What is a giant statue doing in the middle of Runyon Canyon?

Good morning, it’s Thursday, April 8 and you can expect perfectly fine weather (high 70s). 

In today’s newsletter, we have a looming schools strike, a hack of sensitive LAPD information and Jeff Shell’s departure from Paramount. But first, a Runyon Canyon mystery.

The beautiful people of Runyon Canyon were all stopping to gawk. 

Why had a 10-foot tall classical statue been plopped onto a lookout point high in the Hollywood Hills? Juxtaposed against the skyline, the towering male figure was an eminently Instagrammable addition to a hiking trail known for attracting influencers and paparazzi. Pictures of the sculpture — and questions of its provenance — had pinged through group texts since it mysteriously appeared early Monday. But to what end?

“It’s sick that it’s on Runyon,” Kristine Pohle mused as she snapped photos. “I’m just wondering how it got here.”

Like most denizens of this popular see-and-be-seen hiking spot, the professional dancer was clad in skin-hugging athletic wear, with purplish cupping marks visible across her back. She planned to post to Instagram and Tiktok.

Bobby Razak, a London-bred director hiking in a Fear of God Essentials T-shirt, thought the statue looked like Plato or Socrates — one of the ancient Greek or Roman sculptures he’d seen at the British Museum.

“It definitely threw me off, because I’ve been coming here for 15 years. So, I was like, ‘This is unusual,’” he chuckled. As Razak spoke, a guy in a weighted vest posed his Labradoodle at the statue’s feet. 

Forget the ancient Greek philosophers; another hiker was sure the idealized male figure was an homage to Michelangelo’s David. All the sundrenched onlookers agreed on one thing, though: No one knew what the statue was doing up here. 

The answer, as is often the case in 2026, is promotional content. 

The statue — which was trucked in on a flat bed — was temporarily permitted to be at the site through Saturday, along with a three-person film crew there to capture footage of hikers interacting with it. 

The statue is actually made of plastic and fiberglass, not marble, and its subject was a Japanese-Australian singer-songwriter named Joji, according to production assistant Lorenzo Ramos. (What the footage will ultimately be used for was above Ramos’ paygrade; an email to a producer went unanswered.)

Joji, an internet prank comedian turned musician, has a combined 13 million followers across Instagram, YouTube and TikTok and will be headlining a two-night stand at Inglewood’s 18,000 seat Intuit Dome this summer. None of the Wednesday morning hikers appeared familiar with his oeuvre, however.

A few hundred feet down the hill, L.A. Department of Recreation and Parks film monitor Tariq Abdkader sat parked in his wife’s 2013 Mercedes sedan with the sunroof open, making sure the small production followed permit rules (no nudity or simulated sex, no pyrotechnics, no blocking the road, etc). 

Like many Angelenos, Abdkader is a creative himself, having worked as a TV host in his native Iraqi Kurdistan, where he also provided security for U.S. news crews during the war. The conflict was brutal: Abdkader came to the U.S. in 2009 as a refugee after 13 of his family members, including his two-year-old son, were killed in a terror attack, he said.

His son’s memory gives him the power to continue his passions, he said, and he has “proudly” worked for the city of Los Angeles since 2014, monitoring productions in local parks. He loves Hollywood and he loves representing the city.

Griffith Park has his heart, though Angels Gate Park in San Pedro, with its waterfront view and Korean Bell of Friendship, also stirs something in him.

But it's shoots by the iconic Hollywood Sign, which is a few miles from Runyon Canyon, that feel most important to Abdkader. The sign was an image he saw onscreen over and over growing up in the Middle East, he said. How surreal that it was now sometimes his job to help safeguard it.

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Parents in the nation’s second-largest school district are scrambling ahead of a possible schools strike that could begin Tuesday. Los Angeles Unified’s three major unions — representing teachers, administrators and non-teaching staff — are prepared to walk out if an agreement isn’t reached before April 14. The district told the L.A. Times earlier this week that they will be unable to keep all campuses open if two or three of the unions strike at once. Families have been urged to identify other possible childcare options. The district is looking at creating regional drop-off hubs as a fallback for families without childcare, the Times reports. 

The district also provides students with hundreds of thousands of meals a day. More than 80 percent of them qualify for free or reduced price meals. Ensuring students stay fed during a possible strike will be another massive logistical challenge, though the district has said they will operate food distribution sites if workers strike.  

Labor issues in the sprawling school district have been particularly frequent during the last decade: School service workers went on a three-day strike in March 2023, just four years after a six-day 2019 teacher strike. 

SHELL OUT: Paramount Skydance president Jeff Shell stepped down eight months into the job, after weeks of headlines about his embroilment in a bizarre legal battle with a high-stakes gambler. 

BASS’ LAPD PIVOT: During her 2022 campaign, Mayor Karen Bass pledged to regrow the depleted ranks of the LAPD. But amid budget woes and a reelection fight, Bass has a new aim: to stop the department from shrinking further. 

IN OTHER LAPD NEWS: A hack of the L.A. city attorney’s office last month included a stockpile of sensitive LAPD records, including documents from Internal Affairs investigations. The data was obtained by a well-known hacking group, the L.A. Times reports, though it’s unclear if they demanded a ransom or if the city paid one. 

OLYMPICS FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY: L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez is sounding the alarm on the LA28 organizing committee’s “lack of transparency” and failure to reach an agreement with the city regarding reimbursements for city services, which was supposed to be completed more than six months ago. “Bankruptcy cannot be the legacy of these Games,” Rodriguez wrote in a letter to LA28, as reported by Southern California News Group.

LOWRIDING’S ‘FIRST LADY’ In a subculture long defined by masculinity, Tina Blankenship-Early carved her own path in Watts.

For today’s peek inside our subscriber-only Discord server, an abbreviated look at the record store expertise in the #rec-requests channel.

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Days” by Philip Larkin.

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