A.M. News: Lotus Fest, Your Commute, New Blogs & More

Lotus Festival
Congratulations to team blogging.la for winning in the media category at the Lotus Festival's dragon boat race! They beat the wussies over at KTLA. In the end, all of that doesn't matter 'cause LAist is going to kick everyone's ass next year (that means you too Mack Reed). It's on!

Your Commute
If there is one article you read in the news today, read Gridlock, schmidlock:

When it comes to automobile travel, Los Angeles, perhaps more than almost any other large city in the world, suffers from a deflation of greatly raised expectations. After all, the residents of Paris, New York or Tokyo never even entertained the possibility that they could drive through the center of the city at 60 mph.

$140 billion. Yeah, that's the minimum we need to fix our state's highway network. To the right of the article, LATimes.com has a nice interactive feature on "The Eight Worst Roads - Plus 21 More." Does your daily commute make the list?

Are you a perfect driver, but have an expensive auto insurance policy just because of your zip code? Things are changing... at least with the Auto Club.

Bloglandia
LACityNerd is king of finding new blogs and maybe the nerd found your neighborhood blogger. The nerd also is getting uber nerdy with a poll in the right column asking you to vote for who you think the most effective city of Los Angeles GM is.

Curbed LA is slowly developing into a food blog. Real Estate is so over.

View From A Loft: So you didn't save a farm. Here's a chance to save a Farmer's Market.

Same-Sex Marriage
"The multi-pronged effort to make gay marriage legal in California inches another step toward resolution Monday, when a state appeals court in San Francisco will consider whether a trial judge erred in declaring the state's existing marriage laws unconstitutional."

Quake!
Another quake hits the Riverside area at 3.8. That should be a reminder to you about being prepared for a major quake. It's going to happen, we promise you. At the very least, store lots of water and remember to switch it out every six months (and don't store it directly on concrete). And no, your Brita water filter does not count. One of the best things you can do is to start taking a free and priceless CERT class with LAFD.

Photo by Nathan Baird-Hu