The San Fernando Valley, a vast, sun-kissed area of suburbs located just north of the Santa Monica Mountains, is where Cobra Kai takes place. You are already familiar with this world if you grew up watching The Karate Kid in the 1980s: strip malls, apartment buildings, modest bungalows, and the incessant buzz of a city that never really seemed to care about its residents. Thirty-three years after Daniel LaRusso defeated Johnny Lawrence at the 1984 All-Valley Karate Tournament, the show returns to those same streets—or at least the concept of them. At the beginning of the series, Johnny Lawrence is…
Author: Sierra Foster
Sierra Foster
Born in Kansas City, Sierra Foster writes about politics and serves as Senior Editor at kbsd6.com. She was raised paying attention to this city, not just living in it. Sierra has a strong, deep connection to Kansas City, from the neighborhoods east of Troost to the discussions that take place in the city hall halls. Sierra, who is presently enrolled at the University of Kansas to pursue a degree in Political Science, applies the rigor of academic study to her journalism. She writes about politics in Missouri and Kansas as someone who genuinely cares about what happens to the people in these communities—the policies that impact them, the leaders who represent them, and the civic forces influencing their futures—rather than as an outsider watching from a distance. Her editorial coverage encompasses state-level policy, local government, and the national political currents that permeate bi-state regional life. Whether it's a city council vote or a Senate race, she has a special gift for turning complex policy language into writing that feels urgent, relatable, and worthwhile. Sierra seldom sits still off the page. She claims that playing soccer on a regular basis has sharpened her instincts for political reporting because of the sport's teamwork, strategy, and requirement to read a changing game in real time. She's probably somewhere in Kansas City with her friends when she's not writing or on the pitch, discovering new reasons to adore a city she already knows so well.
In the early 1990s, there was a certain kind of noise coming from Britain. It was loud, weird, and hard to put into a single category. Guitars were distorted, beats were taken from club nights, and samples were pulled in from places no one thought they would be. That crash sounded like the future for a short but really exciting time. One of the people who built it was Derran “Derry” Brownson. Brownson, one of the founders of EMF, died on August 13 after being treated for a brain tumor that was cancerous. Fivety-five. The band posted on social media…
There’s something almost movie-like about the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, but not in a Hollywood-made way. That’s not quite right. The agency is in charge of one of the biggest counties in the US. It includes deserts, border areas, and rural outposts where, on a good day, the closest deputy might be twenty minutes away. It’s hard not to think that this department has earned a story worth telling after seeing how it has changed and grown over the years. The department’s main office is on East Benson Highway in Tucson, Arizona. It has more than 872 civilian employees and…
The answer to the question that most Cobra Kai fans debated for months—who wins the Sekai Taikai—turned out to be more nuanced than nearly everyone had anticipated. It wasn’t just about which student finished first. At the end of the tournament, there were three different wins, a historic tie, and a final battle between two senseis that successfully completed the Karate Kid saga in a way that felt truly earned. Characters in the show have been building the Sekai Taikai since Season 5, comparing it to a hybrid of Bloodsport and the Olympics. The tournament had already been disrupted by…
Early in Cobra Kai, a quiet, nervous child named Eli Moskowitz enters a karate dojo and is largely ignored. He has a best friend named Demetri who shares his passion for Harry Potter and Doctor Who, a cleft lip scar that makes him extremely self-conscious, and virtually no social standing at West Valley High School. He is invisible by all accepted standards. It is truly difficult to sum up what happens to him over the course of the next six seasons of the show, which may be precisely why the character has endured long after the series concluded. Jacob Bertrand…
The San Fernando Valley, which includes Reseda, Encino, and Van Nuys—flat areas of suburban Los Angeles where strip malls and karate dojos seem to be on the same block—is the setting for Cobra Kai. The geography feels lived in when you watch the show. There’s a certain California flatness to the light. The neighborhoods appear to be in order. The parking lots, the low-slung business buildings, the signage—all of it reads Southern California without you ever having to think about it. The majority of it was shot in Georgia. One of the more subtly impressive production choices in recent streaming…
There were Instagram direct messages (DMs) before cameras, Casa Amor, and Fiji. That fact by itself tells us something about how Corbin Mims and Parmida Keshani met. He slid into her email and said something about wanting to work out with her when he got to Miami. Her home is in San Antonio. It did not lead to anything. But after a few months, they ended up in the same villa on Season 8 of Love Island USA and fell in love in front of everyone in the country. This is the kind of coincidence that sounds too good to…
A version of Bruce Lee that exists in popular culture is the one with unbelievable speed, the one who could perform push-ups with two fingers, and the one whose kicks were too quick for cameras. That version is fairly accurate. However, it is also lacking. Compared to the icon that people believe they are familiar with, the fuller picture is stranger, more human, and in some ways more fascinating. The cha-cha should come first. Bruce Lee took home the Crown Colony Cha-Cha Championship in Hong Kong in 1958. By the time he competed, he had reportedly kept a card in…
There is a certain kind of heartbreak that comes in waves. Over time, little disappointments add up until the weight of it all is too much to bear. That’s pretty much what happened with Scheana Shay and Mike Shay. Their marriage looked like it was getting stronger from the outside, but it had been slowly falling apart behind closed doors since the beginning. Scheana has been more open about this than a lot of people thot she would be. After they announced they were getting a divorce, she talked about how troubled their relationship was from the start, when she…
There’s something quietly painful about seeing someone figure out weeks later that what they quickly forgot about looks a lot worse on film. This is pretty much what happened to Kaylor Martin after Season 6 of Love Island USA ended. It’s also the only real reason she and Aaron Evans aren’t together anymore. Aaron, 26, from North Devon in the UK, and Kaylor, 22, from Connellsville, Pennsylvania, were paired up from the start. They were kicked off on day 30, right before the finale. It felt like the end, even tho it wasn’t quite. They tried to keep things together…