Photo by Omar Omar via Flickr Late last month, Tribune Company chairman and CEO Sam Zell said in a memo that he was considering selling the iconic Times Mirror Square (along with the Tribune Tower in Chicago). If it does sell, Zell says moving out won't be immediate (they could sell and lease back some of the space), but come five years down the road, moving day may arrive. So the question remains, what......

Photo of the now destroyed Mann National courtesy of Los Angeles Times photographic archive, UCLA Library. Copyright Regents of the University of California, UCLA Library. Is Westwood making a comeback? The LA Times thinks so, in today's article on the burgeoning real estate development in UCLA's backyard. But isn't this a story we've heard a million times before? It goes something like this: Westwood used to be a great pedestrian area, then it fell......

Santa Monica's Pacific Park ferris wheel has a new owner, thanks to an eBay auction that ended at noon yesterday. The winner is Grant Humphreys of Oklahoma City, who came in as the highest bidder with $132,400 for the solar powered heavyweight carnival ride that arrived on the Pier in 1996. According to the Daily Breeze, Humphreys "beat out five others in a bidding war that went back and forth through 35 offers." The wheel......

Photo of bungalows in Monrovia by Living in Monrovia via Flickr The City might not want to help you buy a home, but the Repo Bus Tour will help you find one. A driving tour of SGV neighborhoods has been assembled by Pasadena-based LTV Real Estate, reports the Pasadena Star-News. The tour takes prospective home owners through parts of Duarte, Covina, West Covina, Monrovia, and Pasadena, and shows them homes that are in foreclosure and......

On the heels of the recent SoCal beef recall and a property being sold abut the Hollywood Sign, PETA announced an idea yesterday of buying or, at least, renting the next-door land to place 5-letters to the left of the Hollywood sign. If all becomes said and done (they wish), Hollywood's icon would read "Go Veg Hollywood." PETA does not have the $20 million needed to purchase the property, but they "did write to the......

Drinks with Digital LA tonight at Bodega Bar in Santa Monica (and yes, this is not the Bodega bar) / Photo by C-Monster via LAist's photo pool. FILM I am so scaaared. Writer/director Eli Roth (Hostel) continues his reign at the New Beverly in “The Greats of Roth” series. Tonight, he’s screening the double-feature of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Cannibal Holocaust (1980), an earlier film that deals with a missing documentary film......

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......

Photo by manmadepants via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr The relationship between real estate and the Hollywood Sign is as old as, well, the sign itself. Built in 1923 as a promotional billboard to attract buyers to make their homes in the hills of the burgeoning Hollywood community, the sign that once read "HOLLYWOODLAND" has become one of the most iconic landmarks in LA. Now real estate and the sign have a......

Can we now add eating habits to the long list of modern relationship deal-breakers? The New York Times published a pre-Valentine's Day article this morning discussing the difficulties couples face when their diets are dramatically different: Ben Abdalla, 42, a real estate agent in Boca Raton, Fla., said he preferred to date fellow vegetarians because meat eaters smell bad and have low energy. Lisa Romano, 31, a vegan and school psychologist in Belleville, N.Y.,......

At the Viper Room | Photo by brian boulos via Flickr Harry Morton, son of famed Hard Rock hotelier Peter Morton, is no longer content with opening crudely-named margarita bars. No, the Li-Lo-lovin' entrepreneur has decided to purchase the infamous Sunset Strip club The Viper Room: with plans to franchise, of course. While the Viper Room has only been a part of the Strip since 1993, it immediately rocketed to infamy when River Phoenix......

When the chips are down and you need cash to settle up some legal matters, unloading some real estate is a good move. Which is precisely why the Roman Catholic Archdiocese has sold off their 3424 Wilshire Boulevard Archdiocesan Catholic Center to Jamison Properties for a cool $31 million. Of course, that $31 million is just a drop in a bucket with a pricetag of $660 million for the church's past sins. According to the......

Actor and animal activist Robert Culp is demanding an immediate closure of the elephant exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo and that all work on the expansion of the elephant enclosure be halted. Billy, a 21-year-old Asian elephant, is now the zoo's only pachyderm, after the departure of Ruby last spring. KNBC reports that Culp and real estate agent Aaron Leider have filed a lawsuit against the city and zoo director John Lewis for allegedly......

Photograph of the Trump Soho by Riccardo Sinti Gothamist went to the scene of the Trump Soho construction collapse, which left one construction worker dead and others injured (an indirect culprit - Manhattan's hot real estate market, causing rushed construction jobs).Shanghaiist is confused by media reports as to whether Playboy will be available in China during the year of the Olympics.LAist got fugged in an interview with the Go Fug Yourself girls.Torontoist set hearts......

Twenty-four months, three LA Times editors gone, one reason: budget cuts. Jim O' Shea, editor of the LA Times was fired by Times Publisher David Hiller for failing to carry out $4 million in budget cuts at the paper. Apparently, Hiller wanted the money cut during the presidential campaign, a time when newspapers' budgets usually spike. This is the third editor to be fired over two years over the same budgetary issue. Do we......

Want to buy a two-story, four bedroom, two-and-a-half bath house with a view of a local artistic and historic landmark for a price tag of around $400,000? They've got custom cabinetry, marble counter tops, walk-in closets, and two-car garages to boot. Sounds pretty sweet! Do you mind that you're on land that was once a dump, and that you're three blocks from a housing project with bars on its windows? And that landmark? They're the......

What will Hike The Geek do?!?! In order to face up to budget-balancing woes and a state-wide financial crunch, Governor Schwartzenegger has proposed to close 48 different national park sites, as well as cut funding to many school, health care, and criminal justice programs. Parks in the L.A. area like the Will Rogers State Historic Park, Topanga State Park, and Pio Pico State Historic Park in Whittier will all be shut down, affecting many......

Forget Malibu. Forget the Hollywood Hills. Forget Mulholland Drive. Downtown is the new hot LZ for A-list celebrities, at least for the beloved Johnny Depp. He looked and bought into the $2-million property six months ago, but still hasn't moved into the Art Deco Eastern Columbia Building on Broadway, which has reportedly been having problems selling all the units. To that, the LA Times gives you the hard sell:It's not too late to become......

Record shops and CD purveyors are going the way of the 8-track. Joining the now-defunct ranks of Aron's Records, Rhino Records and Tower on Sunset is the Virgin Megastore. The rent's too high (tell us something we don't know!) And maybe, the sluggish music sales don't help much, either. According to a Los Angeles Times story today: Another one bites the dust. The Virgin Megastore on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, just down the......

Only in Hollywood can a building's facelift earn it an award. Citysearch has dubbed The Wiltern as Los Angeles' Best Live Music Venue. Why? "Hollywood's historic music venue retains its classic Tinseltown charm after a first-rate facelift." The Wiltern's "facelift" wasn't just a barely noticeable nose job. It was a full-scale re-do. The 1931 building was completely renovated five years ago, bringing state-of-the art sound to the venue that desperately needed it. It can now......

Sherman Oaks has a lot going for it. From movie and TV stars to community activism, from dingy Valley corner strip malls to high-end boutiques, this neighborhood of nearly 52,000 residents is never a bore (come on, Desperate Housewives films a bunch here). It is named after General Moses Hazeltine Sherman, a well known real estate developer who bought a good amount of land in the area and sold it off. The community was......

Judith Freeman's just-out book, The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and The Woman He Loved is a must-read for any Angeleno worth their salt. Why? Not only does Freeman detail the fascinating life of Chandler, one of L.A.'s most famous writers, but she documents, researches and visits almost every one of the thirty-five homes he lived in during his life in Southern California. Twenty-four of those homes are in Los Angeles. Twenty-four! Chandler and his wife......

If you support independent anything, listen up: Village Books in Pacific Palisades is on the verge of closing. Thank you big box chains, for screwing with the independents again. How to help right away: Shop at Village Books this weekend for the 15% off sale. You know you've got holiday shopping to do and why not do it at Village Books? How to help after this weekend: If you are an author, have a signing......

By the end of yesterday morning, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Michael Balzary, popularly known as Flea, sent a text message saying his home "had burnt to a crisp," according to the LA Times.Michael Balzary, a.k.a. Flea, had purchased a home for more than $10 million in Malibu last year, but the house that burned was another he owned in the hills west of Corral Canyon. That French country-style home is listed for sale......

I'm thankful for so much this Thanksgiving that I don't even know where to begin, so let's start with the basics: I'm thankful of you, my family, my friends, loose women, cheap vices, Guitar Hero, and the Good Lord. I'm thankful for something that you probably don't have, the greatest bosses alive and the coolest gig. For example can you say fuck to tens of thousands of people today? Fuck. I'm thankful to live......

You know you're in the Valley when real estate options are that old porn studio over there or the former sex toy manufacturing plant over there. Well, the LAPD went for the latter in a $37 million project to build a new station in Canoga Park on Schoenborn Street between Owensmouth and Canoga. The station is tentatively called Northwest Area Division. The reason for this new station in the West Valley is getting officers......

Sam Watters, author of Houses of Los Angeles,1885-1935, will be discussing the homes of Eva Fényes tonight @ 7:30pm. Her homes are just two of 75 historic, famous, and outlandish homes Watters explores in his new set of books. A watercolorist and an insatiable traveler, Fényes built and lived in two well-known Pasadena houses. How well known are they? One is the first Moorish style house in Pasadena and the other one is now part......

The very popular (and rightly so) Museum of Tolerance is pissing off its neighbhors. Since the museum opened 14 years ago, it has steadily gained worldwide mentions. Yet, all the visitors that arrive because of those those international mentions have the residents who live near the museum in a tizzy, claiming their West LA neighborhood has become a nightmare of big bus traffic, blocked streets and stolen parking spaces. All of this, they say, they......

We've been looking forward to the "big day" for a long time. Tomorrow was going to be a "big day" because the Cultural Heritage Commission was going to decide whether or not to declare Buk's De Longpre residence a historic landmark. Why should such a residence be declared a landmark? It's where he wrote Post Office & Factotum and was the very residence that plays a central role in Women. Since we're in love......

With reports of The King of Pop's financial troubles continuing to moonwalk all over the press, it's hard to feel sorry for the middle aged superstar, considering he hasn't really seemed to try to work out his issues - literally. You'd think a guy like Michael Jackson could do a few concerts and collect the $212,963 that's reportedly outstanding on his $23,212,963 mortgage on his sprawling ranch north of Santa Barbara. This summer Pollstar......

While it is hard for most to understand or imagine, once you have become entrenched in the archipelagic enclave of skyscrapers and bona fide mass transit that is Manhattan Island, it is difficult to leave. For a New Yorker, geographic displacement can fester into a self-induced internalized affront (even if just for a few short days). But the compelling lure of a free trip to Los Angeles to accompany my aunt on a business trip......