Hawthorne

The Best West Coast Christian Rappers in History

Christian hip-hop has had an important presence on the West coast for many years now, although the genre continues to bleed into the secular industry. Even its biggest star, Lecrae, seems to be poising himself for a mainstream invasion. Hey, everyone wants to stay culturally relevant; after all, one ... More >>

Elon Musk Thinks His Westside Commute Is L.A.'s Top Problem

L.A. has its fair share of problems, from the nation's most torn-up roads to one of the America's worst unemployment rates. Southern California is an epicenter of home foreclosures. The gap between rich and poor here is bigger than the Angeles National Forest. There are Angelenos who are having trou ... More >>

Top 5 Places in L.A. To Buy Super Bowl Party Beer Kegs

If you're hosting a Super Bowl party this Sunday for friends, you're probably already stressing at the thought of ordering a half-dozen pizzas for on-time delivery and fist fighting for the last family-size bag of Doritos at the local Ralph's. But when it comes to providing copious amounts of beer ... More >>

DUI Checkpoints Tonight, Tomorrow For L.A., West Hollywood, Long Beach

As a small warm-up for the massive DUI crackdown scheduled to harsh your mellow New Years Eve, police around the L.A. area are planning DUI checkpoints. Locations include West Hollywood, Long Beach and the San Gabriel Valley. Think of this as practice for Monday, the ultimate amateur night. We'll ... More >>

Romney Says No To Bieber's Fave Car, The SoCal-Bred Fisker

The third presidential debate, this one focused on foreign policy, took a detour to Southern California when the candidates argued about the auto industry. While Mitt Romney defended his 2008 stance to "let Detroit go bankrupt," he criticized the Obama administration's federal loans for Southern Ca ... More >>

DUI Crackdown For Late Summer Includes Hollywood Checkpoint Tonight

We're not sure why the end of summer is DUI crackdown season, what with all the other wonderful times of year to find drunktards on the road -- St. Patrick's Day, Cinco De Mayo, New Year's Eve, at. al. It just is. We've got a boatload of info for you in our latest edition of LA Weekly's DUI checkp ... More >>

Redd Kross Have a New Record After 15 Years

See also: Still a Malcontent: A midlife crisis spawns Keith Morris' new band Off! The McDonald Brothers, the driving force behind punk legends Redd Kross, stand well over six feet tall and have awkward gaits. Ahead of their new album -- Researching the Blues, our today -- they're sitting together ... More >>

Five Song Requests Jazz Bands Wish You Would Stop Making

Most cocktail jazz gigs are not particularly rewarding on an artistic level, but they aren't supposed to be. They pay well but they usually go on for too long and most people there aren't listening to you. Of course, there are benefits. I once played a solo gig on a white piano surrounded by roses w ... More >>

Santa Monica Trying to Push Annoying Flight-School Activity Onto Surrounding Airports

A rather pompous proposal to alleviate weekend and holiday traffic at the Santa Monica Airport (SMO) is going up before the city's seven councilmembers at tomorrow's meeting: They'll be taking the fates of eight surrounding airports into their own hands, deciding whether to offer flight schools $150 ... More >>

L.A. Animal Shelter Is Selling iPad Art Created by Cats (and People Are Buying It)

So there's this iPad app called "Paint for Cats." Here's how it works: A little mouse scampers across the screen, prompting your cat (whom you must coerce into sitting still in front of your iPad) to take a whack at it. When paw hits iPad, the mouse makes a little squeak (incentives!) and a splotch ... More >>

R.I.P. Los Angeles Red-Light Camera Tickets: What This Means for the Rest of the County

The wait has paid off for all us rebels who refused to pay our red-light camera tickets! LA Weekly reassured you of the good news all through 2011. In July, "L.A. City Council Says You Don't Have to Pay Your Red-Light Camera Tickets." In September, "Are You Sure I Don't Have to Pay My L.A. County R ... More >>

Man Goes on Burglary Spree While Wearing Parolee Ankle Monitor: Cops Track Suspect

In our copy of the How To Be A Criminal Handbook, page 6, paragraph three, is this: "Never, ever commit crimes while on parole and while wearing a court-ordered, ankle-bracelet GPS tracker. Ever." Of course, one Perry Pemberton, a 29-year-old violent felon who was indeed on parole allegedly didn't ... More >>

The Five Dopiest Beach Boys Songs, Including One Where Brian Wilson Raps

Wait, where are our wetsuits? ​See also: A Tour Of Beach Boys' Haunts In Their Hometown Of Hawthorne, California - With Pictures! Last week saw the release of the Beach Boys' The Smile Sessions box set, and folks can't stop talking about how amazing it is. In fact, the recent splurge of criti ... More >>

Best Posts Of The Week

Jena Ardell​"It's fucking Halloween, do you know where your skull is?" Glenn Danzig asked the crowd at Gibson Amphitheater on Monday night. Actually, it was his skull that was showing up in strange places this week, as Jena Ardell imagined what scenes from famous movies would look like if Danz ... More >>

A Tour Of Beach Boys' Haunts In Their Hometown Of Hawthorne, California - With Pictures!

Sean J. O'Connell​Today Capitol Records releases one of the greatest lost albums of all time -- the Beach Boys' Smile. Brian Wilson intended this "teenage symphony to God" as a follow-up to Pet Sounds and countless tapes were recorded. But owing to a hazy blitz of paranoia and group in-fightin ... More >>

G-Funk All-Star Kurupt Sails Uncharted Rap Waters

Art Sex Crime Tagging Crew Targeted in L.A. County Sweep: 8 Alleged Graffiti Vandals Arrested

MySpaceArt Sex Crime has a MySpace page.​Cops fanned out across the L.A. area in pursuit of members of Art Sex Crime, an 8-year-old tagging crew they say is responsible for more than 1,600 acts of vandalism: 11 people were arrested yesterday in eight different SoCal cities -- mostly in the sou ... More >>

Shawn Bryant, 22-Year-Old College Student, Shot Dead by Inglewood Liquor Store Robbers on Way to Beach Birthday Party

Facebook22-year-old Shawn Bryant​A young Hawthorne man who reportedly attended El Camino College in Torrance was murdered last night by two men who had just robbed his family members at Gins Liquor Store, located along Crenshaw Boulevard in next-door Inglewood. The victim's aunt, Trezil Houst ... More >>

Food Trucks Rally for Family of Fallen Hawthorne Police Officer

Photo courtesy Rancho a GoGo​ This Thursday evening, June 9th, in Los Alamitos, nine food trucks will raise money for the family of Officer Andrew Garton, the Hawthorne motorcycle patrolman killed on May 26th while escorting the funeral of a Manhattan Beach police officer. Chris Rocke, the ow ... More >>

Rico Chavez: UC Something Wrong Here?

Anaheim Man Crashes Into Four Parked Vehicles -- Including Cop Car With Another Alleged Drunk Driver Inside -- Breaks Nose, Tries to Run Away

CBSOops.​This, dear readers, is what we call a clusterfuck. (See also: "Double Hit-And-Run Leads To Beating Of Driver Who Actually Stopped To Help Another Victim He Hit In Hawthorne.") Last night at about 2 a.m., better known by cops as DUI prime time, a 28-year-old Anaheim man was driving hi ... More >>

Tarantino's Angst

Jackie Brown and its worried-man blues

Last Night: Dios Celebrates Their New Record Release at the Troubadour

At long last ending a four-year gap between albums, Hawthorne psych-rock quartet Dios celebrated the release of its third LP at the Troubadour on Tuesday by opening the venue's doors to all comers free of charge. Timothy Norris​ WEAREDIOS came out earlier that day on Buddyhead Records, show ... More >>

PEE-WEE'S BIG ANNOYANCE

Coachella Confirmations Begin to Trickle In, Rumors Abound

The Coachella message board is doing a good job of tracking the upcoming Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio. Now's the time that bands begin leaking confirmations, revealing their hands on MySpace, Twitter and Facebook, and basically spilling the beans one way or another. For example, this f ... More >>

2009: Just the Ticket

Eyewitness Account of Inglewood PD Ordering Hard Summer to Shut Down

West Coast Sound is going to use this post for eyewitness accounts from writers who attended Hard Summer, which was shut down last night. The first is from Dennis Romero, who watched as Inglewood PD ordered Hard's Gary Richards to shut down: Dennis RomeroPolice arriving at Hard Summer last night ... More >>

Mike Gin, Redondo Beach’s Chinese-American, Rotarian, Gay Mayor

(Meet Hizzoner)

West of La Brea, East of the Moon: Where the Hell Is West L.A.?

MapQuestAn L.A. Times squib about a stolen-car chase caught our attention Saturday, but for all the wrong reasons. The L.A. Now blog focused on snarled traffic that resulted in a 16-block shutdown around the LAPD's bomb-squad's search of the vehicle, though both events seem to be part of L.A.'s ever ... More >>

Today in Photographs: December 22, 1941 & More

Not JapaneseHelen Chan pins Sun Lum with lapel badge identifying him as "Chinese," to avoid being rounded up with Japanese Americans who were being interred following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. (L.A. Times photo from UCLA Digital Collection)Turn page to see a well-attired Steve Allen picketting ... More >>

The B-Sides: Blu Interview

Contrary to popular belief, Blu did not take his name from the Eiffel 65 song popular in the late 90s. Q: So where exactly in LA did you grow up? A: I was born at St. Andrews and 54th, at my grandparent’s crib, that’s where I was living last year and it’s the first place I ever stayed. But ... More >>

Has the L.A. Hip-Hop Plague Finally Passed?

Four on the floor

Wet Is the New Dry

Cleaner clothes, less smog

Broken Bridges

Did City Hall’s plan to fight gangs bankroll a gangster?

The Lost Streams of Los Angeles

Uncovering our wet and wild past. Is it safe, or even possible, to let the water flow again?

Body Count

Some of the unsolved, mostly prostitution-related deaths

Accident at Sea

Unicorns become Islands

Let's Hear It for the Boys

Four new dude-friendly salons put the “man” in manicure

The Prix

Local bands, man

¡Ay, Dios Mío!

South Bay smart-asses Dios (Malos) change their name and their game

Look Homeward, Angeleno

An introduction and index to 2005's Best of L.A.

Lines in the Sand

Strikes threaten two local industries

I’m Black and Paranoid

An L.A. native’s view of Crash

Jennifer K. Howell

Party Smarty

Pilgrims’ Progress

Blue and clerical collars team up

Fizzle, Puzzle, Dazzle

If It Happened Here

A bioterrorism attack on Los Angeles might look a lot like this

Oldies But Goodies

The television event

Good, Honest and Gone

Ready or not, the short-time era of city government