A second victim of this weekend's street racing-related crash in Hollywood has died from his injuries. The first victim was Nigel Gudray, the driver of the Infiniti struck by the speeding BMW driven by an intoxicated Carlos Steven John, was burned past physical recognition in the accident and died on scene. The passenger of Gudray's vehicle died overnight as a result of his burns. The six-month-long search for missing college student Donna Jou continues......

SFist saw Christmas Day turn tragic after a Siberian tiger escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo, killing a visitor and mauling two others. Phillyist counted down the top ten items on Philadelphia's New Year's wish list. Gothamist looked at the wooden bikes being offered for NYC's first bike share program on Governors Island. LAist received a Christmas present in the form of a drunk Santa Claus in a g-string. Bostonist launched......

The list is a little long this week since I'm including the Christmas Day openers. Having already raved about There Will Be Blood yesterday, I'll lead off with what some are calling the best horror film of the year, The Orphanage. For any horror fan who's tired of torture porn and bad Japanese re-makes, this is the movie for you. Grim and spare, it's a horror film for adults and Spain's foreign-language entrant for......

If good things come in threes, it seems bad things come in twos, at least today in LA: Edward Gage, a 31-year old Lancaster man, has been arrested for an alleged Christmas Day rape of a 16-year-old girl. When Gage's victim ignored his attempts to get directions as she walked to a friend's house, he pulled her shirt and tried to remove her clothing. She punched him in the face and got away! Francisco Santiago......

Vitals details in the killings of two South LA residents who were found shot to death in their 11th Ave apartment remain unknown. The LAPD was notified late Monday afternoon of gunshots heard, and soon after discovered the bodies of Shelton Sumerall, 32, and Monica Youngblood, 23, both of whom suffered fatal shots to their heads. The motive and a shooting suspect have not been determined. A Van Nuys man was stabbed yesterday when he......

Father Dollar Bill (a.k.a. Reverend Maurice Chase) was at it again yesterday, handing out money on Skid Row. While he often hands out money to downtown residents in need, Christmas is his no-holds-barred attempt to spread a little more love in the form of Christmas cash. Skid row residents have lined up every year for 24 years to see what luck might come their way from Father Dollar Bill on Christmas Day. Reverend Chase gives......

A Christmas Day United Airlines Boeing 757 flight to Kauai returned to LAX 10-minutes after take off when the windshield cracked. The jet and its 178 passengers landed safely and began their journey to Hawaii three and a half hours later. Earlier this year, news broke that commercial airline safety these days is extremely better than just a decade ago (contrasting that, on Sunday, a small plane in Panama crashed killing a California businessman, one......

Making sure that many have a safe holiday, fire fighters will be on watch because of SoCal's low humidity and high winds, a perfect mixture for wildfire. As of this posting, the Los Angeles Fire Department has not issued a Red Flag Warning. Mountain and pass areas should expect 25-30 mph winds with "gusts up to 60 mph or more..." In the coastal mountains, the winds will be lighter, about 15-25 mph, with gusts up......

Although most of us here at LAist are gourmet vegan chefs, a few of us (hi!) get our meals via drive-thru's not just daily, but several times a day. So the day after Thanksgiving we found ourselves in the drive-thru of the Jack in the Box on Santa Monica Blvd. in Westwood right near the 405 and we saw this interesting sign. Because we're selfish, lazy, bastards, at first we thought "oh cool, Jack......

My folks are Republicans. I am not. On a recent visit from the East Coast, they wanted to go to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. I kinda didn't. But since they were only in town for a few days -- to see me and I wanted to spend time with them -- I put our political differences aside and drove them out to Simi Valley (via the 118 -- the Ronald Regan......

No Shaq (bum knee). No Pat Riley (bum hip). No personal connections to the past on display tonight. Still, the budding rivalry of Kobe vs. Dwyane Wade is more than plenty when the Lakers and Heat play. The two best shooting-guards in the basketball face off tonight at Staples Center (7 on TNT) in a game with enough juice to make you turn away from the drunken acceptance speeches at the Golden Globes, at......

When we heard tell of a dude falling through the roof of a chicken wing emporium by way of the grease vent, we had a feeling that this chap might be from Florida. But when we heard that he had previously fallen through a roof of a Subway sandwich dining facility and held them up for less than $200 we were pretty sure that this fool was from Florida. However when we read that......

Horse racing season has just begun at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, and from now until April 22, SoCal hopefuls (with $5 for general admission fee) can step up to tellered windows and pick the ponies to win, place or show. But there’s a lot of history behind them horses: Santa Anita opened on Christmas Day in 1934, and still now traditionally opens on Dec. 26 each year. Seabiscuit brought the park more notoriety,......

Lakers coach Phil Jackson could only laugh at the former LA Center’s pomposity. It all began on Sunday when Jackson described Shaq’s pathetic professional attitude back in the day; how it was difficult “getting him to work”. Shaq gave a one-liner response post game on Christmas Day, saying “How can Benedict Arnold be reliable in what he says?” Kobe decided to sit this one out. Shaq’s bitterness obviously stems from Phil Jackson deciding to come......

Like rewatching “The Year Without a Santa Claus” or drinking eggnog, ABC has decided that the Lakers playing the Miami Heat is a holiday tradition. That’s seriously how they’ve been promoting today’s Christmas Day match up (11:30 on ABC 7) for the past couple of weeks — “a game that has become a holiday tradition.” What this match up really seems is sad — more than three years after Shaquille O’Neal left the Los Angeles......

If you watch television or read the newspaper today, or if you did those things yesterday, it seems to us that something is missing. The newspaper will tell you about holiday sales, the television will show you stories about Christmas trees that catch fire, or recipes to make low-fat desserts, but there's very little, if any, stories about Jesus, the reason for most of our celebrations this time of year. We don't expect the......

Pershing Square has once again transformed into a frozen wonderland of twisted ankles and bruised tailbones. This lovely, downtown park spends most of the year as a grassy knoll and concrete potty, but for a few brilliant weeks during the deep freeze of our LA winter, it becomes a glorious, outdoor ice skating rink for the entire city to enjoy. Hockey clinics, open-air movies, community and family events and live music make this a......

Everything has pretty much gone Christmukkah-tastic for the weekend, and dining options are slim or extra-special, since most folks will be roasting their own chestnuts over their own open fires at home for the next few days. This time of year is also about tradition, whether it be the Chinese food feast as avoidance strategy on Christmas Eve or Day, spiked Egg Nogs after Midnight Mass, baking cookies for Santa, hoarding the chocolate coin......

The Los Angeles Fire Department blog (one of the coolest things ever) warns us today to be cautious with our candles. Home candle fires have tripled in the last 15 years, and from 1999-2002 the top two days for home fires started by candles were Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Half of all fires were started because something flammable tangled with the candle. So while it should go without saying, we echo the LAFD:......

It's rare that we actually listen to LA's commercial radio stations. KCRW and the faux-indie 103.1 usually do us just fine. While downing large amounts of tofu pad see ew at our favorite hole in the wall Thai restaurant today, however, the usually vanilla 94.7 The Wave said something that excited us. Throaty voiced DJ Talaya Trigueros announced that they were giving away a trip an hour (between 8 AM and 5 PM) from......