Archive: Life

KCRW gathered up as much available public data as they could get on the breeds and names of dogs in Los Angeles County -- it's surprisingly difficult to get -- and produced an interesting list of the most popular dogs.

The restaurant at Wilshire and Doheny has met a need through the years: open late, big menu, long counter and a few dishes to come back for. It also has an LA Observed connection.

Interesting blog post by law professor and city of Los Angeles ethics commissioner Jessica Levinson on an aspect of the public culture here.

The figure skating and hockey cultures of the Westside are feverishly trying to avert the impending closure of the fixture on Sepulveda Boulevard where Wayne Gretzky practiced as an LA King (and before) and where generations of local kids learned to skate.

It's time again for the annual ritual in Los Angeles County — the mass burial of unclaimed or indigent individuals left in the coroner's morgue.

Fascinating Column One in the LA Times this morning about two researchers with time on their hands. They mapped some — but a lot — of the swimming pools in and around Los Angeles.

Sarah Silverman met Duck at a Van Nuys no-kill shelter 14 years ago. They became best friends.

Our favorite Los Angeles writer about sports has a poignant story up at SBNation -- "a lovely, lovely piece," says a friend via email -- that on the surface is about the missing home run ball off the bat of Kirk Gibson that famously won a big game the last time the Dodgers were in the World Series. But like the best sports stories, it's really about life.

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.

Coachella music festival promoter Goldenvoice has been trying since April to repatriate hundreds of wallets, cellphones, car keys and other items with the fans who left them behind in the desert. They really work hard to find the owners.

Remember our report in April on the twin agave century plants just starting to sprout in Meg Sullivan and Steve Roe's front yard? Well you better look again.

Richie Trimble's two-wheeler rose 14.5 feet and barely fit under the San Diego Freeway overpass on Venice Boulevard during Sunday's Ciclavia. “Everyone looks at you like your nuts and they’re right!,” he says.

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.

Vulture compiled every facet of sex, relationships and New York that Sarah Jessica Parker's lead character wondered aloud about during the six seasons of "Sex and the City."

Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was elected pope on Wednesday night at the conclave in Vatican City. He took the name Francis and will be the first leader of the Roman Catholic church from Latin America.

Remember how the big news in Los Angeles just last weekend was the cold? This winter weekend, the swimming pool at the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica is adding extra hours for Martin Luther King Day.

Regrettable news from Donna Myrow, who founded L.A. Youth as a newspaper written by and for Los Angeles teenagers 25 years ago. It has been a struggle to keep the paper going in recent years. A desperate fundraising pitch last year bought some more time. But a note in the upcoming February issue will announce that L.A. Youth is closing down. Here is Myrow's note in the final issue.

Westside playwright and screenwriter Gideon Brower has found community in the small crowd that gathers to watch the death counter on Santa Monica Boulevard reset to zero at midnight. "People cheer and drink champagne," he says. There's a twist.

Jay Schaefer, a father of four daughters, saw a bicycle parked on an overpass above the Hollywood Freeway. Then he spotted the 16-year-old girl perched on the ledge above the freeway. He stopped, jumped out, and grabbed her through the fence rails. "I asked her if she was OK. She said, No, she wanted to die."

Mack Reed's Tumblr post about finding a duffel bag full of someone else's weed in his Silver Lake yard and calling the LAPD — we posted about it early yesterday — has made its way rapidly around the web.

Silver Lake games developer Mack Reed, the former LA Times reporter and Voice of LA blogger, was faced recently with a quandary most of us will never encounter. On deadline, of course.

Wednesday was the day of the annual interring in Boyle Heights of cremated human remains that were never picked up from the coroner by family members. A couple of dozen people attended a brief ceremony, among them county Supervisor Don Knabe.

In the November issue of Los Angeles magazine, and online today, editor Amy Wallace and photographer Damon Casarez pay attention to the impromptu memorials you sometimes see placed where someone recently died.

My local Orchard Supply Hardware store on Bundy Drive has redesigned and rebranded as the kind of hardware store it says should appeal to women. You know: brighter colors, lower shelves, "aspirational images" and less of that masculine hardware stuff.

The Los Angeles Public Library and maps librarian Glen Creason have a few newly acquired maps on their hands. Make that tens of thousands, at least. "I think there are at least a million maps here," Creason said after visiting a small Mount Washington cottage whose late owner, John Feathers, apparently liked hoarding maps.

Nirvan Mullick's little video about an Eastside boy's cardboard arcade is now a foundation, a cardboard movement and a Global Day of Play on Oct. 6. New video from Mullick.

It appears to be just one of those things. A woman who had been en route to a funeral was found dead sitting in a hearse outside the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard.

Nice Column One story by the LAT's Kurt Streeter on confronting his fears of the water so he can help his two-year-old learn to swim.

The LA Times architecture critic's expanded essays based on walking the Los Angeles area's "iconic boulevards" took on Sunset this weekend. He previously visited Atlantic Boulevard.

Basically USC to Chinatown, with feeder legs from MacArthur Park and Boyle Heights.

The Other Side on Hyperion closes June 24, says John Rabe of KPCC. A documentary in the works traces the decline of Silver Lake as a center of gay Los Angeles through the years.

Parking fines in Los Angeles are already way disproportionate to the crime, but in his desperation to balance his budget Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is planning to ask for the sixth increase in his time in office. Is it a policy move because parking violations are becoming some kind of civic nuisance? Uh, no. It's about money — and parking after the street sweeper comes could cost you a day's pay.

When Giovanni Ramirez attended the first game at Dodger Stadium in April — his first ever — fans asked for his autograph or to take a picture with him. A television crew taped an interview. "Of the all the 56,000 fans who bought tickets for opening day at Dodger Stadium," writes J.P. Hoonstra in the Daily News, " it's possible that none were treated as well" as Ramirez.

Vanity Fair and "60 Minutes" conducted a little poll of Americans' answers to an eclectic set of questions you may not have known were pressing. The answers are fun to see.

On Monday, Nirvan Mullick posted his short film about nine-year-old Caine Monroy and the cardboard arcade he built last summer in his dad's auto parts store in Boyle Heights. The rest is Internet history.

Dulce Vasquez, the managing director of Zócalo Public Square, says hello and defuses the situation.

-feb2012.jpg" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 20px 5px 0;" />Water watcher and dry gardener Emily Green is advising her fellow Los Angeles-area gardeners that despite the tease of rain this week, it's time to irrigate the soil.

I watched a bicyclist get hit by a car today in Westwood Village, right in front of me. So I had bike riders on the mind.

David Wittman, the DJ Dave who made a hit YouTube music video spoof last year about getting real in the Whole Foods parking lot (on Lincoln Boulevard), and followed it up with a new satire of yoga studio culture, gets "noticed" in this past weekend's New York Times Sunday Styles section.

Turns out we might keep our own little mental map inside our heads. That's no surprise. But where it's pointed did make researchers think.

in the city of Los Angeles, residential trash pickup that usually occurs on Thursday will happen on Friday, due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Regular Friday pickups will occur on Saturday...

Evidence is mounting for the bad health effects of breathing the air in traffic jams and living near freeways, even as the exhaust from cars and trucks gets cleaner.

Condolences, everyone. Normalcy returns March 11, 2012.

The cherry-red Porsche 930 Turbo reported stolen in Las Vegas in 1988 was headed to the Netherlands.

KCET producer Karen Foshay Kolesnikow and friends made this video as a school fundraiser.

Your loved ones will immediately read from your dull eyes that you don’t love them, never will again.

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....

Topics include L.A.'s children's museum, LudoBites, Westside Pavilion parking, the 405, Los Angeles magazine and more.

Abby Sunderland, now 17, is taking flying lessons and talking about going around the world.

"It's how we live on the Westside of L.A....pay my 80 bucks for six things and get the heck out."

Here's 54 seconds of video from the Los Angeles entry in World Naked Bike Ride on Saturday. Looks like about 100 riders in different stages of nudity turning off...

Jennifer Ferro, the general manager of KCRW, writes at Zocalo about changes in her neighborhood near Western Avenue and Washington Boulevard.

The county's Department of Beaches and Harbors website blames "budget curtailments" for the cancellation of the traditional beachfront fireworks show.

The New York Times Magazine has a little feature where it looks at interesting people's homes.

End of an era in the Valley, which was still agricultural enough in the 1940s to launch an annual livestock and equestrian fair held for a few decades at the Devonshire Downs race track and fairgrounds in Northridge.

Adrienne Crew came to me a while ago and said she wanted to do a personal blog on growing older in Los Angeles. The topic is one that a lot of people quietly think about, but it doesn't get a lot attention in the blogosphere.

The cocktail lounge at the Canoga Park Bowl features classical music on Wednesday nights.

Markos Geneti of Ethiopia, running his first marathon, set a course record 2 hours, 6 minutes and 35 seconds. It's the fastest marathon ever run in California and the second fastest in the world this year.

Good story by Kurt Streeter on Kelly Gneiting, a sumo wrestler who stands six feet, weights 405 pounds and has a 60-inch waist.

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

In this WSJ video, Dominic Ehrler talks about how the conection began between him and Maria the goose that follows him around Echo Park lake every day.

Many conventioneers go to the Playboy Mansion hoping for a special experience, but attendees at the DOMAINFest conference really did catch something special.

Your friends at the 99 Cents Only stores, as usual, offer you some buying advice for the cheap date on your Valentine's Day list.

Lowriders from around the West caravanned through East Los Angeles on Saturday in a funeral procession for Jesse Valadez, co-founder 45 years ago of The Imperials car club. His red...

Really, snow in January? That's so unfair. To our New York friends, here's an early valentine from the Coast.

Robert Masello's novel "Bestiary" came closer to the truth than he could have imagined.

Victoria Delgadillo at the LA Eastside blog explains the December relationship many Angelenos have with their San Marcos blankets — the big thick colorful cobijas that sometimes double as art works.

The blogger at Bottom of the Fourth was invited to join his roommates' holiday tradition of commemorating some big Jewish event in gingerbread. He chose Sandy Koufax' 1965 perfect game against the Cubs at Dodger Stadium.

I've really been enjoying Los Angeles magazine's feature this month on 50 more-or-less famous Angelenos remembering something about growing up here.

Journalist and blogger about gardens and water policy Emily Green writes about leaving her garden in the city for a new challenge in the foothills, "half the house and twice the land...and has sandy loam instead of clay."

California Watch, the Northern California investigative reporting outfit, will be in Echo Park on Thursday conducting free tests for toxic lead in jewelry.

Starbucks baristas are being told to take their time even more, according to company documents seen by the Wall Street Journal.

Stephen Randall, the editor in Los Angeles for Playboy magazine, explains in an Op-Ed piece for the LAT that while he loves his smartphone and all of his tech toys, the old fashioned telephone on his desk at home still has its place.

I spotted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver pedaling their bikes northbound on Main Street in Santa Monica.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has extended the stay-pending-appeal of the recent Proposition 8 decision until at least December....

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker kept his temporary hold on gay marriages in effect until Aug. 18 to give supporters of Proposition 8 time to appeal last week's ruling invalidating key parts of the voter-approved measure.

Joshua Joy Kamensky, the ex-City Hall press aide turned screenwriter, argues that Jewel's videotaped stunt in Santa Monica for Funny or Die (below) wasn't funny. And worse.

First lady Michelle Obama was spotted last night leaving Osteria Mozza with one of the children, and they stopped today at Pink's before heading to Game 6 of the NBA Finals.

For those who remember when the Cineplex on the top level of Beverly Cinema was a pretty hot ticket, this is somewhat shocking.

TJ Sullivan was standing in line at a warehouse store when he called out a couple of his fellow shoppers for strategically staking out spots in two lines, waiting to see which moved faster. OK, so they took umbrage at TJ's umbrage, then things got racial.

Tina Dupuy at Fishbowl L.A. says the runners she has heard from had tons of horror stories about pre-race traffic, the course and the experience for runners after they finished the race. Especially the traffic.

With the local Blockbuster closing, Tabloid Baby blogs that the community at the far end of Sunset Boulevard from Downtown — home to Hollywood heavies such as Steven Spielberg, Kate Hudson "and until yesterday, Peter Graves" — will be without a bricks-and-mortar video outlet.

The view from Mount Wilson, just a couple of minutes ago. It's not dark at 7 o'clock any more....

Saturday was opening day at the Encino Little League baseball diamonds, located at Hayvenhurst and Magnolia since 1954. John Scheibe, the author of "On the Road With Jim Murray: Baseball and the Summer of '79" and an editor in Sports at the L.A. Times, played there as a boy and returned for the annual ritual.

The Starbucks at L.A. Live is trying a three-month experiment of closing at 2 a.m. six nights a week.

Laurie Pike at Los Angeles magazine let the website Apartment Therapy do a tour of her Koreatown apartment. Reader reaction hasn't all been positive.

If I were doing an end-of-year roundup of obits, Schiller would be in it. Her husband opened the Pink Pussycat in an old Hollywood jazz club on Santa Monica Boulevard,...

When our LA Sketchbook cartoonist Steve Greenberg had a drawing in Sunday's Daily News, it was something of a time warp. He was the paper's first staff cartoonist back in...

Dating author and hypnotherapist Alex Benzer gives his seven reasons at the Huffington Post why Los Angeles is, he argues, an extraordinarily tough dating town. The high ratio of single...

In part three of Iris Schneider's exclusive-to-LA Observed posts following Bruce Lisker's reentry to society after 26 years behind bars, Bruce moves in with Kara in Marina del Rey. Iris...

Chances are you have seen James Goldstein around town — and how could you miss him and his python cowboy hat? He shows up at fashion events and courtside at...

Sean Roderick was on busy Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica on Saturday night when she encountered a wedding procession, apparently Indian, with the groom riding atop an elephant. The video...

Alas, our long virtual summer is over. Standard Time returns Sunday, so set your clocks back an hour. Read it and weep: the sun will set Sunday at 5 p.m....

Friends and family of the late philanthropist and civic leader Nancy Daly heard heaps of praise last night at a memorial gathering in UCLA's Royce Hall. Times columnist Patt Morrison,...

Iris Schneider went to Saturday's parking lot sale of old costumes and props from the L.A. Opera warehouse. "They wheeled 2,500 costumes onto their parking lot and at 10 a.m...

I love this paragraph for what it says about the quirkiness of Los Angeles, or at least of the Tujunga area. Much more authentic and telling than the media meme...

The store's annual clearance sale began in the Convention Center today....

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...

The 99-cent store's newspaper ads today divide possible Father's Day gifts into two categories: Good Choice and Bad Choice. In the former are ties, belts, socks — and condoms. In...

A few readers have emailed in the last couple of days wondering about the Lucky market that re-appeared at Van Nuys and Sherman Way in the Valley, taking over an...

Dennis Cozzalio, the cinemaphile and baseball obsessive who blogs at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, is sponsoring a group outing to the Mission Tiki Drive-in in Montclair. (The...

NPR staffer Karen Grigsby Bates has a nice Easter feature in this weekend's L.A. Times' Image section on church hats, focusing on the ladies who dressed for Palm Sunday services...

As many as a couple hundred hoofers walked Sunset and Santa Monica boulevards — from downtown to the bluffs in Santa Monica — today in the latest of Michael Schneider's...

Gov. Sarah Palin hanging in effigy or this Los Feliz store display with a Manson family murders theme? That's a pregnant Sharon Tate, tied with a noose around her neck,...

Remember last year when I posted on the million-dollar wedding of real estate mogul Jeffrey Greene and New York real-estate executive Mei Sze Chan, at the groom's 27-acre Beverly Hills...

Elaine Martin, left, and Cindy Gise have been together since meeting at Valley State College, now Cal State Northridge. They were among the first in line this morning in Norwalk....

I made a note to myself, but forgot to mention, that the base Dodger Dogs at the stadium are five bucks this season. You can of course pay more...

Metromix profiles women who are rising through the club scene. Shereen Arazm, a petite, bubbly brunette, could easily be mistaken for a Hollywood clubber at trendy venues such as Central,...

In another of those generic magazine roundups claiming to know the best of something, but really an exercise in geographic diversity, Details includes Square One Dining on its top ten...

The winter fruit of the gods has been fingered, crushed and tossed aside at my Westside supermarkets. But I found some yesterday in Little Tokyo, at the Mitsuwa Marketplace, that...

Actually it's not so new, but the Koreanization of the suburbs in the northwest Valley has really taken hold. I think every church my parents tried to drag me into...

Larry Lipson wrote up restaurants for the Daily News starting in 1958. From his exit column: Sure, there have been editors who have leaned somewhat heavily on me - especially...

In his last piece left in the can for the LA Weekly before taking his keyboard to Mexico, Daniel Hernandez uses Elizabeth Palacios's troubles with the law to tell the...

The blogger at Spanglish Gringo lives in Boyle Heights and recently was told by the Los Angeles Times that he can no longer receive the paper at home. Baffled, he...

Larry Mantle this morning took on one of the lesser issues of our time, but one that's still interesting and perplexing for locals: should we refer to freeways by their...

A Jon Weisman post at Dodger Thoughts that is not about baseball inspired a long run of comments on being a pedestrian, here and elsewhere. Jon began by addressing an...

Children who grow up close to busy highways "have significant impairments in the development of their lungs that can lead to respiratory problems for the rest of their lives," the...

→ Los Angeles magazine executive editor Mary Melton had a scare on the Santa Monica freeway: her left rear window exploded, spraying safety glass bits over her thankfully unoccupied child...

You might think of director Sydney Pollack as a New Yorker, but he has been here for thirty years. He answered questions for the blog of the 92nd Street Y...

They threw a party last night in Pasadena for a Stradivarius violin. Jerry Kohl fell in love with the idea of owning a Strad after reading an L.A. Times story...

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LOS ANGELES/OXNARD CA 954 AM PDT SAT JUL 15 2006 ...DANGEROUS HEAT EXPECTED TODAY ACROSS THE VALLEYS AND LOWER MOUNTAIN ELEVATIONS OF...

Filmmaker, blogger and promoter Brian Flemming has cooked up a new stunt. He announced yesterday on his blog that for the next week he will eat only what comes out...

When LA Weekly lifestyle editor and Style Council blogger Linda Immediato lost her Venice home suddenly, she looked around and came up empty. No place she could afford would let...

T Bone Burnett did indeed play the El Rey last night, as not scheduled, then scheduled, then moved, then moved back again. If that seems crazy, see yesterday's post. One...