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.
Equestrians of the northeast Valley will ride Sunday in memory of Bert Bonnett, a legend in the horsey communities of Shadow Hills and Sunland.
Vanessa Whang, the director of programs at the California Council for the Humanities in the Bay Area, contributes a reminiscence of the 1971 Sylmar earthquake on the Zocalo Public Square website.
Editor Rob Eshman calls the Encino State Historic Park threatened with closure his personal retreat growing up in the neighborhood.
Fifteen or so years since Universal Music Group left for Santa Monica, the honchos at Universal City are taking down the signs on various streets and driveways that honor music legends.
Berman-Sherman are in one orbit, Richardson-Hahn in another with fewer zeroes.
Former speaker and losing candidate for mayor releases a statement (through campaign strategist John Shallman) saying thanks but no thanks.
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.
The narrow squeeze between the San Fernando Valley and points north shuts down so often that a blog has come up with the, um, Comprehensive Newhall Pass Disaster Planning Tool.
"It's been 40 years since I took a vow of poverty and became a newspaperman," Dennis McCarthy writes in his column announcing he will retire from the Daily News on January 31.
The acting police chief in the city of San Fernando has been placed on administrative leave during an investigation into an allegation that he fixed a traffic ticket for Fred Flores, an aide to Rep. Howard Berman
Romantic rivalry, not gangs, appears to be the motive in the murder of Francisco Javier Rodriguez Jr. outside the teenager's home in Winnetka. Two suspects with long rap sheets, a man and a woman, have been arrested.
Good on Cheryll Devall of KPCC for working up a radio piece on today's 70th anniversary of the day that Hollywood comic actress Carole Lombard died in a plane crash. Famously married to Clark Gable, Lombard was honored by FDR as the first American woman to die in the line of duty during World War II.
This year's showdown in the Valley between Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman does more than just echo the 1980 fight in Sacramento when Berman tried to unseat fellow Democrat Leo McCarthy as Speaker of the Assembly.
The Service Employees International Union in California will announce today its backing of Rep. Howard L. Berman in the San Fernando Valley showdown with fellow Democrat Rep. Brad Sherman.

The former Assembly Speaker and unsuccessful candidate for mayor says he can win and she can't.

History buffs in the know revere it as the spot where the Portola expedition, the first European land explorers in the region, left the riverbank that later became Los Angeles and came upon a Tongva camp beside a spring in a wide grass-covered valley in August 1769.
The number of links to coverage of last night's forum between Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman (and their Republican accessories) has kept growing through the day. So I'm gathering them here.
She resigned as ambassador to the Bahamas and will return to Los Angeles "to help fix the president's troubled relationship with the entertainment industry." Plus: Keith Olbermann, Berman-Sherman.

Last week's post about Life magazine's newly available trove of unpublished on-set photos from the film shoot for "It's a Wonderful Life" brought a nice email pointer to a story by Michael Fessier.
 
Previously on LA Observed:
Valley of 'It's a Wonderful Life'
When Encino became Bedford Falls

Life magazine has posted online a gallery of unpublished photos from the Encino set of the 1946 holiday classic starring Jimmy Stewart.

There's less demand in NoHo for an "organic, sustainable fast food restaurant that embraces local, hormone-free and pesticide-free food, compostable containers and other green components" that one might have thought.
City Councilman Paul Krekorian's latest emailed newsletter got my attention, and not for any of the headlines or stories.
Berman's friends in the House are lending their name to a "California wine tasting" fundraiser next week in Washington.
This isn't a total dose of bad bookstore news, just a demi-dose for people in Valleywood.
San Fernando Mayor Mario Hernandez is expected to face a crowd calling for his resignation at next week's City Council meeting, but his girlfriend will be in Israel.
Are any of the small cities in Los Angeles County not havens of crazy or worse?
The women suspected to using pepper spray on a crowd of Black Friday shoppers at the Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch turned herself in at the Devonshire Area station late last night.
Reporters, editors and other staffers at the Daily News offices in the Valley have been told to stop feeding the wildlife.
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.
When Daily News editor Carolina Garcia was named editor over the Daily Breeze and Press-Telegram as well, it seemed pretty clear more moves were coming. Now they have come.
In an online commentary under the New York Times' Opinionator banner, newly New Yorkified journalist Katie J.M. Baker ticks off why she loathed growing up in Encino and the San Fernando Valley.
Carolina Garcia, the editor of the Daily News, will now be the executive editor for the Daily Breeze and the Press-Telegram in Long Beach as well.
It was on this day in 1913 that the pop-up town of Van Nuys — located at the intersection of a vast former wheat field turned dustbowl and a sandy seasonal flood wash — got a newspaper.
Coming up on 4 p.m. on October 12, the LA Observed weather center reports a Downtown temperature of 99 degrees. 97 in the Valley, 88 along the KOST (sorry, couldn't...
Sound City Studio Center in Van Nuys is where many top records were made. "If you're a fan of rock and roll...this is hallowed ground."
Rep. Howard Berman today endorsed Los Angeles City Councilman Tony Cardenas in his bid to win the Valley's newly drawn 29th congressional district.
I'm taking part in a panel discussion Tuesday at the Cal State Northridge library.
The Jewish Journal intends to keep a close eye on the divisive local race.
Daily News columnist Doug McIntyre on the weekend shuttering of the Van Nuys jazz bar.
Many in Hollywood (and especially in Valleywood) wish the looming primary fight between the two Democrats would just go away.
There used to be others around the Valley, but far as I know this is the last Hot Dog Show.
My weekly column this evening centered on the redrawing of political lines in California, mostly on the new districts that will see Reps. Henry Waxman, Howard Berman and Janice Hahn seek reelection outside their traditional home turf.
Rep. Howard Berman may face reelection in a new (if still Democratic) district, and a likely opponent from his own party in Rep. Brad Sherman. But his Hollywood friends are still with him.
From Al Martinez in his Daily News column.
The murals inside the Tujunga Wash flood control channel known as The Great Wall of Los Angeles are getting some fresh care.
Bert Blyleven, Pat Gillick and blogger Rich Lederer will stand up at the baseball Hall of Fame in upstate New York.
Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney was at the Valley Plaza shopping center in North Hollywood today, using it as a photo op for some claim about jobs and the economy.
Now that the big media event is over, it's back to the routine closures that users of the 405 freeway have experienced over the past several months. Here's tonight's partial list.
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...
Until the tunnel under Mulholland Highway opened in 1930, there wasn't much "pass" to Sepulveda Pass. There was a dirt road and trails, but most of the traffic between...
CBS 2 says it has an exclusive with the local murder suspect who was released from custody in Puerto Rico then disappeared.
"Born of the motorcycle and hot rod culture of Burbank California in the early 1970s, the Travis Bean guitar was fused from gear head sensibility and rock and roll creativity," says a website.
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 Automobile Club of Southern California Archives have some stunning photos from the years in which the L.A. area was discovering its relationship with the car. Like this one.
The latest news and gimmicks on the coming 405 shutdown, including the LAPD asks a favor of Lady Gaga.
I don't know what's going on at Roy Romer Middle School in North Hollywood, but after watching this video posted today at YouTube, if I were on the school board or a news assignment desk, I'd get somebody out there tomorrow.
Not everyone's happy, but Councilman Krekorian is willing to play along.
Conan O'Brien has sweetened, so to speak, his request for the city of Los Angeles to rename a segment of West Raymer Street beside the train tracks in Van Nuys....
How LAX is planning for the worst weekend ever. Isn't it weird how the best job of covering the 405 freeway construction disruption so far hasn't been by any traditional media at all, but by the websites of Metro and of Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky?
KCSN, the FM station from Cal State Northridge, has a new program director. Sky Daniels, formerly of the late KMET and other stations, has also been a label executive at...
When was the last time you saw a news release issued jointly by Caltrans, Metro, the California Highway Patrol, the Los Angeles Police Department and the L.A. Fire Department?
Inspired by Oprah Winfrey's street in Chicago, Conan O'Brien calls on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to get it done. Video.
The San Fernando Valley Business Journal has a new editor. Plus: The story of ValSurf, and the band She Wants Revenge really loves the Valley.
A YouTube videomaker who doesn't care for the grittier realities of life in the Valley has made a series of "tourism" videos on Canoga Park and Van Nuys.
Tonight's KCRW column, airing at 6:44 p.m. talks about the massive I-405 freeway makeover and the plans to close the freeway for a weekend in July.
All lanes of the freeway will close in Sepulveda Pass for an enitre weekend in July. You've been warned, but you will be warned again.
End of an era in the Valley, which was still agricultural enough in the 1940s to launch an annual livestock and equestrian fair held for a few decades at the Devonshire Downs race track and fairgrounds in Northridge.
The cocktail lounge at the Canoga Park Bowl features classical music on Wednesday nights.
These pictures reemerge every so often, but they are always interesting. These are World War II shots of Lockheed Aircraft, a major builder of war planes at Burbank Airport,...
Daily News columnist Dennis McCarthy writes "when I arrived at the Daily News 30 years ago this month, I had dark hair, a flat stomach, and the stamina to chase stories all day and night. Five thousand plus columns later, what's left of the hair is white, I've got a pot belly, and need a nap after lunch."
Valley boosters used to take pride in the stat that Van Nuys Airport was the busiest in the country, due mostly to all the private pilots and students who flew there. Now traffic has fallen to 1963 levels.
Steve Jenkins is in surgery in "very guarded" condition after being shot in the face on Dronfield Avenue, LAPD chief Charlie Beck announced.
Last week in the Valley, something like 450 people turned out at a raucous community meeting called to discuss the restriping of upper Wilbur Avenue to add left-turn and bike lanes.
ESPN Los Angeles discovers the Woodley Park cricket field in the Sepulveda Dam Basin, "a Shangri-La to cricketers around the world."
KCET and Annenberg News21 have co-produced a piece on Rich Goodman, the 27-year-old political novice who is running against Councilman Tony Cardenas.
Jane Russell is probably best known as the busty actress whose cleavage Howard Hughes exploited so flagrantly in "The Outlaw." Her life story, though, runs through several other prominent Los Angeles threads.
On a recent episode of "The Simpsons," Bart Simpson's list of "must-see attractions" for Los Angeles included Cerritos Auto Square, Keyes on Van Nuys, "The Valley," LAX lot C, the...
On Feb. 22, 1911, trains from Los Angeles delivered the first buyers of vacant lots to the new town of Van Nuys.
Coming up on the air at 6:44 p.m., a often-forgotten corner of the city — the far northeast Valley — and two historical milestones there.
Sixty-five people died in the 6.6 magnitude Sylmar earthquake 40 years ago today. We have pictures.
City Councilman has a Sacramento fundraiser scheduled next month for an Assembly run in 2012.
There's a reason that, 52 years later, they still remember Ritchie Valens. Especially in Pacoima.
Forty seven years later, the San Fernando Valley gets another performing arts space and it's bigger and grander.
Men with plastic sheeting rush out and cover the words Policia Federal: now we're intrigued.
An LAPD alert posted to Facebook by a resident: "Burglary Suspects posing as DWP employees are attempting to enter homes in Woodland Hills.
Last week's lockdown of Woodland Hills schools, fear felt by students and parents, and massive dragnet for a gunman that disrupted entire Valley neighborhoods — all the result of a dishonest LAUSD police officer, LAPD chief Charlie Beck said tonight.
My posts on Dr. Martin Luther King in the west valley and mention of the late Valley Times newspaper led reader Jim Houck to point me to a Time magazine story on that newspaper in 1963.
A history teacher at Canoga Park High School graciously pointed me to this online evidence of Dr. Martin Luther King's 1961 appearance.
Troubled ex-Dodger Milton Bradley looks to be in trouble again. He was booked into the Van Nuys jail today on suspicion of making criminal threats, reportedly involving a woman in...
Brad Smith got the endorsement of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party the other night in the 12th district City Council race in the west Valley. On Thursday, Smith dropped out of the contest.
I'm not sure where Ron Kaye's grand plan to topple the L.A. City Council with a slate of candidates stands, but he'll be columnizing on Sundays in Glendale and Burbank.
The bookstore and its adjoining Starbucks have been pretty popular hangout spots at Ventura and Hayvenhurst in Encino.
Sherman Oaks and Echo Park start up this week, with familiar names involved.
If the Universal City development project goes through, the size of the city of Los Angeles will grow by 44 acres. How's that, you may ask?
Over the past two years, Los Angeles County emergency responders have been quietly preparing for a massively bad scenario: explosion of a 10-kiloton "improvised nuclear device" in the San Fernando Valley.
Phil's Diner was a beloved hangout for its fans in North Hollywood when it was located on Chandler Boulevard, from the 1920s until about ten years ago.
The Daily News' Tony Castro writes on his personal blog that despite Alex Padilla's talk of running for mayor, the state Senator from Pacoima really wants to be in Congress.
Admiral Michael G. Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who is making the L.A. rounds today, grew up in the Valley.
Bing Crosby's old Toluca Lake estate is up for sale: just $6.595 million for almost two acres, a main house with 6 bedrooms and five fireplaces, plus pool, cabana and tennis court.
The Daily News is celebrating next year's 100th anniversary with a series of centennial stories on the paper's and the Valley's history.
Wicked Pictures and Vivid Entertainment stopped production after a performer identified by one industry source as a male who does gay and straight films tested positive for HIV.
Art Ginsburg is leaving Art's Deli to his children, but look who reported the story for AOL Patch.
Sound consultants have already begun tuning the concert hall's acoustics, with the help of a single pianist at a Steinway.
More fun with Google Maps and its perplexing take on the geography of Los Angeles. I will say, this one seems more like a technical glitch than a failure of...
Ackerman, chairman of the Community Redevelopment Agency board of commissioners, died today of cancer.
Achois was the name that Europeans and, later, Americans thought more or less reflected the pronunciation that the local Tongva used for their settlement at the north end of the...
Well, we know he hasn't been violating the city's watering ordinance.
Good Samaritans on Burbank Boulevard in Van Nuys used a crowbar and guts to free an older man trapped in his burning 1932 Ford after a four-car accident on Sunday. Watch the video.
Los Angeles police on horseback raided a long-standing homeless encampment under the 210 freeway in Big Tujunga Wash and used ropes to rip down shelters.
In the San Fernando Valley secession election in 2002, state Assemblyman Keith Richman received the most votes and would have become the first mayor of the newly formed sixth-most populous U.S. city if voters had allowed the split.
Kevin Jolly, 45, left as superintendent of the Burbank schools a few weeks ago to take over a troubled school district in Mendocino County.
At least six of Councilman Richard Alarcon's staffers have received subpoenas to testify Wednesday in front of a grand jury looking into where the boss actually lives.
My weekly column on LA Observed tonight talks about my visit to the Valley to talk to Los Angeles Conservancy folks at The Onion, the Unitarian church where the first Los Angeles acid test was held in 1966.
I'm the keynote speaker this afternoon at the Los Angeles Conservancy's annual meeting.
The suspects' car struck and killed a child who appeared to be five years or under in Lake View Terrace.
Nearly 200 acres of grassland and oak trees at the junction of the Ventura Freeway and Las Virgenes Canyon Road have been acquired by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.
Stephen Clancy Hill, apparently known in the adult video business as Steve Driver, has been wanted since an attack Tuesday night porn warehouse in Van Nuys.
If you're one of those who never memorized what SCAG stands for, well, it doesn't really matter. Same for this new entry of local semi-officialdom, but some folks in the Valley are happy anyway that as of next Tuesday, when the Board of Supervisors votes it into existence, there will now be a formal San Fernando Valley Council of Governments.
The design isn't much to brag about, and they were partisan to the max, but one thing about the newspapers of Los Angeles a hundred years: they were chock full of news.
When was the last time a fashion spread in the L.A. Times got this much attention? Kobe as ET.
Hundreds of dump trucks a day have been driving through a Sylmar neighborhood to dispose of sediment from the Station Fire.

On this day in 1915, the voters of the San Fernando Valley chose to join the city of Los Angeles — and nothing here was ever the same
"This American Life" revisited the demise of the former General Motors assembly plant in Van Nuys, where an entrenched work force never came around to more efficient and reliable Japanese-style methods. The plant closed in 1992.
The San Fernando Valley Fair used to be a pretty big community affair — with horse racing, rodeo events, and barns full of sheep and rabbits raised by 4-H kids in their backyards — that kept alive the Valley's equestrian and agricultural tradition.
Saturday was opening day at the Encino Little League baseball diamonds, located at Hayvenhurst and Magnolia since 1954. John Scheibe, the author of "On the Road With Jim Murray: Baseball and the Summer of '79" and an editor in Sports at the L.A. Times, played there as a boy and returned for the annual ritual.
Amy Beck is 33 and a sixth-grade teacher at Jordan Middle School in Burbank.
Democrat Andrew Westall has dropped out of the race in the 43rd assembly district, citing the weekend death of Charmette Bonpua, his colleague and the chief of staff for Councilman Herb Wesson.
Valley-based campaign consultant Julie Buckner is opening InYoga Center, a studio with boutique, in the former Dutton's bookstore on Laurel Canyon Blvd.
The city has paid $3.35 million for ten acres and the home designed by Paul R. Williams for actress Barbara Stanwyck, a vestige of the Valleywood horse-ranching heyday.
Kristen Stewart, as usual, is so uncomfortable doing media it always creeps me out a bit to watch her.
Councilman Richard Alarcon now concedes he hasn't been staying at the Panorama City home his wife owns in his council district for three months, citing a break-in and attempted squatting...
Search warrants were served this week at homes owned by Alarcon's wife in Panorama City (in his district) and Sun Valley (not.)
When work begins Wednesday night on the Sepulveda Pass Widening Project — the first full closure of the northbound freeway is after midnight — Metro's man in charge will be an Iraq veteran.
he latest census data gathered at the request of Rep. Brad Sherman shows that Latinos are still the largest population group at 42.8%.
Think the new construction project only affects the freeway? Ho ho ho.
Yeah, Metro CEO Art Leahy changed course and approved running free all-night service on the Metro Orange Line this New Year’s Eve — after the Daily News reported that the...
The city of Burbank wants Debra Wong Yang, the Los Angeles police commissioner and former U.S. Attorney here, to help clean up whatever ails the Burbank Police Department. KPCC...
KFI's news Twitter feed says that convicted killer Phil Spector is at a dentist's office in Toluca Lake right now, escorted by prison correctional officers. Update: Yes, Spector was allowed...
Israeli organized crime activity in Los Angeles has gotten "a little bit worse" recently, LAPD terrorism chief Michael P. Downing told the Jerusalem Post this week on a visit in...
I have no idea what is really going on at the Burbank police department, only that things seem pretty messed up. This afternoon, Chief Tim Stehr announced he would retire,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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....
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...
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,...
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....
Here is today's image from Earth Snapshot. Click it to biggify....
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...
* 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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")...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
"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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
David Garza of Los Angeles Mission College grabbed this photo of snow dusting the hills behind Sylmar this afternoon....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
* 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...
* 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
I like Encino. Oak-shaded streets, some nice restaurants and oozing with Valley and Hollywood history. The impetus to spruce up Ventura Boulevard is a good one. I can even live...