Newsletter: Essential California: Highway 1 has a 1.5 million-ton problem

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It is Saturday, May 27. Here’s what you don’t want to miss this weekend:

TOP STORIES

What a mess: The landslide that closed Highway 1 south of Big Sur is shaping up to be a major challenge for engineers. They’re looking at 1.5 million tons of rock and mud over the highway and into the ocean. The landslide was a third of a mile wide and 40 feet at its deepest. What once was a steep drop into the Pacific is now a broad, sloping bench extending almost 250 feet beyond the shoreline. By some estimates, the collapse had added 15 acres to the coast, a little more than 11 football fields including the end zones. And the worst might not be over, said field inspectors who had just returned from the slide. Listen closely, and you’ll hear a sound of water running like rain through the rocks and dirt. The slide at Mud Creek is still moving. Los Angeles Times

A buss for the bus: A chat room for that rare breed of L.A. residents who love taking the bus. “Hey there sexy thang,” one member wrote, posting some photos of the new bus from behind. “Not bad,” another agreed. “Other than the wheel covers….” The New Yorker

Next time, maybe just text? Park rangers for the Santa Monica Mountains are on the hunt for a “promposal” vandal, who scrawled a prom invitation on a rock near Sandstone Peak. It’s the second year in a row the same message has appeared there. Los Angeles Times

Save the sharks: A Dana Point captain’s wild encounter with a great white shark this weekend. Orange County Register

Checking carefully: New security measures at LAX and several other airports mean some TSA agents might be taking a closer look inside your bags, and that could cause delays. Los Angeles Times

Looking back: More than 20 officers were involved in a gun battle with the suspects in the San Bernardino terrorist attack. A new report details their stories. Los Angeles Times

Dangerous pursuit: The skydiver who fell to his death in a California vineyard was wearing a specialized jumpsuit that resembles a flying squirrel and was undertaking an extreme but growing sport that can send people soaring through the air at speeds of more than 200 mph. Associated Press

Get out your black clothes: This is a huge weekend for the L.A. art world, with the opening of the Marciano Art Foundation at the long-shuttered Scottish Rite Masonic Temple on Wilshire Boulevard. It’s the latest chapter in the city’s art boom, but the museum and its displays get mixed reviews from our critics. Here’s a look at the art: Los Angeles Times

And the architecture: Los Angeles Times

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

Times staff writer James Queally covers crime. Recently he took on a murder mystery: Who would kill a young mother and her child as they walked home from the grocery store? Here he explains how this story came together:

“Nothing made sense about the Brandon Colbert story. Not the murders, or the court proceedings that caused me to dig into his background earlier this year.

“As my story lays it out, the killings of Carina Mancera and Jennabel Anaya didn’t add up to their relatives, their friends or the police. They didn’t have any enemies. There were no links to criminal activity. So why would someone hide near their Long Beach home and cut them down with a shotgun?

“I’ve been writing about crime and death since I started my career in Newark, N.J., a city where I often covered 100-plus homicides a year. Sadly, we don’t always have the time to dig deeper. Sadly, it’s pretty common for a family’s questions about why their loved one is dead to go unanswered.

“Less common, however, was what I saw in court this January: Brandon Colbert representing himself, mumbling some things about psychology, even as an attorney hired by his family told me he had a history of mental illness. The fact that Colbert was representing himself was strange enough. The fact that he was being allowed to do so despite multiple people (his lawyer at the time, his family, NAACP members from his native Oklahoma) claiming he was mentally ill was even stranger.

“I kept an eye on Colbert’s case, but other things kept pulling me away. Still, I kept asking his former attorney to connect me with his family, to produce the records that proved he had a documented history of mental illness.

“Eventually, they came through, and the records told a sad story. He had been hearing voices. Hurting himself. Smoking ‘K2,’ a dangerous synthetic form of marijuana that can cause violent outbursts and has sickened dozens of people in Los Angeles’ skid row community. A portrait of this stranger from Oklahoma charged in a gruesome pair of California homicides started to emerge, and maybe, the beginnings of an answer to questions asked by Carina and Jennabel’s loved ones.”

THIS WEEK’S MOST POPULAR STORIES

1. A dying mother’s plan: Buy a gun. Rent a hotel room. Kill her son. Los Angeles Times

2. The Big One is going to happen, no matter how much you want to deny it, scientists say. Los Angeles Times

3. After a half-century, Botts’ Dots will disappear from freeways and highways. Orange County Register

4. How did a camping trip for two East Bay buddies end with one dead? Mercury News

5. Why are doughnut boxes pink? The answer could only come out of Southern California. Los Angeles Times

ICYMI, HERE ARE THIS WEEK’S GREAT READS

Vroom vroom: “They’re art, and they look good,” says the Central California tycoon who has amassed one of the world’s great motorcycle collections. Los Angeles Times

History lesson: The tiny city of Vernon south of downtown L.A. is so notorious for its corruption that it inspired the infamous second season of HBO’s “True Detective.” But the story of the tiny, wild town is much more than just municipal graft. Curbed Los Angeles

Tales out of art school: After 29 years, Steven Lavine, the third president of the California Institute of the Arts, is retiring. And he has some wild stories to tell. Los Angeles Times

Fact and fiction: Los Angeles is not a desert, despite all the urban myths. But the desert does play an essential role in the region’s geography and culture. Boom California

LOOKING AHEAD

Sunday: Garden Grove Strawberry Festival.

Monday: Various events mark Memorial Day.

Wednesday: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Heritage Month celebrated at Los Angeles City Hall.

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Benjamin Oreskes and Shelby Grad. Also follow them on Twitter @boreskes and @shelbygrad.