Archive by Month
December 31, 2005
KCET's charity auction this week on eBay included lunch with incoming president of the city council Eric Garcetti. Billed as "a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get your viewpoint heard," bidders were...
This photo captures Los Angeles at night in 1908, taken from Mt. Wilson with a one-hour exposure. It's found in the online photo gallery of the city's Bureau of Street...
December 30, 2005
Newest adds at the bottom... ⇒ KNX 1070 reporter Michael Linder's website details his background as a KTLA reporter, creator of "America's Most Wanted" and "The Jesse Jackson Show" and...
The Times asked some UC Berkeley researchers to look at Caltrans data, and they came up with a surprising conclusion: even though Orange Line ridership has been modest, with mostly...
It's that time again. At 11 a.m. today in Lynwood, Mayor Villaraigosa, Chief Bratton, Sheriff Lee Baca and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo will once again plead with Angelenos (and our...
December 29, 2005
⇒ New managing editor at the Long Beach Press-Telegram: it's John Futch. Also, Jason Gewirtz becomes city editor for business and John Canalis moves to the editorial/opinion pages. ⇒ A...
Dodgers owner Frank McCourt recently and very quietly proposed building a 65,000-seat football stadium on the parking lots at Dodger Stadium for a new NFL team he would own, the...
Two emails came in this morning about the city's ballyhooed pothole repair effort. One, from Bureau of Street Services chief William Robertson, lectures that I shouldn't have been so skeptical...
December 28, 2005
Los Angeles blogger Jeremy Hermanns and his fiancee were on the Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to Burbank that lost cabin pressure at altitude, causing a scary time for everyone...
From today's L.A. Times: An article in Tuesday's Section A about tensions over the federal effort to reintroduce wolves into parts of the West wrongly attributed to Wyoming Gov. Dave...
⇒ Only in L.A. quote of the day: "Just 2,200 square feet—it's practically an apartment" — Screenwriter Naomi Foner, mother of Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal, complaining in the LAT that...
In last week's LA Weekly, Sam Slovick wrote about drugs on Skid Row and the LAPD cops who work The Box, the area around Fifth and San Pedro. The story...
December 27, 2005
⇒ City Controller Laura Chick turned up the heat today on schools Supt. Roy Romer, making a public records act request for all federal, state, county, and internal audits of...
Mayor Villaraigosa's photo op du jour was the ceremonial filling of a North Hollywood pothole—reputedly pothole number 80,173 to be repaired since September 24. That would mean an impressive (or...
December 26, 2005
This will be a slow week around LA Observed Tower. I won't be doing the 'First thing' reports in the morning, but will probably pop in from time to time...
Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles was at number eight on yesterday's Los Angeles Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list....
December 24, 2005
In case the whole wintry Christmas thing in Los Angeles isn't faux enough for you, KCAL-9 added an hour to its new tradition of airing the WPIX-TV Yule log. New...
December 23, 2005
Outside of the many disgruntled ex-colleagues (and a few fans) he left in his wake, Michael Kinsley's relatively brief tenure as chief opinionist at the Times seems mostly forgotten. He...
Somebody asked me recently at a party if I remembered riding on the Pacific Electric Red Cars that used to rattle famously across Los Angeles streets. The answer was no:...
Bruce Seaton, the interim executive director at the Port of Los Angeles, informed the city today he will retire in January after thirty-five years. He was due to be replaced...
If I promised not to post again until after Christmas, some news would surely come along to make a liar out of me. So let's just say the pace will...
December 22, 2005
Fresh off the buyout/layoffs, the Times is bringing in San Jose Mercury News tech columnist Dawn Chmielewski to be a multimedia reporter. She used to be at the Register in...
Shag, the artist also known as Josh Agle, commemorates the late (but maybe to be resurrected) Tail o' the Pup in a pair of acrylic works. This one envisions a...
Paseo Colorado in Pasadena has angered some local Jews by eliminating the shopping center's annual Hanukkah menorah display, calling it a religious symbol, while featuring a tall Christmas tree. In...
Mayor Villaraigosa has appointed architect Alejandro Ortiz to complete the board of the Community Redevelopment Agency. He replaces the commission appointment of architect Mark Rios, who withdrew in October. Release...
Remember last summer's case of former Burbank mayor Stacey Murphy, arrested by an anti-gang task force on suspicion of cocaine possession and child endangerment? She pleaded guilty today in a...
Attention hill people: the City Council took away your street parking during "red flag" fire alerts just in case a fire truck might want to come up your street some...
December 21, 2005
Lucy’s El Adobe Cafe near Paramount Studios has been prime Democratic turf since Gov. Jerry Brown made it his L.A. headquarters in the 1970s. His long romance with Linda Ronstadt...
Allison Margolin's display ad in CityBeat features a fetching photo and this copy: LA's Dopest Attorney *Need Warrant Recalled? *Want to Smoke Pot on Probation? *All criminal defense, from drugs...
Variety's review today of the Fun with Dick and Jane remake coulda and probably shoulda said that one of the executive producers is none other than reviewer Justin Chang's boss,...
Neither the L.A. Times nor the Daily News mentioned the gang tensions at Tookie Williams' funeral yesterday, but KPCC's Frank Stoltze did. His report included audio of some arguing between...
⇒ Robert Rector, associate editor of the Pasadena Star-News, is leaving Jan. 13. He will write a twice-a-week column for the San Gabriel Valley News Group papers. He held a...
Residents of Laurel Canyon trekked downtown and waited four hours to address the City Council about a hillside development matter. When it came their turn to speak, twelve of the...
The University of California will continue to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. UC had to bid competitively for the first time in sixty years after being...
We're not talking Oahu's north shore or Mavericks, but by local standards the high surf expected today is enough to get my attention. The National Weather Service has an advisory...
Four people were found dead on one day in different places on Skid Row, none of them due to crime. The City Council got the news just before creating a...
December 20, 2005
As many expected, LAT op-ed editor Nick Goldberg today also got responsibility for the Sunday Current section. The staffs of each will be merged and Goldberg receives a couple of...
Colleagues of longtime LAT film reviewer Kevin Thomas have been unhappy that he was nudged to take the buyout and upset that after four decades the paper did not plan...
Thirteenth district councilman (and soon-to-be Council President) Eric Garcetti today announced the hiring of David Gershwin as his chief of staff. Gershwin left the office of current Council President Alex...
Last week a delegation of progressives met with the top opinion editors at the L.A. Times to complain about the axing of Robert Scheer's column and push for more anti-war...
At the Hollywood crew blog Totally Unauthorized, "Peggy Archer" tells the story of a mean-looking power juicer who got drafted into a scene as a security guard because the guy...
Few culture war causes strike me as more dishonest and less trivial than the Fox News-promoted meme that liberals are anti-Christmas. (Excuse me while I stop laughing.) Part of the...
More than 2,000 people (LAT; AP says "hundreds") viewed the body of executed murderer Tookie Williams Monday at a mortuary on South Vermont. Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and Snoop Dog...
December 19, 2005
Drove down San Vicente to confirm what I heard tonight at the Los Angeles Conservancy Modern Committee holiday party in Holmby Hills: Tail o' the Pup's giant hot dog has...
New shorts added at the bottom as they come in... ⇒ Rep. Brad Sherman today introduced a bill to name a Valley post office for retired UCLA basketball legend John...
With lots of buzz around today about Tom Cruise and Scientology, various sources emailed to remind me of some seminal local reporting in addition to the 1990 Sappell-Welkos series in...
Former LAT reporter Ken Garcia explains in his new column in the Phil Anschutz-owned San Francisco Examiner why he left the cross-town Chronicle, where he also had been a columnist:...
The L.A. Times website plans to launch tomorrow a new Flash-driven service feature called L.A. Off the Map. The first un-Timeslike installment has staffer Pete Metzger, on video wearing shorts,...
Reporters will recognize the email that L.A. Times staffer and dog owner Samantha Bonar received from an unhappy—some might say deranged—reader. He objected to her Sunday Current piece calling for...
December 18, 2005
⇒ The Daily News' Beth Barrett takes off from last week's nugget (and follow-up) about City Council time off to compare the L.A. council's pay and perks to other cities....
In 1990, L.A. Times reporters Joel Sappell and Robert Welkos ran a six-part series on Scientology that took them most of five years to report, vet, re-report, write, re-write, lawyer...
The Dodgers today added Nomar Garciaparra to their growing list of ex-Bostonians, joining the manager Grady Little, pitcher Derek Lowe and infielder Bill Mueller (plus owner Frank McCourt, of course.)...
Car racing has a long history in the Los Angeles area. Legendary driver Barney Oldfield lived and raced on Wilshire Boulevard and drove on the speedway that stood where the...
December 16, 2005
Veteran actor John Spencer died today of a heart attack in a Los Angeles hospital. He plays Leo McGarry, the former White House chief of staff and current VP candidate...
Execs at La Opinión sent over word that their owner, ImpreMedia, has acquired the #1 Spanish-language paper in the Bay Area, El Mensajero. Already the biggest Spanish-language newspaper publisher in...
L.A. blogger Tim McGarry grew up with the Ambassador Hotel in his life. He accepts that the new schools will be a good thing and he likes where Koreatown is...
A major technical malfunction has thrown blogs on the TypePad service from Six Apart—all of them, apparently—back to their older backup versions. Bloggers can't log in nor can readers add...
Federal rules finally taking effect mean that Los Angeles' uncovered city reservoirs will no longer hold drinking water, the Times says. Unlike most places, L.A. has traditionally treated its water...
Hey kids, it's Jack Valenti Day in Los Angeles. The former head of the movie-rating and politico-lobbying MPAA gets the key to the city from Mayor Villaraigosa in the council...
Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman's party to raise campaign cash for Senate Democrats was supposed to be the last big Hollywood political event of the season. Melissa Etheridge came to...
December 15, 2005
One of the Valley busway intersections where red-light cameras will not be tried is at Kester Avenue in Van Nuys. Two of the Orange Line accidents have occurred there, however,...
Animal activists don't have Guerdon Stuckey to kick around anymore. If they want to protest the new guy, they'll have to find out the home address for Ed Boks, who...
Mayor Villaraigosa has gone back to the Broad Foundation (from where he lured Chief of Staff Robin Kramer) and signed up Marcus Castain to be his Associate Director for Education,...
⇒ Retired NFL defensive lineman Darrell Russell and a former Trojan teammate at USC, Michael Paul Bastianelli, died early today after a high-speed car crash on La Cienega near Pico....
Remember the grocery store strike-lockout that seemed to last far longer than it should have in 2003? Ralphs was indicted today on federal charges of hiring workers under false names...
Factor's Deli on Pico makes the whole valet parking transaction way too complicated. Just what makes nighttime parking exactly fifty cents less valuable than lunch (except on weekends)?...
From L.A. writer, producer and blogger Lee Goldberg: Dear Friend, I am a former general in the Nigerian army who has managed to steal countless millions from my people. It...
They almost had him: City News Service was alerted to a 4:30 pm press conference, but Guerdon Stuckey changed his mind and refused to step down as head of Animal...
December 14, 2005
Gawker reports that the staff of Radar magazine was just told that it's over. Also at FishbowlNY....
David Zahniser reported in this morning's Breeze that Mayor Villaraigosa's deputy chief of staff, Jimmy Blackman, gave Guerdon Stuckey the word that he's out as head of the Animal Services...
Bill Mueller continues the exodus of Boston Red Sox who names are pronounced "Miller" and signs for two years with the Dodgers, the Times website says. The third baseman has...
Scott Martelle writes that for staffers at the LA Weekly, the coming regime change "is like being eaten by a monster they thought they had already killed." Laurie Ochoa, the...
While I'm playing around with Microsoft's Windows Live Local pics (and burning up bandwidth), just for yucks here's the pool grotto of the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills (or as...
Like a lot of others with fast Internet connections, I've been losing hours to Microsoft's free new Windows Live Local satellite (and aerial photo) service. I've scoured the L.A. mountains...
The L.A. Times is dropping the shell that remains of its national edition. Once a full-scale newspaper sold on the street in Washington and New York as part of a...
December 13, 2005
Angry Dodger Milton Bradley has been traded to Oakland for an outfield prospect, ESPN is reporting. To make the deal, the Dodgers had to include young infielder Antonio Perez. The...
Painter Gregg Chadwick photographed yesterday's demolition of the garage at the Los Angeles Museum of Art where murals by Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee inspired a spirited but unsuccessful salvage...
Tomorrow's meeting of the City Council rules and elections committee will take up an urgent matter of supreme interest to the electeds: how many days off to build into next...
HBO is planning a half-hour comedy based on the life of, well, Ruth Reichl. She is the editor of Gourmet who used to be the restaurant critic in disguise for...
The police commission voted to publish its decisions on use of force by LAPD officers, but without names. Union head Bob Baker of the Police Protective League applauds the move:...
A bunch of movies and actors got Golden Globe nominations today. If you care, Variety has the lineup. It's at all the other new awards-hyping sites too since today is...
Mayor Villaraigosa today appointed his commissioners for the Board of Information Technology. Natalie Cole, publisher of Our Weekly, is among those named. Full release with bios after the jump. *...
UCLA emeritus professor of linguistics Peter Ladefoged gets credit in today's New York Times for inspiring the rare addition of a new symbol to the international phonetic alphabet. The labiodental...
Mayor Villaraigosa appears before the police commission at 9:30 am to urge more transparency in use of force investigations by the Inspector General. The LAT does an advancer on the...
December 12, 2005
Gov. Schwarzenegger opted not to step in and stop the execution of Tookie Williams. In his message (PDF file), Schwarzenegger recounted Williams' crimes and said he did not merit clemency....
At midnight on the Wednesday of finals week, it has been a recent UCLA tradition for a thousand students to strip to their underwear and gather at the corner of...
It's Carolyn Kellogg, who blogs on her own time at Pinky's Paper Haus. She replaces Jason Toney, who took over in February. * Today's LAist Interview: Adrienne Crew puts questions...
New media reporter Anne Riley-Katz's LABJ piece on Robert Scheer's venture Truthdig.com focuses less on the deposed L.A. Times columnist and more on co-founder and publisher Zuade Kaufman. With good...
Don't miss posts from the weekend on the DreamWorks sale, the QM2, Richard Pryor's passing and a little media roundup. On to today: ♦ The state Supremes nixed a stay of...
December 11, 2005
Although I link every day to the front page of La Opinión (and have had a standing link to the paper's website since day one), I only post about individual...
Variety's latest celebration of its centennial is a weekly countdown of the Top 100 awards ceremony fashions. They've reached the final ten on Variety.com. In order, they are worn by:...
Tookie Williams has asked for a stay of execution by the state Supreme Court. No word yet. (* Also: Gov. Schwarzenegger won't divulge his ruling on clemency until Monday, his...
Paramount today confirmed the huge Hollywood shocker that it will pay $1.6 billion for DreamWorks. The story began to get out Friday in the Wall Street Journal, and on Saturday...
The new Queen Mary 2 will arrive for its first visit at the Port of Los Angeles on February 22. But it won't be easy. The world's largest cruise ship...
December 10, 2005
Bill Robertson, the retired L.A. County Federation of Labor chief, was 89 and suffered from Alzheimer's: "...onetime bartender and bouncer who rose to become a major labor leader and power...
December 09, 2005
News swept through the upscale lunch set this afternoon that at least one worker at Cafe Pinot has hepatitis A—and three other workers aren't feeling so hot. If you ate...
You know how banks are supposedly fighting to win our business, being all helpful and friendly? At Sean Bonner's Washington Mutual branch, they didn't get the memo....
Lisa Guerrero used to be a sports reporter for KCBS and KTTV here, then for the "Regional Sports Report" on Fox Sports West. She was also a regular on Fox's...
Now that everyone can scour the state's database of sex offenders from home and work, the LAPD is doing away with the Megan's Law computer terminals in the lobbies of...
Larry Grisolano ran City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's successful 2001 race and, more importantly, was directing the race against Jerry Brown to get the Democratic nomination for state attorney general. He...
LAT watcher Brady Westwater has been watching closely to see how long it will take for the Times to correct a story that said Los Angeles was incorporated as an...
Mayor Villaraigosa's State of the Valley speech included his hopes for a denser, more urban Los Angeles than most in the Valley probably want: "This old concept that all of...
December 08, 2005
The headline belongs to today's Jewish Journal cover story by Joel Kotkin on the recent re-discovery and popularity of religious institutions close to the city's core. When the media or...
Yesterday's Barbra Streisand-drops-the-LAT meme has morphed into a Yahoo News story posted this afternoon....
Services for former Los Angeles city councilman Marvin Braude will be held Monday at 11 am at University Synagogue on Sunset. Braude represented the Westside for thirty-two years. Statements released...
Jose Valentin signs with the Mets, Elmer Dessens goes to the Royals and Jason Grabowski—who was a Paul DePodesta reclamation project—takes what's left of his career to Japan....
City Controller Laura Chick just put an end to the chatter that she is considering a run for state Controller—by announcing that she isn't going for it after all. Just...
The gambling issue. Sample lede: "Like so many young women before me, I had trekked to Las Vegas to hand out free T-shirts at a porn convention." (LA Weekly) The...
Once again the New York Times turns to Southern California for a lifestyle feature. This time, the Pasadena home of film producer Gale Anne Hurd ("a delicate, soft-spoken woman with...
Public Radio International's Tavis Smiley interviewed condemned Crips founder Tookie Williams by phone on San Quentin's Death Row. Calls are limited to fifteen minutes, so it took two redials to...
December 07, 2005
Franklin Avenue has begun a fun blog exercise. He's seeking nominations for the treasures of Los Angeles that are getting up in years and will be missed when if they...
The LA Weekly's (possibly) longest-serving editorial staffer, Mary Katherine Aldin, has been there more than twenty years and remembers when "Jay and Joie were running the Weekly out of his...
UC Irvine historian Jon Wiener has been suing the government under the Freedom of Information Act since 1983 for complete access to the voluminous John Lennon FBI files. J. Edgar...
Barbra Streisand wanted to make sure we all got to read the full text of her letter to the editor that ran—edited—in the L.A. Times on Nov. 28, protesting the...
Mayor Villaraigosa and relevant supporting characters will appear at Berth 87 in the harbor to announce the new appointee to run the Port of Los Angeles. * 1:15 pm update:...
All these newspaper awards show site creators ought to get together before choosing their brand names. The New York Times' new online effort announced today is called Red Carpet, same...
* 12:30 pm update: Dow Jones Newswires has backpedaled all the way on its report of 2006 job cuts by Tribune: "Tribune Co. will not cut 4% of its workforce...
December 06, 2005
Erin Aubry Kaplan's regular Wednesday column debuts on the LAT op-ed page. She writes of being "genuinely shocked" that rapper Snoop Dogg is pressing clemency for Tookie Williams. Along the...
Myron A. "Ron'' Hartwig, the senior executive in California for Hill & Knowlton, is the new vice president of communications for The J. Paul Getty Trust. His responsibilities will include...
Grady Little, former manager of Frank McCourt's hometown Boston Red Sox, will be introduced as manager of the Dodgers at a 5 pm press conference. He was run out of...
No sooner did the Hollywood Reporter gets its annual Power 100 of most important women into print than Publisher and Editor-in-chief Robert Dowling announced he is leaving at the end...
An angle raised by the Times' scheduled closing and sale of its Chatsworth printing plant: what happens to the time capsule that was buried under the floor amid great civic...
Tenants at Lincoln Place began to be removed by sheriff's deputies at 9 am today. Venice Paper says some residents were left empty-handed as locks on their units were changed....
Los Angeles has posted the top stories from the December issue, including Steve Oney's feature on Defamer Mark Lisanti and the rise of online gossip. The most influential and intimidating...
She hasn't posted since the Kings began their annual fade in the standings, but actress Elisha Cuthbert is on board as the L.A. hockey team's blondest, most exclamation-pointed official blogger....
Another longtime L.A. record store, Hatikvah Records on Fairfax Avenue, is closing. Owner Simon Rutberg guests with KCRW general manager Ruth Seymour on today's Politics of Culture at 2:30 pm....
Michael Massing, a Columbia Journalism Review editor writing in the New York Review of Books, reports on why Pulitzer winner Nancy Cleeland is no longer covering labor for the L.A....
December 05, 2005
District Attorney Steve Cooley's office has decided no criminal charges are warranted in the LAPD shooting death of thirteen-year-old Devin Brown. The question was whether officer Steve Garcia broke the...
Village Voice editor Don Forst resigned effective December 31, leaving ahead of the New Times takeover of his paper (along with the LA Weekly and OC Weekly.) "A number of...
Added below: Publisher says 300 Times jobs lost in all There's still a few reporters based in an office in Encino (and they are slated to move), but the Chatsworth...
LA Weekly Deputy Editor Joe Donnelly had a pleasant enough interview with Mike Lacey, the New Times co-founder who will soon be in charge of the Weekly (and its OC...
Those of you who were still cozying up to Richard Fausset of the Times' third-floor bureau can scratch him off the holiday party list. He is shipping out to Atlanta...
Andrew K. Antwih is the mayor's new Chief Legislative Representative in Sacramento. A native of South Los Angeles, Antwih has been chief consultant to the Assembly transportation committee and has...
Websites at the L.A. Times and other Tribune properties aren't getting freshened this morning due to an unsolved technical glitch. This note was sent to Times editors by the "extended...
Starting January 3, the West Coast will get a live version of World News Tonight with newly named co-anchors Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff. The news on CBS and NBC...
The Norwegian consulate in Los Angeles is a $350-a-month conference room inside the Global Business Centers rental suites in Beverly Hills. When someone needs a visa or to replace a...
Extending the subway out Wilshire Boulevard is essential—and only didn't happen originally because of white fears about "those people" coming to the Miracle Mile and Beverly Hills, bus rider D.J....
Might this billboard pop up in Hollywood around Oscar time? It's a freshened up version of a billboard spotted during the 2002 Oscar season. The protest group Guerrilla Girls showed...
December 04, 2005
LAT notable: Patrick McDonnell, now the LAT's bureau chief in Buenos Aires, wrote about his two years in Baghdad in the Times' Sunday magazine...Steve Lopez helps his Skid Row violinist...
They already had a Gold Glove incumbent in Cesar Izturis who made the All-Star team last season (though he isn't likely to ever again.) The new guy, though, is clearly...
December 02, 2005
I just taped a segment with host Conan Nolan to air Sunday at 9 am. Political analysts Arnold Steinberg and Darry Sragow are on first to discuss Gov. Schwarzenegger's hiring...
Todd Purdum, the former Los Angeles bureau chief for the New York Times who also has covered the White House, will depart the paper's Washington bureau at the end of...
The Daily News feature staff has started a blog called Red Carpet. It apparently began a test run last month with Fred Shuster posting from the American Music Awards. In...
Longtime LAT writer Al Martinez uses today's column to report that he survived the buyout and layoff putsch, and to commiserate with those who lost jobs at the Times and...
Around the LA Observed offices, we prefer our pigskin roasted or barbecued. A hotbed of football fever we aren't, but we've ignored the gathering tension across the city (and the...
Rapper Kanye West will perform outdoors at Santa Monica High School on Monday afternoon, the result of students casting a million votes in a Power 106 contest. They get to...
December 01, 2005
Couple more things came in via email after this morning's post: ⇒ MoveOn.org has—believe it or not—adopted the L.A. Times buyouts and cutbacks as a lefty political cause, complete with...
Tonight's "Life & Times" at 6:30 pm on KCET features an interview with Joe Coulombe and his wife, Alice, the creators of Trader Joe's. They opened the first store in...
Perhaps taking a cue from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Controller Laura Chick has offered to oversee an audit of school district administrative operations. "As the independently elected Controller for the...
Scott Martelle has the cover piece in the Weekend Calendar section on local blogs: "In an odd synchronicity, as the pervasiveness of the Internet and mass media homogenizes mass culture,...
Robert Greene in the LA Weekly observed the welcome ritual for L.A.'s newest city council members and says they fit in like familiar veterans—and for good reason. On their first...
I received several reports that computer system troubles plagued the Times yesterday. A big chunk of the IT staff was laid off last week. Also, Orange County staffers are complaining...
At 1:30 Mayor Villaraigosa will announce a deal to scale back the old LAX expansion plan (and settle the lawsuits) at a command audience of pols: two Congress members, two...
