LA has bounced back since the fires. Here's what visitors can expect
In such idyllic scenes it's easy to forget that seven months ago Malibu and the nearby Pacific Palisades were almost wiped off the map by one of the most destructive wildfires in California history.
The firestorm that began on January 7 incinerated more than 23,000 acres, consumed nearly 6,800 structures and claimed 12 lives. There was further devastation on the other side of Los Angeles, where the Eaton fire killed 19 people and erased entire neighbourhoods in Altadena.
Considering the scale of the catastrophe, it is remarkable how far LA has bounced back. Yet bounce back it has. Even in parts of the city where rebuilding will take years, green shoots of recovery are poking through the ashes.
The areas most affected by the fires — Malibu, the Pacific Palisades and Altadena — are all open for business. Long before the fire, Gladstones was a beloved pit stop for Angelenos and coastal travellers. Perched on the Pacific Coast Highway, the seafood restaurant's deck hangs over the ocean giving unrivalled views of the water. There are few better spots from which to watch the sunset. The restaurant sustained serious damage in the disaster, with parts of the building burnt and extensive smoke damage to the walls.
In early July, after months of work, Jim Harris, Gladstones' general manager, reopened the outdoor deck with a special night for first responders and those affected by the fires.
I was in Malibu while it was still burning, reporting for The Times. Returning for the first time in late July was startling. On Gladstones' deck, sun shining, American flag fluttering, it was a perfect southern California day. The ceviche (£17) was light and fresh. Its famous clam chowder (£11) was thick, creamy and packed with clams. As tempted as I was to wash the meal down with a mai tai, I was driving. The house lemonade (£3) was a satisfying substitution (mains from £15; gladstones.com).
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While Malibu remains deeply scarred by the fires — a full recovery will take many years — Gladstones is worth the short drive up the PCH from LA. And as well as having a beautiful afternoon, you would be helping the community recover.
'We lost a lot of restaurants,' Harris told me. 'The ones that are still standing could use the support. We're here with open arms — please come if you can.'
If Gladstones offers escapism, a drive through the surrounding neighbourhood brings you back down to earth. The cars parked next to me belonged to the US Army Corps of Engineers, who are still working to remove debris. The hills once dotted with multimillion-dollar homes are filled with empty lots.
It is a similar story in the nearby Pacific Palisades, a celebrity enclave beloved by Hollywood stars. Billy Crystal, Anthony Hopkins and John Goodman were among the hundreds of residents who lost their homes.
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The stretch of Sunset Boulevard leading to the Palisades is lined by vacant lots. The occasional chimney stack still stands as a reminder of what was lost.
The Palisades Village, the neighbourhood's de facto downtown, was a charming, upscale collection of shops and restaurants. Now it resembles a building site. Quiet village life has been replaced by the beeps of reversing diggers and the banging of pile drivers. Debris is still being removed from the ruined buildings.
The Palisades Garden Café opened in 2004. Surrounded by scorched schools and a library, it somehow survived the flames. Since reopening in March it has become something of a community hub, and was packed during my visit with construction workers and locals on their lunch break. The Korean spicy sandwich (£9) was as good as any I've had in LA's Koreatown. While seated at my laptop with an iced coffee (£3) I overheard two women discussing their problems finding home insurance. A common issue given the fire risk (mains from £6; paligardencafe.com).
Ten minutes from the café is one of California's biggest attractions. The Getty Villa, a marvel of fire-proof engineering, claims to be the safest place for art during a blaze. It survived the flames because of its fire-resistant steel and concrete. We should all be thankful that it did.
The museum, established by the oil baron John Paul Getty in 1954 and home to ancient art from Greece and Rome, reopened at the end of June. Today's headline exhibition is The Kingdom of Pylos, which features more than 230 works of Messenian art and artifacts. Entry is free, though you have to reserve a time slot (getty.edu).
Its gardens alone are worth a visit — I can't think of a more tranquil spot in Los Angeles. Timothy Potts, the museum's director, told me that 'people are coming back in droves. It's really good to see the place alive.'
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While the Getty Villa survived, many of LA's treasures elsewhere could not be saved. Some of its most famous architect-designed homes were reduced to ashes. The Andrew McNally House, a Queen Anne-style mansion designed by Frederick L Roehrig for the publishing magnate and built in 1887 in an area of Altadena that came to be called Millionaire's Row, was razed in the Eaton fire.
Visitors to LA who had driven down Sunset Boulevard to the coast will surely remember passing beneath the brutalist Bridges House, perched high above the traffic. That too was gutted by flames. Nearby Keeler House, designed by the modernist architect Ray Kappe, was also destroyed.
Yet for all that was lost, Los Angeles still has a huge amount to offer. The city stretches far east of downtown's skyscrapers, and its palm tree-lined boulevards are only halted westwards by the ocean at Santa Monica. The fire-related restrictions from Las Flores State Beach to Santa Monica State Beach have been lifted, though you should check for the latest water quality updates.
On a late summer evening I stood on the Griffith Observatory, which sits in the Hollywood Hills overlooking the sprawling city below. From up here the scale of Los Angeles is breathtaking. As I gazed at the metropolis bathed in gold from the setting sun, a cool breeze drifted in from the Pacific. Tourists made the most of the fading light, grabbing selfies with the Hollywood sign shining in the distance. It was a perfect California night.
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Daily Mail
9 hours ago
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Dark secrets behind America's dancing quadruplets who were driven to madness by their Hitler-worshipping dad's sick perversions - as last of the tragic Morlok sisters dies aged 95
Before they had names, they had initials. There was baby A, baby B, baby C and baby D – and their birth from a single egg in Lansing, Michigan, on May 19, 1930, was hailed as a modern-day miracle. No sooner had the quadruplet sisters taken their first breath than their notoriety had spread throughout America and the rest of the world. However, within just a few years, the 'Morlok Quads' – Edna, Wilma, Sarah and Helen – had become a freak show of the most sinister kind, orchestrated by their perverted, Nazi-sympathiser father. Many of the family's darkest secrets have now been taken to the grave after the last-surviving sister, Sarah, died at the age of 95 last month. But the shadowy legacy of the so-called 'house of horrors' in which they grew up lingered long into the 21st century. First though, back to 1930, when the Great Depression hung heavy in the air and the 79,000 people then living in Lansing – the capital of Michigan – were desperate for something to celebrate. Among them was Carl Morlok, a 41-year-old unemployed factory worker, and his wife Sadie, a nurse ten years his junior, who was so heavily pregnant she believed she was expecting twins. There were no ultrasound scans then, but Carl, a vehement white supremacist, wasn't happy about the thought of his wife giving birth to more than one child at the same time. He believed it was a sign of low-breeding and something that happened mainly to black women. 'Aren't you a white woman?' he is said to have shouted at his heavily pregnant wife, according to Audrey Clare Farley's 2023 biography of the Morloks, Girls And Their Monsters. 'What will they think my wife is? A b**** dog?' The girls were born one month prematurely and astonished the city's medical teams, with the Historical Society of Greater Lansing proclaiming their birth to be that of the world's first identical quadruplets. Once the news spread, the city – and the country – soon went into a frenzy. Sadie wanted to call her daughters Jean, Jane, June and Joan. But local newspaper the Lansing State Journal organised a naming competition for the girls, which attracted 12,000 entries. The winner was ten-year-old Nancy Haynes, daughter of the physician who delivered the quads. She selected four names which started with E, W, S and H – matching the initials of the E.W. Sparrow Hospital where they were delivered. They were the talk of the town – and it wasn't long before Lansing was investing in their future. The local authority passed a resolution to enable the Morloks to move into a bigger house, which would be rent-free for one year. That house was 1023 East Saginaw Street in Lansing, which, over the following decades, turned into their 'house of horrors'. The babies became celebrities long before they could crawl, with people driving by or lining up near the front porch to get a glimpse of them. The Massachusetts Carriage Company donated a custom-made baby pram with four seats, locals turned up with gifts, and businessmen opened bank accounts for each child. Carl became known as 'jolly Carl, daddy 4-of-a-kind' in news coverage – and he quickly realised that he could capitalise on his daughters' extraordinary birth, erecting a sign that allowed visitors to enter the Morlok home to see them for 25 cents. But the dark side of their fame quickly became clear. Shortly after their birth, two men were admitted into the house by the girls' grandmother. The men grabbed two of the babies and were about to escape when Carl walked through the door and scared them off. From that moment on, their father would patrol the house and garden with a shotgun, and sleep with a revolver under his pillow every night. He was protective of his daughters – but for all the wrong reasons. 'The Morloks had this reputation of being the 'all-American family', US academic Dr Farley told The Mail on Sunday. 'The newspapers, locally and nationally, would write one puff piece after another about these girls – everything was picture-perfect.' Except it wasn't. Everything was horrific. When they were less than a year old, German-born Carl – a vocal supporter of Adolf Hitler – put himself up for the role of Lansing constable, a senior position within the city's police department. He used photos of his daughters on his campaign advertisements, with the slogan: 'We will appreciate your support.' He won by a landslide and held the post for 26 years, allowing him to serve warrants, notices and other legal papers, as well as carry a gun and badge. With his newly-invested powers, he poured his resources into his daughters and trained them to be a stage troupe. By the age of seven, they were touring music halls across the Midwest, earning hundreds with their matching dresses, cherubic smiles and performances of patriotic, religious tunes. Offstage, their lives were no song and dance. The older they became, the more their father exerted control over everything they did. Carl wrote them a list of 20 rules, which included no wearing of trousers, no holidays, no friends, no weekend jollies, no swimming lessons, no birthday parties, no picnics, no church activities – and certainly no boyfriends. They were never to marry or have children – although Sarah was eventually the only one who did after her father's death in 1957. Carl went to such lengths to maintain his daughters' 'purity' that he even had a surgeon circumcise Wilma and Helen – a common medical procedure for 'oversexed' women in that era – so they could not masturbate. He removed all the doors in the house so he could watch as they changed their clothes or used the bathroom, even when they changed their sanitary pads. His obsession with their virginity was fuelled by Nazi fears of mixing races, and yet, as Dr Farley pointed out: 'The media were always portraying the girls as these emblems of cheerful white American girlhood, and, during the war, as fighters of fascism.' It later emerged that, although Carl never raped his daughters, he would 'fondle' them to test whether they were allowed to socialise with men; if they resisted his advances, he concluded they must be 'good girls'. By the time the Morlok Quads reached the age of 24, they were severely struggling with their mental health – which was soon diagnosed as schizophrenia. All of them, except for Sarah, were given electroconvulsive therapy. All spent their 20s in and out of psychiatric institutions. However, even throughout their illnesses, they were used as pawns. 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The girls were called back in the 1980s and 1990s for further research. They were subjected to lumbar puncture – a medical procedure to collect fluid from their spines – as well as blood, urine and hormonal tests The only quad who went on to lead what could be described as a near-normal life was Sarah (pictured). Following her father's death in 1957, she found work as a legal secretary and typist in Washington DC Three of the quads – Edna, Wilma and Helen – were eventually institutionalised at Northville Psychiatric Hospital, in the suburbs of Detroit, which closed in 2003. The only one who went on to lead what could be described as a near-normal life was Sarah. Following her father's death, she found work as a legal secretary and typist in Washington DC. In 1961, she met George Cotton, an American Air Force officer, at a church group and they married that same year. They had two sons – one of whom, William, died from Aids in 1994 – and a daughter, who died at birth. 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