Looking ahead to the mayor's State of City remarks, LAX's not so simple plan to get people around, a visit to LA's Museum of Selfies.
'It's nowhere near enough': LA homeless advocates react to mayor's shelter plan
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has a new plan to try to solve the city's homeless crisis. Garcetti would like to spread temporary shelters across the city, placing one in each of L.A.'s 15 council districts. There's also a promise of more enforcement to keep the areas near those shelters clear of homeless encampments. It's an ambitious plan with a $20 million price tag.
Andy Bales is CEO of the Union Rescue Mission. The mayor's proposal is a good first step, Bales said, but more needs to be done.
[This plan] is nowhere near what I would hope for, nowhere near what the Urban Land Institute called for. These are experts from all around the country who came and consulted with the leaders of Los Angeles, and it's nowhere near enough for people who are suffering on the streets.
The Urban Land Institute recently recommended that L.A. build 60 shelters across the city, which would be four in each district, not one, Bales said.
However, building shelters in more neighborhoods would be a positive change, he said, because it could be a step to help get more people into shelters and off the streets.
Having a shelter in your own neighborhood to go to when you lose your housing rather than having to go to the mean streets of skid row, that would help immensely. And wouldn't we as neighbors rather say yes to shelter and accountability and care, rather than saying no, not in my backyard? Yes to people being under a roof instead of leaving people on the streets to suffer.
In the past, finding shelter sites has been a challenge around Southern California because many neighborhoods don't want them, so the opinions of residents across L.A. are a potential concern for Garcetti's new plan.
Chris Ko, Director of Homeless Initiatives for United Way of Greater Los Angeles, said his organization's poling shows that L.A. residents actually do support more shelters.
I think people understand that other solutions are just temporary and patchworks. People that we've spoken to, as long as they know that there's a plan and that there's something that is more holistic that will move people inside, that's what our residents are really asking for at the end of the day.
That idea of a more holistic, permanent solution to homelessness is something that should be incorporated into this plan and the shelters being built, Ko said.
What we need to make sure is that every single bed constructed has a connection to permanent housing. We've started calling these solutions bridge housing because we want them to connect to the next step of exiting homelessness. Unless every bed has a connection to a permanent exit, they become bridges to nowhere.
Ko said that means having enough permanent housing to accommodate everyone in shelters later moving to a permanent home.
Supportive services in both shelters and those permanent housing units are another a key component to getting people out of homelessness long term, Bales said.
How many Angelenos will use multibillion-dollar trains to get to LAX?
Taking kids on a protest? This SoCal mom has your back
Between the presentation and other activities, there was a lot going on at the Los Angeles March for Science on Saturday – but Veronica Galen wasn’t paying attention to any of that.
She was walking around Pershing Square looking for families with young kids to point out the family tent she had set up, where there were diaper changing stations, shaded seats for moms who were breastfeeding and free water.
This is the third event where Galen had volunteered to run a resource like this. She first got the idea at the Women’s March last year.
“When I was marching, I saw a lot of women with very young children, like under two years old, changing their diapers and breastfeeding and feeding their babies on the sidewalk,” she said.
So she spent $100 on supplies and started contacting different march organizers offering to run what for the March for Science called a “family tent.”
In one corner, there was a folding table with three changing pads. There were also four camping chairs with armrests and popup side tables for moms breastfeeding. On the other side, there were science crafts for older siblings to do while parents were taking care of the baby.
“You don’t know that you need it until it’s your life,” she explained. And up until very recently, it was her life. Galen’s sons are two and four years old.
Jennifer Wheeler, the managing director for the March for Science in L.A., is a relatively new mom herself. “There’s definitely an awareness around the needs of parents when you are one,” she said.
Wheeler also wanted to make sure that parents have the ability to participate in this march and other similar events, even if they have young kids. “As a working or not working parent, to spend your Saturday away from your kids to go to an event like this just doesn’t make sense.”
And the parents at the March for Science were thankful. Ashley Bennett heard about the tent by word of mouth. She has seven-month old twins, and if it hadn’t been available, she would have “sat down in the hot sun somewhere, and just hooked up the pump, or left.”
Bennett and her husband Micah were the first parents in the tent, where they changed and fed the twins. “It’s really nice, especially the changing table and the water,” she said. “It really was a lifesaver.”
Mom Yang Zheng agreed.
“It’s hard to take kids to places and take care of them and find a good spot for them, so it was really nice to have a changing area and to have water and activities for the kids,” she said. “So it keeps the kids happy. It keeps the adults happier.”
Zheng added: “I wish there was something like this everywhere.”
Galen sees no reason why something like this can’t be everywhere. In her perfect world, other people would see what she’s doing and pitch their own family tent for events they care about, too.
“It doesn’t take a lot to put this together,” she said. “I mean everything that I have here I put in the trunk of my car, I carried it up here by myself and I set it up in 15 minutes.”
Still, Galen’s going to keep providing these spaces as long as she is able. “I definitely feel like this is my activism. I feel like this is something I want to promote to everyone,” she said.
Galen doesn’t have any more events on her calendar yet and she’s open to opportunities, but that’s not her main goal. She just hopes event organizers become aware of the needs of parents who want to join in on the protest with their kids.
Does Hollywood have a new star it can take all the way to the bank?
Video game movies are an often-maligned genre, but Dwayne Johnson's "Rampage" squeaked out a box office win this weekend. Surprising? Sort of.
Here's how it did: $34.5 million in North America on opening weekend, barely overtaking "A Quiet Place." It did much better overseas, where it raked in $114 million -- $55 million of which came in from China.
"For a movie that cost $120 million to make and starred the Rock and was based on a 1980s video game, I'd say that's just OK," said Vanity Fair's Rebecca Keegan.
But the movie still surpassed expectations. "It's safe to say that he is definitely one of the last real stars capable of getting people out to the movie theater," Keegan said.
One reason for this could be the wrestling background that prepared him for showmanship. The guy just gets marketing and social media, Keegan explained.
His prodigious social media feeds are doing half the marketing department's job for them. He does seem to be able to engage with his fans and get them out there. Should be interesting to see if it lasts.
PLUS:
- Emmy season is underway. How Amazon and Netflix have upped the for-your-consideration game with museum-like experiences that are open to the general public.
- More on the Netflix-Cannes debacle, Keegan obtained an email Orson Welles’ daughter sent Netflix executive Ted Sarandos begging him to reconsider pulling her father’s movie from the festival.
- Remembering filmmaker Milos Forman, the filmmaker behind classics like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Amadeus."
On The Lot, Take Two's weekly segment about the business of entertainment and Hollywood, airs every Monday.
This museum wants to change the way you feel about your selfie
L.A. has become a hotbed for interactive "museum" installations — that is, places designed to take selfies along with the art. Places like Museum of Ice Cream, 29 Rooms, Happy Place.
And now there's another one jumping into the mix.
The Museum of Selfies is opening its doors this weekend in Glendale. The mission: to "explore the history and cultural phenomenon of the selfie."
Before you roll your eyes, give it a chance. One of the people behind the museum used to feel pretty negatively about selfies himself.
"I saw them as empty and shallow," said Tommy Honton, the museum's co-creator, "and sort of tied together with screen culture and the addiction that comes with living life through a screen."
Honton would have been the last person expected to take on this kind of project. He describes himself as a writer, game designer and narrative experience creator. He doesn't even have a social media presence. But in the Museum of Selfies, he saw a new kind of challenge.
I had a preconception and I wanted to try to change that. Is there something deeper here? Is there something playful and interesting and can we find this sort of deeper connection to humans and teach people in a fun and playful way.
The challenge was on and the stage was set. Honton embarked on his journey to change the way the public feels about selfies.
Injecting history
One of the first rooms you come across at the Museum of Selfies features a giant timeline along the wall that denotes important historical points in the selfie's history. It's an effort to put things into context. The room also features a life-size re-creation of Van Gogh's "Bedroom in Arles" painting.
The point is to show the visitor that beautiful art is part of the selfie's history and DNA.
When you look at art, that's where it evolved from to be able to capture painted images and when you look at the Renaissance, painted images were pretty accurate. So, I think it's fair to begin with the beginning of art.
Next to Van Gogh's room is the black and white room.
The monochromatic room commemorates black and white photography, an era that saw the first known selfie photo. The room is meant to reflect how photography really evolved and how it lead to the creation of the selfie.
Poking fun
Going deeper into the museum brings your closer to the present day selfie as we know it. There's a whole section that commemorates food and the large role food has played in selfie culture.
The room dedicated to the bathroom selfie really threw A Martinez for a loop. And it is a bit jarring. You walk in expecting to see yourself in what you think is a giant mirror. But you've been duped.
There is no mirror. The point of eliminating the mirror is to get people to reflect.
You need a reflection to take a selfie and we wanted people to have that moment...because mirrors are meant to be reflective. Obviously bathrooms selfies, the classic image you see of people going 'Hey you up? I'm gonna send you a pic,' that doesn't work here.
Next door to the optical illusion bathroom is a makeshift gym, designed to celebrate the ever-so-popular gym selfie. But this gym is unlike others. It has funhouse mirrors that warp reflections -- so what appear to be giant weights are, in actuality, very light.
The concept of the gym room began with a question: Why are gyms a place where people take a lot of selfies?
There are some things in the room that may not be as accurate as people believe. We want people to have fun and play around with the idea that gyms are a place where people go for showing off what they are...but is seeing believing?
This room was probably A Martinez's favorite, as he himself is probably guilty of the occasional gym selfie.
It's all a part of the human experience
While curating the museum, Honton felt his perception of selfies slowly changing, and it's a journey he hopes visitors will take as well.
"I used to lump everyone who took selfies into the category of...Blech. But now, I only vomit a little bit," Honton joked.
You can capture a moment, for example, a marathon. Crossing that finish line. It's a very powerful moment. And you can actually capture that yourself. So as long as you're not living life purely through a screen, then it's an exciting thing. I have a begrudging respect for them.
As Honton and A Martinez complete their selfie journey and come to one of the last interactive exhibits the museum has to offer, the question about changing people's minds crops up again.
"It's been around since humans have dawned, the understanding that you are the person staring back at the mirror. We want people to acknowledge that it's just a part of what humans are."
And with that, the two of them commemorate the moment with a selfie on the selfie stick throne.
Scroll through the slideshow above to see some other installations at the Museum of Selfies.
LA's selfie-ready art spaces cater to our narcissism — but they didn't start the trend
The Museum of Selfies, 29 Rooms, the Museum of Ice Cream, Candytopia.
There's a trend of these kind of places in L.A. – artistic destinations designed for people to take pictures in.
Or, to put it a little more bluntly, spaces built for narcissism.
But if you think it's a problem, they didn't start it. High-brow museums did.
"Maybe about 20 years ago, they didn't care too much about the number of people through the gate," says art critic and historian David Pagel. "But museums are now more interested in giving a voice to other people, and I think that the selfie phenomenon is developing out of that."
The Broad's recent blockbuster exhibition of Yayoi Kusama's work, for example, was primed for selfie culture. Her infinity mirror rooms allowed people to see themselves repeated over and over again (totally vain, right?).
But next to those rooms appeared Kusama's earlier works of paintings and collages, and so the museum was able to introduce this venerated artist to a new generation of social media-obsessed people.
There is still a tension about how to do it right, though.
"When the art becomes a background for a selfie, then they've lost that viewer," says Pagel. "But if the selfie is a moment to get people in to really get engaged with the work, then it's working."
And higher attendance numbers can be important to institutions as they prove their worth to donors, their board of directors and the art world at-large.
As for places like the Museum of Selfies and Museum of Ice Cream, they may just be satisfying the outsized demand that people have for more selfie-ready art.
"Anything that spreads the word of art out there is probably a good force," says Pagel. "People cashing in on it is questionable, but art's a pretty robust enterprise that can hold its own against ice cream."