The Los Angeles Pride parade went forward without delay. At the Hollywood Bowl, Hugh Jackman and The Roots headlined for the opening weekend. The “June gloom” fog, as Southern Californians call it, burned off in time for traffic to jam under clear afternoon skies as families fanned out to swim meets, to beaches, to churches, to parks.
“It’s a beautiful, sunny day,” one parking attendant at Hollywood Burbank Airport marveled.
As the first National Guard troops rumbled into Los Angeles on Sunday, summoned by the Trump administration to quell protests against an immigration crackdown, Los Angeles remained its eternal self — bigger than any one disruption. Los Angeles County, all 4,000 square miles of it, has a way of insulating and isolating mayhem, man-made or otherwise.
As clashes have broken out between protesters, federal agents and police officers, life — that uniquely sunlit and serene Southern California version of it — mostly unfolded peaceably. It’s not that those elsewhere were oblivious to what was happening. It’s just that there was space for the one to not interrupt the other.
On Sunday, at a park in the Silver Lake neighborhood, children sprinted across the grass and a tent was set up for a birthday celebration. The day before, in Compton, as sheriff’s deputies pushed demonstrators out of the intersection they had occupied for hours, Saturday night plans carried on about a block away in homes and apartments. The echoes of a Spanish-language birthday song boomed from a backyard party. At another home, a live band performed on a front lawn.
“One of the defining factors of L.A. is that it’s so very hard to define because it is so vast and so diverse,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School. “I live on a hill overlooking the city, and this is not like the 1992 riots. I don’t see helicopters. I don’t see fires raging. In places like the West Side it’s largely business as usual.”
The chaotic demonstrations that consumed social media and cable news in recent days were concentrated around only a couple parts of the region — the working-class suburb of Paramount, where federal agents clashed with protesters near a Home Depot, and downtown Los Angeles.
It was in the downtown area around federal properties that the first convoys settled on Sunday, rows of big green military vehicles manned by troops in camouflage. The deployment stunned Mayor Karen Bass.
“Our city is still trying to recover from the wildfires, and you just think about how so many people were impacted by that, and that’s an example of where the administration was helpful, and to go from that situation to where we are now is just really tragic, and I think is so unfortunate,” Ms. Bass told reporters on Sunday. “It’s the last thing Los Angeles needs.”
Professor Levinson texted a picture of her hilltop view: palm trees, quiet streets, a children’s play structure. “At this moment, I can’t tell which way things will tip,” she said. “Will we take a breath? Will we fight this? Who knows? We’re all just looking at each other right now, going, like, ‘What’s next?’”
Jill Cowan and Orlando Mayorquín contributed reporting.
Shawn Hubler is The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, reporting on the news, trends and personalities of Southern California.
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