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Phoenix Rising, Skid Row team up for donation drive

By Andres de Ocampo LA Downtown News Contributing Writer hoenix Rising Worldwide and Operation Skid Row are hosting their first donation drive on Saturday, April 17, on San Pedro and Ninth streets.

Phoenix Rising Worldwide COO Tara Drafton is asking the public to donate whatever they can, “whether it’s their time, clothes, nonperishable foods.” For updates on the drive, text 213-290-3754 or email phxrising357@gmail.com.

“Anything you can donate would be greatly appreciated, even if it’s to just come down to say ‘hi.’”

She said Phoenix Rising Worldwide’s “mission is to provide service, ministry and ascension of self to the world.”

“We are trying to help people by uplifting them, ministering to them and providing them with services that are needed, like what we are doing with this donation drive,” she said.

“We will be supplying people with food, bottled water, tents, clothing, toiletry items, and things that they don’t have that is causing them to suffer.”

Co-founded by Brian Harper, Cedrick Drafton and Raphael Oliphant in January 2020, the West Covina-based organization chose its name recently.

Phoenix Rising Worldwide operations manager Helena Kimble founded Operation Skid Row, which focuses LA’s homeless crisis. Kimble did four donation-based drives in Skid Row before collaborating with Phoenix Rising Worldwide.

“This is not a formal nonprofit that is registered,” Kimble said about Operation Skid Row. “It’s something that I was passionate about. I work in Downtown LA, so driving in to work every day and seeing the Skid Row encampments made me decide that it was time to do something.”

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Kimble sought sponsorships and community involvement at that time and accepted secondary items, like clothing, tents, food and money.

“I was doing it on my own,” she said. “I would put out information saying that I would be handing out items to the homeless on a certain day, and then I would drive around LA County and pick up donations and then have a designated (donation) spot and give out the donations on that day.”

Before the drives, Kimble picked up donations in LA, Riverside and Orange counties. She compared her initial process to the “Midnight Mission where they put bags on the doors, people will fill them up and you have to go pick them up. That’s kind of the same type of tactic that I was using for these homeless drives.”

Kimble utilized social media and a customized flier, which her friends shared, to get the word out about the Operation Skid Row and Phoenix Rising Worldwide events.

The first four donation drives on San Pedro and Ninth streets were a success, Kimble said. She needed to work on organizational issues, however. She recalled her last donation drive on a rainy Christmas Eve. “I didn’t have an E-Z Up tent or anything,” she said. “I rented a 17-foot U-Haul truck and had items (to donate).”

The highest need in winter are blankets and jackets. Kimble said she impacted between 100 to 200 people in the Skid Row. “People were coming, and I was handing out blankets, unperishable food items like fruit cups, and tents. The items went very fast,” Kimble said.

Kimble collaborated with Phoenix Rising Worldwide because there’s strength in numbers. Harper made the initial contact about collaborating to make it more impactful. Kimble has since become the operations manager.

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Kimble and Tara hope the collaboration inspires other organizations to join them to make a bigger impact.

“We’re not just here to provide food and tents; we’re here to provide outreach and transitional services,” Kimble said.

The goal for those involved with Phoenix Rising Worldwide and Operation Skid Row is to help underserved people with bigger issues, like education, job transitional services and housing.

“That’s what Phoenix Rising Worldwide is about,” she said. “We’re here to help you with services to get you back on your feet permanently. It’s about long-term effects; that’s the bigger picture.”

Tara said that with Operation Skid Row she’s trying to make Phoenix Rising Worldwide a household name so the staff can help people overseas. Phoenix Rising Worldwide has other projects planned, and it is looking for sponsorships to fund them as well as other outreach and ministry services.

Phoenix Rising Worldwide received a large donation from an anonymous donor in New York for the April 17 donation drive.

The donor contacted Kimble after hearing

negative comments about her and the nonprofit on a podcast, she said.

The nonprofit is purchasing 10 acres of land in the Lake Tahoe area to build a sanctuary for women, which will be the organization’s first location. “It will be a place of healing for women who have suffered from sexual, mental and physical abuse,” she said.

“Women need these services. There are so many women who have been abused and don’t know where to go to recover.”

Kimble is ready to lobby and provide legal advocacy to hold local legislatures and elected officials accountable.

“I want to approach it from the legal side,” said Kimble, who wants to attack homelessness in Downtown LA “from the root.” “Operation Skid Row is not only here to serve the community but also to bring about awareness for how much the city is receiving to combat homelessness and why the funding is not getting to the people.

“I feel like, with the homelessness, it’s been a ‘their problem’ kind of thing. I feel like it’s the city that needs to take responsibility for what has happened with homelessness and what has been done about it.

That’s why Operation Skid Row is here.”

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Toyo Miyatake and the legacy of internment

By Andrew Checchia LA Downtown News Contributing Writer ttacks against Asian Americans are on the rise. From the high-profile Atlanta massage parlor shootings and the defacement of the Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo to the almost daily reports of ethnically targeted violence, this disturbing trend has shaken communities all over the United States.

Latent fear from the COVID-19 pandemic and misinformation about its Chinese origins have exacerbated existing prejudices, worsened by the economic desperation during widespread shutdowns. Los Angeles’ residents are now grappling with safety concerns amid a growing tide of racism, violence and the disturbing realities of culturally ingrained bigotry against Asian Americans.

Neighborhood leaders in Little Tokyo, including members of the Little Tokyo Historical Society (LTHS), are reckoning with this violence in myriad ways, but looking to history has been a useful guidepost to understand the delicate balance of action communities must strike when confronted with public fear. “(During) the pandemic, people have lost jobs, so they’re either angry or fearful. Our former president stupidly calls it the Chinese virus and exacerbates,” said Bill Watanabe, a member of the LTHS and former executive director of the Little Tokyo Service Center. “I’m sure there are many Asian Americans who are more fearful being out in public.”

For Japanese Americans in Little Tokyo, the story of fear is all too familiar. From February 1942 to March 1946, some 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps across the Western United States.

The incarceration was started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, passed in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The order allowed military officials to set up areas where “any or all persons may be excluded.” While not explicitly outlined in the law, the majority of these exclusion zones housed Japanese Americans living on the West Coast, with 10 major camps in California alone.

One of the most significant of these camps was Manzanar, located northeast of Los Angeles, a three-hour drive toward Death Valley.

At the camp, over 11,000 Issei, Nisei and Sansei (first-, second- and third- generation Japanese Americans) were interned for years, forcibly removed from their former lives.

A significant portion of the camp’s population came from Little Tokyo, which was, and is, the largest Japanese American community

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in the nation. Families in the neighborhood were suddenly forced to leave their homes and businesses behind — often with little to no warning — without any chance to safeguard their burgeoning livelihoods as established immigrants.

“We all came from somewhere. I think it’s important for people to know that there are roots, that a lot of people had to sacrifice and work hard to build what’s existing today,” said Watanabe on the efforts of the early generations of Japanese Americans in Little Tokyo.

“They say history is not about the past, it’s about the future.”

One such immigrant was Toyo Miyatake, a legendary 20th century photographer. He immigrated to the United States from Japan in 1909 and settled in Little Tokyo. While there, he got involved in the arts scene and trained as a photographer, initially taught by fellow immigrant Harry Shigeta. After working in the neighborhood for years, he set up his own studio in 1924, which quickly became a community institution. Families would come for portraits, wedding photos and all kinds of special events. Toyo would frequently be asked to photograph significant festivals and holidays, including the 1932 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.

“The first generation and their children are the ones who built Little Tokyo — like the Miyatakes with the Toyo Miyatake Studio,” said Mike Okamura, the president of the LTHS. Like the thousands of other Little Tokyo residents, Toyo also faced the suffocating reality of internment. Having run his studio for over a decade, he fully commanded the power of photography to catalogue and convey unique experiences. So, when the time came for him and his family to be shuttered off to Manzanar, he took an enormous risk — he snuck a camera lens and a film holder into the camp.

Despite only working with rudimentary workshops set up for the prisoners, Toyo enlisted the help of a carpenter friend in Manzanar to build a rudimentary wooden camera out of a threaded pipe and scrap wood. With that, he started documenting the daily life of the internment camp from an insider’s perspective.

“The reason that Toyo took the pictures was to document it so that things like this would never happen again,” said Alan Miyatake, Toyo’s grandson and a third-generation photographer at the Toyo Miyatake Studio.

But things weren’t that easy. Manzanar camp director Ralph P. Merritt quickly caught

A view of Toyo Miyatake Way, a small residential street dedicated to the photographer in 2011.

Submitted photos

wind of Toyo’s covert cataloguing given the communal nature of the camp, which included barrack-style sleeping arrangements and public latrines for every camp “block.” Merritt first became camp director during a period of intense conflict, which included an early incident of a riot that left two inmates dead, so he was particularly cautious of any unrest.

“It’s kind of embarrassing to poop alongside everybody else,” said Watanabe. “Photographs, I think, can add so much more to what camp life was like.”

For whatever reason — be it interest, sympathy or concern — Merritt agreed to let Toyo continue his efforts on one condition: He couldn’t “take the pictures.” So, with an arbitrary restriction preventing him from actually pressing the button to snap the camera’s shutter, Toyo led around a white assistant to create his arresting visual account of camp life in the early years of internment.

“The more (Toyo’s photos are) out in the public, the better for people to realize what happened,” Watanabe said. “Because there was no evidence of any kind of sabotage or espionage, it shows how thin the veneer of our constitutional rights can be.”

Toyo’s decision to put himself in harm’s way allowed him to record some of the most disturbing lessons of American history: When confronted by a threat too large to comprehend, like the Japanese Empire in World War II or a faceless pandemic, desperate people become irrational. He understood this in the face of dehumanization. An inscription underneath a public memorial for Toyo on a street named after him in Little Tokyo even stresses that his photos were taken “so this kind of injustice never happens again.”

“Personally I love old photographs. There’s a sense that these photos are very real and catalogue what happened on a daily basis. If you’re young and want to get a sense of what was really going on (during internment), they are a great place to start,” Watanabe said.

“Toyo, he was an insider. Taking (thousands of ) pictures as an inmate. Ansel Adams and Dorthia Lang were also both commissioned to take pictures in Manzanar.”

Those other famous photographers were brought in by the American government and Merritt in later years to document camp life, but they were commissioned to highlight

“American loyalty” in a twisted effort to portray internment as a kind of patriotic sacrifice.

In reality, the lives of Japanese Americans in the camps were strange perversions of the American experience.

“Thankfully, because of Alan’s grandfather, they knew that this was a historic moment.

They had to record it; they had to document it for broader American society to know what it was actually like to be in a camp,” said Okamura.

Though not always tragically difficult — with couples falling in love, students continuing their education at every school level, and life loosely resembling some kind of neighborhood structure — the dehumanizing distrust of internment permeated every second of life in the camps. It was that feeling, the inescapable injustice of the situation, that Toyo’s photos captured. “(The Japanese in the internment camps) always looked at the positive side,” Alan said. “They have this term called ‘shikata ga nai’ — suck it up, make the best of it, we’ll make it through it. I think with that attitude they were able to survive those terrible conditions and make it through.”

That mentality also meant that upon their return to Los Angeles many former internees were reluctant to share their experiences. As such, younger generations only heard loose anecdotes or veiled references to the struggle of their parents and grandparents. This left a gap in history that many Little Tokyo locals still reckon with.

“We talked about (internment), but not all families talk openly about it. There are many who refuse to talk about it,” Alan said.

“With this legacy my grandfather has left, my family has always talked about it. I always would take my parents to Manzanar when they were alive. About 10 years ago, I was taking a picture and they said, ‘You wouldn’t be here if not for this. We met at Manzanar.’”

The legacy of internment still haunts the community. Families of the formerly interned organize popular yearly pilgrimages to Manzanar (though interrupted by the pandemic) to keep in touch with their history. And as recently as last year, there were even class reunions for the students at Manzanar’s junior high. Co-hosted by Okamura

APRIL 12, 2021

at a Buddhist temple in Boyle Heights, the 90-odd-year-old former grade schoolers reminisced about the strange circumstances of their formative childhood years and shared stories with the community.

After being so intimately acquainted with the violations of dignity that fear can spawn, these people were quick to action when national crises hit. Universally, people in the community connected internment and the current uptick in Asian American violence to the racial prejudice that surged against Muslims after 9/11.

“You’re finding that the fourth generation, they are becoming more interested in their legacy from the grandparents and great-grandparents,” Okamura said. “(After 9/11), we did not want to see that scapegoating without any due process of law, that this could become another internment. That’s where I think the Japanese American community said, ‘We can’t see this happen again. We will not let it happen again.’”

This mirrors efforts even during internment. For example, universities were pressured by anti-internment advocates (composed of church groups, charities, concerned neighbors and more) to admit Japanese American students despite concerns of their removal, giving a few young adults chances at a “normal” life during a period of intense fear.

Now the youngest generations in Little Tokyo and Los Angeles are grappling with

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the potentially corrupting power of public fear during the pandemic. Community leaders, including members of the LTHS, are seeing significant increases in interest among young people as they start advocating for struggling neighbors during the pandemic. As much as fear — a fear deeply understood in the shadow of internment — can sow irrational violence, it can also inspire humanity. It connects the sympathetic and the threatened.

“I think that’s why it’s even more important that I try to keep my grandfather’s work exposed,” Alan said about the power of history to lead people through crises. “It’s an important issue that shouldn’t be forgotten.”

Toyo’s legacy looms large over this current crisis of Asian American violence. As a role model for advocates, artists and historians, his photographs continue to provide an understanding window into the impact of hatred decades after the end of Japanese internment. His life story also shows how an individual can bend history’s long arc, even in the face of a seemingly insurmountable public trend. While the current fear-bred violence doesn’t look exactly like governmentally mandated exclusion, the same lessons of human dignity provide insight into how personal advocacy can fight against racist violence.

“Fear can make people do unwise things,” said Watanabe on the lessons from Toyo’s legacy. “The camp is an example of what fear can cause people to do.”

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An inscription and memorial for Toyo Miyatake on his namesake street along the side of the Sakura Crossing apartment building.

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Asian violence leads to 60-city demonstration

By Andres de Ocampo LA Downtown News Contributing Writer iolent attacks on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have sparked outrage throughout the county, leading a string of demonstrations to “Stop Anti-Asian Violence” on March 27.

Sixty cities gathered nationally after shootings in Atlanta left eight dead, six of whom were Asian women. Downtown Los Angeles was among the cities to demonstrate.

The protest’s organizer, ANSWER Coalition, stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.

ANSWER’s local chair, Sheila Xiao, also founded Pivot to Peace. She said the 1,000-person protest started at Downtown LA’s City Hall, then moved to the Japanese American National Museum, Edward R. Roybal Federal Building and finished at the Chinese American Museum.

The speakers at City Hall included: • Lydia Ponce, organizer with American Indian Movement.

• Pastor Stephen “Cue” Jn-Marie with Creating Justice LA and The Church Without Walls.

• Sheila Xiao, chair and organizer with ANSWER Coalition Los Angeles and Pivot to Peace.

• Jonathan Kim, organizer with ANSWER Coalition.

• Maxine Garcia with Codepink.

• David Monkawa with PANA or Progressive Asian Network for Action.

• Juan Jose with Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition.

• Jackie Fernandez, a two-time Emmy-winning news anchor.

• Kameron Hurt, co-chair and organizer with ANSWER Coalition.

• Marissa Sanchez, organizer with ANSWER Coalition.

The racially diverse mix of speakers and protestors was powerful to Xiao as well as many other attendees.

“There were people from the Black community, the immigrant rights community, the Latino community, so many different types of people who understand that this is just another wave of violence against an oppressed group of people,” she said.

“That’s what the Chinese American and the Asian American community needs right now — solidarity.”

The gathered crowd shouted affirmative words and phrases during the speeches at City Hall and en route to each stop, chant-

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ing things like “Hey hey, ho ho, Asian hatred’s got to go” and “Asian community’s under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back.” Passing cars’ drivers honked in support.

Speeches like Xiao’s triggered the riled reception.

“We are here today because we are outraged at the violence facing our community, and words cannot describe the pain I felt the day women from my community were killed at the hands of a white supremacist,” Xiao said.

“The audacity for the racist (Georgia) Sheriff Jay Baker to say that this was the result of a bad day and that the shooter was eliminating his sex addiction by killing women, well, is that not a hate crime? We’re going to call it what it is; it is a (expletive) hate crime!”

Xiao touched on many points in her speech, including how women — especially Asian women — are treated and how the current rise in hostility toward Asians and Asian Americans came to be.

During an interview with LA Downtown News, Xiao said, “When Atlanta happened, that was the tipping point. It was specifically Asian women (targeted), and my heart sank into my stomach because it’s a culmination of how Asian women are viewed in U.S. society. We’re not only fetishized but we’re seen as passive sex objects. It was heartbreaking and outraging.”

Some protestors in the crowd carried signs that said “I don’t like Asian women being fetishized” and “I am not your fetish.”

These signs were among many others that said “Stop Attacks on Asian Women Now!” and “Stop Asian Hate.”

As the co-founder for Pivot to Peace, Xiao said she believes the organization is a natural partnership between a traditional anti-war movement and the Chinese American community, which is direly affected by the violence against Asian peoples.

“During the Obama administration, when U.S. foreign policy shifted toward China, I sort of knew it was only a matter of time until Chinese Americans were next,” Xiao said.

Xiao is referencing the Obama administration’s “pivot to the Asia-Pacific” that was announced in the fall of 2011, which is a U.S. foreign policy, national security and economic interest shift away from the Middle East toward Asia, with China being a major stakeholder, according to a 2012 Congressional Research Service document.

ANSWER Coalition organized a DTLA protest against anti-Asian violence on March 27.

Photo by Andres de Ocampo

“As someone who has been in the movement for almost a decade now, I really had to stand up and speak out for my community. Also, not just for my community but to galvanize people outside of the Asian American community, too. We’re only stronger if we stand shoulder to shoulder against racism,” Xiao said.

Xiao’s personal stake in the stand against Asian American violence and hostility, like many others at the protest, is in her family.

“To see all of the attacks on Asian elders is heartbreaking,” said Xiao, whose father worked in Chinese restaurants.

“It makes me think of my parents and my grandma. It’s because of this racist characterizing of what COVID is and who is more likely to have it, which is all false. That affected Chinese businesses, and it’s heartbreaking understanding how Chinese restaurants are some of the only options Chinese immigrants have to survive in U.S. society.”

ANSWER Coalition organizer Jonathan Kim noticed the diverse crowd.

“We feel really great about the turnout today,” Kim said. “We feel like the community showed up. There were a lot of first-generation Asian Americans who I saw and a lot of elders who I saw, who you normally don’t see at protests. Also, a lot of people of different races (and backgrounds), you definitely saw the community show up in numbers.”

LA County-born Wes Uchida, 56, is a Japanese American who attended the ANSWER protest. He said he does not normally attend protests but that “all the recent attacks on minorities” pushed him to take action.

“All of the hatred that’s been going on, all

of the things my grandparents had to endure during World War II in the imprisonment camps,” Uchida said with heavy emotion. “I don’t call them internment; I call it imprisonment camps.”

He was also inspired to attend because of the George Floyd killing.

“Wrong is wrong,” he said. “It feels good to see people come out.”

As far as Asian Americans, and racism, he said, “We need to no longer be the silent minority. We need to stand up against what’s wrong. Any racism is wrong. We all need to stand together, because we’re all one race — the human race.”

Eve Chen, 24, is a Chinese American who drove from the Inland Empire to attend.

She read about the ANSWER Coalition rally on social media.

“It’s absolutely personal,” Chen said about her reasons for attending. “I’m out here for myself and everyone else out here. I’m here for my mom, who is the same age as some of the women who were killed in Atlanta, as well as my sister, who is 1 years old.”

This marked Chen’s first Asian anti-hate protest, but she attended four Black Lives Matter protests last summer.

“I don’t want to compare two movements, but when I showed up in support of Black Lives Matter, it was a different kind of movement for me,” Chen said.

“It was myself trying to stay firmly in my lane and allow the people who are closer to the issue be out in the front of it, and I was just there to back them up. But, coming to something like this, where it affects me personally, it was a different kind of feeling.”

Chen became emotional when she showed up to City Hall, she said. “I remem-

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ber walking in at 12:15 p.m., right when they started, and 100 people showed up. I could not stop crying. … Seeing all these people come out and support, it is absolutely moving.”

Xiao noted she hopes the media stops perpetuating the Black and Asian conflicts.

“We made a point to combat that (at the protest). It’s a racist system that perpetuates violence on both communities. There has always been Black and Asian solidarity,” Xiao said.

Xiao hopes the movement for anti-Asian violence continues to see the support among different races and ethnicities.

“It doesn’t happen one way,” she said.

“When we look at the 2020 (Black Lives Matter) uprisings last summer, it was very multinational and multiracial. People from different backgrounds, including the Asian community, came out against police violence on the Black community.”

ANSWER Coalition Los Angeles co-Chair Kameron Hurt stressed the importance of Black and Asian unity. Hurt drew parallels between African American and Asian American history, both abroad and domestic.

“When we faced the brutality of chattel slavery right here in the Americas, they faced the brutality of the opium wars, of colonization,” Hurt said. “The blood of both of our peoples stains every part of this country, where our people have been abused.

“We have to think about the fact that so many Black (soldiers) defected in Korea and Vietnam because they knew the Korean and Vietnamese people were not the enemy.

“Our blood is intertwined right here and always has been, from the Black Panthers until now. The truth is: The fight against imperialism has no borders.”

Hurt connected the historic parallels and said the violence and racism we see in the United States is directly connected to the country’s wars abroad.

“That’s why they push division at a time like this. They want us to turn on each other,” Hurt said.

He was impressed by the turnouts at Black Lives Matter protests.

“I saw people of every single background in the streets, and that is what scares the imperialists: when they see that people are becoming conscious,” Hurt said. “When I say imperialists, I mean the people who are sending young folks to die and kill oppressed people in other countries to make the oil, gun and bomb industries rich.”

To close, Hurt left the audience with a reminder that “we have more in common with Chinese, Korean, South Asian, African and Latin American workers than we ever will with a CEO, white supremacist and war profiteer. So, like the Illinois chairman of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton, used to say, ‘Let’s fight racism with solidarity.’”

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A variety of people spoke at City Hall during the March 27 protest, which gathered 1,000 people.

Photo by Andres de Ocampo

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News Briefs

By Christina Fuoco-Karasinski LA Downtown News Executive Editor

Angels Flight supports Angels Landing Angels Landing has garnered the support of the Angels Flight Railway Foundation, the nonprofit organization charged with stewardship of Downtown Los Angeles’ historic 298foot, fixed-rail, two-car railway serving passengers on Bunker Hill since 1901.

Hal Bastian, president, Angels Flight Railway Foundation, wrote in a letter to LA City Planning Department leaders, “We support the Angels Landing project and urge the city to approve it. The Angels Flight Railway Foundation will be a next-door neighbor to the project, which will provide certain community benefits to the railway, including being respectful of vistas of the railway from multiple points on and around the project.”

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“We believe the anticipated flow of Angels Landing’s hotel guests and Angels Landing Plaza’s visitors will be of benefit to the railway’s daily operations,” MacFarlane said.

“We’re pleased the Angels Flight Railway Foundation shares our belief.”

Angels Landing will have two towers, each to be anchored by a five-star hotel. The development will feature Angels Landing Plaza, an expansive, pedestrian-centered, transit-adjacent, modern urban park in the heart of Downtown LA. According to an analysis prepared by BJH Advisors LLC, more than 8,300 new jobs will be created during Angels Landing’s project design and construction. The New York Citybased firm’s report estimates Angels Landing would additionally create more than 800 permanent jobs in Downtown LA. An estimated 500 jobs would be created by vendors in the LA County region providing goods and services to the two luxury hotels.

In addition to new job creation, the BJH Advisors analysis projects Angels Landing would provide LA’s local economy a $1.6 billion boost and contribute $731 million to local workers’ earnings during its construction.

The project would generate as estimated $12 million in recurring tax revenues and $2.4 million annually in local property tax revenues, according to the report.

APRIL 12, 2021

Angels Landing Plaza will frame the angular, multilevel Bunker Hill site as a publicly accessible, privately managed park amenity, establishing it as a vibrant, inviting and treasured locale for LA’s Downtown neighborhood residents, weekday commuters, nightlife seekers, tourists and hotel guests. LA’s historic Angel’s Flight funicular will operate along its hillside-climbing, east-west route contiguous to the Angels Landing.

Downtown’s vulnerable residents vaccinated Dignity Health-California Hospital Medical Center vaccinated 1,000 vulnerable residents in Downtown Los Angeles.

Esperanza de Anaya, a 93-year-old DTLA resident, was one of many patients to receive their first dose during a two-day Pfizer clinic held over the weekend.

“Vaccinating those most at risk of severe COVID that don’t normally have consistent access to health care is our top priority,” said Alina Moran, CHMC Hospital president.

“Being in Downtown LA, the surrounding neighborhoods have suffered the worst of it.

We know that our communities of color are disproportionately impacted, and we are doing our part to help save lives.”

CHMC has administered nearly 10,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to health care workers and high-risk eligible members of the community since vaccines became available.

APRIL 12, 2021

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DOWNTOWNNEWS.COM

DOWNTOWN NEWS 9

Covered California will help COVID COUNT Reported cases in DTLA and surrounding areas as of April 4 Chinatown: 720; Little Tokyo: 389; Los Feliz: 1,031; Silverlake: 3,144; South Park: 7,286; Wilshire Center: 5,529 Total confirmed cases in DTLA: 3,926 Total deaths in DTLA: 51 Total confirmed cases in LA County: 1,222,778 Total deaths in LA County: 23,292 Health officials have loosened travel guidelines as Los Angeles County advances into the orange tier of the reopening plan on April 5. There has been a 97% drop in the number of new coronavirus cases reported each day, and the seven-day average is now under 400 per day compared to 14,200 daily cases on Jan. 5. Hospitalizations are also down by 92% compared to the beginning of the year, and deaths have decreased by 92% from 252 deaths per day to nine. Travelers who are now fully vaccinated are not required to get

tested or quarantine when returning to Los Angeles County. All travelers must quarantine if they begin to show illness, and nonessential travel is still discouraged.

Los Angeles County may be at risk of a fourth coronavirus wave in some places with new variants. The UK variant continues to surge, while the first cases of the Brazilian and South African variants have been detected in Los Angeles. The county has received nearly 400,000 vaccines to administer this week, including 118,000 Johnson & Johnson doses. More than 100,000 doses will go to centers and clinics serving the communities that have been hit hardest by the pandemic. An additional 54,000 will be going to mobile vaccination efforts in Los Angeles. The county is also planning on receiving $15 million in state funding to expand vaccine administration in vulnerable areas.

Grants of $250,000 to $500,000 will be

given to clinics, community organizations, home health care agencies and mobile vaccinators to increase vaccine capacity.

Los Angeles County’s decline in new COVID-19 cases has stalled. The county will not be able to advance to the yellow tier for at least three weeks. Los Angeles County’s seven-day average is at 3.1 per 100,000 residents, the same as the previous week. Advancing to the yellow tier requires an average of less than 1 per 100,00 residents. The threshold was eased April 6 to less than 2 per 100,000 residents for two consecutive

weeks because the state met the goal of 4 million COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in low-income communities. However, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state officials announced April 6 that they may be eliminating the tier systems and restrictions if there are a steady vaccine supply and no spikes in hospitalizations. The vaccine supply has been slowly increasing in the state, but Los Angeles County needs an average of 576,000 doses per week to have 80% of the resident population, 16 years and older, vaccinated by the end of June.

—Compiled by staff writer Doyoon Kim

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Covered California will help OPINION

APRIL 12, 2021

KIRK’S OPINION

Family planning never goes out of fashion

By Ellen Snortland LA Downtown News Columnist

“I

can’t believe I’m still marching about this!” is one of my favorite signs seen at the marches I’ve attended over the last few years. “This” applies to various issues, like access to health care, ending sexism and racism, and reproductive rights.

Reproductive freedom is at the core of every human’s life: Whether to have a child or not is fundamental. This may seem obvious, except that there is a rabid and vociferous segment of our country that will not rest until they’ve “wrested” family planning from the rest of us.

They are not content to practice their own dictates; instead, they want to impose their beliefs on everyone. They will not stop at banning abortion either — by their own admission, they will ceaselessly try to eradicate all forms of birth control. If that happens … bam! We’ll be slammed back to the 1950s.

My husband and I are now fans of, and latecomers to, CTM: “Call the Midwife.” This stellar British show, which began in 2012 and is still going strong, is initially set in the late 1950s. If you haven’t yet seen it, I highly recommend that you watch it and encourage others to do so. You and they will get a close-up and personal reminder of what reproductive tyranny looks like. As in other private areas of life, women and girls pay the consequences when it comes to unplanned, unwanted or dangerous child bearing.

Briefly, CTM is set in the hardscrabble post-WWII world of Poplar, a neighborhood in East London. It’s such a depressed area economically that there’s still rubble from the blitzkriegs of the mid-’40s. Many tenements are dilapidated and uninhabitable, yet they are teeming with people of all ages and backgrounds. Although poor and barely scraping by, many of these people have huge families. Central to the story is a local Anglican convent of nuns who are also midwives; they are joined by a coterie of lay nurses/midwives. Anglicans didn’t have the same “no, no, no!” about family planning that the Catholics continue to have. The series is often tragic, interspersed with blessed oases of absurdity and comedy.

Why do I suggest you and others watch the show? You’ll see in no uncertain terms what happens when females don’t have a say in the whom, what, where, when and why of having kids. The only “family planning” the people of East London had were

the old standbys: unreliable condoms and the “rhythm method,” aka The Babymaker.

And if the man said, “We are having more kids,” they did — end of story.

The late, great Florynce Kennedy said, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” As it is, men are often still not held accountable for the pregnancy they wholeheartedly participated in. Good men have always done the “decent” thing (also the plot of a particular episode), and yet … when I’ve defended family planning clinics, we always have a lousy showing of those “decent” men. How on earth can men keep thinking that reproductive freedom is a “women’s issue?”

If I had a magic wand, I would make sure the men in my life not only watch CTM but attend “women’s marches.” I would make witnessing the pain and ecstasy of a live childbirth a mandatory class in junior high for both boys and girls. They would come away with more respect for the possible consequences of having sex and a heightened appreciation of birth control!

I have personally seen two births. They were awe-inspiring, magnificent, splendid and majestic, as well as an apt demonstration of women’s courage and sheer grit.

Given that, I wonder why realistic depictions of birth in mass entertainment have been and continue to be such a rarity. There have been a gazillion scenes of violence, fighting and the “glories” of war, featuring gore galore. And yet we deem the miracle of a birth to be either too much to witness or make it the butt of jokes? Really? Well, move over, boys, and let the real glory take center stage for once, as CTM shows birthing in all its suffering and grandeur on almost every episode.

It infuriates me that women are often regarded, with a few exceptions, as weak and namby-pamby. After watching CTM, that notion is out the window. So, the next time you meet a mother, or you are regarding your own mom, remember that she’s a veteran of the battle for your life or someone else’s. She deserves a medal — or a chest full of them.

As we observe the continuing attempts at overturning Roe v. Wade, I’ll once again be out there with my sign. One that will probably say, “I can’t believe I’m still marching about this.”

Ellen Snortland has “birthed” a column continuously since the early ’90s. She also coaches writers. Contact her at ellen@ authorbitebybite.com.

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Covered California will help OPINION

A plausible solution to LA’s homeless problem

By Ralph E. Shaffer Guest Columnist

L

os Angeles Councilmember Mike Bonin believes the city’s homeless ought to be moved to the Westside beaches, a proposal that has aroused opposition from beachgoers, coastal residents and the homeless themselves.

Bonin’s proposal won’t fly, but give him credit for a novel idea, which is what is needed to deal with a crisis that only gets worse. In fact, it seems to worsen in proportion to the money taxpayers willingly vote to eliminate the problem.

The Los Angeles city controller recognized this in 2019 when that office issued an audit critical of the major player in the “End Homelessness” scam. We should remember that it isn’t just LA city funds that are supporting the dozens of nonprofits that have sprung up in response to the homeless problem. This is now a multibillion-dollar industry that feeds on an ever-available supply of folks without a home, apartment or shelter in which to throw their sleeping bags.

When there are no homeless, what happens to the nonprofits and to their wellpaid executives? Not to worry. The homeless problem isn’t going away. The more of our money they spend, the larger the number of homeless in LA grows.

Los Angeles Homeless Services Agency (LAHSA), the umbrella for about 100 nonprofits — and for the contractors, landlords and others milking taxpayers for every penny of the approximately $5 billion in bonds and taxes city and county voters have approved — manages and coordinates about $800 million in homeless funds annually.

Does that group really want the homeless to disappear?

The homeless problem easily divides into two issues. One: finding shelter in any number of forms for those who really want it. And two: dealing with the free spirits, whose lifestyle is such that they reject the discipline and bureaucracy of public housing in any manner.

LAHSA isn’t going to solve that second problem. The free spirits encamped in the Sepulveda Basin, the LA River bed near Frogtown, or their Santa Ana River cousins aren’t about to move into “bridge housing” unless it’s under a bridge on one of the rivers or an underpass beneath a freeway.

These souls relish the freedom that comes from pitching their tents or crawling under a tarp. They don’t understand or care about

the esoteric terminology used by LAHSA to describe in academic terms the process of resolving the homeless issue. These folks want to be homeless.

Let LAHSA help the father who can’t pay the rent and whose family has been forced onto the street or into their car for shelter, or the single mother whose income is too low to pay rent, no matter how low the rent.

LAHSA can also be right at home providing services for the alcoholics or mentally ill on Skid Row, but others living there are more akin to their counterparts living in the riverbed but who like the hustle and bustle of the city rather than the call of nature primeval.

LAHSA doesn’t have to worry about working itself out of the job of managing all that taxpayer money. As the annual census of the unhoused reveals, no matter how many LAHSA finds shelter for, another homeless person takes his or her place.

As the great book says, “The homeless you have with you always.” Or something like that.

But what about the homeless who won’t accept LAHSA’s aid, those living in our ur-

ban wilderness? That’s where a plausible alternative to Bonin’s proposal fits in. Here’s the pathway to abolition of those permanent encampments not only in the real wilderness but in parks, vacant lots and the front yard of that empty house on your street.

LAHSA hasn’t accomplished much toward relieving that particular homeless problem, even with that $400 million in homeless money that it oversees each year — your federal, state, county and city taxes, of course. So let’s consider something really radical, something that Jonathan Swift might have suggested were he here today.

No, we don’t have to eat the homeless, nor do we sell them to rich barons. There’s another way.

Background: In 1909, Thomas Dixon, who is associated with “Birth of a Nation” and other white supremacist, pro-Klan stories of that era, wrote an anti-socialist novel, “Comrades,” in which a wealthy sympathizer bought an island off the coast of Ventura and settled a band of socialists there. In the end, the colony failed. But it provides grist for today’s mill.

Let’s buy one of those channel islands and settle the free spirit homeless out there.

We shouldn’t even have to spend a dollar of LAHSA’s annual $400 million. As in the novel, entice some wealthy leftist to put up the purchase money. If George Soros can spend millions promoting migrant caravans from Central America to the United States, he ought to be willing to help our own dispossessed. Surely $100 million ought to be enough to get the feds to relinquish their sole possession of San Miguel Island, which

DOWNTOWN NEWS 11

is now largely an uninhabited national park.

Clean out the nests of settlers in Sepulveda Basin. Move ‘em out of the LA River bed.

Clean up their mess along the Santa Ana River. If they want to live in the wild, so be it, but not in our wilds.

How will they survive on San Miguel?

Fishing is good there. How about abalone and clams? They can grow vegetables and raise chickens and rabbits.

Some of the residents will probably receive pensions or welfare checks, with which they can buy supplies from the mainland. The colony will need a post office, which will give employment to those who want it, and the county will have to establish a minor medical clinic as well. But keep civilization to a minimum. That’s what these folks have been espousing by living in the thickets along our rivers.

That ought to appeal to this group of homeless. It wouldn’t be a solution for those with alcoholic or drug addiction, or to those with other physical ailments. They would still need LAHSA. The panhandling will decrease, as will burglary and robbery caused by the free spirits. Trails through the riverbed will be safe for your kids to walk once more. And if it rains again, we won’t have to risk the lives of first responders to get those encamped on flood-prone terrain in Frogtown to move.

This is surely the modern equivalent of Swift’s “Modest Proposal.” But unlike his satirical essay on eating poor Irish children, some will see this idea as one that really is a possibility.

Ralph E. Shaffer is professor emeritus of history at Cal Poly Pomona.

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APRIL 12, 2021

DTLA IS OPEN DTLA Dinner Club returns after COVID-19 hiatus

By Annika Tomlin LA Downtown News Staff Writer osh Gray-Emmer started a pet project in 2011: having his friends over for dinner every Wednesday for a year.

A decade later, DTLA Dinner Club is returning Wednesday, May 19, after a year-long hiatus due to COVID-19.

“Last year was the first year, even though it didn’t happen, that we had all 20 chefs lined up before Dinner Club even started,” Gray-Emmer said. “We had a wait list of seven chefs who wanted to cook who I didn’t have spaces for. I’m just super excited to be back this year.”

To increase comfort, Gray-Emmer is remodeling his roof.

DTLA Dinner Club invites 30 Downtown Los Angeles residents to a free five-course (or more) meal along with alcoholic drinks.

Gray-Emmer said he likes to mix up his dinner partners.

“It’s 15 regulars and 15 strangers,” Gray-Emmer said. “I always try and mix it so we have

J

15 people who have been before and know what to expect and kind of have that vibe and 15 people who are new and keep it fun and exciting.”

The night begins with pre-dinner drinks and socializing at Gray-Emmer’s loft. Then they head to the penthouse for dinner.

One of Gray-Emmer’s first celebrity chefs was Ilan Hall from “Top Chef,” who opened his restaurant The Gorbals across the street from him.

“I was a fanboy from ‘Top Chef’ and I was over (at The Gorbals), and it was super fun,” Gray-Emmer said. “I loved Ilan and his whole team over there. He offered to cook here, and he was our first big celebrity chef to cook for Dinner Club, and he had a lot of fun.

“He ended up bringing a lot of friends. Jason Fullilove, who was there at The Gorbals at the time, is now a big chef in his own right and has been cooking seven or eight times now for Dinner Club over the years.”

Other chefs who have stopped by include

Cal State DTLA

Earn an MBA in just 16 months

By LA Downtown News Staff Stay competitive and relevant in the workplace. Apply by Friday, May 28, for the fully employed MBA (FEMBA) program at Cal State LA Downtown, conveniently located in the heart of the Financial District.

The FEMBA program allows students to earn their degree in 16 months, permitting working executives and professionals to build upon their experience, enhance Cal State LA Downtown is located at the their leadership, analytic and com- corner of Eighth Street and Grand Avenue munication skills. It also makes an in the heart of Los Angeles. impact on their careers in an in- (Photo courtesy of Cal State LA Downtown) creasingly global economy.

The accredited FEMBA program features a hybrid curriculum schedule that includes Saturday class meetings, schedule is subject to change. The classes are taught by accomplished Cal State LA faculty. Interactive class projects allow professional networking opportunities. In addition, financial assistance is available.

The FEMBA program is ideal for individuals who have earned their undergraduate degrees in the fields like business, marketing, economics, engineering, math/ statistics and science. It is also ideal for mid-career business professionals with three to five years of work experience and seeking to advance their careers.

Plan to participate in a live or prerecorded webinar. Each provides FEMBA program, application and financial assistance information. Visit calstatela.edu/dtla to learn more.

This fall, individuals are invited to increase their future earning potential and fulfill their professional aspirations at Cal State LA Downtown.

ADVERTORIAL

DTLA Dinner Club held its last dinner on Jan. 22, 2020, with Sake Dojo as the lead chefs.

Photo courtesy of Josh Gray-Emmer

“Hell’s Kitchen” season 12 winner Scott Commings, celebrity chef Sami Udell, and “Next Food Network Star” Arnold Myint.

While the official list of chefs for this year’s Dinner Club is still being finalized, Gray-Emmer promises the first chef will be “someone really awesome” and that “all of our chefs are incredible.”

“I love supporting Downtown Los Angeles,” Gray-Emmer said. “I’ve been on Spring Street personally since 2002.

“I love this historic port. I love our neighborhood. I love all the people here. Some people have their doubts or reservations if it will come back (after COVID-19); I have none of those — none whatsoever. We are going to be an incredible metropolitan community for many years to come.”

He has a special sponsor, too.

“I’m really excited for this year because we got J&J Distributors as a sponsor. I’ve never had a meat and seafood sponsor before, and J&J provides restaurants with Wagyu beef, lobster and incredible proteins, and all my chefs will get to choose from those proteins this year.”

Additional sponsors include Brookfield Properties and Halo DTLA. That allows the event to be free for everyone. Gray-Emmer hopes to feature a “few of the chefs from the new Halo complex.”

“I really try to promote the chefs with what they are doing and take great pictures,” Gray-Emmer said.

Gray-Emmer expects RSVPs for the May 19 dinner to open the first week of May, pending possible new COVID-19 regulations. He expects Los Angeles to “move into another tier by the end of the month.” Registrations can be made at dtladinnerclub.com.

“You do have to live in Downtown Los Angeles or be kind of a contributing member to the community to attend,” Gray-Emmer said.

“The whole point is to give people a chance to meet their neighbors.”

Guests must apply to attend. The two-part application requires the guest’s name and a short biography.

“I really want to create a great experience,” said Gray-Emmer, who handwrites the seating chart.

“The goal is to be able to meet and make long-lasting friendships at Dinner Club with people that live near so it’s people that they can see regularly. It’s really important that people complete the full application so that I can do the best job seating everyone.”

He doesn’t want folks in the same industry “talking shop” and leaving out other guests.

While seating is limited, reservations are on a first-come, first-served basis. Gray-Emmer sends an email to people who have already submitted an application saying that “reservations are going to open at this date, at this time, first-come, first-served,” allowing everyone an equal opportunity.

“For this year, at least for right now, we are going to have to adhere to the event components to the COVID protocols,” Gray-Emmer said.

“That basically means that everyone will need to be fully vaccinated — two weeks after their second dose, if they got Pfizer or Moderna, or 28 days after the (single) dose if they got Johnson & Johnson, or a negative test from the previous 24 hours. Other than that, I am trying to bring it back just like it was before — 30 guests every single week all summer long or at least into November or however long the weather allows us to.”

DTLA Dinner Club dtladinnerclub.com

APRIL 12, 2021

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DTLA IS OPEN

APRIL 12, 2021

Spire 73 reopens to guests and locals alike April 9, featuring a seasonal menu of culinary expressions and a wide selection of top-shelf whiskey and next-level cocktails.

(Photo courtesy of InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown)

Renowned views meet remarkable culinary fare, reopening this month

By LA Downtown News Staff Spire 73, located atop the 73rd floor of InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown, reopens to guests and locals alike on Friday, April 9.

Just in time for rooftop season, take in breathtaking, unrivaled views of the city from the tallest open-air bar in the Western Hemisphere while indulging on a seasonal menu of culinary expressions, from entrees like sauteed Mediterranean bass and filet frites to sweet desserts like chocolate truffle cake or créme brulée cheesecake. Guests will also choose from a wide selection of top-shelf whiskey and next-level cocktails, such as the Orion’s Paloma, perfect to complete your night under the stars.

This dining experience will allow guests to dine socially distant with an updated layout and the implementation of additional safety/ cleanliness procedures such as temperature checks upon arrival and

required face masks when not seated. Spire 73 will open at 5 p.m. daily, and guests can book reservations directly through OpenTable.

Come April 16, Dekkadance also reopens to the public, serving à la carte breakfast and lunch options daily. Located on the 69th floor of InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown, Dekkadance is the perfect place to enjoy a hearty breakfast, a light snack or chef-inspired lunch in a casual setting while taking in the views. Do takeout or linger longer while sipping on a specialty coffee or glass of wine at the Barista Bar. Whatever your mood, Dekkadance can accommodate.

To all those who hunger for more, now is your time to savor something truly transcendent, one remarkable course at a time, at InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown.

For more information, visit dtla.intercontinental.com/ downtown-la-restaurants.

Dekkadance also reopens to the public April 16, serving à la carte breakfast and lunch options daily.

(Photo courtesy of InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown) ADVERTORIAL

3D_logo1_CMYK_LP_LADOWN.eps

DTLA IS OPEN

APRIL 12, 2021

DOWNTOWN NEWS 15

Spire 73 Reopening April 9

Dekkadance Reopening April 16

FE AST ON FA R MORE TH AN THE VIEW. Starting this month, we invite all those who hunger for more to savor something truly transcendent while soaring high above the L.A. skyline.

Just in time for rooftop season, take in a breathtaking, open-air panorama at Spire 73 with a dining experience that offers up a seasonal menu of culinary expressions, from entrées like sautéed Mediterranean bass and filet frites to indulgent desserts like truffle cake and crème brûlée cheesecake.

If it’s a hearty breakfast, a gourmet lunch, or simply a light snack you’re in the mood for, you’ll find it on the 69th floor at Dekkadance, where freshly prepared pizzas, rotisserie chicken, salads, burgers, and more can be ordered to go or enjoyed tableside complete with an elevated perspective of the city.

Whatever you’re craving, come indulge it in a place where unrivaled views meet an unparalleled culinary experience, at InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown.

intercontinental.com dtla.intercontinental.com 213.688.7777

16 DOWNTOWN NEWS

DTLA IS OPEN

APRIL 12, 2021

DTLA IS OPEN Woodspoon: Resilient Brazilian charisma

By Frier McCollister esilience is a word used during the last year to describe Downtown restaurateurs who have simply refused to give up. The word implies a combination of qualities: steely perseverance, unshakeable confidence and a patient, tireless faith in one’s talents and abilities.

Then there is Natalia Pereira and her tiny bastion of Brazilian deliciousness, Woodspoon.

“When you come from a life of limitation, you embrace opportunities in a different way,” Pereira mused.

To look at the humble storefront and the simple menu of homestyle dishes from the Brazilian province of Minas Gerais, Woodspoon does not suggest a likely business model, even in the best of circumstances.

Yet for the last 15 years, Woodspoon — with Pereira’s irresistible alchemy of culinary subtlety and ebullient, heartfelt hospitality — has consistently proven to be one of the brighter stars in Downtown’s dining firmament.

Pereira was raised as an orphan. The offspring of her married father and his niece, Pereira was raised for a bit by her dad’s wife before she gave the girl back to her birth mother. She was abandoned first at age 7 by her birth mother with her siblings and again at 9.

“She dressed us up, took us to church and gave us away,” Pereira said.

She was raised in relative poverty and barely finished grade school, shuffled from one foster home to another. By the way, she also speaks four languages and is writing her first cookbook.

In 1998, a medical condition brought her to Southern California for treatment. She lived there with a host family, who introduced her to the Santa Monica Farmers Market.

“I missed food and home so much,” Pereira said. “The family I was staying with pointed me to the market. I couldn’t speak a word of English. I began cooking. I would go out to the farmers market and I would make something, and people would ask, ‘How did you make that?’ I enjoyed doing it.

“I had fun doing it, and that escalated to this beautiful connection. I didn’t have to speak. I could look at a tomato. I could touch a vegetable. I was able to really enjoy myself on a different level, without the necessity to speak per se. It was more of an emotion. I met incredible people, incredible families. I cooked for the kids and hosted little gatherings.”

In 2000, she met the Radziner family (co-founders of the Radziner Marmol archi-

R

tecture firm) at the farmers market. The family had a connection to Brazil, and soon Pereira was cooking for the family twice a week. Five years later, she was hired as a private chef for a firm client.

“One evening I cooked for this particular gentleman,” she recalled.

“He’s very particular when it comes to cooking. He’s a phenomenal cook, and he was unhappy with my meal. So, he said, ‘I think you should go. I’ll talk to you later.’ And he didn’t call for a while.”

Finally, he called and invited Pereira over to have a paella he cooked. He quizzed her about her plans and aspirations. At the end of the meal, he handed her an envelope.

“I opened it. It was a check for $60,000,” she said. “Two weeks later, he drove me Downtown.” He had a business in the Fashion District and pointed to the small storefront on Ninth Street.

“He said, ‘You won’t be rich, but you’ll be able to be happy.’”

She bought out the previous tenants and then renovated the 850-square-foot space on her own.

“I painted the walls, took down the ceiling. I slept here,” Pereira said.

Three weeks later, Woodspoon opened for business.

“Bite by bite, here I am now 16 years later in Downtown Los Angeles,” she said.

Before the pandemic, Woodspoon had built a loyal following. Pereira had a booming catering business out of Woodspoon’s kitchen and employed up to 20 people.

“We were doing well,” she said.

Her immediate staff has been reduced to four for takeout and delivery only.

The combination of the George Floyd protests in June and the renewal of pandemic restrictions proved a double whammy for Downtown businesses and residents.

“Everything was closed,” she said. “I remember, for weeks we would throw our food away because not one person would walk in. It was empty. It was completely deserted.”

The ensuing sense of loss triggered painful emotions.

“This particular time has been personal to me because this is home to me,” Pereira said.

“Growing up without a home, it felt like, ‘There it is again. The same feeling again.’ I don’t expect anyone to understand. This (Woodspoon) is home to me.”

The narrow front sidewalk doesn’t easily accommodate outdoor seating, but soon, Woodspoon will reopen its dining room with two tables. Pereira and her staff have received

Natalia Pereira is the chef and owner of Woodspoon.

Photo by Luis Chavez

their first round of vaccinations. Once complete, the dining room will reopen.

Woodspoon’s small dining room and atmosphere is not so much charming as charmed — charmed and enchanted by Pereira’s imagination and spirit. The room blooms with an odd preternatural radiance and warmth, and that’s on a random, quiet Tuesday afternoon.

Assembled with colorful thrift shop remnants, curios, handmade candles and Pereira’s black-and-white photographs, the room is delightful.

Brazilian cuisine is most associated with churrascaria steakhouses. It’s known for roving waiters hoisting long skewers of grilled meat, supplemented with vast buffets of salads and seafood. It’s not a dining format likely to return anytime soon, nor does it represent an authentic regional cuisine in Brazil.

She said folks recognize Minas Gerais province for the gastronomy. Known for its humble preparations of fresh, locally sourced ingredients, Minas Gerais’s cuisine blends Portuguese, African, Indian and Mediterranean influences.

“We grow okra. We do polenta with fresh corn,” she said. “We make homemade sausage.

We make jams. We make cheese. We make butter. I grew up with everything in my backyard. It has a very rich culinary (tradition), and a lot of people don’t know about it. They think Brazilian food is all about the meat.”

Highlights on Woodspoon’s menu start with eight small plates, including coxinha ($8).

Known as one of Brazil’s most popular street foods, it’s a fried breaded orb oozing with a rich poached chicken filling. Also included is Portuguese pastel ($8), fried dumplings

stuffed with shrimp and coconut; and a traditional potato croquette ($8). Each one has a tasty surprise inside.

Kibe ($8), ground beef and bulgur wheat with mint, reflects the cuisine of the Lebanese diaspora in Minas Gerais. There is a selection of Grelhas, or grilled meat plates with a choice of beef ($18), chicken ($16), chicken and bacon ($18) or tilapia ($18). The plates are served with rice; beans; collard greens; salsa; and the staple Brazilian condiment farofa, toasted manioc flour.

Woodspoon favorites feature frango com quiabo ($19), a chicken stew with okra and fresh polenta; costelinha com canjiquinha ($20), pork short ribs on corn grits; and the traditional beef stew, carne de panela ($21).

Fresh red and white sangria is available for $8 a glass or $20 for a bottle.

Pereira hopes her book, “My Life in Recipes,” will be available soon. She resumed the project over the last year, and as the title suggests, is an autobiography and cookbook. It features her photography, poetry and artwork as well.

“In the book, you get me — the good, the bad and the ugly.”

Her staff fondly refers to Pereira as “the kitchen witch” for her otherworldly talent at the stoves, but there is something oddly bewitching about the entire Woodspoon experience that challenges full description.

“Being an orphan and a polyglot, I’m a citizen of the world,” Pereira said. “Maybe not having a home is OK. We are all just individuals in a world we create. Food for me is personal. It’s where I’m happy. It’s a bridge that connects us all. There is no racism in food. We can all sit at the same table.”

Woodspoon 107 S. Ninth Street, Los Angeles 213-629-1765, woodspoonla.com

DTLA IS OPEN

APRIL 12, 2021

DOWNTOWN NEWS 17

Public School 213

Restaurant and bar returns in late April

By LA Downtown News Staff Public School guests won’t want to be tardy when it reopens, bringing back all of the fan-favorites.

Public School 213 is a fun, schoolthemed gastropub known for its craft beer, hand-crafted cocktails and flavorful signature dishes with a twist Taking center stage are the PB&J Burger, infamous bacon cheddar tots and the ahi tuna poke nachos.

“Recess,” also known as happy hour, is 3 to 6 p.m. Mondays to Fridays.

Almost-bottomless mimosas are a staple of the popular weekend brunch, which is available until 3 p.m.

Saturdays and Sundays. Night owls can stop in for Late-Night Tasting & Tots on weeknights from 9 p.m. to The Public School 213 beer cheese burgclose. It offers a $10 draft beer flight er is a hot commodity at the restaurant/ and a free order of crispy tots. bar.

Public School 213 will also debut (Photo courtesy of Public School 213) two concepts for takeout and delivery — Burger Academy and LA Bowls & Breads.

LA Bowls offers a wide variety of fresh, homemade flatbreads and bowls, perfect for a refreshing lunch or office catering. The Burger Academy menu boasts exciting new flavors from the Public School 213 kitchen like the truffle mushroom burger, mac and cheeseburger and elote loaded tots.

For more information, visit psontap.com.

ADVERTORIAL

Lumbini Child Development Center The preschool is enrolling students, while following guidelines

By LA Downtown News Staff Lumbini Child Development Center opened its doors in 1977 with the notion of filling the need for day care in the downtown area.

Forty-four years later, its philosophy remains the same. To provide a nurturing learning environment in which children can grow and develop with each passing year.

The center is a year-round academics-based school that fosters socialization within the program to give children a well-rounded preschool experience.

The classrooms are unique to each of the age groups. The curriculum used in each of its classrooms has been developed in creative ways to make learning fun and exciting by teachers who have been with the school for 13-plus years.

For more information, visit lumbinLumbini Child Development Center proicdc.org, email lumbini.missleslie@ vides a nurturing learning environment in gmail.com, or phone 213-680-2976. which children can grow and develop.

The preschool is located at 505 E. (Photo courtesy of Lumbini Child Third Street, Los Angeles.

Development Center) ADVERTORIAL

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Hours of Operation: Monday-Friday 7:30a.m.- 6:00 p.m.

For more information: Email: Lumbini.missleslie@gmail.com Address: Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple 505 East 3rd Street, Los Angeles, 90013 Phone: Miss Leslie @ 213 680-2976

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Chef Alejandro Guzman heads up the kitchen at Cha Cha Chá.

DT

Terraza tosada is piled high with tuna, crispy cilantro and chile morita aioli ($15).

Photo by Luis Chavez

Covered DINING California will help

Cha Cha Chá: Fresh from Mexico City via North Hollywood

By Frier McCollister LA Downtown News Contributing Writer he March 18 opening of Cha Cha Chá in the Arts District represents the culmination of a four-year process that began in Mexico City.

The restaurant’s Mexican sister, Terazza Cha Cha Chá, is in the center of Mexico City on the Plaza de la Republica, facing the Monumento de la Revolucion. The large open-air terrace and the restaurant’s sophisticated but accessible menu soon attracted clientele from all walks of life.

The eateries are two of six developed and owned by Grupo Palmares, a relatively young Mexico City-based restaurant group. Its U.S. managing partner is Alejandro Marin. He reflected on the success of the Mexican original.

“Everyone was dining together, which is very rare in Mexico,” Marin said. “We decided to stand by that. We call ourselves a democratic restaurant and stand by what that monument represents, and not just for our guests but also with our staff.”

The outdoor rooftop atmosphere is part of the group’s formula for success and would ultimately prove fortuitous as it looked to expand to Los Angeles.

“It’s been a long time coming, to be honest,” Marin said. “I moved here almost four years ago with the intention of opening up a restaurant in Los Angeles for the group.

T

APRIL 12, 2021

“It was difficult not having an existing business in the United States. A lot of landlords are wary. They still prefer to go with local companies.”

The search for a viable location was further challenged by the need for an accessible rooftop space.

“In Mexico City, we have two rooftops: Palmares and Terazza Cha Cha Chá,” Marin said.

“We were really looking for a rooftop or outdoor space. That’s what we specialize in.”

Fortunately, the space on Third Street had appropriate features and amenable landlords.

“It was the ideal space. It was the nicest rooftop we had seen in LA. It has a second floor with straight access to the rooftop. It’s very unique, very attractive. It gives you a really nice view, just from the second floor.”

As part of the courting process, Marin escorted his prospective landlords to Mexico City.

“We went with them to Mexico City and showed them our restaurants. They believed in us, and we were able to sign the lease because of that, and that’s how it all started.”

That said, the raw rooftop would also require a full kitchen buildout. “We planned to take a year to build it out and open in July 2020. The pandemic hit and delayed us.”

However, as Marin acknowledged, their intended outdoor dining format proved prescient.

Photo by Luis Chavez

“It worked out,” Marin said. “Our concept fell right into line with the trend that the pandemic generated. That’s one of the big reasons why we continued to push with this project. When the pandemic hit, we were not even halfway through the buildout. We decided to fully commit, even though we had a really, really hard time. We decided to find a way to see it through, because we saw that (outdoor dining) trend becoming even more popular.”

The cunning design of the rooftop dining area conjures a lush, green plant-filled oasis. It’s the work of lead architect Lena Kohl, who also happens to be Marin’s wife. The couple lived Downtown for their first two years scouting the project. “It really helped us make informed decisions on the project as well.”

Noticing the lack of parks and green space Downtown, the evolution of the rooftop design sought to address the problem for the neighborhood.

“We wanted to make it as a community decision,” Marin said. “(We wanted) to make a space that was a very green, natural space filled with plants, where neighbors can just come up and enjoy a moment. Surrounded by plants and green, maybe just have a drink in a casual moment, where they can separate from that concrete craziness for a bit.”

Kohl’s design also intended for a large, well-lit and colorful kitchen space with a bright yellow floor and large windows facing Third Street. It’s meant to encourage and nurture creativity.

“We opened the windows to the kitchen.

It’s a creative space. There’s natural light, and it’s a really nice space for them to work,” Marin said.

That team in the kitchen is led by chef Alejandro Guzman, another fortuitous discovery for Marin. Having found the perfect location and space for Cha Cha Chá, he also needed the perfect chef.

“We wanted to build an LA team. We wanted a young chef who was creative, who could use us as a platform and grow with us. That’s what we found in Alejandro. We got really

lucky to find him. We were searching for chefs for a very long time. It took us about a year to find chef Alejandro,” Marin said.

Guzman had been staging a pop-up Downtown called Fabby’s, when Marin found him. “He aligned completely with our culture.

We’re a democratic restaurant. We value our employees. He’s a great leader and a super nice guy. We connected.”

Guzman was born in Mexico City and moved with his family to Southern California when he was 9 years old. The family landed in North Hollywood, and his mother owned and operated El Taco Loco on Lankershim Boulevard.

“That’s where I learned to cut myself and burn myself and stand up for eight hours a day,” he said. “From age 12 to 18, I was at El Taco Loco. It was a punishment for a long time. It was the means to get my allowance.”

Leaving the family business after high school, he pursued an interest in coffee roasting and became the first beverage director at Jessica Koslow’s hipster breakfast mecca, Sqirl. Slowly his interest turned back to food and culinary technique. He actively pursued chef Gary Menes for work at Le Comptoir, Menes’ French-inspired vegetable-forward, fine dining venue.

Staging there initially as a volunteer, five years later Guzman was sous-chef and the restaurant had earned its first Michelin star.

Guzman’s pop-up Fabby’s — named after his mother — allowed him to revisit and rework his family’s recipes with the refined sensibility and technique that he accrued during his time at Le Comptoir.

“I actually ordered food from his pop-up, from Fabby’s, and I was blown away, because he was making pipian, which is rare in LA,” Marin said about a type of mole sauce that is thickened with ground pumpkin seeds.

“When I tried the pipian, I said, ‘This is it.

This tastes like Mexico.’ This pipian recipe is a recipe from his grandmother, and you can really taste those Mexican family flavors combined with his experience working at Le Comptoir. He really is able to (prepare) famil-

APRIL 12, 2021

DOWNTOWNNEWS.COM

iar Mexican dishes with the highest execution and quality. We were super lucky to find him.

He understood what we were doing right away. Almost naturally, he built a menu that is completely new for LA but takes on the essence of our Mexico City menu.”

Guzman’s menu for Cha Cha Chá reflects the subtle sophistication and populist accessibility of its Mexican sister. The top is headed by three “botanas”: a selection of fresh salsas and guacamole served with corn chips ($10), a shrimp ceviche ($14) and an aguachile of wild-caught scallops ($16).

Under “mercado,” there are four unusual salad compositions, of which the star is Chicharos de Sierra, a pile of grilled greens on fresh spring peas tossed with a serrano pepper aioli and razor-thin potato crisps ($16).

The core of the menu is comprised of four taco options (all $5): hongos with bunapi and maitake mushrooms, pollo in achiote and salsa fresca, chorizo with salsa verde, and a traditional carne asada with red salsa. In the same bracket are four tostada options. The standouts here are the monumento ($14) stacked with grilled octopus, cherry tomatoes, habanero pepper and a cilantro aioli; and the terraza ($15) tiled with tuna and crispy cilantro, dressed with chile morita aioli. By the way, the

DOWNTOWN NEWS 19

tortillas are made fresh in-house. The kitchen moves as many as 400 on any given evening.

Slightly more substantial fare can be found under the heading “principales.” Here there is grilled fish on charred lettuce ($36) and a New York strip steak with charred tomato, green onion and cactus ($44). Also here are two Guzman family favorites: carnitas ($34) with pork shoulder confit and braised beans; and his abuela’s pipian ($31) served over red cabbage and epazote rice. Though unannounced, it’s also vegan friendly and gluten free.

The combination of Guzman’s menu and the placid, lush tranquility of Cha Cha Chá’s unusual rooftop space proved to be an immediate Downtown sensation. The restaurant booked over 800 reservations in it first four hours.

“Now it’s about making sure every single plate going out is perfect,” he said.

“We fell into this great community and group of people that support each other. It’s been amazing. We will keep trying our best to put out the best quality, the best service we can, and keep being hospitable and curate a very, very good experience for everyone that visits us. Hopefully that will help us become one of the Downtown spots for many, many years. We would love nothing more than that.”

Cha Cha Chá 812 E. Third Street, Los Angeles 213-265-7707, chachacha.la

Alejandro Marin owns Cha Cha Chá.

Photo by Luis Chavez

20 DOWNTOWN NEWS

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APRIL 12, 2021

DT

Covered California will help ARTS AND CULTURE

DTLA’s Piera ‘unravels’ in new music video

By Christina Fuoco-Karasinski LA Downtown News Executive Editor iera Klein says music is all about creating a community.

That is especially true during a pandemic, when music fans can’t congregate and enjoy live music. Klein, a singer/ songwriter/producer, and Micah Plissner, songwriter/producer, did what they could to make the turbulent time easier.

Known collectively as Piera, the synthpop duo recently released its latest single, “Unraveling.” The video sees the Downtown LA-based musicians confronting the dark, emotional landscape of a broken relationship seemingly without hope of redemption.

“This has been a crazy time,” Klein said.

“Everybody’s hunkering down. Diving into another reality helps, and music does that.

“It’s been really fun having that outlet amidst this chaos and unprecedented time we’re all experiencing. Living Downtown, we’re in the epicenter of seeing things, just how the world has changed.”

A Southern California native, Klein has been creating music, poetry and art since she was young. At age 5, Piera sang on a children’s record. Two years later, she started writing music on pianos and her dad’s acoustic guitar.

By junior high, Piera went on to work with an Emmy Award-nominated songwriting team needing a singer for placements. She later broke out on her own, as a songwriter/producer, singer and performer. Inspired by truly independent musicians and artists, Piera decided to venture out into the uncharted waters of experimental sound design, lyricism and performance.

Plissner has been in California for some time. He moved from Manhattan to Santa Monica with his parents when he was 13.

However, he still feels like a New Yorker.

His father, Martin, was the national political director for CBS news. Plissner was published in Village Voice magazine at 8 years old for a poem he wrote on the dark side of prep school culture.

He was scouted by agents to be in various shows and commercials, but it wasn’t for him. He enrolled in modern dance classes in Santa Monica and moved up to the pro classes, until a serious injury forced him to change course.

He moved his way into the LA punk scene, where he was eventually signed

P

as an artist. He toured and charted in the top 10 on the college radio charts nationally. Plissner said he felt that the major label route was too commercial for his taste, so he started working as an independent musician and producer.

Cinematic desires Plissner said the duo had cinematic desires to put to music. Klein agreed.

“We’re totally independent,” she said. “I think our vision is unique. It’s a fun experience to have the opportunity to create something and showcase it when everybody’s home and people are scrolling.”

Not only did fans have to pivot, but musicians did as well. Klein said musicians live for life on the road, so they had to find new ways to exist.

“One thing that’s really great is we do have all this technology and people are finding ways to connect,” Klein said. “This was a year when people really started connecting online now more than ever.

“I think it has its pros and cons. I’m seeing the silver lining of connecting. It’s interesting to see who we’ve been connecting with musically. It’s been global, and it’s all because of technology.”

That technology has played a major role in Piera’s career. Plissner said their song “As Good as You” hit No. 50 on the internet radio charts. He described the track as mystical and ambient but personal.

“It’s very electronic and ambient, with a lot of reverb and space in it,” he said.

“Piera’s voice is so vulnerable and personal. When you’re dealing with songs, you’re really dealing with the singer wrapped in some kind of sound bath.”

Klein added, “It’s a simple message and it feels familiar. It’s simple and relatable.”

As for “Unraveling,” the catchy song layers classic synth-pop and new wave, a la Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins and New Order. The video is inspired by visual artists like James Turrell and Zaha Hadid.

“The Cocteau Twins doesn’t surprise me,” Plissner said. “I can sort of see New Order, with the heavy basslines. We didn’t aim for a genre with this song.”

Klein said fans instantly responded to the song. She hears from fans comparisons to Ladytron, Goldfrapp and David Bowie.

“There references are very diverse,” she said. “It’s good to know the music we en-

DTLA’s Piera plans to release an EP this summer.

Photo courtesy of Piera

joy listening to, fans are listening to as well.”

More music coming Fans will have more to listen to by the end of the summer, when Piera releases an EP. In the meantime, during the COVID-19 restrictions, Piera is soaking in DTLA. “I love it here so much,” Klein said.

“I spend tons of time in the Arts District. There are some really, really great restaurants in the area, and great galleries like Hauser & Wirth. That’s really fun.

We enjoy Café Gratitude, too.

“I feel like we’re in an interesting world that doesn’t exist anywhere outside of LA. It’s just neighborhood after neighborhood and then you have the beach.

Grand Avenue is grand and epic with all the buildings. You have that sense of Old World meets New World. It attracts all different people. DTLA has a different vibe and flavor than a lot of LA. It’s more multinational or diverse. I feel there are a lot of artists here.”

Plissner added, “I can’t wait for MOCA to reopen. I know that’s obvious, but that’s one of the things I look forward to the most.”

“Downtown LA has the most visceral art community that I’ve been around, though,” he added. “There are a lot of little pockets. There is an extreme amount of talented and powerful artists. The people I know in the music scene are artists I’m in awe of. They’re not so much affected by Hollywood. They’re just doing their thing. They’re committed to their life and art. It challenges me. This is for people who love art more than they love money.”

Piera pieramusic.net

APRIL 12, 2021

DOWNTOWN NEWS 21

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APRIL 12, 2021

Covered California will help ARTS AND CULTURE

Hussain College students Xavier Orozco, director/performer, and Giancarlo Garritano, performer, rehearse for “Urinetown: The Musical.”

Photo by John Cassidy

HCLA students turn to puppets for ‘Urinetown’

By Christina Fuoco-Karasinski LA Downtown News Executive Editor CLA faculty member Scott Barnhardt has had fun getting to know his students’ creativity, even though it was waylaid by the pandemic.

Finally, the first-semester faculty is getting to show the public the fruits of the students’ labor with an all-puppet rendition of the Tony Award-winning musical “Urinetown: The Musical.”

“These students have been absolute champs,” Barnhardt said. “The idea of this came about last year. The pandemic pushed it into this direction.”

“Urinetown: The Musical” streams digitally, presented in partnership with Music Theatre International, for one weekend: 7 p.m. Friday, April 16; 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, April 17; and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 18.

Tickets are $5 per device at showtix4u. com/eventdetails/50284. For a teaser, visit youtu.be/MCx1cAbAzEA. Those needing more information can visit

H

@InStudioHCLA on Instagram.

Hussian College’s campus is located in the heart of Los Angeles Center Studios, a working film lot in Downtown Los Angeles.

In “Urinetown,” its residents have to pay to urinate because water has become such a commodity during a drought.

“There is a small group of now puppets who revolt against that fee,” Barnhardt said. “As the fees go up, a small group builds a small revolution against the powers that be — the corporations that are controlling them. It’s very funny and cheeky and ironic.

“The original production started in a small off-off-Broadway theater and then off-Broadway and then Broadway. It’s was a really unlikely Broadway musical that did really well on Broadway. It opened around 9/11. It’s the anti-musical.”

HCLA students, in their sophomore year, take a class about collaborating and pitching, Barnhardt said. They pitch ideas for the following year and, prepandemic, they offered a live production of “Uri-

netown.”

“As they entered the fall/spring semesters and we weren’t doing live performances, they pivoted toward a virtual puppet production,” Barnhardt said.

“They thought they could record it safely and separately. It’s innately safe.

It was filmed over spring break. I visited the set a few times. It looked like so much fun. They were working hard, really long hours. They basically filmed an entire movie musical in five to six days with puppets. They were living their best lives.”

The show is directed by HCLA students Daisy Micklich and Xavier Orozco under the guidance of Barnhardt, along with Music Director Christopher Lloyd Bratten (“For the Record”) and Live Production Coordinator Bridget Flanery (“Will and Grace,” “Three Sisters,” “Gossamer Folds”).

Jeremy Kent Jackson, who starred on Disney’s popular show “Lab Rats,” was named associate dean of performing and entertainment arts in 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was making waves.

“This is exactly the kind of ingenui-

ty we’ve come to expect from our HCLA In Studio students,” Jackson said. “We’re a school that cultivates performance as a passion, producing as a mindset and creative problem solving as a way of life.

Through this project these students have met the moment and, in turn, evolved as both artists and humans. We are so very proud.”

Barnhardt lived in New York City for about 15 years and starred on Broadway in “The Book of Mormon.”

“I was there from the get-go,” he said.

“It was the ride of a lifetime. It was so much fun.”

His position as lead faculty of contemporary musical theatre and film, however, is like a dream come true for him.

“They’re so eager,” he said. “They’re so excited, and they work so hard. They’re so creative. It’s fun to nudge them along and nurture them — especially working on projects like this. They’re genuinely creative and breaking ground in new ways. It’s fun. It’s not teaching math — no shade to math.”

APRIL 12, 2021

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DOWNTOWN NEWS 23

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“Recently National Mint spoke with a retired Treasurer of the United States of America who said ‘In all my years as Treasurer I’ve only ever seen a handful of these rarely seen Silver Walking Liberties issued by the U.S. Gov’t back in the early 1900’s. But to actually find them sealed away in State Restricted Bank Rolls still in pristine condition is like finding buried treasure.

So anyone lucky enough to get their hands on these Bank Rolls had better hold on to them,’” Lynne said.

“Now that the State of California Restricted Bank Rolls are being offered up we won’t be surprised if thousands of California state residents claim the maximum limit allowed of 4 Bank Rolls per resident before they’re all gone,” said Lynne.

“That’s because the dates and mint marks of the U.S. Gov’t issued Silver Walking Liberty Half Dollars sealed away inside the State of California Restricted Bank Rolls have never been searched. But, we do know that some of these coins date clear back to the early 1900’s and are worth up to 100 times their face value, so there is no telling what California residents will find until they sort through all the coins,” Lynne went on to say.

The only thing California residents

need to do is call the State Toll-Free Hotlines printed in today’s newspaper publication before the 2-day order deadline ends.

“Rarely seen U.S. Gov’t issued silver coins like these are highly sought after, but we’ve never seen anything like this before. According to The Official Red Book, a Guide Book of United States Coins many Silver Walking Liberty Half Dollars are now worth $115 - $825 each in collector value,” Lynne said.

JACKPOT: Imagine “So just imagine how much these finding the 1919-D Walking Liberty last remaining, unsearched State Silver shown above worth VALUABLE: of California Restricted Bank Rolls thousands of dollars in value in one of It’s like a treasure could be worth someday. Remember, collector these unsearched Bank hunt - there’s no telling what these are not ordinary coins – these Rolls. There are never any you’ll find. That’s because the dates and mint marks of the fifteen U.S. Gov’t rarely seen coins date clear back to guarantees, but State residents get their hands on these State Restricted issued coins sealed away inside these State the early 1900’s. In fact, these coins who Bank Rolls will be the really lucky ones because Restricted Bank Rolls have never been have been forever retired by the U.S. even more common coins are still worth up to searched. All we know is some of the coins are worth up to 100 times their face value.

Gov’t, and you can only get them $115 - $825 in collector value. rolled this way directly from the NaThe dates and mint marks of the U.S. Gov’t issued Silver Walking Liberties tional Mint and Treasury because IMPORTANT: sealed away inside the State Restricted Bank Rolls have never been searched. Coin values these are the only State Restricted always fluctuate and they are never any guarantees, but any of the scarce coins shown below, Bank Rolls known to exist,” said regardless of their value that residents may find inside the sealed Bank Rolls are theirs to keep.

Lynne.

“We’re guessing thousands of California residents will be taking the maximum limit of 4 Bank Rolls because they make such amazing gifts for any occasion for children, parents, grandparents, friends and loved ones,” Lynne contin1916-P 1919-P 1921-S 1938-D ued.

Mint: Philadelphia Mint: Philadelphia Mint: San Francisco Mint: Denver “We know the phones will Mintage: 608,000 Mintage: 962,000 Mintage: 548,000 Mintage: 491,600 Collector Value: $32 Collector Value: $80 Collector Value: $60 be ringing off the hook. That’s Collector Value: $55 $265 $515 $800 $160 why hundreds of Hotline Operators are standing by to answer the CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS: COVER JUST $39 MINIMUM PER COIN phones beginning at 8:30am this morning. We’re going to do our best, BEGIN CALLING AT 8:30 AM: 1-800-929-4439 EXT. RWL1787 but with just 2 days to answer all if you are a resident of the state of California call now to claim the state limit of 4 state of California restricted bank rolls. all California the calls it won’t be easy. So make residents who beat the 2-day deadline are getting the only full fifteen coin bank rolls loaded with rarely seen u.s. gov’t issued silver walking sure to tell everyone to keep calling liberty half dollars dating back to the early 1900’s some worth up to if all operators are busy. We’ll do 100 times their face value known to exist. The only thing California residents cover is just the $39 per coin state minimum set by the private our best to answer them all,” Lynne National Mint and Treasury, that’s fifteen rarely seen u.s. gov’t issued said. silver walking liberty half dollars some worth up to 100 times their face value for just $585 and that’s a real steal because non-California “That’s why the private National residents must pay $1,770 for each state of California restricted bank roll. just be sure to call the state toll free hotlines before the Mint and Treasury set up the State deadline ends two days from today’s publication date.

Toll-Free Hotlines in order to make sure California residents get the NON STATE RESIDENTS: MUST PAY $118 PER COIN - IF ANY REMAIN State Restricted Bank Rolls before DO NOT CALL BEFORE 5:00 PM TOMORROW: 1-800-929-8898 RWL1787 they’re all gone,” she said. if you are a resident living outside of the state of California you The only thing readers of today’s are required to pay $118 for each silver walking liberty for a total of $1,770 plus shipping and handling for each state of California newspaper publication need to do is restricted bank roll loaded with fifteen u.s. gov’t issued silver walking liberty half dollars. make sure they are a resident of California and call the State Toll-Free NATIONAL MINT AND TREASURY, LLC IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH THE U.S. MINT, THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, A BANK OR ANY GOVERNMENT IF FOR ANY REASON WITHIN 30 DAYS FROM SHIPMENT YOU ARE DISSATISFIED, RETURN THE PRODUCT FOR A REFUND Hotlines before the 2-day deadline AGENCY. LESS SHIPPING AND RETURN POSTAGE. THIS SAME OFFER MAY BE MADE AVAILABLE AT A LATER DATE OR IN A DIFFERENT GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION. OH RESIDENTS ADD 6.5% SALES TAX. NATIONAL MINT AND TREASURY, PO BOX 35609, CANTON, OH ends midnight tomorrow. ■ R1018R-2 44735 ©2020 NATIONAL MINT AND TREASURY.

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APRIL 12, 2021