A year into pandemic, Van Nuys Boulevard transforms from shopping mecca to mausoleum of failed businesses Listen 13 min MORE Scot Mendelson, owner of Mendy’s Gym, has covered the glass doors of his facility facing Van Nuys Boulevard with brown paper. Photo by Benjamin Gottlieb.
One year ago this week, Governor Gavin Newsom issued his statewide stay-at-home order to try and limit the spread of the coronavirus in California.
Since then, the efforts have been marked by moving goalposts reopening plans that change frequently, rules that differ county by county and even sometimes neighborhood to neighborhood. Most tragically, California has seen more than 55,000 residents lose their lives to COVID-19.
Business was booming at LA’s Bloom and Plume. Then the pandemic took its toll Listen 10 min MORE Maurice Harris poses for a Valentine’s Day ad on his Instagram page. Photo by Benjamin Gottlieb.
In the back room of a downtown LA flower shop, Maurice Harris carefully applies a layer of blueish-grey eyeshadow.
His thick, black beard pokes out from under a faded, pink wig.
“I watch a lot of YouTube tutorials on doing makeup,” Harris says as he gets ready to star in an ad for his flower business, Bloom & Plume. He’s focused on the mirror of his portable vanity. “But I never try it, actually, until the day I actually have to . which is an interesting technique, I think.”
MORE The small dog area at the Sepulveda Basin Off-Leash Dog Park in Encino at dusk. Photo by Benjamin Gottlieb.
Genia Ahranian doesn’t know what she would do without her daily trips to the dog park.
“I retired years ago,” Ahranian says, sitting contently with her red poodle named Dousha on her lap under a canopy of trees in the San Fernando Valley. The name, she says, means “sweet face” in Russian slang.
“The moment you cross the gates, you enter another world. I call this place paradise.”
Genia Ahranian and her red poodle Dousha sitting together at the Sepulveda Basin Off-Leash Dog Park in Encino. Photo by Benjamin Gottlieb.
2020 in photos: Political battles, civil unrest, and celebrations hit the streets of a pandemic LA
Dec. 22, 2020
KCRW looks back at the year’s biggest events from President Trump’s impeachment trial to the protests against racial injustice, and the celebrations around victories by the LA Lakers, Dodgers, and presidential contender Joe Biden.
JANUARY
The death of Kobe Bryant
The sudden death of LA Laker Kobe Bryant brought the city together in a moment of collective mourning. He and seven others died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas. Hours afterward, thousands of Angelenos flocked to the Staples Center in downtown LA and grieved together.