This year marks 20 years since Hannah Montana premiered on the Disney Channel. The show made a global phenomenon of star Miley Cyrus and her pop-star alter ego. It’s been streamed millions of hours since going off the air, and influenced the next generation of pop stars like Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter. With the new Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special on Disney Plus, we figured it’s a good time to look back at the legacy of the show, and where it fits into Miley’s career.

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Stepping into Jr. Market boutique in Highland Park is like entering a 1980s time warp. Built into a refurbished shipping container, it’s filled with everything from tiny Walkman-style portables to colorful, number-flip clock radios and, naturally, boom boxes of all sizes. Few are more imposing than the TV the Searcher, a Sharp boom box from the early ’80s that features a built-in, 5-inch color television.

“Try lifting it, it’s really heavy,” warns Spencer Richardson, the shop’s owner. Indeed, the machine is at least 15 pounds without the 10 D batteries that power the unit. He adds, “I don’t think you’re taking this to the beach so you could watch TV while you listen to music.”

An affable, hyper-knowledgeable proprietor in his early 30s, Richardson repairs and resells analog music technology from the 1980s or earlier. In bringing these rehabbed players back into circulation, he’s helping others rediscover a musical format once left for dead. While his hobby-turned-side hustle started as “a gateway to discover sounds” that he otherwise would not have heard, it now attracts curious customers willing to drop $100-plus for a vintage Technics RS-M2 or My First Sony Walkman. His customers include older baby boomers and Gen Xers nostalgic for the players of their childhood, but most have been millennials like himself, drawn to something tactile and analog in an era when everything else disappears into the digital ether.

A rare Technics RS-M2 stereo radio tape deck. “I’ve worked on a lot of tape players and this one shouts quality inside and out,” Richardson writes on Instagram.

(Spencer Richardson)

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Unlike turntables, which have become increasingly high-tech thanks to the “vinyl revival” of the last 20 years, almost all cassette players in current production rely on the same, basic tape mechanism from Taiwan, Richardson explains. Though cassette culture is enjoying its own period of rediscovery — albeit on a far smaller scale — he hasn’t seen a market emerge for newly engineered tape decks. And he’s fine with that.

“I’m not one of those people that’s like, ‘Why don’t they make good new tape players?’” he says. “No one needs to make it better. You’re still better off buying a refurbished one from the time when they made them.”

That’s where he steps in.

Richardson works on a Nakamichi tape deck out of his repair studio in downtown L.A.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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It’s easy to forget that when cassettes debuted in the mid-1960s, the technology was groundbreaking. Not only were the players far more portable than turntables but unlike records, tapes were resilient to being tossed about. Even more profoundly, cassettes democratized access to the act of recording itself since cassette technology required minimal infrastructure and cost.

“I think about how incredible it must have been for people to realize they could just put whatever they wanted onto a tape, dub it, give it to a friend,” says Richardson.

Entire genres of music, especially in the developing world, became far more accessible across borders. In some countries, big records are still released on cassette. “I have a Filipino release of Kanye West’s ‘College Dropout’ on tape,” Richardson says.

The constraints of the technology guided the listening experience. Because skipping songs on a player was a hassle, most people sat with cassette albums as a track-by-track, linear journey, the antithesis to the algorithmic, shuffle-centric playlists ubiquitous on today’s streaming platforms. It’s a pace that Richardson appreciates.

“I want things to be intentional and slow,” he says. “I don’t need them to be optimized.”

He learned how to repair gear by watching YouTube videos, perusing old manuals and through trial and error.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Born in the early 1990s, Richardson grew up in Santa Monica and the Pacific Palisades, where his mother’s home was lost in the L.A. wildfires last year. He’s just old enough to remember cassettes as a child: “My mom had books on tape like ‘Winnie the Pooh,’ but I wasn’t out buying tapes.” Fast forward to the mid-2010s and he was working at the now-defunct Touch Vinyl in West L.A. “Back in 2014, we started this little in-store tape label,” he explained. “Bands would come to play, and we’d duplicate 10 tapes and give them away or sell them.” Richardson slowly began collecting cassettes but after the store closed a few years later, he realized how hard it was to find people to service his tape players.

Finally, once the pandemic hit in 2020 and everyone was stuck at home, he decided to learn how to repair his gear by watching YouTube. “I was just fascinated by the videos, absorbing soldering techniques and tools you might need,” he said. With no formal engineering background, Richardson began collecting information online, perusing old manuals, learning through trial and error. “You just need to get your hands in there and be like, ‘Oh, OK, I see how this works,’ or maybe I don’t see how this works, and I’m just going to bang my head against the wall, and then a year later, try again.” His first successful repair was for his Teac CX-311, a compact stereo cassette player/recorder that he still owns. “It has some quirks but runs well.”

A few years later, Richardson’s girlfriend, Faith, suggested he start selling his players online via an Instagram account — jrmarket.radio — originally created for a short-lived internet station. Tim Mahoney, his childhood friend and a professional photographer, shot the units against a plain white backdrop, as if for an art catalog. A community of enthusiasts quickly found his account and Richardson began selling pieces online and via pop-ups. In 2024, the owners of vintage clothing store the Bearded Beagle invited him to take over the parking lot space behind their new location on Figueroa Street Opening a brick-and-mortar store hadn’t been his ambition but Richardson accepted the opportunity: “I never envisioned opening my own physical store. It’s hard enough to have a retail space in Los Angeles to sell something that’s very niche.”

Jr. Market operates as a shop Thursday through Saturday in Highland Park.

(Spencer Richardson)

Jr. Market — whose name is inspired by Japanese convenience stores known as “junior markets” — isn’t trying to appeal to audiophiles though Richardson does stock studio-quality recording decks. He primarily looks for players with appealing visual design, most of them made in Japan where Richardson has been traveling to since graduating high school. Through those trips, he’s learned where to source pristinely kept gear, including his best-selling Corocasse: a bright red plastic cube of a radio/tape player, introduced by National in 1983. He also keeps an eye out for the unique Sanyo MR-QF4 from 1979, an elongated boom box with four speakers, designed to play either horizontally or flipped into a vertical tower.

The store also stocks a small selection of portable record players, including a Victor PK-2, a whimsical, plastic-bodied three-in-one turntable, tape player and AM radio that looks like something designed by a modernist artist for Fisher-Price. That went to local author and historian Sam Sweet, who visited the store with no intention of buying anything and left with the Victor, which now sits on his writing desk. “Spencer’s part of a grand tradition of workshop tinkerers and specialty mechanics,” Sweet says. “The refurbished devices he sells are as much a reflection of his ethos and expertise as they are treasures of the past.”

Last year, Imma Almourzaeva, an Echo Park art director, came to the store and purchased a massive 1979 Sony Zilba’p boom box, which is nearly 2 feet wide and over a foot tall, with wood veneer panels to boot. Almourzaeva, who grew up in Russia in the ’90s, wanted a player that offered “the tactile feel of my childhood and bringing it back into my daily routine, something familiar, something warm.” The Zilba’p is the largest boom box Richardson has carried and Almourzaeva said, “It’s aesthetically a showstopper. Maybe I have a Napoleon complex because I’m pretty small too. It’s like ‘go big or go home’ for me.” She shared that she recently bought a Soviet-era boom box from Richardson for her brother for Christmas. “It turned out my mom grew up using the same brand of stereo,” Almourzaeva says. Richardson had told her that Soviet boom boxes are “very DIY, more funky and finicky.”

Refurbishment is one of Richardson’s specialties, including repairing customer units, each of them a puzzle he enjoys solving. No matter if a player is sparse or feature-packed, the simple act of playing a cassette creates a sense of calm and focus for him. “You’re not distracted, because it doesn’t do anything else,” he says. In a time where every “smart” device is marketed with dizzying arrays of features, that simplicity can feel downright revolutionary.

Water-hungry lawns are symbols of Los Angeles’ past. In this series, we spotlight yards with alternative, low-water landscaping built for the future.

When Christopher Smee welcomes visitors to his Glendale garden, he enjoys giving what his friends jokingly call “the botanical tour.”

“Would you like to walk through the native chaparral?” he asks, pointing out the California native plants in his front yard: a multi-trunk toyon, bright orange California poppies (Eschscholzia californica), lantern-shaped Bladderpod (Cleomella arborea) with yellow flowers that bloom most of the year, purple Arroyo lupines (Lupinus succulentus), fragrant Allen Chickering Sage (Salvia ‘Allen Chickering’), and tall, silvery white sage (Salvia apiana) at the center.

“I love the majesty and structure of the white sage,” he says, pointing out the dried branches he leaves for the birds. “I love the color, and when I learned about its importance to the Indigenous community, I felt it should be at the center of the garden.”

After: Smee’s garden today.

Like many newcomers to Los Angeles, Smee, a 45-year-old former flight attendant, was fascinated by the city’s landscape and its famous palm trees when he first moved from England.

As he spent more time hiking outdoors in Los Angeles, on the Mount Thom trail in the Verdugo Mountains and the Pacific Crest Trail in the San Bernardino Mountains, Smee started to appreciate the native plants that thrive in Southern California’s dry climate.

So when Smee and his husband, Ryan Tish, bought a 1925 French-style home in the Rossmoyne Historic District, he knew he wanted to redesign the traditional front yard.

“There was a privet hedge, a lonely juniper, a hibiscus, a large bird of paradise and a camellia bush,” he says. “The lawn was mostly dirt. In fact, it had been colored green with CGI in the online real estate listing.”

The new patio, or “wine terrace,” overlooks the garden.

A native of Newcastle Upon Tyne, where English gardens are as beloved as football teams, Smee found the Glendale front yard’s layout off-putting. “You couldn’t get into the garden because the plants were a barrier,” he says. “You had to climb over things to get to the garden. In the U.K., my family had a long front garden that we actually used, so having a front garden and not using it seemed silly to me.”

Even though Smee had never gardened before, he decided to remove the tropical plants and Bermuda grass lawn in 2021 and plant a native garden to honor the California plants that grew there before the homes were built.

“I asked myself the question, ‘What was meant to be here?’ ” he says, standing in his yard as birds, bees and butterflies floated through the landscape. “That was the key question. All these plants I see in gardens — are they original? My husband grew up in L.A., and he couldn’t answer the question himself. I learned that generally they are not. I wanted to make things right, so I went on a journey to find what was here originally.”

The only nonnative in the yard, a multi-trunked olive tree, pays homage to the Glendale neighborhood, which was once an olive grove.

He began by visiting the Theodore Payne Foundation’s demonstration garden in Sun Valley, where people can see native plants growing in their natural habitat. “They sell flash cards that are like the Farrow & Ball paint chips you get for home improvement projects,” he says. He also visited local nurseries such as Plant Material, Artemisisa Nursery and Hahamongna Native Plant Nursery, which offer native species.

Wanting a garden that was easy to use and colorful year-round, Smee contacted landscape designer Guillaume Lemoine of Picture This Land to help design a formal French garden using California native plants.

“I always had a vision of walking down the porch steps, turning straight into the garden, and being able to walk to the wine terrace,” Smee says. “You want to get some usage and joy out of your garden. Not just something to look at when you drive by.”

Like many design projects, the plan changed over time. “The French garden didn’t happen,” Smee says. “But one day I will do it.” Still, the cottage-style garden has a French-inspired look composed of four quadrants with a water fountain in the center.

Smee’s Glendale lawn before it was removed.

(Christopher Smee)

Prolific self-seeding California poppies, lupine and Common Tiny Tips grow in the front yard.

(Kit Karzen / For The Times)

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Before planting, Smee and his husband applied for a turf removal rebate from Glendale Water and Power, which gives homeowners $3 per square foot for replacing turf with drought-tolerant and native plants and for installing irrigation and a rainwater capture system. After the work was completed, they received a $1,596 rebate for removing 798 square feet of turf in the 2,000-square-foot yard. Smee estimates they spent about $20,000 in total on design fees, plants, removal and installation before the rebate.

Next, they hired Roger Ridlehoover and Maria Maturano of the Land Design Project to remove the lawn and plant climate-appropriate plants. The team started by cutting the Bermuda grass, turning it over and letting it sit to kill the roots. Then they added cardboard and a thick layer of mulch, using a no-dig gardening method called sheet mulching. “It worked,” Smee says. “We had a few strands of Bermuda grass come back, but that was it.”

Smee is backed by white sage, which he wanted to be the center of the garden. Note: This photo was taken with a 360-degree camera.

After setting up movable micro-emitters for irrigation, they planted native species that fit the site, soil and climate, focusing on their role in supporting a diverse ecosystem.

Because of a delay with their retaining wall, they ended up planting the garden in July 2021, which is usually the hardest time of year to start a new garden.

But the delay proved that you can plant in the summer, Smee says, at least if you use native plants.

“We only lost a few plants,” he says. “Of course, fall is the best time to plant before it gets too hot, but if you are working with a good landscape designer, it is not out of the realm of possibility. “

From the street, you can see the garden’s silver and green leaves shimmering, with bright bursts of California lilac (Ceanothus Yankee Point) spilling over the front wall. Toyon brings red berries in winter and white flowers in spring, while California sagebrush and Cleveland sage fill the air with an intoxicating perfume. There is now a new patio that looks out over the garden, just as Smee wanted. All the plants are native, except for an olive tree he planted to remember the neighborhood’s past when olive groves filled the area before homes were built in the 1920s.

Bladderpod (Cleomella arborea) flowers most of the year.

California poppies bloom in the spring.

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“We wanted to honor the history of the area and the theme of the streets,” Smee says about the low-fruit olive tree, which is less messy than other varieties that often leave oily stains on streets and sidewalks. Smee thought about planting an oak tree instead but worried that a large tree might be too heavy for the retaining wall along the sidewalk, so he decided against it. “It’s still a lingering regret,” he says.

“I love seeing the deep, rich green of the toyon next to the pale green of the sage, dudleyas, sagebrush and the olive tree,” Smee says. “I wanted to make sure that even in the hottest part of summer, my garden wouldn’t turn brown.”

After years of working in his garden, the former novice has figured out what grows well in his yard’s different spots. California Wax Myrtle (Morella californica) couldn’t handle the summer heat. Salvia clevelandii ‘Winifred Gilman’ didn’t do as well as the other sages and was too aromatic for his taste. He also tried showy penstemons, but they didn’t like the shade near the house.

“Native plants are often described at nurseries with their sun preferences: ‘full sun’, ‘partial sun’, ‘shade,’ etc.,” he says. “But full sun in Glendale is very different from full sun in coastal Brentwood. Trying out different plants has helped me learn what ‘full sun’ means in my own garden, so now I can choose plants more confidently.”

An overhead view of the garden.

Smee learned a few things about himself along the way too. “I’ve always thought water fountains were a bit twee,” he says with a smile, but now he loves his. He found the clean-lined water fountain at Reseda Discount Pottery & Fountains, which he calls an “Aladdin’s cave” with hundreds of fountains running at once.

“It’s like in ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ where he has to choose the goblet,” he says, laughing. The birds and bees love it too, he adds. “The ravens have left Cheez-Its for us.”

Five years later, Smee’s dream is now a reality. He strolls along a stepping-stone path through dry chaparral and coastal sage scrub, with Mexican gold onyx boulders on either side, leading to the patio where he and his husband like to host friends during the summer.

Smee didn’t think he wanted to install a water fountain, but now he’s glad he did because it attracts wildlife.

Last year, he welcomed more than 300 visitors during the Theodore Payne Native Plant Garden Tour and had to set up a one-way path through the garden to help manage the crowd.

For maintenance, Smee says he prunes once each season, four times a year. He doesn’t have a gardener and rarely waters the plants. “There is a lot of ebb and flow in the garden,” he says. “I cut it back a lot every year to make space for wildflowers in the spring. I get sad when the wildflowers die, but then I chop them back and save the seeds, and before I know it, the California Fuchsia (Epilobium canum) blooms, adding red to the garden.”

After the first year, while he was getting the garden established, he saw a big drop in the couple’s water use. “When it gets hot in the summer, I turn on the water once a month,” he says. He tried not watering at all, but when he saw the California fuchsia, also called ‘hummingbird fuchsia’ because the birds love it, struggling, he turned the water back on.

“I’m not in the wild,” he says. “It’s still a garden, and I want to enjoy it.”

“It’s really been a joy to reunite the soil with the plants that belong here,” Smee says of removing his lawn and planting California natives.

Now that he has finished creating a native habitat at home, Smee looks forward to using what he has learned by volunteering at the Sunshine Preserve, a 3½-acre site owned by the nonprofit Arroyos & Foothills Conservancy on the eastern edge of the Verdugo Mountains in Glendale.

Working with other volunteers, Smee has helped remove invasive plants and plant native species, including 30 oak trees that attract local wildlife like the endangered monarch butterfly, mountain lions and bobcats. Smee and his group have planted 40 or 50 white sages to help rebuild the local population.

“At the preserve, I’m learning how things grow in the wild,” he says. “The ground is natural dirt, untouched by gardeners. Woolly bluecurls can be tricky for home gardeners, but at the preserve, it thrives because it’s in the right place. We’ve probably planted hundreds of native plants over the last three years. Come back in 30 years, and you’ll see what we’re working toward.”

Smee admits he knew little about California plants and soil at first, but he says he has since become more connected to the land. In the process, he learned there is real joy in bringing native plants back to the soil where they belong.

“I hope people can see that a California native garden can be joyful, colorful and full of life — that’s it not just about conserving water, but about enriching life through the biodiversity that the native plants attract to the garden,” he says. “Thoughtful plant selection can ensure a native garden has something of interest at all times of the year and doesn’t have to go brown in the summer.”

Many people can make a difference on the planet even with a small garden, says Smee. “Having a native garden brings a unique level of joy because you discover you’re doing something for the native wildlife that no other type of garden can do,” he says. “It’s a really special thing.”

PLANT LIST

Bladderpod, Cleomella arborea

Blue grama grass, Bouteloua gracilis

Blue grama grass ‘Blonde Ambition’, Bouteloua gracilis ‘Blonde Ambition’

Bright green dudleya, Dudleya virens ssp. hassei

Britton’s Dudleya, Dudleya brittonii

California Laurel, Umbellularia californica

California Buckwheat, Eriogonum fasciculatum

California Fuchsia, Epilobium canum

California Goldenrod, Solidago velutina ssp. californica

Canyon Gray Sagebrush, Artemisia californica ‘Canyon Gray’

Canyon Dudleya, Dudleya cymosa

Yankee Point Carmel Ceanothus, Ceanothus thyrsiflorus var. griseus ‘Yankee Point’

Cedros Island liveforever, Dudleya pachyphytum

Chaparral nolina, Nolina cismontana

Chaparral Yucca, Hesperoyucca whipplei

Allen Chickering Sage, Salvia ‘Allen Chickering’

Mound San Bruno California Coffeeberry, Frangula californica ‘Mound San Bruno’

Conejo Buckwheat, Eriogonum crocatum

Desert Agave, Agave deserti

Desert marigold, Baileya multiradiata

Eastwood Manzanita, Arctostaphylos glandulosa ssp. glandulosa

Fingertips, Dudleya edulis

Giant Chain Fern, Woodwardia fimbriata

Lanceleaf Liveforever, Dudleya lanceolata

Lemonade berry, Rhus integrifolia

Emerald Carpet Manzanita, Arctostaphylos ‘Emerald Carpet’

Howard McMinn Manzanita, Arctostaphylos ‘Howard McMinn’

Vibrant Red Monkeyflower, Diplacus ‘Vibrant Red’

Narrow Leaf Milkweed, Asclepias fascicularis

Wilson’s olive, Olea europaea ‘Wilson Fruitless’

Tall Oregon Grape, Berberis aquifolium

Palmer’s Dudleya, Dudleya palmeri

Margarita BOP Penstemon, Penstemon heterophyllus ‘Margarita BOP’

Red-flowered Buckwheat,Eriogonum grande var. rubescens

David’s Choice Sagebrush, Artemisia pycnocephala ‘David’s Choice’

San Quintín liveforever, Dudleya anthonyi

Tecate Cypress, Hesperocyparis forbesii

Toyon, Heteromeles arbutifolia

De La Mina Verbena, Verbena lilacina ‘De La Mina’

White Sage, Salvia apiana

Woolly Bluecurls, Trichostema lanatum

WILDFLOWERS

Blue-eyed Grass, Sisyrinchium bellum

Arroyo lupine, Lupinus succulentus

California Poppy, Eschscholzia californica

Common Tidy Tips, Layia platyglossa

California Goldfields, Lasthenia californica