Aug. 10, 2025 3 AM PT
Ham and Cheese
By Steph Cha
Creator Steph Cha within the kitchen at Louisa’s Trattoria in Larchmont Village.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
Marlowe Lee was off the clock, 12 extra hours within the can, however Name-Me-Jessie had modified the closing process, and now, for the second week working, Marlowe needed to do ultimate cleanup and lockup after clocking out. It was 9, and she or he was ravenous, with one other quarter-hour of unpaid work forward of her. She hadn’t eaten since her lunch break, and as sick as she was of Charcuterie Woman’s sandwiches (The Finest Deli on Ventura Boulevard, Human-Owned and Operated!), it was torture making and serving them on an empty abdomen.
Los Angeles is aware of methods to climate a disaster — or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to construct a metropolis for everybody.
She set two slices of baguette on the counter and stared at her choices. Roast turkey and mortadella, vegan salami and imitation tuna salad. It was miserable, that faux tuna, the very best in the marketplace however nonetheless a vaguely unsavory amalgam of fish paste and seaweed powder — nothing just like the tuna she remembered. It made her consider all of the issues she missed, these misplaced treasures of the current previous. Avocados, panda bears, temperate climate.
Her eyes landed on Charcuterie Woman’s crown jewel: a complete leg of ibérico ham in its personal bespoke rig. How for much longer would the world have black Spanish pigs, fed nothing however acorns and chestnuts? The jamón price $70 an oz, however wealthy folks had been too wealthy — they purchased issues as a result of they had been costly, and people pigs had been in greater and better demand. Jessie named the sandwich the Trillionaire’s Ham and Cheese on the suggestion of the richest man in Los Angeles, who personally requested to see jamón ibérico on the menu. He bragged about it on-line, and now it was each native billionaire’s favourite sandwich on the town.
Marlowe had but to attempt the jamón — she wasn’t allowed to the touch it, besides to slice it by hand for high-value prospects, who preferred to report her sluggish, methodical actions as she dealt with the particular ham knife. It got here off in skinny crimson ribbons that she piled onto baguettes with manchego and grated tomato. She tried to think about the style, and her mouth watered.
She eyed the digital camera, which transmitted footage to Jessie’s iGlass, with any irregularities flagged for rapid overview. An irregularity may get Marlowe fired, by no means thoughts that the digital camera additionally logged hours and hours of labor violations.
She was fortunate, she knew, to have this job — any job in any respect, when she was solely 23. Simply that day, a buyer had requested how lengthy she’d spent on the California Hourly Employment.
Marlowe answered, in truth, that she’d gotten on when she was in school. The shopper shook his head. He’d been ready for 2 years — how may anybody be anticipated to go that lengthy with out work? Marlowe didn’t point out the exemption for small enterprise homeowners, who may circumvent CHEW in the event that they had been prepared to spend money on superfluous human labor, or that her mother and Jessie had been classmates at Wellesley.
Marlowe appeared again on the digital camera and picked up the ham knife. It slid simply beneath the oily meat, repeatedly and once more. She labored till she had sufficient jamón for a half-dozen sandwiches, then pulled a final slice proper off the leg and popped it into her mouth. She closed her eyes and laughed. Oh man, she thought. I may get used to this.
Steph Cha is a critic and writer of “Your House Will Pay,” winner of the Los Angeles Occasions E book Prize and the California E book Award, and the Juniper Music crime trilogy.
Allnight Grocery store
By Ivy Pochoda
Ivy Pochoda, proper, a novelist, and author/activist Linda Leigh in Skid Row.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
I’m right here to let you know just a few issues. Some are triumphs and a few are info. However first — let me welcome you to the primary official assembly of the Skid Row Neighborhood Council. Doesn’t sound historic to you? Effectively, let me say, we’ve been making an attempt for many years to get acknowledged. As a neighborhood. As a neighborhood. As folks. The BID stopped us. The Downtown Neighborhood Council stopped us. I wouldn’t be stunned if a succession of supposedly useful mayors hadn’t a hand in stopping us.
Let me additionally say there was a second after I myself lived within the parts. That’s what I instructed my daughter. “I’m living in the elements.” However, it’s a part of my story — this story that brings us right here at the moment. Thirty lengthy years after we first tried to get a neighborhood council of our personal. What’s the massive deal? Let me let you know the massive deal. It is a actual neighborhood — an precise neighborhood. Everyone knows one another and what’s what and what’s up. Did folks in Hancock Park know one another? Did people in Beverly Hills assist each other out? Nothing doing. Simply strangers in massive homes. It’s totally different down right here. All the time has been.
It took some doing to get acknowledged. We’re the final ones not pushed out by local weather and costs. That’s what despatched the wealthy folks away. They gave up and made this metropolis a ghost city of warmth and poverty. However we stayed. Local weather and costs don’t imply so much if you don’t have numerous alternative. Not a lot we will do in regards to the parts. Truth is — we’re used to the weather. The weather are our factor. And rising costs don’t matter when you possibly can’t afford something anyway.
So when everybody up and fled, we received our neighborhood council constitution. We’re Skid Row proud — local weather and money be damned.
Issues occur by default, you understand. I received sick. I misplaced my house. I wound up on the streets. I received housed for good. So be it. That was a very long time in the past. Similar with this council. We tried. We tried once more. We received denied. Town received scorching. Town received moist. Town grew to become the local weather disaster’ floor zero. Costs shot up. Folks didn’t wish to pay for water rights. They didn’t need their youngsters struggling at recess. They didn’t wish to pay hovering gasoline costs for his or her non-public jets to take them north. So got here the nice abandoning.
We may have moved into their homes. We may have swept into the Hollywood Hills and Brentwood. However that’s not a spot. That’s not a house. That’s not a neighborhood. We’re who we’re and the place we’re. And with nobody left however us, we received our council. And now we’ve plans, and plans are taking place. You may assume our plans are easy. However these small issues are every thing.
And so I’m proud to set in movement our first neighborhood market. All these years, and that is the primary time Skid Row has an unique place to buy, hear music, get your hair reduce. A spot to get skilled as much as work, a spot to offer again. A spot from which we’ll rebuild this blessedly emptied metropolis in our personal picture.
Ivy Pochoda is the writer of a number of novels together with “Wonder Valley,” “Visitation Street,” “These Women,” “Sing Her Down,” which gained the L.A. Occasions E book Prize in 2023, and “Ecstasy,” which was launched in June.
2047: Meet David Allen, the Minister of Commemoration
By Jonathan Lethem
Creator and MacArthur Fellow Jonathan Letham in opposition to a backdrop of Mt. Baldy in Upland.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
Stanleg and I had lengthy deliberate an expedition to satisfy the Minister of Commemoration. Only a few folks knew as a lot as we did, which made Stanleg and me well-known frenemies. Stanleg was the Emperor of Lifeless Folks Hill. I lived in Bonelli with the Boaties. He preferred org as a lot as I preferred disorg, however we each remembered the floodtimes from after we had been youngsters, so the little amnesiacs preferred to flock round and pepper us with queries, however our info was nothing like Minister Allen’s.
You can get by gondola as much as the mouth of the Euclid path, the place the donkey trolleys dragged the sledges up towards Baldy. That was the place the Minister lived. He preferred the excessive locations and by no means glided by water. David Allen was made and lived within the Dry and nonetheless noticed all of it with the Eyes of the Dry: the Gabriels and the Wetness under. They’d as soon as named a few of these locations for the water, like Riverside, or the Wash, earlier than the water got here. However those that really remembered the Dry needed no a part of the Wetness.
So Stanleg and I packed in and portaged by means of the Pomonliest swamp after which crossed the Downland gondoliers’ palms with bribes to get us to the shore the place the mule sleds waited, after which we bribed the mule sledders. They’d little interest in our tales.
The Minister of Commemoration waited in his temple, solely frivolously guarded by amnesiacs. He was deep and surprisingly tall, although crooked and bald, and his robes hung lengthy. He greeted us with a powerful smile. The lenses in addition to the repairing tape on his spectacles had been thick.
We had introduced waterkale truffles and wild chicken hand-pies, as a result of we had been inspired to imagine David Allen preferred these items. Maybe he did, although he appeared to take no discover of our items.
“Stanleg is from Dead People Hill,” I stated earlier than Stanleg may get a phrase in. “He likes org, and he orgs those dead people pretty good. Maybe the amnesiacs not so good.”
“Fitchly hails from Bonelli Underwater Park,” stated Stanleg, returning the favor. “He is an expert in disorg and keeping it real. I had to bake you those hand-pies myself.”
“Org and disorg were sitting on a fence,” stated David Allen. “Org fell off, and disorg felt the bump.”
We had been humbled by his knowledge, and all of the rancor was relieved from our our bodies. We needed solely to be suffused together with his powers of Commemoration.
“Is it true,” requested Stanleg, “that where there is now a beach there was once a forest and a lawn?”
“It was a forest lawn, yes, on the top of the hill, when the lands surrounding were dry. But it took much watering to keep the Forest Lawn from reverting to yellow scrub. I know this might seem preposterous to you…”
“Watering is one of the old mysteries. Was it the watering that brought the flood?”
“Not in a direct sense,” stated Allen.
“Will you give us a Commemory?” I requested.
“I have been thinking much about the Beach Boys,” stated Paul Allen. He appeared to attract deep inside himself to summon the Commemory. Maybe he mused upon the chosen theme as a result of Stanleg had talked about his personal seashore, there at Lifeless Folks Hill. “There were many debates,” the Minister intoned, “back in the dry times, about the extent of their Inland reach. Some scant evidence suggests they came to Riverside in 1962. An autographed glossy or two. But did they actually perform?”
“What miracles might the Beach Boys perform?”
“At that time, they might have performed ‘Don’t Worry Baby.’”
“This would have been a consolation.”
“If they made it to Riverside and performed ‘Don’t Worry Baby,’ it would have been a terrific consolation, yes.”
“We thank you for this Commemory,” stated Stanleg. “We don’t want to ask too much of you.”
“I am old.”
“Yes.”
“It may or may not have happened. Go now.”
“Yes.”
“And remember, and speak it to your amnesiacs.”
“Yes.”
“Tell them this. Tell them they are all Beach Boys now.”
Jonathan Lethem, a MacArthur fellow, is the writer of a number of novels, together with “The Fortress of Solitude,” and “Motherless Brooklyn,” winner of the Nationwide E book Critics Circle Award, and several other brief story collections. “A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories,” can be printed in September.
