News Brief: Airbnb Cracks Down on Party Houses

In your brief for today: Airbnb hits local party houses with sanctions, protestors gather over Jacob Blake’s shooting, and maybe some good news in the local COVID-19 spread trends. Finally, at least one signature scary experience is going “drive-up” style for Halloween 2020. First, some news stuff.

Morning News Rundown

Taking a cue from Mayor Garcetti, Airbnb is cracking down on hosts who rent out their properties for big parties, which it had warned against back in May. The company announced that it has removed more than 50 L.A. County properties from the app for complaints and/or violations of its no-party policy. [WeHoVille]

Around 200 demonstrators gathered outside LAPD headquarters late last night to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake. The crowd was declared an unlawful assembly and tear gas was eventually deployed. Blake was shot in the back by Wisconsin police multiple times as officers responded to a domestic dispute call on Sunday evening in Kenosha. [CBS Los Angeles]

A new mural will permanently commemorate the All Black Lives Matter March that took place in June in Hollywood and drew upwards of 40,000 attendees. The artwork will be installed on Hollywood Boulevard between Orange Drive and Highland Avenue. [We Like L.A.]

USC’s fall semester opened on Aug. 17. Barely a week into it, the university has already reported a spike in coronavirus among students. As of yesterday, there were 43 confirmed coronavirus cases in off-campus housing facilities plus another 100 students in quarantine. [NBC Los Angeles]

Despite what’s happening at USC, can we be cautiously optimistic about COVID-19 overall? L.A. County’s 7-day average positivity rate stands between 5% and 6%. Daily hospitalizations have decreased by 45% from the July peak. Meanwhile, neighboring Orange County was removed from the state’s coronavirus watch list on Sunday, with the county showing a 5.4% positivity rate. Collective behavior and mask-wearing seem to be making a difference. The question isn’t whether or not we’re moving in the right direction, but whether we can keep it up. [Public Health]

Mail theft is up in Los Angeles year-over-year, with 300 total incidents of mail theft representing a 30% increase from 2019. Speculation is that increased usage of mail services overall has led to increased cases of theft. That is, more mail is being processed, so more total packages to steal. Sounds like a great time to be stripping away postal resources! [Crosstown LA]

Since we’re on topic, there are more post office protests planned around Los Angeles today, including in Pasadena, Eagle Rock, Torrance, Carson, and Long Beach. [Action Network]

Drive-In is the New Immersive

Remember when every new live attraction in Los Angeles was marketed as immersive? Immersive art pop-ups and food experiences and museum exhibits and installations and theater productions. Eventually, the word sort of lost all meaning. But then the pandemic hit and we didn’t just lose the meaning of the word, but all possibility of experience. Enter: the drive-in. These days, you can do stuff with other people as long as you’re walled in by the steel frame of your sedan. Drive-in movies, drive-in concerts, even drive-in comedy shows. But can it really compare to the original when we’re talking about, say, something that’s supposed to scare the hell out of you? The Los Angeles Haunted Hayride is going to give it a try starting in late September. [We Like L.A.]