NASCAR

Marijuana is The "New Beer" (VIDEO)

Updated at the bottom: The billboard company got cold feet and pulled the spot. First posted at 8:08 a.m. Friday. What if we told you there was a substance that could put you in a good mood without the alcoholic side effects of weight gain, hangovers and violence? You're there, right? (Many of you ... More >>

Michael Hastings' Engine Flew, Boosting Conspiracies, But It Happens

Conspiracy theorists who have trained their Twitter accounts on the death of journalist Michael Hastings often seem to focus on the fact that engine in the Mercedes he crashed landed several yards away. In fact we learned through traffic investigators that the motor landed about 100 feet away. Unus ... More >>

More Food Drink Events: Tap Takeover, Beer Pairing Santa Monica Festival

Tap Takeover Eight Strand Brewing Company brews will be on tap at Cinco for one night with offerings such as 24th Street Pale Ale, Cherry Ito-Weisse and Atticus IPA. Tasting samplers as well as "Drunken Tacos" (includes Strand Beach House Amber beer-battered shrimp) will be available. There wil be a ... More >>

Happy Hour: Biergarten in Koreatown

Place: Biergarten, 206 N. Western Ave., Los Angeles; (323) 466-4860. Hours: Weekdays 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., excluding holidays. Deal: A one-page menu with deals on beer pints and bar bites priced between $3.50 to $7.50, including German fried rice for $7 and sizable wursts (knack, brat and bock) at $7 ... More >>

New Faces of Targeted Beer Drinkers: Joe College and Hipsters

From Joe Six-Pack to Joe College, the face of the desired beer drinker has changed in the past few years with growing sales of craft beer brands and fruit flavors. Joe College, unlike his older and more blue-collar counterpart Joe Six-Pack, is a "lot more experimental than [he] used to be, sampling ... More >>

Q & A With Nigella Lawson: On Her New Cookbook Nigellissima, The Taste, And Whether There's Too Much Food on TV

As always, Nigella Lawson has a lot of balls in the air. Her new show The Taste with Anthony Bourdain, Ludu LeFebre and Brian Malarky, has turned out to be quite a hit. At the same time, she's just released her 9th cookbook, Nigellissima, which celebrates the flavors of Italy. We sat down with her o ... More >>

The Best Concerts in L.A. This Weekend

Friday, January 18 Femi Kuti EL REY THEATRE In 2009, the Nigerian government forcefully shut down the Shrine, the home base of Afrobeat originator Fela Kuti. By now, however, not only is the Shrine back, it's a government-endorsed museum -- a sign, Femi Kuti told one reporter, that the revolutionar ... More >>

Step Brothers

What the Dodgers' Musical Taste Says About Them

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] Forget phrenology, both the overrated Roots album and the 19th-century pseudo-science. Ignore palmistry, psychotherapy and Rick Warren. The best way to b ... More >>

71: Hunan-Style Preserved Pork with Tofu at Hunan Chilli King

Leading up to this year's Best of L.A. issue (due out Oct. 4), we'll be counting down, in no particular order, 100 of our favorite dishes. 71: Hunan-Style Preserved Pork with Tofu at Hunan Chilli King. Walking up to San Gabriel's Hunan Chili, located in a nondescript section of strip mall along Va ... More >>

Riff Raff FTW: His Best Tweets From a Turbulent Time

See also: Is Riff Raff Serious? One thing's for certain: This maddeningly inscrutable white rapper is more entertaining than you are Riff Riff, the L.A.-and-outerspace-based rapper and avid BET, MTV, NBA and World Star Hip Hop enthusiast (he's tattooed each brand's logo on his body in a dogged purs ... More >>

L.A. Storm Leaves Thousands Without Power, Interrupts 'Mad Men' Premiere

The weekend rain- and windstorm that tore through Los Angeles County left over 8,000 residents without power last night -- about half SoCal Edison customers and half L.A. DWP. And according to City News Service, thousands are still in the dark this morning, mainly in the Mid-Wilshire area. In resp ... More >>

Danica Patrick, Racing Warrior, is A Word That 'Starts With B' Says SoCal Sports Anchor Ross Shimabuku

Danica Patrick, who competed in NASCAR's fire-and-brimstone Daytona 500 over the weekend, is no shrinking violet, as they say. She competes -- and wins -- in a white-knuckle sport that would make most of us pee our pants and cry for mommy. Literally. This shit is scary. And so, despite capitalizin ... More >>

Banks Violette's Sculptures Inspired by NASCAR and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

"I'm pretty sure my fans will wear this award as a badge of honor," racer Dale Earnhardt Jr. said when he accepted the 2011 Most Popular NASCAR Driver Award in December. "And so they should, because the award is theirs." This was the ninth consecutive time Earnhardt Jr., whose grandfather was a rac ... More >>

Lowe's Boycott Has SoCal Roots After State Sen. Ted Lieu Blasts Home Improvement Chain For Pulling Out of 'All-American Muslim'

FoxCletus.​This is a tale of two Americas, one based in the conservative South, the other on the liberal West Coast. After the Lowe's home-improvement giant pulled its ads from TLC's All-American Muslim reality show, a local state senator this weekend helped sparked what appears to be an all- ... More >>

Electric Daisy Carnival: Vegas Could See Nearly One-Third The Cops The LAPD Puts on Smaller Raves Here: Are They Really Ready For This?

YouTubeA girl in a crush of people at EDC in L.A.​Updated with LAPD Deputy Chief Patrick Gannon's thoughts on rave deployment, at the bottom. As Electric Daisy Carnival hits Sin City for what promoters are anticipating will be their biggest rave yet, the big question is, is Las Vegas really p ... More >>

Top 10 Most WTF Band Names at SXSW

​ You'll be kicking up plenty of gravel waiting to see Cee Lo Green, Queens of the Stone Age and The Kills at this year's SXSW. Chances are, the lines will be much, much shorter for Go Back to the Zoo, Hungry Kids of Hungary, Amusement Parks on Fire or the dozens of other requisite oddly-name ... More >>

Raves: How Do You Get L.A. Politicians to Get Behind Parties and Ecstasy? Here's How ...

Caesar Sebastian / InsomniacRavers at 'EDC.'​It was a day of magical thinking Wednesday at the L.A. Coliseum, where officials essentially said yes to another edition of a two-day rave that saw 60 mostly drug-related arrests, more than 200 medical emergencies and the ecstasy-related death of a ... More >>

Raving Without Ecstasy: Is It Even Possible?

Caesar SebastianRavers at Together As One.​Following our weekend report about the 62 medical emergencies and 25 arrests at the annual "Together As One" New Year's Eve rave, several commenters weighed in to accuse us of being biased. After all, these megaraves are just good clean fun for the w ... More >>

$20,000 buys California laws: Felipe Fuentes, Charles Calderon, dozens of legislators take cash from special interests who ghost-write laws

Assembly Felipe Fuentes: is he selling California laws?​We've already reported that Los Angeles' State Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes is "The Worst Legislator in California," putting his name on laws that are actually ghostwritten by corporations, unions -- and anyone else Fuentes thinks he can sq ... More >>

Short Attention Span Dinner Theater: Your Week in Food, 11/8-11/12

In which we highlight the past week in food, either at home or abroad. "But if it's really not too much trouble, could we all declare a moratorium on implicit comparisons between spherical foods and the male anatomy? Thanks. It would mean a lot." A Food-Writing Misstep of Which I've Been Guilty ... More >>

Movie Reviews: Beautiful Islands, Kings of the Evening, Racing Dreams

Also, Farewell, Ramona and Beezus, Valhalla Rising, Mademoiselle Chambon

Former NACAR Driver Still Caught After Successfully Speeding Away From Authorities

KTLA News/O.C. Sheriff's DepartmentDeputies' on-board footage of the chase.​What we like about this story is that the guy actually got away. Authorities called off the chase after he sped south on the 5 freeway at a reported 140 miles an hour in a C5 Corvette. Forget it, the cops said, it's no ... More >>

RADIO GOO-GOO

LA People 2009: Spokesmen — Bicycle Oven's Josef and Adam Bray-Ali

Their single-gear Flying Pigeon bikes are all over the city, and on weekends the boys take to the streets of Alhambra for monthly dim sum rides, leading a parade of hungry rollers

Better Late Than Never: Howard Hawks at LACMA

Retrospective surveys indomitable director’s final films

Best and Worst of L.A.

Roller coasters, pub crawls, bake shops and the Bakery

Step Brothers: Blended Family Values

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly Get Relational

Energy Drunk: One Man's Monster Bender

How one man drank a Vin Diesel movie ... and just kept drinking

Last Chance to Be a Better Person!

What to do in Los Angeles this week

What's So Bad About Performance Enhancement?

The steroid debate rages on

X Post Facto

The power of the X Games, especially on TV

Film Reviews: Meet the Robinsons, Blades of Glory

Also, The Hills Have Eyes II, Air Guitar Nation and After the Wedding

Kelly Clarkson New Face of NASCAR

That's right the American Idol winner was just chosen to be the "it" girl for the racing sport. But you're not really surprised are you? (Not that there isn't a special place in my heart for NASCAR.) According to the press release I just received: "Nearly 50% of NASCAR fans are female and with the ... More >>

The Best Films of 2006: The Year of Army of Shadows

And the First Annual L.A. Weekly Film Poll

Zoom Zoom

Cars quickens the pulse, stops to smell the roses

Farting in Church

How to make irreverence matter

Stumbling Toward 2006

The Freak Parade

Nashville superweirdoes Big & Rich wrangle the Rose Bowl halftime, somehow. Nation reacts with relief, pride

Let’s Go for a Ride!

Car culture on Pacific rims

T-Bone’s Dream

Katrina victim washes ashore in Echo Park, goes to NASCAR race, kisses Sandra Bullock

A Day at the Races

Faster, Speedycat! Thrill! Thrill!

NASCAR Country

Southern California, that is

Sideways to Stardom

The future of a rear-wheel-drive phenomenon

Photo Essay

Flamethrowers to Framecams

Cool new car stuff

Pass the Paddles

Our guide to the games

Here Comes . . .Who Are You Again?

Notes From E3

A day with the booth babes at the Electronic Entertainment Expo

Hang On

Let’s not do away with the summer ritual of drag racing