Lifestyle
After fires, L.A. teens just want to feel normal. New all-ages venue is ‘a way to escape’
Through a veil of dark hair tendrils, Audrey Cymone stares intensely into the darkened room. The 16-year-old singer of the high school band Kim Theory croons the melancholy-tinged lyrics from “Growing Pains,” their song about adolescent angst.
Why can’t things just be the same?
The question hangs in the air as the sound thickens during soundcheck — guitars climbing, drums cracking. It carries double meaning here at Backyard Party, a new all-ages music venue in a nondescript business park on the border of Pasadena and Altadena.
The band, the venue’s team and the audience share an undesirable connective tissue. All have been affected in different ways by the Eaton and Palisades fires. Some watched their homes burn to the ground. Others live as expatriates from their own community because their houses in the burn zones are still uninhabitable. And some simply bear witness to the grief that, almost a year later, still bubbles up.
Before this rainy November night, the all-female band self-described as Riot Grrrl-adjacent mostly performed at house parties and small downtown L.A. venues. To celebrate the release of its EP, “Bitch Scene,” Kim Theory chose Backyard Party.
“This is a big deal,” says Lula Seifert, 16, the guitarist, watching the line of people snake through the door. “This is an awesome venue.”
When Cymone, wearing a dress fashioned out of a trash bag, and Seifert take the stage later with drummer Zoey Su, and bassist Lucy Fraser, the sold-out room crackles with energy. Teenagers crowd around the stage. A mosh pit breaks out. Bodies collide in a whirl of elbows and flying sneakers.
Attendees dance in the crowd during the band Kim Theory’s EP Release Party at Backyard Party on November 15.
The back of the room — populated with parents, guardians and supervisors — is more sedate. Linda Wang, 45, the drummer’s mom, likes the all-ages venue because it provides a safe space for teens to experience live music. Nearby, a dad vigorously bobs his head. Hugs are exchanged between community members torn apart by January’s wildfires.
At Backyard Party, where live music happens every weekend, the vibes are good, the guest list is family friendly and the house rules are straight-edged. Between band sets, Brandon Jay, a Backyard Party partner, popped onstage to remind the crowd that the space is a drug-free zone. For those who don’t comply, “You gotta go,” he announced.
And on Kim Theory’s night, the heaviness left behind by the fires stays at the door.
“Music is a very powerful thing,” says Malena Vesbit, 14, who helped run ticket sales for the show. “It moves your emotions. I think it’s really a way to escape it all.”
The band Kim Theory preforms on stage during their EP Release Party at Backyard Party.
Music composes a second life
Backyard Party, run by Jay and partners Sandra Denver and Matt Chait, is inspired by Pasadena lore — the backyard shows that helped launch Van Halen. The next era of Pasadena parties starts in this 1,500-square-foot space.
But it’s become more than just an all-ages venue and event space since hosting its first show in September. If you lost your record collection in the fires, you can pick up free vinyls from their library. If you lost an instrument, free guitars, amps and a piano for the taking fill a room next to the stage.
Jay, and his wife, Gwendolyn Sanford, who work together as a composing team, lost their Altadena home, music studio and over 150 instruments and pieces of recording gear in the Eaton fire.
“Everyone lost special things like that,” says Jay, 53. “It’s so hard to cope”
Backyard Party founder Brandon Jay helps adjust a drum set during the band Kim Theory’s EP Release Party.
After the fire, friends started pressing their musical gear into his hands — small acts of generosity that helped stitch him back together. All over Los Angeles, musical instruments sit untouched in garages and closets. What if Jay could help match these lonely instruments with musicians in need?
Weeks after the fire, Jay founded Altadena Musicians, and the companion Instrumental Giving app followed in April to connect musicians in need with donors. Jay, with his bouffant curly hair and preternatural ability to remember the smallest details, became a de facto musical matchmaker.
For the record:
1:33 p.m. Dec. 1, 2025A previous version of this article stated Altadena Musicians has helped over 850 people. It has helped roughly 1,200 people.
The process often starts with a personal story of a loss and ends with an unexpected human connection made by the need for something small, like a harmonica. Altadena Musicians has helped roughly 1,200 people, says Jay. The circulation of treasured possessions and an extraordinary sense of kindness can change lives.
When the Pacific Palisades fire raged, Michelle Bellamy, 39, reached for her Martin acoustic guitar, affectionately named Gretchyn the Second, before evacuating, but then changed her mind. Something told her she would be back.
But the fire took her home — and the guitar she used to learn to write songs on. Regret replayed in her mind until Jay found a match: Abby Sherr, 80, whose Pacific Palisades home survived. Sherr had been given a Martin acoustic guitar at 16 by her brother. She was never quite able to part with it until she heard about Jay’s effort. Then she knew exactly where it needed to go.
In April, Sherr arrived at the Santa Monica real estate office where Bellamy works to give her the guitar, newly named Gretchyn the Third.
Attendees listen to the band Kim Theory during their EP Release Party.
“This guitar has given me a new lease on my musical life,” says Bellamy. She was inspired to write a song about the Palisades fire on Gretchyn the Third. Of course, she sent Sherr a video of her performance.
“It did bring tears to my eyes hearing her play and sing that song,” says Sherr. “I drive by what used to be her apartment, not infrequently, and I think of her every time.”
Just like normal. Just for one night.
No one at Kim Theory’s show really wanted to talk about fires. Especially the kids, says Jay. They just want to feel normal.
Some teenagers prefer action over words. Ticket sales go toward paying the bands and funding Backyard Party and Altadena Musicians’ venue upkeep and programs.
“Helping out can make everything just feel a little bit better about the state of our world,” says Fraser, 16, Kim Theory’s bassist.
Attendees wear various outfit accessories during the band Kim Theory’s EP Release Party.
Vesbit agrees. She helped establish the Alta Pasa Project, an organization to help teens who were impacted by the fires. She and her family are still displaced from their Altadena home.
During the party, Vesbit took breaks from working the door to watch the show. She danced and joined the mosh pit. She noticed that many teenagers hugged, even though they didn’t know each other, Vesbit says. That was her favorite part.
It was the Morrow Family’s first time attending a Backyard Party event. They came from their long-term temporary place in Highland Park to see Kim Theory perform. Their Altadena home stands, but because of the fire’s lingering smoke and ash they haven’t been able to return.
Max Morrow, 15, is tired of talking about the fire and the house they can’t go back to yet. His younger sister, Stella Morrow, 13, still feels awkward about grieving what is still tangible but out of reach.
“It’s a time capsule,” says their mom, Mel Morrow, 52, about their home.
Friends arrive, and she rushes over to greet them.
“I mean, we’ll show up no matter what,” she says. “Because we didn’t just lose our houses, we lost our community.”
Attendees play in the rain after the band Kim Theory’s EP Release Party.
“Growing Pains,” Kim Theory’s EP closer, is a song about the stage of life when you’re unsure the person you were would be proud of your present self, says Cymone.
“I feel like it’s something that a lot of teenagers can relate to,” she adds.
Tomorrow, there will be more uncertainty, but in the parking lot after the show, the teens start dancing in the rain.
David Bowie debuted his Ziggy Stardust persona and released The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in 1972 — the last year humans went to the moon.
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Evening Standard/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
The Artemis II rocket launched on Wednesday, carrying astronauts to the moon for the first time in over half a century.
The four-person crew is headed on a 10-day, 230,000-mile journey around the moon and back — a pivotal test of the Orion spacecraft that NASA hopes will bring future astronauts to the lunar surface as soon as 2028 and Mars after that.
The last time humans went to the moon was the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.
The final Apollo mission involved three astronauts: Command module pilot Ronald Evans orbited above as Eugene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt — a professional geologist, in a notable first — touched down on the moon’s Taurus-Littrow valley.
The pair spent just over three days on the lunar surface, collecting some 250 pounds of moon rock and soil samples. They set multiple records, including the longest stay on the moon (75 hours), the most lunar samples collected and the longest mission duration at 12 days, 14 hours.
NASA astronaut Eugene Cernan, commander of the Apollo 17 lunar mission, is welcomed back to Earth after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 19, 1972.
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NASA/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
The crew knew they would be the last to visit the moon at least for the foreseeable future, as NASA had decided two years earlier to cancel the remaining Apollo missions, primarily due to budget cuts.
Cernan became the last human to walk on the moon on Dec. 14, 1972. He acknowledged the significance of the moment out loud as he stepped off the lunar surface, seemingly nodding to Neil Armstrong’s infamous words from the 1969 moon landing.
“As we leave the moon and Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came — and God willing as we shall return: with peace, and in hope, for all mankind,” said Cernan, who died in 2023.
A lot has changed in the 53 years since. Here’s what life was like the last time astronauts launched to the moon.
A banner year for geopolitics, pop culture and technology
Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit China in February 1972.
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The year 1972 is in many ways synonymous with upheaval: the uncovering of the Watergate scandal, “Bloody Sunday” in Northern Ireland, the “Munich massacre” at the 1972 Olympics, North Vietnam’s “Easter Offensive” in the final years of the Vietnam War — and antiwar protests at college campuses and political conventions.
That was the year President Nixon announced that no more draftees would be sent to Vietnam, and the year he visited China in a presidential first.
The Volkswagen Beetle officially surpassed the Ford Model T as the most popular — and most-produced — car in the world. And a gallon of regular gasoline cost 36 cents, or the equivalent of $2.53 a gallon today, according to the AARP.
Herbie, the anthropomorphic Volkswagen Beetle featured in the 1969 Disney film The Love Bug, terrorizes a young woman at a car show in Berlin in June 1972.
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Keystone/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
1972 was also a major year for still-beloved cultural creations. It marked the debut of David Bowie’s alter ego Ziggy Stardust, the formation of ABBA, the opening of Grease on Broadway. The top-selling album of the year was Neil Young’s Harvest, and the biggest box office hit was The Godfather, which came out in March.
Fashion was dominated by bold colors and patterns, bell-bottoms, shawls, platform shoes and synthetic fabrics, as part of “the Polyester Decade.” Style icons included Bianca Jagger, Jane Birkin and Diana Ross.
Mick Jagger and Bianca Jagger, pictured in 1972, were among the style icons of the era.
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There was a lot of news, but fewer ways to consume it. Some 95 percent of U.S. households owned televisions, according to Census data, and just three commercial broadcast networks dominated the airwaves: ABC, CBS and NBC. Total print newspaper circulation reached a record 62.5 million, before it began to drop.
And of course, it was a time of innovation — and not just in space. The digital watch made its debut. Atari published “Pong,” the first commercially successful arcade video game. Other key inventions from that year include the floppy disk, the first handheld scientific calculator (the HP-35) and the Hacky Sack. McDonald’s Egg McMuffin entered test markets, and Shrinky Dinks were on the brink of creation.
According to Merriam Webster, some of the words recorded in print for the first time in 1972 include: animatronic, beer pong, bird flu, habanero, garage band, glam rock, lowrider, page-turner, sound bite, spaghetti strap, veggie burger, women’s studies and yard sale. Far out!
As far as wellness trends go, small talk isn’t sexy. The same with participating in civic government or helping a neighbor carry their groceries. But connecting with others might be the ultimate form of self-care, according to psychiatrist Joanna Cheek.
Shelf Help is a wellness column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books — all with the aim of learning how to live a more complete life.
In her book, “It’s Not You, It’s the World: A Mental Health Survival Guide for Us All,” published in February, the University of British Columbia professor makes a case for the health benefits of collective care. For example, Cheek cites research that connects altruistic behavior and a sense of purpose with reduced inflammation, as opposed to hedonistic pursuits, which can worsen inflammation.
Perhaps most importantly, Cheek warns how individual solutions aren’t enough to protect and heal us. “Emotional alarms” such as fear, guilt, shame and anger are healthy signals that help us avoid obstacles and find rewards, she says. When it comes to poverty, discrimination, isolation and other systemic problems, a sense of “moral distress” warns us away from harm and toward a more just, equitable society. And taking small steps to connect with others — even as simple as engaging in idle chitchat with a stranger — can be an impetus for broader change.
Portrait of author Joanna Cheek.
(Tegan McMartin)
“I’m constantly trying to think about socializing in the same way I think about exercise or physical activity,” says Cheek. “In the same way I eat a certain amount of vegetables or have a certain amount of quiet time to meditate, I think, ‘Have I had enough social contact today?’”
People obsessively track their steps. They might want to count their social interactions, too, she says. Those moments can build confidence and trust, until the momentum transforms us and the communities we call home.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
In the book, you quote the renowned psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who wrote, “Happiness cannot be pursued. It must ensue.” Why should we focus on cultivating purpose instead of pursuing happiness?
There are a lot of studies that show that cultivating any emotional state — happiness in particular, but also calmness or lack of anxiety — actually backfires. The more we try to feel a certain way, we inevitably won’t, because we don’t have much control over how we feel and then we’ll compare it to some standard of how we should feel, which will only magnify our suffering.
Rather than chase an emotion, which is futile because our emotions are constantly shifting, we can chase purpose, which gives us a lasting sense of accomplishment, because we’re living in line with our values. That’s true wellness.
“It’s Not You. It’s The World” book cover bo Joanna Cheek, MD.
(Hachette Book Group)
How can people who feel isolated take steps toward cultivating purpose with others?
There was a large study that reviewed studies on loneliness. It showed it posed the same risk as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. I was utterly shocked when I read that, and started a deep dive and met [author and professor of psychology at the University of Sussex] Gillian Sandstrom. Her research shows that connections don’t need to be with the love of our life, a tight-knit family or best friends. When we have contact with a barista at the coffee shop, someone delivering the mail or just say hello to a neighbor who’s walking their dog past you, these weak ties actually have similar benefits to having really deep, personal connections. She ran a study with students at her university and found even if they had no friends in class, if they talked to strangers, they felt better and had more wellness indicators.
When we’re separated from others, we haven’t really evolved that fast, so it sets off alarms in our bodies. When you talk to someone at the grocery store, it’s like, “Oh, I’m not alone, I’m OK, I belong to something.” It silences those alarms so they don’t keep going off.
So it’s beneficial for us to have social interactions. How does it help our communities?
The more that we’re connecting with each other, the more we’re talking across differences, the more that we speak with people of different lived experiences, different politics, different cultural backgrounds, different ages, different levels of health and abilities and needs, then we can have more empathy and really take care for each other and make decisions that are based on the truth that we’re all connected.
Building community can start with weak ties. It can be really scary to join a new group in person. When we talk about anxiety, we talk about graduated exposure, where we don’t expose ourselves to the scariest things right away. So sometimes baby steps can help us get comfortable with weak ties. Then, with time, we can move toward deeper contact.
I just had knee surgery this summer, and I ended up doing a lot of water walking in the pool for rehab, and I was amazed at this community pool. There were all these people who were either retired or injured there during the day and I would have so many conversations. And so often we think that these connections don’t matter because we’re not building a friendship that might continue on. What is the point? The point is that through each interaction, we’re building a sense of community for everybody. And it doesn’t have to be more than one interaction. It helps create a sense that we can trust each other and we can learn from each other. It feels good to be in connection and that makes us want to care for one another.
(Maggie Chiang / For The Times)
You mention the term McMindfulness in the book. Could you describe what that means and why it can be damaging?
Yeah, there are a lot of concerns about quick fixes for mental health. I speak a lot about how mental health is really about the health of our entire systems. When we sit with that, it can be overwhelming to recognize that we can’t be well until our systems are well. We can practice wellness, we can do the best we can, but feeling better in a sick world isn’t going to fix us. We need to fix the world. McMindfulness is taking people in a toxic workplace and giving them mindfulness classes and not changing the toxic structures of the workplace. We should ask, “Why are they having these symptoms? And how do we make this workplace healthy so that our workers aren’t constantly falling sick?”
People need a sense of agency to thrive. But examining big problems through a systemic lens can create the impression we don’t have control over our lives. How do you reconcile the two?
Every connection we have, every time we live in a way with care and kindness, when we’re offering mutual aid or caring for our neighbors, those little things become contagious. Day to day, we can choose if we’re going to share our resources, whether that be our time, our care, our inclusiveness. Every time we choose to care for others, it’s contagious. It creates a culture. And every little connection like that matters. So while stress and dysfunction can ripple outward, I think our kindness and our unity and our caring can also ripple outward.
TAKEAWAYS
From “It’s Not You, It’s the World: A Mental Health Survival Guide for Us All”
That sounds wonderfully optimistic.
I think a lot about hope and I think hope has to be active. I think we can’t just passively wish for a brighter future. And so I like to think about what agency I have today. It doesn’t have to be becoming the next world leader or finding a cure for cancer. What matters is every little decision I make to make the world a little bit brighter.
Lifestyle
‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’ remembers every Nintendo moment ever : Pop Culture Happy Hour
Mario (Chris Pratt) in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
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Universal Pictures
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is the ultimate piece of Nintendo fan service. Mario (Chris Pratt), Luigi (Charlie Day), Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) are on an outer space adventure to save Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson). The film features other beloved Nintendo characters like Bowser (Jack Black) and Yoshi (Donald Glover) – and a few surprises. It’s a sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which made more than a billion dollars worldwide.
Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture
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