Last week the LA Weekly released Jonathan Gold's annual picks for his Essential 99 restaurants in Los Angeles. Though you can condense the multiple web pages into one printable list, or get your fingers good and inky with the paper itself, some intrepid diners have been using some web tools to make the endeavor to enjoy meals at all 99 spots more manageable. more ›

Finally. There have been various food truck-related websites and iPhone apps introduced to us over the past few months, but none of them satisfied our taste for real-time data until now. truxmap is a Google Maps mashup pinpointing the locations and times of where trucks are right now, where they'll be later and where they have been. And yes, there's a mobile version. They do, however, have one small warning: "Our program is 99.9% effective, but to be completely sure of a marker's accuracy simply visit that truck's Twitter page." Time to eat! more ›

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[O]ur friends at Found LA have decided to get together and throw us a party at their amazing gallery in Silverlake (Google Map here), with free drinks and a cake to boot. It goes from 8PM - 10PM this Saturday (12/15) and is bound to be a blast... more ›

Welcome to the all fire, all the time edition of Extra Extra! The weather is not expected to abate until tomorrow, and fire fighters are still days away from containing major blazes. The New York Times is liveblogging the fires; they are reporting that over 500,000 people have been forced to evacuate so far (although other reports are estimating up to one million people have had to flee their homes). The Daily News is... more ›

Fourteen fires are burning across Southern California right now. Evacuations in Malibu, Los Angeles, San Bernadino and San Diego are in effect. For more ongoing updates on evacuations, road closures, business closures and fire maps: LA Times & Sign On San Diego. more ›

The Ceremony of Worshiping the Messenger Monk's Ship continues tonight at the Wat Mon Buddhist Temple in Panorama City. The Wat Mon Temple is unique from other Buddhist temples in LA County in that it prescribes Tipitaka (Pali canon) teachings. These scriptures are believed to be the oldest set of teachings of Buddha recorded. more ›

A car and a truck collided late this morning on the 101 Freeway in the Valley forcing both directions of the heavily used Interstate to be closed briefly, causing major delays that are still lingering. At 11:20 a.m., two lanes were reopened on the southbound 101 Freeway. Only one lane was open on the northbound 101 Freeway. Four people suffered minor injuries. The crash occurred on the northbound Ventura (101) Freeway, according to the... more ›

... but there's not much Los Angeles in the latest issue of Plenty, a bi-monthly magazine on environmental news and commentary. There's a feature story on the negative environmental impact of surfing and good tips for going to the farmer's market (use it with the new Farmer's Market Google Map), but our dear home is not but a mere mention in a small, but fun brief. With the fact that "urban areas are responsible for... more ›

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All of you looking for a quick getaway Up North might want to think about going tomorrow morning, or taking the scenic route up the 101, or getting ready for some long delays. NBC4 is reporting that due to a semi-truck crash in Castaic, the CHP is detouring northbound cars off the freeway to avoid the wreckage. Several lanes of the Northbound 5 Freeway are closed because of a big rig crash in Castaic,... more ›

Last fall LAist took a road trip around the country. Our mother called each night to make sure we were all right. We'd say, "we've got EVDO, WiFi, cell phones, Google Maps, ATM cards, it'd be almost impossible for us to not find exactly what we want for the lowest prices possible." And that was from the road. Here in the lap of luxury of LA, with DSL and LAist as your homepage, Lord... more ›

One thing LAist salivates over is the many Google mashup maps Gothamist gets to show New Yorkers. Here in LA, we're still struggling to find a good number of Los Angeles based Google Maps. We love RentSlicer. LA Eats has potential. What are we missing here? Google Maps Mania, the unofficial Google Maps blog that tracks websites, mashups and tools being influenced by Google Maps, has pointed us towards My California Traffic. Here you... more ›

Just a heads-up: A friend employed at Google pointed out to us today that our new favorite website, Google Maps, has just in the last day or two tied the satellite imagery from pay service Keyhole into the maps themselves, for free (just look for the link in the upper-right-hand corner). We've been having hours of fun looking down on the ant farm we all live in...and even though being able to get this meta on yourself is probably the beginning of the end, it's pretty cool, isn't it? more ›