Don Shirley: Pianists make history
Iris Schneider on Annie Leibovitz
The trolling hits of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC this weekend were three guys in Trojan colors selling t-shirts mocking the admissions cheating scandal rocking the school.
Archive: Place
The trolling hits of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC this weekend were three guys in Trojan colors selling t-shirts mocking the admissions cheating scandal rocking the school.
"SoCal Connected" returns Oct. 9 with a new focus on long-form investigative documentary pieces, starting with the LA Times and other local newsrooms in transition.
Nice photo of the long-gone bathhouse and swimming facility from the Auto Club of Southern California archives.
The kittens, all females, were born to P-62 and are the first litter to be tagged in the hills north of the 101 freeway.
LA Observed Notes: Media moves, books and authors, media people, place notes and selected tweets.
Talking Points: A trip down Whittier Boulevard. Trump vs journalism. City bans cellphones in crosswalks. And more.
Gag on this, Angelenos: United Airlines Memorial Coliseum.
That leaves one chain bookstore west of the Grove, unless you count the new Amazon store in Century City.
LA Times journalists vote on a union this week. Plus the most-clicked story of 2017, Hollywood women organize, notes on media politics and place, and selected tweets.
Endless Summer changed the image of surfers and surfing culture in the 1960s and made Brown a legend on the beach.
Doyle McManus leaving LAT, new LA Weekly gets an editor, Jerry Brown on "60 Minutes," bad sheriffs, media notes and a good read that's not really about cats.
Our occasional roundup of news and notes. This time: award winners, media notes and selected tweets, plus a magazine issue on teenagers.
And more: Assemblyman will resign over women's accounts. Garcetti ambitions "not insane." Jim Newton needles the Times. Media people and selected tweets.
"Many people I know in Los Angeles believed the '60s ended abruptly on Aug. 9, 1969," Joan Didion wrote of the most notorious multiple murders in Los Angeles history.
Plus two weekend pieces examine Harvey Weinstein spokeswoman Sallie Hofmeister, and Pulitzer talk for Ronan Farrow.
The scandal that won't go away. An LAT columnist apologizes. Job movies, an invite from the New York Times and other media notes.
Selected scandal reading from Lupita Nyong'o's amazing piece to Quentin Tarantino's quasi mea culpa. Plus heat, Dodgers, media news and selected tweets.
Dodgers walk off in game 2. The obstacles to covering Hollywood. Media notes, moves and changes. Plus selected tweets.
Bullet points: LA River bacteria. Dodgers lose 10th in a row. That fatal night they boxed at the stadium. On the ground in Florida.
LA Observed Notes: Covering Harvey, Dodgers flailing, an editor change in LA, media notes, Angels Flight shuts again
Bullet Points: A horrific jail death. Food writers in Tuscany. The LA Times follows on Canter's. A media promotion, a hire, and the celebrity terminal at LAX. Plus a difficult long read.
Nazi and racist scum in Virginia, Trump equates, and a nation shakes its head. Plenty of media and politics notes and selected tweets.
Our occasional gathering of notes on media, politics and place with selected tweets.
LA Times explains how many times it gave USC a chance to comment on a dean's secret life. Plus LAT buyouts, media people doing stuff and selected tweets.
NPR staffers won't face a strike. Obits for Martin Landau, George Romero, Bill Smith and Tenny Tenusian. Selected tweets.
Plus what some LA media people are doing and selected tweets from the past week.
Plus it's time to pay attention to the Dodgers, Roxane Gay is in town, media people doing stuff and selected tweets.
Chock full of Monday observations on media and media people, politics, place and more. Plus a good week for selected tweets.
The iconic hot dog facade will go on public display in Chatsworth sometime soon.
The latest drone video by Mingomatic includes what looks to be a group workout class on the outdoor observation deck at about 70 stories above the street.
Our irregular compendium of media, police and place with selected tweets.
In honor of Frank Lloyd Wright's birthday, photos are allowed this weekend in his only home project in LA that is open to the public.
The kittens were abandoned by their mother, P-42.
Wong was based in Rancho Park and was training at his new station downtown when he fell from a ladder and died.
Our occasional roundup of news and observations from the media, politics and place. Plus selected tweets and more.
For years I've been intrigued by the long-closed fire station adjacent to Bread Lounge on Santa Fe Avenue. Finally got inside.
The total jumped 23 percent over last year despite many more homeless people being moved into housing. So it could have been even worse.
Even those Angelenos who like the promiscuous sprouting of non-native Mexican fan palms across the urban terrain will have to agree these are misplaced.
Our occasional roundup of news and observations from media, politics and place. With some selected tweets.
"Before John Severson, there was really no surf art, no surf magazines, no real surf films, no surfwear industry, no pro surfing, no Surfrider Foundation, no surf culture as we know it."
Our occasional roundup of news and notes on media, politics and place. Plus selected tweets.
Our occasional roundup of media, politics and place news and notes.
Our occasional roundup of news and observations on media, politics and place. Plus selected tweets.
Media and politics notes for the new week, plus selected tweets.
KCRW's Frances Anderton goes through the house that architect Thom Mayne built for himself on the site of Bradbury's longtime home in Cheviot Hills.
The two new cats are nearly grown males and face the threat of dominant males already in the Santa Monica Mountains along with the freeways, rat poison and other dangers.
Maharaj at the LAT Book Prizes plus media notes, LA riots anniversary and more.
You probably have heard of David Fahrenthold by now. Ex-LAT journalists re-uniting at CNN. Octavia Butler, Bob Miller, politics notes.
"Nothing prepared us for the magnitude of this train wreck," the Los Angeles Times says of Donald Trump in a full-page editorial. Plus: Paul Magers, the Groundlings founder and more.
Media and politics notes from all over, plus media people news, some place notes and selected tweets.
Nick Ut's retirement. Key editors jump from the LA Times. Downtown News sold. Plus many more notes and observations.
The view from Grand Avenue on DTLA's Bunker Hill.
Westwood Village, once the place where big films opened, is about to be down to just two remaining movie houses.
Keith Boyer, a veteran with the Whittier Police Department, was 53 and a father. He was shot by a recent parolee.
The Sunday afternoon line outside the Broad Contemporary Art Museum went down the block
The iconic Luis Valdez play is back where it started in 1978.
News, notes and observations of media, politics and place. Plus selected tweets.
Our occasional roundup on media, politics and place from multiple sources.
Two views of the river: Sunday's rain-swollen racetrack and the big concrete ditch we usually see.
A few hundred thousand people on the streets all day and no arrests of any kind. Lots of great signs though.
Every location, in order, researched by reader Don Bentley and his brother.
Media, books, politics and place and a few tweets.
Our occasional roundup on media, politics and place from a variety of LA Observed sources.
As Lynne Seemayer, she created an indelible part of LA street art lore and became something of a legend.
Media notes to end 2016, plus politics, place, selected media tweets and more.
Nick Johnson likes hiking so why not do the whole Santa Monica Mountains. Alone. Starting at night on P-22's turf.
From the LA Observed archives, a piece for the winter solstice on a Chumash cave painting in the local hills.
Media and politics notes, observations on place and much more.
A extra big helping of our occasional roundup of media, politics and place notes.
The local homeowner group says the 24-hour coffee shop will close December 31 to make way for a new development.
Our occasional offering of media, politics and place noted from assorted sources.
New attorney general appointed. An anchor leaves the news desk. What to do with P-45.
Donald Trump tweets his way to the top item again by inventing a new conspiracy. Plus much more.
Our semi-regular column of media and politics notes, with other news and observations.
Franklin Pierce won with the help of early LA figures like the Californio Andres Pico.
Queuing to vote across LA, Trump's last stand, and why the sports department hates election night.
The legendary guerrilla cliff art was painted in one night by a young mother hanging from ropes. She's still around and should be more famous.
Gigantic Frank Gehry project on Sunset Boulevard approved. Kudos for LAT's Sea Breeze investigation. Notes on Campaign 2016, 2017 and 2018. And more.
LA Times investigations afflict the powerful. LA's homeless shame. Notes on media, politics and place.
LA Times loses a top Hollywood voice. Dodgers go home. More Trump and Clinton notes.
An update to our guest blogger post from last month about the demise of Casa de Petrol in Sherman Oaks.
Snotty Scotty and the Hankies led every single version of the Occasional Pasadena Doh Dah Parade.
Because there's more going on than Donald Trump's get-even war on America.
Colyton Street.
Los Angeles can breathe again. The day no one wanted to come has passed.
Friday night pre-game ceremony at Dodger Stadium will air at 6:30 on KTLA Channel 5, SportsNet LA and KLAC radio.
The museum holding the collection of Gary Cypres had just opened to the public in July.
Our occasional roundup on media, politics and place.
El Big Happy, Wall Street, DTLA Flower District. LA Observed's occasional column of media notes and more. At the top "Taco trucks are like palm trees here. Part of the...
Chefs Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken have been VIPs in the LA food scene since they opened City Cafe in 1981.
Readers of the Southern California News Group papers are warned how to watch out for the stuff.
MONA had to leave downtown in 2011 but things are all right now. Visiting is like seeing old friends again.
Historian Michael Beschloss has an active Twitter presence and posted this stylized map to the sights of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games.
Vice revisits the story of how designer Amy Inouye saved Chicken Boy from the landfill.
The highway in the San Gabriel Mountains lets you drive 66 miles through "some of the most difficult terrain in the U.S."
Gary Cypres' shrine to sports history (mostly baseball) is right up there with Eli Broad's Grand Avenue temple of art as proof of one man's passion.
The furnishings, seats, office equipment, scoreboard and even the hockey dasher boards of the old LA Sports Arena go at auction on Wednesday.
Donald Trump piñatas are a staple at shops in the Los Angeles piñata district these days.
New mountain lion kittens have been tagged in two litters in the Santa Susana Mountains.
The start white and red apartment complex in the Arts District will get a softer look under new ownership.
Joint attention to the homeless issue will be on the same day as 70+ Bay Area news organizations focus their coverage on the problem.
Magdi Hanna never saw a jukebox growing up in Egypt. Now he is one of the last to repair the icons of 20th century America.
Bear playing in the swimming pool in Bradbury during Sunday's heat.
La Opinión says the Sunday scene of families, horses and bands is like a rural Mexican village.
The Los Angeles LGBT Center has announced a a vigil and a rally for victims of the Orlando mass shooting and their families at 7 p.m. Monday at Los Angeles City Hall.
Before it was a boulevard and a suburban community, Van Nuys was a name from LA's past that people should know.
Another phase in the remake of San Pedro's waterfront had the wraps taken off.
Train service returns to the beach city for the first time since 1953, though the old Red Cars were dead long before that.
The Los Angeles Business Journal's annual exercise of estimating net worth has again tabbed Patrick Soon-Shiong as number one. Here are the top 10.
Sunday afternoon on East Olympic Boulevard.
This is the piece you want to read as the games tick away in our time with Vin Scully.
Bob Hope has been a dumb name for an airport for 12 years. So they are going with Hollywood Burbank (again.)
The old owner is still fighting eviction by the Chinese buyer of the Hollywood hillside landmark.
Brown widow spiders from Africa are becoming the region's dominant venomous spider.
The publisher says the money-losing, 103-year-old journal of LA's Japanese American community will have to close this year unless something changes.
Dodgers official photographer Jon SooHoo begins to chronicle the final season.
Lost LA's Nathan Masters curates a look at the urban carnage wrought by construction of the Hollywood Freeway in the 1950s.
She remains at Caltech and will work more on the effects of climate change and global warming.
A former stand-alone Kentucky Fried Chicken on Pico Boulevard is well along in its conversion.
The mountain lion's long-term prognosis doesn't get any better on the news that he's probably preying on the LA Zoo's animals now.
The documentary opens Friday in Los Angeles and New York.
There is too much wallowing in LA history by local media and blogs, but the regular maps feature from Los Angeles Magazine doesn't count.
Competing ballot measures on housing in LA. Rising crime rates. Winter heat is back. And much more.
The organizers blame lack of a mature market for art fairs in Los Angeles.
Catching up to a week's worth of media moves and hires, political notes and a whole lot more.
If you enjoy spotting LA locations in Hollywood movies, you'll like this.
Time for the Broadway theater and entertainment district to be a year-round draw, says longtime activist Hillsman Wright.
"Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race" runs Thursday night at 8 p.m. on PBS SoCal.
For an exhibition on menswear fashion through the years, a zoot suit seemed essential to include.
New series about Los Angeles and history hosted by Nathan Masters is a co-production with the USC Libraries.
A bike ferry across Marina del Rey? A pedestrian entrance to Dodger Stadium? Might work!
Developments at Porter Ranch. Penske buys Indiewire. Univision buys the Onion. A fake Politico reporter. Local finalists for the National Book Critics Circle. And much more.
Selected items from the media, our in box and other LA Observed sources.
Roger Vargo spotted this undressed Rolls-Royce today beside the railroad tracks near City Terrace.
Popular LA deejay Gene Weed signs off one of the top music stations of its time. The next day, KFWB went all news.
All the junkyard cars are gone from U-Pick Parts and Aadlen Brothers Auto Wrecking in Sun Valley, after 53 years serving car owners and Hollywood.
The downtown civic push to (re)reinvent Pershing Square took a step forward today with the naming of four final design concepts from which the actual plan will be chosen.
The family-owned store that opened in 1957 was sold just five months ago. Lots of other changes coming to Westwood Village soon.
Train versus truck after an illegal left turn at 7th Street and Colorado about noon Thursday.
This training film for parking officers shows a lot of downtown street scenes.
NPR series looks at aerospace jobs and the garment industry.
Catching up from the holiday on politics and media notes, plus a lot more.
The last military transport to be made in Long Beach flew off Sunday, symbolically ending the era of aircraft manufacturing here.
About 400 headed out from Clifton's to conquer the former 10th Street. It's the walk's 10th anniversary.
New manager for the Dodgers. Growth politics in LA. Women in Hollywood. Lots and lots of media notes. And more.
This weekend's unseasonably high temperatures cinched a new record for 2015, breaking a mark that had stood for awhile.
Another missile launch coming? That homeless state of emergency pledged in LA never happened. Plus more.
In his terrific new podcast series, Santa Monica author Bill Barol seeks to explain what it meant to call the San Fernando Valley home.
A weather change. Tarantino plans to apologize. A new spokeswoman for Kuehl. More politics, media and place.
Water flows in the LA aqueduct again. Vin Scully repeats next year is his last season. Los Fezil. And more.
AAdlen Brothers Auto Wrecking, an institution in Sun Valley for 53 years, has supplied or been in a lot of movies, TV episodes and music videos.
A drone knocks out power. La Opinión endorses Kamala Harris. Media notes. And much more.
Catching up to news from politics, media and place. Plus more.
C-146 stays close to the river in northeast LA, but the coyote recently tagged west of downtown has roamed as far as Hancock Park and back.
Future of Cities: Leading in LA held its first public event Monday night, while Zocalo Public Square has been going deep on its home city.
Catching up on politics and media news, job moves and some notes on place. Including: Metro losing riders.
Fourteen events later, CicLAvia says it's the largest open streets event in North America.
An exhibit of World War II camp photos at the Skirball includes images by Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake.
The Times won't tell you because, one, it doesn't know LA as well as it should and, two, it hypes to attract web eyeballs.
This is the flip side of the healthy local mountain lions in the San Gabriels I posted about earlier today.
Robert Martinez's cameras stationed in the mountains above Glendora captured two more feeding lions — in color this time.
A month before shooting her famous migrant mother, Lange documented the "Mexican quarter" before it was razed for downtown's Union Station.
Bad day yesterday for stereotypes about the Mojave Desert cities being a hotbed of unsavory news.
Producer Peter Jones wants the show to feel inpired by Ralph Story and Huell Howser, "who taught me the best quality to have as a journalist: listening."
Andy Bales caught the trifecta of Skid Row infections — E. coli, strep and staph — and now uses a wheelchair. "Conditions on Skid Row are worse than they have ever been…"
Noe Ramirez is the 18,548th player to appear in a major league baseball game, but he's almost certainly the first from the Ramona Gardens projects.
A show of Eric Garcetti's social media photos opens downtown on Saturday and runs through Oct. 31.
The camel would probably have been in Saturday's Agua Dulce parade and some of the locals are pretty upset.
The Broad on Bunker Hill looks to be a hit. The Petersen, on the other hand, looks like something...
The drought has gone on so long there may be new Angelenos who have never seen the concrete Los Angeles River raging. Hola, El Niño.
The Fine Arts movie house on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, dark for five years, reopens Sept. 18. Opened in 1937 as the Wilshire Regina.
"There’s 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies...All the boys in the bullpen straining to get a better look as they look through the wire fence in left field..."
California and the lore of LA are rife with Basque immigrants. A new study thinks it can finally answer: who are these people with their odd language?
Al Jazeera America goes for an Eastside tour with Sesshu Foster, "the poet laureate of a vanishing neighborhood."
Media moves, crime politics, fires, LA bike gangs observed and much more.
The contest for dominance between LA's two main squirrel species is one of my favorite local wildlife situations.
"This is as good as it gets," says real estate broker Jeff Hyland: 157 acres on the ridge line above Beverly Hills.
The blogger at Here in Van Nuys visited with some of the homeless parked in 15 vans, campers and RVs at North Hollywood Park.
The jail cells and other TV sets finally have to move out of the former home of the Los Angeles Examiner (and HerEx) at Broadway and 11th St.
In Topanga Canyon in 1963, even the doctors got stoned and took acid. Plus: Sacks in the most colorful green room in town.
The net loss to domestic migration is closer to one million. Which destination state was (again) the most popular?
Flush with new cash from NBC Universal, BuzzFeed is reported to be looking at the former Ford Model T factory across from Stumptown Coffee on Santa Fe Avenue.
Items include Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Daniele Watts, Eric Garcetti, Frank Gehry, Aja Brown, Wes Craven, Serena Wlliams, Jessica Mendoza, Claudia Puig and more.
I'm always glad when Steve Lopez goes back and checks on the busboy who cradled Robert F. Kennedy as he lay wounded on election night in June 1968.
Joe Domanick argues that the city's rising poverty and crime rates are related, "coming together in an era of astounding, Third World-like income disparity, declining social services and desperate poverty." And you thought Uber getting into LAX was the big issue of the day.
Politics and media moves. New homeless numbers. Stephen Colbert's guests. NYT newsletters. Kirk and Anne Douglas will give it away. And more.
Jerry Brown on "Meet the Press." Toni Atkins on "News Conference." A crossword creator dies. And much more.
Inspection last month found too many flies, improper food prep and dirty fingernails among other violations. Bon Appetit's top new LA restaurant now has an A.
Dave Lesher named to run start-up CalMatters. News from City Hall and the county, and much more.
The magazine gets a second wave of publicity with its choice of the 10 best new restaurants in the U.S.
Selfishly I hope he returns. But you know -- maybe it's time we all embrace our lifelong friend in whatever he wants to do.
Red wiggler worms now help with the composting so less food waste gets sent to landfills.
Can you help this ex-Marine get her old uniform back? Lots of politics, media and place for a desk-clearing Friday.
He was the first male lion known to have crossed freeways north out of the Santa Monica Mountains.
Hong was a prominent immigration lawyer and community leader through the middle decades of the 20th Century and helped in the move to today's current Chinatown.
Lots and lots of anniversary stories looking back at the riots and how Watts is a different place now. Plus: Rediscovered photos and a black cop's story of racism in the LAPD.
Trump vs. Megyn Kelly but not on Fox. Bernie Sanders in LA today. Amazing ratings for GOP debate but not "True Detective." James Poniewozik to NYT TV beat. Drone racing. And more.
City Hall politics, media items, books news and place notes, including Maria Sharapova at Gjusta.
The LA Dodgers' first locally born star left the 1969 game with a sore shoulder and announced his retirement within the week. Some video memories.
Herb Wesson's report card, Ted Rall fights back and new mountain lion cubs in the Santa Monicas. Plus more.
Politics, media and place with a little news thrown in. Catching up from the weekend.
In his new memoir about surfing, the New Yorker staff writer remembers the hot and dry, white, inland place that spawned him. We help him a little with the origin story of Tarzana.
An Expo Line test train rolls where old tourist cars and freight trains used to run -- and where an Edison cameraman of the 1890s took some of the oldest footage of the LA area.
Times editors give another letter grade. CBS2/KCAL promotes Amber Lee. Key and Peele to end their Comedy Central show. More politics and media notes.
Some black residents of the hilly neighborhood off Crenshaw see an influx of white homebuyers as a problem. But is it really a Westside issue? (No.)
During one stretch on Saturday, it rained steadily for two hours and lightning flashed across downtown. So why not some pics.
A sampling of the media stories trying to find some meaning in the LA romp after 20 years.
LA Times analysis of accident records finds 817 intersections countywide the paper calls the "most dangerous" for pedestrians.
A first-ever experience for me on Pacific Coast Highway, on a Friday, in summer.
Remember the post in March about the discovery of 30 new fly species in LA yards?
Fun piece by Anna Scott, a producer with KCRW's Press Play, on that house you can see among the oil wells off to the west of La Cienega Boulevard.
Ridley-Thomas and more politics notes, DeAndre Jordan stays with Clippers, new hosts at NPR's All Things Considered and more.
Customers like the deep inventory of films in stock. THR's story drops names like Kyle Chandler, Steven Soderbergh and Keanu Reeves.
Los Angeles is becoming a metropolis of the developing world, the New York Times columnist argues.
Catching up on politics, media and place. Including a piece on KPCC's Latino audience.
Amber Carvaly and Caitlin Doughty, both 30, have ambitions to disrupt the funeral business.
Parks and LaBonge check out of the City Council. SCOTUS to take on labor union fees. Gravel yards. Much more politics, media and place.
Mission Hills Bowl, Friendly Hills Lanes in Whittier and Wagon Wheel Bowl in Oxnard all went dark this month. And a home where Norma Jean Dougherty lived in what's now Valley Village was torn down.
Politics, media, books and place for a new week, plus a couple of tweets.
Prepare to be laughed at if you ever refer to Microsoft Square in DTLA.
Stories by Los Angeles Magazine, THR and the LA Times include the quote of the night: "Building a bike lane at the farmers’ market won’t build a great city. It would build a great Danish village."
Donna Bojarsky and friends unveiled a new group Future of Cities: Leading in LA at the hilltop Pritzker residence.
One of Hollywood's most visible landmarks is the site of a proposed mega-project.
March was warmer than April or May. Last time that happened: 1921.
An old barn and packing shed remain from an asparagus ranch where a Chinese immigrant family thrived before the San Fernando Valley became the suburbs.
I've been storing up for a few days.
My post for Memorial Day includes a book excerpt and a visit to Los Angeles National Cemetery.
The 1920s landslide zone apparently is safe enough to let people in during the day.
Fun stock footage posted on the Internet Archive. Clifton's, the Golden Gopher, the Rialto and other theaters make appearances.
Groundbreaking is set today for a $200 million retail and entertainment center to be built on the site of a swap meet burned down in the 1992 riots, which began on this date.
The CicLAvia organization will conduct a national search for an executive director.
Investigators hired by the church tracked the defector father of David Miscavige for 18 months, the story says. Miscavige denies it.
If you remember the names Ralphie Valladares and Shirley Hardman, this post is for you. Whoa, Nellie!
People on the street in DTLA aren't sold yet on the new parking signs, but a writer at CityLab loves them. Here's why.
Désirée van Hoek says people ask why "a relatively wealthy, white girl from Amsterdam" spends her summers in LA taking photos of the poor and homeless.
LA's oldest Jewish synagogue building is now used for prayer by many kinds of congregations. That's not by accident.
Local surfers who are observant Muslims and female and the challenges they face, tonight on 'SoCal Connected.' Plus orcas, an urban farm and Hollyhock House.
News and notes from LA Observed on politics, media and place plus a couple of tweets of the day.
Metro is installing the artwork for the elevated station at Sepulveda Boulevard. Westwood/Rancho Park and Palms went first.
Sunday is the centennial of, arguably, the most significant public vote in the history of Los Angeles.
The city's first blue signs for the new district were unveiled on Sunday.
Scientist Grace Peng reminds us there was a time when the Pacific inundated California with rivers of free water from the sky.
Jeb Bush to raise cash in Bel Air. Supes look to raise minimum age. A new column in Daily News. More notes on politics, media and place.
Wayne Ratkovich says that getting a historic designation on a building can be a good thing. He should know.
The story of the LAPL map treasure collected by John Feathers is told in a video for the LA Review of Books.
The news doesn't really get better for fans of the Googie-style Norms coffee shop.
"Pipeline" became "one of Southern California's most recognizable musical exports — an instrumental anthem to riding the waves and living the life..."
Designating Sawtelle Japantown has more local authenticity than Little Osaka or West LA.
Sarah Holland-Batt, an Australian poet, has a poem of California in this issue of the New Yorker.
Cities aren’t gentrifying by master plan, but because young people with money to spend want to live there.
The site provides information on and mapping of hundreds of City Hall-designated historic-cultural monuments and other places that might be designated someday.
Just as the Expo Line will be arriving, Nordstrom will be relocating to a much bigger space a few miles east.
In the age of smartphones, GPS and Waze, the directional signs remain a staple of Hollywood shoots.
The latest issue of LA Weekly takes an interesting approach to the hot topic.
The block in Pacific Palisades is being torn down for Rick Caruso's newest shopping area. But Bob Vickrey remembers.
Saturday was one of those pretty cool LA days. Museums were free and packed, and thousands cruised Broadway on foot.
The producer of "Zero Dark Thirty" and "American Hustle" loves her video store, I guess.
Feels like an impending death in the family of film lovers, says the Wall Street Journal and KCRW film critic.
Video store on Pico has amassed a collection of 50,000 titles over three decades.
Three more of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches in the Los Angeles area are in the news this MLK Day.
An exuberant example of the California coffee shop type and an expressive Googie masterwork by Armet & Davis, the LA Conservancy says.
Defining the borders of downtown remains an uncertain task, writes KCET's Nathan Masters.
Los Angeles County was a much different place in 1939. Boy was it.
Journalist Sam Quinones writes that street gangs have been retreating from public view all over Southern California for a few years now.
Sure, it's a whole city, but Inglewood is on the rise. So it counts.
Dodger Stadium is now the second most-Instagrammed location in the world, after Disneyland, but SoCal destinations no longer dominate the Top 10 list.
Sunday's South LA event will be held on the 40th anniversary of the first ciclovía in Bogotá, Colombia, and the cofounder will be on hand as an honored guest.
One in a (possibly) occasional LA Observed series.
Michael Schneider's Great LA Walk marked its ninth year by traversing Ventura Boulevard from Woodland Hills east across the Valley to Universal City, then up to North Hollywood.
A homeless encampment on Saturday on Virgil Avenue, beside the Hollywood Freeway in what the blue signs call Wilshire Center.
It's Christmas season already on KOST, and next week venerable KHJ switches to all-Catholic radio.
A new report concludes that LA "has among the slowest, most expensive internet services in the industrialized world."
I'd say the ficus tree has definitively won this battle on Ben Lomond Place in Los Feliz.
Holiday magazine sought to delight Americans with tales of "the cliff dwellers [who] cling precariously to the brush-covered slopes of the Hollywood hills, sharing the common perils of fire and flood."
The county calls him a John Doe, but on certain corners in Canoga Park he was known as Tuan Nguyen. "This is one of the best stories I've read in a long time," says a former LA Times reporter on Facebook.
Bloomberg Businessweek examines the latest influx of Chinese capital to transform a corner of the San Gabriel Valley.
Mariachi Los Camperos members perform a final tribute to the troupe's founder and leader.
Alison Martino's Vintage LA community on Facebook has turned up another gem. It has been seen before, but check out the video.
As president, Pisano oversaw the transformation of NHMLA. She will stay on until a replacement is named.
KCRW gathered up as much available public data as they could get on the breeds and names of dogs in Los Angeles County -- it's surprisingly difficult to get -- and produced an interesting list of the most popular dogs.
Palm tree zoo? It's almost as if the three fan palm young 'uns have come to visit a jailed parent.
Image database we posted about yesterday includes this 1928 view of the corner of Riverside and Fletcher drives, showing a long-gone Pacific Electric Red Cars viaduct.
Lennon taped a promotional spot for the Tower Records store on Sunset Strip in 1974, reportedly while in studio at KHJ radio.
The Sunkist building on Riverside Drive in Sherman Oaks has been a visual landmark beside the Ventura Freeway for 45 years. "A symphony in concrete," the LA Conservancy says.
Richard Hilton guided his final walking tour of old Van Nuys on Saturday -- so I just had to go along.
On a pleasant Los Angeles summer day, the bouncing fountain in Grand Park becomes a concrete urban beach.
Couple of scenes at the director's morning gathering two years ago. "Lots and lots of dick jokes," says the videographer.
The Sherman Oaks location on Van Nuys Boulevard has gone dark. There's some talk of reopening under new ownership.
The sign at 8th and San Julian should be in a museum, Ed Fuentes blogs. Gorky's Russian cafe was a big thing for downtown in its day.
So many fans went to the bathroom as play stopped between the U.S. and Germany that water use spiked. It then spiked again at the end of Thursday's match.
Eric Spillman, the reporter for KTLA Channel 5, posted this photo to Twitter of World Cup fans watching in South Bay.
The mother road that brought so many families to new lives in California -- and introduced so many young Americans to their country -- gets an entertaining treatment at the Autry. Treasures on display include Jack Kerouac's manuscript for "On the Road," an entire Corvette and the Getty's print of "Migrant mother" by Dorothea Lange.
The club on north Lankershim was the premier West Coast venue for country music for a few decades. Los Angeles Magazine revisits the good old days.
Linda Deutsch of AP was the reporter Simpson felt he could talk to and be treated fairly. Jim Newton of the LA Times thought he was going to get into a fistfight when he interviewed Simpson. Plus more.
In just seven years, some streets in downtown LA have changed quite a bit. Check it out.
I moderated a planel last week at the Central Library that got a sneak peek at Monday's unveiling of plans for the next upgrade to Union Station.
Fun item from historian Michael Beschloss: In 1962, Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax invested in Sandy Koufax’s Tropicana Motel.
After being lobbied by Mayor Eric Garcetti and river activists, the Army Corps of Engineers said it would recommend an ambitious $1 billion makeover of 11 miles of the Los Angeles River upstream from downtown. "The greatest thing to happen to the river since it was paved over,” say advocates.
Deep collections of photos showing the faded Wednesday night car culture tradition don't really exist. These photos by Ricard McCloskey are fun to look at.
The restaurant at Wilshire and Doheny has met a need through the years: open late, big menu, long counter and a few dishes to come back for. It also has an LA Observed connection.
Front door of Iglesia Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles on Saturday morning.
Broad tells Los Angeles Magazine the city needs "better political leadership and better citizen and corporate leadership than it’s had." He also confirms he is still trying to buy the LA Times.
The heart of old Van Nuys is lousy with mature fan palms. Indiscriminate placement is the rule.
The freeway building boom that began with the Arroyo Seco Parkway in the late 1930s and continued for three decades made the city of four million people possible, but the damage done to neighborhoods and whole communities across Los Angeles was painful and, as we now know, permanent and scarring.
The cracked, splintering benches at the upper level of the Hollywood Bowl were last replaced in 1981. New benches of Alaskan yellow cedar are now being installed.
Awesome weather map. The free water will be here Friday morning.
Vintage LA on Facebook is posting images released for the first time by photographer George Mann. This cropped photo shows Pacific Electric cars piled up on Terminal Island in 1963
Jocelyn Y. Stewart used to cover hard news for the Los Angeles Times, an assignment that often took her into the South LA neighborhood where she grew up to cover homicides and other crimes. Then one night, late, her phone rang.
Alison Martino has posted perhaps the most fun picture yet, at her Vintage Los Angeles page on Facebook. It names several current LA figures, now grown up.
The storied West Hollywood area hot dog stand Tail o' the Pup has been in storage in Torrance for seven years — until Monday. The stand's wiener and bun were placed on a flatbed and launched toward some kind of destination in Las Vegas for restoration.
Interesting blog post by law professor and city of Los Angeles ethics commissioner Jessica Levinson on an aspect of the public culture here.
KCRW looks at efforts by activists and the Trust for Public Lands to convert neglected alleys into nice, safe lanes for walking, running and riding bikes.
There are now eight historic structures at the museum -- in various stages of continuous repair -- built between 1876 and 1899. They offer "a fascinating look into an infantile Los Angeles without an architectural identity."
Everything is ready for Saturday's outdoor Kings-Ducks game at Dodger Stadium. The rink is up and the media have done their job promoting the event. Remember, this is not the first outdoor hockey game in LA.
Here are two more LA palm trees that don't fit with their current locations -- plus one I do admire and KPCC's "Off-Ramp" takes on the subject.
The parking lots at Dodger Stadium have more ridiculous palm trees per square mile than just about anywhere in Los Angeles.
This native Angeleno has finally seen one too many palm trees. Occasionally we'll highlight one that stands out, even in this city of misplaced Washingtonia and Phoenix.
The Natural History Museum's entomology people give the intriguing details. "Some ant decapitating flies, like zombie hunters, aim for the head..."
Pamela J. Peters is a photographer from the Navajo reservation who discovered Kent Mackenzie's film "The Exiles" while she was at UCLA. Her work updates the presence of young Native Americans in LA. She talks to Lisa Napoli at KCRW and has a show downtown this weekend.
The Annenberg Beach House in Santa Monica has declared "Bonus Pool Days!" because the weather here is so nice.
The countdown to 2014 was projected on City Hall tonight, it looks like. It's part of a big 3D digital mapping show planned for Tuesday night. "I believe we have every 40K projector in California for this event," says the creator.
B&N has developed this distasteful practice of shuttering bookstores at the close of business on New Year's Eve. That's when the Old Pasadena store turns out the lights for good.
The shuttering of bookstores has been a perpetual story for the past decade in Los Angeles. These are the booksellers that have shuttered since LA Observed began posting.
In Los Angeles in the 1960s, there were three huge local news stories that riveted people in front of their televisions — mostly to watch KTLA Channel 5, because that was the only station with a news helicopter.
Two decades ago, librarian Carolyn Kozo Cole found, time and again, that vast swaths of the city's people and ethnic story were not represented in the LAPL's photo collection. Out of her exasperation grew a project to copy thousands of family photos and take oral histories. It remains a signature achievement of the LA Public Library.
Tibby Rothman returns to the LA Weekly with a piece on all that has been lost as Venice transforms from "an island off the coast of Los Angeles" into what the locals endure today: "They went to bed one night living in a community and woke up in an ad."
UC Berkeley planning Ph.D. student Fletcher Foti animated the data from household travel surveys showing how people move throughout the day, hour by hour. You can view the population by income and mode of travel.
Part 2 of an excerpt adapted from "San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb" for the 100th anniversary of the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
Sunday's "heart of LA" CicLAvia route drew a good crowd. The Metro trains in and out of downtown were certainly hopping.
The quarterly magazine from UC Press devotes its entire fall issue to water, the aqueduct from the Sierra Nevada and the Mulholland legacy. The issue will be a keeper for anyone with an ounce of water geekdom in them, and for many others who just like LA's layered backstories.
When she was growing up in South Central, no one she knew attended or worked at USC. That has changed, but the students still don't know the South Central she does.
Posted to Twitter by historian Michael Beschloss, without explanation. Click to see it big.
Two of the busiest Los Angeles communities on Facebook, Alison Martino's Vintage Los Angeles and Tommy Gelinas' San Fernando Valley Relics, are joining forces to collect and preserve the old sign from the facade of the former Tiffany Theater on Sunset Strip. They invite supporters to come out Monday and help take it down.
Several LA Observed regulars knew right away that the mystery Jurgensen's Grocery sign posted last week can be found on Glendon Avenue in Westwood Village. There's nothing quite like the Jurgensen's chain in LA today.
Who knows where this beauty of a sign was revealed by some construction a few years ago? I'll post the answer later. LA Observed photo...
An exhibit of of photos taken by the house photographer for the late Country Club is bringing some attention to the days when rockers flocked to Reseda. They would buy vinyl at BeBop Records or attend shows at the Country Club on Sherman Way.
Designer Peter Dunn re-envisioned the Los Angeles area freeways and mounted a Kickstarter campaign that raised enough money to print the map on 36-inch by 24-inch heavy stock. He explains inside.
Forget Downtown. Gehry still agrees with his pitch of ten years ago: MOCA and the cathedral should be on Wilshire Boulevard and his signature Walt Disney Hall should have been built in Westwood (or further west.)
McManus & Morgan just reached its 90th year in the Westlake district — reason enough to re-post my favorite LA video of 2011.
Bullwinkle held Rocky the flying squirrel in his hand outside the former home of Jay Ward Productions — right across Sunset Boulevard from the Chateau Marmont — since 1961. The statue has been removed for repairs by DreamWorks.
The Natural History Museum unveils to the public the new and much-anticipated Becoming LA exhibit hall on Sunday. It's must-see for students of Los Angeles history, but it should be interesting for just about anyone.
These new towers would be built on the parking lots around the Hollywood Palladium near Sunset and Vine. "Holy shit," says Curbed LA, "there have been rumors about some kind of development at the site of the Hollywood Palladium for ages now, but here they finally are, for real....two big-ass towers."
The new site is driven by — this will shock you — big pictures of important buildings and architecture. Plus self-guided tours to places like the San Fernando Valley.
Claud Beelman was one of those Los Angeles architects whose work spanned eras and dramatic changes in style. He's responsible for noteworthy LA examples as different as the Eastern Columbia building downtown and the office tower occupied by Occidental Petroleum and the Hammer Museum in Westwood.
Photographer Lane Barden has announced that the Getty Research Institute acquired his series of 130 images called the Linear City Porfolio. The three segments consist of low-altitude oblique aerial photographs of three major visual features of the LA landscape: the Los Angeles River, the Alameda Corridor railroad trench and Wilshire Boulevard.
You might remember that after the recent Ciclavia event from Downtown to the beach along Venice Boulevard, USC professor Clifford V. Johnson had some constructive criticism — some advice to help the organizers of Ciclavia regain some of the day's mojo. Well, Sunday's event was "almost perfect," he says. With photos.
Going to Ciclavia today? I suggest some of favorite hidden gems and lesser-known spots to take in while you are out exploring. Some are taken from my Wilshire Boulevard book.
Mark Robinson organized the biggest and best rock and roll show to be held within the city limits of Los Angeles. He's now a Newport Beach lawyer. We look back at the first weekend of a historical summer.
"It is accompanied by a map that is either totally misleading, or astoundingly visionary," writes Eve Bachrach at Curbed LA. LOL — I choose the former. It's pretty hard to mis-locate the San Fernando Valley, 1.7 million people and all, but I especially like "Waterfront" and "Neighboring Communities."
Wilshire Boulevard will be closed two extra hours for this Ciclavia. On Thursday evening, I will take part in a panel put on by Ciclavia and Hidden LA for the Getty's Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in LA.
You may have never thought you would see this. As of Monday, a 2.5-mile stretch of the Los Angeles River was officially opened to recreation: kayaking, fishing, or just walking along and checking out the blue herons and the floating trash. Here's where.
If you are not here and are wondering what season it is in Los Angeles, it's jacaranda season. The streets are flush with purple, and soon the sidewalks will be too.
If you lived in Los Angeles in the 1960s and were inclined toward rock and roll, you might have seen Ray Manzarek and The Doors play at Sunset Strip clubs, at Ports O'Call in San Pedro — or at your high school. Memories are flowing on social media.
Parents and five girls from Sweden was found walking on Sepulveda Boulevard near LAX at 4:30 a.m. on Friday. They were out of money after changing their return flight itineraries due to a health emergency at home.
Remember our report in April on the twin agave century plants just starting to sprout in Meg Sullivan and Steve Roe's front yard? Well you better look again.
A little taste of Scranton (and Dunder Mifflin) on Saticoy Street.
KCRW producer Matt Holzman embedded with cops in the LAPD Air Support unit to see what it's like in the helicopters that patrol Los Angeles skies. Listen inside.
All the electronic billboards I usually see on the Westside were turned off today. The companies that operate 77 digital boards in the city of Los Angeles, Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor, were told by a judge to darken the signs by 5 p.m.
Los Angeles Superior Court judge Terry Green has ordered that Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Outdoor turn off most of their digital billboards in Los Angeles by 5 p.m. today. These are some of the signs that the City Council told the companies they could fire up as part of a controversial settlement deal in 2006 that allowed the conversion of up to 840 existing billboards.
Meg Sullivan and Steve Roe came home Sunday to find the agave in the front yard beginning to sprout the big reproductive thingy in the middle. Same for a nearby plant: two century plants sprouting at the same time. Anyone want to take pictures?
It has been more foggy than not along the beaches for the past week or so. Blame the recurring Southern California weather phenomenon known as the Catalina eddy, shown here. NASA explains how it works.
The Los Angeles Marathon begins at Dodger Stadium on Sunday morning and ends on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. Most runners will start at 7:28 a.m. Streets and freeway ramps will reopen across the cities of Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, and on the federal VA campus near West LA, on a rolling basis.
Artist and designer Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA -- in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? According to TED.com, "for fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where 'the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys.'"
The media who parachute into Hollywood for the Oscars don't always get that, for the locals, the Academy Awards are something of a community event. It's not just that traffic sucks in Hollywood and officials shut down the Hollywood and Highland subway station. The week of the Oscars provides work, diversion and more.
Canadian astronaut on the International Space Station makes his second appearance of the week on LA Observed. Wait until you see his shot of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate inside.
In the rest of the United States, the best selling new vehicle is the Ford F-series pickup truck. In California the Prius has surpassed the Honda Civic to be number one.
In a piece for Zocalo called "I Blocked Off Wilshire and Angelenos Loved It," Aaron Paley talks about when he and his wife saw the beneficial effects of Bogota's street-closing ciclovía and how the Los Angeles version came to happen here.
Billy and Audrey Wilder lived for decades in the Wilshire Terrace co-op building in the Platinum Mile stretch of Wilshire Boulevard between Westwood and Beverly Hills. The apartment is on the market for $1.049 million, with monthly homeowner dues of $2,812, says Curbed LA.
In the new issue of VQR, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Los Angeles journalist Adam Baer (with photographer Elizabeth Daniels) explores his own and Hollywood's draw to LA architecture, especially the modern works of Lautner.
Temperatures have plunged into the 40s and the local news is freaking out.
Which all proves that popularity on Instagram does not reflect the actual world, or Internet culture. And that San Francisco baseball fans post more than Los Angeles baseball fans — and more than all the football and soccer fans in the world.
This weekend's year-end edition of "This American Life" reprises a 1998 segment in which Jonathan Gold explains his year exploring the food offerings of West Pico Boulevard. Then everything changed. Listen inside.
Imagine if Disneyland had been built in Burbank, or if LAX lay west of the corner of Balboa and Roscoe. A major new exhibit will look at the city that never happened — a cool video inside invites you to support the project on Kickstarter.
The LA Times architecture critic's expanded essays based on walking the Los Angeles area's "iconic boulevards" took on Sunset this weekend. He previously visited Atlantic Boulevard.
Ask Google Maps to find you Tehrangeles, and it places the community on the upper floor of an apartment building in the 10600 block of Kinnard Avenue, between Westholme and Hilts avenues. That's in Westwood, about eight blocks east of Westwood Boulevard, the shopping street sometimes referred to as Little Tehran. Street view is even more specific.
Lots of L.A. in the video for Lana Del Rey's first hit.
A website gathers the rear-window plaques for hundreds of car clubs across the U.S., including more than 100 in the San Fernando Valley alone — covering generations of low riders, high riders and more.
The subject of "The Maid's Daughter" is interviewed by Hector Tobar.
Some linguists believe that aspects of the pronunciation and usage heard on L.A.'s Eastside for generations can be traced to Nahuatl, a group of indigenous tongues still spoken in parts...
If you've never shopped on Santee Alley in the downtown Fashion District, here's a short LA Observed video showing what the scene is like.
New at LA Observed
Clinton fundraises in LA
Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
The natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Performing arts with cheer
Donna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
