As Northern California fires continue to rage, one of the most affected industries will be the vineyards. Long Beach zoning, Metro's new etiquette campaign.
Why some Northern California vineyards survived the fires
California is still burning. According to CalFire, 23 people have been killed and 20,000 residents have been ordered to evacuate since Wednesday. More than 170,000 acres have burned throughout the state.
The Tubbs fire, in both Napa and Sonoma counties, is now the fifth deadliest in California history.
It goes without saying: This week's wildfires have devastated California's wine country up north.
"As you may well know, much of the valley has been without cellphone service and it’s been very difficult to get ahold of people," said Cate Conniff, communications manager for Napa Valley Vintners.
The not-for-profit group represents hundreds of vineyards in the area. Conniff said that they are most concerned with ensuring the safety of their staff and clients.
"This is still a very critical situation," Conniff said.
While it's still too early to tell the full extent of the damage, several vineyards and the personal homes of winemakers have been destroyed.
"The fire touched us extremely closely. It came on our property," said Dan De Polo, president of Darioush Winery in Napa. But De Polo was fortunate compared to his counterparts that were nearby. "Our winery did not burn down. Of course, our neighbors have been completely burned out, unfortunately."
De Polo believes that being on a vineyard, with plants that are not as dry and brittle, made the difference in his winery's security.
"The vineyard actually saved us," De Polo said. "We're a 35-acre estate here with the winery. We're surrounded by vineyards on three sides. And we only had landscape fire because the ashes were literally being blown onto our property. This is basically a grass fire in our area. Vineyards are not really a classically designed fire prone area like the forest. "
A list of damaged and destroyed vineyards can be found on the San Jose Mercury News.
To hear more about the wildfire's effects on the California wine country, click the blue player above.
Long Beach high-rises lead to high tensions
Certain things ignite intense passion and anger in Southern Californians – the rivalry between USC and UCLA, for example, or driving the 10 freeway to the 405 in rush hour.
But there's a new one. It's trying to sell residents on high-density buildings, and the latest flare up is in Long Beach.
"I spoke with one member of a neighborhood association," says Long Beach Press-Telegram reporter Andrew Edwards, "and she says, 'This is two-story town, and they want five, six? How on Earth are we going to accommodate these people?'"
The city is in the process of updating its land use plan, which lays out what kinds of buildings can go where. It was last updated in 1989, and officials want to rewrite it with the expectation that the city's population will increase by tens of thousands in the coming decades.
"From the proponents' perspective," Edwards says, "they want it to grow. They want more businesses. More businesses mean more people."
The new proposed land use maps would allow for taller, denser buildings along certain stretches of Long Beach Boulevard, Traffic Circle and more. But at two town halls about the maps, tensions were high.
"On a scale of 0 to 100, I'd put it at about 85 to 90," Edwards says.
To see an excerpt from one of the meetings, watch the video below
A strong contingent of residents are livid about the proposed density increases, citing fears of increased traffic and crime.
At a meeting last week, one city official tried to say that if the plan fails, it won't prevent people from moving into Long Beach.
"The entire audience broke out into applause at the prospect of no one moving into Long Beach," Edwards says.
It reflects a trend in Southern California where some communities are repulsed by building taller housing for more residents.
Activists in Santa Monica and Los Angeles, for example, tried to take the issue to voters in ballot initiatives in the past year. The measures would've put restrictions on newer, tall building constructions, but both failed.
For Long Beach, two more town hall meetings take place in the coming week.And the pressure is on city officials to hear the anger of residents, and change their proposal to reflect that.
"They're going to have to do something," Edwards says, "but that something is going to be a lot different than this draft document."
Job protections under fire for military reservists
LA councilmen move to protect street vendors in parks
Street vendors are part of the fabric of LA, selling everything from bacon-wrapped hot dogs to ice cream. It's perfectly legal here, except in public parks.
That means vendors in America illegally who violates the rule could face criminal charges that get the attention of immigration authorities. Then they could be deported.
But this week, members of the LA City Council moved to protect these vendors, including Councilman Mitch O'Farrell who talked with Take Two.
Hear how his motion, if passed, could shield vendors who are undocumented from immigration agents. Use the blue audio player above.
Ultraviolet feminist activist group takes protest to the LA skies
The allegations that movie producer Harvey Weinstein harassed and assaulted multiple women over the years has everyone talking. And a lot of people this week are saying Weinstein's behavior was an "open secret."
Since reports first started surfacing, several women, including Angelina Jolie and Gyneth Paltrow, have said they were harassed by Weinsten when they were young actresses. Now a lot of people are wondering when the next male executive will be exposed.
Raising awareness about the issue this week was the feminist activist group Ultraviolet. It flew a plane over LA with a banner reading, "Hollywood: Stop Enabling Abuse." Ultraviolet co-founder Shaunna Thomas explained why the group chose this unusual form of protest:
"We really had two objectives immediately off the bat. One was to make sure this story resulted in significant and real accountability for Harvey Weinstein. He could not continue to behave the way he has and undermine the people who he's victimized over the years. And the second was to have the back of the incredibly brave women who were willing to come forward and tell their story."
The Binge: catch up on Search Party, Chewing Gum and Ozark
The Binge is our monthly list of the best movies and television shows you should be streaming.
is our guide, and here are his picks.
SEARCH PARTY (TBS.com)
Search Party stars Alia Shawkat, who delivers a touching, complex lead performance as Dory - a twenty something who really feels lost - and this becomes crystallized when she learns Chantal, a friend from her college days has gone missing.
It affects her deeply even though she hadn’t kept in touch with the missing girl for years. The show really has fun and laser-like insight into the Selfie/Snapchat generation - can they rise above their self-indulgence and actually care about someone else? It takes the old Nancy Drew tropes and turns them on its head. It is very clever and suspenseful but most of all it is very, very funny.
CHEWING GUM (Netflix)
Our next show came highly recommended by this segment's producer,
. The British series, Chewing Gum, is written by and stars the incredibly talented
- though born in England her parents were immigrants from Ghana and she came from a very religious Pentecostal background - and Cole uses all of this in Chewing Gum.
There are two seasons worth of CHEWING GUM currently streaming and Michaela Cole deservedly won the BAFTA Award in 2016 for Best Female Performance in a Comedy. Sadly, there are only 2 seasons of Chewing Gum available, but there is talk that Coel is in talks with Netflix about other projects.
OZARK (Netflix)
And finally we have the gritty drama Ozark, starring Jason Bateman and Laura Linney. It toes somewhat the same water as Breaking Bad, in that Jason Bateman’s character of Marty Byrd is a man who finds himself in a very difficult situation. Bateman plays a Chicago financial advisor who becomes involved with a very dangerous client - the head of a large drug cartel - superbly played by Esai Morales.
It's incredibly well done and the 10 episode first season just gets better as it goes along - the rural setting on the lake is gorgeous, hypnotic and sinister. Bateman himself directs four of the episodes and does an excellent job. He’s come a long way since he was a child actor on Little House on the Prairie and Silver Spoons.
Mark Jordan Legan is a writer and film buff living in Los Angeles. If you want to binge on previous Binge segments, click here.
The Ride: CA proposes self-driving regs, Lebron James stars in self-driving car commercial
The California Department of Motor Vehicles proposed new rules for self-driving cars Wednesday. If they take effect, cars without a human driver - or even a steering wheel or pedals - could be a reality on public roads as early as next summer.
Right now, 42 different companies have permits to operate self-driving cars on California roads, but the state has required them to have a human safety driver in the front seat. The new rules would negate the need for that safety driver.
California's new proposed regulations are an update to what California proposed in March, and they factor in what the US Department of Transportation said just last month — that it doesn’t want to regulate self-driving cars so much as give companies the flexibility they need to innovate. The California proposal dovetails with that by encouraging car companies to advance the technology but also requires self-driving car companies to certify they’re meeting federal safety standards as a prerequisite for letting these cars use public roads.
“The department looks forward to seeing those companies and additional companies advance the technology under these new regulations,” DMV Director Jean Shiomoto said. “Today’s action continues the department’s efforts to complete these regulations by the end of the year.”
Still, most drivers remain unconvinced they want a robot driving. Understanding that most Americans aren't ready to hand over control of their vehicles, Intel tapped NBA superstar Lebron James for a new public service campaign that began airing this week on NFL TV, as well as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. The spot shows James getting into the back seat of one of Intel's automated cars, which drives around without anyone at the wheel.
Google's self-driving car division, Waymo, also launched a public service campaign this week to educate the public about self-driving technology and win their trust. Waymo's Let's Talk Self-Driving campaign is a series of billboards and radio spots. Eventually the campaign will spread to other states, but it debuted in Arizona, where Waymo rolled out a self-driving car program earlier this year.
These crazy new PSAs want you to be a better Metro rider
Watch all the videos down below.
Think you're a polite person if you ride a Metro bus or train?
But if you do things like eat, you might actually be a Rude Dude.
This week, Metro debuted a series of Japanime-inspired videos aimed at teaching people what's bad behavior on mass transit.
So don't be like the monster Rude Dude. He snacks on trains, hogs seats on buses and blocks aisles everywhere.
Be more like Super Kind, the magical hero who teach him how to be a better passenger by breaking out into catchy J-pop jingles.
The main message: make trains and buses a more pleasant experience for you and everyone else.
What bad behavior have you seen on Metro? Tell us in the comments, and propose a rule that people should follow.