Van Nuys

5 Great Old School Burger Stands in Los Angeles

There's something special about the walk-up burger stand, that post-WWII staple of American eating that has slowly started to fade from view. There are still zillions of madre-and-padre burger operations around Los Angeles, pressing beef into ageless cast iron griddles, but many of them have opted f ... More >>

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Budweiser's New Can Launches Today: We Test Its Functionality

When an oversized package from Budweiser appeared at the LA Weekly office last week, we were befuddled to discover that it contained just one single can of beer. But it wasn't just any old can of beer nestled neatly into a glossy gift box -- it was a limited edition, bow-tie-shaped can of Budweiser, ... More >>

Weekend DUI Checkpoints Start Tonight In Hollywood, Silver Lake

April showers bring May flowers. Sure. But an April DUI will only bring you misery for months and years to come. The AAA of Southern California now estimates that the cost of a DUI conviction is $15,649. At the same time, cops across the Southland are giving you an easy out. They're giving you a vi ... More >>

Bicyclist Sustains Major Injuries In Valley Village Hit-And-Run By Mercedes SUV

See also: Hit-and-Run Blowback on LAPD. A series of hit-and-run crimes on bicyclists have L.A. bike activists fuming this spring. The community was buzzing about a near-death hit-and-run in Griffith Park last month. Now there's this:

Traffic Tickets Get A Boost With LAPD's Laser-Accurate Speed-Detection Guns

If you're tired of the LAPD killing fish in a barrel with "ticket traps" and other money-making schemes while motorists make atrocious and dangerous moves in your neighborhood, we have bad news for you. The department has obtained new laser speed-detection guns that can not only pick you out of a c ... More >>

Everybody's a Critic: Readers Respond to Our Food, Movie and Music Critics

7 Great Los Angeles Ethnic Markets

As significant as farmers markets are in reintroducing seasonality to our diet, it is the neighborhood market that regularly holds us down when times call for lingonberry syrup or injera bread. It may be too early to declare Los Angeles -- or anywhere for that matter -- post-racial, but in a city wi ... More >>

Stephanie Lazarus, Former LAPD Detective, Gets 27 Years-Plus For Murder

In crime, it's rare when the detective becomes the murderer. But it happened to Stephanie Lazarus, a beloved LAPD art-crime investigator who, it turned out, murdered the wife of her ex-boyfriend in jealous rage in 1986 and lived with the crime until DNA connected her to the slaying in 2009. Today ... More >>

Toni Monroe Is a Big Beautiful Rapper

See also: Top Ten Sexiest Fat Chicks in Music Toni Monroe is beautiful. She has a powerful stage presence, and doesn't need a hype man. But yet, she's something of a hard sell. For one thing, she's white. For another, as her press release says, she is rap's "biggest" new artist -- a reference to he ... More >>

Los Angeles Gadflies on Fire

City Hall politicians want them gone

Governor Brown Agrees Shaken-Baby Syndrome Is Bogus, Takes Mercy on L.A. Grandma

When Shirley Ree Smith was convicted of killing her grandson in a Van Nuys apartment in 1997, "shaken-baby syndrome" was all the rage. If a baby showed signs of bleeding in the brain, the "shaken" diagnosis was a go-to -- and the last person to have been in the same room with the baby was the prime ... More >>

Top 10 Gay Bars in Los Angeles

Gay nightlife in Los Angeles might seem like it's separated into two distinct camps -- Weho on one side and Silver Lake on the other -- but the truth is, plenty of queer and queer-loving crowds hit both, thanks to promoters offering parties on both sides of town. Cliches about the Westside being s ... More >>

Busted Marijuana Dispensary in Reseda Could Have Been Any Other Pot Shop in Town, Cops Say

Even though the explosion of marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles happened about 5 years ago, we bet you didn't know this: The city of L.A. considers pot shops that sell weed to strangers for cash -- and that's pretty much all of them -- illegal. Scary innit? As such, the LAPD could pretty much s ... More >>

Cityzen: Paralyzed From the Neck Down, Singer Toby Forrest Still Belts It Out

When Toby Forrest -- the vocalist for Los Angeles progressive funk rock band Cityzen -- was 22, his dream was to move from Arizona to Colorado to ski, make jewelry and play music. After college graduation, Forrest and his buddies went to the Grand Canyon, where he jumped off a cliff and did a swan ... More >>

Los Angeles Modern Auctions: 5 Iconic Works of California Design on Sale Sunday

Courtesy of Los Angeles Modern AuctionsRichard Neutra's VDL House in Silver Lake, photographed by Julius Shulman in 1966. A print of this image, and some of the furniture photographed, are up for auction this weekend. Life in sepia remains unavailable.​In the material world, the past is never ... More >>

Perv With Fake Badge Allegedly Told Middle School Girl in Chatsworth He Needed to Put a Tracking Device in Her Bra

Young girls saw this poseur a mile away.​Updated at the bottom: Cops arrested a mixed martial arts "fighter/trainer" as their suspect in this case. The best part of this story is that middle school girls know a perv-ass poseur when they see one. Police say a twentysomething man with a fake b ... More >>

Free Comic Book Day Events in Los Angeles

Liz OhanesianYou can get your Free Comic Book Day Dark Crystal book signed at Meltdown Comics tomorrow.​May 7 is the first Saturday of May and, as many comic book lovers know, that means it's Free Comic Book Day. The annual event encourages people to support their local comic book shop with lo ... More >>

Los Angeles Spring Storm Fells Trees, Floods Streets, Darkens Homes

MuscleNerdTree down in L.A.​Update: PCH was reopened, and so was the Grapevine. Record rainfall was recorded around Southern California, with downtown Los Angeles seeing 2.42 inches Sunday compared with 1.48 inches on the date in 1943. See more records after the jump. The first week of spring ... More >>

Food Truck Friday: Smokin Willie's BBQ

Smokin' Willie's (@smokinwillies) has existed as a truck since at least last summer, but it's been in business as a producer of bottled sauces, books and grilling equipment since 2005. (1999, if you count their first aborted attempt to mass-produce and sell their sauce.) The truck's namesake, Bil ... More >>

Steerage: Smoke City Market

New Sherman Oaks barbecue joint gets the important things right, Texas-style

Alleged Porn-Star Killer Dies After Police Shoot And He Falls Off A Cliff

The suspect with porn actress Sasha Grey.​[Updated throughout at 10:20 p.m.] Alleged porn-star killer Stephen Hill died Saturday night following a day-long standoff with police that ended when officers used what they said was a stun-gun/Taser against him -- although at least one other cop appe ... More >>

Lawsuit: First AME Pastor Pushed For Sex As "God's Will"

A lawsuit against controversial First AME Church Rev. John J. Hunter claims that he pressured a subordinate for on-demand sex as "God's will."First AME ChurchRev. John J. Hunter is alleged to have pressured a subordinate to have sex.​Rev. Brenda Lamothe, who now works for the office of Mayor Anton ... More >>

City Council Votes for Permanent Ban on Digital Billboards

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously today to ban all digital billboards in the city, an action brought before them by City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, who feared that an existing "Interim Control Ordinance" that temporarily bans digital billboards and super-graphics may soon be found inval ... More >>

Today in Photographs: July 22, 1959

Uh-Oh! East L.A. boxer Art Aragon and girlfriend Barbara Shey (center) cross paths with Aragon's wife, Georgina, in Van Nuys court hallway. Aragon would beat charges that he had tried to run down Georgina with a car.Hollywood Citizen News/LAPL

Steaked Out: Argentine Food Beyond the Parrillada

Emergency Response: Ambulance Feature Continues to Inspire

Plus, on Patrick Range McDonald’s Queer Town, Jonathan Gold, and our L.A. Infrastructure story

L.A. Planning Commission Approves New Sign Law

The Los Angeles Planning Commission voted today to adopt a new sign ordinance that would prohibit brightly-lit digital billboards and giant vinyl supergraphics citywide but allow them in 21 potential sign districts. The commission also voted to establish a city task force to annually review the im ... More >>

No Good Deed Dept.: L.A. Times' Neighborhood Map Project Gets Flak

The fact that some L.A. Times readers have treated the newspaper's attempt to map 87 Los Angeles neighborhoods as an act of capricious gerrymandering shows how fluid and volatile are our notions of community boundaries. Angelenos typically cry foul over boundary slights when their addresses, by fall ... More >>

Villaraigosa could copy the Blagojevich billboard-removal crews

People were cheering in Chicago and other parts of Illinois today after crews openly began dismantling the obnoxious blue signs that ousted Governor Milorad Blagojevich had slathered all over the state in an embarrassing effort to personally take credit for road projects.When I saw this efficient-lo ... More >>

Brick's Picks: Blue Note 7, Ravi Coltrane, Stones Reed Man Tim Ries and more

Brick's Picks: Three-Horn Circus

Sanders, Garrett and Lloyd blow into town

Bookworm in a Tequila Bottle: 2007's Most Intriguing Music Books

Oh, those bed-wetting, penis-injecting, 43-person gangbang days of yore

Escape from Allentown

Beardo’s long journey into teenage wasteland

Bob Say

The pursuit of vinyl happiness

It's Two Thousand What??????

What to do in Los Angeles this week

Pleasures of the Flesh

Among the happy beef eaters of Mercado Buenos Aires

Letters

Letters

Cirque du Kobe

How race and riches are shaping the Kobe Bryant case in Eagle County

Letters

Letters

The September 11 That Never Was

A summer of anti-American paranoia

Letters

War Games

The Unelected

. . . and to spend more time with their families . . .

Bump, Set, Spike

South Bay Volleyball with the Best of ’em

From Spaetzle to Saimintosoda

The world on a string

Off the Beaten Spiritual Path

Looking for the gods, for the light, for the truth

Nightlife