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Venice Boardwalk features local and international artists, pop-up evening performances, and projects that explore the themes of childhood and home. The Venice Boardwalk is usually a daytime playground, but a new art installation and performance pop up aims to breathe new life into the evening scene at the beach.
Two formerly vacant buildings with spaces facing the Boardwalk have been turned into free art installations after a new owner took over the former Snapchat-owned buildings.tefan Ashkenazy, founder of the Bombay Beach Biennale, brings some of his favorite collaborators into a new space on the Venice Boardwalk, giving a chance for tourists and locals alike to check out projects from artists including William Attaway, James Ostrer, Greg Haberny, Robin Murez, and more. The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue.
Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House. ” “Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them.
“I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day. ”The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty sincein 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.
The installations are open now and can be seen from the Boardwalk for free 24/7. They will be up for several months and evening performances are ongoing. All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach.
Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea.
Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.
“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too. It's beautiful. ” Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.
” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.
“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and dark things. ” While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.
Greg Haberny works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.
“I don't really know if I say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.
” While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk.
“I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking. ” Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.
“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.
”San Gabriel Valley residents are rallying today against a battery storage project in the City of Industry. They warn it could bring environmental and health impacts and pave the way for more industrial development, like data centers. City leaders approved the 400-megawatt Marici battery facility in January. But residents in nearby communities say they were not adequately informed and are concerned about safety risks.
A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.
A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that wasWHAT: Protest against battery storage facility in the city of IndustryBecause of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents. Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.
A request for comment from Aypa was not returned. Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.
“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out. ”Steve Campos sits on a bench he calls the "LA Bench" that approriates the logo used by the Dodgers in a statement of civic pride. LA welder-artist uses the well-loved"L.A.
" logo to create an “LA Bench” to spark civic pride. It may look like a tribute to the Dodgers, but it's more complicated. Steve Campos is a second-generation welder born and raised in L.A. who is using his training and education to create work with more artistic designs. The Dodgers’ success is making their logos ubiquitous.
But the team's success, some Angelenos say, came at the cost of mass displacement after World War II of working class communities where Dodger Stadium how stands. The interlocking letters of the L.A. logo were used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958. Campos is offering the LA Benches for sale and hopes he can get permission from the Dodgers to install a few at Dodger Stadium.
It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.
“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos. Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans.
So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people fromThe logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958. Welding is the Campos family business.
His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena. The inspiration for the L.A.
Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.
“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said. It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional.
In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present. Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.
For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan. Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become.
For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said. While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers. If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report.
Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less. The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno. The trail is part of a decades-long effort to preserve the entire 110 acres of Elephant Hill. Read on to learn more.
The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno. The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.
"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofitPeople have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides. The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land.
Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners. Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail.
The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres. And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.
"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come. ""They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.
In an attempt to resolve evictions before they go to trial, the Los Angeles County Superior Court has launched new programs that seek to facilitate settlements by giving free attorneys to tenants and financial relief to landlords who are owed back rent. Presiding Judge Sergio Tapia said the pilot programs are designed to stem the tide of evictions, which have risen sharply since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both tenant and landlord attorneys agree that settlements can often be the best path for both parties. But lawyers who represent landlords say their clients often feel local government is increasingly putting money toward helping renters, while leaving property owners struggling.
In an attempt to resolve evictions before they go to trial, the Los Angeles County Superior Court has launched new programs that seek to facilitate settlements by providing free attorneys to tenants and financial relief to landlords who are owed back rent.
“We're trying to show litigants across the board, whether it’s tenants or landlords, that the court is the opportunity to try to find resolution faster,” Tapia told LAist.in downtown L.A. ’s Stanley Mosk Courthouse gives tenants the right to request a mandatory settlement conference overseen by a court-appointed settlement officer.
These tenants, who rarely come to court with legal representation, will be given a free attorney to guide them though the settlement conferences, as long as they earn less than 125% of the federal poverty level. But lawyers who represent landlords say their clients often feel local government is increasingly putting money toward helping renters, while leaving property owners struggling.
Facing eviction without a lawyer “puts people at such an enormous disadvantage, when landlords normally have lawyers,” said Conway Collis, president of the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles, a nonprofit that is helping to fund the Mosk program’s free attorneys. Landlords will be required to notify tenants about the program in the eviction paperwork they serve to tenants. Settlement officers come from the court’s pool of temporary judges, who handle lower-level cases, such as traffic infractions.
Other officers are retired judges or trained lawyers. The settlement conferences are being held on the same day as regularly scheduled court hearings, one floor down from the Mosk courthouse’s eviction department. Elena Popp, the executive director of the Eviction Defense Network, which is providing lawyers for the program, said that on one recent day, landlords and tenants were able to reach mutually agreeable settlements in about half the conferences.
“We settled one,” Popp said. “We are very close to settling a second one. The other two are way further apart because the tenant really wants to stay on, but the landlord really wants them to go. ” Settlement deals look different in each case, Popp said.
Sometimes they involve landlords letting tenants stay if they pay overdue rent. In other cases, tenants are given additional time to find new housing before they must leave. When settlements are reached, cases are sealed so that evictions won’t be visible on a tenant’s record, a black mark that makes it very difficult to find new housing. When settlements can’t be reached, landlords and tenants go back upstairs to resume their normal proceedings, Popp said.
No matter how cases are resolved, she said, tenants can’t be expected to navigate legally complex processes on their own.
“One of the things that we stressed when we were setting this up is that you absolutely have to have a lawyer,” Popp said.launched last month at the Compton courthouse offers up to $10,000 to cover rent owed to landlords in cases that settle. Landlords will be required to inform tenants about the settlement conferences. To qualify, either the tenant or the landlord must earn no more than 120% of the area’s median income.
The settlement conferences at the Compton courthouse are overseen by Community Legal Aid of Southern California, and rent relief funding is administered by L.A. County’s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs. Attorney Aaron Kohanim, who represents landlords, said he advises his clients to settle whenever possible, because going to trial is “a casino — you don't know if you're going to win. ”“Only one side gets a piece of that pot,” Kohanim said.
“Landlords have to pay out of pocket for their attorneys. And on top of that, they are not allowed to collect rent in the middle of the case, so they're getting beaten by two different angles, versus a tenant who is just living there rent-free and they get a free lawyer. ” Tapia said the programs are currently limited to the Mosk and Compton courthouses because of funding constraints and limited resources.
But the judge said if they prove successful, they could be expanded county-wide.
“If we're able to show success, that will allow us to recruit a more robust set of settlement officers to perhaps expand,” Tapia said. “We need to see how this pilot plays out first. ”
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