Greater LA

The City of LA estimates that 3-4% of street vendors have the proper documentation to operate legally, and advocates for street vending say it’s around 1%. City and county officials say the pandemic has severely impacted their ability to do outreach and help vendors get their permits. But activists and vendors alike say the city and county permitting processes are too costly, difficult to navigate, and foster a generally unsupportive environment.

The LA Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA) is opening a permanent space for classes in September. Famed architect Frank Gehry remodeled an old bank building in Inglewood to be the program’s center. Mayor James T. Butts hopes the program and building will be an anchor for the community, offering intensive after-school music training to high schoolers.

LA will host the Summer Olympics for the third time in 2028. It has the infrastructure to do it, but an increasing number of people say the process is undemocratic and can come with unexpected financial and health consequences. A day after the closing ceremonies in Tokyo, KCRW hosts a panel discussion about what lessons LA should learn.

As Southern California enters the tensest months of fire season, a looming issue could keep critical air assets used to battle the big blazes stuck on the ground, or force them to go long distances between drops. A lack of truck drivers is making it hard to move jet fuel around all of the West. Rural airports that double as air tanker bases in Montana and Idaho have already seen their fuel tanks run dry and had to send fire planes elsewhere for supplies. Now it looks like that problem could be migrating south to the Golden State.

LA Metro ridership numbers have plummeted since the pandemic began. The transit agency reports that in 2020, just 213 million people used its trains or buses, as opposed to 370 million the year before. This year, Metro’s buses and stations are slow to fill up again, as more people turned to private cars for safety reasons amid the pandemic. To get riders back, Metro is expanding bus services and building new rail stations, but some people think they should improve their existing system instead and focus on the basics, like arriving on time. 

COVID cases have jumped in recent weeks, and if California were still using a tier-based system for lifting restrictions, the county would currently be in the most restrictive, purple one. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Unified School District is still planning to restart in-person instruction in less than two weeks. Aviva Alvarez-Zakson teaches world history and ethnic studies at LAUSD’s Hamilton High. She’s struggling to embrace excitement when there are so many unknowns about the semester ahead. Meanwhile, rapid response nurse Erin McIntosh at Riverside Community Hospital says the number of COVID patients coming in doubled over the past week or two. And this time, they’re in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.

Fire agencies, politicians, and tribal governments tout prescribed burns as an effective fire mitigation strategy. California needs to use every tool it has amid what’s shaping up to be the largest fire season in state history. But it’s different in Southern California’s chaparral and grasslands than in northern forests. Some residents and fire ecologists say prescribed burns here will do more harm than good.

High school senior Kelly Danielpour founded VaxTeen to give her peers reliable and easy-to-understand information about COVID. She had learned about a growing trend of teenagers turning to Reddit to figure out if they could get vaccinated in their state without their parents’ consent. Now Danielpour wants to use her website to advocate for straightforward legislation that allows teenagers to consent to all vaccinations.

Today the LA City Council approved new rules targeting people who sit, sleep and store their belongings near building entrances, freeway underpasses, parks, homeless shelters, day care centers, and other public facilities. Those who support the ordinance say it addresses many housed people’s concerns about impassable sidewalks and encampments becoming health and safety hazards. Those against it say the restriction punishes people for being poor and will shuffle unhoused people around while doing nothing to get them off the streets.

LA theaters are offering new performances — online and in-person. Culver City’s The Actors’ Gang is out with a new virtual play called “We Live On,” about life during the Great Depression and lessons for COVID recovery. Topanga Canyon’s Theatricum Botanicum is premiering an outdoor show this Saturday called “The Last, Best Town,” about two families from different cultures, and what the American dream means to them. KCRW also looks at the legislative challenges facing theaters as they reopen.