Latest news with #L.A.inaMinute
Newsweek
29-05-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
Thrifty Ice Cream to Close Over 500 Stores Nationwide
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Thrifty Ice Cream locations are closing nationwide as Rite Aid winds down its assets amid bankruptcy proceedings. As reported by The Street, the 500 hand-scooped ice cream counters inside Rite Aid stores across the country will shutter by default as a result of the pharmacy chain filing for Chapter 11 protections in early May. Newsweek has contacted Thrifty Ice Cream for more details on the closures. Why It Matters While Thrifty Ice Cream remains available for purchase at stand-alone stores and counters in other retailers across the country, the move marks a significant hit for the ice cream brand. An image of Thrifty Ice Cream products. An image of Thrifty Ice Cream products. Rite Aid Corporation What To Know The Los Angeles-based ice cream brand, which launched in 1940, can be found at thousands of retailers and stand-alone locations across the U.S. In 1996, Rite Aid acquired the brand, and the circular scoop ice cream has since become a staple at its West Coast pharmacies. Now facing its second bankruptcy in as many years, Rite Aid plans to close hundreds of its roughly 1,200 locations. In addition to selling its stores to pay down debts, Rite Aid is set to auction off its intellectual property and assets, which includes its Thrifty Ice Cream businesses and the factory in El Monte, California. As a result, a buyer could purchase Thrifty and continue distributing the ice cream to grocery chains and at ice cream counters. In 2018, the brand was almost sold along with Rite Aid to food and drug retailer Albertsons, but the deal was abandoned. According to Reuters, Rite Aid's previous Chapter 11 filing in October 2023 allowed the company to eliminate $2 billion in debt, close hundreds of stores and reach settlements with both lenders and plaintiffs in various lawsuits. What People Are Saying Evan Lovett, the host of L.A. in a Minute, said in a video posted on X, formerly Twitter: "If history is any guide, Thrifty Ice Cream is going to be scooping up smiles for years to come, just maybe not at your local Rite Aid." Rite Aid CEO Matt Schroeder said in a statement earlier this month: "While we have continued to face financial challenges, intensified by the rapidly evolving retail and healthcare landscapes in which we operate, we are encouraged by meaningful interest from a number of potential national and regional strategic acquirors. As we move forward, our key priorities are ensuring uninterrupted pharmacy services for our customers and preserving jobs for as many associates as possible." What Happens Next According to court documents, Rite Aid is soliciting offers for its assets, and potential buyers are required to submit indications of interest for assets such as Thrifty by Friday. Sale hearings are set to take place in late June.
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
An L.A. institution, Du-Par's Restaurant & Bakery ‘struggling,' owner says
If you've lived in Los Angeles, really for any amount of time, you've probably eaten at Du-Par's Restaurant & Bakery, but according to a recent interview with the owner, the local institution of nearly 90 years is struggling to stay afloat. The beloved diner-style restaurant, famous for its hotcakes and pies, first opened its doors in 1938 in the famed L.A. Farmer's Market in the Fairfax District, according to its website, The original location is now the last of a once thriving chain in the city. Frances Tario, the president and CEO of Du-Par's, began her career working as a server in the restaurant before taking over ownership. 'I had no idea what I was getting myself into,' Tario told Evan Lovett, creator of L.A. in a Minute and host of the podcast 'In a Minute with Evan Lovett.' 'I just thought, 'Okay, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing on daily basis,' but now it's wearing different shoes and hats.' Skateboarder, 22, left for dead by hit-and-run driver in L.A. identified Tario explained that Du-Par's, like many other L.A. restaurants, has been struggling since the pandemic and to make matters worse, the Palisades and Eaton fires only added to the challenges of keeping the doors to the iconic diner open. 'Although we weren't in the fire ourselves, it felt like we were, because the fires, the [increased cost of] eggs and the situation about immigration – all of that has hit us hard,' she explained to Lovett. Tario said what's been missing for the restaurant is the volume of customers it used to draw and says they are making moves to bring people back, especially the late-night crowds. Starting on April 4, Du-Par's will stay open until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights with a 'Blue Plate Special' for $12 that includes coffee, the restaurant's website noted. The owner added that there will be an additional 'early bird' special announced soon. Du-Par's Restaurant & Bakery is located near the intersection of 3rd Street and Fairfax Avenue. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
USA Today
29-03-2025
- USA Today
Purple streetlights cast a mysterious, eerie and fleeting glow across the nation
Purple streetlights cast a mysterious, eerie and fleeting glow across the nation Evan Lovett finds the purple streetlights alluring and troublesome as they glow over his hometown, Studio City, California. The area's once yellow lights began turning purple last summer, offering 'a very airy vibe, in a cyberpunk sort of way,' said Lovett, 46, the creator and host of the podcast, L.A. in a Minute. He talked about the purple lights during a recent episode. However, the uniqueness can wear off quickly, Lovett said. After all, streetlights are supposed to help you see when it gets dark outside. The purple lights aren't particularly good at that. The dim lights became a bit more personal after his house was broken into one night when he was out with his family in early February. He believes the purple-bluish lighting has made his entire neighborhood vulnerable. 'I'm a fan of the color purple, but I don't want my streetlights to be that way," he said. "It's kind of dangerous.' Lovett is just one of many people who have observed an odd yet atmospheric coast-to-coast phenomenon caused by faulty LED streetlights. It has led to a years-long wave of purple lights that mysteriously appear and then disappear across the nation. It's generated incorrect theories, potentially dangerous lighting and fans of an accidental aesthetic. In Milwaukee, at least 300 streetlights installed in 2018 began taking on a purple hue in 2021. In Eau Claire, Wisconsin, some city streetlights took on a blueish-purple tint the same year, as did bulbs in the village of Schaumburg, Illinois and Palm Beach, Florida. In all, at least 30 states have reported suddenly purple streetlights and parking lot lights, along with areas of Canada and Ireland. The first reports began in 2021 and have continued since. Speculation abounds, and theories have included: Maybe the purple lights are more energy efficient or more wildlife friendly. Maybe they're meant to raise awareness about domestic violence. Or perhaps they make it harder for drug users to see their veins. But the truth is that hue isn't intentional — it's the result of a spectacular, if aesthetic, failure of some LED chips. The signature purple glow has popped up, then disappeared, across the country as the lamps slowly fail and are replaced. Safety concerns are real, especially for drivers. "If you've driven through these areas where there's a lot of these purple street lights, you know that it's kind of glare-y and uncomfortable, which could distract the drivers and create some issues," J. Lynn Davis, a member of the Illuminating Engineering Society, said in a presentation on the lights last year. But for some, the fleeting failure has a poetic quality. The color "makes the ordinary look extraordinary," said Selina Román, 46, a photography professor at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. What went wrong with the faulty purple streetlights? The purple hue is the result of the delamination of the phosphor-silicon layer in the streetlights' LED chips. In this case, tens of thousands of LED bulbs installed along streets and parking lots across the country, which appear to have begun delaminating around 2021. To understand why, it's helpful to go back to the mid-2000s, when LED street lighting began to replace the sodium-vapor lamps that had been previously used. (LED stands for light-emitting diode.) LEDs were more cost-efficient because they lasted longer and used less energy than sodium-vapor lamps. And the older sodium-vapor lamps also cast a very distinctive yellow or yellow-orange light. LEDs were meant to cast a white light. However LED diodes don't produce white light naturally. To get white light, it was necessary to mix other colors with blue LEDs – just as sunlight is not actually white but a mixture of all colors. 'The combination together, blue plus yellow, gives us something that approximates white light,' Davis said in an online presentation in May last year. But something began to go wrong with some of these LED arrays beginning around 2021, when the first reports appeared of previously white streetlights suddenly casting first lavender, then violet and finally plum-colored light. The science behind those purple streetlights To get to the bottom of what was happening, a group of lighting experts called the LED Systems Reliability Consortium came together to research the problem. In 2024, Davis and three other lighting researchers analyzed multiple LED modules from streetlights that were producing the purple light, using both microscopic and thermal analysis. The group tested 28 faulty LED modules donated from the North Carolina Department of Transportation. They had been manufactured in mid-2017 and installed around 2018. The color shift began after they had been operating for three to four years. What the researchers found was that in some of the modules, the yellowish phosphor and silicon mixture that filtered the blue light to make it white began to crack and split, eventually falling off and allowing the blue light underneath the shine through. The light that comes out is purple rather than blue because with the loss of some of the yellow layer, the mix of blue and yellow light tilts strongly toward blue – creating a light that appears purple, said Davis. Although some posters online have suggested the streetlamp are emitting ultraviolet or black light, that's incorrect, Davis said. "It's because of the combination of of blue and yellow. It's not a violet source, he said. "It's coming from the blue LED." Who made the faulty purple streetlights? Davis and others in the May 2024 presentation declined to name the company whose faulty LED chips they tested. Whether the malfunctioning streetlights were made by only one company or several, and if it was just one batch or a longer production run, is not known. In the many news articles about the LED lights being replaced in various cities USA TODAY found, only one company is named – American Electric Lighting, a division of the nation's largest lighting producer, Atlanta-based Acuity Brands Lighting. The reports came from Saint Paul, Minnesota, Sioux City, Iowa, Milwaukee, Orlando, and Tallahasee, Florida. Neither American Electric Lighting nor Acuity Brands Lighting responded to emails or phone calls from USA TODAY. However in an interview with Business Insider in 2022, an Acuity spokesman said the effect occurred in only a small percentage of its light fixtures and that it appeared several years after initial installation. According to multiple news reports, the company is replacing all the malfunctioning lights under warranty. As the lights are replaced, photographers race to record Across the country, photographers are rapturous over the mysterious purple glow being cast by the malfunctioning streetlights that began to crop up around 2021. They call their unique gleam "mystical" and "magical." In Los Angeles, photographer Willem Verbeeck cruises the streets scanning for purple streetlights at least three nights a week. For him, the subtle nature of purple captures an essence that used to be seen in old movies. The 'deeper and darker the purple, the better,' he said. The purple lighting doesn't illuminate, he said. Instead, the color 'sits on things and doesn't show anything, not the traditional way a streetlight should,' he noted. With cities working to replace the bulbs, the photographers are busy trying to capture the fleeting moment. Verbeeck's nearly two-year journey to photograph areas with the purple lights has taken him across L.A. up to the Hollywood Hills, near downtown and over to the beach. For him, it's 'going on a treasure hunt.' Recently, his purple light treks have taken him to industrial areas like the Port of Long Beach, where the lights don't get immediately fixed and there aren't many residential complaints. 'I think it's incredibly eerie and unsettling,' he said. 'It's not a totally uncomfortable experience, but it feels like you are in a back alley or a place you're not supposed to be, that's the feeling I get.' For Román, seeking out the mauve light has became a passion project and resulted in a photo collection she called 'A Bad Batch' Recently she saw some of purple hued lights at the rest areas off the Skyway Bridge during her commutes from Tampa to Sarasota. 'The purple lights take an otherwise bland, average scene at night and creates something mystical and magical," she said. 'I felt like I was in a race to get them before people started complaining and they would get fixed.'
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Yahoo
Thieves hit 'The Money Queen' influencer's Bel-Air home, wind up with fake cash
An influencer known as "The Money Queen" declared that "karma won" after burglars broke into her Bel-Air home and made off with piles of fake cash used for a photo shoot. The Los Angeles Police Department responded to a call about a burglary in process at a home shortly after 1 a.m. Monday, according to a department spokesperson. By the time officers arrived, the suspects were gone. The home belongs to financial influencer Amanda Frances, an author and creator of online courses who says her aim is to help women acquire wealth. "The burglars ransacked my closet, damaging my home in the process, but they dropped nearly everything, prioritizing the prop money when confronted by a neighbor's security guard," Frances said in a statement shared with The Times. The thieves abandoned several designer bags in the streets, which the police were then able to recover, she said. In their rush to flee, they left some of the fake money scattered in the street. She believes they also made off with a handful of purses, a ring and a necklace but dropped most of the items of major value. The fake money was used in a recent photo shoot to promote Frances' "Money Mentality Makeover" digital course. In the past, Frances has withdrawn and returned real money from the bank for photo shoots, but she opted for prop money this time after her photographer suggested it would be safer, she said. Although Frances is relieved the stolen money was fake, she remains rattled by the experience. "I've worked incredibly hard my entire life to build what I have and own my home in Bel-Air," she stated. "I am disheartened and distraught that the city I have dreamed of living in — since I was a child being raised in a tiny town in Oklahoma — has turned out to be an unsafe place to raise a family." Read more: 'L.A. in a Minute' host says he was on hold with 911 for an hour. 'What if my son was choking?' Frances founded an online education and coaching company specializing in financial empowerment courses for women in 2011. The influencer now has more than half a million followers on Instagram, where she bills herself as a "self-made multimillionaire" and a "repetitive unrealistic goal achiever." In an Instagram message shared with The Times, Frances noted that she bought the home from Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky, who raised their four children at the property. Richards is Paris Hilton's aunt and best known for her long-running role on "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills," while Umansky is a real estate broker known for his own reality show, "Buying Beverly Hills." "They raised their four kids here, I have four kids," she told The Times. "This is a family home and we no longer feel safe." Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Yahoo
L.A. podcast host says he called 911 and waited on hold for an hour. 'What if my son was choking?'
A Los Angeles content creator waited 58 minutes for 911 to pick up his call after his home was burglarized, he said. Evan Lovett, host of the "L.A. in a Minute" podcast, returned to his Studio City home just after 9 p.m. Friday after his 11-year-old son's baseball game. A glass door in the back of the house was smashed in and valuables, including jewelry and a safe with items left to him by his deceased father, were gone. After searching the home for intruders, Lovett said he called 911 and was placed on hold for 58 minutes. "This s— is unnerving," he said in a video posted to social media. "What if my son was choking? What if my wife slipped and fell in the shower and cracked her head open?" he said in an interview with The Times on Sunday. Police publicly disputed his estimate for how long it took to respond to his call, with L.A. Police Capt. Ray Valois telling NBC4 the call was picked up in 74 seconds and then was de-prioritized as a non-emergency call. Lovett rebutted Valois' claims and said he had witnesses to prove it. Several of his neighbors had come to his home to help and were listening while he called 911 on speaker, Lovett said. When he called, he said, a two-part recording told him he was placed on hold, then said there was a heavy call volume and not to hang up. "There was absolutely no human being that we heard from, until 58 minutes." Once dispatch picked up, Lovett said, L.A. police officers arrived to take a report within six minutes. By then, it was about 10:12 p.m. His Wi-Fi-enabled Ring cameras had detected no movement between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m., he said, leading officers to believe a group of thieves used a Wi-Fi jammer to disrupt the cameras and enter unseen. Lovett, who worked as a sports staff writer for The Times from 1998 to 1999, said he'd like to use his platform to start a dialogue on how to correct what he sees as a negative trajectory for Los Angeles. Lovett's podcast regularly focuses on history, news and current events shaping Los Angeles. But earlier on the day of the break-in, he'd posted an episode in which he described feeling despondent about the condition of the city. "From the fires to ICE raids to the political blame game to Hollywood's continued struggle, the atmosphere of gloom is pervading Los Angeles," the description reads. Then the break-in happened. Now he feels he should speak out, given his own experience, as well as the staff shortages that exist in the L.A. Police Department and 911 call centers. "When it shows up at your front door, and I have a platform that reaches important people and decision-making people, I'm like, I gotta say something," Lovett said. "Let's be constructive and let's all work for the betterment of the city without getting mad at each other, without pointing the finger at each other, because the air is heavy enough in Los Angeles as it is right now. Let's work on doing it in a positive, uplifting way." Since the burglary, he said, several local officials including his City Council representative, Nithya Raman, had reached out to him. The LAPD did not immediately respond Sunday to a Times request for 911 call reports that could show what happened with Lovett's emergency call. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
