Photo by John Perrin Flynn Living in a city that's so dominated by the silver screen, it's easy to forget that Los Angeles is also home to some truly cutting-edge, if overlooked, theater performances. Tonight and tomorrow are your last chances to catch the final bow of a particularly entertaining effort. Local playwright John Pollono's Razorback is running at the relatively new Rogue Machine Theater on Pico just west of La Brea, across the... [continue]

The 8th Annual US Sumo Open came to the Los Angeles Sports Arena on Saturday. As expected, this yearly demonstration of the popular Japanese sport drew a colorful array of competitors. While the women's division was cut short by a combination of last minute dropouts and injuries, the heavyweights more than made up for the loss with a ton of great matches. World champ Byambajav "Byamba" Ulambayar walked away with the gold medal for the... [continue]

Photo by Chuck Green 1. This is the perfect primer. The Grand Sumo Tournament was held in Los Angeles back in June. It was a great showcase of traditional sumo, complete with ceremonial performances and an air of formality. The open is more what you’d see if sumo were an Olympic sport. If you’ve never seen sumo wrestling before, the diversity of wrestlers, many of whom are part-timers (this year includes a rock drummer... [continue]

Sometimes the news really does paint our wonderful town as something of a racial powder keg, which makes it all the more gratifying when you stumble across a truly diverse neighborhood. Hugging the western border of Koreatown, just south of tony Hancock Park and just north of West Adams, sits a neighborhood where true diversity is a reality. Just how diverse is Country Club Park? Ask yourself this; where else in town can you... [continue]

I already find myself having to close my blinds before daring to pick up my plastic Guitar Hero 3 controller. Well, the folks at City of Industry-based Jada Toys, Inc., thought pressing buttons on a fake guitar in a musical version of "Simon" wasn't embarrassing enough, so lo and behold we have the Guitar Hero Air Rocker! For only $29.99, you can now strap on the specially-designed air guitar belt and strum away on your... [continue]

It was almost a year ago that LAist was blown away by the US Sumo Open at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. The day of amateur sumo wrestling action, yakisoba noodles and free sake made us understand why the sport is followed so religiously in Japan. With the lousy weather keeping us homebound this weekend, it seemed like a good time to start researching the 2008 event, as we’re anxious to see the return... [continue]

1. That I have two healthy, happy, sometimes crazy kids. 2. That, against all odds, I've found in Los Angeles a city I'm as comfortable in as my hometown (that would be Brooklyn, NYC). 3. That I have a better adult life than I could ever have imagined back during my stickball-playing childhood in Flatbush. 4. That being a square actually became the cool thing to be. 5. That I have a family and...... [continue]

It has been a long time coming, but after a temporary hiatus, we're happy to announce that today our ongoing Neighborhood Project makes its return to LAist. We're hoping to bring our readers a new neighborhood entry on a (fairly) regular basis. First up in this second round of Los Angeles neighborhood tours is Franklin Village, an entry completely written and photographed by a couple of regular LAist readers (and a few of their...... [continue]

Dan "Shoe" Hsu knows video games. As the Editor-in-Chief of Electronic Gaming Monthly, one of the most popular magazines in the world of gaming, it's part of his job. Shoe, 35, first dove into video game coverage in 1996. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in Statistics, he sent query letters to 30 different organizations in the rapidly-growing industry. "I was looking for a job, any job in the game... [continue]

If you happen to find yourself driving around at 11pm tonight, you'll likely see long lines of (mostly) men standing outside of Best Buys, EB Games and Gamestops all over greater Los Angeles. Do not be alarmed. It's just the hardcore gaming faithful lining up to claim their midnight copies of Halo 3, the biggest video game of the year. For the completely uninitiated, Halo is the sci-fi shooter franchise that is basically the...... [continue]

On Sunday, one of my buddies and I went downtown to the Oprheum Theater on Broadway for a taping of Russell Simmons' Def Comedy Jam. What can I say? I'm a sucker for lowbrow comedy. So, picture my surprise when after about 30 minutes of the stylings of such comics as Damn Fool (yes, that's his name), host D.L. Hughley came onto the stage and announced the final comedian. "All the way from Canada...the... [continue]

It has been two days, and the dust still hasn’t settled from the embarrassing MTV Video Music Awards, which both the media and public seem to agree was the worst one ever. The reasons for the disastrous show range from the lackluster performance of Britney Spears to the confusing jumble of special performance spaces to the unhinged antics of Kanye West, Kid Rock, Tommy Lee, et al. But I know better. I also know...... [continue]

Every once and a while, a group of cinephile friends and I sit around and get into a heated discussion about all of the great artists we wish someone would make a movie about. Today that discussion centered on the fabulous Nicholas Brothers, maybe the two most dynamic tap dancers who ever lived. I was never a very starstruck person, even as a younger man, but Harold (d. 2000) and Fayard (d. 2006) Nicholas were...... [continue]

There is so much more to Baldwin Hills than meets the eye. Home to the largest middle and upper middle-class African American community in Los Angeles, this hillside neighborhood ties together one of the most important strongholds of black culture in town, forming the residential nexus of the Crenshaw area. Baldwin Hills has gone through many permutations over the decades, and has been the site of some of the most significant events in the...... [continue]

With somber news like the string of race-related murders in Highland Park, the battles being waged between black and Latino politicians and the recent prison race riots in Chino frequenting local headlines, it sometimes feels like the Latino and African American populations of Los Angeles are on the verge of a war. Depending on whom you ask, the black-brown race problem is either being blown way out of proportion by the media or it... [continue]

Virtually ignored in most travel guides, this 90-block garment district is arguably the most underrated destination neighborhood in Los Angeles. The Fashion District is dismissed by many as an "off the beaten path" kind of area, when in fact it should be among the top two or three places every visitor to the city should see. That's because LA has become the clothing manufacturing center of America, and the Fashion District is its pulsing... [continue]

There are three very distinct communities housed in the jumble of high-rise office towers, apartment buildings and houses that make up Koreatown. There is the Koreatown of middle-class and wealthy Korean families, who live, eat, shop, party and golf in a faithful facsimile of their native country. There's the Koreatown of toil and danger, experienced by the Latinos and blacks occupying much of the neighborhood, working in the thousands of local businesses and (occasionally)...... [continue]

Alexi Lalas President and General Manager Los Angeles Galaxy Dear Alexi: I've gotta hand it to you. You are indeed the man. Landing David Beckham is a much bigger deal than any of your fellow MLS owners will ever acknowledge, because they're all steamed that they couldn't pull it off first. The man is the biggest brand in international sports, without a doubt, and his made-for-the-highlight-reel penalty and free kicks are just what the...... [continue]

Starting today, audiences in Los Angeles can take their first worthwhile break from the summer blockbuster madness with one of the few award-worthy pics released so far this year (other than Ratatouille). First, a disclaimer. Do not let the trailers for Talk to Me, the new biopic starring the always excellent Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor, mislead you. This is not a film about the civil rights movement, or race in America. Those who... [continue]

Good grief, BET. First, the Black Entertainment Television network embarrasses black college students across the country with College Hill, a show that proves a house full of black college co-eds can be as useless as a house full of white ones. Now the MTV-show-dipped-in-chocolate experiment kicks into overdrive with last night's premiere of Baldwin Hills, a new single-camera docudrama that proves that when it comes to effortlessly reinforcing stereotypes, BET still reigns supreme. Promoted...... [continue]