Speaker 1: Well, the city council might only give you sixty seconds
Speaker 1: to where your grievance is.
Speaker 2: Oh hi, I'd like to go to the first caller
Speaker 2: on the phone.
Speaker 1: Well, if you're lucky, now we're giving you a both
Speaker 1: sixty minutes. It's a KABC News Blitz with Randy Wang
Speaker 1: in our long recap of the day's top local stories
Speaker 1: on your drive home. And unlike the city Council, we're
Speaker 1: the perfect vehicle to actually.
Speaker 2: Get your voice heard.
Speaker 1: The KABC News Blitz with Randy Wang starts no.
Speaker 3: It is the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk
Speaker 3: radio seven to ninety KABC. This is your daily rundown
Speaker 3: of everything you need to know that's going on in
Speaker 3: Southern California as well as the Bay Area, Sacramento, San Diego,
Speaker 3: and the Central Valley.
Speaker 2: I cover all of it.
Speaker 3: I compile a list every single morning of all the
Speaker 3: news stories affecting you locally that you may have missed,
Speaker 3: and you can check it all out Atwangradio dot substack
Speaker 3: dot com. You'd also check out our YouTube channel where
Speaker 3: we do the John Phillips Show live every single day
Speaker 3: from noon to three at YouTube dot com, slash at
Speaker 3: Randy Wang Radio the at sign like an email address
Speaker 3: at Randy Wang Radio. You can also follow me on
Speaker 3: Instagram and x at Randy Wang Radio and send me
Speaker 3: an email. I bet you can guess Randy Wang Radio
Speaker 3: at gmail dot com. It is day two of me
Speaker 3: broadcasting from Toronto, Canada. And let me tell you, I
Speaker 3: got to try poutine last night, legitpoutine from the Burgers Priest,
Speaker 3: a delicious smash burger place, and we got fries top
Speaker 3: with gravy and cheese kurds. And by the time we
Speaker 3: brought it back to the hotel room, the cheese curds
Speaker 3: were all melty.
Speaker 2: It was amazing. It was incredible.
Speaker 3: But I'm not just here to talk about cheese curds,
Speaker 3: although I could do the whole hour on it if
Speaker 3: you let me. But let's talk about digital driver's licenses.
Speaker 3: Govenor Gavin Newsom put out a little video over the
Speaker 3: last couple of days showing.
Speaker 2: How easy it is.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: The California DMV Digital driver License program is live. It
Speaker 3: was in the testing phase and I actually tried to
Speaker 3: use it during the testing phase and kept getting rejected.
Speaker 3: I was under the impression, oh, okay, maybe I'm getting
Speaker 3: rejected because I'm way thinner than my photo in the
Speaker 3: DMV picture on my driver's license. Turns out that's not it,
Speaker 3: because it worked out just fine today. So although it
Speaker 3: is funny to look at that picture, because yes, I
Speaker 3: am eighty pounds heavier in the picture, but I'm much
Speaker 3: closer to the weight that's actually listed on my driver's
Speaker 3: license now than when I took that picture, because I
Speaker 3: was at two to eighty and I'm pretty sure I
Speaker 3: told the DMV I was two thirty five, because nobody
Speaker 3: is honest on the weight on your driver's license picture.
Speaker 2: So I did it.
Speaker 3: I downloaded this app, I logged into my DMV account,
Speaker 3: which I had to set up last year when I
Speaker 3: had to get the real ID, and it was very,
Speaker 3: very simple. And I know there's a lot of people
Speaker 3: concerned about you know, do you really want to have
Speaker 3: a digital ID? Do you want to have even more
Speaker 3: of your information online? All of my information is online.
Speaker 3: I am broadcasting this not just to the radio, but
Speaker 3: I will also be recording this to upload to YouTube.
Speaker 3: Every part of my life is digital at some point,
Speaker 3: so I don't have a problem with that. And I
Speaker 3: can actually see a lot of advantages to having a
Speaker 3: digital driver's license for me, specifically, I when I'm home,
Speaker 3: get up every single morning, and the first thing I do,
Speaker 3: after you're doing a little show prep and feeding the
Speaker 3: dogs and emptying out the dishwasher is I go to
Speaker 3: my plate studio. And I love my pilate studio. I
Speaker 3: am missing it a little right now. It's like the
Speaker 3: one thing, Oh I'm missing my dogs. I am missing
Speaker 3: my pilates studio. But other than that, I'm having a
Speaker 3: great time in Canada this week. But when I go
Speaker 3: to pilates, I've got the toe socks on, I've got well,
Speaker 3: I don't do the toe socks, but I do the
Speaker 3: stocks with the sticky stuff because I just it feels
Speaker 3: wrong to me to have my toes separated in socks.
Speaker 3: It's just not my thing. And typically what you do
Speaker 3: is you bring your You have a little cubby where
Speaker 3: you can put your water, where you can put your keys,
Speaker 3: where you can put your phone, where you can put
Speaker 3: your wallet. And while I feel totally safe having it there,
Speaker 3: there's usually somebody watching, and if there isn't, they lock
Speaker 3: the door before the studio starts so nobody can steal
Speaker 3: all the wallets and everything. It always assume to me that,
Speaker 3: like this seems kind of unnecessary. Why do I need
Speaker 3: my wallet? And you could say, well, maybe you need
Speaker 3: your wallet, Randy, because you're probably gonna go to Ralph's
Speaker 3: next door afterwards and buy something, And I usually do
Speaker 3: because I go through a lot of cottage cheets, or
Speaker 3: I need some more sodas because I've gotten addicted to
Speaker 3: sparkling water. At some point, we're gonna have to do
Speaker 3: a new segment, Randy, sparkling water reviews, because I am
Speaker 3: drinking all of it.
Speaker 2: For the longest time.
Speaker 3: I was, so I don't do flavored sparkling water.
Speaker 2: I don't do it.
Speaker 3: I just do plain sparkling water out of my soda stream,
Speaker 3: or I get fancy imported mineral water from Germany. But
Speaker 3: now I'm on the sparkling water flavor train. Trader Joe's
Speaker 3: Black Cherry Vanilla, Oh, how I miss you. My wife
Speaker 3: has been in Canada for the last six weeks, says
Speaker 3: one of the things she misses the most next to
Speaker 3: me and the dogs is Trader Joe's. She was actually
Speaker 3: considering on a day off, driving two hours to Buffalo
Speaker 3: to go to a Trader Joe's.
Speaker 2: The addiction is real. Anyway, I'm completely off topic, but
Speaker 2: I started thinking about sparkling water.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I go to Ralph's after my pilates class
Speaker 3: every single day, and so I would probably need a
Speaker 3: wallet for that, except I don't because I can pay
Speaker 3: for stuff at Ralphs with Kroger Pay, which is by
Speaker 3: the way, I don't know if you know this hack.
Speaker 3: So I'm a big credit card hack guy, and one
Speaker 3: of the simplest hacks in order to maximize your points
Speaker 3: when you're going to Ralph's specifically or Kroger whatever. I
Speaker 3: don't know if Safeway does this up in the Bay Area,
Speaker 3: but with Kroger specifically, any Kroger brand, you can download
Speaker 3: the Ralphs app and you can use Kroger Pay. And
Speaker 3: what you do is you use for the credit card
Speaker 3: that's connected to your account, Chase Sapphire Preferred, which is
Speaker 3: a great card that only has one hundred dollars annual
Speaker 3: fee that has three X points on online groceries. But
Speaker 3: guess what, when you use Kroger Pay, even though you're
Speaker 3: buying your food in person, it counts as online groceries.
Speaker 3: So I get three X points on that Chase card
Speaker 3: for everything I buy at Ralphs, even though I'm buying
Speaker 3: it in person. It is a little hack that I
Speaker 3: think they are all glad to know that is out there,
Speaker 3: because it makes me use that card instead of my AMEX,
Speaker 3: although I probably could just use my AMEX as well
Speaker 3: because I get four X points on groceries, but I
Speaker 3: use the Chase Sapphire there and I use the MX
Speaker 3: at Trader Joe's and it all kind of evens out.
Speaker 3: I got lots of points and lots of different buckets,
Speaker 3: so I don't need to have a wallet with me
Speaker 3: for any of my morning routine except for I'm driving
Speaker 3: to and from the studio.
Speaker 2: It's not far.
Speaker 3: But still, if I ever got pulled over by law enforcement,
Speaker 3: I should have my driver's license on me. That would
Speaker 3: be important. I have my insurance card and my registration
Speaker 3: in the car, but I should probably have my driver's license.
Speaker 3: And by the way, insurance is something you can also
Speaker 3: get on your phone.
Speaker 2: Triple A.
Speaker 3: I have my insurance card on my phone and I
Speaker 3: tried to show it to somebody when I was involved
Speaker 3: in an accident a couple of years ago, and it
Speaker 3: was very confusing. But here's the problem with this, because
Speaker 3: what I just described is a perfect scenario for why
Speaker 3: you would love to have a digital driver's license, specifically because.
Speaker 2: I don't need a wallet for any of that.
Speaker 3: I can use my digital driver's license if for some
Speaker 3: reason I got pulled over, and I can use Kroger
Speaker 3: Pay at the market. So now I do not need
Speaker 3: to bring my wallet for my morning routine at Pilate's.
Speaker 3: But here's the problem. The California DMV digital driver's license
Speaker 3: is currently only accepted at a handful of different establishments,
Speaker 3: and a lot of bars and restaurants are not counting
Speaker 3: this as ID. I think you can use it at airports,
Speaker 3: but you better already have global entry.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Credit card hack number two, I should just do a
Speaker 3: whole show of credit card hacks. If you have an
Speaker 3: American Express card, whether it's the Gold or the Platinum,
Speaker 3: or you have a Chase Sapphire card, or you have
Speaker 3: a Capital one card, all of them will give you
Speaker 3: a one hundred reimbursement for applying for TSA pre check
Speaker 3: or global entry it up to I think it only
Speaker 3: costs you one hundred dollars and they'll reimburse you the
Speaker 3: full hundred dollars. So getting that extra background check for
Speaker 3: global entry is free, and when you have global Entry
Speaker 3: it lasts for five years and then you get automatic
Speaker 3: tsa pre check on all of your flights.
Speaker 2: Very very very important. But it's not accepted at bars.
Speaker 3: It's probably not accepted at Ralphs as I was going
Speaker 3: to buy alcohol, but you cannot do it the self checkout,
Speaker 3: which apparently you can do in states like Texas, but
Speaker 3: guess where it's also not accepted. The digital driver's license
Speaker 3: is not accepted by California law enforcement. So Gavin Newsom
Speaker 3: makes a whole deal out of how we have the
Speaker 3: digital driver's license. We're finally living up to the promise
Speaker 3: of Citizenville, Gavin Newsom's book that he wrote about modernizing government,
Speaker 3: and the place where you would use your license the most,
Speaker 3: the place where it would be most needed as identification
Speaker 3: to law enforcement. When you get pulled over, you cannot
Speaker 3: use it. So I downloaded it. I have the digital
Speaker 3: driver's license, but at this point there's no reason to
Speaker 3: haven't because it doesn't actually do anything except if I
Speaker 3: ever want to remember what I looked like eighty pounds heavier,
Speaker 3: I can go look at that picture. That's pretty much
Speaker 3: the only benefit the California Digital Driver's License has. Right now,
Speaker 3: I have a very important health update for you. Even
Speaker 3: though no Californians have been affected, it's on everybody's mind.
Speaker 2: The cyclosporiasis. I think I have pronounced that correctly.
Speaker 3: Outbreak that's mostly affecting people in like Michigan, which is
Speaker 3: very close to where I am right now in Toronto.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing.
Speaker 3: The the organizations that are supposed to tell you where
Speaker 3: this came from, specifically the FDA, they got it wrong.
Speaker 3: They told everybody that this came from a pause that's
Speaker 3: aive test result from lettuce linked to Taylor Farms and
Speaker 3: a farm in Mexico. Taylor Farms, which is based in
Speaker 3: the part northern part of California, and Taco Bell got
Speaker 3: the blame because the lettuce that Taylor Farms uses is
Speaker 3: shredded into Iceberg lettuce and shipped to Taco Bell's nationwide.
Speaker 3: So you had all kinds of jokes about Taco Bell
Speaker 3: now giving Chipotle a run for its money. Probably shouldn't
Speaker 3: use the word runs in this story because you've all
Speaker 3: heard about the explosive. You know what it happens with
Speaker 3: the cyclospariasis, and so people started throwing away their lettuce,
Speaker 3: people started looking at up and trying to maybe avoid
Speaker 3: leafy greens. This week, Taylor Farms took a massive hit
Speaker 3: to their reputation, only to find out a week later
Speaker 3: after everyone is not ordering lettuce on anything and people
Speaker 3: are avoiding Taco Bell like the play that it was
Speaker 3: a false positive. It wasn't the lettuce. We don't know
Speaker 3: where the outbreak started. So Taylor Farms is still doing
Speaker 3: the recall just out of an abundance of caution. But
Speaker 3: I think you'll be okay having lettuce. Should you wash
Speaker 3: it first? Probably? You know, it's a very good investment
Speaker 3: a salad spinner, because with a salad spinner, you can
Speaker 3: cut your lettuce and then you can wash it, and
Speaker 3: then you can spin it dry and so it'll stay crunchier.
Speaker 3: Just a little tip from me to you. It turns
Speaker 3: out it wasn't the lettuce all along. You're gonna be
Speaker 3: fine if you have lettuce and you're not gonna get
Speaker 3: cyclosporiasis if you go to Taco Bell. I was going
Speaker 3: to say, you're going to be fine if you go
Speaker 3: to Taco Bell. But I shouldn't be knocking Taco Bell.
Speaker 3: I know some people love it. I loved it for
Speaker 3: many many years when I lived in Valley Village, I
Speaker 3: was so recognizable to the people working at the drive thrus.
Speaker 3: We were almost on a first name basis because I
Speaker 3: ate Jack in the Box or Taco Bell pretty much
Speaker 3: every single night. I would if I was working back
Speaker 3: when I was working at the radio station, I would
Speaker 3: get home around eleven o'clock at night. I probably wouldn't
Speaker 3: go to bed until like two or three in the morning.
Speaker 3: And then there was a year where I was working
Speaker 3: overnights regardless if it was before three am, I had
Speaker 3: the option of going to Taco Bell because the Taco
Speaker 3: Bell on Collfax was open till three am, and if
Speaker 3: it was after three, I had to go to Jack
Speaker 3: in the Box. Either way, I was getting tacos because
Speaker 3: it is impossible, physically impossible to go to Jack in
Speaker 3: the Box and not get two tacos with ever you're ordering. Okay,
Speaker 3: I should be honest, four tacos with whatever you're ordering,
Speaker 3: but oh boy, I love to get in that Taco
Speaker 3: Bell line at two thirty and I'd figure out the
Speaker 3: five things that I wanted, and that was like a
Speaker 3: responsible meal for me because it would probably add up
Speaker 3: to about ten dollars. Oh, how times have changed. But
Speaker 3: back in two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: twenty ten, yeah, you could order five big things at
Speaker 3: Taco Bell and you'd spend eight to ten dollars. Now
Speaker 3: I was hitting the drive throughs four times a day,
Speaker 3: so I was still spending forty dollars a day on
Speaker 3: drive through. But you definitely got a lot more value
Speaker 3: for you buck than you do today. It's actually funny too.
Speaker 3: I haven't been to a Taco Bell in well over
Speaker 3: a year and a half, but they think the last
Speaker 3: time that I went, I actually pulled into the drive
Speaker 3: through and then said, nevermind, I don't want any of
Speaker 3: this because the things that used to be on the
Speaker 3: dollar menu now cost four dollars. I'm looking at you,
Speaker 3: cheesy bean in rice burrito and beefy five layer burrito.
Speaker 3: I don't even know if they have those anymore, but
Speaker 3: those were some of my staples, especially anything that was cheesy.
Speaker 3: And then I would always spring for the cheesy Gordiita
Speaker 3: crunch even though it wasn't on the dollar menu. That
Speaker 3: was some good eaton. Okay, I just made myself very
Speaker 3: hungry It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk
Speaker 3: Radio seven ninety KABC. It's the News Blitz with Randy
Speaker 3: Wang on Talk radio seven ninety KABC. We're here every
Speaker 3: single day giving you the local news up and down
Speaker 3: the state of California that you really need. And make
Speaker 3: sure you subscribe to The Accountability Podcast, my podcast that
Speaker 3: I do every single week with John Phillips talking about well,
Speaker 3: this week we're talking about Gavin news dirty diaper deal
Speaker 3: and the incredible investigative reporting from Julie Watts over at
Speaker 3: CBS News Investigates. The ruptured water pipe in West Hollywood
Speaker 3: has been replaced. They're in the middle of pressurizing it.
Speaker 3: They don't know when everything will be back to normal
Speaker 3: and you can actually drive on Sunset Boulevard. But this
Speaker 3: has caused so many fears in LA about when's the
Speaker 3: next one going to be because there were five in
Speaker 3: the span of a week, and now everyone is well
Speaker 3: aware of how aged our infrastructure is in the city
Speaker 3: of Los Angeles, and there really is no plan.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Karen Bass went on KTLA the other day and I'm
Speaker 3: waiting for KTLA to put up this full interview so
Speaker 3: we can.
Speaker 2: Talk about it.
Speaker 3: But she loves to talk about all the things that
Speaker 3: are wrong with LA, like she's not the one in
Speaker 3: charge because and I'm going to tell you right now,
Speaker 3: the big difference in this race might be age. Policy wise,
Speaker 3: Nythia and Karen are cut from the same cloth, even
Speaker 3: though Nythia is DSA, tell me one policy that Karen
Speaker 3: Bass supports that isn't also supported by the DSA. And
Speaker 3: remember the other big DSA members have endorsed Karen Bass.
Speaker 3: But when it comes to age, the era of politician
Speaker 3: that Karen Bass is, especially working in Congress, She's used
Speaker 3: to things moving really slow and thinking that that's fine.
Speaker 3: So she talks about how there was no major infrastructure
Speaker 3: plan in Los Angeles and for two years she was
Speaker 3: developing one and they're still working on figuring out how
Speaker 3: to implement it. Not good enough, Karen, Not good enough? Hey,
Speaker 3: how about this? The graffiti towers, a tourist attraction if
Speaker 3: there ever was one in downtown LA is finally getting
Speaker 3: taken care of. The down ass kids don't like it,
Speaker 3: but they're finally gonna start cleaning up the graffiti because
Speaker 3: the bankruptcy court has allowed the sale of that building
Speaker 3: to go forward, where the project will maybe finally get finished.
Speaker 2: We'll see.
Speaker 3: The question is, if they start really cleaning up the graffiti,
Speaker 3: how quickly.
Speaker 2: Is it going to come back?
Speaker 3: Unless I mean they're gonna have to have twenty four
Speaker 3: to seven security because think about the six Street bridge,
Speaker 3: which gets a lot of attention for having no lights
Speaker 3: which are still not replaced by the way, but it
Speaker 3: also gets tagged so often that when they clean it up,
Speaker 3: the graffiti comes back in two days. So they have
Speaker 3: to have graffiti cleanups two to three times a week.
Speaker 3: We've got a lot more coming up on today's news Blitz,
Speaker 3: so keep it right here. It's the News Blitz with
Speaker 3: Randy Wang on KBC. It's the Newsplitz when Randy Way
Speaker 3: hang on Talk Radio seven ninety KABC. This is your
Speaker 3: daily rundown of everything you need to know that's going
Speaker 3: on in southern California. So check out my list at
Speaker 3: Randywangradio dot substack dot com. You get subscribed for free,
Speaker 3: and that just means that it gets emailed to you
Speaker 3: when I post it, which because I'm in Toronto right now,
Speaker 3: it's getting posted at like seven am LA time. Okay,
Speaker 3: I love this story. We're seeing a huge spike in
Speaker 3: couples that want to get married do it at the courthouse,
Speaker 3: go to specifically, they're going to the Santa Barbara County Courthouse,
Speaker 3: which is gorgeous, because Santa Barbara is gorgeous. But one
Speaker 3: of the reasons that we are seeing this maybe it's
Speaker 3: because of the uncertainty in the economy, but more and
Speaker 3: more young people are realizing that a big.
Speaker 2: Expensive party is just not worth it.
Speaker 3: And look, I have had some fun at some big weddings.
Speaker 3: My brother in law and sister in law's weddings were
Speaker 3: massive productions with lots and lots of people, and I'm
Speaker 3: sure there are lots of memories. I mean, we have
Speaker 3: like photo booth pictures, so we remember it. But I'm
Speaker 3: so glad that I did not have a big wedding,
Speaker 3: and we were almost on track to have one. So
Speaker 3: if you don't know my story, my wife and I
Speaker 3: got engaged in twenty nineteen in December, just a couple
Speaker 3: of months before the world shut down. In fact, in February,
Speaker 3: we went up to Santa Barbara wine country, to the
Speaker 3: Santynez Valley. We went to Foley Winery, which at the
Speaker 3: time was one of my wife's favorite wineries to talk
Speaker 3: about what it would look like to get married there,
Speaker 3: because that's a thing that they do. And I think
Speaker 3: part of the deal is you have to buy like
Speaker 3: one hundred bottles of pinot or something. Oh, I think
Speaker 3: we'll get through that. And it was going to be
Speaker 3: the good stuff too. But you could host one hundred
Speaker 3: people and they had vendors that you could contract with.
Speaker 3: There's a place up there, I think it's called the
Speaker 3: Valley Piggory that could have done some pork dishes for us.
Speaker 3: And it was looking at like just rent the venue
Speaker 3: was a couple thousand dollars. Then you got to buy
Speaker 3: the wine on top of that. Then you have to
Speaker 3: pay for the food. Then you have to worry about
Speaker 3: getting travel for all these people to come out to
Speaker 3: Wine country booking rooms. It's just it was a hole
Speaker 3: to do, but there was no way around it. My
Speaker 3: wife's family wanted to have another big, fancy celebration. My
Speaker 3: sister in law got married in a beautiful ceremony near
Speaker 3: the Trinity River in Dallas, and my brother in law
Speaker 3: got married in Santa Fe at the Inn and Spot Loretto.
Speaker 3: They actually got married at the famous Loretto Chapel.
Speaker 2: And it is the cutest thing.
Speaker 3: When we walk our niece along Santa Fe, we pointed
Speaker 3: it out once to her that hey, that's where your
Speaker 3: mommy and daddy got married, and she remembers that. So
Speaker 3: anytime we walked past the Loretto Chapel, she'll say, that's
Speaker 3: where mommy and daddy got married. It is the cutest thing.
Speaker 3: I don't want any of my own, but I love
Speaker 3: that kid. So we were on track to have to
Speaker 3: do something as spectacular, but then the world shut down
Speaker 3: in March, specifically what March fifteenth, sixteenth of twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: and so we had to put all of those plans
Speaker 3: on hold, which was fine because I think like a
Speaker 3: week before we get a call from the events coordinator
Speaker 3: at Foley who was like, you know, we really much
Speaker 3: rather have you do this at what firehouse? And I
Speaker 3: was like, we have no connection to that. We'd have
Speaker 3: never been to that winery.
Speaker 2: No, thank you.
Speaker 3: So a few months go by, time stops, we stock
Speaker 3: up on toilet paper. I'm still going into work every
Speaker 3: single day, but every single other person is working remotely,
Speaker 3: so that means, of course that the freeways are wide open.
Speaker 3: Boy do I miss that those were some good old times,
Speaker 3: me and the four h five and a twenty minute
Speaker 3: commute to get to Culver City. I do look back
Speaker 3: on that part of the pandemic very fondly. Two net
Speaker 3: positives out of the pandemic. There was no traffic for
Speaker 3: a while, and leggings became socially acceptable. That's probably the
Speaker 3: best takeaway from COVID is that leggings became acceptable to
Speaker 3: wear in the workplace around town, not just when you're
Speaker 3: going to pilates or yoga.
Speaker 2: So at least we have that.
Speaker 3: When it came to around September October, and it looked
Speaker 3: like the two weeks to slow the spread that turned
Speaker 3: into the thirty days to slow the spread that had
Speaker 3: turned into no one knows when this thing is ending,
Speaker 3: and restrictions are getting worse and worse. They started talking
Speaker 3: about banning outdoor dining in Los Angeles. My wife texts me,
Speaker 3: I remember exactly where I was. It was at the
Speaker 3: radio station, and she texted me, I have a crazy idea.
Speaker 3: And I texted back, is it to drive to Santa
Speaker 3: Fe and get married?
Speaker 2: And she said yes.
Speaker 3: So my wife, who works in television production, organized this
Speaker 3: like a production because you needed to, because This was
Speaker 3: deep COVID October of twenty twenty, and she organized everyone
Speaker 3: to arrive by car. And when I say everyone, I
Speaker 3: mean eight people including us. The only people that were
Speaker 3: at this wedding were me, my wife, my mother in law,
Speaker 3: my father in law, my sister in law and her husband.
Speaker 3: My brother in law and her husband. My parents were invited,
Speaker 3: but they didn't want to go. That's a long time
Speaker 3: to be in the car, I understand. So we make
Speaker 3: the journey on the road. My wife figured out like
Speaker 3: the safest gas stations to stop at to be able
Speaker 3: to like wash our hands, and you know, all the
Speaker 3: nice truck stops. Very interesting driving through places like Kingman, Arizona,
Speaker 3: where nobody was wearing masks because well that wasn't a
Speaker 3: thing in Arizona. But we made it to Santa Fe safely,
Speaker 3: I remember, and gosh, it was so it was so
Speaker 3: heartbreaking to hear this because you know, we had, you know,
Speaker 3: like everybody associated with our friends and family maybe a
Speaker 3: little bit like distanced on a patio and wearing masks.
Speaker 3: We would do little wine get togethers. We would do
Speaker 3: little zoom dinners where we would make food and drop
Speaker 3: it off at our friend's houses that live nearby, and
Speaker 3: then we'd eat on zoom.
Speaker 2: These were things that we did.
Speaker 3: But I'll never forget when we finally got to the
Speaker 3: house and the in laws come in and my mother
Speaker 3: in law said, am I allowed to hug you guys?
Speaker 2: Ah. It was a strange time.
Speaker 3: But again I look on this memory so fondly because
Speaker 3: we got married right there in the backyard of the
Speaker 3: house that we love in Santa Fe.
Speaker 2: The leaves were turning. It was just the eight of us.
Speaker 3: We did hire a photographer, one person to document the day.
Speaker 3: My wife found a two hundred dollars dress on Amazon.
Speaker 3: She paid for a bouquet at a local place that
Speaker 3: costs about fifty bucks, and the whole thing, including travel,
Speaker 3: including everything else, maybe cost us a few hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: To get the license in New Mexico was like twenty
Speaker 3: five bucks, which by the way, I think it's only
Speaker 3: seventy five bucks in in Santa Barbara County, So that's
Speaker 3: a great idea to do it.
Speaker 2: At the time.
Speaker 3: We actually couldn't even get one in Los Angeles County
Speaker 3: because they were so backloged. Because people they wanted to
Speaker 3: get married, they wanted to get their live started together.
Speaker 3: You know, at the time, one of the reasons we
Speaker 3: wanted to get married sooner rather than later was because
Speaker 3: I had SAG after health insurance, and that meant that
Speaker 3: my wife would have SAG after health insurance. And then
Speaker 3: what do you know, just about a year later, they
Speaker 3: introduced that working spouse rule. I'm still pissed off about
Speaker 3: that sag after, but the whole thing cost us very little.
Speaker 3: We ended up getting takeout for the shed that we
Speaker 3: had at the house. I had read Chile enchiladas. We
Speaker 3: got these little cupcakes from Chocolate Maven. It was a very,
Speaker 3: very very special celebration and definitely one of the highlights
Speaker 3: of that whole strange era that was COVID. But it
Speaker 3: was a small wedding, and the added bonus was all
Speaker 3: of the money that my in laws were prepared to
Speaker 3: spend on that wedding, which would have been quite a
Speaker 3: lot because the other weddings were pretty extravagant, went toward
Speaker 3: helping us with a down payment for our house, because
Speaker 3: even though I make a decent living and my wife
Speaker 3: makes a decent living, we were still nowhere close to
Speaker 3: having the money for a twenty percent down payment on
Speaker 3: a home in the valley, and it kind of worked
Speaker 3: out because the house we were renting, the owners decided
Speaker 3: to sell it and they gave us first bite, which
Speaker 3: was very nice of them, because if they had put
Speaker 3: that thing on the market, they could have easily gotten
Speaker 3: fifty thousand more than they were asking for.
Speaker 2: But it all worked out great.
Speaker 3: We're still in that house to this day, and we
Speaker 3: also have a very cool wedding date ten ten, twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: So I love to see that the courthouse ceremonies are
Speaker 3: on the rise.
Speaker 2: I am all for it.
Speaker 3: My advice if you want to have a big wedding, fine,
Speaker 3: but I think if you can take whatever money was
Speaker 3: going to go towards that and have it go towards
Speaker 3: something a little more lasting, like a house payment, it
Speaker 3: was well worth it. And we still had an incredibly
Speaker 3: memorable day.
Speaker 2: It was a great time.
Speaker 3: And now I look back at all those pictures and
Speaker 3: I'm like, wow, I was one hundred pounds heavier. It's
Speaker 3: the News Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC.
Speaker 2: It's the News.
Speaker 3: Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk Radio seven ninety KABC.
Speaker 3: Janis Hahn, who we know has great affection for bus drivers.
Speaker 3: I love the bus driver has a interesting idea for
Speaker 3: the La Metro board. Janis Hahn thinks that we should
Speaker 3: have a bus writer on the Metro board as a
Speaker 3: voting member. And the funny thing about this concept, it's
Speaker 3: something that has been done in other cities, so it's
Speaker 3: not a crazy idea.
Speaker 2: But the funniest thing about this is.
Speaker 3: The reason that we need someone who rides the system
Speaker 3: is because none of the fifteen or sixteen members of
Speaker 3: the Metro board ride the system. In fact, Janis Han
Speaker 3: made a lot of headlines when she was Metro chair
Speaker 3: last year.
Speaker 2: That's your final warning.
Speaker 3: Because Janis Han was like, I'm gonna take this thing
Speaker 3: once a month from San Pedro to Union Station on
Speaker 3: the Silver Line whoever they're calling it now. I was like,
Speaker 3: that's actually from her talking to the news about how
Speaker 3: the bus was a lot dirtier than she thought it was.
Speaker 3: So we need an actual Metro rider to be on
Speaker 3: the board because nobody will ride it, whether it's for
Speaker 3: completely legitimate things like Catherine Barger mentioning that she doesn't
Speaker 3: feel safe using it from Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: or the fact that it is even though we have
Speaker 3: expanded it greatly. I mean, come on, we've now got
Speaker 3: the D line, and we know who loves the D Line,
Speaker 3: don't we.
Speaker 2: Where are you, Tom Steyer? I'm Tom Steyer. I never
Speaker 2: about to ride the D.
Speaker 3: One of our listeners, by the way, and I don't
Speaker 3: even know how to do this. Cleaned up that sound.
Speaker 2: I'm Tom Steyer. I never about to ride the D I'm.
Speaker 3: Not that much of an expert, but I can do
Speaker 3: a few things. It still doesn't really go anywhere I
Speaker 3: live in the San Fernando Valley. There is no feasible
Speaker 3: way for me to take Metro to Culver City. It
Speaker 3: just cannot happen. I would have to take the Orange
Speaker 3: Line busway all the way to North Hollywood take the
Speaker 3: North Hollywood Red Line. Again, nobody knows what these things
Speaker 3: are called now, so I'm just gonna go with the
Speaker 3: names they're known by. All the way down to near
Speaker 3: Union Station. I think you can go to Seventh Street,
Speaker 3: then take the Expo Line and all the way to
Speaker 3: Culver City. It would take two hours instead of my
Speaker 3: one hour by car. And you know your system is
Speaker 3: bad when sitting on the hellish four h five Freeway
Speaker 3: is faster. You also have legitimate safety concerns because, unlike
Speaker 3: bart in the Bay Area, Metro does not have locking faregates.
Speaker 3: A lot of these stations are outdoors and anybody can
Speaker 3: get on, and as we have seen during COVID another
Speaker 3: COVID mention, we kind of decided it was a Gavin
Speaker 3: Newsom idea to make transit free, which eventually turned all
Speaker 3: of the Metro stations and Metro buses and Metro trains
Speaker 3: into homeless shelters. And we are slowly but surely cleaning
Speaker 3: them up. And Jennis Hahn has introduced some interesting ideas
Speaker 3: like weapons detection at Metro stations, but how do you
Speaker 3: do that with the bus? And we've gotten a little
Speaker 3: better at fair enforcement. We'll see if Metro starting their
Speaker 3: own police station has any positive results. But it is
Speaker 3: funny to me that nobody on the board will ride it.
Speaker 3: So they need to have a member. Now what kind
Speaker 3: of member is it going to be, because it's got
Speaker 3: to be somebody that isn't working on a Thursday at
Speaker 3: eleven o'clock in the morning, So I'm gonna guess it's
Speaker 3: somebody who's not working. Are they getting a salary to
Speaker 3: be on this board. I have a lot of questions,
Speaker 3: but I'm not opposed to the idea. Let's talk about
Speaker 3: what's going on in Petaluma before we get out of here,
Speaker 3: because this is a story that you know, we get
Speaker 3: emails about this pretty regularly up and down the state
Speaker 3: of California of senior citizens that are able to live
Speaker 3: in mobile home communities. They're able to survive on the retirement,
Speaker 3: on Social Security, what have you, because they live in
Speaker 3: these mobile home communities that are designated for seniors.
Speaker 2: And over the last few years, While.
Speaker 3: I don't know if this is the specific situation in Petaluma,
Speaker 3: but we have so many stories up and down the
Speaker 3: state of California of these mobile home parks getting bought
Speaker 3: by private equity and trying to squeeze as much cash
Speaker 3: as they can out of them, and some of them
Speaker 3: making life a living hell for the senior citizens who
Speaker 3: then move out and they can turn it into something else,
Speaker 3: turned into some other kind of development. I'm guessing you
Speaker 3: can't make a whole lot of money on senior's only
Speaker 3: low income mobile home parks. And the owner of this
Speaker 3: park says they need to be able to raise the
Speaker 3: rents even though they can already raise them six percent
Speaker 3: every year. They say they're still not making any money
Speaker 3: on this thing, and the residents are like, we can't
Speaker 3: afford anything else.
Speaker 2: We're going to have to.
Speaker 3: Move, and there's nowhere else to move too. So it's
Speaker 3: either go to Arizona, go to Nevada, or be homeless.
Speaker 3: And we've got to figure out a happy medium here.
Speaker 3: I don't understand why, in all the talk about our
Speaker 3: housing crisis, why we're not building more mobile home parks,
Speaker 3: Like isn't that isn't a trailer?
Speaker 2: Is a double wide?
Speaker 3: Isn't that like, you know, an easy way to get
Speaker 3: into home ownership. And apparently we've had some insane rules
Speaker 3: about things like and this is something that the big
Speaker 3: federal law that just got passed that for some reason
Speaker 3: Trump didn't want to sign. One of the interesting things
Speaker 3: that it did was it made a change in the
Speaker 3: regulations around prefabricated homes, where apparently to build a prefabricated
Speaker 3: home you had to make it so it was, it
Speaker 3: had wheels, it had a trailer. Apparently that's not the
Speaker 3: case anymore, and prefab homes can be made much cheaper.
Speaker 3: We'll see if that actually takes any change or effect.
Speaker 3: But we need more of these things, not lefts of
Speaker 3: these things, because if you get rid of the mobile
Speaker 3: home parks because everyone's climbing that they're not making any money,
Speaker 3: you're going to chase more and more seniors out of
Speaker 3: the state, and we don't want that. And maybe as
Speaker 3: one of the things that was talked about in that
Speaker 3: housing bill is that big private equity firms can't buy
Speaker 3: more than like three hundred and fifty houses, I think
Speaker 3: we might also need to figure out private equity not
Speaker 3: buying up mobile home parks and other kinds of multifamily
Speaker 3: because it's it's not a winner for everybody. And if
Speaker 3: truly costs are so expensive, whether it is insurance, whether
Speaker 3: it's utilities, what have you, If nobody can make any
Speaker 3: money and the only thing we can do is raise
Speaker 3: the rent to the point where nobody can afford to
Speaker 3: live there on fixed incomes, what is the answer. This
Speaker 3: is where the DSA will say public housing, But I
Speaker 3: don't know what you do if we want to keep
Speaker 3: people here but we cannot afford to have them here.
Speaker 3: I feel real bad for the seniors that are having
Speaker 3: their rent stretch. Then, and there's also other little tactics
Speaker 3: that are going on, and this is how you know
Speaker 3: sometimes what's going on is underhanded. They took look Away
Speaker 3: all their parking spaces because they said they were gonna
Speaker 3: build something there. So now there's like eighty spaces for
Speaker 3: three hundred people. But they're not building anything there. They're
Speaker 3: just trying to make life a living hell. So these
Speaker 3: people will leave because they're locked into leases and the
Speaker 3: only way to get them out is to get them
Speaker 3: out by making life unbearable for them. And I don't
Speaker 3: like that whatsoever. These stories don't get nearly enough attention,
Speaker 3: but it's one of the things.
Speaker 2: It's not just do.
Speaker 3: We need to build, build, build, build, build more housing,
Speaker 3: which again the question I have is at what point
Speaker 3: have you built enough that you actually see prices and
Speaker 3: rents going down?
Speaker 2: Is San Diego great example.
Speaker 3: They have built, built, built, built, built, and the prices
Speaker 3: have not gone down. It has not happened. Hey, thank
Speaker 3: you so much for being a part of this show.
Speaker 3: This is day two of my adventures in Toronto, and
Speaker 3: I'm having a heck of a lot of fun. Make
Speaker 3: sure to catch us on YouTube at YouTube dot com,
Speaker 3: slash at Randy Wang Radio. That's where You can check
Speaker 3: out The John Phillips Show live from noon to three
Speaker 3: every single day. It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang
Speaker 3: on ka BC