{"id":200500,"date":"2026-03-02T13:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T13:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/200500\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T13:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T13:34:14","slug":"world-cup-funds-delayed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/200500\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup funds delayed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walk through cities around the world and it’s easy to spot the trend: utility boxes painted and transformed into public art to spiff up neighborhoods. <\/p>\n

In downtown Los Angeles, street artist S.C. Mero has taken the idea of the utility box as art in a different direction with one she\u2019s installed in the Arts District.<\/p>\n

\u201cWould you like me to open it up and you can see?\u201d she asked on a recent morning.<\/p>\n

At first glance, it looks like an ordinary electrical cabinet \u2014 gray, about the size of a refrigerator, with slotted vents. But instead of the usual fire-resistant metal, this one is made of wood with a faux concrete base.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The box theater incognito.<\/p>\n

Mero spins two combination locks and pulls open the door.<\/p>\n

A hidden theater<\/p>\n

Inside, instead of a tangle of cables and cords, red crushed velvet covers the walls from top to bottom. <\/p>\n

A gilded clock and gold-framed pictures of two other electrical boxes (\u201cpossibly its mother, and its great-grandfather\u201d) adorn the tiny interior, inspired by one of downtown\u2019s oldest and grandest movie palaces, the Los Angeles Theatre.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time I went into that theater, the feeling that I had, I wanted people to have a similar feeling when they opened this up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Like the theater, the box is meant to bring audiences together. Mero invites performers to step inside, and since its installation a few weeks ago, some 30 poets, magicians, puppeteers and clowns have reached out about using the space.<\/p>\n

Many are female artists.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it’s because of the scale of it, they feel like they can actually have a chance to get inside,\u201d Mero said.<\/p>\n

A tradition of unexpected art<\/p>\n

The box theater sits on the 800 block of Traction Avenue, across the street from the historic American Hotel, an early hub for artists in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Jesse Easter, the hotel\u2019s night manager, has a front-row seat to the box theater performances.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Arts District is still alive,\u201d he proclaims.<\/p>\n

Easter first arrived in the neighborhood in the 1980s, a blues and rock musician who also professionally installed art.<\/p>\n

He said the Arts District has long been known for unconventional public art. Famously, in 1982, artist Dustin Shuler pinned a Cessna airplane to the side of the American Hotel with a 20-foot-long nail.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was one of the people that was in the hotel that saw the room that the nail came down into, went through the brick wall, into the floor and stopped,\u201d Easter recalls.<\/p>\n

Easter says Mero\u2019s installations boldly continue that tradition of guerrilla street art in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

After graduating from USC in 2011, she started to make sculptural works with overlooked street fixtures, exploring issues such as addiction and homelessness.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Before the box theater, there was a giant mailbox. <\/p>\n

Before the theater box, Mero installed an oversized mailbox at the same corner, towering over passersby, symbolizing a housing market that remains out of reach for many Angelenos.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the Arts District on Rose Street, she has installed a 13-foot-tall parking meter sculpture, commentary on the overwhelming nature of parking in the city.<\/p>\n

Realizing a dream\u00a0<\/p>\n

The box theater is perhaps the piece that has invited the most participation.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Jesse Easter, a musician and night manager at the American Hotel, prepares to perform at the box theater. <\/p>\n

Last week, Mero asked Easter and other local artists to perform there. He played a blues song he wrote more than 40 years ago when he first moved to the Arts District.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was sunset, and I was thinking, this kind of is the bookend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Other participants performed spoken word poetry and played saxophone.<\/p>\n

One performer, Mike Cuevas, discovered the theater by accident.<\/p>\n

An Uber driver, Cuevas was waiting for his next delivery order by the box theater as it was being prepped ahead of the night\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

Mero recalls him getting out of his car to look at what she was doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s like, what’s going on here? This looks so cool,\u201d Mero said. \u201cHe said as he’s driving throughout the city, in between his rides, he writes poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cuevas, who goes by the pen name Octane 543(12), left to make a delivery in East L.A., but he said \u201csomething in his heart\u201d told him to return that evening.<\/p>\n

After watching others perform, he stepped up to the box and read his poetry in public for the first time, a piece about Latino pride.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Mike Cuevas, aka Mike Octane 543-12, publicly reads his poetry for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother generation will pass through,\u201d he recited. \u201cAnd they’ll understand why we honor with proud delight, the continuous fight for the history of our brothers and sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cuevas didn\u2019t know Mero by name or anything about her work, but thanked her for giving him a venue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just felt something beautiful with her art,\u201d Cuevas said. \u201cIt’s time for me to start expressing myself. She inspired me to do exactly what she’s doing, but through poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n

He now plans to read again at an open mic in downtown L.A. next week.<\/p>\n

An overture to look inside<\/p>\n

Mero says the project has spoken to her personally, too. Growing up in Minnesota, she loved art as a child but later focused on playing lacrosse and hockey. At USC, she studied public relations.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce I started getting so into art, everyone was kind of shocked,\u201d Mero said. \u201cThat’s why I really want to encourage people to go inside themselves and see what’s there, because you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mero is hoping for a long run for the box theater. Its predecessor, the supersize mailbox, stayed up for five years, only toppled, she heard, after skateboarders accidentally ran into it.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the small theater sits unassumingly on the sidewalk waiting for its next performer, its exterior starting to collect graffiti like any other utility box.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Walk through cities around the world and it’s easy to spot the trend: utility boxes painted and transformed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-200500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-la","9":"tag-la-headlines","10":"tag-la-news","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","13":"tag-los-angeles-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}