Chris Kissel

Joe Ruiz walks out to the parking lot of Self Help Graphics, the Boyle Heights community arts center, to show off his car — a 1964 Chevy Impala SS. It's not so much a car as a steel monument, shining supernaturally, reflecting the street lights. Ruiz is a sight, too,......

It's been a long time since Eddie Van Halen tore into "Eruption" at Sunset Sound in 1977, or Slayer and Megadeth escalated the thrash-metal arms race in the early '80s. But Pasadena's Holy Grail prove L.A. is still a haven for behemoth riffs, breakneck solos and metal shrieks to raise......

Mount Analog isn't just the best record store in Los Angeles — it's the only one of its kind. The Highland Park shop caters to those who delight in cassette-only noise label samplers, for instance, or double-LP collections of Persian psychedelia, records that are otherwise available only via underground distributors......