Weekend Links: Oct. 14-16
Bullet train ballyhoo, LA meltdowns, and 8 other stories to consider in your quest to understand the Golden State
Greetings from What is California? HQ, where I’m in… layers? Praise fall! Now if we could just get on with falling back. Hurry up, Nov. 6!
Welcome to new subscribers and followers!
It’s been amazing to see so many new folks following, sharing, and listening to What is California? here on Substack, on Twitter, and wherever you listen to podcasts. I’m grateful to have you here, and I hope you’ll stick around! If you like the show and the newsletter, please consider rating and reviewing What is California? on Apple Podcasts and/or sharing What is California? among like-minded folks.
ICYMI: This week’s podcast
This week’s podcast features Rep. Jackie Speier, the U.S. Congresswoman representing California’s 14th District and former state legislator representing her native South Bay. Today, Rep. Speier is wrapping up her seventh and final term in Congress—the culmination of more than 40 years in public service. The minute I heard that Jackie Speier was not running for reelection in 2022, I knew immediately: I’ve got to invite her on What is California?! And the conversation—from surviving Jonestown to navigating Jan. 6 and all of the reflections in between—did not disappoint:
On with the Weekend Links
Meanwhile, I hope you'll consider checking out some of these nifty California stories if/when you are so inclined.
NOTE: I try to link to stories that are not behind a subscriber-only paywall. If you can, please consider subscribing or donating to news organizations that provide this essential California coverage.
How California’s Bullet Train Went Off the Rails - Ralph Vartabedian, NY Times (gift article; free to read)
High-speed rail is the epitome of the warped California dream: A project that everyone would just love to see materialize if only they didn’t have to spend money or sacrifice self-interest to realize it. Sixty years ago, we had leaders and visionaries with an imperative to build stuff like this—the interstate highway system, BART, the California Aqueduct. Today, no one builds anything without a binge of CEQA lawsuits and media recriminations and running it past whatever lobby or NIMBY group demands its pound of flesh. It’s a disgrace that the French consultants who came here to help us do this a decade ago gave up on California and went to Morocco—yes, north fucking Africa, which a project manager said “was less politically dysfunctional”—to get that country’s high-speed rail open in less than a decade. Meanwhile, here’s a longread where everybody bitches publicly about the futile boondoogle that dared to connect cities and people in the most populous state—the fifth largest economy in the world, etc. etc.—instead of just talking to each other like grown-ups and daring to not fail at this infrastructural marvel. Between this and the failure to prepare for drought and botching legal cannabis and soaring homelessness, what are we even doing here? What’s the point anymore?
RELATED: Robert Cruickshank’s rebuttal thread to the failure fetishists in the story above is 🔥 🔥 🔥 . Click/tap to read the whole thing:
What to Know About the Los Angeles City Council Fallout - Shawn Hubler, NY Times (gift article; free to read)
Look, I could give this whole newsletter over to coverage of the scandal currently gripping Los Angeles City Hall, where the city council president has resigned and (as of this writing) two council members cling to their seats after a recording caught them engaged in racist gossip and Machiavellian backroom power-plotting. Or, if you’re still not quite clear what’s going on and what it means, you can just go read Hubler’s masterful explainer from the indispensable “California Today” newsletter. I pretty much haven’t stopped shaking my head since the story dropped Sunday. Good luck, LA.
RELATED: Los Angeles staggers under cascade of scandals, by Jeremy B. White at Politico, offers an excellent (and sobering) overview of all the skulduggery afflicting in the City of Angels, from the City Council tape scandal to misconduct in the mayor’s office. “It just looks like a dumpster fire on top of a hurricane,” said the former president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. Pretty much.
The Dark Legacy of Nikki Finke - Matthew Belloni, Puck
My first interaction with Nikki Finke, the truly awful entertainment industry blogger who died last week at 68, came when I described her as a “gossip” in something I wrote maybe 15 or 16 years ago. “You need to change that,” she emailed me. “I am not a gossip. I am a journalist.” Thus began years of fending off Nikki’s broadsides and bullshit every time I referenced or even cited her and her work. At her peak, around 2009-10, she was as feared and reviled as any journalist on any beat in the world. When I worked at Gawker, the publisher Nick Denton pulled me aside one day and said, “I don’t know what you did to piss off Nikki Finke, but she hates you.” A few years later, Nikki and I even worked in the same company when my ex-boss Jay Penske bought her website Deadline. Talk about a toxic work environment. But as Belloni shows in this essential Finke think piece (Finke piece?), mine is just one of countless cases where Nikki Finke hectored, bullied, threatened, and even blackmailed folks in and around Hollywood in her bloodlust to control narratives and the people who made them. Her influence, cruel and malevolent as it was, cannot be overstated.
A California city’s water supply is expected to run out in two months - Joshua Partlow, Washington Post
There are so many good nuggets in this story, like the angry mayor of Coalinga defying lawn-watering cutbacks by arguing that if the State Capitol waters its own lawn, so can Coalinga. (Ron Howard voice: The State Capitol doesn’t water its lawn.) Or this passage: ”In the High Times marijuana store — a burgeoning industry for Coalinga, which has two prominent dispensaries downtown and a pot farm run out of a defunct prison owned by Bob Marley’s son Damian — manager Luis Zamora is just starting to register a new level of concern about the water crisis. ‘Just in the last probably two days, I’ve had people asking me, like, what do you do when the water runs out?’ ” Anyway, climate change is here, and everyone in this story will be a climate refugee within three years. Hope we have houses for them!
Padres Attempt to Limit the Dodgers From Taking Over Petco Park - Kristilyn Hetherington, Publication
Remember when the Los Angeles Rams tried to block ticket sales at the NFC Championship Game from buyers outside their home region, lest the friendly confines of SoFi Stadium turn into 49ers South? Petty turnabout is fair play now in San Diego, where the Padres have sought to block Dodgers fans from hoarding tickets to the National League Division Series games at Petco Park. Not the greatest look, I admit, but hey—it beats those camouflage uniforms.
RELATED: Will the Dodgers face the curse of the white-fronted goose, which haunted Dodger Stadium during Wednesday’s NLDS Game 2? (Note: Indeed, the Dodgers lost.)
Conservatives are waging a war for control over California school boards - Diana Lambert, EdSource
Looks like some totally reasonable times are in store for school boards up and down the state. Shawn Steel, a California representative for the Republican National Committee, tells Lambert that everything from radical left curriculum to Covid-19 overreach has got conservatives ready to throw the bastards out: “First on Steel’s list is firing the lawyers who, he said, gave school boards bad advice and superintendents who encouraged masking ‘for unnatural periods of time,’ and who embrace critical race theory. ‘It’s racist,’ Steel said. ‘Anyone who is Caucasian is an easy target. You have to shake their wokeness.’ ” Uh-huh. Of course. Don’t you dare enlighten yourself. Not here. Nope. This all reminds me of a great line in the new Lydia Millet novel, Dinosaurs:
Don’t @ me. 🤷♂️
California Extends Digital License Plate Option to Everyone - Sebastian Blanco, Car and Driver
I don’t get digital license plates; what problem do they actually solve? Eliminating registration stickers? Cool—until the DMV turns your plate red or EXPIRED or something when you miss your payment. Flicking on AMBER Alerts? I already get that on my phone, and why would I turn over my private vehicle to communicate state messages? Not a great precedent. Either way, they’re available to everyone now—but only from one company that has an exclusive on the technology with the state. What could go wrong?
The Gap, One of San Francisco’s Most Iconic Businesses, Has Come Undone - Julie Zigoris, San Francisco Standard
“At a time in consumer culture when selling a story matters more than ever,” Zigoris writes, “the veteran purveyor of casual separates can’t decide what it wants to be: online retailer, mall stalwart, urban chic or discount bin.” It gets worse: “The biggest mall owner in the country, Simon Property Group, has more than double the number of Gap Factory discount stores than there are Gaps, and the group is suing Gap—one of its largest tenants—over unpaid rent. Gap’s share price has fallen more than 50% this year alone.” I buy virtually all my clothes at Gap.com, so I’ve cast my vote. Apparently they need a CEO. I volunteer! (Especially now that Kanye’s out of the picture.)
This is how much money you’ll get from the California gas rebate - Grace Gedye, CalMatters
News you can use! “The first round of payments are expected to go out between Oct. 7 and Oct. 25,” Gedye reports. “The rest of the direct deposits are expected to go out between Oct. 28 and Nov. 14. The tax board expects 90% of direct deposits to be sent out in October, according to its website.” More eligibility info at the link. Get that $$$!
And finally…
Art Laboe dies; his ‘Oldies but Goodies’ show ruled the L.A. airwaves - Esmeralda Bermudez, LA Times
Godspeed to the legendary DJ who helped popularize artists from the dawn of the rock ‘n’ roll era through the age of “Oldies But Goodies” (his phrase—he coined it!) that he broadcast until his final days. It’s hard to overstate not only Laboe’s cultural influence as a DJ but also his social influence as the organizer of live shows whose mixed Black, Latino and white crowds helped dismantle segregation in Los Angeles and Southern California more broadly. And he was a gentle, friendly, compassionate man who played dedications for generations of listeners. Laboe died last week at 97. See below for a good segment chronicling Laboe’s life, work and character. RIP
Thanks for reading, and have a safe, happy weekend! 🐻 ❤️
-Stu