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.”
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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