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My commentary today talks about the murder of 17-year-old Lily Burk and the strong reaction it has evoked in the city. The piece airs at 4:44 p.m., can be heard...
LA Observed archive
for July 2009
If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.
See more from Steve Greenberg in LA Sketchbook...
Nice science column in today's Wall Street Journal by Robert Lee Hotz on the lost art of restoring and conserving masterpieces. It's set at the Getty, which is spearheading a...
News and notes are after the jump. Also see Mark Lacter's morning headlines at LA Biz Observed, and follow Mark and Kevin on Twitter....
Hat tip to the New Beverly Theater's Twitter poster for noticing that the Mann Festival has put up a final message to patrons. Known previously as the Egyptian (and as...
The film writer's affiliation with Variety has finally played its last note. She posts there that as of Sunday night, her Thompson on Hollywood brand will be housed at IndieWIRE....
Most nights, it seems, one window remains brightly lit on the west face of the City Hall tower. Lisa Napoli emails that she and her neighbors on Bunker Hill watch...
The Center for Investigative Reporting received more than 600 applications for its new California Watch project. The winner, to be announced soon, is Lance Williams, who has been part of...
The Go-Gos tool around early '80s Los Angeles in a convertible, vamp outside Trashy Lingerie on La Cienega and frolic in the electric fountain at Wilshire & Santa Monica in...
Lamar to sign a four-year deal for $33 million, J.A. Adande reports at ESPN. Broderick Turner at the LAT agrees. Dodgers note: They get lefty reliever George Sherrill for two...
Patt Morrison will be talking to Eric Spillman of KTLA, whose blog post I mentioned here yesterday, and I presume others about Mayor Villaraigosa jetting off to Iceland so soon...
"Forget the exterior," Gehry says in this recent interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival, via Curbed LA. Covering the interior in wood cost an extra $5 million, and was...
It's an unanswerable question probably, but the LA Weekly's Christine Pelisek says police are puzzled by an aspect of the Lily Burk murder. Surveillance video shows the 17-year-old walking with...
Manny Ramirez and his Boston Red Sox teammate David Ortiz were among the 100-plus major league players who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003, the New York Times...
Cari Beauchamp took her deep personal umbrage at Native Intelligence the other night, and now you can add the LAT's Kenneth Turan to the list of Hollywood and film aficionados...
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...
News and notes are tucked away there after the jump. Also see today's Mark Lacter morning headlines at LA Biz Observed, and follow Mark and Kevin on Twitter....
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...
This evening's Which Way, L.A.? on KCRW sets up the discussion this way: "The murder of 17-year-old Lily Burk has received saturation coverage. Does a brutal crime contain any lessons...
Who is the first female Congress member mentioned on The Hill's new list of the 50 Most Beautiful hill people? Why, our own Rep. Maxine Waters, who comes in at...
The Huffington Post is moving ahead with its long-talked-about local pages for Los Angeles. The site has "yet to set a launch date but is actively looking for the right...
The Times and Register have announced a deal in which L.A. Times delivery people will deliver both papers. The Register will thus become the Times' largest commercial delivery client. If...
L.A. Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein has turned to the San Diego Union-Tribune for his newest executive. The post is a hybrid that carries the title of Executive Vice President/Business and...
News and notes are hidden after the jump. Also see today's Mark Lacter morning headlines at LA Biz Observed, and follow Mark and Kevin on Twitter....
Vin Scully told Bill Plaschke tonight that if he feels OK this winter he'll come back to the Dodgers next season — his 61st — but then that's it. Retirement?...
Museum director Michael Govan announced the film program will be closed and rethought — audiences were down, he said. LA Observed contributor Cari Beauchamp, an author and film historian, calls...
The Daily News is looking for an online breaking news reporter to replace Jason Kandel, who is moving to KPCC as online managing editor. Job description is after the jump...
Mayor Villaraigosa has been busy online today, sending out Twitter updates (and email) on his new Ask a Mayor feature, replying to this morning's dissing of LAX and, just forty...
A Los Angeles County Superior Court jury today assessed $370 million in damages against Guess? Inc. co-founder Georges Marciano for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress in a case...
Today's front page of the Wall Street Journal talks about Hamilton High senior Kenya Mejia receiving $1,800 to plug the movie "I Love You, Beth Cooper" in her valedictorian address...
Yesterday on Twitter I re-tweeted this affectionate parody of Huell Howser on a road trip of another sort, but forgot to post it here. The creator calls it California's gold...
The L.A. Times does Ted Kennedy no favors with this one: Sen. Kennedy: An article in Sunday's Section A about Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's role in Congress' healthcare debate said...
Steve Greenberg picks up on the lost story of the California budget mess. The crunch and the political fallout of kids being kept out of college in California — and...
An LA Observed reader grabbed this screen shot of the half-digested front page that appeared on the Los Angeles Times website when he clicked print edition this morning. Still no...
Los Angeles International now ranks as the world's sixth busiest airport, just behind Paris' Charles de Gaulle. Of course, on any ranking of airport amenities, transportation, signage or comfort of...
News and notes are hidden after the jump. Also see today's Mark Lacter morning headlines at LA Biz Observed, and follow Mark and Kevin on Twitter....
It seems the Pacifica radio station just can't keep a GM. Here's Sean Heitkemper's resignation letter to Grace Aaron, Interim Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation, after just a year:...
Wired magazine's Mark Horowitz has created a Zee Maps-assisted guide to the Los Angeles locations in Thomas Pynchon's novels and real life, based on the presumption that "Pynchon, the paranoid...
Eric Jaye, Gavin Newsom's longtime political strategist, tells the San Francisco Chronicle's Matier and Ross that "there was a fundamental difference in how to run" the mayor's campaign for governor....
The Washington Post has a new TV critic in Stuever, whose job will be "exploring the medium across the many platforms and in the many ways it now traverses our...
Police said today that they took transient Charlie Samuel into custody by 5:30 p.m. Friday on drug charges in Downtown. They now have a pretty horrific chronology of the events...
Gawker just put out the word that the site's new West Coast editor will be Richard Rushfield, currently at LATimes.com. The note from Gawker's editor in chief is below (and,...
When Jack Klunder returned to the Los Angeles Times in 2005 to run circulation, the crowing from Spring Street was that he was a brilliant choice to turn around the...
Isabel Kaplan is 19, got her book deal when she was a high school junior, and now is enjoying "Hancock Park" hold a spot on the L.A. Times bestseller list...
The memo to the sales and marketing staff says it's Steve Gellman. External announcement to come later, tied to a launch (finally?) of the Los Angeles Times magazine website. Remember,...
This week's exploratory subway drilling is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday at San Vicente and Gracie Allen (that's near Cedars-Sinai), Wednesday in UCLA parking lot 36 near Wilshire and Veteran,...
Sunday's New York Times published a letter to that newspaper's public editor from the publisher of L.A. Youth, the paper run here by teenagers, commenting on a column about how...
Police announced that a 50-year-old man named Charlie Samuel has been booked on suspicion of murder in Friday's killing of 17-year-old Lily Burk. A press conference is scheduled for 11...
Some week-starting news and notes for today are after the jump. For a quick look back at the past week at LA Observed, click here. Also see today's Mark Lacter...
Esa-Pekka Salonen's house in upper Brentwood has gone on the market for $4.1 million. It has six bedrooms, 5.5 baths and a chilly Scandinavian demeanor throughout. Check out the sauna...
After the U.S. waived the visa requirement for South Korean tourists, and Seoul loosened controls on foreign investment, Koreatown was expected to take off. Instead, the Los Angeles Business Journal...
City Council President Eric Garcetti grabs Wendy Greuel's old suite on the fourth floor where they keep the elected inmates. Same square footage but more windows, says Rick Orlov at...
The formal title is Chief Content Officer, and the employer is Radio Bilingue. The project takes a little more explanation. A major new public media programming service in Los Angeles...
We've all seen the enormous white thunderheads build up on summer afternoons out beyond the San Gabriel Mountains, over the Mojave Desert. Photographer Gene Blevins chases the storm cells; check...
The daughter of Los Angeles journalist Greg Burk and Southwestern Law adjunct professor Deborah Drooz was found slain this morning in her car near Alameda and Fourth Street downtown. A...
From the Jewish Journal's food blog, posted by editor Rob Eshman: I just got a peek inside David Sax’s new book, “Save the Deli,“ due out Oct. 19, and can...
Los Angeles Magazine is out with its annual Best of LA issue, and #16 among its 101 favorite things is "Blog by an ex-LAT staffer." By that they mean Craig...
Not really. But Frank Coffey at eTrueSports has fun with the concept of a chain of shops where everybody can just be Manny. Noted: Time Warner Cable's official story is...
Oil drilling off Santa Barbara and borrowing of transportation funds from local governments are dropped. Mayor Villaraigosa tweets that it's a big victory for cities, plans 4:15 news conference. "This...
The best-selling writer of gay black fiction fell ill yesterday at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. He lived in Atlanta. LAT...
Whoa, the news and notes run a bit long today — that's what happens when you take the night off. The buzz is after the jump. Also see Mark Lacter's...
Just a heads up to the 12% of LA Observed visitors who still drop in using Internet Explorer version 6 or earlier. The bane of web designers everywhere may soon...
Synthesizing the emails I've received and comments I've seen about Time Warner Cable cutting to commercial and missing Manny Ramirez's sensation of a home run last night, it sounds as...
Sacramento's fragile deal on the state budget is in the best tradition of California governing, according to editorial cartoonist Steve Greenberg. See more of LA Sketchbook by Greenberg in...
Mayor Villaraigosa is apparently looking for a director of speechwriting, based on this job posting that just dropped in the mailbox. Salary commensurate with experience, and who knows, you may...
Charles Bukowski narrates a tour of the Hollywood and Western area, highlighting his favorite bars, hangouts, hookers and dope-dealers. From "The Charles Bukowski Tapes" (1985), by Barbet Schroeder, via...
News, notes and observations are after the jump. Also see Mark Lacter's morning headlines at LA Biz Observed and follow us on Twitter....
Manny Ramirez just hit his most dramatic home run as a Dodger, a first-pitch grand slam coming off the bench in a tie game on Manny bobble-head night — and...
An unidentified man was shot dead in his black Lexus about 11 a.m. today in the parking lot of Allstate Insurance in Glendale. Police were searching for a man who...
Channels 2 and 9 will be known, as of the fall, as CBS 2 NewsCentral and KCAL 9 NewsCentral. Behold the joint logo. Release is after the jump....
Phillip Sanfield announced in the newsroom (well, technically in the publisher's conference room) this afternoon that he's leaving as executive editor and interim publisher of the Breeze to become director...
Well, that honeymoon's over. Twenty-two days into City Attorney Carmen Trutanich's term, campaign backer and ex-Controller Laura Chick called him a liar and a demagogue this morning on Doug McIntyre's...
Wednesday's news, notes and observations are after the jump. Also see Mark Lacter's morning headlines at LA Biz Observed and follow us on Twitter....
Tomorrow's New York Times real estate page ventures into the Century Plaza preservation dispute. Diane Keaton, listing the hotel's supposed glories, likens the design to a "sexy woman surrounded by...
TMZ.com received a lot of attention and some praise — including from me — for scooping the rest of the media on the cardiac arrest and later death of Michael...
L.A. Times coverage of the Los Angeles Kings is the poster child in a Sports Business Journal examination of waning sports reportage in newspapers and how worried pro sports teams...
Manny Ramirez was hit on the left hand by a pitch early in tonight's game at Dodger Stadium. He shook the hand and flexed his fingers for a few minutes,...
LA Biz Observed has followed some of the state budget fallout over there. Cal State university and colleges trustees raised student fees 20% and furloughed employees, as California's higher ed...
That South Bay real estate broker whose body was found inside a home for sale in Westchester has the kind of checkered past that will certainly perk up the ears...
Nice photograph by Juergen Nogai of Julius Shulman at John Lautner's Chemosphere house. Nogai, Frank Gehry, Dion Neutra and others, including Shulman himself, talk during a radio documentary on the...
Jose Antonio Vargas, a national reporter at the Washington Post who covered the intersection of politics and technology during the 2008 campaign, was named Technology and Innovations Editor of the...
Tuesday's news, notes and observations are after the jump. Also see Mark Lacter's morning headlines at LA Biz Observed and follow us on Twitter....
The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo says that the U.S. and North Korea have "started delicate negotiations" over the future of Los Angeles journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, citing...
Deal requires "significantly scaling back many services that have been offered to residents -- particularly the elderly and the poor -- for years," says the LAT story. More: Bee, Capital...
Min announced today that she's leaving next week to do something else unspecified. "The top spot of US Weekly may be a coveted job, but its by no means be...
News item: LAPD consent decree lifted See more in the LA Sketchbook by editorial cartoonist Steve Greenberg....
TMZ videotaped Mayor Villaraigosa and Lu Parker coming out of Mozza just ahead of the newly enriched Ryan Seacrest this weekend. The site says the trio was eating together. Watch...
State Sen. Alex Padilla's title as campaign chair may help Gavin Newsom grab some Latino votes away from Jerry Brown, but even Padilla's political mentor — James Acevedo — says...
I mentioned in last night's ESPN item that the Times was about to name a new editor for sports. It's Mike James, a veteran of the LAT's sports desk. The...
The magazine publisher is struggling, so here comes McKinsey and Co. to study all aspects of the company. Ominous memo from the CEO this afternoon to employees in Los Angeles...
Alexandra Berzon's addition isn't the only move this summer in the Wall Street Journal bureau here. I'm told that when Berzon arrives, Tamara Audi is expected to slide from casino...
Monday's news, notes and observations are after the jump. Also see Mark Lacter's morning headlines at LA Biz Observed and follow us on Twitter....
In her weekend column, Daily News editorial page editor Mariel Garza imagines what the mayor might have written if he had sent back postcards from his recent Africa trip. The...
When visiting Venice, notes the blog Yo Venice, "it is advisable not to block a driveway when you park your vehicle. Odds are that two towing trucks, two parking enforcement...
The cable sports giant will announce plans Monday for a website devoted to covering Los Angeles sports teams. It has worked for ESPN in Chicago, but L.A. Times sports boss...
Remember Sam Zell's chief innovation officer, the irrepressible Lee Abrams? Turns out he has been a pilot since he was 17, and like many hobbyist pilots across the U.S. he...
Jenny Burman is back and blogging at Chicken Corner after a bit of hiatus. She explains. Watch for her blog to expand beyond the borders of Echo Park....
"We're young, we live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, we might as well have fun while we can," Zooey Deschanel's character says in "500...
Cronkite passed away Friday at age 92. Here's our earlier link. More from LA Sketchbook by Steve Greenberg...
U.S. District Court Judge Gary A. Feess freed the Los Angeles Police Department from most of the federal oversight that has been in place since the Rampart corruption scandals of...
Thomas Saenz talks about the MALDEF job and being passed over by the Obama Administration. NPR's Tell Me MoreMarc Haefele says the debate over paying for police services during the...
Media sites are saying that the longtime CBS News anchor has died, according to his family. Cronkite announcing the assassination of President John Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963:...
In today's LA Observed segment on KCRW, I honor Julius Shulman as a foremost chronicler and interpreter of Los Angeles and get personal on behalf of my wife, who has...
Alexandra Berzon, the Las Vegas Sun reporter whose four-part series on the high death rate among construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip won the Public Service medal in this...
Friday's news and notes are after the jump. Also see Mark Lacter's morning headlines at LA Biz Observed and follow us on Twitter....
Los Angeles photographer Iris Schneider attended this week's birthday party for Farmers Market and took in the USC band and "hokey card trick" spelling out 75 years. Schneider covered news...
David Carr came through town a week or so ago and lands on the New York Times' front page tomorrow with a piece on Nikki Finke. Her deal to sell...
Frances Dinkelspiel, the author who talks tonight at ALOUD about "Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California," is also president of the board at the...
Julius Shulman, the dean of Los Angeles photographers, died Wednesday at home in Laurel Canyon. He was 98 years old. “He led a charmed life right up to the...
The former City Councilman and current planning commissioner will be dean of Cal Poly Pomona’s College of Environmental Design, effective July 30. Release after the jump....
An LA Observed reader phoned in this photo from Marina Del Rey, where they're expecting Zac Sunderland's return this morning from his round-the-world solo sail. Sunderland's blog says he is...
Quick first read of the day's news and notes is after the jump. Also see Mark Lacter's morning headlines at LA Biz Observed and follow us on Twitter....
Busy day on the local politics front: State Sen. Alex Padilla was named statewide chairman of Gavin Newsom's campaign for governor, a pretty blatant appeal to SoCal Latino donors and...
Nightlife and hotel impresario Sam Nazarian is Mayor Villaraigosa's choice to fill the Chris Essel opening on the Board of Airport Commissioners. A release from Villaraigosa is going out this...
Pro Photography Network is a new business offering photo services from recently departed Los Angeles Times photojournalists, including Pulitzer winner Annie Wells. From today's release: A funny thing happened on...
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...
Today's Daily News, in an editorial, reminds new City Attorney Carmen Trutanich that as a candidate he promised to reverse Rocky Delgadillo's legal opinion that prohibited audits of his office...
Quick first read of the day's news and notes is after the jump. Also see Mark Lacter's Wednesday morning headlines at LA Biz Observed and follow us on Twitter....
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...
Sing along with Steve Greenberg as he mourns runaway production from Hollywood. Click the cartoon to view it larger. See the entire LA Sketchbook archive and Steve's bio in one...
Doug Jehl is a former Los Angeles Times White House reporter who jumped years ago to the New York Times, where he is deputy editor in the Washington bureau. He...
Tina Daunt, who writes the Cause Celebre political column for the L.A. Times' Calendar section, posted on her blog that she's taking time off to care for her ailing father....
Thomas Saenz, Mayor Villaraigosa's in-house legal counsel, will become president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund next month. Saenz, 43, says in the Los...
A quick first look at today's items on politics and the city, with a media obit. Inside after the jump....
This morning there was the guy running from Burbank to Texas. Now KPCC's John Rabe, riding his bike into work today, ran into a South Korean native named Shine who...
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has changed his office's tune on donations to defray expenses of the Michael Jackson memorial, saying this morning that providing police services is what cities do and...
Mark Lacter has ten tickets for Thursday morning's appearance by Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson to talk about his book, "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," at the ALOUD Business...
Robert Korda's body was located by LAPD detectives Sunday in the county morgue. His death is under investigation. Korda disappeared on Wednesday and his son Noah had been seeking help...
Los Angeles and New York both make great settings for police dramas on TV. But why, over the last decade or more, are most of the better ones located in...
A mix of today's news and observations and some from the weekend. Inside after the jump....
Korda, 69 and a veteran of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has not been seen since Wednesday, the day before he was supposed to drive from home in Van Nuys to...
Four minute LAO video: Young (mostly 17-20) not-yet-pro players in the Los Angeles Kings system came to L.A. this weekend for the team's summer prospects camp. They worked with the...
John Arthur left the L.A. Times newsroom Friday, eight days after being told that a masthead reorganization meant his services as executive editor were no longer needed. Staffers, including managing...
I can't remember the last time I saw the Hotel Rosslyn roof signs on display over Downtown, but I was pleased to see the northern one of the pair fired...
Well, he is if his Twitter posts are real. @villaraigosa Good to be back in LA! And good to see @revcarr 's work in action: check out this Summer Night...
Former UCLA chancellor Charles Young filed suit asking the California Supreme Court to invalidate the state's 2/3 vote requirement for raising taxes. Dan Walters More chest-beating and attention-seeking by...
For the first time in what feels like forever, Michael Jackson isn't mentioned in this week's LA Observed segment airing at 4:44 p.m. on KCRW. The subject this time is...
I don't know — I'm kind of thinking Steve Greenberg is no fan of the distracting digital billboards popping up around Los Angeles. With the issue due to get hot...
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is trying to remove its Los Angeles president, Rev. Eric P. Lee, over his support of gay marriage. It's reopening the rift over African American...
Abbreviated Friday edition... Chief Bratton says he's selling his Los Feliz home to get free of the unused pool and will buy another home in or around Los Angeles. L.A....
Channel 7 reported tonight that Michael Jackson's casket was removed from Staples Center after Tuesday's memorial while hidden in a SWAT van. Chief Bratton would neither confirm nor deny, saying...
Jonathan Kirsch reviews "A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler's Émigrés and Exiles in Southern California," Dorothy Lamb Crawford's study of the 1930s emigres to Los Angeles such as Igor Stravinsky, Arnold...
Aaron Sorkin will take over the script, Steven Soderbergh will no longer direct, but Brad Pitt is still attached to star and the movie remains at Sony, says Variety's Marc...
Hmm, selling in a down market. Let the speculation begin. The Times' Hot Property column says that LAPD Chief William Bratton and his wife Rikki Klieman are asking 1.875 million...
Her husband Eric Weisbard posts on Facebook that he will be teaching in Tuscaloosa. Powers says in a Facebook note that she will continue to write as L.A. Times pop...
Joel Kotkin posits five suspects in a new piece at Forbes. It took some amazing incompetence to toss this best-endowed of places down into the dustbin of history. Yet conventional...
Catching up to this via the SoCal Minds blog: Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmiec, a regular on op-ed pages and elsewhere in the media, was nominated by President Obama to...
The Getty remains closed today due to that mostly contained fire in Sepulveda Pass, and Sepulveda Boulevard is still closed from Sunset to Mulholland. LAT, KNX Capitol Weekly's Anthony...
Back in June, when I posted about Mayor Villaraigosa's Twitter updates lagging behind by hours, the account at HTRimalower tweeted the link and a question: "Why is L.A.Observed hating on...
The L.A. Times says its comparison of LAPD crime stats to the department's online maps that are supposed to show what's going on in neighborhoods found that 40% of serious...
Wednesday night's opening performance of "Monty Python's Spamalot" at the Ahmanson ended with creator Eric Idle taking the stage (to a standing ovation, though his name was never used) and...
The Los Angeles staffers for Current TV have now been held in North Korea for 113 days. Lisa Ling sends word of a new website — lauraandeuna.com — to galvanize...
Mayor Villaraigosa's posts on Twitter during his Africa trip have all been about Los Angeles — and until further evidence appears I'll assume they have been written by @Matt_Szabo or...
Smoke is much reduced out here. Jonathan Alcorn shot this photo when the plume was still growing....
The Getty Museum is being evacuated down through Brentwood as a precaution due to a fire burning in brush a ridge or two to the north in Sepulevda Pass. Damn...
The Los Angeles Business Journal site went dark on Tuesday and didn't come back until late this morning. No, they weren't mourning Michael Jackson. Editor's note posted today: The Business...
Steve Greenberg picks up on the local politics of the Michael Jackson event seen 'round the world. Click to view larger; see more cartoons by Greenberg in the LA...
City Attorney Carmen Trutanich appeared at the City Council podium to say he is investigating how the city got the tab for the police costs of staffing the Michael...
The real estate developer who may have had a hand in 100,000 new homes was a condo and strip mall pioneer in Southern California and built office towers in Century...
AEG chief Tim Leiweke, asked by Mark Coogan on Channel 2/9 to respond to Councilman Dennis Zine's demand that the company cover the public costs of the Jackson memorial, sounded...
Eerie media silence regarding the return trip to wherever Michael Jackson goes now, and the continuing buildup of costs for public services. Will freeway closures occur again this afternoon? 1:28...
Live in Los Angeles on channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 34 and 52 (translated), MSNBC, Fox News Channel, CNN. And on many L.A. radio stations, as well as...
A hearse is driving through Forest Lawn and falling into procession formation. Which route to Staples Center? Updates: Left the cemetery at 9:25, east on Forest Lawn Drive. 134 eastbound...
The Times is reporting that the unidentified detective shot herself last night after walking into the Santa Clarita sheriff's station and speaking to a deputy. She placed a box of...
Wags are cackling that Mayor Villaraigosa is on vacation in Africa and missing the city's biggest media day in years — all those cameras, perhaps a billion people watching L.A....
Several dozen black limousines (and other vehicles) are starting to move away from the Jackson family home on Hayvenhurst Avenue, presumably headed toward Forest Lawn. They have a police escort,...
In the same issue of The Atlantic where Sandra Tsing Loh finishes off her marriage, the editor's choice book is Kevin Starr's eighth in his series on Golden State history:...
Ex-Dodger Nomar Garciaparra took the field today in Boston for the first time since the 2004 trade that broke off one of the great sports love affairs. The Red Sox...
Dodgers manager Joe Torre is on Fox Business Network today talking with David Asman about, of all things, the Yankees he used to manage. Some highlights from FBN: On Roger...
Who's the ringmaster of the circus in Sacramento? We are, ultimately. Steve Greenberg nails it. See more by Greenberg in the LA Sketchbook archive....
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....
Sam Zell's Tribune Company has a written agreement to sell the Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field and other assets to the Ricketts family for about $900 million, says the Chicago Tribune....
City Council prez pro tem Jan Perry has released the city's map on street closures designed to keep the ticketless masses far away from the Michael Jackson memorial at Staples...
So to attend the Michael Jackson memorial, you have to be a web user, able to print your instructions, have free time today and the transportation to get to...
Channel 11 reporter John Schwada blogs that the recent layoff of 99 staffers cost his newsroom "a lot of good young people, with energy and dreams (fortunately, not all of...
I skipped right past this Steve Coll piece in last week's New Yorker skimming revelations from a forthcoming book by Osama’s first wife, Najwa Bin Laden, and his son. Coll...
Today's New York Times Magazine devoted more than 8,000 words to the question: "Who can possibly govern California?" Reporter Mark Leibovich gets at his inquiry through Gavin Newsom, the other...
In a move to save space, the Los Angeles Times weather page dropped 43 international cities, 16 U.S. cities and four California locales — Blythe, Mt. Wilson, Rialto and Santa...
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...
They're talking now about a private family funeral at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, with no motorcade through the city. Cops will have their hands full with Tuesday's Staples Center memorial,...
From the Adventures in Grave Hunting blog: While the world's media focused on speculation about where Michael Jackson would be buried, lovely Farrah Fawcett was quietly laid to rest two...
Manny Ramirez rejoined the Dodgers tonight in San Diego, was greeted with a loud mix of boos and cheers when he came up in the first inning, and drew a...
Did Lu Parker go along, as she implied she would in that first public glimpsing of the couple at Chevalier's bookstore a month ago? Mayoral spokesman Matt Szabo isn't saying....
Cynthia Littleton at Variety reports that Brennan, a longtime reporter and editor for The Hollywood Reporter, died today at Cedars-Sinai after a yearlong struggle with cancer. "He was my friend,...
Eater LA, through a post signed by Curbed creator Lockhart Steele, says its post earlier this week leveling blind charges at downtown wine bar The Must "didn't rise to our...
Veronique de Turenne drops off a load, posts some pictures at Here in Malibu: "Kind of freaks me out, but it's also fascinating, this other world where tons of junk...
Newsroom groups are being informed right now that John Arthur is out as Los Angeles Times executive editor — that's number two on the paper's masthead. Sports editor Randy Harvey...
LA Observed will begin observing the first holiday weekend of summer by switching early to infrequent posting mode. Enjoy the weekend!...
In this issue of Los Angeles Magazine and on the website, Steve Oney revisits the summer of 1969 when Hollywood figures, and then much of the city, were terrified by...
Steve Greenberg is traveling this week to the annual convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. While he's gone, we'll post some previously unpublished work. This one was...
An elected San Francisco supervisor has been agitating up there for details on the cost of Mayor Gavin Newsom's security detail, without much luck. Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, however, easily tracked...
Steve Hymon, who covered the City Hall beat (and later transportation as the Bottleneck blogger) for the Los Angeles Times, is back again, at least virtually. This time, he's doing...
Emanuel Pleitez is the 26-year-old who may have played a bit of a spoiler role in the 32nd congressional district by taking votes from Gil Cedillo in the Democratic primary...
Dov Charney's L.A. firm today was "fingered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for employing some 1,600 workers at its Los Angeles factories whose eligibility documentation is 'suspect and not...
Actually, the tongue-in-cheek list at LatinoLA is titled Top 10 Mistakes You Made Last July 4, But Not This One. Favorites: 3. A Congresswoman was still asleep on the sofa...
TMZ has posted the PDF. Plus: We may not know when or where [or if?] Jackson will be buried, but it won't be at Neverland. L.A. Now...
Channel 5 reporter Eric Spillman posted the photo on Twitter of his KTLA colleague, the mayor's girlfriend, in the invited crowd at Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's pre-swearing-in church gathering this morning....
Homies Unidos director Alex Sanchez was denied bail even though former Senator Tom Hayden offered his home as security and support at the hearing included a deputy to City...
One day before she would have left elective office, Governing magazine features former Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick on its July cover. She stepped down early, of course, to...
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.
