Monday, October 13, 2025
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Imperial Avalon Residents Fight Displacement

Reporters Desk
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Imperial Avalon Residents Fight Displacement
By Joseph Baroud, Reporter

The intersection of Carson and Avalon was surrounded with the deafening sounds of
honking cars on Oct. 20 in support of more than 30 demonstrators protesting the
attempted displacement of residents from the Imperial Avalon Mobile Home Park.
As the City of Carson moves forward with redevelopment projects they believe will add more quality retail options and market rate housing, mobile home residents believe these improvements are happening at the expense of their housing security.
Residents have decided to take to the streets because the phone calls and the letters aren’t yielding results. This is the second week of protests. Residents are joined by supporters and representatives of their homeowner’s association in order to reverse the momentum with public support.
During a July 7 council meeting in which representatives from Faring Capital joined the council to discuss this situation, Darren Embry, a representative of Faring, which is part of the relocation project team that has been tasked with Imperial Avalon and handles community development, said that residents have until January 2022 to find a new home.
The relocation project team that will handle the move presented a chart to the City
Council’s planning commission. Embry said that each resident will be provided this chart and given the chance to make a selection of which buyback rate they would like to use to complete this transaction.
Jeff Steiman, 55, a resident and representative of the mobile home homeowners’
association said that as of Oct. 26 residents haven’t been given a choice about the rate at which they want to sell their house. Steiman also says the resident’s first right of refusal wasn’t respected.
Homeowners say that they’re being offered a significantly low value for their homes.
Glenn White, 66, who has been living there for 21 years, said he was being offered
$10,000 for his home valued at $80,000.
“The residents have been offered on site market value,” Marcela Steiman, 62, said. “We want fair market value because we have to go out to search the housing market with less money. Why in the hell would we move into another mobile home park when they are all being bought up by all the investors?”
The entity who conducted the appraisals for the homes was Faring Capital, which also
bought the property. White says that the council is helping Faring Capital obtain mobile home parks, because Faring makes hefty contributions to the council.
“The main voting bloc allowing Faring Capital to buy up all the mobile home parks are
led by city council members Lula Davis-Holmes, Jawane Hilton and Cedric Hicks,” White said.
Carla Zanotti, 48, who has lived at Imperial Avalon for 40 years, said she received a
change of ownership notice in August and a promise from the new proprietors, Faring
Capital, that they would find everybody a residence in Carson and they would take care of all of the moving fees. That didn’t happen, so she took the matter up with an attorney and is scheduled to meet Nov. 4 to discuss her options.
The City Council has scheduled a meeting on Oct. 28 at Dignity Park to hold an open
discussion with affected residents. Steiman said that the City Council wants residents of the various affected mobile home parks to attend this meeting. They requested that representatives from Faring Capital attend as well.
“When the mobile home lots were built, they were intended to be an affordable way instead of living on the street,” Steiman said.

GOP Losing the Popular Vote

Paul Rosenberg
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The media ignores the warnings

Republicans have lost the popular vote for president in every election but one in the past 30 years and they appear headed to lose once again, by well more than the 2.9 million votes they lost by last time.  

“Where are all of the arrests?” Trump tweeted on Oct. 7, followed later with the all-caps demand:

“DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN – GOT CAUGHT!!!”

Trump never spelled out the alleged scandal/plot or the person being asked to act. But that very lack of specificity, together with the sweeping, grandiose claim of unprecedented evil, are hallmarks of how autocratic leaders seek to grab absolute power for themselves — justifying the elimination of all rivals. His outburst should have set off alarm bells across the political spectrum. Instead, it barely caused a ripple.

Beyond being inattentive, the media is routinely pernicious: It amplifies Trump’s efforts to undermine our democracy. A recent report from Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society found that Trump was the primary driver of disinformation about alleged “voter fraud,” via elite media coverage. The methodology was “an elite-driven, mass-media led process,” the report noted, driven by Trump’s tweets, press briefings and interviews amplified via media coverage.

“Social media played only a secondary and supportive role,” the report stated.

In all, the study analyzed more than 55,000 online stories, 5 million tweets, and 75,000 public Facebook posts. The only peak in activity not personally driven by Trump came in response to the exposure of his administration’s interference with the U.S. Postal Service. Three media practices helped to spread the misinformation, according to the report: “elite institutional focus (if the president says it, it’s news); headline seeking (if it bleeds, it leads); and balance, neutrality, or the avoidance of the appearance of taking a side.”

More precisely, the report explained:

[Trump] uses the first two in combination to summon coverage at will, and has used them continuously to set the agenda surrounding mail-in voting through a combination of tweets, press conferences, and television interviews on Fox News. He relies on the latter professional practice [balance] to keep audiences that are not politically pre-committed and have relatively low political knowledge confused, because it limits the degree to which professional journalists in mass media organizations are willing or able to directly call the voter fraud frame disinformation.

Thus, the media have played a key role in helping to spread Trump’s disinformation, attacking the legitimacy of our elections — and doing so in the specific form that Trump himself has chosen to maximally hurt his opposition. If enough mail-in votes can be suppressed — particularly in Pennsylvania — Trump will have a path to re-“election,” especially with the help of the courts that he’s been stacking with his appointees.

There are some who recognize the depths of what’s at stake, which is why three giants of science publishing — Nature, Scientific American and the New England Journal of Medicine — have made the first presidential endorsements of their histories, stretching back to the 19th century. And, while other institutions have wobbled, specific individuals have nonetheless stood out. Thus, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent noted that Trump’s recent attacks on infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci and 60 Minutes interviewer Leslie Stahl made perfect sense:

They are the figures he perceives to be standing in the way of his effort to conduct this campaign in an entirely invented universe that he’d hoped to manufacture for this very purpose.

But other institutions are flailing badly in defense of reality, despite the clarity of evidence of what’s going on, and the potential dangers that loom.

“The producers of news aren’t capable of dealing with Trump within their present rules and formulas,” NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen told Vox recently. “There’s no emergency switch. … You would have to, for example, tear apart the Sunday shows and start again with different premises. And, there’s no appetite for that.”

Most in the media have long been reluctant to call Trump a liar, which amounts to complicity with him, in helping to obscure the truth of what’s going on in our country. This obscures both what he’s lying about, and why he’s doing it, as well as what should guide us in responding to him.

Ignoring Psychologists’ Warnings

Psychologists and psychiatrists have long warned about Trump — his pathological lying, and a host of other troubling traits reflecting narcissism, sadism, psychopathy and more — but the media have never taken their warnings to heart, never stopped treating him as if their observations and analyses were irrelevant.

Yet, their input can be invaluable. For example, Ian Hughes, author of Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy, shed light on the dynamics Sargent touched on above.

“Imposing their pathological worldview onto the world is what individuals with dangerous disorders do,” Hughes told Random Lengths News. “Doing so is not a conscious choice; it is a consequence of the fact that individuals with these disorders live in an internal ‘reality’ that is shaped by their disorder.”

“He reacts with anger at anyone who dares challenge his superiority — whether that is female journalists or scientific experts,” said Hughes about Trump’s sense of superiority. “He lives in a world of his own making in which he must control others or take them down before they harm him.”

Trump’s refusal to take the coronavirus seriously has resulted in more than a hundred thousand excess deaths. That’s typical of the dynamic Hughes went on to describe:

By acting out this worldview in their minute-by-minute relationships with everyone around them, pathological individuals make this internal world an external reality. People either agree with them, stick around and reinforce their pathological views, or disagree with them, refuse to associate with them and become enemies to be destroyed.

This is exactly what has happened with COVID-19.

The media has generally failed to realize how experts like Hughes can help make sense of Trump’s actions for their audiences. But that’s as foolish, in its own way, as Trump’s refusal to listen to and learn from Dr. Fauci. Like Fauci, they can help us grasp things we already experience, but don’t know how to make sense of.

A paper published in spring showed that ordinary Americans — Trump supporters and conservatives as well as liberals — perceive the same sets of Trump’s psychologically dangerous traits that experts have been warning against.

“We found that, on average, those who voted for Trump and those who voted for Clinton did not have wildly different views of Trump’s personality,” the lead author Jacob Fiala told PsyPost. “Both groups saw him as particularly sadistic and narcissistic, and even though the two groups disagreed about how prominently he displayed these traits, his own supporters still judged him to be more sadistic and narcissistic than 90% of people.”

This didn’t surprise Hughes.

“In the context of an extremely divided society, even majorities can believe that choosing leaders with traits that correspond to the clinical diagnosis of psychopath or malignant narcissist is the smart thing to do,” he said.

But if that’s what they’re choosing, it should be a central matter of debate.

Attacks On Democracy Also Ignored

Similarly — though not so completely — the media has also done a poor job of describing Trump’s multifaceted attacks on American democracy. In September, the Washington Post ran a story, The United States is backsliding into autocracy under Trump, scholars warn. And, while it wasn’t the first such story, there’s no spillover into changing day-to-day reporting on what Trump is doing, despite widespread agreement amongst political scientists, such as the V-Dem project, involving 2,800 national experts around the world.

We’re now in a “third wave” of autocratization, they tell us. The first two waves, from 1926 to 1942 and from 1961 to 1977, were characterized by sudden events, such as military coups, but the third wave, starting in 1994, is characterized by gradual erosion (at least initially) most often driven by elected leaders like Trump, who undermine democratic norms and institutions to remain in power.

“Once in power, the ambitious autocrats work to change constitutions, undermine independent electoral authority (domestic and international), weaken the opposition, besiege civil society and persecute critical media,” Armando Chaguaceda, a V-Dem national expert, explained in 2019. And V-Dem’s 2020 report noted that “The United States of America is the only country in Western Europe and North America suffering from substantial autocratization.”

This is where America stands today, less than a week from Election Day, with a very real chance of significant democratic erosion, depending on what kinds of results come in where, and how, and when — and how other actors respond to Trump’s continued efforts to undermine our democracy.

Trump’s tax cut is his sole piece of major legislation, vastly overshadowed by the volume of judges he’s appointed, aided by Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s practice of sabotaging almost all of Barack Obama’s nominations in the last two years of his term. While intended most broadly to win support from the GOP establishment as well as the base, Trump has also made it clear he expects “his” judges to protect him — up to and including the Supreme Court, where his latest nominee  was confirmed at record speed. And so far, that’s exactly what they’ve done.

On Oct. 19, the Supreme Court declined to overturn a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling to allow late-arriving ballots to be counted up to three days after election day. But with Amy Coney Barrett on the court, that could easily be reversed, and one theory being argued could allow the GOP-controlled state legislature to simply ignore the popular vote and send their own slate of electors to the Electoral College.

Even more arcane power-grab scenarios are possible — predicated only on the willingness of GOP enablers to carry out Trump’s wishes. In a suddenly tightening re-election race, Texas Sen. John Cornyn has let slip a few modestly Trump-critical comments. The GOP could also lose two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia and one each in South Carolina and Mississippi, which they once assumed were all safe — signs that an epochal power-shift may be underway. Joe Biden could conceivably win Texas and Georgia as well, effectively outflanking Trump’s threatened Pennsylvania shenanigans.

There are too many possibilities to specifically discuss, but there’s a common thread: Trump’s instinct to stay in power no matter what will diverge from the perceived interests of long-term power-players like McConnell to a greater or lesser degree. And here, again, a combination of psychological and political science frameworks can help illuminate what may come.

“Daisy” a Timely Document of the Advertising Shot Heard ‘Round the Political World

Greggory Moore
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“Daisy” a Timely Document of the Advertising Shot Heard ‘Round the Political World

If you don’t know The Beatles, you cannot possibly understand the genesis of rock ‘n’ roll. But in both politics and advertising, the “Daisy” spot is even more seminal, more original. Sean Devine’s Daisy, which makes its California premiere online in International City Theatre’s first COVID-era production, dramatizes the creation of the 60-second spot that revolutionized political campaigning and whose reverberations still move us today.

Aaron, Sid, and Louise (Matthew Floyd Miller, Alex Dabestani, and Erin Anne Williams, respectively) are star ad execs at Doyle Dane Bernbach, which has just been hired by the White House to create an ad campaign for Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 presidential run. Although television may have been a big part of the prior three races, LBJ’s election committee wants something new, something more aggressive — especially once the Republicans nominate extremist Barry Goldwater, who has publicly professed his willingness to use atomic weapons in Vietnam and elsewhere.

Enter Tony Schwartz (David Nevell), an agoraphobic sound designer who’s ahead of his time. He knows that combining the right sonic elements in the right way can “bring to the surface what’s already deep inside,” just as Louise knows a killer ad idea when she hears it — in this case, the juxtaposition of a little girl counting flower petals, followed by an ominous countdown preceding a nuclear explosion. 

Despite never mentioning Goldwater’s name, from the moment of its one and only TV broadcast on September 7, 1964, the “Daisy” spot was considered the first attack ad, and Daisy is a meditation on the Pandora’s box it opened, with characters taking turns questioning and justifying their actions in language that at times is a bit too on-the-nose. “Tell me, where is the ethics in attack ads?” “Tell me that when Cliff [an LBJ adviser played by Phillip J. Lewis] was talking about attack ads that didn’t feel like a slippery slope.” “What we do is going to play on 8 million televisions across the country. Not only is the opportunity unprecedented, but so is the responsibility.”

By design, Daisy is a play without either a moral center or a bad guy. All of the characters are ambitious, but none is amoral. All have blind spots, yet all have some idea what they’re doing. Devine deserves credit for this, just as he does for not trying to provide answers for the unanswerable. “The best we can do,” says Schwartz, “is make choices for an imperfect world.”

As an online production, although Daisy is a decent first stab for ICT— and you definitely feel like you’re watching a real play and not simply a video exercise masquerading as such — it’s a bit puzzling why it isn’t a bit better. Although this is an archived live performance, it contains no less than mid-scene five edits, three or four of which are noticeable glitches. And that doesn’t include a particular line flub so obviously wrong in a nontrivial way that there’s no excuse for leaving it as-is since they’re doing edits, anyway. 

Perhaps a tougher nut to crack is the stasis. Because Devine’s script is innately static, this was going to be a shortcoming even were ICT staging this in their usual Beverly O’Neill Theater digs, and so the problem of having actors isolated from each other in their own rectangular boxes doesn’t hurt as much as it might for a script with more physical action and interaction. Still, it doesn’t seem like director caryn desai has quite yet figured out how to turn the limitations of virtual theatre into inspirations. (I’m not saying I do, either, but I’ll know it when I see it.)

What cannot be denied is that Daisy is a timely choice for our current election season, where the Republican in the race ain’t got nothing on Goldwater, and the cerebral sophistication of the “Daisy” spot is a far cry from today’s political milieu and the attacks that even relatively sober candidates routinely unleash on each other. So if you feel like ruminating on the road that got us here, Daisy is not a bad place to start.

Daisy at International City Theatre (virtually)

Times: On demand
The show runs through Nov. 7
Cost: $20
Details: (562) 436-4610, ICTLongBeach.org

Learn More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJiYY2-xibU

Street Fare: Looking into Ray Carofano’s “Faces of Pedro”

Reporters Desk
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Street Fare: Looking into Ray Carofano’s “Faces of Pedro”

By Bondo Wyszpolski, Contributor

Ray Carofano has pointed out different subjects in Faces of Pedro, his most recent publication, which highlights 56 black-and-white images of San Pedro’s denizens, past and present.
“It’s not really about the homeless, although there’s a number of them in the book because they’re in town here and I find them interesting, interesting in their lifestyles and what they’ve gone through and how they’ve survived,” Carofano said.
Carofano began this series in 1998.
“Shortly after moving to San Pedro, I became aware of the many different cultures and interesting people surrounding me,” he noted elsewhere. “I befriended many of the locals here and began taking photographs of them in my studio, sometimes long after the bars have closed.”
It should be clear by now that Carofano hadn’t set his sights on high school cheerleaders, gym rats or ballerinas. Coco Chanel has been quoted as saying, “Nature gives you the face you have at twenty, but it’s up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.”
Speaking of 50, it turns out that 39 of the subjects depicted in Faces of Pedro have crossed that rubicon, with 18 of them younger.
“A lot of these people look older than they really are,” Carofano pointed out.
He added that the median age is about 60. Of course, by that point in life, nature has already scraped away some of our initial, rosy-hued beauty and begun laying in the wrinkles, the gray hairs and the liver spots that will make us almost as generic at 80 as we were as infants.
That’s not to suggest that this is a collection of unattractive people. And what do we mean by “unattractive” anyway? These are, rather, weathered faces, some a great deal more than others, but what draws us to these portraits — apart from the exquisite use of the camera and Carofano’s skillful lighting — is that each visage
seems to convey a life story, a short autobiography in code.
“If you look at somebody’s legs or arms it doesn’t really tell you anything about the person,” Carofano said. “But the face. We can look at somebody and go, That guy looks like a toughie or looks like a nice guy or a nice lady. Looks tell you a story (although) it might be wrong in certain areas. Still, you’re going to find out the most
about that individual probably by looking at them closely.”
A pause in the action
Ray Carofano and his wife Arnée own and work out of Gallery 478, on Seventh Street near Pacific Avenue.
For the past several years, and especially during the San Pedro Art Walks — remember those? — anyone from the merely curious to the connoisseur who wandered into the gallery would almost always single out the wall
where Carofano has been displaying some 40 images from his Faces of Pedro series (images which he rotates periodically). It’s been the Rembrandt in the room, so to speak, the parts congregated into the whole that was for many the highlight of their initial visit. People would regularly comment on them, perhaps compliment them
is a better word, but Carofano reveals that nobody has ever laid out a few bucks in order to buy one.
“There’s a reason behind that,” he said. “When you look at the faces, a lot of them are a little spooky and I can’t imagine somebody bringing one home and hanging it up in their bedroom or even over their sofa.”
But to own a book or a portfolio of these images? Well, yes; people have responded positively to that idea.
Now, they’ll have a chance to respond with their billfolds. However, if it wasn’t for the pandemic, it’s likely we’d still be talking about the prospect of a publication rather than the volume itself.
“You’re not bringing people in here who we don’t know,” Arnée made clear.
So, the indoor photography came to a sudden stop. Theaters call this “the great intermission” and for Carofano, as for many artists of whatever medium, blocks of time became available that simply weren’t there before. And thus, Carofano was presented with a golden opportunity — although who doesn’t wish these
opportunities didn’t have to come at such a great economic cost to the entire country.

Faces of Pedro by Ray Carofano


Don’t hold that pose
Some people may ask, “Where does Carofano find his subjects?”
After all, these men and women tend to have distinctive facial features that for better or worse elude the normal person.
In years past, Carofano found many of them hanging out in the neighborhood or in San Pedro’s dive bars. He’s always been affable and he’d strike up conversations with the regulars, many of whom met his criteria, people whose faces revealed or suggested a story.
“That worked out pretty well in the old days,” he said.
In more recent years, during his walks or his bicycling around town, he’d spot folks out on the streets or he’d skirt the homeless camps.
“I can find people there or talk to them,” he said.
And, that led to additional subjects for his portfolio.
“If they’re homeless I usually offer them some money to help them out, and it helps me out, too,” he said.
Back in the studio, the lighting setup would already be in place if Carofano was expecting to shoot and it’s a process that takes him a few hours to get just right.
“If you look closely on the floor there [are] little circles that tell me where the light’s going to be, where the diffusion’s going to be,” he said. “I’ve got it all written down, the power of each strobe, it’s all set up. I have a piece of tape on the floor and I like them to stand on that position because I don’t hold the camera, it’s on a
(tripod).”
As for getting a “pose,” Carofano said that he doesn’t really tell them what to do, but it’s evident that he wants them to be natural and relaxed and then engages them in conversation. What he’s looking for is a candid shot and not one where someone has put on their best but artificial smile. “When you look at some of those
faces, somebody’s got their mouth open because they’re talking to me and I’m talking to them, and the camera’s rolling while we’re doing that,” he explained. “I like that look; It’s not fake; it’s the real McCoy; it’s what that person looks like when they’re having a conversation.”
Early on, Carofano often reveled in the stories he heard, but he didn’t write them down.
“Then I bought a pocket recorder, and we’d sit around and talk, either before or after [a shooting session],” he said.
Later he began video recording, which further documented the occasion.
“When I photograph you that means you’re going to be around for a long, long time,” he explained to them.
“Long after you’re gone and I’m gone you’re still going to be around.”
And I believe the new volume will back him up on that!
The final touch
The effectiveness of the portraits resides in the detail, the veritable landscape, of each face along with the tonality and the lighting that enhances it all. Of course, as Ron Linden writes in his introduction to the book, it’s also a collaboration between photographer and subject. Linden refers to it as a negotiation, with “the photographer searching for the essence that words can’t describe.”

It’s there, we all have an essence and if you want to liken Carofano to a miner he’s chipping away until he finds the diamond in the rough. Maybe it’s taken 20, 30, or 40 clicks of the shutter, but find it he does and the conclusive proof is now waiting, between the covers, for everyone who ever admired them on the wall, but never wanted one above their sofa.


Faces of Pedro by Ray Carofano, hardbound with 57 images on premium paper is $60. California residents add sales tax. Shipping and handling, U.S. flat rate is $15. Book with 8×10 archival paper print is $160.

Details: ray@carofano.com

San Pedro 7-Eleven to Be Turned into Gas Station

Hunter Chase
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San Pedro 7-Eleven to Be Turned into Gas Station

The 7-Eleven store on the southwest corner of North Gaffey Street and West Capitol Drive could have gas pumps in the future. 7-Eleven Inc. intends to demolish the store and rebuild it as a gas station with a convenience store. Whether it is successful or not may depend on what side of the property it chooses to place the store.

The original proposal put the store at the corner of the property, facing both Gaffey and Capitol. That arrangement would conform with San Pedro’s community plan, said Diana Nave, chairwoman of the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, when she spoke at the council’s Oct. 13 meeting.

Because of community feedback, 7-Eleven also considered placing the building at the back of the lot, like a traditional gas station, Nave said. However, the Los Angeles City Planning Department stated it won’t approve such a layout.

“If our board were to support the traditional layout, it would mean that the Planning Department would reject the proposal,” Nave said. “7-Eleven would then need to appeal it to the Area Planning Commission and they would need to find that there are some extraordinary circumstances that prevented it from being built in the front of the lot.”

The station will have four gas pumps, two hoses each, for a total of eight fueling positions. Nave said the Planning and Land Use committee asked 7-Eleven to put in electric vehicle charging stations. However, the company had only committed to putting in conduits for two stations, but not the actual charging stations themselves. If its plans are approved, it will apply for a rebate from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for the charging stations.

Peter Burmeister, a member of the NWSPNC’s planning and land use committee, said neither the committee, the council or even 7-Eleven have done any outreach to the community that directly surrounds the project.

“I personally went to the homeowners over here and the businesses around,” Burmeister said. “None of them knew about that project.”

Burmeister does not believe the council or the Planning and Land Use Committee are acting in the best interests of the community, but rather like a broker for the developer.

“We as homeowners, our quality of life is at stake,” Burmeister said. “That’s their responsibility to outreach to the neighbors and outreach to the businesses adjacent to it. And, the chair of the Northwest Neighborhood Council, the outreach chair, has the responsibility to notify the community about it, and they didn’t do that.”

Nave said that once the project is set for a zoning administrator hearing, then the businesses and residences within 500 feet will be notified.

“That’s why the businesses next door weren’t aware of this,” said Melanie Labrecque, treasurer of the NWSPNC. “Once that happens, then they’ll be notified.”

Nave said that this item was put on their agenda with the purpose of informing the community.

“One of the reasons that we put it on our board agenda a month or two ago … is a way of increasing outreach to the community and raising awareness early as to this proposed project,” Nave said.

Burgmeister said that most people are so preoccupied with their own lives they would not necessarily see it online.

Board member John DiMeglio said that there was no reason to wait to inform the public about the project. He also questioned whether gas tanks were even needed in the area.

“Why are we putting dirty tanks in the ground?” DiMeglio said. “I thought we stopped doing that, or we shouldn’t be doing that.”

When the oil tankers are driven to the site of the project, they will not be taken through Capitol Drive, Nave said. Instead, they will come from Gaffey Street, but it is yet to be determined if they will come from the north or the south.

“The neighborhood didn’t want them going through the residential area,” Nave said.

The council did not act on this item at the Oct. 13 meeting, leaving it to be discussed further at the Oct. 28 meeting of the Planning and Land Use Committee.

Gladstone’s Comes to San Pedro’s West Harbor

Melina Paris
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Gladstone’s Comes to San Pedro’s West Harbor

The West Harbor development — the project for the former site of San Pedro’s Ports O’ Call that was initially named San Pedro Public Market — brings Gladstone’s in as the new anchor tenant. The new name and project is moving along well, despite a period of stagnation.

Back in pre-COVID times, through 2019 and after demolition of the original quaint village, except for the San Pedro Fish Market, no one knew exactly what tenants and what kind of layout the new site on the Waterfront would bring.

Slated to open in 2022, the West Harbor project has begun lining up occupants — including a yet-to-be named concept from Greg Morena of Pappy’s Seafood, formerly located on 6th Street in San Pedro. Robert Bell of the recently closed Chez Melange in Redondo Beach will also open a now unnamed establishment. A brewery and beer garden are also in the works with information to come.

As with all Gladstone’s, its trademark views of the water remain consistent. The West Harbor location shares the same owners as the 16-year-old Long Beach location — as opposed to the original iconic Gladstone’s built in 1972 at the end of Sunset Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, owned by former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. After 50 years that location had structural issues and has now undergone changes to form a new project designed by Frank Gehry and to be operated by Wolfgang Puck.

When completed, San Pedro’s West Harbor will provide nearly 35,000 square feet of waterfront dining space. The venue will include shopping, fresh markets, office space, a waterfront promenade, a 6,200-seat amphitheater for live entertainment, a dockside area for incoming cruises and water taxis as well as the AltaSea marine research facility. Construction is scheduled to begin this year at a cost of $53.7 million. The developers, The Ratkovich Co. and Jerico Development, are expected to invest about $100 million in this redevelopment.

Amid changes from iconic locations to new developments, Gladstone’s seems to have the recipe for lasting appeal with its mix of offerings in prime locations with a casual ambiance. Yet, the project has had its critics, particularly from people within the community. Some worry about displacement as a result of gentrification and an influx of tourism.

Port town residents lambasted the loss of the 57-year-old Ports O’ Call Restaurant, which was forced out in 2018. It had all of the same offerings as Gladstone’s, sans the name recognition. But the restaurant more than made up for that with its longtime support in hosting local musical talent. Indeed, a reciprocal relationship was enjoyed for many years between the community and the restaurant that they had grown attached to.

Now, West Harbor is on track to break ground formally in 2021.

Western States Join Forces to Ensure Safety of COVID-19 Vaccine

Reporters Desk
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Western States Join Forces to Ensure Safety of COVID-19 Vaccine

SACRAMENTO — Washington, Oregon and Nevada, Oct. 27, have joined California’s COVID-19 Scientific Safety Review Workgroup, which will independently review the safety and efficacy of any vaccine approved by the FDA for distribution. The week of Oct. 19, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the panel made up of nationally acclaimed scientists with expertise in immunization and public health.

The Governors of Washington, Oregon and Nevada will identify public health experts to join California’s workgroup to guide the review of any vaccine approved by the FDA. While there is no proven vaccine for COVID-19 yet, these health experts will review any vaccine that receives federal approval and verify its safety before California, Washington, Oregon and Nevada will make the vaccine available to the public.

This is not the first time Western States have collaborated in response to COVID-19. In April, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Nevada joined in a Western States Pact which shared a vision for fighting COVID-19 and reopening their economies.

Watchdog Agencies Release Initial Analysis of Skilled Nursing Homes

Reporters Desk
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Watchdog Agencies Release Initial Analysis of Skilled Nursing Homes

The Inspector General and Auditor-Controller Oct. 14, each released their initial reports detailing their ongoing investigation into skilled nursing homes. Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas called it a critical first step towards improving operations at these facilities, which have accounted for about 42% of Los Angeles County’s COVID-19 death toll.

Skilled nursing homes have been the epicenter of the pandemic in LA County, with about 16,000 infections and 2,500 deaths among patients and staff. In May, the Board of Supervisors approved Supervisor Ridley-Thomas and Chair Kathryn Barger’s motion directing LA County’s Inspector General to investigate skilled nursing homes for the first time. They also tasked LA County’s Auditor Controller with monitoring the facilities and creating a public dashboard showing their COVID-19 case totals, testing frequency, mitigation plan status, personal protective equipment supply and other information. The dashboard went live last month.

In his first interim report back to the Board, Inspector General Max Huntsman examined skilled nursing homes’ COVID-19 mitigation efforts and provided an overview of existing regulatory and oversight structures. He said subsequent reports will analyze the long-standing, complex issues that left many skilled nursing homes ill-prepared to prevent and control the rapid spread of COVID-19 and the systemic failures that have allowed substandard conditions to persist.

After posting the skilled nursing homes dashboard in September, Auditor Controller Arlene Barrera released her own first interim report, which pointed out the number of outstanding investigations into skilled nursing facilities. She noted that in addition to 5,407 open investigations, the Health Department’s or DPH, Health Facilities Inspection Division or HFID reported an additional 6,228 in-progress investigations related to other long-term care and short-term care health care facilities.

The Auditor Controller also confirmed that as of June 30th, HFID reported 10% of the 5,407 in-progress investigations had been prioritized at the level of “Immediate Jeopardy,” because the facility’s alleged non-compliance with one or more requirements has caused, or is likely to cause, serious injury, harm, impairment, or death to a resident.

Upcoming reports by the Inspector General and Auditor Controller are expected to include recommendations for addressing this backlog and for streamlining the process.

Health Advisory: High Risk of COVID-19 Transmission at Gatherings and Public Celebrations

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Health Advisory: High Risk of COVID-19 Transmission at Gatherings and Public Celebrations

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County Health Officer, Muntu Davis, MD, MPH Oct. 27, issued a health advisory for private gatherings and public celebrations. Dr. Davis advised residents that the potential risk of COVID-19 transmission at such celebrations is high, based on the increasing rate of COVID-19 community transmission in Los Angeles County.

Since early October, Los Angeles County’s average number of daily cases has increased from around 940 per day to almost 1,200 per day. Additionally, recent contact tracing interviews over the course of 3 weeks showed that 55% of the people who knew of a possible exposure had attended an event or gathering where 2 or more people were sick.

To prevent future spread of COVID-19, Dr. Davis reminds L.A. County it is best to celebrate at home with your household, however, if you are going to host or attend a private gathering, it must adhere to the following Public Health protocols:

  • Held outdoors with physical distancing between households;
  • Limited to 3 households, including the host and all guests;
  • Cloth face coverings being worn when not eating or drinking;
  • Food served in single-serve disposable containers;
  • Two hours or less.

If you are sick, stay home. Isolate from others and consider being tested for COVID-19.

  • Wear a cloth face covering when outside your home and around others.
  • Stay at least 6-feet or more apart from others not in your household.
  • Do not share utensils, cups, food or drinks.
  • Disinfect frequently touched items often.
  • Wash or sanitize your hands.
  • Isolate if you are positive for COVID-19.
  • Quarantine if you have been a close contact of someone who is positive for COVID-19.
  • Additionally, Dr. Davis recommends we all do the following throughout this week and beyond:

Details: For more information, please refer to the guidance documents below:

Owner of Restaurant Chain Pleads guilty to Obstructing Investigation

Reporters Desk
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Owner of Restaurant Chain Pleads guilty to Obstructing Investigation

An owner of a chain of Mexican seafood restaurants in Santa Ana pleaded guilty to obstructing a federal investigation into his failure to pay minimum wage and overtime to his employees, as well as to filing a false tax return.

Victor Hugo Guzman, owner of Ostioneria Colima, which has locations in Los Angeles and Orange County, admitted that he failed to pay some employees overtime and paid some below minimum wage. From 2011 through 2014, Guzman paid some employees a flat rate of $320 per week, despite them working 12 hours a day, six days a week. This equals $4.44 per hour, when minimum wage was $8 per hour from 2011 to 2013, and $9 an hour starting in 2014.

To obstruct the investigation, Guzman told his employees to lie to investigators, hired someone to fabricate records, and fabricated time cards.

Guzman agreed to pay back taxes to the IRS, as well as pay $200,000 in back wages to his employees. His hearing is scheduled for April 23, 2021, where he will face a maximum of eight years in federal prison.

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