Flags have been placed at 85,000 grave sites at Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood in observance of Memorial Day 2008. | Photo & Caption by Jonathan Alcorn (Sundogg) via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr It's Memorial Day. That means Federal, state, county and city offices, courts, libraries, animal shelters and banks are closed. And Metro will run on a Sunday schedule. But the holiday is much more than a day off and a......

At the Lightning in a Bottle Festival this weekend near Santa Barbara | Photo by Scott Kampmeyer Tonight Topanga Days @ Topanga, CA Jazz Reggae Festival @ UCLA ?uestlove @ Roxy (L.A. URB Issue Release Party | Read the LAist Interview with him) War @ Greek Theatre One Trick Pony w/ a Sarah Negadari of the Happy Hollows @ pehrspace Mad Gregs, Flowers From The Man Who Shot Your Cousin, Jenny Jenkins @ Found......

All photos by Kelly C. Gallamore for LAist.-->Lucent Dossier is the spectacular LA-based vaudeville circus that highlighted The Do LaB's awesome Lucent L'Amour Valentine's Day party last month. You may have even seen them performing at the official Grammy Awards party (no, that wasn't Cirque du Soleil, it was Lucent Dossier). Stretch your legs and enjoy the photos below of Lucent Dossier members getting their vaudeville cirque on at the Lucent L'Amour bash. Want......

I went to my introductory session with Andy Petranek one morning while taking a "sick day" at work. I had been searching for a gym that taught Crossfit, a special brand of fitness recommended to me by a friend. I e-mailed Andy to ask about the class schedule, and next thing I knew I was in my workout clothes and standing in the alley between 14th and 15th Streets in Santa Monica wondering what......

There's the orange men and abundant tattoos and the fashion disasters, but is there a cooler group of people than the roller skaters? Malingering says no.......

Did any of you catch Bobby Flay's Throwdown the other night? It's the show where he goes to different cities across the world and challenges some legendary food purveyor that his version of whatever traditional city food they're making will win a blind taste test. Usually, he loses, cause I mean COME ON: can anybody really make a cheese steak better than a Philly native? What about fish n' chips from some grotty bar......

Ducks 3, Senators 2 - Do you believe in miracles? We're almost there. Sunny, surf-city-adjacent Anaheim drew another step closer to Lord Stanley's trophy by beating Ottawa (a real, honest-to-goodness Canadian team) in game one of the NHL finals. The Senators managed only 20 shots on goal, but connected on one of their three in the first period. Anaheim equaled before intermission, but lost the lead again in the second. The third was all Ducks,......

Memorial Day Weekend 2007 wasn't just all about Lindsay's crash and arrest, there were other celeb items in the news..... One of, if not the most beautiful baby in the world, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt turned one this weekend in Prague alongside the rest of the Jolie-Pitt litter - Celebitchy Looks like its the official end of the unlikely match of John Mayer and Jessica Simpson as these photos from Cabo reveal - Flynetonline Nicole Ritchie looking......

We know we listed them a few posts below, but this is a band who bears repeating... and hyping. If you recall, in March we went to SXSW in Austin and had a little battle of the bands of sorts. LAist got a few bands from LA, and we invited some bands from Austin to play at the LAist SXSW party. We had never heard of Quiet Company, and quite frankly, their name didn't......

I can be cheap. When it comes to food, I like thinking I’m getting a good deal…a great bargain…the best bang for my buck. Who doesn’t like getting a hearty meal? But this weekend, I realized that sometimes too much food isn’t always a good thing. My breakfast buddies and I decided to chance the lines at the Griddle Café on Sunset and really dive into our Memorial Day weekend. We lucked out and......

If it seems like Vin Scully has been doing Dodger games forever, that's because this is his 50th season broadcasting LA Dodger games (1958-2007) and his 57th as a Dodger announcer. He's one of the few major broadcasters who works alone in the booth. No color man needed, no ex-jocks, no sidekick. The only problem with that is sometimes he can casually blow you away with precise diction and perfect tone, and sometimes the......

Memorial Day kicks off summer which means we can finally show the world our ripped bodies we've been working on all winter and skateboard down the boardwalk grinding to our favorite summer jamz. City Hall's favorite taxpayer, Zuma Dogg was nice enough to share with us what we would probably hear if we wound up over at his pad sharing mother nature and working on plans to save the world. Sez ZD: Where do......

All across the Ist-A-Verse (or at least the American parts thereof), writers and editors are in the midst of enjoying their three-day weekend. But after the week we've all had, we feel like the break is not only needed, but deserved. Just look at everything we've been doing! Gothamist headed into the Memorial Day weekend with a number of tasks accomplished. They worried about Long Islanders giving New Yorkers a bad name. They tried......

A bear-hugging belated congratulations to local rockstars The 88 for their record deal with Island Def Jam (announced last week). These LA marvels have been working their tush (it’s a technical term) off for years and I am thrilled for their success. I heard a track off Kind Of Light in 2002 or 2003 and it was one of those compulsive, immediate love, kismet things. I assaulted the internet looking for any information on the......

A late lunch at the Century City Mall’s Bread Bar proved quite refreshing. It’s Friday of Memorial Day Weekend and everything is jammed, but Bread Bar was pretty empty and we got seated right away. We ordered iced teas, a ham sandwich and some chicken soup. Everything was really good. I’ve heard that the salads come a little under-breaded for a place called the Bread Bar, and indeed, most of them seemed to come......

There is no reason to fight traffic to get away this Memorial Day weekend. There is plenty of traffic right here in L.A. Between all of the barbeques and festivals, it’s going to be hard to decide where to go first. Here is a taste of some of the festivals happening around town: Fiesta Hermosa May 26, 27, 28 (The festival formerly known as Fiesta de las Artes). This Hermosa Beach festival is primarily an......

A Word or 20: No network or cable channel has made a compelling reason to stay inside this Memorial Day Weekend and watch TV. Tonight - Friday - May 25, 2007 Cubs @ Dodgers (Prime, 7:30 p.m.) The Henry Rollins Show (IFC, 8:00 p.m.) Steve Buscemi pushes new films Interview and Delirious, and discusses his years as a firefighter and working at Ground Zero. In a 'Letter' to Michael Chertoff Rollins reflects on the......

So here we are, the week before Memorial Day and we're starting to see summer fruit at the Culver City Farmer's Market. There's the first apricots, nectarines and peaches, along with high season cherries (which peak between Mother's Day and Father's Day) and lingering strawberries. Whole Foods already has saturn peaches and cherries, though their charging nearly nine bucks a pound, whereas at the Farmer's Market you get something around a pound for five.......

By now, everybody knows that the magical culinary wonderland that is Surfas will be closing its doors at its current location on July 1, no thanks to Culver City and one of the lamest enactments of eminent domain in Westside history. The latest news update on their website states that they will be moving to a nearby warehouse on July 1st and continuing to serve their customers, but hope to continue fighting the city......

Cinco De Mayo kicked off the summer drinking season and now we've got Memorial Day and the Fourth of July just around the corner. What better way to relieve the summer heat than with a nice cold brew? Suds are once again pouring in the Dodger Stadium bleachers. Weekend warriors are preparing their roadtrips to Bay to Breakers, where sobriety is as optional as the clothing. Yes sports fans, it's time to get your drink......

nature=danger, part 1 - An experienced, skilled mountain climber fell to her death last week on Mt. Mendel in Kings Canyon National Park. 57-year-old Patricia Rambert had reached the summit of 206 Sierra Nevada mountains and was considered a "peak bagger" in climbing circles. nature=danger, part 2 - The Kern River is a great place to go inner-tubing (the laziest of river sports, all you need to do is float and drink beer) but......

It's after Memorial Day. It's sunny. And living in Los Angeles finally pays off. While theatres in the rest of the country are showing HORRIFIC movies, mostly in sequel form. Those sweet, air-conditioned, stadium seats are focused directly on filth. Hundred-million dollar filth. But in the evenings of our movie-obsessed city, we can find the indy, artsy theatres and alternative venues (Hollywood Forever Cemetery, anyone?) that show something better. Scrape the gum off the......

LA photoblogger Malingering has a keen sense of how ridiculous Angelenos can be — and how idiotic we can look. She (we think she's a she) also has a keen eye for the too-low low-rise, the belly fat, the mullet at the ballpark. So why, we wonder, did she subject herself to a Memorial Day bikini contest on Venice Beach? She sounds bitter, sure, but we think it secretly makes her very, very happy.......

Who said running was a loner sport. Niketown has been sponsoring jogs-about-town from its mammoth Beverly Hills location for years. When a race is upcoming, it sponsors group runs at other locations throughout the city and South Bay, as well. The sneaker seller has just launched a new batch of training runs ahead of the Brentwood 5k/10k Run on Sunday May 28th, Memorial Day weekend. They're all free. As a lure, Nike is offering......

Arthur Magazine and Spaceland are bringing a whole bunch of Indie goodness to the Barnsdall Art Park on September 4th and 5th (Memorial Day Weekend). As headliners (along with Sonic Youth and Sleater-Kinney), The Black Keys point out at that there will be other "Arthurfest" events going on at the Spaceland owned venues on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd as well but that the festival lineup as it stands already is pretty damn awesome.......

And by that we don't mean that Jason Vorhees popped up during the night, nor did the Blair Witch underwhelm us with hype. This was far more insidious, and really left us with a foul taste in our mouths. Memorial Day Weekend - a long-standing holiday tradition for this weekend involves "getting out of town". Traveling somewhere. Hitching up your skirts and moseying down the lane. You get it. For this auspicious occasion we......

We saw lots of motorists over the weekend slowing down to read the information screens positioned on our freeways. This was no Amber Alert, however, this was a new initiative by the California Office of Traffic Safety to get more people to fasten their seat belts. The signs read "Click It or Ticket. Buckle Up." The usually leisurely Memorial Day Weekend traffic around the city felt more hazardous as free-flowing lanes would unexpectedly feature......

We had a very nice Memorial Day long weekend, thank you! We felt it was high time we took some time for ourselves, though, so we took ourself to beautiful San Francisco for a few days of fun, fine art, flora and fauna, and, of course, food. Before we dined, we did just a little research, making sure that, whenever possible, we had a restaurant in mind to fit our desires. There were a......

We spent Memorial Day Weekend away from the computer. We were enjoying the surprisingly pleasant weather outside running and reading books. We spent Saturday night at the Infusion Gallery with Cannibal Flower and their 80s prom art event (which featured an awful lot of art focused on the vagina as well as Vincent Calenzo). We caught up on our spring cleaning and we enjoyed "The Longest Yard" far more than we ever expected to. Now......

Daniel A. Olivas is an LA-based writer who has been described as "a master folk-teller," "enthralling" and "adept at establishing character." Is it a surprise that he has a day job as an attorney? Maybe not so much when you consider one of his titles: Devil Talk. Last week Olivas was apparently silver-tongued, winning a long fight on behalf of the Coastal Commission in securing a right-of-way to the beach next to David Geffen's......