Beverly Hills Versus the Westside Subway By Patrick Range McDonald Thursday, Jul 14 2011
On an overcast morning, Susan Bursk, president of the Century City Chamber of Commerce, is running a meticulously staged press conference at the corner of Constellation Boulevard and Avenue of the Stars, across from the Century Plaza Hotel. She has enlisted a gaggle of middle-aged supporters who cheer and wave placards for the TV cameras while Century City boosters urge spending tens of millions of dollars on a Westside Subway stop on sleepy Constellation Boulevard, instead of at a long-discussed site on bustling Santa Monica Boulevard about two blocks away.
Bursk, politically savvy if reserved, declares that a station "in the heart of Century City" — a marketing phrase she coined to promote building the subway stop at Constellatio
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The First 15 Minutes by Ryan Deto LA Weekly Photos from the week of November 24, 2011
"I think there will be looting and rioting right after it happens," Gooday predicts.
With streets in the Spring Street area filled with rubble and crushed cars, and no way to call for aid, word spreads among those trying to help victims: The California Hospital Medical Center, the only hospital in downtown proper (White Memorial Medical Center is in Boyle Heights, across the L.A. River, and County USC Medical Center is three and half miles away), is 12 blocks away, close enough to go for help.
Little do they know that California Hospital Medical Center is ground zero for its own disaster. Figueroa Street, Pico Boulevard and Grand Avenue near the hospital are at a standstill, with some 20,000 fans converging on the area for a 7:30 p.m. Katy Perry concert at Staples Center when the quake hits. That panicked mass ha
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The First 15 Minutes by Ryan Deto LA Weekly Photos from the week of November 24, 2011
Peggy Gooday sits paralyzed on her sofa as the world outside shrieks with an unearthly roar. The sound of millions of bits of lumber, metal, concrete and glass twisting and shattering echoes as downtown Los Angeles plunges into darkness. Gooday's TV is launched off its pedestal and smashes at her feet. Paintings jump from their hangers. Her clattering cup of tea falls off the coffee table and splashes onto her carpet.
Gooday's eighth-floor apartment in the historic Alexandria Hotel at Fifth and Spring streets is convulsing like a paint shaker, and her emotions race from fear to fascination and back. All she can do is sit, immobile, in her suddenly pitch-dark domicile.
Gooday says: "I would probably try to grab my
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In Leigh Fondakowski’s harrowing new book, Jonestown survivors talk about what happened in Guyana — and the might-have-been utopia that still haunts their dreams
This year marks the 35th anniversary of the infamous Jonestown murdersuicides orchestrated by Reverend Jim Jones in Guyana. More than 900 people lost their lives.While Jones’ Peoples Temple is inherently a Bay Area story — that of an Indianapolis preacher who, in 1965, moved his followers to Ukiah and later San Francisco, where they became a political force — the church branched out to L.A. and attracted thousands of local congregants. In her new book, Stories From Jonestown (University of Minnesota Press), author Leigh Fondakowski interviews more than 40 survivors, former cult members, relatives of the deceased and vario
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"Like a lot of other stuff in my life, I sort of fell backwards into it,” screenwriter Will Beall says of his unexpected perch atop Hollywood’s A-list. Unexpected, because just five years ago Beall was busy working for Tinseltown’s second most famous employer, the L.A. Police Department, where he was a homicide detective in South Central’s notoriously rough 77th Division. Then he published his first novel, the gritty rookie-cop saga L.A. Rex, which earned Beall plaudits from Joseph Wambaugh, fellow LAPD vet–turnedauthor, plus a gig adapting the screenplay for über-producer Scott Rudin.
When that script landed in seventh place on 2009’s "Black List” — the annual insider survey of the industry’s best unproduced screenplays — Beall
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In the 1960s, Mercedes Cortes arrived in Hollywood after fleeing her homeland of Guatemala, which was roiled by bloody unrest. After moving around a bit, she and her husband and their three sons settled in a two-bedroom apartment on Eleanor Avenue, a community of run-down apartment buildings and old Craftsman-style houses, which is a short walk from Paramount Pictures and Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where many stars are buried.
A decade later, Cortes' world was shattered again — when gang violence and drug dealing hit her beloved neighborhood. This time, the affable, soft-spoken housekeeper bravely stood her ground as Hollywood was en
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Behind the Goodyear auto shop on Lincoln Boulevard in Venice, there's a dimly lit parking lot with scattered cardboard boxes and two Dumpsters. At night it's as silent as an empty church, and mist drifting in from the ocean forms a permanent fog. Up against the shop's rear façade, there's a small indentation in the wall, about 4 feet wide and 1 foot deep.
This indentation is where Russell Sheen, 61, has made his home for the past three months. A Vietnam vet and self-proclaimed alcoholic (sober for 15 years), Sheen walks with a limp from shrapnel he caught in his left leg during an explosion while in combat. He lost his apartment last year. He's been on the streets ever since.
"I've been in probably some of the worst spots in the world. I
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Tsunami Debris Coastal Cleanup Day http://wwwecoslo.org/coaSTAL-CLEANUP-DAY
Palms
Queen palm
Windmill palm
Mexican fan palm
King palm
Date palm
Canary island date palm
Anis –fennel
Field trip to the wind wolves Preserve
www.centralcoastbioneers.org Central Coast Bioneers annual pre-conference in western Kern County. Wind Wolves non-profit preserve. Mountains, grassland and desert converge. Between a Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada. Tule elk, California condor,golden eagles,San Emigdio Canyon,Native American rock art site. The Windland Conservancy
Several years ago, filmmaker Dan Abrams was in his office above Primitivo Wine Bistro on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, an ex–New Yorker thinking about how much he loved Venice.
L.A.'s housing bubble meant beloved bungalows were being converted into high-design mansions and condos, transforming once-charming pocket neighborhoods as land speculation gripped the city. But Abrams had some money, and realized that if he bought the quirky property where he rented his office, he could preserve the place he loved, which also encompassed iconic Joe's Restaurant and a third eatery, plus the popular local Sculpture Gardens Nursery, the community's famed melaleuca tree and back parking lots along Electric Avenue. He figured he could develop the site based on environmentally sustainable ideals imbued with a Venice vibe, going up in height but not too hi
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