Downtown Los Angeles maven and blogger Eric Richardson posted an observation today about street construction and its lack of impact on traffic. Specifically, he speaks of a transformer that's been sitting in the northbound curb lane on 6th street for several weeks. This very lane is designated for traffic during peak hours and parking otherwise, but during rush hour, traffic seems to be been fine. Richardson ponders... "if the city's content to let the lane......

Photo by hinducow via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Looks like the Hollywood sex tape predates YouTube and Betamax by a landslide. A sex tape featuring late film icon Marilyn Monroe--on 16mm film--sold for $1.5 million to a NY businessman. Did you check out the Songkran fest yesterday in Thai Town? Did you ride the Red Line? Did you wonder why the hell the MTA only put in two ticket vending machines......

City Controller Laura Chick announced yesterday the results of an audit ordered on the construction of the 10-story police headquarters downtown, revealing that the costs on the project "have soared $150 million over projections" bringing the receipt to over $453 million, according to the Daily News. Chick explained that the "city's Bureau of Engineering has failed to provide adequate oversight and management" and when the city's engineers "lost control of the project" the LAPD had......

View Larger Map If you've noticed northbound Hollywood Way closed in Burbank between Riverside Drive and Alameda Avenue, get used to it -- it's scheduled to reopen in October. Caltrans tells the Burbank Leader that they advise commuters to use Pass and Verdugo Avenues in the interim. A new onramp is being built on the 134 freeway to help congestion flow on the busy artery near major studios and the Los Angeles city border in......

Fairfax Avenue is the Bomb!!! Declining enrollment and rising costs means less expansion and construction to help relieve overcrowding in LAUSD schools. The LA Times reports that "since the fall, the school system has canceled plans for 19 new schools and additions to existing campuses in South Gate, Bell, Van Nuys, San Fernando, Sun Valley and central Los Angeles, among other areas, citing new enrollment projections." Kids, you don't mind sharing that book, do......

Molly's Charbroiled Burger, a rickety burger shack on Vine between Selma and Hollywood, is one of those funny little places that is both totally ordinary and totally L.A. -- run by Koreans, with a Mexican line cook, who serve up good old American burgers, fries, hot dogs, burritos, and, um, bulgogi plates. Students at the neighboring film and recording schools swear by the breakfast burritos -- cozy bundles of egg, french-fry hash browns, bacon,......

Day 32 of the strike was "Bring Your Dog To Work Day". Apparently, it was also day 32 of we're coincidentally performing random construction right where you are attempting to strike. "Don't Make Us Beg" bandanas and dog treats were provided for the pets. In the above picture, two volunteers use the bandanas to protect themselves from the toxic asphalt fumes. We showed you the other day how the crosswalk at Warner Brothers Gate......

What with all the Big Game festivities going on this weekend, a girl can't help but think back fondly upon her alma mater. But you know what? It's only been a few years since I left UCLA, and I gotta say -- I almost don't recognize the place anymore. Has it really been so long since I graduated? Five years? Maybe more? So much has changed -- I came of age in the Steve......

If you're anything like us and still incorporate large quantities of instant ramen noodles into your diet (is that shameful for a food writer to admit?), this morning's news might cause more than a little worry. We woke to our local news broadcasters discussing yet another American health worry: salt. Apparently Americans consume 50% too much salt in their diet, much of it locked up in processed and canned foods, and the FDA is......

The Malibu fire is now 25% contained. At least 35 structures have been destroyed and thousands were forced to flee as wind whipped flames ravaged the coastal town. The cause of the blaze is not known at this time, but crews haven't ruled out CNN's Glen Beck. In other fire-related news, two people died this morning when a house fire ripped through their Pasadena home. The cause of the fire is unknown. A woman......

"You don't actually think they spend $20000.00 on a hammer, $30000.00 on a toilet seat do you?" ~ Independence Day Well, it's the difference between what the new LAPD headquarters currently under construction should cost and is costing. And City Controller Laura Chick, who is responsible for auditing city spending to find misuse, abuse and savings, is making headlines by putting departments city who oversee contracts and contractors themself on notice, starting with the......

It's time we all realized something very very important about Britney Spears. Something incredible. Something -- redemptive, even. Much like Tamburlaine, she has been sent by God as a scourge to rid our fair city of its vermin-like paparazzi, one crushed foot at a time. Thank you, Britney. Thank you. Looks like the ArcLight at the Sherman Oaks Galleria might be up and running! Now us Valley kids don't have to cross the big......

The very popular (and rightly so) Museum of Tolerance is pissing off its neighbhors. Since the museum opened 14 years ago, it has steadily gained worldwide mentions. Yet, all the visitors that arrive because of those those international mentions have the residents who live near the museum in a tizzy, claiming their West LA neighborhood has become a nightmare of big bus traffic, blocked streets and stolen parking spaces. All of this, they say, they......

While it is hard for most to understand or imagine, once you have become entrenched in the archipelagic enclave of skyscrapers and bona fide mass transit that is Manhattan Island, it is difficult to leave. For a New Yorker, geographic displacement can fester into a self-induced internalized affront (even if just for a few short days). But the compelling lure of a free trip to Los Angeles to accompany my aunt on a business trip......

"This is not. . . targeting or profiling. It is an effort to understand communities." Police Chief William J. Bratton defending a LAPD counter-terrorism program that uses "U.S. census data and other demographic information to pinpoint various Muslim communities and then reach out to them through social service agencies." [LA Times] "Over my dead body." Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on any limit of his goals of expanding the LAPD. A fiscally conservative and wary City......

" "Just because you've rolled horse manure in powdered sugar doesn't mean you have a doughnut": people aren't very happy with the Farm Bill, and yet the Senate still seems set on passing a totally inadequate "reformed" bill that continues to subsidize Big Agriculture at the expense of our nation's health. City officials are "identifying" Muslim communities across the city -- but it's not profiling, it's "community engagement"!! Those kooky kids at City Hall!......

And in case you haven’t heard, Roky walks among us this weekend. Tonight at 7:30 he's signing books and introducing a showing of his “all time favorite horror movie”, The Creature With The Atom Brain, at the Silent Movie Theater, and playing with his latest crew Evilhook Wildlife ET on Sunday night at the El Rey. Your Pre-Halloween weekend just got creepier, in person. We haven’t had a visit from this fellow since 1980, and the one before that was around 1966, so avoid him at your extreme peril....

Did you notice anything different on your commute through the Valley at the 405/101 interchange yesterday? Was it faster, smoother, safer or none of the above? In any case, it should have been after 2 years and $46-million. This is what they did: Widened the northbound freeway in the area to six lanes Added an onramp from Sepulveda Boulevard to the northbound 405 The Sepulveda onramps to the 101 freeway were reconfigured At yesterday's......

The most talked about post on Metafilter today was in reference to a blog entry by a fellow who came out to visit our lovely city. Two excerpts from his post: L.A. is the apocalypse: it's you and a bunch of parking lots. No one's going to save you; no one's looking out for you. It's the only city I know where that's the explicit premise of living there – that's the deal you......

BOO-ya! There's still time to check out some Halloween events, including the Hollywood Hell House and Bordello's Voodoo Vixens Burlesque show tonight at 10p. This accident on the 5 may tie up traffic until tomorrow: authorities are still counting only 3 casualties, but who knows how drivers will react to the construction and clean-up now taking place. First the water, then the power, now the phones? Mayor Villaraigosa is proposing a 9-percent phone tax.......

Imagine a day when the Purple Line "subway to the sea" and Expo Line to Culver City (and eventually to Santa Monica) are a reality. Two rail lines running parallel from Downtown to the ocean -- are we mad men or what? But what about traveling north-south? Enter the Crenshaw/Prairie Transit Corridor:The Crenshaw/Prairie Transit Corridor extends approximately 10 miles north from Wilshire Boulevard, south to El Segundo Boulevard, east to Arlington Avenue and west to......

As development wraps up on the first of two major redevelopments above subway stations on Wilshire, the reviews are begining to come in. The Wilshire/Vermont station is just about complete and tomorrow the LA Times will give the design of the complex a negative review, complaining, among other things that it just doesn't fit in with what else is going on with the legendary boulevard. During the many decades that architects enthusiastically celebrated the......

Welcome to October! Metroblogging wants to know how you and your neighborhood will celebrate the run up to All Hallow's Eve. Kobe "I can't live with you, I can't live without you" Bryant was in a jolly mood today as the Lakers greeted the media at its El Segundo practice facility. Construction on a proposed child-care facility, once touted as the centerpiece to Panorama City redevelopment, is hampered by political and building delays. I......

José González In Our Nature Mute Records Release Date: 09/25/07 As contrived as it may be, there is a time and place for everything. My father always conveyed this notion to me with the "lightning in a jar" metaphor. When an artist is experiencing the heyday of their career, they have contained this so-called "lightning in a jar". I always thought the point of the whole metaphor was that the volatile lighting in this......

Los Angeles is cleaning up after a wet weekend that drenched the southland and knocked out power to thousands. Want asthma? LAUSD is building seven new schools near freeways, despite scientific studies saying such construction could damage the children's lungs. Huell Howser is here. That's amazing! The city's neighborhood councils could be in for some major changes. Maybe now, you'll actually understand what they are. A Los Angeles man suspected of shooting his pregnant girlfriend......

Tonight at the Shrine Auditorium, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences will bestow the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards. This year the Academy has launched their Green With Emmy Campaign. The event features the use of alternative fuel sources for deliveries, hybrid vehicles for talent, recycled paper, a set created from mostly rentals with less construction and waste, staff tuxedo will be dry cleaned with eco friendly solutions and not covered in plastic bags,......

Even for L.A. this is a bad parking job. On Saturday morning my roommates and I woke suddenly to the overpowering sound of a police officer speaking loudly on a megaphone. I couldn't make out what he was saying, but whenever there is an authority figure on a megaphone, it's usually not a good thing. I dragged myself to the front door and peered out the screen door to see what was going on.......

Today's LA City Beat's LA Sniper column focuses aim on 30th District Congressman Henry Waxman who led the banning of subway construction under Wilshire Blvd. in the mid 1980s. Could you imagine what LA would be like today? A Los Angeles with a subway down the god friggin' most congested city street in America? Instead we have the one of the nation's busiest rapid bus lines, the 720, which the Sniper suggest should be......

How does the idea of hilltop vistas, the quiet charm of tree-lined streets, and a quick and easy one mile trip on public transit to Downtown grab you? Well, it certainly proved an effective lure for the fresh-off-the-train Midwesterners settling in Los Angeles who flocked to our city's first suburb in the late 1880s. A real estate boom in 1887 saw the construction of numerous majestic Victorian homes in the new neighborhood, but a......

"Constance" by Mr. J. Medeiros of Echo Park Being stuck on the Hollywood Freeway during rush hour, trapped in a metallic expanse of automobiles, counting the minutes of your life that you will never get back on the dashboard clock is a nasty predicament to be in...But that isn't the kind of traffic I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the human traffic -- the trafficking of people. Human cargo. Coerced labor. The exploited......