For Altadena
And an unprecedented start to "Circle Back Season"
I started drafting 2025’s FIRST Substack post right after the New Year and planned to send it out last Sunday on my birthday. Attention - on the internet - on my birthday? Yes, please. I was excited to write about “Circle Back Season”, aka the first full work week of the year after everyone in your professional circles told you “let’s circle back after the New Year!” in mid December (or in the case of the music biz - October). “Circle Back Season” is when, possibly to their chagrin, you actually circle back.
Coming into Circle Back Season I felt refreshed for the first time in years. I took the end of '24 to hit pause on full-time work, get some mental rest, and be more physically active. That combined with a real holiday break, full of friends, family and watching more NBA basketball (including seeing Cavs vs. Lakers aka all my boys in person on NYE), was exactly as recharging as I'd hoped.
So I rolled into Circle Back Season training camp “locked in”. I was gonna write about my independent freelance work and share what I’m optimistic about in digital media and entertainment in the coming year, but I don’t actually know if I’m optimistic. Writing about that stuff will come, but for now I wanna talk about Altadena, CA.
Most people know what happened last week across Los Angeles County, and friends know how much me, Elizabeth and Humphries (our stunning maltipoo) absolutely love Altadena. In Fall ‘23, we found our “Forever (aka hopefully longer than 4 years) Home” in a corner of Pasadena we hadn’t previously explored much. We instantly loved it, and Altadena being just up the street was a major reason. At this point of adulthood, Altadena felt like Eagle Rock did 10 years ago at that point of adulthood. A sort of “this seems like a good place to be a grownup that still has interests” feeling. It looks more like the Pacific Northwest than it does LA because the mountains are close and it has actual, big trees. Plenty of our favorite east side food & coffee spots of the last decade recently opened up Pasadena/Altadena locations. This seems 100% catered to us aspiring “cool grownups” who were thankfully able to take roots here just outside LA proper. Maybe they brought their businesses to Altadena to see their businesses become cool grownups as well.
Obviously nowhere is an actual utopia, but Altadena seemed diverse in the way that if those “COEXIST” bumper stickers could be a place, it’d probably be Altadena. When I brought up its crunchy, artsy, indie energy, a friend pointed out that it isn’t called “Alt”adena for nothing. Great point.
Altadena has many cool dads. Some cool dads that look like they ‘re in Turnstile, some cool dads that look like old-timey tenured professors, and every kind of cool dad in between. It seemed like one of the last places around LA where people of all backgrounds and professions that didn’t come from oil money could still buy homes. That included many TV and music industry peers I admire, some I didn’t even know lived in the area until seeing posts last week that they lost everything.
As for us, we’re OK. Our home is OK. We evacuated Tuesday night ahead of the mandatory evacuation after winds took out our power and a big-ass tree branch took out our driveway. We spent the next few days on the road with no clue what was gonna happen. A couple friends asked what evacuating was like with a physical limitation, and lemme tell ya, it wasn’t ideal! Elizabeth held it down remarkably and Humphries probably thought we were taking him on some fun tour of new smells.
Fire has always been one of my biggest fears, something my brother reminded me is a common and justified fear. True - but it did create a disconnect as a ‘90s kid who’s Beavis & Butthead-obsessed peers were self-described “pyros”. Not me, buddy. Always hated the stuff. When I toured in the mid 2000s I remember freaking out (aka raising my voice a little) on a band member for leaving his hair straightener (it was the mid 2000s) plugged in on a messy hotel room sink. He said I was paranoid and “must have died in a fire in a past life”. I still consider that a weird response to a reasonable request.
Here are some pics looking west and north from our hotel the morning after evacuating.
Here are some of my favorite pics I took in Altadena.
The outpouring of support to those affected by the Palisades and Eaton fires has been incredible and inspiring, but so many are still displaced or returning to total destruction. The help will be needed for weeks/months to come.
So getting back to my silly work I mentioned earlier, I’ve been able to jump in and start getting fundraiser streams going with some of my favorite musicians, managers and creatives. More to come on that soon. For NOW, if you have the means and are looking back some people with immediate needs, I’ll drop a couple Altadena specific foundations and GoFundMe’s below.
LETTERS FROM ALTADENA - helping multiple displaced families across the area.
DISPLACED BLACK FAMILIES GoFundMe Directory - Helping the generations of black families who owned homes in Altadena with immediate needs before they (hopefully) rebuild protects and preserves a lot of what made Altadena so great.
Help Therese Trujillo Recover After LA Fires - Therese is a certified “real one” in the animation biz according to certified real one Fred Seibert.
See you soon with some fun and good things you can watch and listen to while supporting those affected by these fires.
Thank You For Being a Friend,
-Tony (2025 style)