LA by the firelight
Resources and how to help [#174]
It's a thing. It's not a person. You know, if it were my dog or my wife, we wouldn't even be talking about the property.
It's property, it's stuff.
Dan the man has an amazing attitude, still smiling and hugging his daughter after losing his home in the LA wildfires. He has his priorities right. [Channel 4 News].
There’s a lot of news about celebrities losing their homes, but that’s just a tiny part of it. Entire neighbourhoods and communities have been wiped out and many creatives have lost their home, studios and life’s work.
Just read about how abstract painter Daniel Mendel-Black's home and studio, containing five years of work, was lost to the flames and similar stories in Creative Boom.
John-Michael Bond, the new deputy editor of Passionfruit, talks about how brutal disasters like this are for the self-employed.
Most creators don’t get days off. The freedom that comes from being your own boss also means you are your only backup when the world starts to burn.
There’s also the challenge of continuing to create while you’re dealing with personal trauma. He’s anticipating conversations about the callousness of people creating content about the disaster. “But if your life and your story are your content, sometimes it isn’t easy to step out of that role.” Your reality is your job.
LA is a global hub for entertainment. But the lockdown, writers' strikes, and a year-round fire season have made it a challenging place to live. It will be interesting to see how the city rebuilds itself. It’s heartening to see people coming together to help each other out.
It also raises questions about the longer-term impact on LA’s creative ecosystem.
Will there be an exodus of creatives with rising rents and a property shortage?
How do we define ‘home’ and sanctuary in a climate crisis?
LA is one of the world’s wealthiest cities, but climate change spares no one. What’s the point of having a multi-million-dollar home and material possessions nature can destroy so quickly?
has written about how we’ll see a great migration out of LA and why, as a native Angelino, she has no intention of leaving.
I spoke to my friend Mel Lambert, who’s in no immediate danger in Studio City, north of Hollywood - the two major fires are several miles away in Pacific Palisades and Altadena.
But the third conflagration was in the Hollywood Hills southwest of us. There was the scare of a mandatory evacuation – lots of industry people have recording/production facilities and post-production in their homes or town – so the threat was palpable.
Elsewhere, several film and TV artisans have lost editing and mixing resources – they returned to a smoking ruin!
This is his friend's house in Altadena:
And here's a satellite view of the San Gabriel Mountains, showing the extent of the fires.
This brings it closer to home.
I know Heather Goldberg as a banjo player with a local band, The Carnival of Futility, whose husband is a noted artist and photographer.
Everything in their home has gone – this morning, she asked followers if they maybe had a spare banjo case because she grabbed her instrument as she rushed out of the house. I've sent her some money via Zelle.
How you can help
Donate to The Salvation Army South California Division Emergency Fund
Reach out to creators and share their stories online
Be safe, protect your loved ones, and always keep making stuff. - John-Michael Bond.
Cheers,
Nika 🥂
PS I'm so pleased eight people have signed up for my Substack St Leonards meetup - something I can do to bring people together. There's a real hunger for in-person events.
💬 👀 💬
Newsletter engagement and retention tactics for 2025 – a new white paper from Omeda [Read]
Creative Rights in AI Coalition – a simple way to write to your MP, asking them to safeguard creative rights in AI [Read]
NUJ Webinar: AI and Ethics – 22 Jan. Join online to share your views and hear more about the use of AI in journalism. [Book]
What's Next? 2025 marketing trends w/ Amanda Laird | Off The Grid – big shifts in the social media landscape, Substack, the rise of IRL events & more. [Watch]
🔗Great post from Lex Roman on how to help - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lexroman_how-to-help-la-right-now-heres-my-advice-activity-7284199692022734848-3xdP?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
It's tragic, but like London in the great fire of September 1666, it's a story about inflammable wood frame construction methods (which have repeatedly been far fire susceptible to fire brands than concrete and brick when dried out by low-humidity inland winds, as proved from San Francisco in 1906 to Hiroshima in 1945). The propaganda spin by the BBC that this is inevitable climate change simply ignores the fact that wood burns, concrete doesn't. But I won't be blogging about this, it's impossible to get the truth out about anything now.