Christine Pelisek

Photo by Ted Soqui Jennifer K. Howell knows how to turn it out — even in Hawthorne. On a recent Saturday eve, she organized an opening at Soicher-Marin Gallery for painter Thom Bierdz, hosted by Scarlett Johansson and attended by the likes of Jared Leto — perhaps the first time......

Photo by Anne Fishbein Some of us burn toast and screw up cereal. Others breeze through a dinner party like Marcia Cross’ robotlike character on Desperate Housewives. Not everyone has a cooking gene. But that shouldn’t stop us from throwing a fabulous dinner party. Whether it’s for catching up on......

Photo by Max S. Gerber “Art schools are fabulous but don’t address the issue that artists need to be self-employed,” says businesswoman Judith Luther-Wilder, who two years ago co-founded the Center for Cultural Innovation, a nonprofit corporation that focuses on the financial and business needs of artists (www.cci2002.org). “I realized......

Twenty-two-year-old Kristin High wanted to be a civil rights attorney. The former Cal State Los Angeles student and mother of a 2-year-old boy named Skyler had marched in numerous rallies against police abuse, organized the NAACP chapter of her L.A. campus and worked on committees to register people from her......

Photo by Wild Don Lewis Francesca de la Rosa knows how to organize people — from founding Women Advocates for Knowledge and Empowerment in 1996, which rallied around issues such as Proposition 187, while a student at Mount St. Mary’s College, to volunteering on various political campaigns to working as......

Florentine Gardens, the once popular World War II servicemen’s hangout and the site of Marilyn Monroe and Jim Dougherty’s wedding reception in 1942, will likely be demolished to make room for a fire station. In recent years, the Hollywood Boulevard club, open only on Fridays and Saturdays, has drawn mostly......

The long-simmering standoff between Runyon Canyon rivals has turned into a real dogfight. Faced off against each other over issues of park use and parking are local residents, park users and city officials. The current teeth gnashing is over preferential parking. Residents representing nine blocks adjacent to Runyon Canyon, which......

We asked the Board of Commissioners of the Department of Water and Power about discrimination at the DWP and the city attorney’s use of secret settlements in racial- and sexual-harassment lawsuits by employees.   Board President Dominick Rubalcava, attorney, Main Street Law Office: “My blood would freeze if I thought......

An alleged Temple Street gang member who received a $290,000 settlement from the city of Los Angeles in 2002 after rogue Rampart Officer Rafael Perez said police planted drugs on him, has been charged with the murder of a Palmdale man. Twenty-six-year-old Roy Andres Montes is accused of killing 58-year-old......

Dick Cheney had some advice during the U.S. Senate’s annual photo session for Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, who has been relentless in his criticism of the no-bid contracts awarded to the vice president’s alma mater, Halliburton. A search of the Nexis newspaper database showed only one U.S. daily newspaper —......