As the financial crisis tightens its grip on California, the pressure to squeeze out more local revenue is causing rifts between the city and county governments -- and the results are not pretty. Last week the County Board of Supervisors unanimously supported a letter proposed by Supervisor Gloria Molina and backed by her colleague Mike Antonovich, advising the City of Los Angeles to stop taxing businesses that lie outside its borders."Investigators with the County's Treasurer and Tax Collector
In the unpredictable wake of music's digital rebirth, vinyl has experienced a modest boom in popularity, seen by many (with delicious irony) as a replacement for the awkward middleman that is the compact disc. INCHES seeks not only to review the output of L.A.'s healthy vinyl community (artists and labels, indie or otherwise), but to pay dap to those who continue to tend the flame, believing that good music deserves much more than a handful of ones and zeros.
Last week, we focused exclusively o
Waiting in line is never as much fun as it is when you're camped out in the early evening on a picnic blanket with your friends, draining a bottle of wine, and working through a box of fried chicken (or cheese and grapes, if that's how you roll), eagerly awaiting a movie at Hollywood Forever with hundreds of other happy Angelenos.
This Sunday, October 11th, the Entertainment Industry Leadership Institute (EILI) is hosting Ghostbusters at the cemetery for the price of five cans of food. The can
LAPLAccording to City News Service, the L.A. City Council today directed government agencies "to consider offering a host of incentives to encourage television and movie production companies to keep conducting business in Los Angeles, instead of moving to other cities and states."The council deserves a special Academy Award for this gesture but don't count on a suggestion for agencies to "consider" anything to have any real effect on runaway production. The plain facts of capitalist life show
Alhambra native Rickmond Wong considers himself a ramen shaman. According to Jonathan Gold, when Wong was in high school he was already emailing our food critic to brag about his superiority in the field of the often understated noodle. Wong's food blog, Rameniac, pays homage to the history and tradition of the noodles, serving as a dictionary of ramen forms and styles (he defines 22 different styles) and charting the diasporas of a food easily typecast as an instant noodle in a Styrofoam cup.Ri
Today's L.A. Times Business section has an alarming story about the downturn in the city's garment industry. The plight of L.A.'s rag trade seldom gets the spotlight that, say, Hollywood's shifting fortunes receive, and even though their industry provides a powerful economic generator for the county, clothing manufacturers claim they are treated as poor relations by the powers that be -- notably those in City Hall who may bend over backward to keep movie and TV studios from filming out of town.
It's Friday night and you drove out to Hollywood, found your secret parking spot, got in line and after an hour of waiting, realized that there's no way you and your friends will be getting inside the club. The night is still young, so what do you do? Fear not, dear reader, L.A. Weekly is here to help. We're excited to announce the launch of the L.A. Weekly iPhone app, the first app built for an alternative weekly paper. L.A. Weekly has always been your go-to guide for where to go, where to eat,
It's Friday night and you drove out to Hollywood, found your secret parking spot, got in line and after an hour of waiting, realized that there's no way you and your friends will be getting inside the club. The night is still young, so what do you do? Fear not, dear reader, L.A. Weekly is here to help. We're excited to announce the launch of the L.A. Weekly iPhone app, the first app built for an alternative weekly paper. L.A. Weekly has always been your go-to guide for where to go, where to eat,
Stuck in the San Gabriel Valley without your copy of the Weekly or that dog-eared, garlic sauce-spattered copy of Jonathan Gold's 99 Essential LA Restaurants? Can't imagine trying out a noodle house or bistro or taqueria without finding out of it's earned an imprimatur from your favorite restaurant critic? Sure, you could show some initiative and try it anyway, but if you have an iPhone, now you don't have to.
We're excited to announce the launch of the L.A. Weekly iPhone app, the first app bu
Is it soup yet? Definitely. Today, although it looks beautiful and white-capped under the gloomy skies, Santa Monica Bay is teeming with toxins and filth, big-time, because a fairly heavy rain hit the city this morning following months of drought. And that rainfall washed God-knows-what kind of built-up crap off the streets, roofs and yards of the city. Main thing to remember is: stay the hell out of the water. Keep the kids and dogs away.Here's how utterly gross the ocean waters off of Los Ang
Huge big-rigs are quietly vanishing from the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach regularly, their cargo whisked away by sophisticated crime teams using regional leaders, fencers, "lumpers" and drivers who hijack the entire big-rig container, each stuffed with goods worth between $12,000 -- in, say, Fruit of the Loom Underwear -- to as much as $3 million -- in, say, iPhones. That's per big-rig container. These massive heists have been a dirty, not-so-well-kept secret that the cities of
Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad has a knack for getting ranked.The Broad FoundationEli and Edythe BroadWhether it's as one of the richest men in the world, one of the richest men in L.A., one of the of this country's most influential and generous philanthropists, or, in this case, one of the most powerful people in the world's art scene.In the recent issue of U.K.-based magazine ArtReview, art collector Broad lands at number seven in the publication's "Power 100," just a few notches down fr
"Los Angeles is where personal freedom is defined by the automobile. A city where store entrances are accessible through parking lots rather than sidewalks," observes artist Diane Meyer in her essay, "Car-less in Los Angeles." The remark found instant resonance with my life in the city. A year and a half here brought home this city's love affair with their own four wheels. Such is the obsession, that I get detailed parking instructions, every place I go, people safely assuming that I have a car.
COMPREHENSIVE THEATER LISTINGSLATEST THEATER REVIEWSSTAGE FEATURE on Leonard Nimoy and Company of AngelsL.A. SHOWS HEADING EAST SoulArt Productions presentation of Alex Lyras' The Common Air - a nominee in last year's L.A. Weekly Theatre Awards solo performance award for its 2008 run at the Asylum Theatre - is opening at the Bleeker Street Theater, 45 Bleeker Street, New York, NY 10012 More info here and hereAlso, director Stephan Wolfert says that last year's production of Fit For Society (c
Los Angeles's urban inferiority complex has been seriously challenged in light of recent food news: we are a terrific deli town. Or so claims David Sax, author of Save the Deli, the website and book that just hit stores . Sax will be here next week to discuss all things deli at Langer's on Wednesday, October 28 at 2:30 p.m. ($55 per person, includes lunch, a copy of Save the Deli, and a $10 Langer's coupon). But if you want more dish now, read what Sax had to say to Squid Ink about Los Angeles's
A man who was found with a gun shot wound to his chest in an underground parking lot in West Los Angeles has been identified as 65-year-old former multimillionaire real estate financier Richard Traweek.
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Traweek was discovered fatally wounded in the 11700 block of Goshen Avenue just before midnight October 26. In the 1980s, Traweek raised more than $120 million from investors in dozens of real estate partnerships before he found himself in legal trouble and financial ruin. Anyon
Whomever says Los Angeles doesn't have seasons is obtuse. Sure, our complaints about the latest weather bringing "cold" temperatures would make any Midwesterner laugh.
But still, Monday's high was 91 degrees. This morning we woke up to temperatures in the 40s and 50s. Add to that wind gusts up to 50 miles per hour, tree limbs crashing, palm fronds flying and at least one Jack In The Box sign tumbling to the ground in North Hollywood, and you have weather.
Overnight about 40,000 homes in
There's no way we can cover it all. We try, but, as you well know, West Coast Sound misses a lot of music events every week. We just can't cover them all. But YouTube can, and it's got its own beautifully random tastes. Herewith, stuff that happened recently that we missed, but others caught.
Wil Wheaton introduces Paul & Storm at Largo at the Coronet
COMPREHENSIVE THEATER LISTINGSLATEST NEW REVIEWSSTAGE FEATURE on Poland, where theater is hipRACHEL ROSENTHAL AT 83
The Rachel Rosenthal Company (founded in 1989) is throwing a fundraiser to help celebrate the performance artist's 83rd birthday, past achievements and the upcoming publication of her book on her teaching methods, The DbD Experience, Chance Knows What It's Doing (Routledge). Saturday, Nov. 7, 7-11 p.m. at Track 16, Bergamont Station in Santa Monica. The event features a sile
Los Angeles state Sen. Gloria Romero and several Sacramento colleagues signed a letter supporting county District Attorney Steve Cooley's efforts to extradite Roman Polanski, who admitted to having unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old before fleeing to France in 1978.State Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, wants Roman Polanski back in L.A.
Polanski was nabbed nearly a month ago en route to a film festival in Switzerland, and Cooley wants him back in town to face the music. The
The shooting that shook L.A.'s Jewish community Thursday and provided flashbacks to the hate-fueled North Valley Jewish Community Center shooting a decade ago was likely a personal attack, according to reports.Google MapsThe site of the shootings.
ABC7 and KTLA News state that police say the attacker knew one of two victims shot and wounded in the parking structure of the Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic synagogue in North Hollywood. The stations reported that the shooter might have been t
Slamming the Los Angeles City Council's bizarre 2006 "settlement" with billboard giants Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor as "poison," Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Terry Green tossed out the backroom deal that handed huge outdoor advertisers a multi-billion-dollar gift to erect more than 800 glaring, digital billboards in Los Angeles neighborhoods without public hearing or public notice.Sources tell L.A. Weekly that Green, ruling on a suit brought by Summit Media, found the deal invalid and has
It seems that nearly as many restaurants opened as reopened in the city of Los Angeles last month. Some restaurants got makeovers, some changed hands, and others took risks. Take the pork-themed Flying Pig Truck that set out on the streets of Los Angeles in the midst of the Swine Flu scare. On the topic of portable eats, the take-out centric Culver City café, The Point, reopened early last month after Beacon's Kazuto Matsusaka and Vicki Fan sold it to Campanile's Mark Peel. And L.A. Bento, a ta
Buttermilk Truck launches the evening of November 11th at The Brig in Venice (via LAist).
The Grilled Cheese Truck, which launched last week, just posted this week's schedule on their website. Today, Brentwood. Tomorrow, on KTLA.
Flying Pig Truck, which hit the streets in mid-October, is on Cahuenga for lunch today.
Both Get Shaved Truck, running since last year, and Border Grill Truck will be at Sherman Oaks' Woodman Avenue farmers market today.
For updates and current locations of the some
By Donna BarstowThe U.S. Postal Service, hammered just like government postal services throughout Europe and North America by a massive drop-off in snail mail caused by the Internet and email, is deciding the future of 19 Post Office branches in Los Angeles. No word which ones will get shuttered. But signs of consolidation started last spring, when corner mail boxes began vanishing from Silver Lake to Woodland Hills to South Central. Even though the Post Office has raised postage prices four yea
It's been a long year since Proposition 8 was passed on November 4, 2008, when the existing right to legally marry in California was shockingly taken away from gays and lesbians.Patrick Range McDonaldDays before Prop. 8 was passed, pro-gay marriage supporters took the streets in West Hollywood.That soul-wrenching vote, however, placed same sex marriage, and gay rights in general, in the national spotlight, and brought forth a new wave of political activism among gay rights advocates and their
Liz OhanesianBurning Image live at The Wolfpak
On Halloween, I stopped by Roberto's in Chinatown for The Wolfpak's holiday party featuring a live performance from Burning Image. The Bakersfield band first formed in the wake of California's early-'80s deathrock explosion and then reformed earlier this decade after Alternative Tentacles released a compilation of its initial work (you can find out more by reading LA Weekly's interview with frontman Moe Adame). The set was a heavy, high energ
KCET is about to unleash, tonight, a stunning expose of FEMA and Los Angeles City Hall that involves an unintentional but outrageous shakedown of South Central Los Angeles residents for "flood" insurance costing an eye-popping $900 to $1,700 a year. Mostly black and Latino homeowners in virtually no risk of being flooded are getting the squeeze thanks to FEMA's dubious new "flood zones" for L.A. Reported by the award-winning broadcaster Judy Muller, the report, "Hung Out to Dry?", which ai
In between solving a $500 million budget shortfall, choosing a new Los Angeles Police Department chief and making sure those potholes get filled, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa found time to appear on this week's season finale of Bravo's Project Runway.Bravo
They had a little fun with the city's political leader, letting him ramble about the inherent greatness of L.A. while cutting away to focus on chatter among the designer contestants. When the camera returns to Mayor V, he's still talking
Here at West Coast Sound we have been long-time fans of the RZA's 2005 book The Wu-Tang Manual, a really inspirational retelling of the conception and formation of hip-hop's unlikeliest spiritual gang. So we were thrilled when we learned earlier this year that The Abbot was working on a followup of sorts to be called The Tao of Wu.
The book has been out for a few weeks now and we have been enjoying it tremendously. Not only is it a better read than the previous book, but it also contains