Get ready for the 2024 Topanga Open Studio Tour, October 5-6! This is a unique opportunity to meet local artists, explore their studios, and experience the creative spirit of the canyon first hand. TNT has all the details on page 4! Our artful Studio Tour cover was designed and shot by photographer Lauren Purves and stars her talented rescue doggo, Malibu. Lauren will be exhibiting her work at the studio tour and there’s a good chance Mr. M. will be there to assist her! Follow them on Instagram: @laurenexploren and @mrmlidude. Cover concept and design by Urs Baur
First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys; full of cold winds, long nights, dark promises. Days get short. The shadows lengthen. The wind warms in such a way, you want to run forever through the fields, because up ahead, ten thousand pumpkins lie waiting to be cut. —Ray Bradbury
Here in Southern California that wind is more likely to be the hot, dry Santa Ana instead of a cold wind, but October is still a rare month, one with warm days, sullen orange sunsets, followed by wind-swept skies at night, and there is a somber, autumnal perfume in the air compounded of dusty, sun-baked chaparral, the incense-like scent of flowering coyote bush, a hint of skunk musk, and a note of smoke that warns of wildfire danger instead of evoking the comforts of home and hearth.
Wildfire risk will remain a concern until the rains arrive, and we may be headed for a dry winter. Data analyzed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts a 71 percent chance that La Niña conditions will emerge this fall and persist through March 2025. That means the potential for a warmer, dryer winter in the West, and a wetter, colder one in the East.
Right now, however, conditions are neutral. It’s too soon to know what this winter has in store for us. The best we can do is get ready: clear brush to reduce fire risk, but also clean drains and gutters and check windshield wiper blades and tires—just in case.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has just finished clearing his desk of nearly one thousand bills. The bills—he signed more than three quarters of them—cover everything from prison reform and traffic laws to AI and abortion.
One of the laws the governor just signed into law will allow for five law enforcement speed cameras to be installed along a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. The bill was authored by state Senator Ben Allen in response to the high number of traffic fatalities on PCH in Malibu, including the tragic death of four Pepperdine students last year. The pilot program is part of a concerted push to prevent speed-related accidents.
Newsom vetoed a second bill that would have created new penalties for speeding on roads with speed limits of 55 mph or less. That bill was also authored in response to the death toll on PCH, but was rejected because it would have “less of an overall deterrent effect than intended.”
Another suite of bills gives actors some protection for their “digital likenesses.”
“No one should live in fear of becoming someone else’s unpaid digital puppet,” said SAG-AFTRA spokesperson Duncan Crabtree-Ireland in a statement. “Governor Newsom has led the way in protecting people — and families —from A.I. replication without real consent.”
Just one hundred years ago, the motion picture industry was beginning to grapple with the technology that would enable the creation of sound and color movies. The future arrives a lot faster than anyone could imagine and in ways that defy our ability to predict.
A new county law goes into effect on October 7. Homeowners in unincorporated Los Angeles County, including Topanga, who provide short term rentals of 30 consecutive days or less will now need to register and pay an annual registration fee of $914. Learn more at ttc.lacounty.gov.
Up the coast, advocates and activists are awaiting the official designation document that is the final phase of a multi-decade push to create Chumash Heritage Marine Sanctuary. The final designation documents will trigger a 45-day Congressional and state review. The preferred alternative extends nearly sixty miles from shore to a depth of 11,580 feet, and encompasses 4,543 square miles of coastal and ocean waters offshore Central California, including 116 miles of coastline—from just south of Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County to the Gaviota Coast in Santa Barbara County. It will provide protection for all of the resources in the area—biological, cultural, historical—and it will return to the Chumash people an important aspect of their cultural heritage. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it tends towards justice.”
Stay safe, be well. Happy October—a rare month, indeed!
