Eight shot at South L.A. bus stop

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Five children and three adults were hit as a gunman sprayed the crowd just after classes let out at Carver Middle School on Wednesday. None of the victims have died. LAT: "Investigators were unsure of the motive for the shooting and were still searching for the gunman Wednesday night. Witnesses initially told police an African American man between 18 and 24 years old fired about 15 rounds from a semiautomatic handgun into the group of blacks and Latinos, many of whom were waiting for buses in front of a fast-food restaurant. Afterward, the gunman -- who police said was wearing a white T-shirt, blue pants and appeared to be about 5 feet 7 and 160 pounds -- calmly walked away."

Density hawks changing L.A.'s DNA

New ordinances will let developers bypass the city's fundamental zoning protections — and profoundly alter the livability, look and essence of Los Angeles, the Weekly says. This even though planning chief Gail Goldberg, when she first arrived, complained that the value of land in Los Angeles is not based on the zoning as in other cities, but on "what [the] developer believes he can change the zone to. This is disastrous for the city." LA Weekly

The rules for how Angelenos wanted to fashion their city were arduously, sometimes bitterly, negotiated among homeowners, developers, environmentalists and politicians in the mid-'80s, led by then city councilmen Joel Wachs, Marvin Braude and Yaroslavsky. Those core rules today hold tremendous power, creating a blueprint that dictates which Los Angeles neighborhoods should be preserved — and which should be dramatically built up.

Yet in contrast to the boisterous civic debate launched by city and community leaders in the 1980s, the Villaraigosa administration has grown accustomed to only tepid public interference and awareness. Through aide Gil Duran, the mayor has for five months ducked L.A. Weekly's routine questions about his agenda's potential consequences citywide — much taller and fatter residential buildings than zoning law allows, significantly less green space, obliteration of residential parking in some complexes and removal of older, less expensive housing.

Carson City Hall smacker goes to trial

Remember when Vera Robles DeWitt, a former mayor of Carson, applied a sheaf of papers to the back of the head of a commissioner, who waited a couple of beats then fell writhing to the ground while the incumbent mayor began shouting theatrically? DeWitt goes to trial today for misdemeanor battery. LAT

Mulholland family papers go to CSUN

"There's a bigger history to this city than most people in the country realize," says Robert Marshall, head archivist in the library at Cal State Northridge. DN

Gold gives the new Du-Par's a try

Pancakes remain good, but the coffee is still weak and Jonathan Gold calls the changes made in the french toast tragic. He puts Du-Par's in the appropriate historical context:

Du-par's was the place on the Miracle Mile where blue-haired women lined up in the afternoons for snacks of tea and banana bread. Tiny Naylor's was the drive-in on Sunset where you ate postmidnight onion rings in your Dodge Dart. Du-par's was cracked vinyl and steak-and-kidney pies in the Farmers Market. Tiny Naylor's was '50s glamour and grilled cheese sandwiches at the bottom of Beverly Hills' famous Restaurant Row. Du-par's was the office-building restaurant where your grandmother took you for chicken-salad sandwiches on raisin bread. Tiny Naylor's was the hamburger dive just a couple of blocks away.