Archive: Canyons

UCLA staffer Annelie Rugg bicycles to her job from West Hills, over the Santa Monica Mountains via Sepulveda Pass. Her route takes her two and a half hours -- or three minutes on video. Check it out.

When the Los Angeles Fire Department puts up its red flag, thousands who live in the city's hillsides and canyons are affected. Move your car off the streets in posted areas, or risk an expensive ticket and possibly get towed.

That extra traffic in Laurel Canyon this evening was due to an accident involving an LAPD motorcycle officer. The unidentified officer was on his way to investigate a previous accident when a driver stuck in traffic made an abrupt turn in front of the officer's bike. He's at a hospital but going to be OK.

For a month starting on March 23, the main canyon road connecting the Valley with Beverly Hills will be closed during the day. Coldwater Canyon Avenue needs to be dug up to replace the main water line installed during the William Mulholland era with a new trunk line.

The 405 freeway widening and upgrade project on the Westside and in Sepulveda Pass is about a year behind schedule. But if you haven't been through there in awhile, you might be surprised at the visuals. The skyline at the Wilshire Boulevard interchange is starting to look very different.

KPCC's website has posted a nice gallery of photos from the maintenance work on the iconic Hollywood sign. Nothing like a new coat of paint to freshen up a place.

If things go right, there will be fewer media choppers hovering pointlessly above the ends of the closed 405 freeway during this weekend's traffic event. Or non-event, whatever.

The trompe l'oeil bookshelves were commissioned by Lee Dembart, a former Los Angeles Times editor and writer, and painted in 2005 by artist Don Gray. Author Robert Crais posted about the garage door recently on Facebook.

How dry are the hills around Los Angeles right now? So dry that a small herd of cattle showed up eating lawns on the edge of Chatsworth this morning. And last night. Then a mysterious woman with a bullwhip herded them back home.

Author Robert Crais posts on Facebook: "Another reason I love LA is because people like this live here. They painted their garage door to look like book shelves."

Since at least February, National Park Service trackers have known that P-22 was roaming the canyons of Griffith Park. But his GPS collar has stopped working and they want to track and tag him again.

The overall project is now four to six months behind schedule. This means that the plans to close the freeway over a weekend to finish tearing down the Muholland Drive bridge in Sepulveda Pass are now delayed at least until late summer. Plus: Wilshire Rampture by the numbers.

The city of Santa Monica sent residents an email alert this morning saying that "2nd St. between Wilshire and Arizona is closed down to vehicular and pedestrian traffic due to a mountain lion sighting. The lion is contained and The Department of Fish and Game is in route." Plus the first known photo of a lion in Griffith Park. More Update: Lion shot and killed.

Residents of Grand View Drive in Laurel Canyon are mad as hell about a "scofflaw" builder who has already mansionized one lot on the street and started work on two other parcels. They have banded together to make an effective and informative video — and have a little piece of local rock and roll history in their film.

Check out Veronique de Turenne's photographs from inside the gate at the Hollywood sign.

Gerhard Albert Becker was arrested Saturday on his arrival from Spain at LAX, and he's scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the death last year of LAFD veteran Glenn Allen.

The actor gives CBS' "Person to Person" a tour of his Studio City home of 20 years. His dad became the anchor at KNBC News in 1984.

Police responded this morning to his Mulholland Drive home and found Cornelius dead, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot.

The secret City Council district maps were released publicly today, revealing whose ox is being gored. As she foreshadowed, Councilwoman Jan Perry is among the gored.

Investigators believe the body parts found off a trial under the Hollywood sign belong to a man who was only dead for a day or two.

Metro says it has no cause yet for the failure of a retaining wall section on the 405 freeway improvement project in Sepulveda Pass.

The red flag restrictions that limit parking on many streets in the hills and canyons kick in at 8 a.m. Thursday. I'm kind of surprised they are not in force tonight.

Vanity Fair digs into the neighbor-on-neighbor clash over plans for a big house on the five-acre estate of Saudi prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud.

It's not bad out there. I came over Sepulveda Pass about 2 o'clock, and except for what seemed to be a bit of lookie-loo slowdown on both sides approaching the...

The city Department of Transportation is slapping up new No Stopping any Time signs for Carmageddon weekend on these streets, mostly in the Valley.

The mega Tower Lane construction project was withdrawn Thursday by the owner.

In November it will be 50 years since one of the city's scariest wind-whipped fire storms burned through Brentwood and Bel Air.

Runyon Canyon's mystery mansion gets some ink in the New York Times.

Mark Frauenfelder went for a fun Saturday walking tour of the old Hollywoodland development in Beachwood Canyon.

Bikers aren't happy about rumble strips being added to the loop of canyon roads off Mulholland Highway where motorcyclists have raced for decades.themselves or others. T

Curbed LA's Adrian Glick Kudler goes to the numbers to put the lie to the media hype that buyers from China and Russia are lining up to buy Zsa Zsa Gabor's Bel-Air home.

Singer Neil Diamond's 70th birthday is Monday. On Sunday afternoon, five skywriters spelled out a birthday greeting over the Bel-Air hills.

Escrow closed last week on the late photographer's Raphael S. Soriano-designed home on Woodrow Wilson Drive — Los Angeles historic-cultural monument #325.

Caltrans and Metro have all but finally decided to alter the way the impressively high, 1959-era Mulholland Drive bridge is replaced during the I-405 widening project. It's a simple change that will reduce headaches and could save $10 million.

Nice piece by writer Steve Oney on the memories evoked by the city covering the old concrete pavement of Outpost Drive, with its embedded paw prints of a long ago...

Photojournalist and blogger Ted Soqui was riding with the L.A. Wheelmen on Mulholland Drive when they came across Jay Leno, loading his 1963 Porsche onto a truck.

Instead of preserving the Hollywood sign in its static condition as a legally condoned supergraphic, why not embrace its inner hotel potential?

Hugh Hefner helped put up the last chunk of money in the Trust for Public Land's campaign to buy and preserve acreage west of the Hollywood sign. Councilman Tom LaBonge will talk up the effort this evening on "Which Way, L.A.?" on KCRW.

Three years ago, the family that owns the Hollywood property where Yamashiro and the Magic Castle sit put the 10 acres up for sale. They accepted an offer from Sean MacPherson, impresario behind the Maritime Hotel, Jones, Bar Lubitsch and other hip spots.

Sponsored by parents at Wonderland Avenue Elementary School in Los Angeles and posted at Funny or Die. It's pretty good.

About 300 volunteers helped the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department search through the hills of Malibu Canyon on Saturday without finding any evidence that sheds light on the woman's disappearance.

Superior Court Judge Scott T. Millington expressed doubts about Dr. Christopher Thompson's remorse for stopping short and injuring two cyclists on Mandeville Canyon Road. Millington also claimed the five-year sentence...

Cruising the canyons in a Gullwing and telling tales of Steve McQueen drag racing.

The home on Woodrow Wilson Drive designed by Raphael Soriano — and built for Shulman — is listed at $2.495 million vacant. It includes an extensively wooded yard, including redwood...

As part of the promotion for his new movie, actor Adam Goldberg drives around Los Angeles pointing out some of the things he dislikes. Among them are the food,...

I visited a Los Angeles icon yesterday for the first time. Before we got there I told friends I half-expected to be disappointed. Boy, was I not disappointed. As soon...

Prince has lived in Los Angeles since last spring — that is, if you consider the rarefied gated nouveau complex of Beverly Park to be part of the real L.A....

The two halves of Beverly Park, the exclusive gated community tucked between Beverly Hills and Mulholland Drive, have gone to court against each other over blocked access and unpaid fees....

Mayor Villaraigosa announced some road closures in the park as the rains continue. "The park has experienced some minor to moderate debris flows and flooding on several of its main...

The LAFD is calling the Griffith Park fire 50% encircled and some firefighters are being taken off the line. A little more than 800 acres have been blackened. Councilman Tom...

Michael Walker at Laurel Canyon the Book hopes the cat run over on Barham Boulevard wasn't the one that had been using his lower deck. He also points to a...

Since we're talking cats this week, a reader in Glendale passes along more sightings: No photographic evidence; but up here on the shoulder of the Verdugo Hills (right across the...

Wednesday's Morning Buzz reprinted an email from the president of the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council warning residents that a dog had fallen prey to the mountain lion (or lions)...

Attention hill dwellers: It's brush clearance season for you. Los Angeles Fire Department inspectors are out checking all 129,647 parcels in the scarily named Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone,...