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Adam Roberts began blogging about food in 2004, grew it into a part-time gig with The Food Network, and now calls himself a full-time food writer.
LA Observed archive
for August 2011
If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.
Adam Roberts began blogging about food in 2004, grew it into a part-time gig with The Food Network, and now calls himself a full-time food writer.
The Lakers' Ron Artest and former Clippers star Elton Brand are among the NBA players taking part in informal workouts this summer.
He was installing a floor-to-ceiling piece in the new West Hollywood library when L.A. Independent managing editor John Moreno caught up with Fairey.
A male lion known as P-18 left his mother's home range in Malibu Creek State Park earlier this summer and was struck by a hit-and-run driver near Getty Center.
Quick look at the titles book readers are buying in Southern California.
Obama will also fundraise in Silicon Valley, Perez bungling the job of Speaker, Hollywood trades gear up and more.
It's not just the Russian baths and Beverly Hot Springs any more.
Before the Ronettes, the Supremes or the The Shangri-Las were The Exciters.
He's actually Magic's second grandchild.
Matt Chambers of Canyon Country brought home a safe he bought at Home Depot and inside it found family papers dating back to the 1800s.
Police are at the Channel 5 studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.
President Obama will be in West Hollywood on Sept. 26 for two entertainment-themed fundraisers. The return of Obamajam will be on a Monday night.
An Antarctic storm has spun off large swells that are expected to begin pounding local beaches with the summer's biggest waves on Thursday.
Goodwin Liu, Villaraigosa's new USC connection, Andrea Alarcon profiled, big changes at KOST-FM, Artest on 'Dance With the Stars' and more.
Jose Luis Sandoval of Wilmington spends his summer visiting the region's top birding destinations. Check him out on "Off-Ramp."
Several adult film studios suspended production Monday after the Free Speech Coaltion, an industry group, reported that a performer may have tested positive for HIV.
Former Laker Javaris Crittenton was taken into custody tonight at John Wayne Airport in Orange County after checking in for a Delta Air Lines flight to Atlanta.
Perez rejected on Vernon, moves in CD 15 and Villaraigosa's legacy years.
Richard Cooper goes back to the 1960s at the Los Angeles Times, for much of the time the key deputy in the Washington bureau who held things together on big national stories and crises.
Cat shows are far more populist events than dog shows, says The Awl's Natasha Vargas-Cooper.
Villaraigosa's legacy, remapping backlash, getting a ticket while paying the parking meter, riding out Irene, Five Card Stud, Cinema Treasures and more.
The Dodgers have approximately two hitters on their roster who would be everyday players on a good team, and the one that isn't Matt Kemp appears to be burning his personal bridges.
The Orange County city is under fire from the budget-slashing wing of the Republican establishment, writes Tad Friend.
Councilman Jose Huizar tweeted tonight that Ezat Delijani, a leader in L.A.'s Persian Jewish community, died yesterday. No other details are immediately available.
There used to be others around the Valley, but far as I know this is the last Hot Dog Show.
James Farkus Cohan says he has end-stage emphysema and, according to Channel 7, he has filed at least 161 lawsuits against small businesses claiming they violate his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. But the camera doesn't lie.
Warren usually asks the questions of his guests on To the Point and Which Way, L.A.?, his long-running shows on KCRW.
What Southern California is reading this week, plus the new season of Live Talks Los Angeles and a book sale.
The Los Angeles corner of Twitter (and my email box) just lit up with the news.
The New York Times tweets, "As a public service, @nytimes will allow free access to storm-related coverage on nytimes.com and its mobile apps."
If you think the predicted inundation in Manhattan is sobering, wait until you see Brooklyn.
The view from NASA's Terra satellite at 12:30 eastern time. Also, video on Thursday from the International Space Station.
The National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat watch for the Los Angeles area from Saturday afternoon through the evening.
Gunmen stormed a casino in Monterrey and set a fire that trapped gamblers and employees in the flames.
The court said Ron Artest of the Lakers can't change his name to Metta World Peace until he pays off his traffic warrants first.
LAPD officer stabbed, AEG threatens again over stadium, Trutanich now wants signs off Santa Monica buses, and more.
A Los Angeles Police Department officer was hit at least three times after stopping several pedestrians about 2:45 p.m. on south Western Avenue near 66th Street, between Gage and Florence avenues. The officer, whose name has not been released, is at the hospital and is expected to survive.
No deal for Freedom newspapers, Contessa Brewer out, Jon Huntsman on, NYT visits LA. and more.
The Huntington Beach home owned by former Bell city administrator Robert Rizzo is back on the market.
SI's Lee Jenkins has landed a major piece reconstructing the day when Bryan Stow was attacked at Dodger Stadium, and analyzing how it became such a big story both for Dodger fans and the culture.
Villaraigosa woos Hollywood, Feinstein doubts the subway money is there, S.A. Griffin and the Times on Scott Wannberg, CBS web writers sign a guild deal and most ridiculous parking sign ever?
Shafer was part of the original team that launched Slate with Michael Kinsley in 1996.
"I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you."
But don't buy any advance tickets, and if you're a band, cash the check quick and get out of town.
He will give up his full-time employee status and post part-time for Poynter, do some tweeting and launch JimRomenesko.com in January. Poynter will rename its site Romenesko+.
Heat wave in the valleys, Cardenas claims an endorsement, de Leon bails on Vernon, Arbitron's impact on L.A. radio, and Nikki Finke to do voiceovers.
A documentary will chronicle the store's final month.
The former CBS News correspondent and local TV newsman in Los Angeles is now painting and sculpting at a studio in Elysian Valley.
KCET has posted a two-minute video listing the shows it will offer in the fall, including Roy Firestone's "L.A. Tonight."
The Oakland Tribune, a fixture for decades, will now be grouped in with four other papers under one masthead: the new East Bay Tribune.
Questions now are whether $140,000 or so is enough and whether the city will reconsider the denial of a permit for this weekend's scheduled street fair.
People out here too like to recite endlessly what they felt, and even a mild, non-disaster earthquake can be an unsettling event.
The parents of Mitrice Richardson have reached a tentative agreement to settle their lawsuits against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for $900,000, the L.A. Times says.
The City Attorney's office has announced the charges against Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis, who was booked last night after surrendering at the LAPD's Pacific Division station. He bailed out this morning.
Amazon's donations, airport commissioner resigns, new assignments for the City Council, Joe Francis surrenders, rabbis go Hollywood and more.
In the September issue of Los Angeles magazine, Mike Kessler reconstructs the sheriff's and coroner's departments mishandling of Mitrice Richardson's disappearance and the subsequent investigation into her death.
Anyone who lived on the Westside of LA in the 80’s and 90’s and who read books knew Scott Wannberg, says Richard Rushfield.
Caltrans had planned to show off four new pieces of artwork along Los Angeles freeways this morning, replicas of murals from the 1984 Olympics era that had been defaced by taggers. But overnight, two of the pieces were stolen.
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.
Bad day for legendary songwriting teams. Nick Ashford, a prolific writer of hits for Motown with his partner and later wife Valerie Simpson, died in New York City.
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met in Los Angeles in 1950 and teamed up to write dozens of early rock and roll hits, including many for Elvis Presley. Leiber died today at Cedars-Sinai.
Todd Martens posts at Tumblr that it was pretty jarring to watch a dispute on the Red Line rapidly escalate to a fatal stabbing. His report of Friday night's incident,...
We'll see if this holds up once people realize it could mean this weekend's Sunset Junction street festival has to be cancelled
As executive producer of the Marketplace franchise, Deborah Clark will oversee editorial content of Marketplace Morning Report, Marketplace, Marketplace Money, and Marketplace Tech Report.
Burbank man nabbed for feeding birds near airport, those Santa Monica Mountains stop sign cameras, Times employees settle suit, Patrick Range McDonald profiled, Bay Area writer says Hollywood stole his script, prolific TV director dies and much more.
Emily Green reported and wrote (and apparently went through editing hell to finally publish) a long seres in the Las Vegas Sun on a big Nevada water grab. And she's miffed to find a lot of parallels between her reporting and a chapter on Nevada in "The Ripple Effect" by Alex Prud’homme.
With City Attorney Carmen Trutanich making two campaign-style stops in the Valley last week, Rick Orlov writes that his "'exploratory' campaign for district attorney is starting to look more and more like the real deal."
The rebels in Libya confirm they have the influential son of Gaddafi in their custody.
Scott Wannberg, a member of the traveling poet troupe known as the “Carma Bums” and a 23-year employee of the late Dutton's Brentwood Books, died Friday of an apparent heart attack in his recent hometown of Florence, Oregon.
Pop music staffer Todd Martens was in the subway in Hollywood last night when he witnessed a man stab another man, then flee the scene. It was more complicated than...
Q&A with the director follows Saturday night's free film screening at the Hammer Museum of the 1973 documentary on "the black Woodstock," more properly known as the Wattstax Music Festival.
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.
County supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky finally had something to say about the newly drawn election districts submitted by colleagues Gloria Molina and Mark Ridley-Thomas.
Arianna Huffington will be in her old spot on the left of KCRW's "Left, Right & Center" panel for this afternoon's show.
New York Times art critic Holland Cotter reviews "Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s" by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp.
From Al Martinez in his Daily News column.
Reader Bob Patterson spotted this vintage Helms Bakery truck at the festivities surrounding the Concours d'Elegance in Pebble Beach. If you don't smell bread or donuts upon seeing the...
Dr. Kenneth Litwack, 71, suffers from bouts of confusion and checked himself into a Tucson clinic, then turned up missing.
Former NBA columnist's comments on earlier sports deadlines are interesting,
Obama and illegal immigrants, civil rights probe of Antelope Valley sheriff's, bus bench politics, Carey McWilliams and more.
Michele Chimienti is a Los Angeles County civil engineer who oversaw upgrades of the flood control dam in Big Tujunga Canyon — and she's a world-class fencer.
Lisker was married once before, in 1994 while serving time at Mule Creek State Prison. That marriage lasted about three years.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa goes with the end-of-an-era theme.
I'm told there was a packed house last night at American Legion Post 804 in East Los Angeles to honor the life of journalist George Ramos.
Edie Wasserman was called the first lady of Hollywood and with her late husband, the studio powerhouse Lew Wasserman, was a major donor to local institutions. She died today in...
Those Paso Robles settling ponds look like something from before the dawn of sewage treatment, says Mark Gold of Heal the Bay.
LAUSD's test scores beat the mayor's, Brown backs high-speed rail, AEG wants more protection, Suzanne Marques gets a promotion and photogs in Long Beach watch out. Plus of course, Bratton won't run Scotland Yard.
The latest monthly memo from online managing editor Jimmy Orr says that the L.A. Times website is now the second most-read newspaper site in the country.
These are the top-selling books at independent bookstores in Southern California, through sales of Sunday.
Southwestern Law School professor David Fagundes, writing at the legal blog Concurring Opinions, considers the long waits for a hot dog at Pink's and concludes there's a paradox lying therein....
The murals inside the Tujunga Wash flood control channel known as The Great Wall of Los Angeles are getting some fresh care.
Villaraigosa and Prop. 13, Jerry Brown scales back, those Latino supervisor districts, city fires Standard and Poor's, designs for Farmers Field and a new CicLAvia date.
Molina moves Yaroslavsky toward East L.A., the other maps sacrifice Knabe.
The web-based tools and service for authors wishing to promote their own books will close down Sept. 1
She was stranded for 53 days, attracting crowds of gawkers to Del Norte County near the Oregon border and numerous efforts to help steer the whale down to the sea.
Los Angeles is "is only beginning to realize the impact" of L.A. Times layoffs and other media cuts on civic life, the mayor says.
In testimony this morning in federal court, the head of a company that handles merchandise for the Dodgers says this season's actual turnstile count at Dodger Stadium (not the bogus number the team announces) will be between 2.2 and 2.3 million.
KCET is announcing today a new partnership with Dominique Bigle, CEO of Eyetronics Media and Studios, to produce and air new local programs that will then be packaged domestically and globally.
The proposed Gayley at Wilshire would be wedged into an irregular-shaped-lot at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Gayley Avenue formerly occupied by a video store and gas station.
Rembrandt drawing recovered, remapping mania all over, Al Martinez writes about his disease, the LAT discovers the House of Davids, and which obscure local agency uses cameras to write 15,000 tickets a year at $175 each. Plus: who could play Gov. Rick Perry in a movie?
Gustavo Arellano, creator of the Ask a Mexican! column syndicated out of the OC Weekly, writes today that "I've been sitting on this announcement for months, partly because I fully expected it to fall through."
Two years to the day since Bruce Lisker was freed from prison after 26 years, he married Kara Noble and LA Observed was there.
Writing today at The Awl, Eric Spiegelman is amused by the cacophony of Los Angeles place names — some more valid than others.
The plaque identifying a Linotype machine (used to set type in the old days) and the plaque on the last "hot type" plate used on Times presses were switched.
The Huntington Beach home of indicted former Bell official Robert Rizzo hit the multiple listings database last week.
A stadium endorsement, Howard Berman vs. Brad Sherman, Rainey on Schwada, Ross Porter gets a gig and more media and politics notes.
Lots of stories this weekend about former LAPD chief William Bratton and the political squabbles that have formed around him since the prime minister over there, David Cameron, suggested he would like Bratton to lead the London police.
Mitnick is, I think, the most famous or notorious computer cracker (and hacker) to come out of the L.A. area.
You may remember the local ballet company that we featured in an audio photo video a couple of years ago. The LA Weekly looks at why so many dancers leave.
Whale-watchers on board a Redondo Beach boat were off Palos Verdes Peninsula on Monday when they got an unusual treat for these waters.
Longtime Hollywood photographer David Strick is suing the Times and Tribune for using his photos 500 times.
SoCal Focus has pulled together an amusing array of photos and postcards showing just how pervasive oil derricks were on the region's landscape for many years.
The effect of moving the vendors and food trucks out of the crowded core of Downtown's Art Walk was, predictably, to steer some of the people to other blocks.
Bus benches start to disappear, USC's veto power over NFL in Coliseum, an anchor in London, News-Press loses again and Tobar calls L.A. a third-world city.
Twenty-nine years after they frolicked on La Cienega and in the Beverly Hills fountain for the "Our Lips Are Sealed" video below, the Go-Go's showed up in Hollywood today...
Former CNN Business News correspondent Stephanie Elam will join Robert Kovacik at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Channel 4.
Police investigating a reported suspicious package at a talent agency office on Rodeo Drive found — and blew up — a briefcase.
The Falcon, an unmanned experimental space plane launched this morning at Vandenberg, is designed to fly 13,000 miles an hour, or 20 times the speed of sound.
Add the National Association of Hispanic Journalists to those concerned about recent job shifts at NBC 4 here in Los Angeles.
30 Mosques in 30 States is the blog of Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq’s Ramadan-month road trip across the United States from Alaska to New York.
The ABC News Senior White House Correspondent gives tips to the new army of virgin journalists that will be spun by national campaign machines before it ends in 2012.
Peter Douglas' exit from the Coastal Commission, California's electoral vote, the view from London, covering high-speed rail, the City Council re-votes on Farmers Field, James Franco and porn, plus "Los Angeles Plays Itself."
Diana Nyad was almost 24 hours into her Cuba to Florida swim and losing the battle with the Gulf Stream. An inside look.
L.A. Times photographer Barbara Davidson comments at the paper's photo blog on the stunning image she shot of a refugee and her child. It ran last week on the front...
Veronique de Turenne celebrates five years of blogging with a pictorial tour of her favorite posts.
Peter Sanders, the Wall Street Journal's former aerospace writer in Los Angeles, begins Monday.
The Getty's acquisition includes photographs of nudes, celebrity portraits, and images made for high-fashion ad campaigns.
Stanford University's Rural West Initiative has a fine interactive map showing the spread of newspapers across the United States from 1690 to today.
Food trucks will be kept outside the core area of this Thursday's Downtown Art Walk, the first to be held since the death last month of Marcello Vasquez when a car went up on the sidewalk.
State budget already in trouble, bullet train gets even more expensive, remapping politics at county, dinner at Rupert's, an ovation for "The Help," and invoking God to get through the news. Plus good news from Bryan Stow's hospital room.
The current wave of departures from the Los Angeles Times newsroom isn't nearly over.
Mis-attribution of quote on anonymous political novel is cited.
City Council members Bill Rosendahl and Herb Wesson propose that Friday be John Schwada Day in the city of Los Angeles. Plus: Joe Saltzman.
LAT calls for stadium approval, Rutten on KPCC, KFI leads morning ratings, inside The Wrap, production begins on "Mad Men," plus zombies in Topanga.
Many of her 173,000 followers on Twitter want to know about the animals.
Nyad was vomiting when she was pulled onto her support boat at 12:45 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday.
On my trip to Seattle, my hotel room window looked out at the baseball stadium. We got to our seats in five minutes.
His brother Mark, the head of Heal the Bay, says that he asked the LA Weekly food writer for this weekend's op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times. Getting it done was more of a struggle.
"The feeling is that this could be much worse" than Carmageddon, says the president of the Westwood Homeowners Association.
In first class with Will Ferrell, Antonio Jr.'s mural project, the LAT's slimmer editorial page, the last purchase at Village Books, plus politics and media notes.
The Home Secretary and Mayor of London nixed the idea, says The Telegraph.
A note from Assistant Managing Editor Henry Fuhrmann reminds copy editors that "Latino should be used in nearly all contexts."
With so many NPR staffers in town the past week, L.A. stories are getting a good ride on the network.
Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego is opening an L.A. area store this summer on Artesia Boulevard in Redondo Beach.
Susan Salter Reynolds and Richard Rayner will continue the book columns that the Los Angeles Times recently dropped in its cost-cutting of freelancers.
Nyad, the KCRW columnist and extreme swimmer, played "Reveille" on a bugle then at 4:45 p.m. L.A. time plunged into a Havana marina to begin swimming from Cuba to Florida.
Imprisoned former Hollywood troubleshooter Anthony Pellicano said during his first prison interview — with Daily Beast writer Christine Pelisek for Newsweek magazine — that he knew enough about Arnold Schwarzenegger to prevent him from becoming governor. No details offered.
Channel 4 took home 13 awards at last night's local Emmys, including a sweep of all three regularly scheduled newscast categories. The Governors Award went to FOX11 anchor Christine Devine...
By Ryan Killackey, who writes: "I worked on this project on and off for over a year and a half. It is composed of over 10,000 photos shot in California by my wife and I."
Before Lucy, before Desi, before she ran Desilu Studios and before even television, Ball was a showgirl and a blonde bombshell.
With the space shuttle gliding into retirement, Deanne Stillman has a nice piece at Truthdig on the local origins of the U.S. space program.
Avery, who plays the role of agitator in hockey and has been run off a couple of teams by his own teammates, was arrested this morning on suspicion of battery against a police officer. He has since been released.
The paper's award-winning pro basketball writer sent along this write-up of his experience going into the Times to check out after 32 years in Sports.
The cover story of the ABA Journal for August has some good news for three Los Angeles authors who are also journalists.
Last March, you might remember, journalist Chip Jacobs posted never-seen photos that his brother Paul remembers taking on June 4, 1968, hours before presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally...
East of West L.A., Linda Ronstadt signs to write her memoirs, and finalists for the Southern California Book Awards.
Did the L.A. Times' Barbara Davidson lock up another Pulitzer with yesterday's front-page photo of a Somali mother and child in a Kenyan refugee camp?
Lauren Ambrose will play the role of Fanny in the Los Angeles production of "Funny Girl" set to open at the Ahmanson Theatre in January.
I'm back in town and digging through email and phone calls and newspapers. Thanks to Mark Lacter for a great job keeping the front page going.
The LAPD's anti-gang unit today raided the city's six animal shelters and confiscated the service weapons of animal control officers as part of a gun audit of the Animal Services department, the Daily News is reporting.
Actor Jerry Lewis said in May that he was retiring from the muscular dystrophy telethon he had hosted since 1966, but that he hoped to make an appearance on this year's show.
Albert Abrams resigned Wednesday from the city's Board of Neighborhood Commissioners, where he was the president, after computers were seized during an FBI search at his home last Friday.
Demoting one or two Latino anchors may be a coincidence; but "demoting five in the past year raises suspicions," writes Julio Moran of Latino Journalists of California to KNBC's boss. Read the letter.
Photographer Colin Rich worked for months on this time lapse study of Los Angeles at night.
She has been lingering in the river since June, attracting daily crowds.
A bunch of NPR producers and other staffers have relocated temporarily to the NPR West studios in Culver City. Here's why.
No official word on cause of death, but police believe it was natural causes.
They argue that the changes will reduce the financial incentives for solar power by up to 40 percent.
Dunaway is supposed to be living in NY, but she seems to be spending most of her time in West Hollywood.
Actually, he's in town to appear at the TCA press tour.
There's some newsroom grumbling over timing.
The ineptitude takes your breath away - agents made about 60 visits to the home of onetime parolee Phillip Garrido without realizing that Dugard was being kept hidden in the backyard.
Always fun to see NY media folk with next to zero knowledge of our fair city report out a piece that's dated and distorted.
The governor says the debt-ceiling crisis was "a very dangerous and sorry spectacle."
No, this is serious. Really.
Ad Age survey provides some encouragement for the industry.
L.A.'s mayor is turning to his buddies in Sacramento for help in paying out the $42,000 in fines.
Baghdad Bureau Manager Salar Jaff was among those let go last week.
Actually, he was well down the list, which was topped by businessman Malcolm Glazer.
Hate to break this to all you miscreants out there, but you've never had to pay your ticket.
Matthew Lee, who was with Stow for the Dodgers home opener and had been considered an important witness, died Sunday after an allergic reaction to nuts.
This one sounds like fun - a walking tour along the stretch of Wilshire Boulevard that was designed to rival the great boulevards of Europe.
By the time it's over, these folks might need to raise upwards of $3 million to stay competitive.
When dealing with pro football, don't ever assume anything.
There's nothing like a late-season trading deadline to separate baseball's haves and have-nots.
He calls the arrest "regrettable," but also defends the decision to bring in Ramirez.
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.
