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Topline:
The details: The first comprehensive record of California’s tidal ecosystems — from San Diego to the Oregon border — is focused on invertebrates and algae. They play a key role in the ecosystem but have been studied far less than more visible fish, birds and mammals. The reference library will include DNA profiles and physical samples and will be an open resource for scientists.
Tracking climate change: The DNA library will give scientists a reference point to let them more effectively track and understand changes in tidal ecosystems. Intertidal habitats are some of the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including rising water temperatures and sea levels.
Expanding protections: Officials say the project will also have practical applications for managing the state’s Marine Protected Areas. They say it will allow them to better monitor invasive species and identify new marine environments that need state protection.
Read on … to hear from the scientists involved in the project.
On an overcast morning in July, marine biologist Greg Rouse knelt next to a large tide pool near La Jolla’s Bird Rock.
“This place is incredibly diverse in habitats,” Rouse said, scooping a sample of seawater into a plastic bag.
A few miles down the beach, in his seaside lab at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Rouse separated the sampled water into a petri dish.
At first glance it was just water and some floating ocean debris.
But when Rouse slid the petri dish under a microscope, hundreds of nearly-microscopic animals burst into life on a high-resolution monitor: shrimps and snails, pillbug-like isopods, worms of all sorts of different shapes, and at least one bright-orange sea slug.
Sampling tide pools like this is fairly routine for Rouse, but lately, it has been part of something bigger. Rouse is leading the first phase of an effort to document California’s intertidal ecosystems.
That means logging every organism found in the tidal seawater, sand and rocks from San Diego to the Oregon border over the next two years.
“It’s a baseline of what is here right now,” Rouse said. “It’s a shame we didn’t do this 20 or 40 years ago. But in those times, we didn’t really have the DNA technology and the cost efficiency that we have these days.”
The project, called the California Intertidal Biodiversity DNA Barcode Library project, is ambitious. Nothing of this scale has been attempted in the U.S. It’s being led by a coalition of top research institutions, including Scripps, the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, the California Ocean Protection Council and the Southern California Coastal Research Project.
The goal is to create a comprehensive picture of California’s tidal habitats by focusing on the algae and invertebrates that live in them, including their DNA profiles. Scientists say that will let them more effectively track changes in those ecosystems.
The intertidal region is made up of the narrow strip of coastline that alternates between being submerged at high tide and exposed at low tide. It’s habitats are some of the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including rising water temperatures and sea levels.
The two-year project launched with $10 million in state funding earlier this year but kicked into high gear this summer.
Last month, Rouse led a group of dozens of scientists to the tide pools, where they pulled more than 7,000 samples from the area around Bird Rock.
“Anything we could see, we took. But also we took a lot of stuff you can’t see back to the lab and had many people on microscopes finding all the tiny creatures,” Rouse said. “Because most of the diversity is actually too small to see.”
Testing is still underway, but so far the samples represent 1,600 species of invertebrates and algae, hundreds of which could be new to science.

Once collected and analyzed at Scripps, the physical specimens and their DNA profiles will be sent to the L.A. County Museum of Natural History where they will be stored in a massive library.
The museum was chosen in part because it has the largest collection of invertebrates in the U.S., outside of the Smithsonian Institution.
The project will be focused on invertebrates and algae because fish, mammals and other big, visible animals have been sampled plenty. Scientists say there is a major gap in the understanding of the tiny tide pool organisms that play a key role in the wider ecosystem.
“It’s all about a food chain … and we don’t have a good grounding of who’s eating whom,” said Regina Wetzer, curator of marine biodiversity at the Natural History Museum. “It’s a whole cascade of networks that feed the larger things that are carnivorous fish or that are birds.”

Building this biological library is not just for the sake of expanding scientific understanding. It’s also practical.
Without a clear baseline to reference, said Dean Pentcheff, project manager of the Diversity Initiative for the Southern California Ocean, scientists have been largely operating in the dark.
“To responsibly manage the shore and manage our resources and manage the life on it, we need to know who’s where and who’s who,” Pentcheff said. “And right now, for the intertidal [zone], we don’t know that.”
The DNA library will lay the groundwork for new, powerful tools scientists can use to monitor changes in the tidal ecosystem.
One of those is environmental DNA, or E-DNA, the biological detritus that naturally sloughs off organisms. Collecting samples of water or sand, and the E-DNA in it, can provide a quick snapshot of an ecosystem when compared to a baseline.
“That’s a list of all the organisms that are there, but you can’t put a name to any of them unless you have a reference library to look it up in,” Pentcheff said. “So our job in this project is to cruise up and down the state and create that library of genetic reference sequences to enable environmental DNA to be used in the future.”
The library will also be designed to allow for different levels of DNA sequencing, from basic DNA profiles, called barcodes, that are quick and easy to produce, to much more complex profiles that provide detailed information on an organism.
The tools the project is expected to unlock have also galvanized the officials in charge of protecting the state’s marine environments.
“Where are invasive species showing up? What’s happening with species range shifts as things migrate northward? Those are the kinds of questions that we can answer, start to answer with a lot of this information,” said Mike Esgro, a staff member at the California Ocean Protection Council who leads the agency’s work on biodiversity, including Marine Protected Areas.
California’s Marine Protected Areas cover about 16% of California’s coastal waters. They are specific geographical areas in the ocean or around coastal estuaries designed to protect and conserve marine life and habitats.
Esgro hopes the DNA library, and emerging tools like E-DNA that rely on it, will improve how officials manage these places. For example, it could help officials better understand which ones are most vulnerable and identify additional marine environments that need state protection.
It could even help scientists figure out how to shift tidal habitats inland to compensate for rising sea levels.
He also wants to see continued collaboration with state agencies like the Ocean Protection Council and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
And he hopes the project, which he calls the “Noah’s Ark of intertidal diversity” — and others in California like it focused on insects and fungi — can serve as an example.
“The climate crisis is very real. It’s very urgent. We’re seeing the impacts right now,” Esgro said. “And so I think adopting that kind of mindset of — ‘We gotta go big; we gotta swing for the fences’ — that’s crucial.”

Topline:

Why it matters: The revolving cast draws from a repertory group of about 15 artists, including: saxophonist Rickey Woodard, who played for Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and more; trumpeter Nolan Shaheed, who backed Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Stevie Wonder.
Read on … to find the details of this hidden gem …

It seems that jazz is everywhere in Los Angeles. Blue Note opened a club last year, venues like Sam First, Catalina’s, Vibrato and the Baked Potato draw large crowds, and hotels and bars are adding jazz to their schedules.

But every week, a semi-secret event at the tony Los Angeles Athletic Club lets anyone experience a near-private concert from legends such as Rickey Woodard, who played saxophone for Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn and others; and Nolan Shaheed, trumpeter for Duke Ellington, Marvin Gaye and more.

That’s before you get to the evening’s singer, who might be 96-year-old pianist Betty Bryant, former Raelette Val Monroe or singer and Grammy-winning songwriter John Proulx.
 
Until recently, the Sunday night Jazz Salon was free. Now it charges a nominal $10 per person, which is still an outrageous bargain, so be sure to add something to the tip jar on the piano, and maybe try one of the cocktails or the steak frites.

Walking into the club earlier, you see black-and-white photos of all types of healthy pursuits on the walls, as well as trophies and mementos of the club’s nearly century-and-a-half history. Plush sofas, high ceilings and book-filled shelves are the order of the day, and alongside members in gym gear or lugging laptops, you go up in one of the elevators to the third floor, where the Jazz Salon takes place.

Earlier in the day, Dave Ross, 76, was setting up the amps, drum kit, mixer and mic stands. He also administers the website, acts as MC and plays double bass as part of the ensemble. He began the venture over a decade ago, when he persuaded the LAAC, of which he had long been a member, to host concerts in their redecorated restaurant and bar.

Ross draws from a repertory group of about 15 artists, and the concert takes place opposite the bar in a wood-paneled room of just a few dozen leather chairs and tables. This small scale makes the night intimate and unique.
Location: Invention (3rd Floor), The Los Angeles Athletic Club, 646 S Olive St., Downtown Los Angeles
Time: Sundays, 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM (with a brief intermission)
Cost: $10 cover charge at the door
Make reservations and check out the weekly artist schedule
“No gig is ever the same,” says Ross. “We don’t rehearse, and every time we play a song, we’re never trying to play it the same way we played it before.”

That makes the night fun, too. Since you’re right near the musicians, you can hear their laughter and banter, as well as their impressive solos. Ross, stage left, stays out of the limelight — which is how he prefers it — and often says he’s just happy to be there playing.
“You’re there to keep the beat, the pulse of the music,” he says. “And then, secondarily, the notes that you play help the other musicians understand what the chord, what the harmony is. I’m just doing it for the pleasure of playing the music.”

Once a month, Ross and some of his stable join a touring artist — recently five-time Grammy-nominee Karrin Allyson — in the club’s 250-seat ballroom for a more formal ticketed event, but there have been just two complete sellouts of them this year: tributes to Bill Evans and Dave Brubeck/Paul Desmond.
Donations and the tip jar on Sunday evenings sometimes haven’t been enough to break even, either, which led to Ross reluctantly introducing the $10 charge. No matter what, he is determined the Jazz Salon will keep going.

“When I was younger, there was a receptionist I knew who was a nun. She said: “‘You know what your problem is? You’re too optimistic!’”

Topline:
Why it matters: What starts as a quick, chaotic street-corner challenge opens into something bigger — a Long Beach woman honoring her late mother-in-law’s gefilte fish recipe, and a chef processing his own mother’s death and the loss of his home in last year’s Palisades Fire, one taco at a time.
Read on … for how a stranger’s yes turns into a family’s story, and what happens when a taco truck becomes a place to grieve, honor and remember.
Daniel Shemtob has been going around Los Angeles asking strangers this question: “What’s your mom’s best dish?”
He then turns their answers — from Filipino oxtail adobo to the Ashkenazi Jewish favorite of gefilte fish — into a taco for his new five-episode web series, “Better Than Your Mom.”
One episode breaks from the format entirely: a head-to-head chopped salad taco challenge between Shemtob and Vanessa Silverton, daughter of famed L.A. chef Nancy Silverton, judged blind by Nancy herself.
A two-time winner of “The Great Food Truck Race” on the Food Network, Shemtob is no stranger to reality TV — he also founded The Lime Truck, serving Cali-Mex cuisine in Orange County.
What starts as a quick, chaotic street-corner challenge opens into something bigger — a Long Beach woman honoring her late mother-in-law’s gefilte fish recipe, and a chef processing his own mother’s death and the loss of his home in the 2025 Palisades Fire.

Despite loving fine dining, Shemtob said nothing beats the experience of having someone invite him to their mother’s home for dinner.
“It’s by far my favorite thing,” he said.
That urge to connect with other people also came from wanting to celebrate his late mother’s legacy and the impact she had on him in the kitchen.
“Eating was like a big part of how we shared and celebrated,” Shemtob said. “It was a culture that was built around food.”

While most walk past him or decline to talk, Shemtob said he’s been surprised by how many strangers say yes almost immediately — like Anne Gundry, a retired biology teacher in Long Beach.
She answered with a dish from her mother-in-law from her first marriage — gefilte fish served cold.
Gundry recalled her first meeting with Dena Levenstein, who would become her mother-in-law. The relationship started out cold — but cooking together changed their dynamic.
“That’s where I honestly think we had the deepest bond with her,” Gundry said.
Gundry described yearly visits to Levenstein’s house as a cooking “apprenticeship,” where Gundry was taught to cook by feel — adding ingredients by the handful, testing a dish’s consistency by touch.
“She used to say, ‘How does it feel?'” Gundry recalled. “And I’d say, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know how it’s supposed to feel.'”
Over the years, she learned. Now, Gundry teaches her own children that recipe the same way — without referring to what’s written down.
Watching Shemtob cook on “Better Than Your Mom,” Gundry was skeptical. Her own process takes over two hours; his took 20 minutes — until she tasted the apple-horseradish slaw he added.
“Brilliant,” she said. “I’ve been trying to duplicate it at home.”
You can find Shemtob’s videos on his YouTube channel.
Topline:
Why now: Lost Weekend, Bridgers’ first studio album in six years, is out Friday, with listening sessions taking place at dozens of planetariums around the world next week.
The backstory: Orange Coast College already has a tradition of pairing music with visuals through popular laser shows featuring the music of everyone from Pink Floyd to Taylor Swift. But the Bridgers event is by far the most high-profile, pairing the album with both a laser show by Laser Fantasy and a full-dome presentation with imagery by taken by astrophotographer Babak Tafreshi.
Next week Phoebe Bridgers fans in Southern California will get an otherworldly way to enjoy her new album ahead of its official release Friday.
And a Costa Mesa institution will enjoy the chance to introduce indie music lovers to what it does beyond astronomy lectures and field trips.
The Orange Coast College Planetarium is one of dozens of planetariums around the world – and the only in Southern California – hosting listening sessions next week for Lost Weekend, one of the year’s most anticipated indie releases and Bridgers’ first solo studio album in six years.
The Pasadena native is not expected at any of the planetarium shows. But that doesn’t matter to her fan base.
Twelve shows in the 125-seat theater sold out within four hours of going on sale Thursday, according to the planetarium. So staff added 16 more, bringing the total to 28 screenings over four days, Aug. 10 through 13. (At last check, tickets for showings earlier in the day were still available.)
“We have never had an event that was this anticipated,” Rhiannon Graffio, lead speaker and educator at the planetarium.
When: Aug. 10–13. Shows are scheduled throughout the afternoon and evening, with both fulldome and laser show experiences.
Where: Orange Coast College Planetarium, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa.
Tickets: $20. Tickets are available through Orange Coast College’s ticketing site.
Phone-free: Phones must be placed in locking Yondr pouches during the listening sessions. Smartwatches, cameras, Meta glasses and other recording
There’s two ways to experience the record from start to finish, which is a little over 50 minutes long.
One is a full-dome show featuring images taken by renowned astrophotographer Babak Tafreshi.
“It’s gorgeous,” Graffio said. “There’s some that are of the night sky, where you can see the paths of the stars as the Earth rotates, or auroras or lightning.”
The other option is a laser show created by Laser Fantasy, with scenes and storylines moving in time with the music.
Graffio said the planetarium had been approached by Bridgers’ label Dead Oceans to host the shows, which are being presented in partnership with Spotify.
The events are strictly phone-free. To prevent album leaks, attendees will have to put their phones in pouches provided by Yondr, a company that works concerts and other events. Smartwatches, and Meta glasses also aren’t allowed.
The Lost Weekend events are the most high-profile but certainly not the planetarium’s first experiment with mixing music and visuals.
The theater regularly hosts laser shows set to music, cycling through different artists like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé each month while keeping some crowd favorites like Pink Floyd in rotation. Graffio said in the last year KPop Demon Hunters laser shows have been especially popular.
Accommodating the Lost Weekend shows has meant bringing extra staff to handle the weekday crowds at the community planetarium.
But Graffio said there’s a big upside to introducing music fans to a place they may never have thought to visit.
“It’s a wonderful experience,” she said. “And most of the shows that we do are also educational in some sense. As cool as the visuals are, they are about the universe and what we know about it.”
And for those who can’t make it to the planetarium shows, there’s a more traditional route to marking Bridgers’ new album. A dozen record stores around Southern California are hosting listening sessions at midnight Friday.
Topline:
What we know so far: The fire started at 3:02 p.m. near Gorman School Road in Gorman, according to Cal Fire and grew to 1,000 acres in two hours. Both northbound and southbound lanes of the 5 Freeway were briefly shutdown.

Read on … for more on evacuations and weather conditions.
This is a developing story and will be updated. For the most up-to-date information about the fire you can check:

The 5 Freeway has reopened after a brush fire in Gorman near the L.A.-Kern county line shut down both northbound and southbound lanes at around 5 p.m.
Evacuation orders and warnings in both L.A. and Kern counties are in effect for the Ridge Fire, which started at 3:02 p.m. near Gorman School Road in Gorman, according to Cal Fire.
The fire quickly grew to 1,000 acres in less than two hours.
It was 0% contained as of 9 p.m. Friday.
A Wildfire Smoke Advisory has been issued by South Coast AQMD through 2 p.m. on Saturday for areas around Gorman.

Evacuation orders have been issued by the Los Angeles County Fire Department for the following areas:

Authorities say those who require additional time to evacuate and those with pets and livestock should leave immediately.
KRN-545 (Kern County)

Check out LAist’s wildfire recovery guide

If you have to evacuate:
Navigating fire conditions:
How to help yourself and others:
How to start the recovery process:
What to do for your kids:
Prepare for the next disaster:
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