It was a Friday night in June when former Lyft driver Yago Rodriguez picked up four women in Santa Monica outside the Buffalo Club and unknowingly drove his vehicle into a sly game of bumper... More >>
In April, a man named Erin Walker Markland drove off a mountain road near Santa Cruz and was killed. The woman who had planned to marry him, Jordanna Thigpen, was devastated. For comfort, she... More >>
Alfonso Flores is small but fit, with thick, rounded shoulders and a certain way of holding himself that says he could control a lot of space around him — quickly, if need be. His soft... More >>
Traffic grinds to a halt as an absurdly long hook-and-ladder truck pulls out of Fire Station 9, on Seventh and San Julian streets in Skid Row, lately rebranded as "Central City East." Shining... More >>
They told no one about the dresses. Not their friends, or neighbors, or even their children. Not that anyone would have believed that an ordinary suburban hausfrau has more dresses than Imelda... More >>
Mallory Mnichowski was nervous. Nineteen and pregnant, she had never robbed a bank before. Robert St. John was worried, too. He was her pimp and, on this morning, her getaway driver. He was sure... More >>
Here comes Aja Brown — pronounced “Asia” for those who haven’t heard about the 31-year-old mayor of Compton elected in a landslide vote last month. The young black men... More >>
Nine months ago, we kicked off a tournament to determine the greatest L.A. novel of all time. As the months passed, we read all the greats: Chandler and Cain, Bukowski and Fante, Didion and... More >>
His ears were a good conversation starter. Misshapen, the cartilage calcified by years spent scraping against sweat-soaked wrestling mats, they looked alien, possibly malignant. Ask about them... More >>
When Leah Capranica decided to go to Occidental College in Los Angeles, she thought she had found a school whose values matched her own. With its tranquil campus in Eagle Rock and its diverse... More >>
Best of L.A. 2013
It’s nearly impossible to cover a city this sprawling — 470 square miles of awesomeness, 6,499 miles of streets and 3.7 million residents, all of them seemingly on the 405… More >>
Silver Lake Millennials War With Boomers in America's "Most Livable" Community
It's around 9:30 p.m. on a brisk Wednesday night in Silver Lake, and Charles Herman-Wurmfeld, an affable, native New Yorker who takes an inner satisfaction, if not outright glee, in… More >>
Computer techie/consultant/aspiring actor Michael Brouillet, 32, moved to Los Angeles four years ago from San Antonio and didn't quite understand how this city rolls. In his first 18 months, parking… More >>
A Boy Named Horst How to summarize the reaction to last week's cover story ("Becoming Riff Raff," by Ben Westhoff)? You laughed, you cried, you called us assholes. Some of you… More >>
How the Hollywood Fault Made Millennium's Future Uncertain, and L.A. a Laughingstock
Note: An unedited version of this story was inadvertently published online on Sept. 18. This is the edited version. See factual correction at end. The Los Angeles City Council rushed through… More >>
NIMBYs and Hitler: Readers Respond
Paul Teetor's critique of Ben Urwand's new book taking on Hollywood's supposed pact with Hitler, The Collaboration, drew raves last week ("Hindsight in Hollywood," Sept. 13). Scottzwartz writes, "Urwand's book is… More >>
