Palo Alto

Marijuana Smokers Might Have Trouble Sleeping

Despite its reputation as somewhat of a downer -- the slacker's drug, if you will -- marijuana can really screw with your sleep patterns and keep you up at night. Maybe. Sort of sounds like that other drug, cocaine. But California researchers say it could be the chronic that's preventing you from c ... More >>

Four Seasons Rolls Out Fancy Food Truck

There's a new word in the food truck universe, and that word is fancy. The Four Seasons Beverly Hills has just debuted its food truck, and it has hit the road. Think The Beverly Hillbillies, in reverse. The spanking-new truck has trompe l'oeil wood paneling on the sides, shiny gold bumpers and wo ... More >>

Telluride Film Festival 2013: A Wrap-Up

From a Gas Station Screening to Linsanity: Your Weekly Movie To-Do List

See also: *More L.A. Weekly Film Coverage *5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This WeekFriday, April 26 Friday, April 26 From Japanese director Shunji Iwai comes Vampire, a film about a teacher (Kevin Zegers -- a long way from his Air Bud days) who seduces his suicidal female students prior to draining ... More >>

LYFE Kitchen Review: This Would-Be Chain's Heart Is in the Right Place, But Its Food Isn't

Now Open: LYFE Kitchen in Culver City

LYFE (an acronym for Love Your Food Everyday) Kitchen opened in Downtown Culver City on Feb. 25, in the former Gyenari location. Featuring an eco, health, social and somewhat budget conscious dining concept, LYFE has two of McDonald's top executives, Michael Donahue and Mike Roberts, at the helm. (E ... More >>

Michael Golamco Became Obsessed With World of Warcraft for His New Video Game Play Build

When Michael Golamco began researching Build, his play about two frazzled, lonely guys on the brink of releasing a revolutionary video game, the writer bought a book on how to program MMORPGs -- massively multiplayer online role-playing games, which you play with other people on the internet. He rea ... More >>

Iranian Actress Sheila Vand's Path to Argo Ran Through UCLA and Experimental Steampunk

Say the word "starlet" in polite conversation and risk conjuring up an image of Lindsey Lohan's mug shot or Amanda Bynes toking up in traffic. For aspiring young actresses in the thick of it, however, the indignities that pile up tend to be less tabloid-ready -- pointless general meetings, indiffere ... More >>

Cookbook Of The Week: Japanese Farm Food Is Even Better Than Sushi Rice A Recipe For Sesame-Miso Dressing

What happens when a California girl goes to Japan on a post-college, year-long sushi sabbatical? If you're Nancy Singleton Hachisu, author of the gorgeous new cookbook Japanese Farm Food, you meet an organic egg farmer, fall in love, and move to an incredible property in northern Saitama Prefecture. ... More >>

Michael Joseph Holden: A Tale of Booze, Rape, Abortion & DNA From Aborted Fetus -- Cops

A 29-year-old woman says she was raped and indicated the suspect, who she hung out with at two Santa Barbara bars on the night of the alleged attack, drugged her, police said today. But this is where the story gets interesting: The victim says she realized what had happened when she discovered she ... More >>

The Glitch Mob Inspires a Man's Rehabilitation

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] Two years ago, Grant Korgan woke up in an intensive care unit in the Sierra Nevada with a broken back and no feeling below his stomach. A snowmobile jump ... More >>

Ben & Jerry's "Taste the Lin-Sanity" Flavor: Stereotypes à la Mode

Boston Ben & Jerry's Twitter pageBen & Jerry's first batch of its limited edition "Taste the Lin-Sanity" flavor​When Ben & Jerry's decided to pay pint-sized tribute to New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin and his spectacular rise in the NBA, they had a few options. Draw inspiration from the ... More >>

California's $100B Bullet Train 'Not Feasible' at This Time, Says Peer Review Group for the High-Speed Rail (Surprise, Surprise)

The Bullet Train: Even more expensive a pipe dream than the L.A. mayor's "Subway to the Sea."​How many more warnings will it take for starry-eyed California politicians to realize the voter-approved $100 billion Bullet Train is a budget disaster waiting to implode? On top of skepticism from t ... More >>

New California Law Bans Minors From Buying Cough Syrup (Happy New Year!)

It'll be a sobering 2012 for the sizzerp-sipping teens of California. As of January 1, state minors can add cough syrup -- alongside porn and cigarettes -- to the list of novelties to buy from the drugstore on their 18th birthday. And they've got Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) to thank. The NorCa ... More >>

$100 Billion Bullet Train

Democrats fray as cost skyrockets, feds bail, and Amtrak starts to look good

iPhone's Siri, a Virtual Assistant, Could Get You a Ticket if You Follow Her Directions While Driving

Siri's a bad girl.​Cops in California say using iPhone's new personal assistant feature called Siri on the road could still get you a traffic ticket even though she works through voice commands. That's because if you touch your phone to, say, explore a map of directions she brought up for you ... More >>

Facebook to Establish Offices on Los Angeles' Westside: Do You Like?

Facebook plans to make more friends in L.A.​Facebook is coming to Los Angeles. "Like" or unfriend? The Palo Alto company has signed a letter of intent to lease 8,000- to 15,000-square-feet of office space at the Tishman Speyer complex in Playa Vista, according to the Los Angeles Business Jour ... More >>

$9 Billion California High Speed Rail Route: The Planning is So Inept That it's Souring Residents from North to South

California bullet train: little rooting for the route​Investigative reporter Tracy Wood writes today about the inept, cloaked, and somewhat creepy PR strategy followed by the California High Speed Rail engineers and Parsons Brinckerhoff, who have not followed basic transparency and outreach ru ... More >>

Bon Appetit Management Company Doubles Its Ranks of Local Producers

SlicesofLight/FlickrYou can almost see the farms from here.​ The local food movement hasn't broken into the corporate world like a wall-crashing Tasmanian Devil just because supporting local producers is the right thing to do. There's demand for it, and companies stand to make serious scratch ... More >>

California Bullet Train To Los Angeles Via Bakersfield: Real Or A $43 Billion Mirage?

Money is so tight, the new leg doesn't actually go into Bakersfield as pictured.​The California High-Speed Rail Authority, ridiculed for its secrecy, mismanagement, conflicts of interest and crazy overspending -- and for choosing as the California bullet train's first leg a "route to nowhere" ... More >>

For Whitmans, Shoving is a Family Affair

Meg Whitman​A day after the New York Times reported that Meg Whitman had to pay an eBay employee as much as $200,000 for shoving her, Gawker is reporting that Whitman's son also has a shoving problem.According to a police report, Griffith Rutherford Harsh V was accused of pushing a woman at a Palo ... More >>

Proposed Bill Would Raise Kindergarten Age to 5

​In an effort to save California an estimated $700 million dollars in annual education spending, California legislators are considering changing the minimum kindergarten enrollment age from 4-years-old to 5. The state Senate approved the bill by Sen. Joe Simitian on Wednesday on a 28-4 vote. ... More >>

Report IDs Tesla Employees Killed In Plane Crash

The Tesla Roadster.​The San Jose Mercury-News on Thursday identified all three people who died when a small, Los Angeles-bound plane they were in crashed Wednesday morning in the East Palo Alto fog. According the paper, the trio of Tesla Motors employees on board included Doug Bourn, 56, a se ... More >>

The Plastic Bag Lives On In Manhattan Beach

​A state appellate panel dealt a setback today to Manhattan Beach and to other cities that have sought to ban plastic bags, ruling that the city should have done an environmental impact report before imposing its bag ban in 2008.In this case, the plastics industry -- under the name of The Save the ... More >>

Techcrunch Crunchup: L.A. Does it in Realtime

SoCal native and the "Golden God of Tech" Michael Arrington was born and raised in Huntington Beach so it came as no surprise that the L.A. contingent was out in full-force at this year's Techcrunch Crunchup Real Time Conference and summer party at the August Capital offices in Palo Alto. There for ... More >>

Shift Happens: Hollywood and Silicon Valley Bring It OnHollywood

With no relief from the recession coming anytime soon, plus Monday's news that L.A.'s own Tsavo Media founder Mike Jones will now take over as COO of MySpace, it's high time Los Angeles and Silicon Valley broke out the peace pipe. The opportunity presented itself at this week's AlwaysOn OnHollywood ... More >>

REMEMBER WHEN BARCAMP MEANT "BAR CAMP"?

GO LA: Mort Sahl, Ziggy Marley and Everything In Between

What to do in L.A., May 1-7

Stealing MySpace: An Interview with Julia Angwin at SxSW

One of our favorite parts of SXSW thus far is that we got to meet and interact with the people that shaped our careers, hearts and minds (I'm talking to you Bill Wasik and Lawrence Lessig). Continuing in the same vein, we were thrilled at the chance to talk shop with tech ambassador and longtime Wal ... More >>

Buying the Cure at Passages, Malibu: June 27, 2008

After patients say they didn't find the addiction cure, the center's Chris Prentiss makes an ad that won't go away

Last Night: L.A. Geek Dinner And Creative Commons' 6-Year Anniversary

"So what's the strangest place you've wifi-ed?" The icebreakers were a bit unorthodox but the endgame was the same at the 6th birthday party of Creative Commons and the now three year strong Geek Dinner held last night at the uWink Restaurant in Hollywood. The organizer of the event, Heather Schle ... More >>

Foreclosure Frenzy

L.A.’s middle class embraced $3,000 mortgages. Will a recession ensue?

Northern Light

A new Mandarin dynasty at Earthen Restaurant

The Imageers

Science shows its (new) visual side

The Politics of Home

Sexual hypocrisy, fractured identities and Azadeh Moaveni’s Lipstick Jihad

The Day-Glo Effect

Exhuming Ken Kesey and Further 40 years after the Acid Tests

The People’s Business

Proposition 59 would discourage government secrecy

Comedy, Sex and Being Recognized

Monica Palacios and Culture Clash, separated but equal

Compound Interest

Letters

Letters

While You Were Sleeping

Mapping the dreamscape of dream research

Gamecock Confidential

Being Ron Unz

The Genius Son of a Welfare Mother, He Made a Fortune in Computers. Now He's Spending it Trying to Reshape the World

Lap dancers

Lap dancers win right to be treated as employees

Scientology, cont.

A River Should Run Through It

Repairing downtown, riparianly

Tripped Out

Local anti-war groups struggle to mobilize opposition

Looking for Blood

The Donnas: Lean, mean teens