Tag: Los Angeles (page 2 of 4)

The 2025 UCLA Women's basketball team on an airplane reading a USA Today promotional newspaper celebrating their BIG10 tournament win

March 10, 2025 / 1 Comment

Bleed blue

After completing our first year with season tickets for the USC and UCLA women’s basketball teams, I have learned the truth: I bleed blue and gold. The signs were there last year when I was broken-hearted for the Bruins in their double-overtime loss to the Trojans during the semifinals of the Pac-12 Women’s basketball tournament. It was cemented this year as I couldn’t stop myself from rooting on Betts and Rice in their loss at Galen Center and left early to avoid the Trojans’ celebration when they won again at Pauley.

I root for most Los Angeles teams including USC, but my heart is in Westwood when it comes to this head-to-head matchup. Fandom is illogical. I am more impressed by Juju Watkins and Kiki Iriafen of USC. Lindsay Gottlieb is a cooler coach than Cori Close (though I like them both). There are far more LA Sparks fans rooting for USC than UCLA; yet, I know the UCLA fight song by heart and cheer along with pride. You rarely catch me raising my two fingers in a V for victory.

I figured the two teams would meet again in Indianapolis for the BIG10 tournament championship and the game didn’t disappoint. UCLA had their first good start to a game against the Trojans before Juju and the Trojan bigs imposed their will and pushed out to a ten point lead at the half. The Bruins didn’t crumble as they had in the previous two games and fought back. It helped that they had a much easier semifinal game than their opponents, who had to fight with the Michigan Wolverines until late in the fourth quarter the previous day. As the game closed with the Bruins up by five and Betts throwing a “V” down at the Trojans bench—USC did a whole lot of “Fours” down when they won the regular season title on the Bruins home floor just a week prior—I teared up with pride.

I don’t know what to tell you. Most of my friends who went to school locally went to UCLA. I have never attended, but I was once a regular guest/co-host of a late-night radio program on campus when a friend was in graduate school. I have a relationship with one of the graduate analytics programs. I love the Hammer Museum and the CAP UCLA programming. During the Pac-12 tourney last year, I would say to other attendees in Vegas that my allegiance lied with whichever California team playing in a game was closest to my house.

That’s UCLA.

Sorry, Trojans, I can’t help it. I’m rooting for y’all to get to the Natty. I’m rooting for the banner to get raised in Pauley.

U-C-L-A, fight, fight, fight!

February 3, 2025 / 0 Comments

Los Angeles Soul

On the second day of Black History Month, Doechii said this as she accepted the GRAMMY award for Rap Album of the Year:

“Anything is possible. Don’t allow anybody to project any stereotypes on you that tell you that you can’t be here, that you’re too dark, or that you’re not smart enough, or that you’re too dramatic, or you’re too loud. You are exactly who you need to be right where you are, and I am a testimony.”

I imagine the black women who make up more than half of the 2024-25 UCLA Bruins Women’s Basketball Team understand this already. Earlier in the day at Pauley Pavillion, the theme was Black Excellence, and it was on display on the court and in the stands. Lauren Betts, the tallest player on the floor, had the most assists, while the smallest, Londynn Jones, had the biggest impact. They both happen to be young black women in incredibly different packages. UCLA fought through a sluggish first half and Minnesota’s pack-the-paint defense to continue their undefeated streak and reign as the number-one team in the country. Meanwhile, Black students were the focus of the in-arena entertainment. Ari Waller hosted as Melanin & Medicine, the National Society of Black Engineers, the Nigerian Students Association, Afro-Latinx Connection, the Bruinettes, and the members of the Divine Nine made their presence known.

UCLA women’s basketball home games don’t usually feel particularly black-coded. They don’t have the South LA patina that USC Trojans’ games bring. What UCLA brings to the table is public school charm, enthusiasm, and earnestness. A Bruins athletic event is a student-run affair with current students most in mind. With that comes the centering of their beliefs, hopes, dreams, and the values the school is trying to deliver to them during their time on campus. That includes making room, space, and time for all those who attend and their incredibly varied backgrounds.

So on this Sunday, a little bit of that Black Los Angeles Soul was in Westwood, and when Lift Every Voice and Sing played before a performance of The Star Spangled Banner, it hit different. American history is filled with violent and despicable acts of regression, and we are in one of those periods now. This time, however, is particularly callous and brazen. Federal agencies are prevented from celebrating or acknowledging identity-based holidays or events, like Black History Month. At the same time, the Trump Administration attempts to roll back years of progress for all Americans.

They not like us.

And, as Alicia Keys would state even later in the awards ceremony at Crypto.com Arena, “DEI isn’t a threat; it’s a gift.”

January 13, 2025 / 2 Comments

Crimson Skies and Hot Hands

The Wildfires have disrupted sports in the city all week. The Lakers and Clippers have postponed games (though they resume home play tonight). The Rams shuttled fans to Glendale, Arizona, for their relocated wildcard game. College basketball is no different. Northwestern didn’t make the trip west. The Bruins will play Penn State in Long Beach instead of at Pauley Pavillion on Wednesday, as Westwood is just outside of one of the evacuation warning zones.

But on Sunday, on what felt like our first day of respite from the flames, Juju Watkins was on fire. The Galen Center was only about half full and not nearly as raucous as it has been for most home games this season but the women of Troy didn’t seem to notice or care. They continued their winning streak, leaning on their two elite stars, who combined for 68 of their 95 points. Those who attended appreciated the efforts and there were smiles, high-fives, and hugs as a little bit of LA came together to cheer and celebrate.

Trojans games continue to feel like Sparks games. DJ Mal-Ski’s playlist and shtick don’t deviate much from what he does at Crypto, aside from fun interactions with the USC band. Familiar faces of Sparks 24/7 members are dotted around the arena. The Trojan fan base is very familial; The proximity to South LA and the deep ties between the current roster and their alums to the blacker parts of this city make it similar to the long-time fan base of our WNBA team.

Much like our first in-person Sparks games in 2021, it was so lovely to see the women’s sports friends we’ve come to cherish so much over the last decade. We might be from all over the county, but these are our neighbors. This is our community.

Once again, the church of basketball didn’t disappoint.

January 12, 2025 / 1 Comment

City of Stars, City of Angels

My mom sent a picture of her view in the northeast corner of the Valley early Friday evening before sunset.

I didn’t understand what direction she was facing. I thought it might have been the Lidia Fire burning on its last legs east of her or the Kenneth Fire to her southwest. She texted that she was looking due south to the mountains behind Encino, just a neighborhood or two over from us. She sent a second pic as dusk turned to night, which shocked me, and I looked out our window to deep red plumes, dark smoke, and flames exploding from the back of the hillside. The mountains often feel close enough to touch from our vantage point, five miles away. It was the first time I thought we might have to evacuate, not just in this wildfire disaster but in any Southern California disaster of the last twenty years.

We checked our go-bags, filled a few extra pieces of luggage, and confirmed we had everything necessary, like my passport and booze. Tiffany packed the car so we could be even more ready. As our ongoing crisis in LA moved closer than ever towards us, I turned on the TV and found local news. It was surreal to watch and hear broadcasters talk about firefighting efforts that we could see occurring in real time every time we looked out our dining room window.

Although the evacuation warning zones were within walking distance of us, The fact that an evacuation center was set up less than a mile from our home comforted me as we slept in our beds.

The following morning, the sun shone, and the winds were calm. White smoke over those mountaintops seemed like welcome progress. I sought out trusted local and national sources for additional context. I used the non-profit app Watch Duty for updates. Tiffany turned the local news back on. The battle raged throughout the day with meaningful progress as we hit dusk. This morning, after I had slept hard for ten hours, we awoke to clear skies where the inferno had raged 36 hours prior.

What I had little desire to do over that time when the crisis was so close to home was jump to social media.

I’ve seen tremendous value in social networks as a utility this past week: it’s great for finding out if loved ones, friends, and acquaintances are safe; mutual aid networks scale awareness for those in need quickly in these spaces; if you’ve tuned your feeds right, you might see things that deepen your understanding, build your resolve, make you laugh, or remind you that the folks you know and follow are primarily lovely people who want to take care of each other.

On the flip side, though, seeing the in-the-moment thoughts of seemingly everyone near and far, especially during a crisis, is terrible for the psyche. As LA burns, we’ve been reminded that the owner of the largest and most used networks has no discernible moral compass beyond attempting to protect himself and his business. Misinformation, disinformation, and hatred run rampant, pushing people to debunk and counter those narratives.

None of that is helpful. Much of it is harmful.

TikTok will likely disappear in the US by the end of the month, and I’m not sure I will miss it. The time I spend consuming content is overwhelmingly empty calories. I could be spending that time reading or idling, granting my brain a more hearty diet than the dopamine rush.

The communities I enjoy interacting with on Threads may not survive Mark Zuckerberg’s MAGA machinations, and I will miss that if it happens. However, I’m not sure I have the energy to invest in another Social Media space beyond distributing my blog. The other upstart networks just haven’t been my thing.

I don’t want to chase your attention. I don’t want to be your audience. I want to be a part of something real.

When real shit goes down, these digital networks only simulate community and often through a funhouse mirror.

Real human networks come together directly. Like this week, the city of stars has proven itself as a city of angels every day, especially in times like these.

At times, we might use these platforms to help facilitate coordinated action but they aren’t are our only resource and likely aren’t even the best.

The best might be just going where you’re needed and asking, “How can I help?”

January 2, 2025 / 0 Comments

No More Hiding

As the clock ticked to midnight, we were in Disney Concert Hall with the rest of “grown & sexy” Los Angeles losing our minds to Mike Phillips doing saxophone solos over Bone Crusher’s “Never Scared.” Nothing says you’re of a certain age like stomping the yard in one of the world’s premiere orchestral venues as a jazz saxophonist gets you hyped to a song that started fights in clubs 20 years ago.

We old, y’all. But much like Big Daddy Kane—who closed the D-Nice & Friends New Year’s Eve Club Quarantine Show and is well into his fifties—these knees still work, and we’re still out here getting the job done.

We are dancing in the aisles. We sing along loudly and off-key with Johnny Gill and Jon B. We canoodle to NEXT and Case’s hip-hop ballads. We get hyped to Greg Nice, En-Eye-Cee-Eee. We praise 90s icons in the building like Arsenio Hall, Yo-Yo, and the dearly departed DJ Clark Kent, whose turntables, kicks, and signature fitted cap were in a place of honor on stage.

I did not want to enter 2025 on my couch watching other people’s lives on our TV. Leaving 2024 behind required something tactile. I needed catharsis.

I am not so dramatic as to need to burn off the sadness, loss, and illness that were frequent in the previous year, but I longed to feel of and in the world. I wanted to feel the electricity of being alive.

I wanted to feel all the days of my big Gen X age and, instead of standing on the sidelines shaking my head, be in the thick of it shaking my ass.

We took public transportation to experience the holiday with our fellow Angelenos. We ran into Cadence of the LA Sparks Crew on the train there. I took that as a good omen. Was our favorite tumbler from our favorite team going in the same direction as we were? Yes.

As we returned home, downtown LA was filled with shiny, happy people. We got to pet dogs and laugh at kids up way past their bedtime while dodging our intoxicated neighbors as they navigated to their next destination.

Like us, I hope they all made it safely to their beds and opened their eyes this morning to a day of perfect winter weather in our fair city.

As I opened my eyes for the first time in 2025, I was immediately reminded that getting home safe and waking up is not guaranteed.

If we are so lucky as to wake up in this life, let’s face it directly.

I ain’t never scared.

December 10, 2024 / 2 Comments

My 2024 Musical Journey

I started 2024 by getting infected by COVID-19. By the end of the year, I would have lost my appendix, my job, and my father. Moments of hope were often dashed by the harsh realities of this moment in time. Kamala Harris would not win the US presidency. The entertainment industry wouldn’t find its footing. I wouldn’t win the lottery.

The ache of loss wouldn’t ease, only transform.

In February, though, Hiatus Kaiyote started sending signals to my aching heart with new music. “Everything’s Beautiful” quickly became a guide for my soul. I might be sad, weary, anxious, and gloomy, but when Nai Palm reminds me that the sun is kissing my face, that I’m singing this song that’s blaring in my headphones, and that I know love, well, everything is beautiful.

I am free from harm’s way. Everything is fine.

Every time my song of the year played, I was back on the path to joy no matter how far I had veered off the road.

My Hyper-Specific Listening Behavior

I wrote about my disappointment with this year’s Spotify Wrapped. Their lack of meaningful genre exploration led me to utilize my own last.FM data to understand my digital music consumption.

While not fully comprehensive, I used the top five tags for each artist that got 100 or more plays from December 2023 through November 2024. These genres and thematic clusters represented my listening for the year.

Hip-Hop/Rap
- Instrumental
- Underground
- Trap
Soul/R&B
- Neo-Soul
- Alternative R&B
Jazz
- Fusion
Pop
- Singer-Songwriter
Female Voices
Los Angeles

In Spotify hyper-specific genre parlance, my 2024 music listening might be categorized as Love Heart Cheat Codes for West Coast Heads Having a Shitty Year.

Beyoncé, KAYTRANADA, and NxWorries (or Anderson. Paak in general) were glue artists this year, often providing the music that allowed for a seamless transition between these clusters.

Charli xcx and Sabrina Carpenter had their moment in the sun during August, my BRAT summer month, and while I think those are great albums, they ultimately didn’t feel like they belonged with the core list.

Albums of the Year

GNX – Kendrick Lamar
Chromakopia – Tyler, the Creator
GLORIOUS – GloRilla
Love Heart Cheat Code – Hiatus Kaiyote
Ceremonial Contrafact (empathogen deluxe) – Willow – Pop
Alligator Bites Never Heal – Doechii
Cowboy Carter – Beyonce
Timeless – KAYTRANADA
Please Don’t Cry – Rapsody
BRAT – Charli xcx

There’s some recency bias at play here, but IDGAF. GNX is a master at work. All these albums were made by people with impeccable taste, vision, and a commitment to their craft. They also all demand to be listened to in their entirety when any of their songs shuffle through the speakers.

Discoveries

While I have listened to Willow since she first whipped her hair back and forth, Empathogen is the album where, for my ears, she became more than one of Jada and Will’s talented children. She is one of the few artists I saw live this year, and I was a bit overwhelmed by her musicianship, stage command, and vocal quality.

Pale Jay’s Shameful Game likely came to me as a discovery from a Spotify playlist. Before their data-driven “Pulse of…” playlists started to falter in May of this year, it was my routine to add the most recently added tracks to my “New Music” listening on Saturdays. Shameful Game showed up on a Saturday in early January, and Pale Jay’s music has been consumed every month since. Over the summer, his 2021 release, The Celestial Suite, entered regular rotation by blending well with Hiatus Kaiyote and Cleo Sol.

KOTA The Friend’s Lyrics to Go vol. 5 was also likely discovered via a Spotify playlist. His track TULUM surprised me enough to seek out the full-length that it came from, and that album was popular on my playlists for the first half of 2024, especially in February.

I’ve been thinking more about how we discover music now. I find myself seeking out more human music curators and tastemakers lately to counterbalance both the increasing dependence on recommendation engines to drive playlists on digital platforms.

2025 will likely have me returning to hunting out the playlists of DJs and music critics whose ears I respect just as much if not more so than algos and AI even as I have been a fan of that kind of data magic in the past.

My musical consumption is hungry for more balance between tech and taste.

How did you discover new music in 2024?

Mixtape

November 27, 2024 / 0 Comments

The Next Movement

The music video for Kendrick Lamar’s “squabble up” pays homage to “The Next Movement” video by The Roots. They are placed in the same setting—an enclosed room with green walls where you never see anyone enter or leave, but the occupants are constantly shifting—and both videos start the same way, with a few seconds of silence before the first musical notes hit.

In 1999, The Roots were both pushing back on the shiny suit/hyper-commercial era of hip-hop and also announcing the arrival of something new: the thrilling Soulquarian era of black music that they were generating in the Electric Lady Studios in New York with D’angelo, Common, J Dilla, Erykah Badu, and others. There were more commercial artists of the era, but none influenced the culture more than the merger of hip hop and soul and the rise of Dilla Time, as Dan Charnas puts it in his book of the same name, that Questlove and his co-conspirators delivered to us.

I’m unsure if K. Dot began this year intending to shift the culture. The operating plan seems to have grown organically as his thesis solidified throughout the beef with Drake. “I’m what the culture feeling” led to him wanting to be explicit about which culture he meant. The impact of “Not Like Us” on Los Angeles and its ability to generate mass appeal for a very South LA, very California sound seemed to spark a more extensive idea about what he wanted to do with his label and his work.

“The Pop Out: Ken and Friends” further confirmed this was magic in a bottle. Since it happened, I have thought a lot about Kendrick’s performance during that show. He flubbed the lyrics in both “euphoria” and “Not Like Us” and could never get “The Colonizer” section of that song correct once. Making quotable, punchline-dense hits is light work for him. He made those songs to win a rap battle, but they aren’t meaningful, incredibly thoughtful pieces.

They won’t win him any literary awards.

They did wake people up, though.

Music audiences didn’t know they were hungry for authenticity, cultural specificity, or even a return of the boom bap in rap, but we were. I was. In the aftermath, I have locked in with bombastic, honest, and enthusiastically unique albums. Tyler, the Creator, Glorilla, and Doechii put out whole bodies of work that felt free from chasing trends and were precisely the music they wanted to be making.

And now we have gnx and Kendrick’s “The Next Movement” moment. Lamar is ready to expand beyond his solo introspective work and utilize this next phase of his career as an artist and tastemaker to put the West Coast on, unite disparate communities, and uplift people. As Spence Kornhaber put it, it’s populism with a point. Thirty-plus years after Dr. Dre’s The Chronic brought about the rise of the g-funk era and LA laying claim as the center of the hip-hop universe, Kendrick Lamar seems to be generating that same gravitational force.

Get on board, get left behind, or be prepared to squabble up.

Photo by Kind and Curious on Unsplash

Dino T.Rex looks over the rooftops of Hollywood

October 14, 2024 / 1 Comment

Entertainment Industry Vibe Check at Bloomberg Screentime 2024

I attended Bloomberg Screentime in search of vibes. I’ve got time to think about what I want to be doing next. Part of that calculus is whether the entertainment industry—television and streaming, specifically—is still the most desirable place for me to work. Evan Shapiro doesn’t mince words:

“No, you do NOT have to leave Media if you don’t want to. But if you want to keep working in Media, you HAVE TO redefine what Media means.”

That’s precisely what was on display at nya Studios last week. While traditional LA production folks were underworked, bored, and anxious about all the AI talk and enthusiasm, Creators—the podcasters, social media content producers, and influencers—had that Hollywood glow. Whether it was mega-successful Sean Evans and his Hot Ones crew holding court in one of the outdoor lounges, up-and-coming podcast producers just happy to be there, or Taylor Lorenz excitedly roaming from place to place looking for exciting stories and a phone charger that worked, they were the ones with the glint in their eye, big dreams of making it (or taking it to the next level), and often with impeccable skin.

The most confident conversation I attended was with the OnlyFans CEO and Whitney Cummings. There wasn’t any shame in being a website for “adults.” Instead, there was certainty in their strategy, their approach to growth, and their sense of what consumers and creators want today. And, there was money—so much money.

Clara Wu Tsai exuded similar confidence about the trajectory of the WNBA and the business of women’s sports more generally as she spoke to us the night before her New York Liberty would lose an instant classic overtime game against the Minnesota Lynx in game one of the WNBA Finals.

Everyone looking to the future talked and walked like they were happily strapped onto a rocket ship.

I also paid attention to who was present at the event and who wasn’t. While they didn’t appear on stage, Disney Entertainment was a presenting sponsor. Brian Roberts of Comcast/NBCU sounded like the one legacy Media boss who is sure of his approach. Matt Hopkins of Amazon Prime Video and Bela Bajaria of Netflix sounded like winners, breaking news about major deals and announcing new shows.

The other legacy media companies only appeared in “media apocalypse” style headlines on-screen or as the butt of jokes.

Hollywood veterans like Snoop Dogg, Kerry Washington, and even Jason Blum, as he suffered through the wings of death, were enthusiastic about creating music, television, and movies in this environment, though they acknowledged the challenges.

Despite all the doom and gloom, you don’t get into the entertainment industry unless your well of hope springs eternal. How else do you have the nerve to try to make popular art?

Like Evan said, though, I left the event realizing I had to open the aperture. Popular entertainment, who makes it, who distributes it, and how we want to experience it are as varied as they are personalized for each consumer.

Accept that.

Get enthusiastic about the possibilities it brings.

Or, get out.

Header image by Franz Hajak on Unsplash

October 7, 2024 / 0 Comments

This is It

I did not arrive at the Saban Media Center at the Television Academy in North Hollywood on Saturday expecting to be emotional. The event was a Table Read of the final three episodes of season four of the One Day at a Time revival. COVID-19 shut down production, and the show was canceled, so these episodes never got made, and we were deprived of one of the best traditional sitcoms of the last decade and one most reflective of Norman Lear’s creative principles.

I started crying during the introduction video.

Lear has long been an inspiration of mine, and that love for humanity, the arts, and civic duty caught me off guard. His words, work, and commitment to ensuring all kinds of families are honored, respected, protected, and seen in this American experiment also matter to me.

After brief remarks from a representative of The People for the American Way, Mike Royce and Gloria Calderón Kellett explained how the afternoon’s event would go, and then the complete title sequence was presented on screen, performed by Gloria Estefan.

This is it. (oh-oh-oh-oh)
This is life, the one you get
So go and have a ball.

This is it.
Straight ahead and rest assured
You can’t be sure at all.

So, while you’re here, enjoy the view
Keep on doing what you do
Hold on tight. We’ll muddle through
One day at a time.

So up on your feet. (Pa’ arriba!)
Somewhere, there’s music playing.
Don’t you worry none
We’ll just take it like it comes.

One day at a time! One day at a time!
One day at a time. (Un día a la vez, lo tomas un día a la vez).
One day at a time, one day at a time.
One day at a time!

As the lights came back up, my nose was runny, and I was desperate for a tissue to dab my eyes. We would go on to laugh uproariously for the next two hours as Rita Moreno, Isabella Gomez, Todd Grinnell, Justina Machado, Marcel Ruiz, and Stephen Tobolowsky reminded us how good they are and how funny and poignant this show was and is.

Despite the laughs, I didn’t stop crying until the final ovation. Family had been at the top of my mind all day before we arrived at the show. As I did my Saturday morning ritual of reviewing what music I had been listening to recently, I realized Cleo Sol had returned to the top of my spins. A year before, her album Gold was what I would listen to on my daily commutes to visit my dad in the hospital. Without consciously thinking about it, I had already begun to revisit that series of terrible events that would dominate the final months of 2023.

One of the three episodes the cast performed was titled “Best Birthday Ever!” and featured Rita Moreno’s Lydia uncharacteristically sad and unwilling to celebrate herself. Throughout the episode, we learn that she’s mourning the loss of keepsakes from her childhood in Cuba and the possibility that she will never get to see these images or hear sounds from that time. By the end, she is treated to the experience of hearing her mother’s voice for the first time since her death, and it fills her with joy.

I suspect I will go through similar whirlwinds of emotion over the next few months. I remember last fall viscerally, and if this weekend is any indication, my feelings will be turned all the way on, and that’s fine.

All emotions are welcome. Let’s feel all the feelings. I just don’t want to get lost in the sads. Much like at the Table Read, I want to balance the melancholy with opportunities for joy.

More laughing through the tears, please.

This is it.

A cropped image of the book jacket for L.A. Weather by María Ampara Escandón. It depicts mountains in Los Angeles experiencing a brush fire. The view is from a hillside home with a pool and palm trees.

July 14, 2024 / 0 Comments

L.A Weather (16 of 26)

María Ampara Escandón loves Los Angeles. More importantly, she understands it. Her novel, L.A. Weather, is about family and the subtle nuances within each relationship. It’s also about identity, the hold that secrets can have over us, and how we handle the crises that can face a family unit in any given year. Los Angeles is where the Alvarados happen to live in this story. This city I love is both the setting and a key player in the plot.

As Storygraph‘s personalized preview of the novel suggested in more polite words: this kind of yarn is my shit.

Throughout the novel, characters describe their visions of L.A.

Compared to New York, we’re like ducks in a pond.

“They glide effortlessly on the tranquil surface, but you can see they’re frantically paddling when you go underwater. […] To survive, you have to keep your cool. Angelenos only sweat in public at the gym.”

One of the Alvarado daughters, who thinks in Instagram captions, believes the city to have been developed horizontally so that it could be projected in Panavision. She goes to the Griffith Park Observatory frequently to remind herself:

“[T]hat because she lived in the wealthiest city of the wealthiest state of the wealthiest country in the world, she had been bestowed with the ultimate responsibility: to thrive in her endeavors many times over on behalf of all the immigrants who hadn’t been given a chance.”

The patriarch of the family shares my perspective on the City of Angels:

“Every race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and food preference was well represented within Los Angeles County, and this is what [he] loved most about his city: how it welcomed everything and everyone.”

Threads has become my social media app of choice over the last year, and recently, there has been this regular drumbeat of new residents of L.A. starting conversations in which long-time Angelenos on the app feel the need to step in and correct their incorrect assumptions. I try my best to stay out of these engagement traps. Los Angeles doesn’t require you to love it. Few will demand that you give up your hometown allegiances or suppress that identity to succeed here. I’ve known people who have lived here for 20 years and still claim Chicago, New York, or wherever. And the city is cool with that.

But, as Escandón seems to know, magic happens if you fall in love with this place—with the parts of it that truly make this city and county shine. This place and its people will love you back. You will find a home. You will find family. You will believe anything is possible when we come together.

L.A. Weather is L.A. County Public Library’s summer read. If you’re a fan of women of color writing about complicated families, intriguing women, and how they make their way through seemingly impossible situations—usually with wit and humor—this is also for you.