Good morning. It’s Saturday, and this is your one-minute, weekly roundup of L.A. Material’s best work.
1. These former gang members are loved by many Venice locals.
They work for a company called Ghost Town, which, for a price, clears homeless encampments from the sidewalks outside clients’ homes and businesses. Many residents are enamored with Ghost Town and say the firm is picking up the city’s slack — but homeless people have had a much less favorable view of the group’s tactics.
2. Lineage wants to rebuild its fire-damaged warehouse in Boyle Heights.
Local politicians ferociously condemned the cold-storage giant after we broke the news that the permit application had been filed. “This corporation has devastated Boyle Heights and East L.A.,” Mayor Karen Bass said. “I can’t believe they would even think about starting the rebuilding process while they haven’t cleaned up the mess they’ve created.”
3. Remember when LAX used to be a great time?
The soaring, futuristic Theme Building in the center of the horseshoe used to be so fun that only a quarter of visitors at its critically acclaimed restaurant actually had flights. But today, the general public can’t even enter the building, and it has largely become a monument to the airport’s neglect. What happened?
MORE MATERIAL
A SERIAL LITTERER in Echo Park sent TikTok sleuths on a harebrained, international manhunt to unmask the “Chick-fil-A bandit.”
THESE WILDLY popular bread rolls in Koreatown have come to embody the neighborhood’s changing character.
IN THE LATEST installment of our quarterly L.A. book roundup, L.A. Material editor Jessica Garrison has four suggestions for your summer beach reads.
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A NEW YORK Times travel reporter published a beautiful visual chronicle of Route 66 after spending two weeks on the historic highway to celebrate its 100th birthday.
EMILY WILSON, one of the most celebrated recent translators of Homer’s Odyssey, savaged Christopher Nolan’s take in the London Review of Books. Then she got criticism for her criticism.
THIS CHARMING Spanish Colonial Revival in West Adams is one of L.A.’s rare surviving historic adobe residences, with lovely tile work and original hardwood floors.
