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Topic Archive: San Fernando Valley
Dramatic geyser is blowing higher than the rooftops on Van Nuys Boulevard near Sherman Way. Screen cap is from CBS 2. * Noon update: DWP says the main, which broke...
Posted November 2, 2009 11:23 AM
The Los Angeles Police Department has issued an alert to all Jewish day schools and synagogues in the wake of this morning's attack in North Hollywood. The Jewish Journal has...
Posted October 29, 2009 10:16 AM
Police are investigating this morning's shooting at Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic synagogue on Sylvan Street in North Hollywood as a hate crime. Two Jewish men were shot inside the synagogue...
Posted October 29, 2009 8:36 AM
Veronique de Turenne was up and outside early this morning and caught this view across the West Valley from the top of the Santa Monica Mountains. She's got another view...
Posted October 15, 2009 4:30 PM
Not much surprise in the 2nd City Council district: Assemblyman Paul Krekorian (34%) will face Christine Essel (28%) in the December runoff. Only 14,525 people voted, a bit more than...
Posted September 23, 2009 7:50 AM
Historian Kevin Starr's latest thick work on California, "Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963," devotes much attention to the San Fernando Valley, which swelled during the time...
Posted September 21, 2009 12:41 AM
While city crews try to repair that giant hole where a water trunk line failed on Coldwater Canyon Avenue over the weekend, another water main break has claimed a fire...
Posted September 8, 2009 7:17 AM
At the morning shift change at the Hansen Dam command post, more than 1,000 firefighters paused to remember Capt. Tedmund Hall and Arnaldo Quinones, the County Fire veterans who died...
Posted September 4, 2009 8:42 AM
Here's the latest page from the U.S. Forest Service command post, with evacuations and other data. The Station Fire stands at 121,762 acres....
Posted September 1, 2009 10:18 AM
If it's not a word, it should be. TJ Sullivan's daily view from the Westside captures perhaps the week's most voluminous pyrocumulus cloud yet, dwarfing the InterContinental Hotel in Century...
Posted August 31, 2009 5:54 PM
Incident commander Mike Dietrich just told the 5 p.m. media briefing that the weather is still working against firefighters in the Angeles National Forest. "This is a very angry fire...
Posted August 31, 2009 5:20 PM
I'll do a fire news roundup after the 5 p.m. briefing at Hansen Dam. Meanwhile, flying in or out of Los Angeles has been more visually dramatic during the fires....
Posted August 31, 2009 4:28 PM
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's face was not in evidence in the fire coverage this weekend — it has been a county, state and national forest show. But with the fire coming...
Posted August 31, 2009 9:04 AM
Wow. The Station Fire is now at 85,000 acres — and there have been no Santa Ana winds pushing this monster along. Some homes were lost last night near Acton,...
Posted August 31, 2009 8:06 AM
What begins as a behind-the-scenes video of the fire camp and media swarm at Hansen Dam turns into an emotional briefing on the deaths of two Los Angeles County firefighters....
Posted August 31, 2009 1:22 AM
Here is today's image from Earth Snapshot. Click it to biggify....
Posted August 30, 2009 9:57 PM
Tonight's briefing at the fire command post at Hansen Dam began with deputy chief Mike Bryant of the county fire department announcing that two of his men died about 2:30...
Posted August 30, 2009 9:23 PM
* Updated through the afternoon The fire front in the San Gabriels stretches 19 miles east to west, with containment essentially at nil. Previously evacuated area in La Cañada...
Posted August 30, 2009 2:53 PM
Channel 9's fire coverage in the 9 o'clock hour included several minutes with reporter Dave Lopez on the battle by firefighters to save the La Cañada Flintridge home of the...
Posted August 29, 2009 9:53 PM
Los Angeles lawyer web content producer Eric Spiegelman, an LA Observed reader from way back, made a time lapse video — 90 minutes in 24 seconds — of the smoke...
Posted August 29, 2009 8:42 PM
It took Van Nuys merchants, the Daily News and the LAPD decades to eradicate the Los Angeles tradition of cruising on Van Nuys Boulevard. They finally had to shut the...
Posted August 13, 2009 10:58 AM
Amusing omission on the Daily News website, submitted by a mutual reader who observes "the neighborhood has its faults, but it ain't thaaat bad." Police reportedly suspect a link to...
Posted August 9, 2009 5:07 PM
Ron Kaye's new organ for his activist brand of politics and news, OurLA.org, ran a long piece yesterday claiming to debunk the "meltdown myth" regarding the 1959 nuclear reactor incident...
Posted July 30, 2009 9:55 AM
Another lawsuit has been filed against the city of Burbank by officers (or former officers) in the city's police department. This is the second suit alone by former detective Christopher...
Posted July 29, 2009 5:15 PM
In honor of Sherman Oaks adding a new precinct of ex-Van Nuysians, here's the latest by Steve Greenberg. For the heck of it, here's my timeline of San Fernando...
Posted July 15, 2009 11:35 AM
With local media obsessing a bit this week on the 50th anniversary of the partial meltdown of an experimental nuclear reactor above Chatsworth, here's the first comprehensive news story on...
Posted July 14, 2009 4:56 PM
Sherman Oaks now extends north of Burbank Boulevard, at least in one neighborhood, in another blow to Van Nuys. Lots of levity during the City Council debate, so to speak...
Posted July 14, 2009 1:00 PM
The Forest Lawn cemetery wedged between Griffith Park, Burbank and Toluca Lake calls itself FL Hollywood Hills for marketing purposes, but make no mistake: it's in the San Fernando Valley....
Posted July 6, 2009 2:35 PM
Lori Jablons sends this photo of a brush fire burning this afternoon in the hills behind her Lake View Terrace neighborhood. "You can see the flames within the smoke, and...
Posted July 5, 2009 3:11 PM
LAUSD chief Ramon Cortines said he was taking "appropriate personnel action" against the principal and athletic director of Birmingham High School for letting Sacha Baron Cohen (as gay character "Bruno")...
Posted June 30, 2009 10:52 PM
As part of the promotion for the new Sacha Baron Cohen movie Bruno, GQ magazine runs photos of Cohen-as-Bruno cavorting on the field with the football team at Birmingham High...
Posted June 29, 2009 4:30 PM
The Orange Line busway extension from Woodland Hills to Chatsworth will follow the route of old Southern Pacific railroad tracks that crossed the Valley starting in 1888. The trains carried...
Posted June 25, 2009 10:57 PM
This weekend is the 40th anniversary of Newport '69, the first — and last — ginormous rock festival to be staged within a leafy Los Angeles suburb. On June 20,...
Posted June 17, 2009 12:01 PM
News reports of a Crips gang party in Studio City on Wednesday night made me smile, if only because of the location. The stories gave the club's name as Platinum...
Posted June 12, 2009 11:49 PM
A few readers have emailed in the last couple of days wondering about the Lucky market that re-appeared at Van Nuys and Sherman Way in the Valley, taking over an...
Posted June 5, 2009 8:38 AM
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa dropped in Saturday at the opening of actress Melissa Joan Hart's store Sweet Harts in Sherman Oaks. He's getting a hug from Valley restaurant and real...
Posted June 1, 2009 1:55 PM
Natasha Vargas-Cooper, who is watching the murder trial of Jesse James Hollywood up in Santa Barbara for The Awl, grew up with killing victim Nick Markowitz in West Hills. The...
Posted May 27, 2009 3:55 PM
"It was supposed to be the Valley's first public museum, our own Disney Hall," says a Daily News editorial. Instead, the plan to relocate the Children's Museum to Hansen Dam...
Posted April 26, 2009 11:05 PM
The troubled museum-in-waiting near Hansen Dam in Lake View Terrace has taken steps to file for Chapter 7 protection, at least partly due to the impact of a scam, per...
Posted April 2, 2009 4:35 PM
Daily News staffer and blogger Steve Rosenberg lives in the latest part of Van Nuys that wants to transfer its real estate karma into Sherman Oaks — and he isn't...
Posted March 21, 2009 12:32 PM
The Cal State Northridge Matadors are leading Memphis by 3 in their NCAA tournament game with 8 minutes left. On Channel 2. * No Cinderella story: Memphis 81, Northridge 70....
Posted March 19, 2009 11:09 AM
Ron Dickson, who writes about the aviation history of the San Fernando Valley, sends along this photo of the terminal and tower at Burbank before Lockheed took over and stucco-ized...
Posted March 18, 2009 12:42 PM
The Burbank Times did a nice job with the 1959 photographs that were recovered from a time capsule dug out of a bridge in Burbank last month. The publication put...
Posted March 17, 2009 5:49 PM
A promotional video from 1993 [? see below] for the Los Angeles Times Valley Edition — an almost stand-alone newspaper put out by dozens of reporters, editors and other journalists...
Posted March 11, 2009 9:45 PM
Dunder Mifflin's office, parking lot and hedge are located on Saticoy Street in an industrial part of Van Nuys. In case you suspected Scranton looked eerily like the San Fernando...
Posted February 21, 2009 8:46 PM
David Kronke, who covered television for the Daily News and wrote the paper's Mayor of Television blog, posted his final item today and said to watch for the launch of...
Posted February 20, 2009 4:13 PM
It's not what you think — perhaps, though, it's the logical Darwinian outcome of car culture? Observed Sunday on Reseda Boulevard in Northridge. Video link More LA Observed video: Downtown...
Posted February 16, 2009 6:01 PM
David Garza of Los Angeles Mission College grabbed this photo of snow dusting the hills behind Sylmar this afternoon....
Posted February 9, 2009 10:58 PM
After an adult male opposum was shot in the head in Van Nuys on Saturday, it required the neighborhood kids, an Animal Services officer, Valley Wildlife Care in Woodland Hills...
Posted February 5, 2009 9:29 AM
Jeffrey Katzenberg and other Motion Picture & Television Fund officials just revealed plans to close the acute-care hospital and long-term care residence at the home in Woodland Hills. About 100...
Posted January 14, 2009 1:40 PM
Looks like the former K-Mart store on Foothill Boulevard will stay empty. Home Depot has given up trying to get approval — over concerted neighborhood opposition — to open a...
Posted January 7, 2009 6:26 PM
In the winter of 1949, snow blanketed the floor of the San Fernando Valley and other parts of the basin. But swimming lessons must go on — it was the...
Posted November 27, 2008 12:15 PM
The author and creator of "ER" died yesterday in Los Angeles "after a courageous and private battle against cancer," his website announced. His books included "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost...
Posted November 5, 2008 11:29 AM
Sign on the Sepulveda and National Hamlet on the Westside cites loss of the lease, but skeptical Chowhound posters suspect "loss of customers" is behind the closure. "We'll certainly see...
Posted November 4, 2008 12:23 PM
Fear for your job? Looking for a safe haven to sit out at the recession? The Church of Scientology is hiring. And offering a free personality test. Spotted on Sherman...
Posted November 2, 2008 7:58 PM
I enjoy Los Angeles history as much as the next guy, and probably more than the guy beside him. Yet I haven't felt motivated to read the L.A. Times' seven-part...
Posted October 31, 2008 1:58 AM
Kagel Canyon looked scorched but almost serene over the weekend. The locals had put up signs thanking the firefighters who knocked down last week's wildfire. Here's a one-minute video of...
Posted October 22, 2008 12:15 AM
The fire that began on Oat Mountain above Porter Ranch doubled in size overnight to 9,872 acres and was burning southwest across Ventura County, while the Marek fire that began...
Posted October 14, 2008 9:45 AM
The two wildfires burning in and around Los Angeles have destroyed at least three dozen mobile homes in Lopez Canyon and 19 structures, many of them homes, in the area...
Posted October 13, 2008 10:50 PM
Los Angeles County fire chief P. Michael Freeman is quoted on City News Service saying that firefighters are doing their best to check the Porter Ranch-Browns Canyon fire "from making...
Posted October 13, 2008 2:09 PM
The campus is probably five miles from the nearest flames, but the heavy smoke over the Valley and interrupted freeways prompted CSUN to cancel afternoon and evening classes. Also, Chatsworth...
Posted October 13, 2008 1:54 PM
Channel 7 just reported that, with the wind blowing more fiercely, evacuations have just been called for Box Canyon, Woolsey Canyon, Bell Canyon, Dayton Canyon and Lake Manor. KABC thought...
Posted October 13, 2008 1:22 PM
It's by Mel Melcon of the Los Angeles Times, on LATimes.com. It shows the smoke roiling off the Sesnon fire in Browns Canyon and Porter Ranch....
Posted October 13, 2008 1:08 PM
Channel 4 says there is a report that someone died in a car fire on the freeway near DeSoto Avenue, a bit east of where the Sesnon fire has jumped...
Posted October 13, 2008 12:54 PM
* Updated post Twin Lakes and Indian Hills, two communities hard up against the brush north of Chatsworth, are evacuating. Flames are moving across Browns Canyon, the access up to...
Posted October 13, 2008 12:24 PM
* Update: All Los Angeles TV new stations are live on the fires. A fast-moving new fire has erupted in the Santa Susana Mountains and is laying down smoke on...
Posted October 13, 2008 11:02 AM
Quick update from an item this morning: Principal Donna Tobin posts at the Walter Reed Middle School website that "permission to use the front of our school for the Republican...
Posted September 5, 2008 1:54 PM
The backdrop photo chosen to illustrate John McCain's speech last night sure appears to be Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood. No one has said why a school in...
Posted September 5, 2008 8:49 AM
Back in the 1920s, when Ventura Boulevard through Sherman Oaks was a two-lane highway with dirt shoulders, real estate agents pitched it as the "Wilshire Boulevard of the Valley." It...
Posted August 11, 2008 4:09 PM
Unfortunately, the Daily News this morning bannered Dana Bartholomew's story saying the hotel and banquet center in Studio City would close. It's still big on the website. Miscommunication — but...
Posted July 16, 2008 4:41 PM
The quirky Sportsmen's Lodge hotel on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City will shut down Dec. 31, the Daily News says. [* But the paper was wrong. See below.] The 11-acre...
Posted July 16, 2008 9:25 AM
The LAPD says that in a study it ran in the Valley, DNA samples collected at the scene of residential and commercial burglaries helped identify a suspect in 45 percent...
Posted July 2, 2008 9:55 AM
St. Bernardine of Siena Parish in Woodland Hills has donated nearly $1.5 million of its savings to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to help fund last year's multimillion-dollar...
Posted April 30, 2008 11:27 AM
The Times' website today is pushing a travel feature on the West San Fernando Valley, writing that "in what we hope will be an ongoing series, we present you a...
Posted April 29, 2008 2:16 PM
Grant High School has been plagued for years by clashes between Latino and Armenian students — dating, some say, to hard feelings over the response to major earthquakes in Mexico...
Posted April 24, 2008 9:20 AM
The Home Depot project on Foothill Boulevard that ran into a mountain of community opposition is back on the agenda. The store applied to City Hall for a permit to...
Posted April 22, 2008 3:54 PM
I'm told by Alex Fay, legislative deputy to Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, that Google will be fixing its maps listing Van Nuys as "Van NY." When I saw...
Posted April 21, 2008 10:38 PM
A few readers have sent this to me. (Thanks.) Google Maps has the Van Nuys community name just right, but the airport, boulevard and golf course are all reduced to...
Posted April 20, 2008 11:57 PM
From ex-editor Ron Kaye's new blog: In my mind, it's time for people to make a stand for what they believe in, to act like the free people Americans are...
Posted April 17, 2008 11:24 PM
This is a pretty good animal story, told in today's Daily News by columnist Dennis McCarthy. On Tuesday morning, John Caruso spotted a sheep and a German shepherd running together...
Posted April 17, 2008 3:05 PM
Rev. Eric Lee says the whole episode in which philanthropist (and Hillary Clinton supporter) Daphna Ziman accused him of anti-Semitic remarks has been wearing and hurtful. Lee, who is African...
Posted April 17, 2008 12:56 PM
Every so often, one of the local media outlets returns to the theme of "The Valley, it's not so bad" and pretends the concept itself isn't kind of old. Today...
Posted March 13, 2008 4:15 PM
Not too many musicians follow this particular career arc. Buddy Miles, who died yesterday in Austin of congestive heart failure, began as a session player with the Delfonics and on...
Posted February 27, 2008 7:35 PM
OK, more loot than treasure. But when cops followed the map scrawled by burglar Roberto Caveda and dug where the X was marked near White Oak Avenue and the Reagan...
Posted February 27, 2008 12:02 PM
With seven residential projects containing 900 units already under construction — and another two dozen projects approved — the most upscale shopping street across the Valley is evolving. But the...
Posted February 24, 2008 12:18 PM
Actually it's not so new, but the Koreanization of the suburbs in the northwest Valley has really taken hold. I think every church my parents tried to drag me into...
Posted February 23, 2008 11:00 AM
Much honored Los Angeles sci-fi writer and alternate historian Harry Turtledove writes about time travel in his Crosstime Traffic series. Could he be predicting the future with the sixth book...
Posted February 8, 2008 9:23 AM
Valley history buffs were aghast to learn last week that the first hangar built at what's now called Van Nuys Airport was in the process of being torn down. The...
Posted December 23, 2007 4:53 PM
A portion of Reseda with large lots wants to rename itself Reseda Ranch to help fend off developers and instill some community pride. If the City Council agrees to let...
Posted July 22, 2007 11:09 AM
Environmental rehab of the Santa Susana Field Lab site in the West Valley has been inadequate, U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti ruled. He told the Department of Energy to...
Posted May 3, 2007 7:58 AM
Blogger Andrew Hurvitz at Here in Van Nuys sounds exasperated, or worse, at the way the onetime downtown of the Valley has gone. He writes in a post called Columbus...
Posted January 17, 2007 11:38 AM
One thing I can add to the Times' appreciation today of It's a Wonderful Life, the film classic starring James Stewart and Donna Reed: all that fake snow was created...
Posted December 23, 2006 1:27 PM
With Glendale and Burbank included the Valley's population is now 1.74 million, larger than every U.S. city except New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. The U.S. Census Bureau's first-ever...
Posted December 7, 2006 11:25 AM
It happened Sunday night on Woodale Avenue in Arleta, says the Daily News' Susan Abram. Filimon Ramos was killed and his 19-year-old son wounded, apparently by a neighbor who had...
Posted June 27, 2006 11:55 AM
© 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.
| Advice for Greenies in a Complicated World
| 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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