At left, James Farr with his mother, Patricia, in 1996. At right, Tupac photographed by Farr.

James Farr, who now reports on Altadena’s recovery from the Eaton fire, was 22 when he helped stage the House of Blues show that became the rapper’s final performance

James Farr, a Pasadena-based writer and radio host who now spends much of his time documenting Altadena’s uneven recovery from the Eaton fire, is marking an unlikely anniversary this Independence Day: 30 years since he helped stage what became Tupac Shakur’s final concert.

The performance took place on July 4, 1996, at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Farr was 22 at the time. He produced the show.

What he remembers, he said in the statement, was not a sense of history in the making.

“At the time, it wasn’t history,” Farr rembers. “It was load-in, credentials, production calls, making sure everything and everyone was where they needed to be. You don’t know what moments will carry forward.”

The concert has since been widely documented as Shakur’s last. It was a joint Death Row Records show featuring Snoop Dogg and Tha Dogg Pound, and the footage was released in 2005 as the album and video Tupac: Live at the House of Blues, which has been certified platinum.

Shakur was shot in Las Vegas on Sept. 7, 1996, and died six days later, on Sept. 13 — a little more than two months after the Fourth of July performance.

In his own published account of the night, Farr has recalled how close the show came to not happening. Booking West Coast rap into a marquee venue was difficult in 1996, he wrote, in part because promoters and venues struggled to obtain insurance for such acts, and Shakur was out on bail at the height of the East Coast–West Coast rivalry. By his recollection, organizers went so far as to leave Shakur’s name off the promotion, building the billing around Tha Dogg Pound and Snoop Dogg instead.

That account first appeared in Culture Honey magazine on the 25th anniversary of the concert and, according to the Tunnel Vision release, was republished this week by Hollywood Progressive.

Farr, who was from the Bay Area, has written that Shakur recognized him backstage that night, greeting him by a family nickname and placing him through mutual connections in Richmond, Calif. He has described the rapper arriving focused as he stepped from his car toward the stage.

The memories resurfaced days before the anniversary. On “Hard Knock Radio,” a program hosted by the hip-hop journalist Davey D and posted July 2, 2026, Farr again revisited producing the House of Blues show and recalled hearing Shakur perform “Hit ‘Em Up” live for the first time.

“This is going to be a problem,” he remembered saying.

Three decades later, Farr’s work is rooted in the San Gabriel Valley. He hosts “Conversation Live: Altadena Rising” on KBLA Talk 1580 and has reported on the recovery of Pasadena and Altadena after the Eaton fire, which burned through Altadena beginning in January 2025. In the same “Hard Knock Radio” interview, he described Altadena as a community defined by generations of Black homeownership and cultural history, and said that, more than 18 months after the fire, recovery had been uneven.

The Tunnel Vision release ties the anniversary both to the Fourth of July and to the national attention surrounding the 250th anniversary of the United States. The 1996 concert fell on Independence Day, and its 30th anniversary coincides with the nation’s semiquincentennial on July 4, 2026.

Farrhas described his work — from hip-hop history to the rebuilding of Altadena — as a form of cultural record-keeping, according to the statement. “You don’t know what moments will carry forward,” he said. Thirty years on, he is still deciding which ones to write down.

[photo credit: Rose Bowl Stadium]

More than a dozen marching ensembles are listed for the touring summer competition in Pasadena

More than a dozen of the country’s competitive marching ensembles are scheduled to take the Rose Bowl field on Saturday, July 11, when Drum Corps International returns to Pasadena for its annual Southern California stop.

The show, “Drum Corps at the Rose Bowl,” gathers World Class and Open Class corps for an evening of field-show competition at the Pasadena stadium, which opened in 1922. Among those listed to perform is Pacific Crest, the City of Industry corps that has served as the event’s host in past years.

According to the Rose Bowl Stadium event listing, the alphabetical lineup — which the listing says is subject to change — includes The Academy of Tempe, Arizona; the Blue Devils of Concord, California, along with their “B” and “C” corps; the Blue Knights of Denver; Gold of San Diego; Golden Empire of Bakersfield; Impulse of Buena Park; the Mandarins of Sacramento; Pacific Crest of City of Industry; the Sacramento Freelancers; the Santa Clara Vanguard; and the Seattle Cascades. The same listing notes a special appearance by the Boston Crusaders of Boston.

For Pasadena and Altadena residents, the event is a hometown date at the city’s most recognizable venue. The Rose Bowl is a National Historic Landmark with a capacity of nearly 90,000. Beyond the college football game that shares its name, the stadium has hosted five Super Bowls, FIFA World Cup matches, Olympic competition and, in 2007, the DCI World Championships.

Attendees should plan for the stadium’s entry rules, which are published in the Rose Bowl Stadium event listing. The Rose Bowl enforces a clear-bag policy, and larger bags must be returned to vehicles. Beverage containers larger than 32 ounces are prohibited, though factory-sealed plastic bottles and empty reusable bottles are allowed, with a limit of two per person. Strollers are permitted but may not be stored in aisles or under seats and can be checked at Tunnel 27 or the Gate C checked-items tent. According to Drum Corps International’s event listing, group discounts are available for groups of 20 or more, with orders due by July 9.

Need to Know: “Drum Corps at the Rose Bowl” takes place Saturday, July 11, 2026, at Rose Bowl Stadium, 1001 Rose Bowl Drive, Pasadena. Ticketing listings show a start time of 5:15 p.m. as of publication. [Editor’s note: Drum Corps International’s own event page lists a 5:00 p.m. start and AXS lists 4:59 p.m.; the start time could not be independently confirmed against DCI’s primary listing.] Ticket prices were not confirmed with a primary source. [Editor’s note: verify face-value pricing and any student-ticket program with Drum Corps International or the box office before publication.] On-site parking is available at the stadium. [Editor’s note: confirm lot, price and gates for this date with the Rose Bowl.] For information, call (626) 577-3100 or visit www.rosebowlstadium.com.

By nightfall, the scoreboards that usually track downs and field goals will be keeping a different count: the tenths of a point that separate one corps from the next.

DCI: Drum Corps International at the Rose Bowl
Date: Saturday, July 11, 5:15 PM | Rose Bowl Stadium, 1001 Rose Bowl Dr., Pasadena | https://www.rosebowlstadium.com/events/details/644/drum-corps-at-the-rose-bowl Rose Bowl StadiumRose Bowl Stadium

[photo credit: The Huntington]

The San Marino institution, adjacent to Pasadena, marks the nation’s 250th anniversary with a major exhibition and seasonal offerings — but reservations are required

The document that declared a nation turns 250 this week, and two early copies of it are on display 15 minutes from downtown Pasadena.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens will be open on Independence Day, Saturday, July 4, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Its anchor exhibition, “This Land Is …,” brings together two rare, annotated July 1776 printings of the Declaration of Independence alongside Woody Guthrie’s 1936 guitar — inscribed with the words “This Machine Kills Fascists” — in an exploration of how land has shaped American life from before the founding to the present, according to the institution.

The Huntington, located at 1151 Oxford Road in San Marino, sits directly adjacent to Pasadena and has served the San Gabriel Valley since it opened to the public in 1928. The institution encompasses more than 130 acres of botanical gardens alongside collections of art, history, and literature. The exhibition, which opened June 14 and runs through January 11, 2027, is mounted in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery as the centerpiece of the institution’s multiyear “THIS LAND IS …” initiative, timed to what The Huntington calls “Reflections for America at 250.”

Co-curated by Josh Garrett-Davis, the H. Russell Smith Foundation Curator of Western American History, and Linde B. Lehtinen, the Philip D. Nathanson Senior Curator of Photography, the exhibition is organized into six thematic sections — roots, uprootings, amendments, edge effects, disturbances, and regeneration — according to a published review of the show. Among the objects on view are hand-drawn surveys by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, manuscripts by Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, documents related to early Native American treaties, and a Congressional resolution to pass the 13th Amendment, according to The Huntington’s exhibition page. A cross-section of a Pasadena Engelmann oak with at least 250 growth rings greets visitors at the entrance.

Outside the gallery, a new garden space called Oak Meadow opened in June as part of the initiative, featuring more than 5,000 plants representing over 55 species — most native to California — along with 22 trees, including 16 oak species, according to The Huntington. Oaks are the national tree of the United States.

July 4 also marks the debut of botanical-infused snow cones near the north entrance to the Chinese Garden, available Saturdays and Sundays, with house-made syrups in flavors including hibiscus lime, Meyer lemon mint, strawberry basil, watermelon cucumber, and mango chile, according to The Huntington’s summer page. The 1919 Cafe will offer holiday specials including grilled salmon with peach BBQ sauce, dry-rubbed baby back ribs, corn on the cob, and watermelon feta salad, according to the institution. The Rose Garden Tea Room is closed for the holiday.

The Huntington is open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. except Tuesdays. Saturday, July 4, 2026, falls during the institution’s designated Fourth of July week peak season, which runs June 26 through July 5. Reservations are required Friday through Sunday, on holidays, and during peak seasons and can be made at tickets.huntington.org. Weekend and peak-season admission is $34 for adults, $28 for seniors (65 and older), military, and students (12 to 18 or full-time with ID), $15 for youth (4 to 11), and free for children under 4. The Museums for All program offers $5 admission for SNAP EBT cardholders and up to three guests. Parking is free but may reach capacity; two entrances serve the parking lot, at Oxford Road and Allen Avenue, and carpooling or rideshare is strongly encouraged, according to The Huntington. The Huntington Store is closed Wednesday, July 1, and Thursday, July 2, for inventory but will be open on the holiday. For ticket assistance, contact 626-405-2100 or tickets@huntington.org. The Huntington is at 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108. Information: huntington.org/plan-your-visit.

Two hundred and fifty years after a printer in New York set the words in type, the Declaration sits under glass in San Marino, waiting for visitors who can reach it by car in the time it takes to read its preamble.

The Huntington — Fourth of July Week Open Hours
Date: Saturday, July 4, 10:00 AM–5:00 PM (peak season June 26–July 5)
The Huntington is open on Independence Day (Sat., July 4, 10 AM–5 PM). | Reservations required Friday–Sunday, on holidays, and during peak seasons. 2026 Peak Seasons include Fourth of July week (June 26–July 5). | 1151 Oxford Rd., San Marino (Pasadena area)
https://www.huntington.org/plan-your-visit The HuntingtonThe Huntington

[photo credit: Angel City Reciprocity]

EagleVision Entertainment series profiles Angel City Lumber founder and the Reciprocity Project supplying wood to fire survivors

The oaks and pines that burned in the Eaton Fire are showing up in Altadena again — not as trees, but as floorboards, molding, and trim for the homes being built near where the vdery trees once stood.

A new audio documentary series now tells the story of the sawmill operator behind that transformation. Nature, Incorporated, produced by Los Angeles-based EagleVision Entertainment Corporation, launched its first episode June 29.

The episode profiles Jeff Perry, founder of Boyle Heights sawmill Angel City Lumber and the driving force behind the Altadena Reciprocity Project, according to a company press release distributed through PR Newswire.

Perry grew up in Boston and moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in Hollywood, according to the press release. An encounter with a fallen tree on a path he walked with his son redirected his life, and he went on to found Angel City Lumber.

His project, operated through the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Angel City Reciprocity, mills fire-damaged trees salvaged from the Eaton Fire burn zone into finish-grade lumber and sells it exclusively to Altadena residents at below-market prices. The Eaton Fire, which began January 7, 2025, in Eaton Canyon, destroyed 9,418 structures, according to Cal Fire, and killed at least 19 people.

Perry, who has spent a decade milling fallen trees across Los Angeles County, partnered with landscape architects Ruth Siegel and Blake Jopling after the fire to launch the effort, according to LAist. The operation mills logs at a temporary site established with Las Flores Canyon Water Company. Roughly half the logs came from the Altadena Golf Course debris area, where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers set them aside during cleanup, and the other half from a U.S. Forest Service contract to remove hazard trees from the Angeles National Forest, Pasadena Now reported in January 2026.

The lumber is intended for millwork — flooring, molding, cabinet fronts, casings, and trim. Perry estimated the project could yield one to two million board feet, enough to supply material for 500 Altadena homes, Pasadena Now reported.

“Trees are a gift, from germination through death,” Perry told LAist in April 2025. “And we can continue to utilize the gift of wood from these trees, or we can squander that gift, which I believe is very disrespectful.”

The press release states Perry saved more than 1,000 trees and set up a local sawmill within a year of the fire. The documentary is hosted by Bryan H. Shepard, whom the company describes as a media veteran, author, and four-time Emmy Award winner, and produced by Monica Downer, whom the company describes as a two-time Emmy Award winner and media professional. EagleVision states it has provided broadcast production services in the entertainment industry for more than 35 years and is now primarily focused on nature-based content, according to the company.

“We created this audio documentary to shine a light on people like Jeff who are actively rewriting how humanity interacts and supports local ecosystems,” Shepard said in the press release.

Matthew Burrows, an Altadena homeowner who lost his home in the fire, told Pasadena Now in January 2026 that he hopes to incorporate wood from his property into his rebuilt house. “Bringing that tree back into our lives, it’ll just be a constant reminder of those beautiful days that were and the amazing future that it’s gonna be,” Burrows said.

The first episode of Nature, Incorporated is available for streaming at natureincdoc.com and on most podcast platforms, according to the press release. The series is also accepting story submissions from people involved in environmental stewardship at natureincdoc.com. Altadena residents who wish to purchase lumber from the Reciprocity Project can do so at the Las Flores Canyon sawmill site with proof of Altadena residence. Donations to Angel City Reciprocity can be made at angelcityreciprocity.org. Additional information about the lumber project is available at angelcitylumber.com.

“By doing this, we’re hoping that those trees and their legacy will stay in the community,” Perry told LAist. “Their stories will live on, and it’ll maintain the spirit and vibe — essentially — of Altadena.”

School of Rock’s weeklong program puts young musicians inside the songs that defined six decades of popular music

The distance from Aretha Franklin to Taylor Swift is six decades — and, starting this week, five days at a music school on East Colorado Boulevard.

School of Rock Pasadena’s Pop Legends Camp, which runs Monday through Friday this week, puts students ages 8 to 18 inside a working band to rehearse and perform songs by artists who collectively trace the evolution of popular music. The camp costs $645 and ends Friday with a live performance for family and friends, according to the school’s website.

The Pasadena location, at 1240 East Colorado Boulevard, is one of more than 450 School of Rock franchise locations worldwide. The performance-based music school, which counts students from Pasadena Unified School District and other local schools among its enrollment, is a member of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce.

The camp’s setlist draws from a roster that starts with early pop legends — Franklin, Diana Ross, Dusty Springfield — and runs through Madonna and Michael Jackson to Kelly Clarkson and Swift, according to the school’s camp listing. The curriculum centers on female pop artists but includes male counterparts such as Jackson and Prince.

Students choose from five instruments — bass, drums, guitar, keyboards, or vocals — and spend each day in rehearsals, practice sessions, and music-based activities from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., the listing states. Some prior musical experience is preferred but not required, according to the school.

On Friday, the week’s work comes together: campers take the stage at the school at 1:30 p.m. for a live show. The performance is open to family and friends.

The Pop Legends Camp is one of several themed summer camps at the Pasadena school. School of Rock was founded as a single location in Philadelphia in 1998 and has grown into a franchise with locations across 19 countries. Its model combines private instruction with group band rehearsals, with the aim of getting students performing live, according to the company’s website.

The Pop Legends Camp runs Monday, June 29, through Friday, July 3, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. each day at School of Rock Pasadena, 1240 East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91106. Tuition is $645. Drop-off is no earlier than five minutes before camp begins, and pick-up is no later than five minutes after camp ends. Campers must bring their own nut-free lunch each day, as well as hearing protection, which is available for purchase at the school. Guitarists and bass players may bring their own instruments. A full refund is available for cancellations made 30 or more days before the first day of camp, a 50 percent refund for cancellations 15 or more days before, and no refund within 14 days, according to the school’s website. Enrollment is available online at schoolofrock.com/locations/pasadena, by phone at (626) 508-1818, or by email at pasadena@schoolofrock.com.

Five days, five instruments, six decades of pop music — and on Friday, a room full of parents will find out what their kids did with all of it.

Marisa Solis and co-author Elizabeth Dougherty bring their guide for first-time authors to Vroman’s on July 14.

For 28 years, Marisa Solis helped other people sound like authors. After editing more than 500 books across every nonfiction genre, the Altadena resident decided to become one herself. On Tuesday, July 14, Solis and her co-author, Elizabeth Dougherty, read from and sign their new book at Vroman’s Bookstore, beginning at 7 p.m.

The book, “The Complete Expert-to-Author Guide: Plan, Write, and Publish Your Nonfiction Book,” is exactly what its title promises — a step-by-step road map for experts who want to turn their knowledge into a published book. Solis and Dougherty, longtime developmental editors and book coaches who cofounded the editorial company Book Structure Pros, wrote it after a planned writing workshop fell through, channeling the disappointment into a guide that collects the advice they had spent years giving clients. Kirkus Reviews called it “a smart and stylish guide to writing and publishing a nonfiction book.”

There is a neat symmetry to the project: two veteran editors, long accustomed to working on the other side of the desk, writing a first book about writing a first book. At Vroman’s, the pair are expected to read from the opening section and walk through the foundational steps that aspiring authors most often skip, with time set aside for questions.

For the many local professionals who have been told, “You should write a book,” the evening offers a practical nudge from two people who have shepherded hundreds of them into print.

Marisa Solis and Elizabeth Dougherty will read from and sign “The Complete Expert-to-Author Guide: Plan, Write, and Publish Your Nonfiction Book” on Tuesday, July 14 at 7 p.m. Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. For more information, call (626) 449-5320 or visit vromansbookstore.com. Admission is free.

An L.A. press founded in 2023 brings American Book Award winners and Pomona’s poet laureate to the city’s oldest bookstore

The hammer in El Martillo Press is not a metaphor the publisher hides. It is in the name, in the logo, and in the kind of writers it puts on a stage.

On Friday, June 26, 2026, five of those writers took the floor at Vroman’s Bookstore. El Martillo Press, the Los Angeles-based publisher founded in 2023, presents a free reading and signing at 7:00 p.m. at the store, 695 East Colorado Boulevard, pairing a founding member of the performance troupe Culture Clash with four poets whose honors include the American Book Award and the title of Pomona poet laureate. For Pasadena readers, it is a chance to hear an award-laden Latino roster in a single evening at the city’s oldest bookstore.

The playwright on the bill is Herbert Siguenza, a Culture Clash founder who recently served as playwright in residence at the San Diego Repertory Theatre. His “Anthology of Latino Plays” arrived in September 2025.

The poets carry their own credentials. Lorna Dee Cervantes founded a publishing imprint at 20 and wrote the American Book Award-winning collection “Emplumada” at 24. Paul S. Flores won the American Book Award in 2024 for “We Still Be: Poems and Performances,” published by El Martillo. Sonia Gutiérrez, recipient of the Tomás Rivera Book Award, reads from the bilingual collection “Paper Birds.” Ceasar K. Avelar, a former factory worker, is the second poet laureate of Pomona; his “God of the Air Hose and Other Blue-Collar Poems” takes its language from the factory floor.

El Martillo Press was founded in 2023 by poets Matt Sedillo and David A. Romero. Romero, the co-founder and editor-in-chief, has described the logic of banding writers together. “We had seen great success,” he told CALÓ News. “We could promote each other’s books, we could get each other’s books into bookstores, and there was just a lot of collective action, you know, of like: together we are more powerful.”

Within its first year, the press published Flores’s award winner. “That’s pretty much unheard for a press within our first year of publishing, we won one of the top literary awards,” Romero told CALÓ News.

Avelar’s place on the roster reflects what the founders say they are after. “He really embodied the spirit of what we are trying to do with the press and really showed that people who work, you know, the working hands are some of the most creative minds,” Sedillo told CALÓ News.

The reading is free; Vroman notes that buying the featured book helps make its events possible. The store, founded in 1894, sits in Playhouse Village and hosts hundreds of readings, signings and book clubs each year. Vroman’s can be reached at (626) 449-5320.

El Martillo’s authors have read at Vroman’s before. On Friday, they bring the hammer back.

Sunday Mt. Wilson Observatory shows are a delicious Pasadena secret

In 2017, Dan Coney, then a trustee at Mount Wilson Observatory, had a little idea. He invited a French cellist named Cécilia Tsan to climb the mountain, stand inside the dome that once housed the most powerful telescope in the world, and play.

He shot the video on his iPhone. They posted it to social media. Within a week it had 12,000 views.

“And I said, ‘Okay, let’s try to launch a series,’” Tsan recalled in a recent interview.

Nearly a decade later, the Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome has become one of the more unlikely success stories in Southern California classical music. No advertising budget. No corporate sponsor. Sold out for two consecutive seasons. Tsan, who now serves as the series’ artistic director, programs each season and performs in select concerts herself.

The dome in question sheltered the 100-inch Hooker Telescope, the instrument Edwin Hubble used to establish that the universe is expanding. It was designed by Chicago architect D.H. Burnham, and its curved interior creates the kind of natural reverb that concert hall engineers spend fortunes trying to approximate. “The resonance is incredible,” Tsan said. “The shape of the dome makes it like an older cathedral in Europe. But it’s not too boomy. We still have clarity. We can still hear minute details.” Every musician who performs there, she said, wants to come back.

The 2026 season reflects her range as a curator. On July 5, a brass quintet featuring Dan Rosenboom and Rob Schear on trumpets, Laura Brenes on horn, Alex Iles on trombone, and Doug Tornquist on tuba will perform Bernstein’s “Suite from West Side Story” along with additional works.

Tsan said brass instruments in that space produce something startling. “You would not believe how gorgeous this is.”

On August 9, jazz pianist Tom Ranier leads a trio with guitarist Larry Koonse and bassist Darek Oles in a program billed as “Carte Blanche to Tom Ranier.” September 6 brings the Webern String Quartet, with Benjamin Hoffman and Chiai Tajima on violins, Alex Granger on viola, and Stella Cho on cello, performing Todd Mason’s String Quartet No. 5, “The Phoenix,” alongside Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132.

The season closes October 4 with a piano quartet pairing Mahler and Brahms’s Piano Quartet in C minor, with David Kaplan on piano, Ambroise Aubrun on violin, Ariana Solotoff on viola, and Tsan herself on cello.

A Steinway grand now lives inside the dome year-round, donated by a USC professor after an audience member at a previous concert made the connection between his search for a nonprofit home for the instrument and Tsan’s series. A skilled piano technician restored it, and it made its dome debut last April. Its arrival opened new possibilities. Last summer’s concert featuring Sarah Gillis, the SpaceX Polaris mission astronaut and violinist, alongside Martin Chalifour, concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was the first time a piano had ever been played in the dome.

Tsan’s own story is as layered as the acoustics she has spent years curating. Her parents met at the Shanghai Conservatory, fled Communist China, married at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome while studying at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, and eventually settled in Paris, where her father, a composer gaining recognition in European musical circles, was killed under tragic circumstances soon after she was born. She was named after the Roman academy where her parents trained.

Her mother raised her in Paris as a young widow of 22. Among the family’s circle of friends were the Mas, the Chinese immigrant family whose son Yo-Yo would become the most celebrated cellist of his generation.

“One day I heard Yo-Yo play the cello and I cried,” Tsan said. “It was so beautiful.” The cello she first learned on was a gift from the priest who officiated at her father’s funeral. Yo-Yo Ma’s father introduced her to a teacher, and she eventually won the single open spot in the Paris Conservatory’s cello program out of 150 applicants that year.

She moved to Los Angeles in 1991 and has divided her time between France and Southern California ever since.

Each season, she makes a point of programming at least one ensemble of younger musicians. “People did that for me in Europe,” she said. “I think it’s very important.”

What she wants audiences to carry away from a Sunday afternoon under the dome is harder to quantify. “This world is so chaotic right now,” she said. “I can sense and feel that people need real emotions. They need to connect to each other. Music is a moment of communication, heart to heart, soul to soul.”

Tickets for remaining 2026 Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome are available at mtwilson.edu/concerts. Access to the dome performance level requires climbing a 53-step staircase at an elevation of roughly one mile. Children under 6 are not admitted.

David Litt discusses a year and a half of learning to ride waves with a brother-in-law who is his political opposite

Former Obama speechwriter David Litt will discuss and sign his memoir about learning to surf Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Vroman’s Bookstore, the Colorado Boulevard shop the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce describes as Southern California’s oldest and largest independent bookstore.

The book, It’s Only Drowning, recounts how Litt took up surfing in his mid-30s with help from his brother-in-law, Matt Kappler — an electrician and Joe Rogan listener whom Litt describes as his cultural and political opposite. According to the publisher, Simon & Schuster, the memoir follows the pair from the Jersey Shore to California, Spain and Hawaii’s North Shore. The publisher lists the title as a national bestseller and a 2025 Booklist Editors’ Choice selection.

Litt joined the White House as a speechwriter in 2011 and left in 2016 as a senior presidential speechwriter to President Barack Obama. The publisher notes he was described as “the comic muse for the president” for his work on White House Correspondents’ Dinner monologues. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Thanks, Obama and Democracy in One Book or Less, according to Simon & Schuster.

He began surf lessons at age 35 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where he lives part of the year. In the book, he writes that learning to surf is “like learning a language that wants to kill you.” In an interview, Litt said he turned to the water at a point when he “needed to try something new, but was feeling pretty adrift.”

In an NPR interview, Litt said the hours he and Kappler spent in the water became “neutral ground” — a space that was not coded liberal or conservative at a divided national moment. The memoir spans roughly a year and a half of his progress from novice to surfing Hawaii’s North Shore.

The Vroman’s appearance is listed as an adult event and book signing. The store, founded in 1894, says a purchase of the book supports its events. The Pasadena stop falls within a busy week of author signings at Vroman’s, which hosts hundreds of events a year, according to the Pasadena Chamber.

Litt has toured widely for the title, which Gallery Books published in 2025; earlier stops included Bookshop Santa Cruz in November 2025 and Warwick’s. In one podcast interview about why he kept at the sport despite repeated wipeouts, he said, “I think that becoming a better surfer is making me a better person.”

Vroman’s is at 695 E. Colorado Blvd. The store is open Monday through Saturday until 9 p.m. and can be reached at (626) 449-5320.

Asked on NPR about a critical review of how he portrayed his brother-in-law, Litt said: “I respectfully disagree with that. All memoirs, to me, are about change.” In that same interview, he framed the book as a story about how much he learned from a person he had assumed he had nothing in common with.

A Culture Clash founder and four poets, including Pomona’s second poet laureate, share one Pasadena stage June 26

A founding member of the Chicano performance troupe Culture Clash and four Latinx poets will read from their work June 26 at Vroman’s Bookstore, in an evening staged by the Los Angeles publisher El Martillo Press.

The reading and book signing, set for 7 p.m. at the Pasadena store, brings together a notably broad slate: playwright Herbert Siguenza alongside poets Lorna Dee Cervantes, Paul S. Flores, Sonia Gutiérrez and Ceasar K. Avelar. El Martillo Press, founded in Los Angeles in 2023 by poets Matt Sedillo and David A. Romero, publishes working-class and Latinx writers. “El Martillo” means “the hammer” in Spanish. The store asks that those attending consider buying a book.

The press built a national profile quickly. In its first years it published Flores’ We Still Be: Poems and Performances, which won the American Book Award in 2024. “We want to treat our authors the way we want to be treated,” Romero, the co-founder and editor-in-chief, said in an interview with CALÓ News. Sedillo has favored a shorter phrase for the press’s aim: “El Martillo: the builder of bridges. The destroyer of walls,” he told Cultural Daily.

Each writer arrives with distinct credentials. Siguenza is a founding member of Culture Clash, the satirical troupe established in San Francisco in 1984 that relocated to Los Angeles in 1991. He was recently playwright in residence at the San Diego Repertory Theatre through an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, and his Anthology of Latino Plays was published by El Martillo Press in September 2025.

Cervantes, born in San Francisco and raised in San José, wrote the American Book Award-winning collection Emplumada at 24 and founded MANGO Publications at 20. Gutiérrez, author of Spider Woman / La Mujer Araña, received the Tomás Rivera Book Award in 2021 and an International Latino Book Award in 2022 for her novel Dreaming with Mariposas.

Avelar became the second poet laureate of Pomona in January 2023 and is the author of God of the Air Hose and Other Blue-Collar Poems. He founded the Obsidian Tongues open mic in 2017 at Café con Libros Press in Pomona. “I write exclusively through the sociological lens of a blue-collar worker,” he said in an interview with The Pomonan.

The reading takes place at Vroman’s Bookstore, the Pasadena institution founded in 1894 at 695 E. Colorado Blvd. It begins at 7 p.m. Friday, June 26. Information is available at (626) 449-5320 and on the store’s website.

El Martillo Press will publish Cervantes’ next collection, FIRE: Poems Against Pandemic, this year.

 El Martillo Press Reading — Herbert Siguenza (Culture Clash), Lorna Dee Cervantes, Paul S. Flores, Sonia Gutiérrez, Ceasar K. Avelar | Friday, June 26, 2026, 7:00 p.m. | https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-06-26/el-martillo-press-reading