Good morning, it’s Friday October 23. You’ve made it through the October heatwave and the badly needed rainstorm. Now you are to be rewarded with a weekend of mild temps in the 70s.
1. How one bright billboard illuminates L.A.’s failed decades-long war against illegal advertisement.
A few weeks ago during our morning news meeting, my colleague Matt Hamilton brought up an extremely bright digital billboard that he had noticed while out on a nighttime run. After seeing several Reddit posts noting its obnoxious radiance, I went out to Sunset and Fairfax to check it out for myself. The billboard, affixed to the side of a Spirit Halloween that used to be a Rite Aid, was indeed shockingly bright.
It was so luminous that everything in its vicinity — palm trees, Bristol Farms, delivery robots, the street itself — was bathed in a harsh glow that changed colors precisely every 20 seconds as ads for Pepsi, Palantir, and Michelob Ultra cycled through. But the billboard’s biggest victims were the residents of the Skyview Sunset luxury apartment directly across the street. These residents, including a former cast member of MTV’s The Hills, suddenly found themselves living in a waking nightmare.
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