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? Imagine,......

Downtown's historic Broadway Theater District could soon be getting a boost from the City. The Downtown News is reporting that a press conference on the area is planned for tomorrow morning, and that City Coucilman José Huizar (14th district) and Mayor Villaraigosa will be on hand to share with local business and land owners their goals and intentions. As revitalization takes place throughout LA's downtown area, many are seeking to extend the developments and improvements......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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 (insert tongue firmly into cheek) 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......

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......

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. Londonist wants you to know where......

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......

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......

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......

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.......

Quentin Tarantino, mah-jongg, art galleries, lofts. L.A. Times profiles the new Chinatown: The transformation has been occurring gradually over the last six years but now appears to be shifting into overdrive... The situation has created a culture clash. Some old-timers complain about the rowdy behavior of the new patrons. There are periodic flare-ups over art shows that some longtime Chinatown merchants consider too racy. Some elderly residents worry about being pushed out by gentrification.........

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. An important lesson to learn about the LA music scene is......

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. But it is a good thing to have someone who culls through the spirited virtual......

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: It happens in Hollywood, it happens in real estate and now it's happening in Brentwood. It's a kind of copycat syndrome. In movies, they're called sequels. In real estate, it's called gentrification. In Brentwood, it's called an explosion in Italian restaurants. We understand the market for high-end cuisine......

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. The Daily News sticks with neighborhood stories and talks about the creation of Apartment Watch in Valley Glen and......

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 L.A. Times points to another interesting fact�that the urban �core� from Hollywood to Downtown might be experiencing �a quiet Anglo reconquista.� LAist......