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• Sean Bonner at blogging.la discovers a parking meter scam run by street people in the toy district downtown.
• Tim McGarry, a frequent commenter on L.A. blogs (and here when I had comments), held out as long as he could but is now officially——a blogger. He calls it Angels and Vagabonds.
• New blogger Clark Baker was fired from the LAPD after being convicted of battery, but got his job back when the verdict was overturned on appeal. He finally retired after twenty years on the force, and he's no fan of the current LAPD. He calls himself an ex-Liberal in Hollywood.
• Mariel Garza bills her personal blog as the "Los Angeles adventures of a Girl Columnist." Her lastest post links to her column in the Daily News about the mood among Mayor Jim Hahn's staffers as they prepare for life outside City Hall.
• At Mayor's Sam Sister City, a regular pseudonymous commenter who goes by the handle of MEAT says he is withdrawing from the fray to attend law school in Arizona. He mentions me and Mack Reed of LA Voice on his way out (Uh, thanks). The "Mayor Sam" side of the blog's anonymous creators also has launched a second site he bills as a confidential dating service for City Hall staffers. Council aides seem pretty certain they know the identities and agendas of "Sam" and co-character "Chief Parker," but it's doubtful that very many (if any) will divulge personal info about themselves to the hidden operators. But, you know, stranger things have happened.
• Ken Masugi at Local Liberty critiques Christopher Hawthorne's LAT profile of architect Daniel Libeskind, saying it "focuses too much on his reputation and not how the site of the World Trade Center should be commemorated."
• Influential New York blogger Jeff Jarvis is mini-profiled by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post.
• Virtual Venice is a new site in honor of the community's centennial. Venice is one of the neighborhoods of Los Angeles that used be an independent city, before its residents agreed in 1925 to be swallowed up. West Los Angeles is another: part of it used to be the separate city of Sawtelle, centered around Santa Monica Boulevard and Sawtelle Avenue.
• Dodger bloggers are calling for the head of Jim Tracy after the manager had top on-base hitters J.D. Drew and Hee Seop Choi give away outs and bunt in the late innings of tonight's game. The Dodgers, who got only one hit, lost in the tenth inning to the Cubs.