Archive: SoCal

Dodger Stadium is now the second most-Instagrammed location in the world, after Disneyland, but SoCal destinations no longer dominate the Top 10 list.

Studio SoCaL debuted Friday night as a weekly half-hour that repeats a few times. The first show had former LA mayor Richard Riordan and a discussion of "Silicon Beach."

The New York Times data team used Facebook data to map the baseball team preferences of the country, focusing on those borders between fans loyal to one team or another. Kind of fascinating, despite the lame name.

The magnitude 5.1 earthquake at 9:09 p.m. was centered near the border of Los Angeles and Orange counties, 21 miles southeast of the downtown Los Angeles Civic Center. There was a 3.6 foreshock and two aftershocks in the same ballpark.

Freedom Communications, the parent company of the Orange County Register and the forthcoming LA Register, says it will introduce a new Spanish-language weekly newspaper called Unidos en el Sur de California on March 21. The weekly will combine the existing SoCal Spanish-language papers, Excelsior and La Prensa.

"The Real Orange" with Ed Arnold has been on since 1997. Still no news about the station breaking from its OC roots to expand into LA and greater Southern California.

The Wheel Inn truck stop beside Interstate 10 has abruptly closed. The giant dinosaurs remain, though their future might be uncertain.

Robert G. Magnuson, a former top editor at both the LA Times Business section and the paper's former Orange County edition, was elected at a meeting last week at the City Club on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles. The location is relevant.

Been a while since I posted an early look at the bestselling books in Southern California's independent bookstores. Here are the top books through sales of Sunday.

It appears that fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner abandoned his Nissan truck on a fire road above Big Bear Lake due to a broken axle. Of course, that doesn't explain why he lit the truck on fire before heading into the forest, but it suggests that abandoning the truck and setting out on foot just before a snowstorm hit the area may not have been his first choice.

Southern California's air quality agency has spoken: the rotten egg smell that wafted over much of the region starting Sunday has been traced to the distant desert lake.

Late in the day, the South Coast Air Quality Management District posted an update in which it acknowledged the possibility that dead fish at the Salton Sea are the source of the rotten-egg smell reported all day Monday. The update noted, however, that "it is highly unusual for odors to remain strong up to 150 miles from their source."

So many residents across the inland parts of the Los Angeles Basin began complaining about a bad, sulfur-like smell this morning — even clogging 911 phone lines — that officials were forced to look into it. Read the memo from an AQMD scientist briefing his board members.

The National Weather Service says the combination of hot temperatures (over 100 in many areas) and higher than usual humidity for the summer "will create a prolonged period of well above normal and possibly dangerous heat." Some of the desert temperatures could take your breath away.

We're not that different — or are we?

Photographer Gary Leonard is really looking forward to the move of that 340-ton boulder to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

This time, let's compare Southern California's book-buying to the Pacific Northwest. First thing we notice: no Steve Jobs.

It didn't take long for Michael Connelly's newest Harry Bosch mystery to take over the top spot in Southern California independent bookstores.

This week's bestseller lists at Southern California independent bookstores have some new arrivals.

Here are the new top sellers for the week at Southern California independent bookstores.

A new study from the Center for Health Reporting at USC says flatly that when the Big One hits Southern California, "hospitals won't be ready."

Here is a first look at the bestseller lists at independent bookstores around Southern California through Sunday.

The state may say L.A. is over four million, but to the U.S. Census Bureau we're at 3,792,621.

James Rainey argues in his Saturday column that with the corporate owners of the Times, Register, Daily News and San Diego Union-Tribune each facing their own financial squeezes, the inevitable best hope is for them to stop competing.

Sumar, one of seven orcas at Sea World San Diego, died this afternoon after appearing lethargic yesterday and being given antibiotics.

Tonight's earthquake at 9:26 p.m. struck near Ocotillo, in the same region of the Imperial Valley near the U.S.-Mexico border where the quakes have been a-swarming for months.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has nabbed Jeff Light from the Register in Orange County to be editor and vice president.