Extra, Extra: 70 years as a bus mechanic

• It's better than winning the lottery. LAist is running three contests right now: a pair of tickets for Bright Eyes with the LA Philharmonic for this Saturday, a pair of VIP passes to LA Weekly's Detour Festival on October 6 and a pair of tickets for next The Crystal Method at The Roxy next tuesday.
  
• Speaking of Detour, the line-ups and stages were announced today
  
• Hopefully, citizens won't get cheated as much anymore: the city is beginning to replace the 40,000 meters in the city with newer and more futuristic ones (well, not that futuristic).
  
• Another Orange Line crash today. This time it wasn't a cell phone wielding, red running driver; it was a pedestrian.
  
• Okay, it's really silly to get in a high speed chase with the police and also throw beer bottles out the window at the cops.
  
• The LA Times gets their nose into MTV's new bisexual dating game starring Tila Tequila
  
• The first modern history book about LA is here costing readers $100. It's called The Development of Los Angeles City Government -- An Institutional History 1850-2000. Will it rival Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898?
  
• Did you vote in our poll today? We ask if Los Angeles will ever get free citywide WiFi as planned.
  
• A little case of psychotic: A 25-year-old son killed his mother last night in Calabasas with a butcher's knife.
  
• Shortly before passing away, "100-year old retiree Arthur Winston tells his great-grand nephew, Eric Anthony Givens, about his 70-year career, working as a bus mechanic in Los Angeles," on NPR's StoryCorps Griot.
  
• Forty percent or 10,882 of the 18,035 motorists caught by the city's $15 million red-light camera system were not sent traffic tickets during the last year because drivers or license plates could not be identified. That equals out to $1.1 million in citations.
  
• Face it people, ficus trees suck when it comes to the "urban forest." It's the city of Santa Monica vs. ficus lovers who don't want Santa Monica to rip the ficus trees out to put safer and non-sidewalk destroying ginko trees.
  
• Michael Vick, the disgraced Atlanta Falcons quarterback, "tested positive for marijuana earlier this month, a violation of the conditions of his release as he awaits sentencing in federal court on a dogfighting charge that already jeopardizes his freedom and career." Wait, isn't it always a violation of the law to smoke pot (medical reasons aside in certain states)?
  

Photo by discarted via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr