Ah, the hazards of gentrification: a limo got stuck trying to make it over the steep hill on Baxter Street in Echo Park. It's bad enough trying to get up that hill if your car's engine isn't up to snuff. But there's an additional danger if you have a really long vehicle that hangs low to the ground, like a limo. more ›

Based on the true stories of Downtown residents, the slightly seedy and deeply hilarious gentrification fable "The Vault: (Unlocked)" is currently playing at Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC). Vault Ensemble pokes fun at the hipster colonization of Downtown Los Angeles, bundling social commentary on redevelopment and loss of urban culture into an edgy farce with musical influences. more ›

When Los Globos hosted a FYF Fest pre-show last night featuring Glass Candy and Chromatics, the choice of venue baffled at least one blogger. It turns out that it was a hint of what is to come: El Cid owner Steve Edelson bought the venue two months ago, and handed over management to Echo Park Records. more ›

Before the fence and the admission fees, the jet-setting bands and even jet-setting fans, the Sunset Junction Festival was all about the hood. Wes Joe, a longtime resident of Silver Lake, dug up some archives from the inaugural event in August 1980 that The Eastsider has posted. more ›

When local restaurants or cafes seek a liquor license, the same nay-saying arguments tend to be hauled out: it will cause too much noise, there isn't enough parking, and what about the children? The most recent purveyor of gastronomic delights to encounter this pickle (ha) is Fix Coffee, in Echo Park. more ›

Vegan brunches and $5 PBR could be signs that your 'hood is gaining some cred, but perhaps not of the street variety. Rachel Glassberg offers her song response to a recent LA Times article suggesting that Echo Park was less no man's land and more upscale nightlife corridor. AKA: Gentrified. more ›

Anyone living downtown in an old converted warehouse is familiar with the specific brand of glee the comes with learning that the big empty retail space on the groundfloor of your building or across the street from your front door has finally been filled. In a downtown that is still growing and adding services for the ever-expanding resident population, any new service is met with excitement. As in: Will it be a Trader Joe's? more ›

As revitalization takes place throughout LA's downtown area, many are seeking to extend the developments and improvements to the Broadway area, which is home to many majestic and historic theaters, once the crown jewels of our city's movie palaces. "Among the most prized treasures of the area are Broadway's twelve historic movie palaces, which in their heyday evoked - and often surpassed - the magic of stage and screen," explains Historic Downtown LA. more ›

Craby Joe's has been at the corner of 7th and Main in Downtown LA since 1933, and earned its place in local lore as a watering hole near and dear to the well-known downtrodden of the literary scene, like John Fante and Charles Bukowski. In honor of the bar's closing night, there will be a gathering of local historians and preservationists, and anyone else wishing to hoist a memorial last drink at Craby Joe's from 10 p.m. until last call on Christmas Eve. The night is being called a wake, in order to properly, and ceremoniously, say goodbye to the bar, whose "now-dead neon sign blinked gaily in the opening credits for Barfly and its pickled eggs were the day's only protein for too many." more ›

Because he's too shy (and way too busy) to announce it here himself, I am proud to do the honors: Zach Behrens has officially accepted the Editor position here at LAist and he'll be starting on December 17th. BloggingLA has the announcement, as well as a nice picture of the new editor's "Sexy Face." That's how you get your Canadian fanbase, Behrens!!! Rain. Please. Rain. Effects of the strike are starting to ripple out... more ›

LAist had the opportunity to catch up with Jonny Coleman, curator of Art Crawl X and also founder of Found Gallery in Silverlake this week to ask him some questions about the art walk this weekend, what not to miss, and why this art walk is sure to kick ass. What is Art Crawl X? Art Crawl X is the tenth annual art walk on the Eastside [excluding downtown]. The Crawl includes both conventional... more ›

There is a serious water (-ing hole) shortage in Northeast LA. Despite their hipster enclave status, I’m always surprised that there aren’t more places to drink in thriving cultural hotspots like Eagle Rock and Highland Park. The recently opened York on York attempts to correct the problem. The “neighborhood gastropub” is located about halfway between Figueroa and Eagle Rock Blvd. in the increasingly popular small stretch of York that also includes Johnny’s, Marty’s, and... more ›

Banner week for SFist as the site's new editor introduced himself -- hooray for Brock! While the NY Times weighed in on SF's mayoral race, only SFist had the hard-hitting latest on candidate/activist Josh Wolf. Coverage of a protest vs. gentrification spawned a fantastic debate amongst SFist's readers. Finally, from the sublime to the ridiculous: video of a man that confused a Board of Supes meeting with "open mic night" and sang a custom version of Madonna's "Borderline" to a much-beleaguered board member. more ›

Monday Barbara Hambly presents Patriot Hearts: A Novel of Founding Mothers 7pm @ Vroman’s Tess Gallagher reads from Dear Ghosts 7:30pm @ Geffen Playhouse Tuesday George Hass presents Forcing Nature: Trees in Los Angeles 7pm @ Book Soup Margaret MacMillan presents Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World 7pm @ Central Library T Cooper & Chris Abani present their latest books 7:30pm @ Skylight Books Caille Millner presents The Golden Road: Notes... more ›

Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly. more ›

Tarfest begins today! Four days of films, music, and tar at the LaBrea Tar Pits - Tarfest.com Beck's new album is too cool for the UK charts. Because you can use stickers to design your own cover, it's got an "unfair" advantage on the other cds, the Brits say. Beck begs to differ. - Billboard How do you fight downtown gentrification? Involve a 75 year old nun - LA Times Boy-crazy Foley's behavior wasn't... more ›

With all the recent local talk here and elsewhere about gentrification bitterness, racial disharmony, and general loathing of entire communities, one might get the idea that Los Angeles is nothing but a disjointed, angry sprawl of warring factions ready for another major meltdown. Well sir, that's simply not true. We shan't pull out Rodney King's once-powerful but now-cliched chestnut, but instead ask you to direct your attention to a stretch of Rowena Avenue in... more ›

Topping the list is a horrifyingly bizarre history of the Sunset Junction area. Including a robbery in the '20s of someone who was sporting some fresh old school grillz.

8. 3900 Sunset: November 9, 1928- A bald-headed man with a mouth full of golden choppers held up the California Bank today, with the aid of a less dramatic-looking associate, to the tune of $4,000. This is the fifth robbery at this particular branch in 18 months, including a notable incident last November, when a dapper (yet toothless) youngster appropriated $3,000 and fled in a stolen green limousine. (Shaken tellers showed no preference for gold teeth over missing ones.) - LA Alternative

While a couple of movies are hardly enough to qualify as zeitgeist, there's something serendipitous about the back-to-back release of two films featuring teenage Latino protagonists growing up in East Los Angeles.* Wassup Rockers and Quinceañera both focus on teenagers defying familial and cultural expectations, but even though they were both shot on video and take a quasi-documentary approach towards their subjects, they achieve very different results.... more ›

Quentin Tarantino, mah-jongg, art galleries, lofts. L.A. Times profiles the new Chinatown: more ›

LAist loves the Echo. They might have recently raised drink prices, a sure sign of Echo Park gentrification, but we still heart their ability to bring in good local bands, sponsor great theme nights, pack the house and show everyone how it’s done. This past weekend was no different with fans of local acts Yellow Sun, Silversun Pickups and San Francisco’s Film School. more ›

As Chowhound.com -- the once relatively obscure über-food lovers' website -- becomes increasingly well-known to the world at-large, it becomes less of a sweet hound and more of a daunting monster. The site’s most active discussion boards, LA included, amounts to a deluge of information and opinions. For the impatient, too much info can be a definitely bad thing. more ›

According to the LA Times Food section's focus on Italophilic gastronomy in Los Angeles, our new Little Italy is located in... Brentwood? Valli Herman’s article notes: more ›

Of course, the biggest local story is the death of Johnny Carson. The LA Times has an obituary written by Daily Variety's Brian Lowry and focuses on his entertainment career. The Daily News takes an even more local look and examines how America's greatest talk show host effected Burbank. Johnny Carson was 79 years old. more ›

We all know that Los Angeles is changing, and it�s changing fast in more ways than LAist can count. Media attention is generally focused on L.A. as global city containing immigrants from all over the globe and where Anglo residents are no longer the majority. This commentary by Gregory Rodriguez in the points to another interesting fact�that the urban �core� from Hollywood to Downtown might be experiencing �a quiet Anglo reconquista.� LAist won�t take on the pro- vs. anti-gentrification debate now, but the piece will get you thinking about the many implications of demographic trends, particularly vis-�-vis some of our most beloved neighborhoods. more ›