Subject: Los Angeles

• Escalante Cover Story Spurs Race Ruckus

  October 22, 2009

• Already Saved: David Sax Dishes About L.A. Deli Life

  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

  October 23, 2009

• Murder was the Case: LA Homicide No. 256, Victim Identified in West Los Angeles Shooting

  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. View Larger Map 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

  October 29, 2009

• L.A. Blows: Some Lose Power

  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

  October 28, 2009

• YouTube Wildcard: Los Angeles Music Clips from Around the Web

  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

  October 28, 2009

• Stage Raw: Rachel Rosenthal at 83

  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

  October 28, 2009

• Romero, Fellow Politicians Support Polanski Extradition

  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

  October 28, 2009

• AFI Fest 2009: What if Movies Were Free?

  October 29, 2009

• Brick’s Picks: (Far) Eastern Swing

  October 29, 2009

• Riled Over California's High-Speed Rail

  October 29, 2009

• Well-Preserved: Playa del Rey, Ennio Morricone and the L.A. Burrito

  October 29, 2009

• Come On and Take a Hayride


  October 29, 2009

• Synagogue Violence Likely Personal

  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

  October 29, 2009

• Judge: L.A. City Council's 2006 digital billboard settlement is "poison"

  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

  October 30, 2009

• Your Month in Review: October Restaurant Openings

  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

  November 2, 2009

• Meals On Wheels: A Brief L.A. Food Truck Update

  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

  November 3, 2009

• Are 19 L.A. communities losing their U.S. Post Offices?

  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

  November 3, 2009

• Queer Town: Proposition 8, A Year Later

  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

  November 4, 2009

• The LA Deathrock Starter Guide

  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

  November 4, 2009

• Chaos in the Casitas

  November 5, 2009

• L.A. Light Rail? Or Keep Your Car?

  November 5, 2009

• L.A. Medical-Pot Shops Peddle to LAUSD Pupils

  November 5, 2009

• Rachel Rosenthal: 83 and Still Swearing

  November 5, 2009

• Red Line Fever: It’s Casual

  November 5, 2009

• KCET scoop: FEMA shakes down South Central for "flood insurance" ten miles from ocean

  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

  November 5, 2009

• Sashay Mayor V: Hizzoner Hits 'Runway'

  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

  November 6, 2009

• LA Stories: The Wacky Adventures of the RZA (featuring Sister-Luvin', the Black Tank, and Travolta in Drag)

  ​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

  November 6, 2009

• EAT: Los Angeles 2010 Edition Out December 1st

  Prospect Park BooksEAT: Los Angeles 2010​EAT: Los Angeles, the locally published guide to food in this town, written by a cadre of local foodies, will come out with its 2010 edition on December 1st. The new edition is 56 pages longer than last year's, with 2 new chapters: Drink Eat, which includes wine bars, cocktail lounges and gastropubs; and Good Food Neighborhoods. Also publisher Colleen Dunn Bates says that she and her team of writers (among them: Eating LA's Pat Saperstein; the LA

  November 9, 2009

• New Dublab Vid: Jennifer Furches (Sea Wolf, Cass McCombs) Live at Elysian Park

  It's been a good six months since the good folks at Dublab (currently holding their Proton Drive fundraiser) have delivered up a new installment of Vision Version, a video series that captures touring or L.A.-area artists performing one-off songs in beautiful or unusual settings. Last time, to wit, syllable-spewing local rapper Busdriver pulled a Mos Def by delivering verse after rapid-fire verse of "Coon Talk" whilst riding shotgun through the streets of Echo Park. Well, this latest addition i

  November 9, 2009

• Top 10 Happy Hours: Penny Pinching Drinking

  High on the list of traditional activities during economic hard times has always been watching movies--and hitting the bars. This town is, happily, very good for both. But it's really no fun to toast the movements of the Dow with a $15 martini, so save a penny at one of Los Angeles' many watering holes and head for a happy hour. No longer set for just the stereotypical end of the business day crowd, LA bars and restaurants offer happy hours at various times, with specials on drinks, entertainmen

  November 9, 2009

• Marathon Takes 'Subway To The Sea'-Like Route

  The Los Angeles Marathon's new Westside-bound route, designed to showcase "the best Los Angeles has to offer," is called the Dodger "stadium to the sea" course -- and that sounds suspiciously similar to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's most-beloved pet project, the planned "subway to the sea."Los Angeles Marathon​ Though not a blueprint by far, the route comes close to the planned subway line at times, chugging through Beverly Hills on Wilshire Boulevard and then on Santa Monica Boulevard tow

  November 9, 2009

• Q & A With Thomas Keller: New Restaurant, New Cookbook Why He Loves Broiled Lobster With Mayonnaise

  Deborah JonesChef Thomas Keller​Thomas Keller is a busy man right now, between opening his new Bouchon Bistro (the third) in Beverly Hills, going on a national book tour for his new cookbook (the fourth), Ad Hoc At Home, and running what can be described as a small empire. It's a very organized empire. It has lots of labels, which are often in French. The gleaming metal doors to the new walk-in refrigerators at Bouchon, set to open next Wednesday night, each have their own labels: Poisson,

  November 10, 2009

• Wall Street Journal Eying L.A. Times' Turf

  The Wall Street Journal is reported to be pondering a Los Angeles edition as part of its expansion into cities that could be perceived to have weak local news dailies. Last week the paper moved into the Bay Area with a weekly edition following the threatened closure of the San Francisco Chronicle. The New York Times has also moved into that city.​The Journal's possible invasion of L.A. was outlined by Dow Jones & Co. CEO Les Hinton, who told company employees at a meeting this week that Lo

  November 11, 2009

• City Legal Payouts Enough To Hire 1,200-Plus Cops

  Here's a doozy: The city of Los Angeles paid out as much money in legal fees and lawsuit settlements as it would have spent to hire of 1,271 much-needed Los Angeles police officers.​The calculation comes from the nonprofit group California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, which states that Los Angeles has spent nearly $137 million dollars to deal with suits in the past two years. "Not only are these costs outrageous in their own right," the group states, "[but] the money spent by the city in ju

  November 11, 2009

• The Last Radio Room: Of The Year Or Forever?

  The last Radio Room at The Edison went out with more of a pfffttt and less of a bang! And when I say, "last Radio Room," I mean, like, maybe ever. It's understandable that the party's being shelved for this year. But what about next year? As it turns out, some rainmaking staff are leaving the steam punk club. To find out where, keep reading. Courtney MunchWhere's The Party?​

  November 11, 2009

• Unregulated Medical Marijuana: Could Pot-Brownie Bake Sales Help?

  November 12, 2009

• Bistro LQ: Hare Today

  November 12, 2009

• For Colored Girls: The Sapphire Interview

  November 12, 2009

• Has L.A.'s Auto Show Overshadowed Detroit and Tokyo?

  In the wake of the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler, a downsized Detroit auto show that saw the likes of Nissan, Porsche and Mitsubishi pull out, and a Tokyo auto show subsequently passed up by the Detroit three automakers, is L.A.'s own annual showcase next the place to be for the auto world?PorscheThe Boxster Spyder will be unveiled in L.A.​The Los Angeles International Auto Show seems to be on schedule to host most of those very luxury brands that passed up Detroit's North Americ

  November 12, 2009

• Public Access Lives! (On DVD): One Of 'The Threee Geniuses' Talks The Re-Death Of Psychedelia

  Taking LSD over seven times may or may not make you legally insane (if the myth were true, some of us here at West Coast Sound might have just missed the loony bin), but we can assure you, watching the psycho-delic circus known as The Threee Geniuses as many times is likely to drive you nuts, at least temporarily. The visually demented Los Angeles public access cable TV show -which celebrates the release of a new Best Of DVD, "The Re-Death of Psychedelia," this Sunday with an all-star in-the-fl

  November 13, 2009

• Date of the Week: Warehouse Walkabout (Guns, Pool, Pub Food)

  So, it happened. You got a date. It could be a first date, or maybe just a night out with your special someone, but either way you're going to need a plan. Los Angeles offers an endless array of nighttime activity and it's easy to be paralyzed by all the possibilities. That's where Squid Ink's Date of the Week comes in. We make your date, so you don't have to. A good date covers a few bases. It creates inside jokes, presents many topics for conversation, opens the door to adventure (or danger),

  November 13, 2009

• Market Report: New Market at Barnsdall Park

  There's a new market to add to the already long list of Los Angeles farmers markets. In the heart of East Hollywood, the Los Angeles Medical Center (LAMC) Farmers Market at Barnsdall Park offers food lovers yet another opportunity to shop for local, California produce. For those of of you stuck on the eastside, or who can't manage to get out of bed early enough to catch Wednesday's popular Santa Monica market, the LAMC Market opens at noon and runs until 6 p.m. That even gives those 9 - 5ers ti

  November 16, 2009

• Council Committees Shake Down Potency Of Proposed Pot Ban

  The political will just isn't there on the part of the City Council to deal with the out-of-control pot dispensary business in Los Angeles. That much was clear today when a joint committee meeting passed along the city attorney's proposed near-ban of medical marijuana businesses like an unwanted joint.​The Public Safety and Planning and Land Use committees on Monday decided to water down this festering weed before it goes to the full City Council on Wednesday. The ordinance proposed by City At

  November 16, 2009

• Council Looking Down Barrel of Lawsuit As It Ponders Pot Rules

  Perhaps the joint city council committee looking at a new pot dispensary ordinance Monday had good reason to back off the city attorney's hard-and-fast ban on the "sale of marijuana" in Los Angeles: Two medical-marijuana advocacy groups have threatened to sue should such a law be passed by the city.Got Kush Collective​ Americans For Safe Access on Monday stated the courts in California have supported the sale of pot to patients with doctors' approvals and that if the council moves forward

  November 16, 2009

• The Noodle Road: A Pasta Film and Tasting

  Watch a documentary on noodle history.​That quick pasta dish you toss together for dinner? It originated thousands of years ago in some unknown kitchen in China. This Thursday, you can learn how pasta came to be and taste some yourself at at a screening of the KBS documentary The Noodle Road at the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The KBS production team spent two years tracing the spread of noodles throughout Asia, Europe and the Middle East, filming in 10 countries. With the aid o

  November 17, 2009

• How To Give The Finger To Your Cable Company

  Ah, the outrageous bills, the alluring premium content that expires in three months, and the subscriber packages that never give you the exact channels you want -- not mention the lack of competition: Cable is so Soviet era.​ You've been clamoring to shed this ball and chain, and now maybe you can: A company called Sezmi is rolling out its service to Los Angeles and it's free until March. The provider pulls content from online, broadband and digital-airwave sources and puts it in homes vi

  November 17, 2009

• FEET, MEET PAVEMENT

  November 19, 2009

• Hollywood's Catered Stimulus

  November 19, 2009

• When White Writers Do “Latino” Issues

  November 19, 2009

• Pro-Pot Group Says L.A. City Council In Its Pocket

  Pro-medical-marijuana group Americans For Safe Access this week claimed victory in its campaign to get the Los Angeles City Council to see things its way when it comes to regulating L.A.'s 800 or so registered pot shops.​After campaigning on-air at KPCC (89.3 FM), ASA claims it has beaten back the strict, anti-dispensary stances of county District Attorney Steve Cooley and City Attorney Carmen Trutanich and that the council will eventually emerge with legislation that allows the kind of over-t

  November 19, 2009