You’re reading the Essential California newsletter <\/p>\n
Sign up to start every day with California’s most important stories.<\/p>\n
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service<\/a>, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy<\/a> such as personalizing your experience and ads. <\/p>\n Thousands of gallons of crude oil were dumped into the river<\/a> in May when a construction crew trying to lay fiber-optic cable hit a pipeline carrying the substance from Kern County to the Port of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n In June, an unknown amount of debris<\/a> from firefighting water runoff from Boyle Heights\u2019 Lineage fire<\/a> made its way into the river.<\/p>\n For good measure, there was even a car chase through the river\u2019s portion in southeast Los Angeles in February<\/a>.<\/p>\n It hardly seems a great time to celebrate the river with a festival, yet that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happening Sunday.<\/p>\n The Friends of the Los Angeles River, a nonprofit advocacy organization<\/a>, is hosting Riverfest on Sunday from 2:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.<\/a> in Chinatown.<\/p>\n Essential California sat down with Ben Orbison, FOLAR\u2019s director of strategic communications, and spoke about festival highlights and motivations.<\/p>\n What to expect Sunday<\/p>\n Orbison said capacity for L.A. State Historic Park, site of the festival, is listed at 1,500 people, but the festival is hoping for about 2,500 visitors throughout the day.<\/p>\n The event is free, but registration is encouraged<\/a>. A VIP package includes preferred parking and food and drink vouchers. Festival organizers are encouraging visitors to take public transit, with the A-Line\u2019s Chinatown station within walking distance.<\/p>\n Musical acts include the Gay Freedom Band of Los Angeles<\/a> and the rock band Undecided Future<\/a>, with the festival closing out with Xipe Totec dancers.<\/p>\n Food trucks with a range of choices from burgers and Greek food to vegetarian and vegan options will be on site, while educational staff will be on hand with tutorials and chats, including the 38-foot River Rover mobile museum.<\/p>\n \u201cFor us, this event has always been about celebrating the L.A. River through the arts,\u201d Orbison said. \u201cIt\u2019s really about bringing together a community of people and working and living along the L.A. River.\u201d<\/p>\n Ducks stand on rocks in the sandy bottom of the Los Angeles River.<\/p>\n (Jaclyn Cosgrove \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Introducing Angelenos to their river<\/p>\n One motivating factor behind the festival, Orbison said, is a simple meet-and-greet.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re here for any curious Angelenos who saw the river in a movie or who drive over it every day but don\u2019t really know anything about it,\u201d he said. (The river has been featured in several movies<\/a> including \u201cTerminator 2: Judgment Day\u201d (1991), \u201cDrive\u201d (2011), \u201cThe Italian Job\u201d (2003), and \u201cGrease\u201d (1978).<\/p>\n After living in and around Los Angeles for most of my life, I counted myself as someone who rarely stopped by the river or understood its importance. <\/p>\n That was until 2020 when I went fishing with my colleague and friend Lila Seidman<\/a> for a wacky feature about fishing in the L.A. River<\/a>. We ate a carp from the river that August<\/a> and lived to tell the tale.<\/p>\n Why celebrate the river?<\/p>\n Though the river is situated in concrete, it\u2019s provides a robust ecological environment that includes migratory songbirds and wading shorebirds.<\/a> <\/p>\n There\u2019s also mix of vegetation and freshwater marshes near the beating heart of the city.<\/p>\n \u201cA big part of this festival is showing off this green space for a part of the city that is low in green park space,\u201d Orbison said.<\/p>\n The river also helps in time of heavy flooding, diverting city storm runoff into the Pacific Ocean<\/a>.<\/p>\n L.A. River bonus track<\/p>\n My colleague Jaclyn Cosgrove<\/a> conducted an extensive interview with Candice Dickens-Russell, chief executive at Friends of the Los Angeles River, in her latest \u201cThe Wild\u201d newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cosgrove asked: Will it ever be safe to swim in the L.A. River?<\/p>\n The organization hopes to get there one day, Dickens-Russell said, but that will require a lot of people changing their behaviors<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cA swimmable river is an achievable goal, but it\u2019s going to require sustained investment in water quality and things like habitat restoration and safe and equitable public access,\u201d she said. \u201cEvery project that reduces pollution and restores natural function brings us a little bit closer to that. And, yeah, we should be planning for a future where Angelenos can safely swim in the L.A. River. Why not?\u201d<\/p>\n The week\u2019s biggest stories (Bloomberg \/ Bloomberg via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Meta faces mega challengesAnimal discoveriesCrime, courts and policingTragic youthful deathsThe president and his administrationWhat else is going onMust-readOther meaty readsFor your downtime (Matt Gush \/ stock.adobe.com)<\/p>\n Going outStaying inL.A. Timeless<\/p>\n A selection of the very best reads from The Times\u2019 143-year archive.<\/p>\n Have a great day, from the Essential California team<\/p>\n Hugo Mart\u00edn, assistant editor, fast break desk How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com<\/a>. Check our top stories<\/a>, topics<\/a> and the latest articles<\/a> on latimes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019ve been following the headlines, these past few months have been eventful for the Los Angeles River.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":990474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,11791,7823,4140,4238,11789,99,6276,2961,224,2444,5337,11395,7825,5996,11792,11790,3549,290,6620,7827],"class_list":["post-990473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-civic-revolt","tag-covid","tag-covid-19","tag-days","tag-essential-california","tag-israel","tag-l-a","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-losangeles","tag-may","tag-pandemic","tag-part","tag-president-biden","tag-red-county","tag-san-diego","tag-state","tag-time","tag-years"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117064003756727318","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=990473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/990474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=990473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=990473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=990473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786254811_482_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Mark](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786254812_678_.jpeg\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"Aerial](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786254813_668_.jpeg\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew J. Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters<\/p>\n