When January 2025’s Eaton fire raged through Altadena, just outside of LA, Good Neighbor bar had only been open for less than two months. Owned by Randy Clement, his life partner, April Langford, and Emely Cubias, the bar became one of the few businesses that remained standing in the aftermath of the blaze.

The Eaton fire destroyed over 9,400 structures. Along with the Palisades fire, it became the costliest natural disaster in US history with more than $250 billion in damage.

Until that point, the area had been a homestead of artists and creatives, a bastion of citizens seeking a diverse community. It’s a wonderland at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, with entrances to a labyrinth of hiking trails, encounters with neighbors on horseback, and chicken coops entrenched in backyards.

In the months since the fire smoldered, Good Neighbor has become a gathering place for survivors, a protected space where many who have lost so much have gone to process their feelings with fellow residents. It is now an incubator for relationships between community members, and a pivotal part of Altadena’s recovery efforts, where neighbors share support, resources, and friendship.

Though so many structures in Altadena may be gone, the bonds between its people have only gotten stronger since the tragedy. “Once Good Neighbor said they were going to open back up, I thought, I bet a lot of victims of the fire are going to go there and find community,” says Karina Martinez, a teacher who lost her home in the fire. “I really wanted to talk to people who also lost their homes and know exactly what I’m going through.”

It was Altadena’s communal spirit that spurred Clement and Langford to move to the area in 2018 with their two boys. “We have met so many people, and reconnected with others we knew in the early days of Silverlake Wine who we haven’t seen in maybe a decade or more,” Langford says. Along with Cubias, they’ve been pioneers of the eastward migration of LA’s hospitality industry. It was only natural they add to their syndicate of wine shops (Silverlake Wine, Highland Park Wine), bars (Everson Royce Bar) and restaurants (Hippo, Triple Beam Pizza) a shop and bar by their home.

“Still Here”

At the height of the Eaton fire, evacuated families grappled with the uncertainty about the fate of their homes. Clement made the most of an unknown entry point into the firescape that the National Guard closed off to the public. People shared their addresses via Instagram direct message to Langford, who used the restaurant’s delivery app to create a route for Clement to drive through. A companion would take photos of the house, destruction, and degrees in between to send back to the inquirer. “Still here,” and “I’m so sorry,” were common responses.

It’s this displacement of Altadena residents that threatens the businesses that still stand today. “If peoples’ houses burned down in January, they came up afterward to check on their homes or property,” Clement says. “Now, a few months later, their lot has been cleared. There are few reasons for people to come back, and the amount of people that are up here is less and less by the day.”

Figuratively and literally, Altadena’s food culture suffered considerable loss too. The Little Red Hen, a Black-owned coffee shop, and Café de Leche, a Latino-owned one, both burned down. The family-owned, 69-year-old Fox’s Restaurant was not spared, nor were independent pie shops Pizza of Venice and Side Pie. Family-run fast-food joint Everest Burgers was also destroyed, and several markets suffered damage. Aldi and Dollar King burned as did the independent superette Minik Market. Super King and Outlet Grocery were temporarily damaged but are thankfully rebuilding.

The Cost of Disaster

Altadena’s average household income and home values ($178,000 and $1.14 million, respectively) are less than half those in the Palisades ($375,000 and $3.7 million), with the latter being one of the wealthiest enclaves in all of the United States. This disparity is also reflected in the unequal response to the fires that hit both neighborhoods. Billionaire Rick Caruso hired private firefighters to protect businesses and homes along the coast. But reports found that some areas in Altadena didn’t receive evacuation orders until four hours after LA County firefighters’ recommendation. West Altadena is also home to one of LA’s most historic Black neighborhoods, and Black families were disproportionately affected by the Eaton fire.

But Altadena is more than its modest-for-LA earnings and home values.

“The challenge with Altadena is it developed ad hoc, without a plan,” says Tom Majich, general manager of the Kinneloa Irrigation District, leader of the Altadena Mountain Rescue Team, and volunteer at the Altadena Fire Brigade. There’s a town council but no mayor, and “[the city] is going to have to be rebuilt in the same way because of the governing structure.”

In the immediate aftermath of the fires, it was impossible to fathom just how much destruction had taken place.

The Unexpected Community Center

Situated just outside Good Neighbor is an 8-by-14 foot color-coded map of the fire’s destruction, making note of the varying degrees of damage, including total destruction. It was created by Noel McCarthy, an artist, production designer, activist, and longtime friend of Clement and Langford. “I’d start to explain [to people the damage] and their eyes would glaze over. I wasn’t able to articulate the scope,” he says.

The huge mock-up of Altadena’s fire map has become a meeting place, even a site of remembrance for survivors and bonding between community members. “You can see people’s body language when they first get there,” McCarthy says. “If it’s a group, they’ll talk about which way the wind was blowing, where they were, how they escaped.”

The map serves as a visual reminder of the devastation that Altadena endured, but it has also been a catalyst for raising money and other support for the community.

For instance, behind the map lies a lively orange, blue, and yellow mural, painted on the shop’s outside wall by Eric Junker, another longtime friend and collaborator of Clement and Langford’s. His bold, vibrant, and cheerful artwork have become a signature at their establishments and many other LA restaurants. Junker designed and sold posters, raising $40,000 with 100% of the proceeds going to Altadena Mountain Rescue, Majich’s volunteer-led organization that conducts rescues of hikers and mountain bikers in the trails of the Foothills.

Clement and Langford’s sons, Everson and Royce, gathered their friends to organize a school concert in Good Neighbor’s parking lot, where they raised $7,000. The lot was also the starting point for a collaborative multi-stop 50-kilometer ultra marathon to Will Rogers State Beach in the Pacific Palisades. Coordinated by Silver Lake Track Club, about 1,000 runners raised $50,000, with proceeds benefitting Altadena Mountain Rescue, Altadena Public Library, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) Immigrant Fire Relief Fund, and Malibu Search and Rescue.

The bar continues to be a space for emotional support among survivors, their family and friends.

“It was really nice to have somebody you didn’t know to connect with,” says Martinez of the Good Neighbor team. “[Bartender] Nathan was also a victim of the fire, but then the person next to me was like, ‘Oh, my god, me too.’ Pretty soon, everybody in the bar was talking about how they were affected.” As Altadena rebuilds, Good Neighbor has, essentially, become a daily support group, where neighbors can find comfort and a sense of permanence when everything else is unsure.

The bar and its patrons know that the area’s recovery is not limited to just fundraisers. Instead, spirit, resourcefulness, and connections fostered at places like Good Neighbor have always undergirded this resilient, tight-knit community. “This is still home,” Martinez says. “This is still Altadena.”