t-shirts

The Dodgers are not the norm in baseball. For the majority of teams in the major leagues, the last week of the regular season is the last week until spring training.

As the Angels played out their final week, the Angel Stadium store featured a “Thank You Fans” sale, with up to 50% off caps, T-shirts, polo shirts, jackets, even authentic Mike Trout jerseys.

Inside the clubhouse, the reminders for players had the feel of the final week of school: return your team-issued iPad; order your gloves for next season; take your exit physical.

As the Dodgers play out their final week of the regular season, on the road, the Dodger Stadium store is stocking up on blue “October Baseball” T-shirts, the same ones the players wore last week, when they clinched a postseason spot.

On Thursday, the Dodgers clinched the National League West, again. On Tuesday, the Dodgers will make their 13th consecutive postseason appearance, one shy of the major league record. Only once in those 13 seasons did the Dodgers fail to win the NL West: in 2021, when they won 106 games and the San Francisco Giants won 107.

For the Angels and their decorated closer, and for 17 other teams, Tuesday will be the second day of the offseason. That is the norm in baseball, at least outside Chavez Ravine, the Bronx, and recently Milwaukee.

Kenley Jansen played October baseball for the Dodgers from 2013-21, and for the Atlanta Braves in 2022.

In 2023, the first time in 11 years Jansen did not appear in the postseason, his family alerted him that the Dodgers’ playoff opener was on television, with good friend Clayton Kershaw pitching.

Jansen had no interest in watching.

“I’m like, guys, I’m not on the Dodgers anymore,’ ” he said this week at Angel Stadium.

He wanted to be around his family. His friends and family members wanted to be around him, which they assumed meant around baseball.

“I get it,” he said. “I still feel like I’m going to get those calls: Did you watch that game?”

He appreciates how difficult it is to get to the playoffs. In his first two full seasons, the Dodgers vs. the rest of the league at Dodger Stadium was a sideshow to the main event: Frank McCourt vs. Major League Baseball in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del.

Never mind whether the Dodgers would make the playoffs. Would the players get paid?

“We went from the bankrupt Dodgers to getting into the playoffs every year,” Jansen said. “I think it was the core group, the leadership that we had, plus the front office and the ownership wanting to win a championship every year. They make it competitive.

“They’ve got to keep that train going.”

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, center, celebrates with teammates in the locker room after the Dodgers defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday to clinch the NL West division title.

(Darryl Webb / Associated Press)

In Anaheim, for the first time in 50 years, the Angels are bound for a second consecutive last-place finish. Their last postseason appearance: 11 years ago. Their last winning record: 10 years ago.

This playoff drought included the stretch in which Trout and Shohei Ohtani played together. The Dodgers are more — much more — than Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.

“For me, on the other side now, I see how hard it is to get in the playoffs,” Jansen said. “It’s not easy. You’ve got to have depth — not only here in the big leagues, but depth in the system — to give yourself a chance to win the division.”

It’s too bad the Dodgers and Angels could not complete a trade to get Jansen back to Los Angeles, where he would immediately have become the Dodgers’ most reliable right-handed reliever.

Jansen has a 2.64 ERA this season, and he has converted 28 of 29 save opportunities. He hasn’t given up a hit in more than a month.

But the Angels didn’t sell at the trade deadline, declaring they were in serious contention without buying any serious upgrades.

Dodgers fans should take it from Jansen: Don’t take this golden era for granted. Take a few days to appreciate it. On Wednesday, Jansen said, he’ll start his offseason workouts.

On Tuesday, the Dodgers will start the playoffs, trying to become baseball’s first back-to-back champions in 25 years. The percentages are not in their favor: As of Thursday, Baseball Prospectus gives the Dodgers a 9.6% chance to win the World Series, a smaller chance than the Milwaukee Brewers, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies and Seattle Mariners.

The Angels have been so bad for so long that a division championship would be cause for great celebration. The Dodgers have been so good for so long that nothing but a World Series championship would suffice.

And so, on Tuesday, the days of gratitude can end, and Dodgers fans can resume reflexively criticizing their manager and grimacing about whether they can trust anyone in their bullpen.

Inside Superchief Gallery, murmurs of excitement and eagerness filled the air. Around 60 people gathered in the downtown art space for a screen printing workshop on a late summer evening in August.

Young families, friend groups and couples filled neon pink pews, ready to print designs on T-shirts. Salsa music blared over the speakers as a few stragglers took their seats and others admired artwork on the walls, including a fine-line David Lynch drawing, a ceramic Garfield and a depiction of a lowrider’s paint job.

Despite the lively atmosphere, this gathering might be one of the last. Co-founder Bill Dunleavy said the gallery may be forced to close this month if it can’t raise enough money to pay the bills.

“We thought we had until November to save Superchief, but it came early,” Dunleavy said. “It’s not easy to build the type of community we’ve built. It would be a real shame, and set the culture back to some degree.”

For over a decade, Superchief has established itself as a place where punk rockers, graffiti writers, street photographers, homegrown fine artists and anyone with a piqued interest in counterculture gather to celebrate art.

Audrey Caceres poses with her screen printed jersey at Superchief Gallery, during the workshop.

(Jonathan Alcorn/For The Times)

The gallery’s possible closure would add to the list of shuttered businesses in downtown L.A. that have struggled to rebound following the COVID-19 pandemic. Although downtown continues to attract residents, many office buildings are struggling with falling values and high vacancies.

This year alone, the neighborhood has seen legacy kitchens like the Original Pantry Cafe and Cole’s French Dip face permanent closure. The Mayan, a historic nightclub, is set to shut down later this month and Angel City Brewery announced that its Arts District taproom is being put up for sale.

Nick Griffin, executive vice president of the DTLA Alliance, a coalition of property owners, said the closures reflect the “ebb and flow” of business and changing tastes rather than conditions in downtown.

“Superchief might be closing, but Dataland, the digital AI Art Museum up on Bunker Hill, is going to be opening next year. The Lucas Museum, a massive billion-dollar museum, is opening in Exposition Park. The Broad is doing a $100-million expansion of its facility,” said Griffin. “It’s the normal churn of businesses and culture.”

He says that more businesses are opening in the area than are closing, but the ones that are closing tend to be “very high profile,” cater to niche audiences and often have a cult following — like Superchief.

Art galleries have faced their own challenges.

The global art market declined 12% in 2024, marking its second consecutive year of falling sales, according to the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. Facing shrinking revenue and rising overhead costs, several other art galleries across the city, like Blum, Clearing and Tanya Bonakdar, have also recently announced the closure of their L.A. locations.

Dunleavy first started to notice a falloff in business about a year ago. The gallery’s usual sponsors, who would attach their names and brands to the various exhibitions, started to pull out and revenue from digital art (NFT) sales declined.

“People are just being more careful with their money,” Dunleavy said. “They’re scaling back their advertising and promotional budgets. At the same time, fewer people are buying art. These are the two things that keep an art gallery business model afloat: sponsors and sales.”

Last spring, he and his business partner Ed Zipco launched a fundraising campaign to help save Superchief. They started a Patreon, a monthly subscription service tailored to individual audiences where members are invited to attend special events and get various perks for a monthly fee ranging $10 to $30.

Subscribers and regular gallery-goers have since carved pinewood derby cars, participated in a figure drawing class where models in lingerie were bound by ropes and shopped at a monthly vendor market. The crowdfunding now has about 400 members.

Although the fundraising has helped, the gallery isn’t making enough to cover monthly expenses that range from $10,000 to $15,000, most of it to pay for renting the 10,000-square-foot building on South Los Angeles Street.

The gallery employs two part-time employees and is now open only on the weekends. Dunleavy disclosed that he hasn’t paid himself in over two years and has taken on more loans to meet expenses.

A flier with a Patreon QR code is pictured at the Superchief Gallery during their event.

(Jonathan Alcorn/For The Times)

“We started to incur a lot of debt in order to stay afloat, hoping things were going to get better. But things didn’t get better, they just got worse,” he said.

Superchief moved into its current location in 2022. The gallery, which opened in 2014, was previously housed in a warehouse in Skid Row where it shared space with artists. It soon built a relationship with L.A.’s underground art scene, selling artworks and competing with larger mainstream galleries.

In 2020, a few weeks before the pandemic, a nearby explosion damaged the building, and the gallery was forced to relocate to its current location.

“The economy is unreliable, and the art market is not what it was pre-pandemic, so it’s forcing us to make some real pivots and adaptations,” Dunleavy said.

Though September may be the final curtain call for the gallery, Dunleavy hasn’t given up. He plans to host ticketed parties and other fundraising events with the gallery’s associated artists.

“Patreon is about halfway where it needs to be in order to be sustainable,” Dunleavy said. “I’ve learned how to cope with stressful situations by throwing crazy parties and unconventional events — so that’s exactly what I plan to do.”

Surrounded by ink-flooded screens and piles of white T-shirts used for the August workshop, Audrey Caceres, a frequent Superchief goer, had just finished printing her pink jersey with the gallery’s logo in bright blue ink. The Boyle Heights resident says the gallery’s location, on the outskirts of downtown near East 21st Street, has brought new life to the commercial area.

“I really can’t imagine LA [sub]cultures without Superchief. It’s such a strong foundation for photographers, zine makers, and multimedia artists,” Caceres said. “So, if they weren’t here, I don’t know where people would run to display their work.”

Angel City FC players and staff wore T-shirts and read a pregame message declaring their support for immigrants on Saturday, a day of protest against ICE raids throughout Los Angeles.

The front of the black T-shirts read: “Immigrant City Football Club.”

The back featured the phrases: “Los Angeles is for everyone” and “Los Ángeles es Para Todos.”

Angel City players lock arms while standing for the national anthem. Their shirts read “Los Angeles is for everyone.”

(Courtesy of Jen Flores / Angel City FC)

The club was the first of the city’s 11 major professional sports teams to release a statement in support of those impacted by immigration raids during the past week focused on Los Angeles County and surrounding areas.

Angel City gave out “Immigrant City Football Club” shirts to the first 10,000 fans at Saturday’s match against the North Carolina Courage.

Singer Becky G, a founding investor in Angel City, read the following statement as players walked onto the field for introductions before the game:

“At Angel City, we believe in the power of belonging. We know that Los Angeles is stronger because of its diversity and the people and the families who shape it, love it, and call it home.

Angel City FC gave away shirts to fans at BMO Stadium on Saturday, June 14, 2025, supporting immigrants.

(Courtesy of Jen Flores / Angel City FC)

“The fabric of this city is made of immigrants.

“Football does not exist without immigrants.

“This club does not exist without immigrants.

“This is our home.

“This is LA.

“This is Immigrant City.”