One of Santa Barbara’s most prolific hospitality groups makes its Los Angeles debut this week with Picala, a new restaurant in West Adams. Acme Hospitality — the group behind Central Coast restaurants including the Lark, Loquita, and Helena Avenue Bakery, led by founder and managing partner Sherry Villanueva — recruited former chef de cuisine at Lulu, Luis Sierra, to develop a menu that embodies California cooking through a Spanish lens. Picala opens Tuesday, April 28, on the bottom floor of Vox Residences on La Cienega and Jefferson Boulevards.

Sierra’s menu leads with the familiar, including olives, pan con tomate, and a tortilla Española for starters. A seasonal shaved asparagus salad is herby and light with Idiazabal cheese and a Spanish vinaigrette, while Picala’s aged prime rib-eye gets presented with a dollop of egg yolk, anchovy for added brine, and a pleasant bitter add of grilled chicory. Each dish is designed for sharing, including the paella served on a traditional pan bursting with Mary’s chicken, chorizo, peppers, and aioli.

Sierra and Villanueva cultivated relationships with Santa Barbara fishermen to source local catches for the menu, like the impeccable dayboat rockfish. Other seafood options include Pacific calamari squid with gigante (white runner) beans and salsa verde, and fideo noodles packed with Caledonian shrimp, venus clams, bay scallops, and topped with aioli. Sierra’s goal is to source ingredients within 200 miles.

Assistant general manager Joey Mar developed the cocktail menu, inspired by his travels through Spain. The menu spans sangria by the glass and a section featuring five gin and tonics, plus a dazzling La Mancha tequila cocktail with passionfruit, Manchego-washed tequila, lime, Orgeat, and pimenton.

Studio UNLTD transformed Picala’s high ceilings into an inviting space with curved custom banquettes, flowing textiles, and floor-to-ceiling windows designed to take advantage of the impressive sunset light on the 45-seat patio or in the 135-capacity dining room.

Though Villanueva resides in Santa Barbara, Picala has local roots. Villanueva is a Los Angeles native whose husband’s family has a deep connection to the now-defunct KMEX, which eventually became Univision. The owners of the Cumulus District are longtime friends of the Villanuevas, who invited Acme Hospitality to their West Adams space. Those visiting Picala will find Whole Foods in the same complex, the La Cienega/Jefferson Metro station within walking distance, and HBO and Amazon Studios just one mile away.

Villanueva says her longevity in the business is based on a personal philosophy that she returns to with each new opening. “We make the connections with people, and encourage them to do the same,” she says.

Picala is open at 3321 S. La Cienega Boulevard, Suite G, West Adams, CA, 90016. For now, hours are 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Secure reservations on OpenTable.

More rain could be in store for Los Angeles this week.

Skies will be partly cloudy Tuesday, with temperatures warming to the low to mid-70s, said Ryan Kittell, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

But by Wednesday night, most parts of Los Angeles have a roughly 20% to 30% chance of getting a measurable amount of rain, he said. There’s also a slight chance of showers over the eastern San Gabriel Mountains on Thursday morning and afternoon, according to the forecast.

Winds are expected to pick up late Wednesday into Thursday, especially in mountain and desert areas, with gusts in the 25- to 35-mph range, Kittell said.

No impacts are expected as far as flooding or downed trees, he said.

Many areas will probably remain dry, and those that do receive rain will see less than a quarter of an inch, Kittell said. The chance of rain increases farther south, in Orange and San Diego counties, he said.

Forecasters are then predicting a warming trend, with high temperatures in most places expected to be in the mid-70s to upper 80s on Friday and Saturday.

There’s an additional chance of very light rain early next week, probably on Monday, Kittell said.

These storms may represent the last gasp of Southern California’s rainy season, which typically ends in April. So far, downtown L.A. has received roughly 18.98 inches of rain since Oct. 1, the start of the water year. That’s more than the 13.65 inches that is normal at this point in the year.

Still, California is enduring its second-worst snow drought in 50 years, which experts say is a sign of how rising temperatures from climate change are worsening the West’s long-term water supply problems.

Student journalists at the Redwood Bark at Redwood High School in Marin County aren’t alone in facing recent attempts to control student journalism.

Despite protections in a 1977 landmark state law, the Student Free Expression Act, which prohibits administrators from interfering with the gathering and publication of news, student reporters and their journalism advisers have encountered censorship attempts in recent years, including efforts to punish advisers for students’ stories and to remove content. In one case, a principal told them that their job was to paint the high school in a good light.

Examples include: 

San Francisco Unified School District

A Superior Court judge in January ordered the district to reinstate the journalism adviser at Lowell High School, Eric Gustafson, to his job after he was removed last year. San Francisco Unified School District officials argued they transferred Gustafson because they wanted someone in his post with more experience and more education. 

Gustafson claimed it was because of his students’ aggressive reporting and stories on topics such as student drug use and teachers’ use of AI in grading, and because he refused to let school officials see stories before they were published, court records show.

Judge Christine Van Aken called the district’s claims “not credible.” The court concluded that the “motivation for the district’s reassignment decision was to impact the editorial content of The Lowell in a way that they could not accomplish directly,” she wrote in her decision.

Mountain View Los Altos High School District 

In Silicon Valley, a trial is scheduled for November over a lawsuit brought in 2024 by a journalism adviser and former students against the Mountain View Los Altos High School District. It alleges a principal, Kip Glazer, “improperly pressured and intimidated” student reporters working on a story about student-on-student sexual harassment.

Glazer sought to “avoid embarrassment rather than uphold the constitutional and statutory right of her students and faculty,” the suit charges. Glazer allegedly told student journalists on Mountain View High School’s Oracle newspaper staff that their purpose was to be “uplifting” for the school and to portray it “in a positive light,” records show. 

“The power dynamic was pretty clear,” one of the students’ lawyers, Jordyn Ostroff, told EdSource. “I think anyone would understand that a student, generally speaking, would probably feel obligated to do what a principal is demanding they do.”

The suit also alleges that Glazer illegally removed Oracle’s adviser, Carla Gomez, from her post, replacing her with the school’s drama teacher. Gomez is suing to get her job back.

The former students are seeking an order from a judge that would “prevent future censorship of the paper. They also want to ensure journalism is still taught at Mountain View High, where the district has cut an introduction to journalism class.

The lawyer defending the district, Eric Bengston, declined to comment. 

Sacramento City Unified School District

In 2024, the district placed Samantha Archuleta, the journalism adviser to The Prospector newspaper at C.K. McClatchy High School, named for the long-time editor of the Sacramento Bee, on administrative leave after a reporter quoted a fellow student saying that Adolph “Hitler had some good ideas.”  

The comment was reportedly made in a government class and printed in a column entitled “What did you say?” about remarks overheard at school.

Student journalists at The Prospector — where the writer Joan Didion was once on staff — wrote on Instagram that the quote had not reflected their beliefs but “was included to spark a conversation on how students here choose to use their words.” 

In a June 2024 guest piece in The Sacramento Bee, Archuleta wrote that “students have rights that give them the first and last say in what is written, how it is edited and what gets published without prior restraint, censorship or punishment from me or any other adult so long as it is protected speech.” 

Numerous free press and student press groups pushed for her reinstatement. However, she left her position at McClatchy High.

Los Angeles Unified School District

In 2021, Los Angeles Unified brought a disciplinary case against Adriana Chavira, the journalism adviser at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School, after she refused to censor students reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic’s effect on the school. The school is named for the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was murdered by jihadist militants in Pakistan in 2002.  

The school newspaper, The Pearl Post, had reported that the school librarian had refused to receive the Covid vaccine, and the library had been closed as a result. The librarian, citing privacy, demanded that The Post remove her name from a story published online. Student journalists refused. The school principal gave Chavira a day to remove the name. It stayed up. The district then suspended her.

In an essay published on the website of her union, the United Teachers Los Angeles, Chavira wrote: “Removing the information would mean that I was censoring my journalism students. And that is something I would never do since that goes against everything I’ve taught my student journalists.” 

The disciplinary case was withdrawn in 2022. Chavira continues to advise the Pearl Post, and is on the board of the Student Press Law Center.