"The city of Palm Springs invites same-sex couples to come to our welcoming community and experience this historic opportunity," writes Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet on a website encouraging couples to marry in the desert city. "We are prepared to help you with all your wedding needs and embrace you on this, this most wonderful day of your life." Pougnet, two Palm Springs city council members and former Mayor Rod Oden, all openly gay, have......

Country diva and Palm Springs native Shelby Lynne treated the folks in the audience for her show last night at Indio's Stagecoach Festival to an earful. But she wasn't serving up just the sweet sounds of her songs--she had an awful lot to say about how unhappy she was with the venue and the attendance."I love singing to empty seats," Lynne sarcastically said as she opened her set, remarking about the vacant chairs in the......

Outside food and drinks are prohibited at Coachella, but the occasional peanut butter sandwich has been known to slip by security. Even if you can get into the “hospitality area” it’s slim pickings as far as decent food is concerned. The options at the cash-only food tents tend to be pretty limited. That doesn’t mean you have to spend three days surviving only on kettle corn and Ecstacy. The Coachella Valley is home to......

"UR," by Lush.i.ous via LAist Featured Photos Pool on Flickr The feds are cracking down on undocumented immigrants who reenter the country after being deported, the LA Times found. Attempts to nab the offenders makes up more than one-third of all prosecutions in Los Angeles and surrounding counties. The logic behind the push, feds say, is to keep the more dangerous elements off the street but some public defenders who represent the undocumenteds are......

Don't try this at home -- or at the Civic Center Metro Station. / Photo by puck90 via LAist's flickr pool. TRANSIT TALK Metro is studying alternatives for connecting the Gold, Blue and Expo lines through downtown Los Angeles. This study will examine linking the future Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension (near the Little Tokyo/Arts District Station) and the 7th Street/Metro Center Station. Tonight Metro will update the public on the project and allow......

Photo by el daverino via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr A Musical Valentine to Santa Monica: Sia just announced a last-minute show (definitely her last before Coachella!) for tomorrow, February 14th at 2PM in Santa Monica at the Starbucks Hear Music Coffeehouse on Third St. Promenade, first come first serve. She kicks off her North American tour the following day, Friday, in San Diego. The 15-year-old boy shot on Tuesday at a......

During 1985 in Riverside, huge and unusual footprints were found. The Press-Enterprise newspaper at the time ran an article on the findings claiming that the prints were made by Bigfoot. Five years later near Palm Springs campers were alarmed by a series of terriyfing screams, heavy breathing and the movement of something large outside their tent. In the morning large footprints were discovered leading away from the camp area and into the thicket. Legend......

Update on why Ventura Blvd. in Studio City was shut down this afternoon by the LAPD: according to the North Hollywood Police Division, the shooting took place at De Soto Ave and Gresham St. in Chatsworth. Later, the suspect's car was found at the Studio City 7-11, prompting the LAPD shut down the area to search (hence all the helicopters). The suspect was later found in the city of Fontana and was arrested without......

Jim Gaffigan is an actor that does stand-up but his stand-up is what has made him so popular. He's got the Comedy Central Specials, his performance DVD and CD called Beyond the Pale, his regular bits on Conan pushing the hilarious and self-effacing animated series Pale Force, and, of course, there's a soft drink called Sierra Mist. We talked a bit about the creation of Pale Force and the recent contest where 3 lucky viewers......

Did you know you can still get tickets for Monday night's Rilo Kiley show at the Santa Monica Civic? Do you know why you can still get tickets for the show? Because it's in Santa Monica. And when the people of Santa Monica aren't trying to destroy old trees and houses, they're looking for things to do Other than see great rock shows. Let's think of things they do on the Westside other than......

Maybe we should take things like this more seriously, but last week "vandals" broke into a vacation home in Palm Springs and caused some eyebrows to rise when they turned over furniture (very nicely), arranged foliage and sticks to create pentagrams and clog toilets, and wrote words like "Pigz" and "Helter Skelter" on a window and on the fireplace... with soap! It was right around the 38th anniversary of the Manson Family murders of......

Remember the good old days, when Italian restaurants had opera-singing waiters? Mario and Larry Lalli grew up in the good old days, in one such restaurant. Mario and Larry’s family has been in the restaurant business for over 50 years. The two cousins have continued the tradition begun by their fathers, previously with a pizzeria in Palm Springs, and now with Café 322 in Sierra Madre. Larry tears it up in the kitchen while......

If you haven't seen some of your friends online today it might be because they're stuck at the Indio Greyhound station with dozens of fans trying to get home. KESQ is reporting that so many people tried to take buses home without first buying tickets that the scheduled buses became full, stranding many who have waited all day in the heat despite having tickets. "I've been been waiting to get to L.A. for like......

Another one bites the rehab dust, but Jesse Metcalfe is waaay less exciting than Britney - NY Post Speaking of Britney, she's out and hopefully back on her rampage....Umm, is it me or was that NOT thirty days? - Defamer Speaking of rehab, future attendee Rumer Willis, daughter of Demi and Bruce, looks like the new "it" party girl - I Dont Like You in That Way Did rehab graduate Lindsay Lohan find the Lord?......

There are really only two major music festivals that truly matter, like really matter: Coachella and South by Southwest. The former happens over two three days in the desert near Palm Springs, the latter rages for about a week on the dusty streets of Austin, Texas. SXSW features over 1,000 bands. You buy a wristband and you wander from bar to bar, club to club, alleyway to patio and you get to see some......

Is Indio the new Austin? Over two back-to-back weekends this spring, scores of the best indie, rock, pop, electronic, and country music will play to tens of thousands outside Palm Springs. The last weekend of April will bring three days of Coachella, and the following weekend will see the first Stagecoach country festival. Voici: Saturday, May 5, 2007: George Strait, Alan Jackson, Sara Evans, Jason Aldean, Eric Church, Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams, Neko Case,......

Because you really can't get too much of a good thing, the good people of Goldenvoice announced last night that this year's hugely successful Coachella music and arts festival will grow to a three-day-and-night affair on the sprawling polo fields in Indio outside Palm Springs. The Miracle Mile concert promoters also announced that the weekend after Coachella they will throw a two-day country festival that will include stages for alt-country, bluegrass, and even storytelling.......

- Snoop Dogg Popped for Guns N' Weed at Burbank Airport - AP - Clippers Don't Suck - the Merc - Barry Bonds might become an Angel - AP - LA Archdiocese will pay most of the $10 million sex settlement in Encino - Newsday - Reward for Palm Springs arsonist tripled to $300,000 - AP - 11 charged with OC voter fraud - LAT - A billion gallons of gas could have been......

Fires continue to rage in the valley near Palm Springs. Early this afternoon, firefighters were protecting homes against flames driven by 25 mph winds when their engine was overtaken by the blaze. Three firemen are now confirmed dead as a result, with many of the personnel continuing to fight after pausing momentarily to come to grips with those who had just fallen. The fire, driven by strong Santa Ana winds, has burned over 4,000......

Does a girl get to be Princess if her father is a real life Prince who had a fling with her mom? That's what they're asking in Palm Springs, where 14-year-old Jazmin Grace Rotolo lives. Her mother dallied with Prince Albert during a trip to Monaco in 1991 and today the Prince, Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre Grimaldi, acknowledged that yes, the girl is his. She's the Prince's second out-of-wedlock child — that we know......

That forecast of "wacky weather" we mentioned in Thursday's Lunch News post was right on. Our blood has thinned and we are frigid sitting here in our sandals. Too bad for vacationers in Palm Springs. Last month, a New Yorker wrote in snow "It doesn't do this in LA," but Martini Republic compared 5 days of L.A. weather to NYC. Guess who won the cold war? One New York City transplant told LAist his......

Yesterday, Curbed LA ran their first Where the Hell is...? column with Castaic. Since we have some experience with Castaic (cold shudder), here are some fun tidbits: Next door (and some claim it's part of Castaic) is Val Verde. Literally translated to Green Valley, local newspaper The Signal references its history as the "Black Palm Springs." Nowadays, the beautiful dirt road community is predominantly populated by orchard laborers and CalArts students (Paul Reubens, a.k.a......

We weren't impressed by "The Comeback" when it debuted earlier this summer. The constant humiliation of the lead character, Valerie Cherish, was mean-spirited and unfunny, and we found the show so unwatchable that we couldn't be bothered to parse out the LA-esque bits. But friends kept insisting that it was worth our time so we kept tuning in. We must admit that we've been wrong. We don't know whether the writing team had time......

The cool thing about that Atomica Magazine Enter the Dragon party wasn't just that they did actually play Enter the Dragon on the screen or the odd dancer on the 2nd floor dressed in a prom dress and seemingly only aware of her own shadow or the really cute couple that came out of nowhere and danced hip to hip to Janet Jackson's very sexy "That's the Way Love Goes" with huge smiles on......

While everybody else tries to figure out where the severed foot came from, we've got our eyes a little further east. KESQ in Palm Springs reports that Phi Kappa Tau has been suspended at Chico State for participating in a porno film. We're not so thrown off by this and while it isn't quite in the academic tradition, it isn't that far off from Pierce College hosting an adult film photo shoot on their......

There’s something about a long weekend—whether you take a day off of work or are mercifully granted a Monday holiday—that begs for a trip somewhere else. One of the greatest benefits of living in LA is that there are so many places to go to get away from it, and the best of them are right here in California. If you're inclined to stay close to home, you can spend the weekend in Long......

The annual Zagat Survey of restaurants has just been released. The Southern California portion of the 2005 edition, which includes evaluations of 1,744 restaurants by 6,621 participants in Los Angeles and surrounding areas (Orange County, Palm Springs and Santa Barbara) contains a few changes this year that are certain to be intensely debated across tables all over town. For starters, the 2005 Zagat reveals some interesting trends. Angelenos eat out more frequently than the......

Who said nothing in LA was free? If you can believe it, under the guise of saving the City of Los Angeles a little bit of power for those A/C-heavy summers, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power is offering up a program called "Trees for a Green LA." The program gives homeowners up to eight (count 'em), eight free trees of varying shapes and sizes for planting on your own property. Why?......

Buckle up, Southlanders, the summer is here. The LA Times reports that temperatures are set to leap upwards this week in various regions. The San Fernando, San Gabriel, and Antelope valleys could reach temperatures of up to 105 degrees due to circular winds that are pulling in hot air from Northern Mexico. City dwellers - rejoice: these winds are set to miss areas closer to the coasts. Signs of summer are busting out all over,......