What’s happening today?
LA leaders to talk super El Niño prep as weather service projects miserable humidity
The National Weather Service said over the weekend that the recent rainfall will make the humidity in Los Angeles “MUCH more miserable.” The Los Angeles Times has a rundown of the high humidity and high temperature weather conditions, and they include a warning that beach surfs will be high, making trips to the shore to cool off inadvisable. LA leaders today are discussing the super El Niño season that’s believed to be making the weather conditions worse than they would have been. They’ll be doing this in the Los Angeles City Council’s Public Committee meeting at 2 p.m., during which three El Niño motions related to hillside properties, general preparations and recovery will be in the queue.
Guerilla crosswalk painter says he’s done waiting and will paint a Hollywood crosswalk this weekend
A public commenter who said he was arrested for painting a crosswalk last year fired some shots at Mayor Karen Bass during public comment at today’s Los Angeles City Council meeting, saying that she is overdue on implementing street safety measures. He also said he’s held off on doing the guerilla crosswalk painting operations because of the promised measure, but all bets are off now. He now says that he plans to resume the guerilla operations this weekend by painting crosswalks at a Hollywood intersection that Hale noted was in a Council District represented by Hugo Soto-Martinez.
“We’re painting crosswalks this Saturday at the corner of Lexington and Sycamore,” the commenter said. “Mr. Soto Martinez, that is in your district. All of you are invited, and we’re asking for your help in urging the mayor to make our streets safer for all by recommitting to Vision Zero.”
The commenter name-checking Soto-Martinez is interesting. Despite being aligned politically on the progressive end of the City Council with Raman, Soto-Martinez has maintained his endorsement of Bass. Unrig LA has a clip of the comment here. You can also listen to the comment with this time-stamped link for today’s City Council meeting video.
By the way, guerilla crosswalk painting in Los Angeles has been happening quietly for some years now. Maylin Tu wrote about it in 2025 in this piece about the Crosswalk Collective, which has been sneaking in crosswalk painting operations in various neighborhoods around Los Angeles.
A few more things…
Raman says she wants to do five upcoming debates by major television stations, but her opponent Mayor Karen Bass has declined all but one: Nithya Raman’s campaign revealed that they have agreed to five mayoral debates, but Mayor Karen Bass has declined all but one hosted by NBC4 on Oct. 13. Raman is now urging Bass to agree to more debates. Raman says the other debates are hosted by CBS 2 and KNX, ABC 7 and Univision 34, KTLA 5, and CNN.
“Los Angeles residents are confronting enormous challenges: homelessness, housing costs, public safety, affordability, deteriorating infrastructure and basic city services that too often fail to deliver,” Raman says in a statement sent around today. “They deserve a serious, substantive and transparent conversation about the candidates’ records, their competing ideas and the choices facing this city.”
The mayor’s race has yet to have a big televised debate in the runoff phase that’s set to be decided this November. While it provided a rollicking (and revealing) back-and-forth between candidates, the most recent debate hosted by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association was criticized by some for having modest visual production value unbefitting of a major city mayoral race (although others like myself defended its down-home neighborhood vibes).
Meanwhile, Karen Bass’s campaign continues to poke at Raman with accusations that she doesn’t have great relationships with City Council colleagues: This time they highlight on their new No Show Nithya account (and a press release) an interview Traci Park did on The John Kobylt Show in which she takes exception with Raman’s recent moves at doing outreach to the Pacific Palisades community as part of her mayoral campaign. Park accuses Raman of having ignored the crisis prior to running for mayor, and she says that Raman “has never said a word, never asked a question, never once offered to help. Never.”
For what it’s worth, LA City Council files show that Raman authored at least three motions related to the 2025 wildfires, and seconded several more, including one by Council member Adrin Nazarian that calls for an examination of how LADWP prepared for and responded for the wind event and Jan. 7, 2025 wildfires, and another by Council member Monica Rodriguez that called for getting a report on the cost of repairs for city property damages in the wildfires.
Debate alert for LA City Council’s 3rd district race in the west San Fernando Valley: Speak of debates with a neighborhood vibe, I will be moderating one tonight, at 7 p.m. that’s taking place right next to a bowling alley. It will be between Tim Gaspar and Barri Worth Girvan, who are running to represent a west San Fernando Valley district on the Los Angeles City Council. Whoever wins will pick up the baton from outgoing and termed out City Council member Bob Blumenfield. The debate is hosted by the Winnetka Neighborhood Council, at 7 p.m., next to Winnetka Bowl at 20122 Vanowen St.
Researcher dishes up some quirky history about a noisy rooster and more about a Lincoln Heights home that just got approved by the City Council as a historic landmark: While the City Council took up some big topics, such as the Fair Work Week ordinance, street takeovers, the reappointment of Jenny Chavez to the Board of Public Works, and a motion on Oceanwide Plaza project (better known as the graffiti tower, LA’s grandest abandoned building and graffiti gallery), there was also a motion to designate a 1912 Mission Revival home in Lincoln Heights as a local historic landmark that contains a few quirky tidbits about its history. The researcher appeared to have found a 1935 news article about a neighbor suing the Bilderrains due to their noisy pet rooster, Banty. The Bilderrains won their lawsuit by citing zoning laws, but Banty vanished shortly thereafter. There was also a quick mention of this in an online article. And for many decades of the home’s life, it was in the family of asparagus farmer Poy Ton Kwong, who helped found the Chinese Asparagus Society.
What just happened?
Alissa Walker lays out in her latest Torched column why the Unite Here Local 11’s endorsement of Nithya Raman over Karen Bass is especially intriguing and cuts the heart of some of LA City Hall’s most heated political battles – such as an Olympic Wage campaign that raises the minimum wage for hospitality workers, and the fight over Airbnb and short-term rental rules in Los Angeles.
Lineage announced this past Saturday that they have completed their cleanup of food waste in Freezer 1 at their Boyle Heights warehouse. This was also confirmed by air quality regulators at the South Coast Air Quality Management District. An independent board at the district had issued an order in early August that called for cleaning out the freezer, with an anticipated completion time of mid August, as part of 90 conditions that Lineage needed to meet.
