These days, customization wins. A newly-opened denim workshop in Downtown Los Angeles' Historic Core has managed to combine said consumer preference with the fashion facts that Angelenos love their jeans and love them even more when they hug and flatter every contour of the lower body. more ›

Downtown's historic Broadway corridor was once a retail shopping mecca, a magnet for tourists, a major force for city business and commerce and home to twelve theatres. These days, although still a busy artery, the heyday is obviously gone. The theatres are mostly shuttered, there's a 15 to 20% vacancy rate for ground floor retail and more than one million square feet of commercial space in the upper floors remains unused. more ›

It only took a few hours for the "new owners" of what was The Must to clear out the furnishings and stock from the property this weekend, but it will take much, much longer for the fate of the Downtown wine bar to be decided. Those decisions are largely in the hands of the law, according to Blogdowntown, who have been following the saga closely. more ›

Operators of The Must, a popular Downtown wine bar, were doubly surprised this holiday weekend when what they thought was a robbery turned out to be an allegedly unexpected eviction. more ›

Controversy spilled throughout the downtown community over the weekend after The Must, a popular wine bar in the Historic Core, was suddenly closed following an apparent surprise business deal over the space's lease. The end result left The Must stripped of furniture and its wine stock. more ›

Shut down in 2001 after a fatal accident, Angel's Flight in downtown has sat unused for some time now. News came yesterday that the short funicular railway is coming back, possibly as early as next month, thanks to a passing grade... more ›

It's been a long time coming and downtowners eagerly are awaiting the reopening of Angels Flight, the funicular railway between Hill Street in the Historic Core to the California Plaza atop Bunker Hill. In fact, people are so eager that last week the Downtown News wrote an editorial saying "it is time for local government officials to insert themselves into the process so the funicular can reopen," citing a 2001 tragedy that killed one and left the "shortest railway in the world" stagnant as they rebuilt, financed and began to get ready for a reopening, which should be soon. more ›

Rich Alossi of the downtown blog angelenic witnessed Angels Flight in operation on Friday (that's his video above). "According to one engineer on-site, 'the world’s shortest railway' may reopen in about a month if testing continues as planned." more ›

These neighborhood projects are a heck of a lot of work. All of the writing, research, fact-checking, map-making, walking around, metro-riding, photographing, uploading, downloading, sun-block wearing, and image re-sizing is not easy. Trying to maximize my lazing potential, I volunteered to document the Jewelry District figuring that the neighborhood's mere six square blocks shouldn't be too much work. I got off the Metro thinking "I've been here a million times, I know where the points of interest are, this shouldn't take long, I'lI take like 15 pictures, and I'll be out of the sun and sprawled out supine under a ceiling fan in no time." But many, many pictures and five hours later, I can safely say, damn, was I wrong. The Jewelry District is vibrant, visually engaging, and architecturally absorbing -- a neighborhood-sized vintage curiosity of antiquarian intricacies. more ›