Westlake Village Restores 2004 Trolley as Dylan Meets Pope Leo XIV

Municipal transit heritage in California, an unexpected cultural exchange inside the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, and a landmark British literary prize for ancient history anchored community and arts coverage this week as Westlake Village funded the restoration of a 2004 wooden trolley, Bob Dylan met Pope Leo XIV ahead of a concert in Rome, and historian Edmund Richardson captured the 2026 Baillie Gifford Prize.

Westlake Village Authorizes $200,000 to Restore 2004 Trolley for Summer 2027 Relaunch

According to Hoodline, the Westlake Village City Council unanimously approved a budget amendment authorizing up to $200,000 for mechanical, electrical, and cosmetic restoration of a retired 2004 municipal trolley that the city purchased from neighboring Calabasas for $30,500 at a government surplus auction in early September. City Manager Rob de Geus noted that Westlake Village's 2026-27 municipal budget projects a $1.1 million surplus that can accommodate the unbudgeted restoration expense as the Cultural Recreation Committee reviews routes for a targeted summer 2027 launch.

Westlake Village previously operated Friday and Saturday evening trolley service connecting the Westlake Village Inn, the Four Seasons, the Shoppes, and the Landing—averaging 115 riders on Fridays and 153 riders on Saturdays during an eight-week pilot—before ending the route in 2020. After setting a January 2024 council goal to revive the service, officials acquired the California-emissions-compliant Calabasas vehicle, whose transmission and air-conditioning system were rebuilt or upgraded within the prior 18 months.

Bob Dylan Exchanges Gifts With Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican Ahead of Rome Concert

In international music news reported by Hoodline, 85-year-old singer-songwriter Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman) wore a black hooded sweatshirt for a brief in-person audience with Pope Leo XIV inside the Vatican's Apostolic Palace on Wednesday, one day before Dylan's scheduled Thursday performance at Rome's Palazzo dello Sport. During the meeting reported by Vatican News and the Association of Catholic Priests, Pope Leo XIV presented Dylan with a rosary, and Dylan gave the pontiff a copy of his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One.

In July 2026, Pope Leo XIV quoted lyrics from Dylan's unreleased 1963 protest song "Go Away You Bomb" in the preface to a Vatican Publishing House book on disarmament. Dylan's history with religious themes includes a late-1970s evangelical period after an audience member tossed a silver cross onstage on November 17, 1978, as well as his 1997 appearance at the 23rd National Eucharistic Congress in Bologna—where Pope John Paul II quoted "Blowin' in the Wind" before a Piazza Maggiore crowd estimated at 300,000 to 400,000 people.

Edmund Richardson's 'Alexander: God, King, Man' Wins £50,000 Baillie Gifford Prize

In London, KCBS Radio reported that Durham University classics professor Edmund Richardson won the 50,000-pound ($67,000) Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction on Wednesday for his biography Alexander: God, King, Man. Judging panel chair Kirsty Lang praised the book—the first work of ancient history to win the award since its founding in 1999—noting that it "reads like a novel" and should appeal to admirers of Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of The Odyssey.

Richardson spent 10 years (a decade) translating sources across 12 ancient languages to chronicle how Alexander inherited a debt-ridden Macedonian kingdom at age 20 and campaigned from Greece and Egypt to Babylon and India before age 32. Selected from more than 350 entries, Richardson's book topped five other finalists—Patrick Radden Keefe's London Falling, Nicholas Boggs' Baldwin: A Love Story, Matthew Sweet's The Great Dictator (on novelist Barbara Cartland), Anand Gopal's Days of Love and Rage, and Andrea Wulf's The Traveler (on naturalist George Forster)—and succeeds 2025 winner Helen Garner's How to End a Story.