Lifestyle
Retired, they moved from 6 bedrooms to a tiny L.A. ADU built in 3.5 months
Ever wondered how long it would take to build an accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, in your backyard?
In the case of Alvaro “Al” and Nenette Alcazar, a retired couple, who downsized from a six-bedroom home in New Orleans to a one-bedroom ADU in Los Angeles, it took just 3½ months.
“We went on vacation to the Philippines in November, right as they were getting started on construction,” Al says of the ADU his son Jay Alcaraz and his partner Andy Campbell added behind their home in Harbor Gateway. “When we returned in March of this year, the house was ready for us.”
The Alcazars were surprised by the rapid completion of their new 570-square-foot modular home by Gardena-based Cover. By the time construction was finished, they hadn’t yet listed their New Orleans home, where they lived for 54 years while raising their two sons.
Andy Campbell, seated left, and his partner Jay Alcazar’s home is reflected in the windows of the ADU where Alcazar’s parents Al and Nenette Alcazar, standing, now reside.
Jay Alcazar and Andy Campbell’s backyard in Harbor Gateway before they added an ADU.
(Jay Alcazar)
Alexis Rivas, co-founder and CEO of Cover, was also surprised by how quickly the ADU was permitted, taking just 45 days. “The total time from permit submittal to certificate of occupancy was 104 days,” he says, crediting the city’s Standard Plan and the ADU’s integrated panelized system for making it the fastest Clover has ever permitted.
For Al, a longtime religious studies professor at Loyola University New Orleans and community organizer, the construction process was more than just demolition and site prep. Seeing the Cover workers collaborate on their home reminded him of “bayanihan,” a Filipino core value emphasizing community unity and collective action.
“Both of my parents were public school teachers,” says Al, who was exiled from the Philippines in 1972. “When they moved to a village where there were no schools, the parents were so happy their children wouldn’t have to walk to another village to go to school that they built them a home.”
“It’s only one bedroom but we love it,” says Nenette Alcazar. “It’s the right size for two people.”
Like his childhood home in the village of Cag-abaca, Al says his and Nenette’s ADU “felt like a community built it somewhere and carried it into the garden for us to live in.” Only in this instance, the home was not a Nipa hut made of bamboo but a home made of steel panels manufactured in a factory in Gardena and installed on-site.
Jay Alcaraz, 40, and Campbell, 43, had been renting a house in Long Beach for three years when they started looking for a home to buy in 2022. Initially, they had hoped to stay in Long Beach, but when they realized they couldn’t afford it, they broadened their search to include Harbor Gateway. “It was equidistant to my job as a professor of critical studies at USC, and Jay’s job as a senior product manager at Stamps.com near LAX,” Campbell says.
When they eventually purchased a three-bedroom Midcentury home that needed some work, they were delighted to find themselves in a neighborhood filled with multigenerational households within walking distance of Asian supermarkets and restaurants.
The ADU does not overwhelm the backyard. “It looks like a house in a garden,” says Al Alcazar.
“We can walk to everything,” says Jay. “The post office. The deli. The grocery store. We love Asian food, and can eat at a different Asian restaurant every day.”
Adds Campbell: “We got the same thing we had in Long Beach here, plus space for an ADU.”
At a time when multigenerational living is growing among older men and women in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center, it’s not surprising that the couple began considering an ADU for Jay’s parents soon after purchasing their home, knowing that Al and Nenette, who no longer drives, would feel comfortable in the neighborhood.
They started by reviewing ADUs that the city has pre-approved for construction as part of the ADU Standard Plan Program on the city’s Building and Safety Department website. The initiative, organized by former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office in collaboration with Building and Safety in 2021, was designed to simplify the lengthy permitting process and help create more housing.
The 570-square-foot house has a single bedroom and bathroom.
Jay and Al Alcazar have coffee in the kitchen of the ADU.
They reached out to several potential architects and secured a line of credit for $300,000. They decided to go with Cover after touring its facility and one of its completed ADUs. “We liked that they were local and their facility was five minutes away from us,” Campbell says.
The couple originally envisioned removing their backyard pergola and lawn and adding an L-shaped ADU. But after consulting with Rivas, they decided on a rectangular unit with large-format glass sliders and warm wood cladding to preserve the yard.
The configuration was the right choice, as the green space between the two homes, which includes a deck and drought-tolerant landscaping, serves as a social hub for both couples, who enjoy grilling, sharing meals at the outdoor dining table and gardening. Just a few weeks ago, the family celebrated Al’s 77th birthday in the garden along with their extended family.
Nenette, a self-described “green thumb,” is delighted by the California garden’s bounty, including oranges, lemons, guava trees and camellias. “I can see the palm trees moving back and forth and the hummingbirds in the morning,” she says.
“They’re a lot of fun,” Jay Alcazar says of his parents. “They are great dinner companions.”
Although some young couples might hesitate to live close to their parents and in-laws, Jay and Campbell see their ADU as a convenient way to stay close and support Jay’s parents as they age in place.
Besides, Jay says, they’re a lot of fun. “They are great dinner companions,” he says.
Campbell, who enjoys having coffee on the outdoor patio with Al, agrees. “When I met them for the first time 12 years ago, they had a group over for dinner and hosted a karaoke party until 3 a.m.,” he said. “I was like, ‘Is this a regular thing?’”
A teak bed from the Philippines and family mementos help to make the new ADU feel like home.
Unlike the Alcazars’ spacious 1966 home in New Orleans, their new ADU’s interiors are modern and simple, with white oak floors and cabinets and Bosch appliances, including a stackable washer and dryer. Despite downsizing a lifetime of belongings, Al and Nenette were able to keep a few things that help make the ADU feel like home. In the living room, mother of pearl lamps and wood-carved side tables serve as a reminder of their old house. In their bedroom, a hand-carved teak bed from the Philippines, still showing signs of water damage from Hurricane Katrina, was built by artisans in Nenette’s family.
“Madonna and Jack Nicholson both ordered this bed,” Nenette says proudly.
The couple chose a thermally processed wood cladding for its warmth. “It will develop a silver hue over time,” says Alexis Rivas of Cover. “It’s zero maintenance.”
But one thing didn’t work out in their move West. When they realized their sofa would take up too much room in the 8-foot portable storage pod they rented in New Orleans, they decided to purchase an IKEA sleeper sofa in L.A. It’s now in the mix along with their personal artifacts and family photos that further add memories to the interiors, including a reproduction of the Last Supper, a common tradition in many Filipino homes symbolizing the importance of coming together to share meals. With limited storage, the families share the two-car garage, where Al stores his tools.
“It’s only one bedroom, but we love it,” says Nenette, 79, of the ADU, which cost $380,000. “It’s just the right size for two people.”
The ADU feels private, both couples say, thanks to the 9-foot-long custom curtains they ordered online from Two Pages Curtains. “When the curtains are open, we know they are awake, and when their curtains are down, we know to leave them alone,” Jay says, laughing at their ritual.
In terms of aging in place, the ADU can accommodate a wheelchair or walker if necessary, and Rivas says a custom wheelchair ramp can be added later if necessary.
Now, if only Jay could mount the flat-screen television on the wall, Al says, teasing his son. It’s hard to escape dad jokes when he’s living in your backyard — and that’s the point.
“It’s really nice having them here,” Andy says.
Jay Alcazar and Andy Campbell enjoy having Al and Nenette Alcazar close. “They feel like neighbors,” Jay says.
After losing his family and home in the Philippines when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the country, Al, who once studied to be a priest, says he’s deeply moved to be the recipient of the bayanihan spirit once again.
“I was tortured in the Philippines, and it didn’t break me,” he says. “So having a home built by a friendly community really points to a shorter but more spiritual meaning of bayanihan, which is, ‘when a group of friends,’ as my grandma Marta used to say, ‘turns your station of the cross into a garden with a rose.’ Now, we have Eden here in my son’s backyard.”
Lifestyle
Jewelry Among the Exhibits at a Daniel Brush Retrospective
Nearly four years after his death, a retrospective of the multidisciplinary work by the self-taught American artist Daniel Brush — encompassing sculpture, paintings and jewelry in materials as diverse as steel, Bakelite and gold — is scheduled to open June 8 at the Paris location of L’Ecole, School of Jewelry Arts.
“Daniel Brush: The Art of Line and Light” will be the fifth time that L’Ecole has exhibited the artist’s work. But its president, Lise Macdonald, said she believed Mr. Brush’s legacy warranted repeated consideration: “He is a very niche artist, but he is excellent — really one of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st century.”
The diversity of his creations has been part of his appeal, she said. “We don’t really consider him as purely a jeweler but more a protean artist where jewelry was part of his approach.”
L’Ecole Paris, which operates in an 18th-century mansion in the Ninth Arrondissement and is supported by Van Cleef & Arpels, has prepared programming to complement the show, from conversations with experts on Mr. Brush’s work (to be held on site and streamed online) to jewelry-making workshops for children. Details of the free exhibition and the events are on the school’s website; the show is scheduled to end Oct. 4.
The exhibition is to include more than 75 pieces, which span much of Mr. Brush’s five-decade career. They have been selected by Olivia Brush, his wife and collaborator, and by Vivienne Becker, a jewelry historian and author who said she first met the couple more than 30 years ago. Some exhibits, they said, have never been seen by the public before.
Ms. Becker, who wrote the 2019 monograph “Daniel Brush: Jewels Sculpture,” said the artist had possessed vast knowledge of the history of jewelry and shared her belief that jewels “answer a very important, very basic human impulse to adorn — that it’s essential to customs, beliefs, and ceremonies around the world.” She also has written a book documenting the L’Ecole exhibition — and with the same title — that examines the artist’s preoccupation with the themes of light and line.
“He loved the idea of making a real, intransigent, opaque metal into something that was almost translucent, or transparent,” said Ms. Becker, citing as an example a trio of bangles made in 2009 to 2010 that are called the “Rings of Infinity.” The lines that he engraved on the aluminum pieces functioned, she explained, to “elevate the jewel from a trinket to a great, great work of art.”
A series of engraved steel panels titled “Thinking About Monet” used the interplay of line and light to achieve a different effect, she said. Mr. Brush made individual strokes in tight formation on the panels, producing gently rippling surfaces whose color changes with shifting light conditions.
The effect “is really hard to understand. I couldn’t,” Ms. Becker said. “So many people ask, ‘Are they tinted? Are they colored?’ It’s absolutely nothing. It’s just the breaking of the light.”
Though Mr. Brush was a widely acknowledged master of skills such as granulation, the application of tiny gold balls to a metal surface, both Ms. Brush and Ms. Becker said the exhibition’s goal was not to highlight his virtuosity — nor, Ms. Becker said, was that ever a concern of Mr. Brush’s. “He didn’t want to talk about the technique at all,” she said. “Technique has to just be a means to an end. He just wanted people to be amazed, to have a sense of wonder again.”
The works selected for the L’Ecole exhibition reflect his range, which veered from diamond-set Bakelite brooches inspired by animal crackers to a steel and gold orb meant to be an object of contemplation. “He didn’t want to have boundaries,” Ms. Brush said. “He wanted to do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.”
The couple met as students at what is now called Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and her 1967 wedding ring was the first jewel that Mr. Brush made.
All of Mr. Brush’s works were one-of-a-kind creations, completed from start to finish by him in the New York City loft that served as a workshop as well as a family home. Photographs of the space, which contained a library with titles on the eclectic subjects that preoccupied him — Chinese history, Byzantine art, Impressionist painting — and the antique machinery that inspired him and that he used to make his tools, are featured in the exhibition and reproduced in Ms. Becker’s book.
Ms. Brush is a fiber artist in her own right, but Mr. Brush also frequently credited her as an equal participant on pieces bearing his name. “I did not physically make the work,” she explained, “but the work would not have evolved or happened the way it did if it were not for the way we lived our lives,” she said.
Lifestyle
Thanks to ‘Mormon Wives,’ Dirty Soda Is a National Obsession
The first time Pop’s Social, a catering company in South Orange, N.J., that specializes in dirty soda, served an alcoholic drink at an event, something strange happened.
At the event in December, its nonalcoholic offering, a spiced pear-cider seltzer with vanilla and peach syrups, cream, lemon and cold foam, was a hit. The Prosecco-spiked version? Not so much.
“People were more interested in the mocktail than the cocktail,” Ali Greenberg, an owner of the business, said in an interview.
Dirty soda — a customizable blend of soda, flavored syrup, creamer and sometimes fruit, served over pebble ice — has been crossing into the mainstream for years, especially after the cast of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the hit reality show that premiered in 2024, frequented Swig, the Utah chain that started it all.
But its reach has gone far beyond the Mormon corridor, and its rise in popularity has dovetailed with an overall decline in U.S. alcohol consumption. “There’s not a lot of Mormon people in our neighborhood,” said Greenberg. “But there are a lot of people who are sober-curious or not drinking.”
The reality show, which follows a group of Mormon influencers in Utah, helped popularize dirty soda beyond the Mountain States and inspired a wave of TikTok videos on the subject. Swig rapidly expanded — growing from 33 locations in Utah and Arizona in 2021 to now more than 150 locations in 16 states — along with other Utah chains, and spawned copycats nationwide.
Dirty soda has joined other Mormon cultural exports, like tradwife influencers, a “Real Housewives” franchise in Salt Lake City and Taylor Frankie Paul, the Bachelorette who wasn’t, that have captivated America.
With the recent rollouts of dirty soda at McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Dunkin’ — behold the Dunkin’ Dirty Soda: Pepsi, coffee milk and cold foam — and the appearance on grocery shelves of Dirty Mountain Dew and a coconut-lime Coffee Mate creamer for homemade dirty sodas, we may have reached peak dirty.
The idea for dirty soda came out of a desire for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has millions of followers in Utah and surrounding states, to have more options for social drinking, as the church prohibits the consumption of alcohol, hot coffee and hot caffeinated tea.
When Swig introduced dirty soda in 2010, it filled a need, providing a pick-me-up for car-pooling moms and an after-school treat for their kids. It was quickly adopted by many in the community.
“In other cultures, parents go, they pick up their coffee in the morning, and for me and for a lot of my other friends’ parents, it was, ‘Let’s go pick up our dirty soda,’” Whitney Leavitt, a breakout star of “Mormon Wives,” said in an interview.
Leavitt was surprised when her dirty soda order became a recurring question from reporters in recent years. “They were so excited to hear all of the different syrups and creamers that we add to our drinks to make whatever your go-to dirty soda is,” Leavitt said. (Hers is sparkling water with sugar-free pineapple, sugar-free peach and sugar-free vanilla syrups, raspberry purée, a squeeze of lime, and fresh mint if she’s “feeling really fancy.”)
In April, Leavitt became the chief creative and brand officer at Cool Sips, a beverage chain based in New York that sells dirty sodas.
“Mormon Wives” inspired Kaitlyn Sturm, a 26-year-old mother of three from Jackson, Miss., to post recipes for dirty sodas on her TikTok. The one she makes the most contains Coke or Dr Pepper, homemade cherry syrup, a glug of coconut creamer and a packet of True Lime crystallized lime powder, which she combines in a pasta-sauce jar filled with pebble ice. “It kind of has become like a ritual, where I make one for my husband as well, and we have it most evenings,” Sturm said in an interview.
The trend has also hit fast-food menus. The new “crafted soda” menu at McDonald’s is riddled with dirty soda DNA. The Dirty Dr Pepper, with vanilla flavoring and a cold-foam topper, is the chain’s version of what has shaped up to be the universal dirty soda flavor. Since 2024, Sonic, beloved for its porous, soda-absorbing pebble ice, has offered “dirty” drinks — your choice of soda plus coconut syrup, sweet cream and lime.
These drinks might feel new, but there are antecedents in the Italian sodas of the ’90s (fizzy water and a pump of Torani syrup); the Shirley Temple (ginger ale or lemon-lime soda with grenadine and maraschino cherries); and the egg cream, a tonic of seltzer, chocolate syrup and milk. And what is a dirty Dr Pepper with cold foam if not a descendant of the root beer float? “It’s just a soda fountain from 125 years ago,” Kara Nielsen, a food and beverage trend forecaster, said in an interview.
Though Leavitt moved to New York City with her family in December, her dirty soda ritual has remained consistent, with one key difference. “In Utah, we don’t get to walk to dirty soda shops,” Leavitt said. “We have to drive there.”
Lifestyle
Chaos Gardening: A Laid-Back Way to Garden
Annuals include flowers like marigolds and nasturtiums. They grow fast but won’t come back the next spring (though they will drop seeds and possibly propagate). Perennials like lavender and sage will return year after year, but they may take longer to grow. Wildflower and pollinator packets often contain both annual and perennial seeds but are frowned upon by some serious gardeners, because the selection can be haphazard and ill-suited to the area.
It’s a good idea to exercise a little situational awareness. How much rain can you expect? How much sunlight? Dig the earth and feel it between your fingers — is it sandy? Loamy? These are things to keep in mind as you prepare for your journey into horticultural chaos.
“You want to prepare your soil, your site, at least a little bit,” said Deryn Davidson, a sustainable landscape expert at Colorado State University Extension in Longmont, Colo. “Try to get rid of weeds. Make sure the soil is ready to receive seeds.”
Davidson, who has written about chaos gardening, strongly advised covering the seeds with a layer of soil, lest they become bird food. As for watering, that depends on where you live, she added. On the whole, though, the formula is straightforward: “Soil, sun and water is what these seeds need,” Davidson said.
Not everyone is a fan of the trend, or at least the way it has been portrayed on social media. “Nature is not chaos — nature is pattern,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and the author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” which recommends imbuing modern life with Indigenous wisdom.
“It seems unrealistic,” Kimmerer said of the chaos gardening videos she has watched. The feeling of effortlessness they convey — a common social media effect, almost always the result of deft editing — seems to elide the work that goes into a garden, whether chaotic or not, she suggested.
“I want my garden to be natural and biodiverse,” she said. “That’s a good impulse. I don’t think this technique is going to get you there, but that’s an important impulse.”
Boitnott, the maker of the viral video, offered a simple reason for why chaos gardening has become popular: “It just makes you happy.”
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