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Topic Archive: Downtown
All this talk of the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner closing led Curbed LA to ask, sensibly, what has become of the plans to renovate the old...
Posted November 4, 2009 12:55 PM
Meridith Baer furnishes and decorates homes specifically to hook potential buyers. A New York Times Magazine writer lusts after the image of a life she created — mountain bike included...
Posted October 26, 2009 12:53 AM
The new Regal Cinemas' L.A. Live Stadium 14 debuts officially on Tuesday with the first showings of Michael Jackson's "This Is It." Variety sees the new Downtown cineplex — which...
Posted October 25, 2009 11:39 PM
City Attorney Carmen Trutanich enjoyed a split decision this morning, getting a Daily News editorial in favor of his bully approach to governing, and an L.A. Times editorial that rebuked...
Posted October 23, 2009 3:54 PM
Staples has re-upped its deal for the naming rights to Staples Center — extending its original 20-year agreement into an "in perpetuity" deal. Staples turned ten this month....
Posted October 19, 2009 11:54 AM
Downtown News staff writer Ryan Vaillancourt spent a year reporting on the inner workings of the Skid Row basketball league, starting by getting himself into pickup games at Gladys Park....
Posted October 12, 2009 12:13 PM
Gustavo Dudamel is making his long-awaited debut tonight at the Hollywood Bowl. The Dodgers are trying to avoid an epic collapse at the stadium. My choice of venues for tonight...
Posted October 3, 2009 7:06 PM
The Museum of Neon Art is leaving Downtown for Glendale's Brand Boulevard. Earlier post here and new L.A. Times story....
Posted September 24, 2009 9:45 PM
The Museum of Neon Art is thinking seriously about moving from Downtown — and Los Angeles — to the city of Glendale. "MONA needs a permanent location to display these...
Posted September 23, 2009 3:58 PM
Motor officers plan to meet the truck from Kansas City when it reaches Rosemead Boulevard on I-10 at 10:30 on Tuesday. The bikes will escort the truck to a mounting...
Posted September 21, 2009 5:35 PM
A media group was escorted Thursday through the new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters across Spring Street from the L.A. Times building. The new HQ, as yet unnamed, opens in...
Posted September 4, 2009 8:55 AM
While crackdowns on counterfeit clothes and DVDs get more attention, Ed Fuentes reports at Blogdowntown that "the Fashion District's illegal animal trade continues unabated." The photo is by Fuentes. According...
Posted August 21, 2009 10:52 PM
The Amateur Enthusiast is a blog devoted to drinking and dining in Downtown by political strategist Glenn Gritzner. In today's post, he struggles to bring his fellow Enthusiasts around on...
Posted August 21, 2009 10:41 PM
Zooey Deschanel, the co-star of the current L.A. paean "[500] Days of Summer," has broken down and sent her first Twitter blurb. Her link goes to the site for her...
Posted August 19, 2009 3:44 PM
The store's annual clearance sale began in the Convention Center today....
Posted August 13, 2009 6:02 PM
Most nights, it seems, one window remains brightly lit on the west face of the City Hall tower. Lisa Napoli emails that she and her neighbors on Bunker Hill watch...
Posted July 30, 2009 9:57 PM
"We're young, we live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, we might as well have fun while we can," Zooey Deschanel's character says in "500...
Posted July 18, 2009 11:40 PM
I can't remember the last time I saw the Hotel Rosslyn roof signs on display over Downtown, but I was pleased to see the northern one of the pair fired...
Posted July 11, 2009 12:30 PM
For the first time in what feels like forever, Michael Jackson isn't mentioned in this week's LA Observed segment airing at 4:44 p.m. on KCRW. The subject this time is...
Posted July 10, 2009 4:25 PM
City Council prez pro tem Jan Perry has released the city's map on street closures designed to keep the ticketless masses far away from the Michael Jackson memorial at Staples...
Posted July 6, 2009 12:48 PM
LAPD chief William Bratton, speaking just now on Fox 11, said officers are trying to clear out the last groups still hanging around Downtown. He says there have been five...
Posted June 14, 2009 10:42 PM
Looks like over a thousand people are gathered in the Staples Center neighborhood right now, with some small fires being set in the street and quickly extinguished — including of...
Posted June 14, 2009 8:53 PM
In the ongoing contest of wills between photographers and the owners of Los Angeles' tallest skyscraper, the picture takers report some progress. The guards who try to block pictures of...
Posted June 8, 2009 11:02 PM
Taplin, who was involved with the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council from its inception in 2002, was killed Tuesday in a freeway car accident. Blogdowntown says that Taplin and her...
Posted April 15, 2009 2:41 PM
"The sudden appearance of these designs, even in provisional form, in the middle of a deep recession prompts a couple of questions. Why now? And why -- when the last...
Posted April 12, 2009 10:40 PM
Dogs, horses, rabbits, cats, turtles, birds — even a few lizards and a snake — got along famously at Saturday's traditional Blessing of the Animals at Olvera Street and...
Posted April 11, 2009 10:41 PM
Downtown has just a single construction crane left on the job, at the Ritz-Carlton tower at L.A. Live. How's that for a sign of the recession. "In the summer of...
Posted April 9, 2009 12:16 AM
Morley Safer did a nice piece on the connection between L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers, with some reportage on the Downtown street musician's former life as a...
Posted March 22, 2009 8:05 PM
Poring over a century's worth of old L.A. newspapers, you see certain issues recur. Billboards, for one. Another perennial is what to do with the public space downtown that was...
Posted March 10, 2009 11:52 PM
Mark Lacter's Tuesday recession reports on KPCC keep getting better — and more ominous — as the situation worsens. Today I woke to Mark talking about the bleak picture for...
Posted March 3, 2009 1:23 PM
Photographer Gary Leonard is no longer taking pictures for CityBeat — they cut him in November — but he has moved his collection of Los Angeles photos to a new...
Posted February 6, 2009 9:35 AM
A group of shooters from the National Photographers' Rights Organization went downtown on Sunday to see if they would be blocked from taking pictures anywhere, and they did run up...
Posted January 22, 2009 8:11 AM
Took my honey to her first Lakers game tonight, and she wasn't disappointed. The Lakers romped over the Warriors 130-113, Kobe scored 31 and our seats were close enough for...
Posted December 28, 2008 11:25 PM
LACMA's board came out today and proposed in writing that the museum merge operations with MOCA. Here's a story by the LAT and the release from LACMA. Also, on KCRW'S...
Posted December 16, 2008 3:55 PM
Downtown blogger Eric Richardson got to see what the view will be like from the top floors of the Ritz-Carlton tower under construction at AEG's L.A. Live complex. Check out...
Posted October 29, 2008 5:55 PM
Here's a full-screen, high resolution 360-degree online tour of the bar and club in the basement of the Higgins Building downtown....
Posted October 17, 2008 10:33 AM
How important are bloggers to promoting the success of Downtown developments? Pretty important, based on this invitation by AEG for the Ritz-Carlton condos to be built as part of L.A....
Posted October 3, 2008 9:05 AM
The perking up of Downtown has reached the point that Sen. Hillary Clinton is scheduled to appear at an Obama fundraiser at the hipster bar The Edison on Oct. 4....
Posted October 1, 2008 9:32 AM
Oddly, Philippe The Original's hundredth anniversary celebration next Monday isn't the only French dip sandwich news in my mailbox. On that day from 4 to 8 pm, Philippe's will roll...
Posted September 30, 2008 12:12 PM
AEG has shopped around a proposal to partner with a Los Angeles TV station on a digital channel to feature events at Staples Center and the Nokia Theater. They would...
Posted September 23, 2008 10:54 PM
Signs have begun going up in Downtown advising commuters. A funeral procession for Officer Spree Desha will begin at Parker Center at 8:45 am Thursday and move to the Cathedral...
Posted September 16, 2008 1:32 PM
Exciting and fairly big news in the world of Los Angeles blogs. Eric Richardson announced today that his blogdowntown has been accepted into an incubator program at Community Partners and...
Posted September 15, 2008 1:30 PM
This weekend I saw the recently finished Belmont Station apartments on the old soccer field at 2nd Street and Beverly near Belmont High and wondered if the subway tunnel opening...
Posted August 21, 2008 9:20 AM
The subject is the Alexandria Hotel, the Rosslyn Lofts project and City Hall's support of an $8 million subsidy for alleged slumlord Ruben Islas. Tibby Rothman, in the LA Weekly,...
Posted July 10, 2008 10:27 PM
Frank McCourt, the Dodgers owner of new, met Peter O'Malley at yesterday's Coliseum unveiling of a plaque honoring Walter O'Malley, the owner who brought the Dodgers west from Brooklyn. O'Malley...
Posted July 10, 2008 12:38 PM
Police and the fire department moved in today on an astonishing homeless encampment that was suspended above Figueroa Street on top of the ventilation shaft under the 1st Street overpass...
Posted July 8, 2008 11:35 AM
Mark Lacter isn't alone in predicting that Sam Zell would be lucky to get any value for the Los Angeles Times property in the Civic Center. Downtown guru Tom Gilmore...
Posted June 25, 2008 3:38 PM
CurbedLA's sharp eyes spot a new sign on the building....
Posted June 24, 2008 11:22 PM
Artist Kent Twitchell settled his lawsuit against the U.S. government and 12 other defendants for painting over his 70-foot tall landmark mural of Ed Ruscha at Olympic and Hill downtown...
Posted April 30, 2008 9:16 AM
Sure, the Tribune Co. has owned the L.A. Times since 2000. But the Chandler family's trust kept the land at 1st and Spring streets in Downtown, so the Times had...
Posted April 29, 2008 5:55 PM
This week's issue of The New Yorker carries a "Letter from Los Angeles" by Dana Goodyear on the movie being made based on Steve Lopez's L.A. Times columns about street...
Posted April 28, 2008 9:23 AM
Doug Davis broke in as the Downtown News editorial cartoonist by lampooning the insular concerns of downtown bloggers. He ruffled feathers, but "when I saw that reaction, I said, 'I...
Posted February 29, 2008 10:51 AM
Police were stumped trying to solve a string of nine residential heists pulled off inside Downtown's Orsini complex, a previously impenetrable place dubbed the Tuscan Rock by Curbed LA. Then...
Posted February 4, 2008 10:58 PM
Music Center president Stephen Roundtree said today that the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion will close for renovations in 2013, not 2011 as originally announced. Apparently, offices for displaced staff need to...
Posted January 7, 2008 2:56 PM
Over at Native Intelligence, Judy Graeme's third offering on Los Angeles photographers introduces a group of teenagers (and younger) who use borrowed cameras to shoot images of their gritty home...
Posted January 5, 2008 11:58 PM
Councilman Jose Huizar, downtown advocate Brady Westwater and, especially, the owner of several of the former movie palaces on Broadway are featured in a Wall Street Journal story today that...
Posted November 14, 2007 1:09 PM
Emily Banneker at Blogging.la is bummed that L.A. Freeway Kids, the 1984 Olympics-era mural that adorned a south wall of the Hollywood Freeway (or Santa Ana, depending on your interpretation)...
Posted September 27, 2007 11:13 PM
Downtown's usually dark neon signs atop the old Rosslyn Hotel towers were relit last night for a film shoot. Eric Lynxwiler and friends rushed out to capture the sight. Via...
Posted September 10, 2007 1:18 PM
Downtown's under-construction Nokia Theatre has booked its opening night for October 18. The theatre, part of the L.A. Live complex going up across 11th Street from Staples Center, promises that...
Posted August 6, 2007 9:16 PM
Motivated by yesterday's fun video of Broadway shot in the 1980s, Los Angeles photographer Robert Pacheco sent along his photo essay of Downtown in the 1970s. In his black-and-white...
Posted July 12, 2007 8:59 AM
Windows Steaks & Martinis, the restaurant with the amazing views atop what's now called the At&T Center, closes July 31. There has been talk of the office building going residential....
Posted June 6, 2007 4:06 PM
Yesterday's number of marchers was small compared to last year, perhaps 25,000 strong, and peaceful. But the day ended with police moving in to MacArthur Park after reporting that bottles...
Posted May 2, 2007 7:41 AM
Another Gran Marcha to support immigrants begins Tuesday morning at Broadway and Olympic, moves north on Broadway starting at 10 am, and heads to City Hall via 1st Street. Fewer...
Posted April 30, 2007 8:13 AM
Last month we posted on Southland Publishing's forthcoming debut of Los Angeles New City Monthly — you remember, the magazine that would "celebrate the intellectual and cultural 'renaissance' of L.A.'s...
Posted April 4, 2007 9:31 PM
Mark Lacter wonders if too much attention is paid to the 29,000 people who live downtown, in a city of four million. It's one of the smaller communities in Los...
Posted February 22, 2007 2:11 AM
Xeni Jardin reported on NPR's Day to Day about one of my favorite unofficial Wilshire Boulevard landmarks. One Wilshire, once a prestigious office tower, was converted long ago into a...
Posted February 20, 2007 12:31 PM
Correction to yesterday's item: it was a homeless woman who jumped to her death from the L.A. Times parking garage yesterday while staffers were arriving at work. Brief memo today...
Posted January 19, 2007 11:14 AM
Eric at Blogdowntown has posted a heat map showing where the homeless population is concentrated, based on LAPD counts. You can see distinct nodes of where people are sleeping on...
Posted January 18, 2007 12:33 PM
Times columnist Steve Lopez isn't the only one keeping a literal eye on construction of the new LAPD headquarters on the downtown block where a civic park should be instead....
Posted January 10, 2007 12:21 PM
Cops and others who work the streets downtown call the boils, abscesses and infections they see all the time Skid Row staph — a strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It's...
Posted October 19, 2006 2:13 AM
Los Angeles mystery writer Naomi Hirahara, whose best-known character is Japanese American gardener Mas Arai, will be giving a private walking tour of Little Tokyo mystery sites later this year....
Posted August 30, 2006 8:52 AM
It's not unusual for someone to claim that a newspaper misinformed them. It is quite unusual, though, for the complaint to come from a Los Angeles Times contributor — about...
Posted August 19, 2006 12:52 AM
The power outage that knocked out lights and elevators across the Civic Center this morning has been mostly over since before 9:30 am, but the Hall of Administration's computers must...
Posted August 2, 2006 1:36 PM
Other than proximity to City Hall when the top brass has to make a visit, is there anything smart about the plans to erect the new LAPD headquarters in the...
Posted July 5, 2006 11:26 AM
Long before Hollywood came into being, a photographer for motion picture pioneer Thomas Edison traveled the Southern Pacific railroad shooting the first movie footage of locales in the West. Snippets...
Posted November 28, 2004 3:47 PM
© 2003-2009 • About LA Observed • Email the editor
| Bev Hills billionaire Ron Burkle has $56 million in loans against his two houses. The McCourts have borrowed $28 million on their properties.
| Steve Jones, the self-proclaimed Sire of Wilshire (a nod to the physical address of his former home at Indie 103.1 FM), is back on the air!
| She gaped at me like I was living history -- Miss Jane Pittman come to put her withered lips to the "Young Only" fountain straw of ageism.
As newspapers and television pull back from investigative reporting, foundations and other organizations are beginning to fill the void. One of the most interesting is Accountable California, a project of Local 721 of the Service Employees International Union.
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