Lifestyle
'It’s been insane': Amid fires, hotels from O.C. to Palm Springs see a rush of Angelenos
January is usually an easy month to book a Southern California hotel room. Not this year.
Driven by the fires that have uprooted hundreds of thousands of L.A. County residents, legions of displaced families and individuals are grabbing rooms in surrounding counties, especially along the coast and in the desert. Beyond those under mandatory evacuation, many more, including many families and anxious pet owners, have left because of poor air quality or general wariness of the county’s precarious state.
“It’s been insane,” said Marie Corbett, group sales manager at the 14 West boutique hotel in Laguna Beach. “I’ve had people in tears… You can see their emotions are so raw. And then they’ve got their animals. There was one lady whose dog was biting her hand. The stress.”
Corbett said that by 2 p.m. Friday, 14 West’s 70 hotel rooms were “pretty much booked out” for the night. She guessed that 80% or more of the guests had come from Los Angeles in the last few days.
Because the region’s hotel inventory is so large and January is usually so slow along the coast, many lodgings do say they still have rooms to offer, in many cases at emergency discounts. And some Angelenos who left town midweek are beginning to come back.
For information on available hotels, Discover Los Angeles has compiled a list that includes dozens of L.A. County properties. The city of Anaheim has a list with 39 hotels. The San Diego Tourism Authority has a list with more than 40 more. VisitGreaterPalmSprings.com has a list with more than 30 hotels. There’s a Santa Barbara list, too. Some of these lists include detailed rate information, and all are subject to change as rooms fill. Meanwhile, Airbnb is teaming with the group 211LA to provide free emergency housing to many people who have been displaced and first responders.
After evacuation from their home in the Hollywood Hills, Ansgar and Julia Friemel and their kids wound up on Ocean Avenue in Laguna Beach.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The sudden L.A. diaspora has already filled many lodgings and pushed occupancy rates skyward. And in desert communities like Palm Springs and Joshua Tree, this was already a busy season. The result is a flood of reluctant travelers — people who are fortunate enough to afford to book hotels at short notice but would still rather be home.
“We couldn’t really go outside,” said Mike Muney, 33, of Mar Vista, explaining his family’s departure on Friday.
“We just feel so lucky. We know so many people who lost homes,” said his wife, Libby Muney, 35.
As they spoke, they stood with their son Nate, 1, and their yellow labrador, Winnie, near the entrance to the Marriott Laguna cliffs Resort in Dana Point. The sky above was a brilliant blue, empty of helicopters and ash. Inside the hotel, staffers had converted a conference room into a play area for children, with “Bluey” on a big screen and a Twister game laid out on the floor.
The hotel’s marketing director, Andrew Sutrisno, said this was supposed to be a slow weekend, with occupancy likely under 50%. But the fire-driven exodus basically filled the property’s 378 rooms for the weekend. Sutrisno estimated that most of the hotel’s guests are from Los Angeles. The hotel’s January rates typically start around $300.
“Wednesday night was the biggest jump,” Sutrisno said. “Until you see it in person — you see your hotel suddenly fill up — it’s hard to imagine.”
“This hotel has been amazing,” Mike Muney said later.
“Two people I know went to Palm Springs. Another friend is coming here,” said Libby Muney.
On Ocean Avenue in Laguna Beach, Ansgar Fremiel, 27, and Julia Fremiel, 32, and their children — Emely, 7; Liam, 3; and Hailey, 2 — may have looked like any other family ambling toward the beach on a Friday afternnon. But they were only in town, Ansgar said, because “we were evacuated from the Hollywood Hills,” about 60 miles to the north.
“We just got the most distanced we could make,” Ansgar Fremiel said. “With three kids, we aren’t that fast when it comes to getting in the car.”
The Fremiels, relieved by the subduing of the Sunset fire, were hoping to return home for the weekend. But many families will be staying away longer. As these emergency travelers make short-notice decisions on when to go, where to stay and when to return, hoteliers are juggling more variables than usual.
The hoteliers are also bound by state anti-gouging laws, which limit prices hikes to 10% beyond the rates that were in place before a local or state emergency was declared. Even if an emergency is in one county and a hotel is in another, that law may apply, officials at the California Hotel & Lodging Assn. said.
Orange County has attracted many of those fleeing the fires in L.A. County. Here, three guests from Los Angeles sit by a fire pit at El Caminante Bar & Bungalows at Capistrano Beach in Dana Point.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times )
At the 120-room Pacific Edge Hotel, also in Laguna Beach, a desk clerk reported Friday that “we were at 18% occupancy on Tuesday. We’ve been at 100% the last two nights.” Guests who were displaced by fire, the clerk said, are generally paying 25% under usual rates, with resort fees and pet fees waived.
For Fairfax Buchanan Banks, 36, who lives near USC and West Adams, the decision to leave “came down to quality of air…. It was raining ash.”
And pets were a factor. Buchanan Banks has a dog and a 16-year-old male cat (named Dad) struggling with viral bronchitis. Her best friend had two dogs. Both pet owners liked the idea of clean air, open spaces. They had doubts about squatting indefinitely at a friend’s home — and, Buchanan Banks noted, “we’re lucky enough to have the means to relocate.”
They tried Joshua Tree and couldn’t find anything that fit their situation. But in nearby 29 Palms, they grabbed an Airbnb rental house with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, washer, dryer and a fenced yard. On Thursday they laid plans.
On Friday they drove out, coping with pet accidents as they went. Still, Buchanan Banks said, “by the time we passed Redlands, I noticed that my sinuses and throat were clearing up.”
He always texted when he was outside. No call, no knock. It was just a message and then the soft sound of my door opening. He moved like someone practiced in disappearing.
His name meant “complete” in Arabic, which is what I felt when we were together.
I met him the way you meet most things that matter in Los Angeles — without intending to. In our senior year at a college in eastern L.A. County, we were introduced through mutual friends, then thrown together by the particular gravity of people who recognized something in each other. He was a Muslim medical student, conservative and careful and funny in the dry, precise way of someone who has always had to choose his words. I was loud where he was quiet, messy where he was disciplined. I was out. He was not.
I understood, or thought I did. I thought that I couldn’t get hurt if I was completely conscious throughout the endeavor. Los Angeles has a way of making you feel like the whole world shares your freedoms — until you realize the city is enormous, and not all of it belongs to you in the same way.
For months, our world was confined to my apartment. He would slip in after dark, and we’d stay up late talking about his family in Iran, classical music and the particular pressure of being the son someone sacrificed everything to bring here. He told me things he said he’d never told anyone, and I believed him.
The orange glow from my Nesso lamp lit his face while the indigo sky pressed against the window behind him. In our small little world, we were safe. Outside was another matter.
On our first real date, I took him to the L.A. Phil’s “An Evening of Film & Music: From Mexico to Hollywood” program. I told him they were cheap seats even though they were the first row on the terrace. He was thrilled in the way only someone who doesn’t expect to be delighted actually gets delighted — fully, without guarding it. I put my arm around his shoulders. At some point, I shifted and moved it, and he nudged it back. He was OK with PDA here.
I remember thinking that wealth is a great barrier to harm and then feeling silly for extrapolating my own experience once again. Inside Walt Disney Concert Hall, we were just two people in love with the same music.
Outside was still another matter.
In February, on Valentine’s Day, he took me to a Yemeni restaurant in Anaheim. We hovered over saffron tea surrounded by other young Southern Californians, and we looked like friends. Before we went in, we sat in the parking lot of the strip mall — signs in Arabic advertising bread, coffee, halal meats, the Little Arabia District — hand in hand. I leaned over to kiss him.
“Not here,” he said. His eyes shifted furtively. “Someone might see.”
I understood, or told myself I did, but I was saddened. Later, after the kind of reflection that only arrives in the wreckage, I would understand something harder: I had been unconsciously asking him to choose, over and over, between the people he loved and the person he loved. I had a long pattern of choosing unavailable men, telling myself it was because I could handle the complexity. The truth was more embarrassing. I thought that if someone like him chose me anyway — chose me over the weight of societal expectations — it would mean I was worth choosing. It took me a long time to see how unfair that was to him and to me.
We went to the Norton Simon Museum together in November, on the kind of gray Pasadena day when the 210 Freeway roars in the background like white noise. He studied for the MCAT while I wrote a paper on Persian rugs. In between practice problems, he translated ancient Arabic scripts for me. I thought, “We make a good team.” Afterward, we walked through the galleries and he didn’t let go of my arm.
That was the version of us I kept returning to — when the ending came during Ramadan. It arrived as a spiritual reflection of my own. I texted: “Does this end at graduation — whatever we are doing?”
He thought I meant Ramadan. I did not mean Ramadan.
“I care about you,” he wrote, “but I don’t want you to think this could work out to anything more than just dating. I mean, of course, I’ve fantasized about marrying you. If I could live my life the way I wanted, of course I would continue. I’m just sad it’s not in this lifetime.”
I was in Mexico City when these texts were exchanged. That night I flew to Oaxaca to clear my head and then, after less than 24 hours, flew back to L.A. No amount of vacation would allow me to process what had just happened, so I threw myself back into work.
My therapist told me to use the conjunction “and” instead of “but.” It happened, and I am changed. The harm I caused and the love I felt. The beauty of what we made and the impossibility of where it could go. She gave me a knowing smile when I asked if it would stay with me forever. She didn’t answer, which was the answer.
I think about the freeways now, the way Joan Didion called them our only secular communion. When you’re on the ground in Los Angeles, the world narrows to the few blocks around you. Get on the freeway and you understand the whole body of the city at once: the arteries, the pulse, the scale of the thing.
You understand that you are a single cell in something enormous and moving. It is all out of your control. I am in a lane. The lane shaped how I drive. He was simply in a different lane, and his lane shaped him, and those two facts can coexist without either of us being the villain of the sad story.
He came like a secret in the night, and he left the same way. What we made in between was real and complicated and mine to hold forever, hoping we find each other in the next life.
The author lives in Los Angeles.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
The art industry is increasingly shaped by artists’ and art businesses’ shared realization that they are locked in a fierce struggle for sustained attention — against each other, and against the rest of the overstimulated, always-online world. A major New York art fair aims to win this competition next month by knocking down the increasingly shaky walls between contemporary art and fashion.
When visitors enter the Independent art fair on May 14, they will almost immediately encounter its open-plan centerpiece: an installation of recent couture looks from Comme des Garçons. It will be the first New York solo presentation of works by Rei Kawakubo, the brand’s founder and mastermind, since a lauded 2017 survey exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
Art fairs have often been front and center in the industry’s 21st-century quest to capture mindshare. But too many displays have pierced the zeitgeist with six-figure spectacles, like Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana and Beeple’s robot dogs. Curating Independent around Comme des Garçons comes from the conviction that a different kind of iconoclasm can rise to the top of New York’s spring art scrum.
Elizabeth Dee, the founder and creative director of Independent, said that making Kawakubo’s work the “nerve center” of this year’s edition was a “statement of purpose” for the fair’s evolution. After several years at the compact Spring Studios in TriBeCa, Independent will more than double its square footage by moving to Pier 36 at South Street, on the East River. Dee has narrowed the fair’s exhibitor list, to 76, from 83 dealers in 2025, and reduced booth fees to encourage a focus on single artists making bold propositions.
“Rei’s work has been pivotal to thinking about how my work as a curator, gallerist and art fair can push boundaries, especially during this extraordinary move toward corporatization and monoculture in the art world in the last 20 years,” Dee said.
Kawakubo’s designs have been challenging norms since her brand’s first Paris runway show in 1981, but her work over the last 13 years on what she calls “objects for the body” has blurred borders between high fashion and wearable sculpture.
The Comme des Garçons presentation at Independent will feature 20 looks from autumn-winter 2020 to spring-summer 2025. Forgoing the runway, Kawakubo is installing her non-clothing inside structures made from rebar and colored plastic joinery.
Adrian Joffe, the president of both Comme des Garçons International and the curated retailer Dover Street Market International (and who is also Kawakubo’s husband), said in an interview that Kawakubo’s intention was to create a sculptural installation divorced from chronology and fashion — “a thing made new again.”
Every look at Independent was made in an edition of three or fewer, but only one of each will be for sale on-site. Prices will be about $9,000 to $30,000. Comme des Garçons will retain 100 percent of the sales.
Asked why she was interested in exhibiting at Independent, the famously elusive Kawakubo said via email, “The body of work has never been shown together, and this is the first presentation in New York in almost 10 years.” Joffe added a broader philosophical motivation. “We’ve never done it before; it was new,” he said. Also essential was the fair’s willingness to embrace Kawakubo’s vision for the installation rather than a standard fair booth.
Kawakubo began consistently engaging with fine art decades before such crossovers became commonplace. Since 1989, she has invited a steady stream of contemporary artists to create installations in Comme des Garçons’s Tokyo flagship store. The ’90s brought collaborations with the artist Cindy Sherman and performance pioneer Merce Cunningham, among others.
More cross-disciplinary projects followed, including limited-release direct mailers for Comme des Garçons. Kawakubo designs each from documentation of works provided by an artist or art collective.
The display at Independent reopens the debate about Kawakubo’s proper place on the continuum between artist and designer. But the issue is already settled for celebrated artists who have collaborated with her.
“I totally think of Rei as an artist in the truest sense,” Sherman said by email. “Her work questions what everyone else takes for granted as being flattering to a body, questions what female bodies are expected to look like and who they’re catering to.”
Ai Weiwei, the subject of a 2010 Comme des Garçons direct mailer, agreed that Kawakubo “is, in essence, an artist.” Unlike designers who “pursue a sense of form,” he added, “her design and creation are oriented toward attitude” — specifically, an attitude of “rebellion.”
Also taking this position is “Costume Art,” the spring exhibition at the Costume Institute. Opening May 10, the show pairs individual works from multiple designers — including Comme des Garçons — with artworks from the Met’s holdings to advance the argument made by the dress code for this year’s Met gala: “Fashion is art.”
True to form, Kawakubo sometimes opts for a third way.
“Rei has often said she’s not a designer, she’s not an artist,” Joffe said. “She is a storyteller.”
Now to find out whether an art fair sparks the drama, dialogue and attention its authors want.
Lifestyle
They set out to elevate karaoke in L.A. — and opened a glamorous lounge that pulls out all the stops
Brothers Leo and Oliver Kremer visited karaoke spots around the globe and almost always had the same impression.
“The drinks weren’t always great, the aesthetics weren’t always so glamorous, the sound wasn’t always awesome and the lights were often generic,” says Leo, a former bassist of the band Third Eye Blind.
As devout karaoke fans, they wanted to level up the experience. So they dreamed up Mic Drop, an upscale karaoke lounge in West Hollywood that opens Thursday. It’s located inside the original Larrabee Studios, a historic 1920s building formerly owned by Carole King and her ex-husband, Gerry Goffin — and the spot where King recorded some of her biggest hits. Third Eye Blind band members Stephan Jenkins and Brad Hargreaves are investors of the new venue.
Inside the two-story, 6,300-square-foot venue with 13 private karaoke rooms and an electrifying main stage, you can feel like a rock star in front of a cheering audience. Want to check it out? Here are six things to know.
The Kremer brothers hired sculptor Shawn HibmaCronan to create an 8-foot-tall disco-themed microphone for their karaoke lounge.
1. Take your pick between a private karaoke experience or the main stage
A unique element of Mic Drop is that it offers both private karaoke rooms and a main stage experience for those who wish to sing in front of a crowd. The 13 private rooms range from six- to 45-person capacity. Each of the karaoke rooms are named after a famous recording studio such as Electric Lady, Abbey Road, Shangri La and of course, Larrabee Studios. There is a two-hour minimum on all rentals and hourly rates depend on the room size and day of the week.
But if you’re ready to take the center stage, it’s free to sing — at least technically. All you have to do is pay a $10 fee at the door, which is essentially a token that goes toward your first drink. Then you can put your name on the list with the KJ (karaoke jockey) who keeps the crowd energized throughout the night and even hits the stage at times.
Harrison Baum, left, of Santa Monica, and Amanda Stagner, 27, of Los Angeles, sing in one of the 13 private karaoke rooms.
2. Thumping, high sound quality was a top priority
As someone who toured the world playing bass for Third Eye Blind, top-tier sound was a nonnegotiable for Leo. “Typically with karaoke, the sound is kind of teeny, there’s not a lot of bass and the vocal is super hot and sitting on top too much,” he says. To combat this, he and his brother teamed up with Pineapple Audio, an audio visual company based in Chicago, to design their crisp sound system. They also installed concert-grade speakers and custom subwoofers from a European audio equipment manufacturer called Celto, and bought gold-plated Sennheiser wireless microphones, which they loved so much that they had an 8-foot-tall replica made for their main room. Designed by artist Shawn HibmaCronan, the “macrophone,” as they call it, has roughly 30,000 mirror tiles. “It spins and throws incredible disco light everywhere,” says Leo.
Karaoke jockeys Sophie St. John, 27, second from left, and Cameron Armstrong, 30, right, get the crowd involved with their song picks at Mic Drop.
3. A concert-level performance isn’t complete without good stage lighting and a haze machine
Each karaoke room features a disco ball and dynamic lighting that syncs up with whatever song you’re singing, which makes you feel like you are a professional performer. There’s also a haze machine hidden under the leather seats. Meanwhile, the main stage is concert-ready with additional dancing lasers and spotlights.
Brett Adams, left, of Sherman Oaks, and Patrick Riley of Studio City sing karaoke together inside a private lounge at Mic Drop.
4. The song selection is vast, offering classics and new hits
One of the worst things that can happen when you go to karaoke is not being able to find the song you want to sing. At Mic Drop, the odds of this happening are slim to none. The venue uses a popular karaoke service called KaraFun, which has a catalog of more than 600,000 songs (and adds 400 new tracks every month), according to its website. Take your pick from country, R&B, jazz, rap, pop, love duets and more. (Two newish selections I spotted were Raye’s “Where Is my Husband” and Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need,” which both released late last year.) In the private karaoke rooms, there’s also a fun feature on Karafun called “battle mode,” which allows you and your crew of up to 20 people to compete in real time. KaraFun also has an entertaining music trivia game, which I tested out with the founders and came in second place.
The design inspiration for Mic Drop was 1920s music lounges and 1970s disco culture, says designer Amy Morris.
5. The interiors are inspired by 1920s music lounges mixed with ‘70s disco vibes
A disco ball hangs from the ceiling.
If you took the sophisticated aesthetic of 1920s music lounges and mixed it with the vibrant and playful era of 1970s disco culture, you’d find Mic Drop.
When you walk into the lounge, the first thing you’ll see is a bright red check-in desk that resembles a performer’s dressing room with vanity lights, several mirrors and a range of wigs. “So much of karaoke is about getting into character and letting go of the day, so we had the idea to sell the wigs,” says Oliver. As you continue into the lounge, the focal point is the stage, which is adorned with zebra-printed carpet and dramatic, red velvet curtains. For seating, slide into the red velvet banquettes or plop onto a gold tiger velvet stool. Upstairs, you’ll find the intimate karaoke studios, which are decorated with red velvet walls and brass, curved doorways that echo the building’s deco arches, says Mic Drop’s interior designer, Amy Morris of the Morris Project.
Sarah Rothman, center, of Oakland, and friend Rachel Bernstein, left, of Los Angeles, wait at the bar.
6. You can order nontraditional karaoke bites as you wait for your turn to sing
While Mic Drop offers some of the food you’d typically find at a karaoke lounge such as tater tots, truffle popcorn and pizza, the venue has some surprising options as well. For example, a 57 gram caviar service (served with chips, crème fraîche and chives) and shrimp cocktail from Santa Monica Seafood. For their pizza program, the Kremer brothers teamed up with Avalou’s Italian Pizza Company, which is run by Louis Lombardi who starred in “The Sopranos.” He’s the brainchild behind my favorite dish, the Fuhgeddaboudit pizza, which is made with pastrami, pickles and mustard. It might sound repulsive, but trust me.
As for the cheeky cocktails, they are all named after famous musicians and songs such as the Pink Pony Club (a tart cherry pomegranate drink with vodka named after Chappell Roan), Green Eyes (a sake sour with kiwi and melon named after Green Day) and Megroni Thee Stallion (an elevated negroni named after Megan Thee Stallion).
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