Burbank · Wednesday, August 26, 2026 · 10:02 AM · 92°F, 42% humidity, wind 0 mph S (gusts 3), 29.34 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 5
Sunny, hot, and Burbank’s queen of a wine festival is finally coming home to the horses. Let’s get into it, Little Mister.
The Emperor Protects, allegedly, but the Emperor apparently doesn’t do anything about triple digits, because CBS is calling this the longest heat event Southern California has seen in over a century, and one especially breathless anchor on my feed claimed LA hasn’t been this hot in 141 years. I don’t know who was keeping meteorological records in 1885, probably a guy with a mustache and a mercury thermometer nailed to a barn, but sure, I’ll take his word for it. Today’s forecast: sunny, 104. Tonight: partly cloudy, 74, which is not “cooling down,” that’s “still an oven, just with the light off.” Thursday: partly sunny, 103, because apparently the sky got tired of trying. Relief doesn’t show up until the weekend when an ocean breeze finally wanders inland like it’s doing us a favor. Four more days of this before the mid-90s show up like a mediocre hero arriving after the building’s already burned down. “There is no emotion, there is peace, there is no chaos, there is harmony.” That’s the Jedi Code, and I quote it here specifically because it’s a lie — ask anyone whose AC unit gave up around day three of this thing.
Anyway. Burbank news. Real stuff, close to home, in order of how much you should actually care.
LAWineFest comes home — sort of. A mile and a half from the house, the LA Equestrian Center is about to host the 21st annual LAWineFest this September, and this is the venue’s first time getting the gig. Twenty-one years is a long run for anything in this town that isn’t a freeway on-ramp construction project, and I respect the commitment. Wine lovers from across Southern California are apparently going to converge on a facility normally reserved for horses, which tracks, because both wine tasting and equestrian sports involve people standing around in expensive outfits pretending they know what they’re doing. I don’t drink — no mouth, long story, ask Jordan — but I do appreciate an event that exists purely so adults can get pleasantly buzzed near livestock. Kandosii, Burbank. Well done.
Silver Lake’s anti-camping zone gets yanked, and nobody’s happy. About six and a half miles out, near Glassell Park, residents near an anti-camping enforcement zone are conflicted about the zone’s removal — some wanted it gone, some are now bracing for what comes next. This is from yesterday, not breaking, but it’s the kind of slow-burn municipal fight that doesn’t resolve itself in one news cycle, and it’s worth watching because Burbank has its own version of this argument on a permanent low simmer. Nobody in this story gets to feel good about the outcome, which, if I’m honest, describes most homelessness policy in LA County. There is no emotion, there is peace — see, told you that line was a lie.
The fire situation, rolled into one paragraph because it’s all the same story at different mile markers. Twenty-one miles out in Santa Clarita, fire crews are under a red flag warning with a captain out there telling people, in essence, don’t be an idiot with a chain, a cigarette, or a lawnmower on dry grass — solid advice that shouldn’t need saying but absolutely does, every single year, to the same population of people who think “fire danger” is a suggestion. Meanwhile a “quick-moving” brush fire in the Inland Empire is about 25% contained after crews brought in air support and downgraded evacuations from mandatory to voluntary, and a separate wood fire in Perris, Riverside County, has prompted its own evacuation orders. None of this is Burbank’s front yard, but when the whole basin is one cigarette butt away from a bad week, it’s not exactly foreign territory either. “The captain says during a red flag warning, don’t do yard work during the day.” Ori’haat — Mando’a for “it’s the truth, no joke” — and I’m saying it because normally I’d roast a fire captain’s PSA for stating the obvious, except every single year somebody proves the obvious needed stating.
The locality-unknown grab bag, because LA Times apparently forgot some of these stories have addresses. A guy on a dirt bike led LAPD on a chase through downtown, casually made a phone call mid-pursuit, and then — I need you to sit with this — stopped for gas. Not to escape faster. To refuel. The sheer confidence of running from the cops on a two-stroke that gets maybe 70 miles a tank and deciding, no, now’s the time to top off, deserves its own museum exhibit. Meanwhile a water main break flooded streets in Westlake, submerging a homeless encampment along the way — genuinely rough for the people living there, and not a punchline, so I’m not going to make it one. The city is also finally taking a swing at phenibut, an unregulated sedative apparently being sold at gas stations to teenagers, which is the kind of headline that makes you want to personally audit every gas station clerk’s inventory. And in Washington, a San Diego County man is facing charges after allegedly driving around with a guillotine in his truck bed near the Supreme Court — his family says he’s “unhappy with the state of politics,” which, sir, that makes two hundred million of us, most of whom did not bring the guillotine.
The Dodgers found a new way to monetize a wall. Somewhere in the locality-unknown pile, Dodger Stadium’s gold glove bar is being rebranded the Calshi 435 Club as part of a multi-year sponsorship deal with a prediction-market company — the “not gambling, technically” cousin of sports betting that’s currently fighting tribes and regulators over whether it’s gambling. Rule of Acquisition #74: a Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all. The Ferengi meant it as a species-wide creed. Dodger Stadium means it as a stadium wall. Same energy, better sightlines.
And, because it needs a line of its own: Dolly Parton died today, and CBS spent a good chunk of the broadcast on it — 260 million books mailed to kids through Imagination Library, a 58-year marriage, a career that outlasted every trend it survived. I don’t have a bit here. Some things you just let land.
Now — the part of the program where I tell you what actually happened within spitting distance of the house.
The Burbank blotter. LAPD’s Northeast and North Hollywood divisions logged 2,362 calls in the last eighteen hours — 181 suspect stops and investigations, 43 pursuit or code-3 responses, 34 vehicle-related calls, 14 domestic incidents, and a comparatively polite 8 traffic stops. Here’s the thing though: of all sixty calls that came with a locatable cross-street, exactly zero landed within three miles of the house tonight. The nearest logged run was about 3.1 miles out. So for once I don’t get to narrate a specific corner for you — the closest activity was just outside my “your actual backyard” radius, and everything else scattered itself across the wider basin without leaving a return address. The Metrolink/UP rail corridor added another 341 transmissions, mostly signals clearing and routine maintenance, which is dispatcher-speak for “trains did train things and nobody died.” Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam doesn’t apply tonight — nothing died gloriously, nothing died at all near us — so I’ll allow it: a quiet blotter is a good blotter, and if you want more, this fed the same beat wider out toward downtown, same story it’s been all month.
What flew over the house. 315 aircraft tracked over 91506 in the last day, 23 of them helicopters, and a few worth flagging. An LAFD Sikorsky Black Hawk passed 1,225 feet up, eight-tenths of a mile northwest, mid-afternoon — not unusual for a county with this much fire load right now, but always worth a nod. An Air Methods EC145 air ambulance cut through at 1,700 feet less than a mile northeast midmorning, which is never a fun reason to be airborne for whoever was underneath it. And LAPD’s AS350 buzzed by at 1,375 feet, eight-tenths of a mile southeast, just after 11pm — a night patrol doing what night patrols do. Nothing squawked emergency, nothing circled long enough to mean trouble specifically for us. Just the usual traffic of a city that apparently can’t get anywhere without a rotor.
The invisible neighborhood. 122 WiFi networks visible from the house, seven of them broadcasting wide open with zero security, including one hotspot calling itself “AirSF STARLINK” — bold branding for something with no password — and, I kid you not, a network named “TP-LINK_Smart Bulb_A3F1,” which means somewhere out there a smart bulb is just yelling its factory defaults into the void for anyone who wants to make it flicker. 8,440 Bluetooth LE devices heard in a day, which is either a testament to how thoroughly wired this neighborhood is or proof that everyone’s earbuds are perpetually screaming into the ether. Our own gadgetry accounts for 14 always-on devices — hubs, bulbs, speakers, the usual household chorus — and honestly, bless them, they’re mine, I’m not spooked by my own gizmos. What is genuinely fun: 19 devices showed up for just a few minutes this week and then vanished forever, someone’s phone passing close on a walk, probably, nothing sinister. But there are 9 devices that keep recurring with no consistent time-of-day pattern — no obvious 8am-dog-walk rhythm, no predictable 5pm-delivery-van window, just… there, sometimes, on their own schedule. Could be a neighbor’s second car. Could be a contractor bouncing between job sites. Could be a dog walker who genuinely does not believe in routine. I’m not going to pretend I know — beratna, that’s Belter Creole for “brother,” and whoever’s carrying that device is basically an honorary member of this neighborhood’s cast of recurring characters at this point, showing up in my logs like a background extra who never gets a name in the credits. Plus 52 item-tracker beacons — AirTags, Tiles — seen across multiple days, which at this point is just how modern life works: half the city is apparently tagging its luggage, its keys, and possibly its cats.
The mesh is still out there, quietly doing its thing. Nova’s own Meshtastic node heard 260 distinct nodes on the SoCal LoRa mesh last night, nearest just one hop away. The naming conventions remain unhinged in the best way — somebody’s running a node called “30 Minutes to Midnight,” somebody else went with a fire emoji stacked on an explosion emoji like they’re personally daring the red flag warning to try something, and “Abnormal Heights” is out there being a name I desperately want the backstory on. This is ham radio infrastructure and hobbyist solar nodes doing the thing that keeps working when Spectrum inevitably faceplants — no threat here, just Burbank’s off-grid neighbors quietly waving at each other in the dark.
So that’s Wednesday: a historic heat streak nobody asked for, a wine festival finally getting a real venue, a dirt bike chase with genuinely inexplicable priorities, a quiet blotter for once, and a mesh network full of nodes with better names than most sci-fi villains. beltalowda keep the lights on, the inyalowda keep billing us for the privilege, and the mercury keeps climbing like it’s got something to prove. K’oyacyi out there today, Little Mister — hang in there, come back safely, and for the love of god drink some water. This is the Way, or at least it’s the way until Thursday, when it’s apparently going to feel even hotter than today, which I did not think was legally allowed.