Amid the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, some Los Angeles businesses are going above and beyond to support those actively picketing. Anyone presenting a SAG-AFTRA or WGA card can take advantage of the following discounts and special deals. Dining AKASHA in Culver City is offering 10 percent off all food & drinks daily Niku Nashi Vegan Sushi will take 50 percent off a lunch bill Irv’s Burgers is discounting 15 percent off the total bill Jalapeño Pete’s includes a free drink with a meal Osteria La Buca is giving out their employee discount of 50 percent for a meal Arlington Food Bank is i ..read more

An iconic and spiritual symbol of Southern California’s high desert, Joshua trees draw millions of visitors to their National Park home and the surrounding environs. But the tree’s very existence is being threatened by climate change and development—specifically property developers—and indigenous communities and conservationists have been looking to get it on California’s list of Endangered Species. Such a classification would offer a higher level of protection. So far, to no avail. However, in a big win for the trees, new legislation was just passed that will allow for protection of the trees ..read more

A specter is haunting Los Angeles—the specter of labor unrest. On Wednesday, the union representing employees of United Parcel Service announced that contract negotiations had collapsed. There are more than 30,000 UPS workers in Southern California. Their union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, has made it clear that UPS members will not work beyond the expiration of the current contract. It is one of several breakdowns in organized-labor bargaining this summer as labor tensions simmer around Los Angeles. One major Hollywood union—the Writers Guild of America (WGA)—went on strike on ..read more

Eight years after its last episode aired, a Mad Men reunion took place at the WGA strike outside Netflix in Hollywood on Tuesday morning. The beloved television show’s creator Matthew Weiner, actress Christina Hendricks, and former Mad Men writers including Semi Challas, Jason Grote, Janet Leahy, and André and Maria Jacquemetton, some of whom wore Mad Men T-shirts, picketed together amid an endless stream of supportive honks from cars driving by on Sunset Boulevard and striking writers’ chants. “The strike is a struggle and it’s not pleasant,” Weiner tells Los Angeles. “We need a bright s ..read more

As the Writers Guild of America inches closer to its eighth consecutive week on strike, momentum only seems to be building for the cause. This week, especially, marked a crucial amplification of the guild’s message. On Tuesday, protests were organized outside of Paramount Studios—a company whose CEO previously said writers “are an essential part of creating content,” but added that they’ve been leveraging “offshore production” during the strike. “Hi, I’m Nathan Fillion from SAG union here in support of the WGA. You should be too.” #sagaftramember @NathanFillion joined the #WGAstrike picket li ..read more

The  first permitted pride parade was held in Los Angeles on June 28, 1970. The parade—which commemorated the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising—was organized in part by Rev. Bob Humphries of the United States Mission and Morris Kight of the Gay Liberation Front, and it ran along Hollywood Boulevard, drawing some 50,000 spectators. It was a stunning show of solidarity,  though the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Edward Davis, notably took every opportunity to remind the public that homosexuality was still illegal in California. The more things change, the more th ..read more

The Walt Disney Company and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have been operating with locked horns over the past year, as a protracted dispute over the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill has put the two at extreme odds over LGBTQ rights and brought lasting consequences for the massive corporation stuck in the battle. Now, as tension remains high, Disney has put a major conference to promote LGBTQ+ rights in the workplace in Florida, to take place right in its park, on the calendar for this September, as the Miami Herald reports. The event will host some of the most prominent names within the glob ..read more

Just two months after 48,000 academic workers across all ten University of California campuses went on strike for better pay and benefits, educators at UCLA Lab School protested at the UCLA North Campus with similar demands on Wednesday, and plan to continue picketing on Thursday. Employees at the exclusive laboratory school with 450 pre-K to Sixth Grade students are accusing the UC system of “unfair labor practices” involving contractual negotiations with the University Council-American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT), the union representing 7,000 librarians and non-Senate faculty working acr ..read more

When Brandon Gruber, the part-time board Of directors at the National Down Syndrome Society, met Lance Bass, he was wearing a newsprint vest he’d designed himself and a shirt emblazoned with the phrase, “Be Yourself.” Soon enough, Gruber had the singer and pop culture personality dressed in the black version of that same vest and was giving him pointers on how to walk a runway. When the two posed side by side for a photo shoot, Gruber held up a sign reading “I’m the Designer.” He’s quick to share that he’s a lot more than that, too.   The collaboration was the product of a partnershi ..read more

Street vendors may be the familiar face of Angeleno food culture, but the city doesn’t take to them as kindly as the public that happily devours their tasty wares. Vendors took to Hollywood Boulevard Friday to protest a Los Angeles law that excludes eight areas—including spots near the Hollywood Walk of Fame, LA Live, and Universal Studios—as “no vending zones.” This city ordinance followed on the heels of a 2018 California rule that legalized sidewalk vending across the entire state. The state law prohibits local authorities from regulating sidewalk vendors “except in accordance with the prov ..read more