My Bloody Valentine, who is playing a string of sold out shows in the UK is going to play the Santa Monica Civic Center, and you can get tickets RIGHT NOW. as of me writing this they are not sold out. The band who hasn't played in the US for more than 17 years will be playing two shows in Santa Monica this coming October, and you don't want to be one of the......

When you're a teenager, there are several big moments in life--when you turn 16 and you can legally drive, 18 when you can vote, buy cigarettes and get pierced without parental consent and then the next big moment is 21. Hold On!! Highways Performance Space and Gallery, one of our local internationally renowned centers for new performance (dance, music, performance art and any hybrid thereof) is turning nineteen this weekend!! And, in this day and......

South opened its doors a few weeks ago and already business is booming. I arrived for happy hour at 5pm, quite relieved to see how well they'd filled in the space previously occupied by that hideous dim sum restaurant which was a disgrace to all things Chinese. South looks amazing, with nice clear TVs on every wall, wide open spaces, comfortable seating, and tons of windows. I was rather impressed. South was opened by......

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......

Dakota Smith over at Curbed LA was kind enough to submit this photo. "I'm over in Venice and someone plastered all of Abbot Kinney Boulevard with these posters on the street this morning," she wrote in an e-mail. Juliana Redding was murdered on March 16th and few details have come out as of late. Santa Monica Police were quick to state that the autopsy results would take 30 to 60 days because of a......

It's 5:00 p.m. in Santa Monica and the boys at the online video startup Bush League TV, who launch next week, are live online video-feeding one man's attempt to break the Guinness World Record for longest consecutive video game play. He'll be going for a minimum of 25 hours. You can follow them on Twitter, or better yet, sit at home on your computer and watch a guy named Jim play the video game for......

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......

It's almost the weekend... | Photo by Kim Shattuck via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr See, I prefer the silent treatment to the stabby treatment: "A woman was in custody today for allegedly fatally stabbing her boyfriend during an argument at their South Los Angeles home." Watch out, flight-goers: get drunk and mean on a plane ride, and your fellow passengers might just duct-tape you to your seat! It happened to one......

With Father's Office branching out to Culver City with a second location this week, an inspection of the Santa Monica original seemed in order. I'll confess, it was my first trip to the Office, but I'd be happy to spend more than a few 9-5s there. To call the gastropub a burger bar seems inadequate – the Father's Office burger shares about as much in common with its local competitors as a BMW does......

This past weekend, the Green Apple Festival (MySpace), billed as "America's Largest Earth Day Celebration," was held in eight cities across the country (with the exception of Washington D.C., which was reportedly rained out), including here in Los Angeles. Performing live music on Sunday at the Santa Monica Pier were the Frequency (MySpace), School of Rock Hollywood All-Stars, Escalera (MySpace), Juliette and the Licks (MySpace), Ziggy Marley (MySpace), and Taj Majal (MySpace). Actress Amy......

Photo by delera-photos via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr There were a lot of earthy things to do this weekend, but the true Earth Day is tomorrow. And after that, Earth Day-like events continue through May 10th with one of the best Earth Day festivals around -- WorldFest in Encino. Tomorrow and as previously mentioned, Wilshire Blvd. is being closed down between Western and Harvard. Since it's also Car Free Day, the event abut......

Mere hours after we interviewed Veronica Belmont last month, news broke that she was leaving the daily video podcast she helped launch -- Mahalo Daily. Soon enough, Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs, Inc. and CEO of the people-powered search engine Mahalo, announced an American Idol-esque contest to find the next host of the Mahalo Daily vlog. As dozens of potential hosts lined up to audition in side Mahalo HQ in Santa Monica, we grilled Calacanis......

Photo by Jonathan Alcorn (sundogg) via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr You can find all kinds of stuff on eBay, from trash to treasure, and so long as you are the highest bidder and can cough up the shipping fee, it's yours. How'd you like to be the proud new owner of a piece of local history, in the form of the nine-story ferris wheel from Santa Monica's Pacific Park? And, hey, cool factor:......

I innocently went to Third Street Promenade on Saturday to go shopping to put together a new "I'm single and available" look as the current one isn't working, and happened upon some sort of pre-Earth Day, super green I heart the environment festival. Fortunately Earth Day brings out the best of Santa Monica, and my camera and I happened to be there. I can't appropriately put words to this, so just click the photos.......

Photo of Kristen Smiarowski by Derrick Bruce, courtesy of the artist With a press release that begins with "a South Korean, an Indonesian and two Jews walk into Highways Performance Space ," locally-based Kiha Lee, Sri Susilowati, Keith Glassman and Kristen Smiarowksi take over the intimate Santa Monica theater to premiere new dances April 10-12 at 8:30 pm. Known around town, nationally and internationally for making work that transcends the limitations of "eye candy,"......

We caught up with Mahalo Daily host/producer Veronica Belmont at Community Next over the weekend to discuss her daily (weekdays) video podcast for Santa Monica-based Mahalo. Veronica discussed her sci-fi affliction, World of Warcraft habit, and LA vs. SF. We also coined the term "puppy roll," a unique variation on the Rick roll featuring the Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis' bulldogs. What will Veronica get up to next?......

There's a massive world freeze planned for April 1st and since Los Angeles has recently gone abuzz with unexpected events that cause "chaos and joy," a new local group inspired by the East Coast Improv Everywhere has already gone out and accomplished some missions, including this above video from February 23rd at Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade. The local group, who recently dubbed themselves as GuerilLA seems to have begun after Improv Everywhere flew......

Photo of Tom LaBonge by Greg Katz for LAist If you missed Tom LaBonge talking with Patt Morrison on KPCC Tuesday, you missed hearing the charismatic council member for Silver Lake, Miracle Mile, and North Hollywood say that he sleeps with his lights on. The subject of their chat was the latest DWP rate hike. When asked whether he thought the DWP should use a carrot-and-stick strategy to compel energy conservation, LaBonge went off......

Spring is here in Los Angeles! To celebrate, I give you a series of Haikus. boobies are in bloom jiggling in the fresh spring air welcome to LA More poetry after the jump.......

I've been checking out college hoops at various bars, like The Parlor and Q's and Barney's Santa Monica, so I felt it only appropriate that I hit up another Santa Monica sports bar: Busby's. I went Saturday around 4pm to ensure I would get a great seat for the UCLA game at 6:30. Um, Busby's was about as exciting as watching the game in my living room. Okay, the food was better than my......

Police say the two murders in Santa Monica are unrelated, but both draw eerie similarities. Both murdered in their multi-family complexes, 3-miles apart, Juliana Redding, found dead on Sunday, and Alexander Merman, found on Wednesday, were discovered in their states at the request of each of their mothers for someone to check on them since communications had lessoned. However, such cases like this can be found coincidental. "Based on the initial investigation, there is nothing......

For the second time this week, another person has been found dead inside their Santa Monica apartment and police suspect homicide. Last night at 8:05 p.m., the body of a man in his 30s was found at 520 Montana Ave. Described as a "suspicious death," the apartment building was temporarily evacuated at the time. As to how police knew to check the apartment, police will not say at the moment. However, they do say that......

Chillaxing at CA BOOM V | All Photos & Captions by Caroline On Crack and Zach Behrens for LAist This past weekend was CA Boom V, a West Coast design show that gathered some of the best of the best design and architecture from the United States. Whether it was non-traditional, modern or contemporary, it was there at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica. Curbed LA was there doing architecture tours and below is......

*Update, 3/20/08: There has been another apparent apartment murder in Santa Monica, this time a man in his 30s. However, police say there is no connection to Redding's assault. More info here. Also, police are still waiting for Redding's autopsy results, but when finished, they will not be released to the public for another 30 to 60 days in lieu of a "security hold."A mother's premonition can be strong and when Santa Monica resident Juliana......

As some of you may well know, I am embarking on Malingering's Marvelous March Madness Sports Bar tour, so I thought I'd hit up one of the usual spots: Barney's Beanery in Santa Monica. Barney's has a few things going for it: 1) The mini chocolate bundt cakes with ice cream and chocolate syrup which are oh-so-delicious 2) Booths which allow you to hide out, have 3 TVs all to yourself, and complete control......

Last night the girls and I decided to go out for Happy Hour - which we'd hoped would extend into Happy Hours and perhaps Happy Night. We went to a few bars in Santa Monica, made our way down to Venice, and after a few drinks and a lot of parking, we decided to head back east. Fortunately we happened upon The Parlor, on Wilshire and 15th in Santa Monica. I'm starting to wonder......

Just in time for St Paddy's Day, we check out some of the Irish coffees around town. Screw green beer. That stuff will kill you. After drinking many Irish Coffees in the name of serious scientific research, I have discovered a good Irish coffee relies on two relatively simple elements: the freshness of the coffee and use of real heavy cream #1 Tom Bergin's Tom Bergin's is known as the home of Irish coffee, at......

In all the many, many years I have been trolling Santa Monica's Promenade, in search of shopping and people-watching and places to eat, it had never occured to me to stop in at Locanda del Lago, an Italian restaurant right in the thick of Santa Monica's shopping mecca. I was invited out to try some of their house specialties; it's Italian cuisine in the Lombardy style, which emphasizes ingredients like fish from Lake Como,......

Last night Madonna was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by none other than Justin Timberlake. In another unusual spin, she chose The Stooges, fronted by Iggy Pop to perform two of her hits, "Burning Up" and "Ray of Light.". Stooges bass player and occasional LAist contributor Mike Watt rocks out in the above clip. Stay tuned at the end of the video for some backstage scenes from last night's induction,......

As reported yesterday in the midst of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's scandal where he was busted for his involvement in a prostitution ring, the same high-scale service he used has ties in Los Angeles as well as Washington, DC, Miami, London and Paris. Documents released yesterday showed that the Emperors Club VIP operated in two unnamed Los Angeles area hotels in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica according to CBS. The service is "an alleged......