart businessperson who cobbled together the money to buy a few homes around the neighborhood, sliced into apartments, which he maintained for his tenants. Vaden worked for over 30 years in the administrative office at the Sears in Boyle Heights.

Vicki, Ruby and Julie all walked down the hill each day and through the 2nd Street tunnel to Fremont Elementary School.

Leaving Bunker Hill

As they played in the streets while Politi worked to capture them, they had no idea about the yearslong battle to level their neighborhood. The Bruces never troubled their children with the unfolding drama over its purchase by eminent domain. (Those who didn’t own their home — the majority of the people evicted from Bunker Hill — were forced out without any assistance.)

When they finally had to leave in the summer of 1963, their childhood on the hill became a cherished memory.

Vicki Rodriguez, Ruby Besing and Julie Lendt pose with a sketch they’d never seen from the Leo Politi Collection at Central Library

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Lisa Napoli

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LAist

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For 30 years now, Vicki, who lives with her husband in Tujunga, has been a longtime secretary of my neighbor on the modern Bunker Hill — directly across the street from where the Bruce family once lived.

When he told me about Vicki’s roots in the neighborhood, I helped her connect with the library.

What the family found in the library's collection

Ruby Besing, librarian Ani Boyadjian, Julie Lendt and Vicki Rodriguez.

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Lisa Napoli

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LAist

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In September, Vicki, Ruby, Julie, and Vicki’s son, Jeffrey, huddled around boxes of art as librarian Ani Boyadjian carefully opened the first. The very first piece she pulled out was one depicting their Bunker Hill Avenue home. But it wasn’t the picture Politi used in the book — it was another one that the family hadn’t known about.

Looking at paintings and sketches they didn’t know existed, these last children on Bunker Hill, now in their 60s and 70s, found themselves transported back in time to their beloved neighborhood — and flabbergasted to see how much attention Politi had paid them, even Ruby’s beloved childhood pet cat, Poncho.

“To our knowledge, there were only the two paintings in the book. And then at the library, we see there are something like 15 sketches and paintings, renderings of the house we’d never seen before,” Vicki said after the visit. “It blew me away. Seeing this artwork was a dream come true.”