Greater LA

Kobe Bryant and eight others died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas on Sunday. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating why the chopper went down. We also look at Bryant’s kinship with the Latino community, and a mural that quickly went up in his honor. 

One of the oldest hospitals in LA is permanently closing this week. Its owner, Verity Health System, filed for bankruptcy in 2018. The announcement of the closure came as a surprise. 

We speak with a member of the Disney Parks Moms Panel, which is made up of 42 men and women who help people plan their Disney vacations.

This Tuesday through Thursday, Los Angeles County will conduct its annual “point in time” count of people experiencing homelessness around the region. We get the basics. 

On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we replay some of our favorite episodes. Local poets share their work and discuss LA's spoken word scene. One new mom was stuck with a $1.7 million bill. And an exhibit explores colonialism in Africa and Europe.

Traffic got you down? Wouldn't it be nice to just fly over it all? A new company is working to make that possible.

Angelenos can reduce their carbon footprints by composting, but finding a place to do that is tough. The nonprofit Compost LA maintains community gardens where residents can drop off food scraps, but many are at capacity, and cities have different rules on what’s allowed to go into certain bins.

We visit three new coffee shops in LA’s historically black neighborhoods to see how designs of the spaces signal who’s welcomed and who’s not.

The BLVD is a pint-sized, unassuming dive bar in Boyle Heights that hosts rap battles every other Friday. The last winner of the rap battles took home $1000 cash.

Australian horticulturist Jo O'Connell came to Southern California decades ago to plant an Australian garden for a client in Ojai. She started a nursery selling Australian plants in Casitas Springs. Now she’s devastated by the destruction of plant life by the Australian wildfires.

Getting a car has never been easier. Even if you have bad credit and can’t really afford it, no problem. The business of financing cars for people with low credit scores or low incomes is booming.  

Tensions between the US and Iran continue to mount following last week’s U.S. airstrike that killed a top Iranian general. We hear reactions from Iranian Americans living in LA.

On this Christmas Eve, we look back at some of the year’s best stories: a monthly ceremony welcoming former lifers back into their communities; an underground cannabis market; a town where a golden retriever is the mayor.

Several experts, tastemakers and trendsetters at KCRW bring you arts and culture stories all year. They’ve come up with their top everything of 2019, including restaurants, books, movies, documentaries, TV shows, music, and even architecture.

Every day, customs officers at airports nationwide pore over documents of thousands of travelers flying into the country. They decide who gets in and who doesn't. We follow a customs officer doing this work at LAX, and talk to a traveler who’s been denied entry and is being sent back to Venezuela.

LA will host the 2028 Olympics, but activists here are against the idea, believing that preparations for the games will displace low-income communities. They’re networking with activists abroad who feel the same. 

A judge ruled that Orange County cannot arrest people for sleeping in public spaces if there are no alternatives. So the county has been creating shelters out of bus stations, motels and warehouses. But reports of conditions in them are not good.

“The L Word” is back after 10 years off air. Lots of young queer women saw themselves for the first time in the show’s characters. The show is also famous for helping queer people discover their own sexual or gender identities, and come out of the closet.

A new genre of art is growing in LA: “immersive interactive experiences.” Board games and video games are immersive, so are virtual and augmented reality, escape rooms, haunted houses, and theme parks. “Safehouse ‘82” is an immersive theater show. The common denominator: the experience requires your active participation. 

The deadline to apply to the University of California was Thanksgiving weekend. Many private college applications are due in early January. We hear from LA high school seniors about the stress and anxiety they’re facing during the admissions process.  

XOTX Tropico Nursery, founded in 1988, is a haven for endangered plant life. But now it’s endangered itself. The owner is required to vacate the nursery by December 30.

Los Angeles County held a memorial ceremony this week honoring the lives of 1,457 people who died in 2016, but whose remains were not claimed by loved ones. 

On Tuesday, presidential hopeful Julian Castro joined Black Lives Matter activists in front of LAPD headquarters to raise awareness of the 2018 fatal police shooting of Grechario Mack.

This fall, the city of West Hollywood gave landmark status to the Whisky a Go Go, the Roxy, and the Rainbow Bar and Grill. That status protects the venues from the aggressive development happening all around the area.

The head of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority will step down at the end of the month. We ask why.