This hot weather is way more summer than fall--par for the course here in LA, true--and that means we can keep acting like it's summertime. And eating like it's summertime. Back in the actual summertime, LAist wondered why the Weekly's esteemed Jonathan Gold had a dog face, as he ruminated about hot doggeries about town, and it wasn't long after that we, too, were inspired to get our hot dog on.......

The Van Nuys Post Office in the 91401 on Van Nuys Blvd. | Photo by Here in Van Nuys via Flickr Valley Glen got a boost in neighborhood pride last week when the US Postal Service finalized the official recognition of the neighborhood by designating all or part of 91401 (Van Nuys), 91405 (Van Nuys) and 91606 (North Hollywood) to be Valley Glen, according to Mark Kellam's neighborhood blog at the Daily News. Zip......

Now that Water Reed Middle School in North Hollywood unexpectedly and mistakenly has become part of the debate about John McCain (read the background on this story here), principal Donna Tobin posts a statement on the school's blog: It has been brought to the school’s attention that a picture of the front of our school, Walter Reed Middle School, was used as a backdrop at the Republican National Convention. Permission to use the front of......

LAist Featured Photos contributor ~db~ submitted this tasty treat for us and writes this about it: I often shop at the Vallarta Market in North Hollywood. A few weeks ago I decided to stop in at Sahuayo Mexican Foods a couple doors down. I was greeted by a friendly bear of a man, grinning from ear to ear. We talked a bit about favorite foods (I like lengua, he likes hamburgers. Go figure), and was......

Sleazeballs are still using that shtick of telling women that they could be models and if they take photos with him, he's got the connections to get them with the right industry people. Last week, the LAPD arrested Miguel Angel Barrera, 44, of Chino Hills, for doing just that and taking it one step further by sexually assaulting the women during the photo shoots. From an LAPD notice: The female victims are 14 through 23......

Photo by cwalkr71 via Flickr "It is imperative to know that when purchasing items on-line, if the price seems too good to be true, then it probably is too good and is possibly a stolen item," said an e-mail sent out this weekend by the LAPD announcing a press conference regarding hundreds of stolen tires and rims from newer model Mercedes Benz and BMWs. Two young men, ages 18 and 20, are prime suspects......

A fire in North Hollywood that lasted under thirty minutes last night ended with four minor injuries, two of which with firefighters. At 11:17 p.m., the Los Angeles Fire Department was called to a single family home on Whitsett Ave. near Roscoe Blvd. It took 35 firefighters 22 minutes before a knockdown was called and in the midst of all that, two firefighters sustained minor injuries when a patio fell on top of them. Two......

Photo of Hy-Mart Deli Falafel Sandwich by Kevin Weis/LAist You know what's great about the Valley? Nobody believes you when you tell them "the BEST falafel sandwich place in the city is in a strip mall on the corner of Lankershim and Vineland!" They just don't believe you. So you get that little, non-descript Middle Eastern deli all to yourself -- well, you and the legions of locals who know that this is the......

It will be rush hour, but due to four DUI collisions in the last year at Oxnard and Lankershim, the LAPD will be holding a DUI checkpoint from 5:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. nearby at Lankershim and Victory Boulevards tomorrow evening. Additionally, the North Hollywood area has had a 56% increase in DUI collisions this year. Now, that's not a good statistic, no matter how you put it.......

A Union Station Metrolink train bound from Ventura (route 106) struck and killed a person this morning after shortly before 8:15 a.m. It reportedly happened at Raymer St. and Bellaire Ave. in the North Hollywood area near where the 170 Freeway meets Sherman Way, according to alerts sent out by the Los Angeles Fire Department. Both sides of the track were shut down for an investigation.......

Good job, boys! Here's what the LAPD sent out in an e-mail today: "At 6:00 p.m. [Monday], police verbally warned Alexander Passos, 35, and Eduardo Ravalha, 35, for loitering on city owned property near Mulholland Drive and Cold Water [sic] Canyon and asked them to leave. About 45 minutes later, the officers learned the pair had returned to the location and arrested them. Passos of Canoga Park and Ravalha of Los Angeles were arrested and......

Reports are coming in about firs in the Los Angeles area. At about 3:30, a fire broke out at mobile home near a state park in Malibu Creek State Park. While the home fire was knocked down, the fire has spread to hillside brush and has at least burned through 10 acres. Park visitors have been evacuated. Update: As of 6:43 p.m., the fire had burned 20 acres and was at 90% containment. "Hopefully within......

When the power goes out, that means the traffic lights go with it, making it harder to tell if there is even a traffic light there to begin with (especially if you're unfamiliar the neighborhood). Despite that, signals that are out must be treated like a stop sign. The LAPD never seems to send these educational warnings out, but this friendly reminder comes from the Los Angeles Fire Department. "With power out to many traffic......

Miss Peaches on Lankershim has just premiered a new weekend barbecue menu for the summer. This cozy little cafe, formerly known as Angelina's, brings a welcome breath of southern comfort to NoHo. Famous for their fried chicken, Miss Peaches usually only pulls out the barbecue for its popular catering department. But this summer you can get your fix while relaxing at a table surrounded by their white picket fence. Miss Peaches 5643 Lankershim Blvd. North......

If you consider having three storefronts in Los Angeles a chain, then PitFire Pizza Company is just that. However, for a chain, their food is excellent. And a few LAist Featured Photos contributors prove that with their photography at each of their locations: NoHo Arts District, Downtown and Westwood. Submit your Eye Nosh food 'porn' photos and mini-reviews to LAist via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr.......

View Larger Map Within four hours last night, two people were shot dead and another eight were injured in a spree of gun violence that went from Northridge to North Hollywood to Sylmar, the Daily News is reporting. It began in Northridge between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. where one 16-year-old boy was shot, but survived with non-life threatening injuries. Then one hour later, two men were shot and killed in related cases on Coldwater......

Good news for the Los Angeles area as Santa Monica High School placed top honors today at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Science Bowl in Washington, D.C. The bowl was created in 1991 "encourage high school students to excel in mathematics and science and to pursue careers in these fields," according to KCBS. North Hollywood High School, also competing, tied for sixth place after losing to Santa Monica. The Los Angeles Department of Water......

A fire on a service truck near the NoHo Metro Red Line Station will cause a minimum of 10 minute delays this morning. Earlier today, the truck came in contact with electrical rails about 100 yards inside the tunnel, prompting it to catch fire. Difficult for Los Angeles Firefighters to extinguish the fire with high voltage running through the rails, Metro shut down the train system for safety reasons and prepared buses in case the......

This week's Sepulveda Blvd explosion took the life of firefighter Brent A. Lovrien, and as the LAFD mourns the loss along with Lovrien's friends and family and the city at large, the sacrifice so often made by our firefighters is on many minds. Prior to this week's tragedy, a fundraising event to benefit Fire Family Foundation, which is a non-profit organization that provides "financial assistance to Firefighters, their families and charities that support the fire......

Hollywood: A man was shot to death early this morning near the southbound 101 freeway off-ramp at Van Ness Avenue and Harold Way. Yesterday, a man lying on the sidewalk allegedly attacked officers with a knife, prompting them to shoot him after one officer was cut. North Hollywood: The body of man was found last night in the alley of the 8000 block of Laurel Canyon (cross street, Strathern). Police suspect that the man overdosed......

View Larger Map In what Los Angeles Fire Department officials called a "dramatic collision," a full size white SUV, brand new still with paper license plates, tumbled off the southbound 170 Hollywood Freeway off-ramp late Saturday night onto Burbank Blvd. barely missing an LAPD squad car that passed by the very same spot just moments before. It was said the sergeant saw the crash, feet away, in his rear view mirror. It appears that a......

It was a tense Good Friday for those in the vicinity of the 4300 block of Club Vista Drive yesterday in Palmdale when the attempt to serve an arrest warrant on a man wanted for a 2004 North Hollywood murder barricaded himself inside a home for several hours and the neighborhood went into lockdown mode. The Daily News explains yesterday's events and how they impacted area residents: Several blocks around the Club Vista Drive home......

The city seems to have gone completely mad. From a 16 year-old shot in Northridge to a 70 year-old stabbed to death in Hollywood, Sunday was just another day in what is starting to feel like an out-of-control crime wave. In just the last few months, a man stabbed people in a movie theater while they watched a horror movie, a woman stabbed her own mother, and a man dressed as a skeleton terrorized......

Two North Hollywood news items melded into one last night when, as reported on LAist, a US Marshal walked in on a robbery in progress at an auto parts store in NoHo Arts, fatally shooting one suspect who is believed to be the "Skeleton Bandit." The robber had recently unsuccessfully held up a local Jack in the Box and a mini mart dressed in an outfit initially described as a skeleton costume, but as reported......

View Larger Map *UPDATE, Weds. 3/5, 10:00 a.m.: The suspect who was shot is believed to be the North Hollywood-area's "Skeleton Bandit." He died in hospital from his injuries after being removed from the scene. *UPDATE, 11:24 p.m.: The alleged robber who was shot by the U.S. Marshal is now at the hospital in critical condition and the suspected accomplice is still at large according to Officer April Harding of the LAPD. So how was......

Photo by ChazWags via Flickr He already served a month of jail time when he was convicted last Spring, but today, sleazy wannabe slumlord Darren Stern, who also goes by Henry Shalom, was ordered to pay millions back to rent-control tenants that he mistreated in order to get them to move out so he could raise rents, eventually selling the buildings at "inflated" prices, according to CBS2. The money will be split and given......

Deacon Booze has returned! Yes, your favorite Steely-Dan-inspired happy hour listing is back on track for March, and we still need your hott hott tips! I recently fell victim to a devil of a gastrointestinal virus (sexy!), and so was unable to ingest any kind of liquid other than Top Ramen broth, but I am happy to say that my convalescence is complete, and I am ready to drink. And drink. And drink! Send......

When plain old ski masks just won't do, what's a neighborhood robber to do? For one thief in such a predicament, the solution was to don a skeleton costume and to hit up a Jack In the Box and a mini mart in North Hollywood in an attempt to get some cash. The heist at the Jack In the Box on Lankershim was a bust, and so was the mini mart, where, according to ab7.com,......

Russian Tatiana Aryasova won the LA Marathon, and the $100,000 "Banco Popular Challenge" with an unofficial time of 2:09:32*, beating out the top "elite" male runner, Laban Moiben of Kenya, who clocked in with an unofficial time of 2:13:50. The petite Aryasova is in peak shape; she recently gave birth and resumed her training rapidly. Both runners received the keys to their new Honda Accords thanks to the race's sponsor, Honda of America, whose headquarters......

As reported yesterday on LAist, a car-to-car shooting took place on the 101 Freeway between Hollywood and Universal City following a verbal dispute that took place between the occupants of two vehicles on Hollywood Boulevard. 26-year-old Bunthan Roeung was shot by one of the four black male occupants of a black Chevy Impala, and was taken by ambulance to Cedars-Sinai hospital. The vehicle exited the freeway at Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood, and the driver......