Dubai

Hotter Than Habaneros

Wally's Wine & Spirits Has Been Sold: And The Wine Shop Goes To?

A moment of silence for another local wine retailer. Steve Wallace has sold Wally's Wine and Spirits. Once a small outpost in West L.A., since it opened nearly forty five years ago the Wally's name has become synonymous for quality, be it the wine and spirits collection or its fundraisers. Plenty o ... More >>

A Fashion Show That Jazzes Up Conservative Clothing For Muslim Women

Marwa Atik needs five pieces of trim, the kind embellished with pearls and black jewels. At a store in downtown L.A.'s Fashion District, boxes of trimmings line the walls from floor to ceiling, but Atik scans quickly and zeroes in on what she wants. At her direction, a clerk climbs a tall, wooden la ... More >>

Henry Rollins: The Column! Globetrotting Blues

[Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here on West Coast Sound every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Saturday KCRW broadcast.] I am on my way back to Los Angeles, on the second of two flights to get back from Johannesburg ... More >>

Hit Boy: Whatever Kanye Wants ...

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here. "Ni**as in Paris," last year's most popular song, exploded in roughly the same amount of time that its producer spent creating it. "It took me probably 15 minutes to make tha ... More >>

Hiram Sanchez, Drunk LAX Traveler, Reportedly Tries to Take Down Customs Officers in 'Last Hurrah' Before Rehab

Morning, kids! Here's what not to do when Customs and Border Protection asks to see your passport at LAX. Early on Tuesday, an L.A. County man who had been traveling abroad for almost a year -- but who was returning to California for rehab -- tried to take down two CBP officers when they asked for ... More >>

Dante Torres, Malibu Kite Surfer Possibly Vacationing From Dubai, Dies in Tragic Kelp Accident

A young man who may have been visiting Los Angeles from Dubai died while kite surfing as the Daylight Saving's sunlight faded on Monday night. Dante Torres, 28, became entangled in a bed of kelp as he surfed the waters of Malibu's Topanga County Beach -- just off Pacific Coast Highway -- says Assis ... More >>

California is The Richest Place on Earth

Haters like to say that L.A. is turning into Mexico City and that California's golden days are long past. Well, we hate to break it to you, but happy days are here again. At least for the rich of the Golden State. California ranks number one ...

Kim Kardashian Reportedly Paid $600K to Party in Vegas on NYE

You know you've done something right, in life, when you find yourself sorting through half-million dollar offers just to show up and do a little V.I.P. shimmy at some cush Vegas hotspot on New Year's Eve, while the rest of the world panics over which miserable laser pit is worth a week's wages. The ... More >>

Bi-curious Girls in Tehran, in Circumstance

Three Americans Killed in Baja, Two Near San Diego Border, This Spring

Bar Dubai / FacebookA scene from Bar Dubai in Tijuana.​Three Americans have been killed in Baja California -- two quite close to the border near San Diego -- over the last month or so. Parsing Mexican news reports, NBC San Diego learned that the victim felled farthest from the border, 26-year ... More >>

Know Your Rich People, Los Angeles: A List of SoCal's 20 Billionaires

Richboy Slim, worth $74 billion.​Forbes' annual list of "The World's Billionaires" was released this week, and (gasp) a Mexican, Carlos Slim Helu, took the top spot for the second time in a row. The U.S. grip on the billionaire game, and California's too, has been slipping even as the ultra-r ... More >>

Alex Cox Back in Possession of Repo

Repo Chick breaks out alongside polished-up Straight to Hell

Henry Rollins: Out of Africa and Into the Land of Acting Without a Script (with Cameo Appearance by Princess Leia and His Favorite Dylan Song)

Timothy NorrisHenry Rollins' Weird Record Academy for the Open of Ears: Last night at the Echoplex​ [For more exclusive shots from Henry Rollins' event last night, see Timothy Norris' slideshow 'Henry Rollins @ The Echoplex'.] I am back from Africa. That was a long haul. From Entebbe, Uganda ... More >>

Magnolia Bakery Opens Tomorrow in WeHo

DommmNYC Magnolia Cupcakes ​ You've seen Magnolia cupcakes in chick flicks such as Sex and the City (in an episode where Carrie falls for Aden), and in The Devil Wears Prada (when Andy buys a cupcake as a belated birthday present/peace offering for her boyfriend.) And after nearly a year of p ... More >>

Terror Suspect Arrested In New York; L.A. Authorities Beef Up Studio Patrols

​As federal authorities announced late Monday that a suspect in Saturday night's attempted car bombing in New York's Times Square was arrested, Los Angeles-area authorities said they have beefed up patrols of area movie studios as a precaution. It's not clear if the terror attempt targeted th ... More >>

Have It Your Way: 3 New Saudi Arabian Burger King Ads

The Burger Wars have taken a whole new direction. Like maybe into cultural irony, although that's expecting a lot from a fast food chain. Burger King has just aired -- on YouTube, as a preview to hitting the mainstream airways -- three new ads made specifically for their Middle Eastern audience. Acc ... More >>

Hump Day: Cooking Camels With Anissa Helou

​ If you follow the blog of Anissa Helou - and you should; nobody this side of Paula Wolfert writes better about Middle Eastern food, offal, or Middle Eastern offal - you've read her missives on desert truffles, Gaziantep katmer, and the exotic-sounding salad of purslane, cherry tomatoes, meq ... More >>

Plate Spinnings: Listings From the Past Week

Some food for thought from local, national and international news sources from this past week: --Portrait of the Food Trucker as a Young Man. [Time] --I'll have a slice of cheese with pigs-in-a-blanket crust, please. Ketchup and maple on the side. [This is Freaking Ridiculous] --Hesperia's Banan ... More >>

Public Unwelcome at Grand Avenue

An obscure body of five will decide if Eli Broad gets public land for his art museum

Kid Cudi's Weird Week in Los Angeles: Handcuffs, GaGa Blowoffs, Tonight Show Let-Downs, Kanye Cameos and All

Those of you just returning from Jamaica, the French Riviera, Dubai or Missouri may have missed the interesting Christmas that singer/rapper Kid Cudi had last week during a media blitz in LA. Timothy NorrisKudi had an interesting week in LA​ On Monday, December 21, he and his entourage were ... More >>

Time Magazine Says Viva California

Dubai might have its man-made islands and Shaghai residents might squint under the glare of all the new skyscrapers there, but California is still where the economic action is. That's according to the latest issue of Time magazine, which states that, despite the budget mess in Sacramento, struggling ... More >>

Featured Photographer Emilio Morenatti Injured in Afghanistan

Photographer Emilio Morenatti Recovering from Bomb Blast

By Steve ApplefordBalazs GardiEmilio Morenatti and Marta Ramoneda in Pakistan​Emilio Morenatti was a reluctant visitor to Los Angeles last month, here to accept his award as 2009's Newspaper Photographer of the Year. The Spanish-born photojournalist was uncomfortable being away from his post in P ... More >>

Camelicious: Dubai Chocolatier Makes Camels' Milk Chocolates

If those bars of Valrhona Manjari 64% and Noir 85% from Michel Cluizel are seeming passé, you might want to try Al Nassma Chocolate, a Dubai-made confection which is the first brand of chocolate made with camels' milk. Hand-milked camels' milk no less, from the camel farm Camelicious, which is Al N ... More >>

Sweeping Dirt Under the Carpet

Indentured servitude; toxic-land development

The Evil That Men Play: Heavy Metal in Baghdad and Mideast Metal

Mideast Metalheads: "Look around. We are living in a heavy-metal world."

Body of Lies: Terror Porn We Can Believe in

British actor Mark Strong steals show in Ridley Scott's latest

Arab Adventures in Hollywood

Hip young actors are refusing roles as terrorists and creating their own material

Grand Avenue Drenched in Misdirection

L.A. politicos don't understand what they vote on. Taxpayers are on the hook

Rolling Out L.A.'s Cement Carpet

Downtown's long-promised central park has few trees. "Ugly" doesn't cover it

John Tejada Rides the Wave of L.A.'s Techno Renaissance

California boomin'

Grand Avenue: Is L.A. City Hall's Pet Project Foundering?

Not a stick of the posh project is up, but a taxpayer subsidy could hit $123 million

Get Your Book On: Book Expo America 2008

It was so deserted at the Book Expo America at the Convention Center today, I was beginning to despair about the state of the book industry. But it turns out I showed up a day early. I was not the only one. "But the website said it was open today at noon?" another lost soul pleaded with the secur ... More >>

Noriyuki Sugie guest stars at Breadbar

But hurry ... Crudobar lasts just until May 15

Eli Broad's Grand Avenue Follies

Mecca for the monied can't get a loan, but is likely to get City Council's nod

"Justice" Unbecoming

Fourth Estate as watchdog; Alan Rich, one of a kind; Gettys our royals?

Eli Broad's luxury Grand Avenue project is now half-owned by Dubai

Remembering Pakistan's Prodigal Daughter

Peter Landesman on his friend Benazir Bhutto and the darkness to follow

Out of the Frying Pan

Democrats may well win this November, but they can’t deliver like they used to

Dubai Bares All

So much for Arab-American assimilation in the U.S.

Terror Logic

Looking for Laughs in All the Wrong Places

Albert Brooks phones in the jokes

New Film Reviews

Tehran Nights

Things Change

Spartan, Mamet’s off his game

Catch as Catch Can

Surf Report: Billabong Threatens an International Incident

To Protect and to Spin

The ex–LAPD cop who became a 9/11 conspiracy king

Clean and Sober

And heading straight to Dubai