Archive: Central

Nice photo of the long-gone bathhouse and swimming facility from the Auto Club of Southern California archives.

There will be yet another expensive and even smaller special election in Los Angeles later this year.

This is the kind of completely new development turn for Los Angeles that should get a thorough debate in the political arena but that rarely does.

LA journalist and author Michael Krikorian has posted a nice piece on encountering an interesting fellow in the gas pumps at the 76 station just above the Santa Monica Freeway.

Magdi Hanna never saw a jukebox growing up in Egypt. Now he is one of the last to repair the icons of 20th century America.

They have been talking about it so long, the neighborhoods on both sides have changed.

Joe Domanick argues that the city's rising poverty and crime rates are related, "coming together in an era of astounding, Third World-like income disparity, declining social services and desperate poverty." And you thought Uber getting into LAX was the big issue of the day.

Female C-144 has cubs in the Westlake district. Male C-145 ranges around the Silver Lake area. There's a new urban wildlife blog too.

Customers like the deep inventory of films in stock. THR's story drops names like Kyle Chandler, Steven Soderbergh and Keanu Reeves.

Officers yelled at a man who flagged them down to drop the weapon, then opened fire. No gun was found. He survives.

Steve Hymon photographs the colorful characters and scenes — and fauna — at the park that gave Westlake its name.

Sunday afternoon in Mid-City. Photo: LA Observed...

Co-owner and general manager Kerry Slattery told the staff last night she is retiring and turning over management of the store to Mary Williams, the events manager at Skylight.

A homeless encampment on Saturday on Virgil Avenue, beside the Hollywood Freeway in what the blue signs call Wilshire Center.

I'd say the ficus tree has definitively won this battle on Ben Lomond Place in Los Feliz.

CBS News caught up the other day with Dominic Ehrler on his daily visit to the Los Angeles Zoo to feed his friend Mario, the goose that bonded with Ehrler several years ago at Echo Park Lake.

American University Preparatory School, which is taking applications from high school students around the world, will open in the fall in the former Laemmle movie theaters and adjacent converted office building at 3rd and Figueroa streets.

The old Eastside versus Faux Eastside debate is back, this time at the level of neighborhood council. Silver Lake's council advises you not to call them Eastside (not that we would.)

The parking lots at Dodger Stadium have more ridiculous palm trees per square mile than just about anywhere in Los Angeles.

Quite a photo over at The Eastsider LA. As onlookers watched, the hawk laid there unmoving for several minutes while the snake unraveled itself and slithered away.

"I met them at the elevator, stopping the jurors to thank them, to hug them," says the well-known LA labor activist. "One held me and murmured: It was our pleasure."

Joseph Gatto is the longtime art teacher at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts who was found shot and killed in his Silver Lake home last week. Gatto was the father of state Assemblyman Mike Gatto.

Los Angeles historian Jim Beardsley, a scholar in the work of architect Ross G. Montgomery, says his man produced a rendering for the hall ten years before the building opened.

You might remember a couple of years ago when we posted a video featuring two throwback businesses that have survived in the Westlake neighborhood: McManus and Morgan, purveyor of fine art papers, and its neighbor on 7th Street, Aardvark Letterpress.

McManus & Morgan just reached its 90th year in the Westlake district — reason enough to re-post my favorite LA video of 2011.

Caltrans officials were able to open two northbound lanes of I-5 at the interchange with the 2 freeway in Elysian Valley in time for today's afternoon commute. The rest of I-5 may open Tuesday, but the tunnel beneath connecting the northbound 2 to the northbound I-5 is closed indefinitely.

The northbound Interstate 5 freeway near Dodger Stadium, and half the southbound lanes plus the connectors to the 2 Freeway, will likely be closed for Monday's morning commute. That's because of possible structural damage to the freeway by Saturday's fire from a gasoline tanker crash.

TV Guide's Michael Schneider says at his blog Franklin Avenue that he has figured out the location of the run-down former Pennsylvania whorehouse depicted in the season's final scene. It's an 1887 home that is often filmed on Carroll Avenue.

The undercover burglary detectives received minor injuries and are helping in the search for the gunman who ambushed them. The station is on Venice Boulevard in the Mid-City area.

The roller rink on Venice Boulevard, a Mid-City institution since 1981, is closing for good on June 23. The adjoining bowling alley is going too.

"We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone," says Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed. "Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians."

You may have never thought you would see this. As of Monday, a 2.5-mile stretch of the Los Angeles River was officially opened to recreation: kayaking, fishing, or just walking along and checking out the blue herons and the floating trash. Here's where.

Some senior citizens played for an hour on Sunset Boulevard last night. Fans waited all day for tickets. Those who got in had a great time. Video and the set list inside.

The high school social studies teacher gained legend status on the Eastside for his mentoring of Chicano students and for being arrested during the 1968 Chicano walkouts. The middle school on the campus of Belmont High was named for Castro in 2010.

Jason Torchinsky, now 41, bought his 1973 Volkswagen Beetle when he was 18. So it kind of sucked when the car was stolen last week.

Jesus Sanchez, the creator and editor of the blog The Eastsider LA, will hold a public reading — by actors — of selected comments from his blog next Saturday at Taix. It's a performance and a meetup and a fundraiser.

Police in the Rampart division laid out for the media today all the stolen loot they say was retrieved from the car of Frank Chibbaro, a 38-year-old ex-con arrested hiding in a downtown garage on New Year's Day. It's a lot of stuff. Video inside.

The lake bed is currently exposed and the dirt is being pushed around to form habitat for fish to thrive and plants to grow. "The lake bed has to be lined to keep the water from seeping into the ground. What would that look like, I wondered?," Judy Raskin writes at The Eastsider LA.

"Sure, you can get gourmet pie flavors at Pie Hole downtown," writes Aaron Gilbreath at the Paris Review blog. "You can get better coffee most anywhere. You can find more unusual egg breakfasts right across the street. But the burgers here are fat and delicious, the pies are unmatched."

ABC devoted a two-hour "20/20" special edition this past weekend to Sunset Boulevard, "a curving slice of American romance running from the rough edges of East LA through the music of Hollywood, past the riches of Beverly Hills and ending at the Pacific Ocean." Well, not quite East LA, or even the Eastside, but hey it's the promotional side of national news — what do they know.

Speaking of Arianna Huffington's news empire, the AOL Patch site for Echo Park has expanded into adjacent Silver Lake as of today.

Blogger-in-chief Jesus Sanchez tells me the host is moving him to a new box. It should all be cleared up within hours, fingers crossed.

HBO is developing a drama series based on "The Madonnas Of Echo Park," the novel by Brando Skyhorse.

The Echo Park landmark packs them in to honor long-time employees.

Architect Eugene Kinn Choy overcame the anti-Chinese covenants and racism of 1940s Los Angeles to settle in Silver Lake and build this modernist home on Castle Street, near the reservoir.

KPCC ventures into the mud with the local councilman, Eric Garcetti.

Echo Park Lake was drained a few weeks ago for an improvement project, but geese and ducks remain inside the fence.

There was a bit of extra buzz this year due to the participation of former television journalist Bill Lagattuta.

Cassie spent her adolescence on the streets of L.A. then got herself together, only to slip back into the rabbit hole of urchins, dealers and characters in...Frogtown.

But don't buy any advance tickets, and if you're a band, cash the check quick and get out of town.

The former CBS News correspondent and local TV newsman in Los Angeles is now painting and sculpting at a studio in Elysian Valley.

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.

We'll see if this holds up once people realize it could mean this weekend's Sunset Junction street festival has to be cancelled

Jenny Burman excerpts at Chicken Corner a lively online discussion on the identity and history of the term Eastside, as a descriptor of place in Los Angeles. Plus some past posts on the subject.

When CBS Outdoor didn't respond, an LAPD officer asked The Eastsider LA to get involved.

Maria the goose is now in residence at the Los Angeles Zoo. Dominic Ehrler is OK with the move, and has visiting privileges.

Our Valentine's Day mystery about the present-day status of L.A.'s Lovers Lane from 1871 appears to be solved

Tropico de Nopal is west of Downtown, but the gallery space and its director are of the Eastside.

Sherman Oaks and Echo Park start up this week, with familiar names involved.

Crowds are already forming, and streets already closing, in the USC area for President Obama's campaign rally this afternoon. But some new plans to be aware of: the White House...

Organizers of an L.A. event to coincide with the Oct. 30 Rally to Restore Sanity being put on in Washington, D.C. by Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" say they have a new venue.

No LAPD officers were hurt in this afternoon's shooting in the 1600 block of Temple Street near Union Avenue.

Last weekend's fatal shooting of 37-year-old Guatemalan Manuel Jamines continues to echo in the news. LAPD officer Frank Hernandez, who shot Jamines, was accused in a civil lawsuit earlier this...

Police Protective League drops its usual no rush to judgment stance on this one, plus a new witness saying there was no knife and other developments.

Police and a few hundred protesters squared off again Wednesday night in the area of 6th Street and Union Avenue, with some objects thrown and at least one fire lit and quickly extinguished. Earlier in the evening, Chief Beck was greeted by jeers at a community meeting where he had gone to promise a full investigation into the shooting of Guatemalan day laborer Manuel Jamines.

fter a day of protest marches, vigils and confrontations with police, the LAPD declared an illegal assembly about 10 p.m. and officers in riot gear began clearing the streets around 6th Street and Union Avenue. That's where an LAPD bicycle officer on Sunday shot and killed a day laborer identified unofficially as Manuel Jamines.

K, we've written so much about the geography wars in Los Angeles — and especially the bastardization of the traditional Eastside — that we're pretty tired of it. Curbed LA is tired of it too, so the site is asking readers to help.

Now comes L.A. Times media columnist James Rainey with his take on The Entryway, the project where two white journalists (soon to be one) are embedded with an immigrant family near MacArthur Park.

Ophelia Chong posts an item at her KCET blog on moving in with some women in the Valley, "so that I can better report back to my friends who refuse to go north of the 134 and west of the 405."

The journalists who are living with a Mexican immigrant family near MacArthur Park posted some new FAQs tonight aimed at addressing some of the criticism directed at the reporting project.

Daniel Hernandez's post about the white journalists living with a Latino family near MacArthur Park has attracted a number of commenters who agree with him that it's a misguided and in some ways offensive project.

Daniel Hernandez, the former Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly staff writer now working for the LAT bureau in Mexico City, is not a fan of The Entryway.

The Echo Park restaurant that become such a community and media center after the Haiti earthquake may be closed 6 to 8 weeks. An electrical short is blamed.

The Eastsider LA posts about a little mystery in Echo Park and a call for some information about the woman who may have been known as Nita.

The cameras crew grew in number today at TiGeorges' Chicken, the Haitian restaurant on Glendale Boulevard where Jenny Burman visited yesterday for Chicken Corner.

Search warrants were served this week at homes owned by Alarcon's wife in Panorama City (in his district) and Sun Valley (not.)