Archive: Canyons

Nick Johnson likes hiking so why not do the whole Santa Monica Mountains. Alone. Starting at night on P-22's turf.

The mother of three mountain lion kittens was killed on the 118 freeway, the National Park Service confirmed.

Eliminating P-45 won't solve the problem of livestock and pets being killed, the National Park Service explains.

The mountain lion, one of the last adult males in the Santa Monicas, is blamed for killing more than 10 alpacas this past weekend.

In an unexplained reversal, the state attorney general's office says it is reviewing the LA sheriff's department's handling of the substitute teacher.

In his new memoir about surfing, the New Yorker staff writer remembers the hot and dry, white, inland place that spawned him. We help him a little with the origin story of Tarzana.

How long P-22 was under the house in Los Feliz, the lion cubs who crossed the 101 freeway and how many pets have been found at lion kills in the Santa Monica Mountains.

P-32 is the first male to successfully disperse from the mountains across the freeway. His sister did it a month earlier.

A year ago friends were saying the former mayor had no assets and was living in an apartment. Now he buys in the Hollywood Hills.

Griffith Park's urban mountain lion has recovered from mange and poisoning. But what about the Twitter photo of a possible second lion up in the canyons?

Holiday magazine sought to delight Americans with tales of "the cliff dwellers [who] cling precariously to the brush-covered slopes of the Hollywood hills, sharing the common perils of fire and flood."

This seems like a twist in the long saga of the 405 freeway improvement project through Sepulveda Pass. Kiewit, the project's main contractor, is suing Metro — not the other way around.

An earthquake of the variety that seismologists classify as "light" rumbled under the basin at 7:36, prompting a routine cautionary response from the LAFD and the usual suspects in LA media to do their over-excited thing on Twitter.

Remember those stunning photos of P-22 in National Geographic? "He doesn't look like that anymore," National Park Service researcher Seth Riley says now.

California mansions are being bought by Chinese families, foreign tycoons and U.S. celebrities as a hedge against currency and stock market disasters or the vicissitudes of politics, Bloomberg Luxury says.

The race to succeed Rep. Henry Waxman in the 33rd congressional district just got more crowded. Miller will take a leave from KCRW and his Washington Post column.

Westside, Valley side or up in the canyons — doesn't matter. Metro officials are urging everyone to avoid driving on the northbound 405 freeway or nearby over this holiday weekend.

Former LA Times reporter Hilary MacGregor describes quite amusingly the battle between her neighbors on Las Palmas Avenue in the Whitley Heights section of Hollywood, and the drivers who want to park there.

Greuel is going with old Villaraigosa hands to run her campaign this time, but Ace Smith and Sean Clegg also advised one of the so-called independent PACs that pushed Greuel for mayor last year.

Greuel doesn't live in the Westside and coastal district, but the law doesn't mind — the voters may be another story. The list of other candidates still may be long.

Rep. Henry Waxman's decision to retire rather than run for another term makes available one of the Democrats' most valuable congressional districts.

The National Park Service said Thursday that the cub was untagged — not one of the cougars they have been following. Which is interesting.

Jones led Northrop for three decades and after retiring created Moraga Vineyards and its respected winery on a slope in Bel Air — a premium winery within the city limits of Los Angeles.

Architect Gerhard Becker pleaded no contest Friday to involuntary manslaughter in the 2011 death of Los Angeles city firefighter Glenn Allen, who died fighting a fire at Becker's home on Viewsite Drive in the Hollywood Hills.

The rebuilt Mulholland Drive bridge opened this morning across the 405 freeway in Sepulveda Pass.

Steve Winter's night photos of a deer, a bobcat, a coyote and a human out in the brush — as well as P-22 in front of the Hollywood sign — accompany the December story, now online.

When the eastbound Wilshire Boulevard onramp to the northbound 405 opens, the transformation will be essentially complete at one of the city's most painful traffic choke points. The ramp project is done 13 days early.

The Beatles album "Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band” was released in the United States on June 1 in 1967. Music writer Chris Morris: "LIke every other 17-year-old in America...we turned the lights down and listened in awe as the last sustained piano chord in 'A Day in the Life' reverberated and died."

UCLA staffer Annelie Rugg bicycles to her job from West Hills, over the Santa Monica Mountains via Sepulveda Pass. Her route takes her two and a half hours -- or three minutes on video. Check it out.

When the Los Angeles Fire Department puts up its red flag, thousands who live in the city's hillsides and canyons are affected. Move your car off the streets in posted areas, or risk an expensive ticket and possibly get towed.

That extra traffic in Laurel Canyon this evening was due to an accident involving an LAPD motorcycle officer. The unidentified officer was on his way to investigate a previous accident when a driver stuck in traffic made an abrupt turn in front of the officer's bike. He's at a hospital but going to be OK.

For a month starting on March 23, the main canyon road connecting the Valley with Beverly Hills will be closed during the day. Coldwater Canyon Avenue needs to be dug up to replace the main water line installed during the William Mulholland era with a new trunk line.

The 405 freeway widening and upgrade project on the Westside and in Sepulveda Pass is about a year behind schedule. But if you haven't been through there in awhile, you might be surprised at the visuals. The skyline at the Wilshire Boulevard interchange is starting to look very different.

KPCC's website has posted a nice gallery of photos from the maintenance work on the iconic Hollywood sign. Nothing like a new coat of paint to freshen up a place.

If things go right, there will be fewer media choppers hovering pointlessly above the ends of the closed 405 freeway during this weekend's traffic event. Or non-event, whatever.

The trompe l'oeil bookshelves were commissioned by Lee Dembart, a former Los Angeles Times editor and writer, and painted in 2005 by artist Don Gray. Author Robert Crais posted about the garage door recently on Facebook.

How dry are the hills around Los Angeles right now? So dry that a small herd of cattle showed up eating lawns on the edge of Chatsworth this morning. And last night. Then a mysterious woman with a bullwhip herded them back home.

Author Robert Crais posts on Facebook: "Another reason I love LA is because people like this live here. They painted their garage door to look like book shelves."

Since at least February, National Park Service trackers have known that P-22 was roaming the canyons of Griffith Park. But his GPS collar has stopped working and they want to track and tag him again.

The overall project is now four to six months behind schedule. This means that the plans to close the freeway over a weekend to finish tearing down the Muholland Drive bridge in Sepulveda Pass are now delayed at least until late summer. Plus: Wilshire Rampture by the numbers.

The city of Santa Monica sent residents an email alert this morning saying that "2nd St. between Wilshire and Arizona is closed down to vehicular and pedestrian traffic due to a mountain lion sighting. The lion is contained and The Department of Fish and Game is in route." Plus the first known photo of a lion in Griffith Park. More Update: Lion shot and killed.

Residents of Grand View Drive in Laurel Canyon are mad as hell about a "scofflaw" builder who has already mansionized one lot on the street and started work on two other parcels. They have banded together to make an effective and informative video — and have a little piece of local rock and roll history in their film.

Check out Veronique de Turenne's photographs from inside the gate at the Hollywood sign.

Gerhard Albert Becker was arrested Saturday on his arrival from Spain at LAX, and he's scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the death last year of LAFD veteran Glenn Allen.

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.

Police responded this morning to his Mulholland Drive home and found Cornelius dead, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot.

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.

Investigators believe the body parts found off a trial under the Hollywood sign belong to a man who was only dead for a day or two.

Metro says it has no cause yet for the failure of a retaining wall section on the 405 freeway improvement project in Sepulveda Pass.

The red flag restrictions that limit parking on many streets in the hills and canyons kick in at 8 a.m. Thursday. I'm kind of surprised they are not in force tonight.

Vanity Fair digs into the neighbor-on-neighbor clash over plans for a big house on the five-acre estate of Saudi prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud.

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...

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 mega Tower Lane construction project was withdrawn Thursday by the owner.

In November it will be 50 years since one of the city's scariest wind-whipped fire storms burned through Brentwood and Bel Air.

Runyon Canyon's mystery mansion gets some ink in the New York Times.

Mark Frauenfelder went for a fun Saturday walking tour of the old Hollywoodland development in Beachwood Canyon.

Bikers aren't happy about rumble strips being added to the loop of canyon roads off Mulholland Highway where motorcyclists have raced for decades.themselves or others. T

Curbed LA's Adrian Glick Kudler goes to the numbers to put the lie to the media hype that buyers from China and Russia are lining up to buy Zsa Zsa Gabor's Bel-Air home.

Singer Neil Diamond's 70th birthday is Monday. On Sunday afternoon, five skywriters spelled out a birthday greeting over the Bel-Air hills.

Escrow closed last week on the late photographer's Raphael S. Soriano-designed home on Woodrow Wilson Drive — Los Angeles historic-cultural monument #325.

Caltrans and Metro have all but finally decided to alter the way the impressively high, 1959-era Mulholland Drive bridge is replaced during the I-405 widening project. It's a simple change that will reduce headaches and could save $10 million.

Nice piece by writer Steve Oney on the memories evoked by the city covering the old concrete pavement of Outpost Drive, with its embedded paw prints of a long ago...

Photojournalist and blogger Ted Soqui was riding with the L.A. Wheelmen on Mulholland Drive when they came across Jay Leno, loading his 1963 Porsche onto a truck.

Instead of preserving the Hollywood sign in its static condition as a legally condoned supergraphic, why not embrace its inner hotel potential?

Hugh Hefner helped put up the last chunk of money in the Trust for Public Land's campaign to buy and preserve acreage west of the Hollywood sign. Councilman Tom LaBonge will talk up the effort this evening on "Which Way, L.A.?" on KCRW.

Three years ago, the family that owns the Hollywood property where Yamashiro and the Magic Castle sit put the 10 acres up for sale. They accepted an offer from Sean MacPherson, impresario behind the Maritime Hotel, Jones, Bar Lubitsch and other hip spots.

Sponsored by parents at Wonderland Avenue Elementary School in Los Angeles and posted at Funny or Die. It's pretty good.

About 300 volunteers helped the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department search through the hills of Malibu Canyon on Saturday without finding any evidence that sheds light on the woman's disappearance.

Superior Court Judge Scott T. Millington expressed doubts about Dr. Christopher Thompson's remorse for stopping short and injuring two cyclists on Mandeville Canyon Road. Millington also claimed the five-year sentence...

Cruising the canyons in a Gullwing and telling tales of Steve McQueen drag racing.

The home on Woodrow Wilson Drive designed by Raphael Soriano — and built for Shulman — is listed at $2.495 million vacant. It includes an extensively wooded yard, including redwood...

As part of the promotion for his new movie, actor Adam Goldberg drives around Los Angeles pointing out some of the things he dislikes. Among them are the food,...

I visited a Los Angeles icon yesterday for the first time. Before we got there I told friends I half-expected to be disappointed. Boy, was I not disappointed. As soon...

Prince has lived in Los Angeles since last spring — that is, if you consider the rarefied gated nouveau complex of Beverly Park to be part of the real L.A....

The two halves of Beverly Park, the exclusive gated community tucked between Beverly Hills and Mulholland Drive, have gone to court against each other over blocked access and unpaid fees....

Mayor Villaraigosa announced some road closures in the park as the rains continue. "The park has experienced some minor to moderate debris flows and flooding on several of its main...

The LAFD is calling the Griffith Park fire 50% encircled and some firefighters are being taken off the line. A little more than 800 acres have been blackened. Councilman Tom...

Michael Walker at Laurel Canyon the Book hopes the cat run over on Barham Boulevard wasn't the one that had been using his lower deck. He also points to a...

Since we're talking cats this week, a reader in Glendale passes along more sightings: No photographic evidence; but up here on the shoulder of the Verdugo Hills (right across the...

Wednesday's Morning Buzz reprinted an email from the president of the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council warning residents that a dog had fallen prey to the mountain lion (or lions)...

Attention hill dwellers: It's brush clearance season for you. Los Angeles Fire Department inspectors are out checking all 129,647 parcels in the scarily named Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone,...