Old men smile at each other's stories over games of dominoes played on card tables set up on the street corner. Ladies in their Sunday best daintily nibble cake at outdoor cafes, and children run laughing around the fountain in the park. People stop to chat as they meander along the boulevard. This is not a scene from another era; it's a typical Sunday afternoon in Leimert Park.......

Councilwoman Jan Perry made do with a one-year moratorium on the addition of new fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles that went into effect last year, but now she's gearing up to fight the battle of the bulge in a more permanent way by asking for a complete ban on new fast food joints in the area. According to the Los Angeles Business Journal, "The ban is intended to stop the proliferation of eateries......

This morning's greater alarm structure fire in Hyde Park was knocked down after one hour and twenty-two minutes with over 100 firefighters responding to the scene. One civilian male was injured with second and third-degree burns and is in stable condition. Ron Myers said the fire started in a cabinet shop when a flammable liquid fell and spilled near a power tool which ignited fumes. The fire, located at 2327 Southwest Drive in the Hyde......

Just a few blocks away from last week's massively big fire that nearly leveled a city block at Gage and Gramercy in the Hyde Park neighborhood of South LA comes another fire this morning at 2327 Southwest Drive that was called in at 10:38 a.m. this morning (map below). Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Ron Myers reported via a text message alert that a two story office building was showing heavy smoke from the upper......

Willie Earl Green was arrested 25 years ago for shooting to death a woman in a crack house. Today, his conviction has been overturned by L.A. Superior Court Judge Stephen A. Marcus, and he has been freed from jail. The decision to set Green, 56, free came after a key witness to the murder, Willie Finley, admitted to having been high on either crack or cocaine at the house in South Los Angeles at the......

A 33-year-old white woman from Sherman Oaks, now living in Eugene, Oregon, has made national headlines today as news comes that her memoir was largely fabricated. Last week, Margaret Seltzer who goes by the pen name Margaret B. Jones was featured in the New York Times' Home & Garden section in a fascinating story about her book, "Love and Consequences." One LAist reader explains her fascination about it in an e-mail: I read the home......

10,500 people packed into the Crenshaw Christian Faith Dome this morning for a very special service for fallen LAPD SWAT Officer Randal Simmons. Police officers from as far as Canada have come to Los Angeles to honor him. More waited outside and people began to gather on the streets along the procession route. Media watcher, Kevin Roderick at LA Observed pointed out this morning as he liveblogged the funeral that "every network owned TV station......

Zoom in, zoom out, click on the icons and click on the lines for more info and times of closures | View Larger Map Last week Wednesday night, February 6, 2007, Veteran Officer Randy Simmons was killed upon entering the home of a gunman who reported to have shot three family members. This was the first casualty in the 41-year history of the LAPD’s Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit. Funeral arrangements for Simmons are......

RUDY GIULIANI leaves after announcing that he has dropped his bid for the Republican Presidential nomination and is now supporting JOHN McCAIN at the RONALD REAGAN Presidential Library where the Republican Debate is being held. Don't forget to join the LAist staff next week at our Super Tuesday Party at Seven Grand in downtown Los Angeles! Come out to drink with us, watch the primary race unfold, and even tell off your least favorite......

Ben Lyons and Jane Lynch at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival LAist caught up with Ben Lyons from E! to tell us what Park City is really like during the Sundance Film Festival. From Charlize Theron to Diddy, Ben's time at the festival is jam packed with screenings, interviews, and parties. We asked him to fill us in on his favorite films, his obsession with "Beverly Hills 90210", and going bobsledding with Ivan Radcliff.......

It was a bloody weekend all across the Southland: after a body was found under the 118 overpass, two separate party shootings with fatal results and two more dead in separate incidents in the O.C., more violence broke out in South L.A. late last night. An adult man and a teenage girl, aged 14, were wounded in a seemingly random shooting attack last night outside of a housing project in South Los Angeles. The......

When people think of Leimert Park, they usually focus on Leimert Plaza Park and the one block of Degnan to the north. But the neighborhood of Leimert Park encompasses the eastern side of Crenshaw Boulevard, including Crenshaw and King Blvd all the way north to Rodeo Road. M&M Soul Food sits right beneath one of the blue signs delineating the Leimert Park neighborhood. When you see a soul food restaurant on television, nine times out......

Last night I was casually checking out what various travel websites had to say about the neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Most of the summaries in Frommers sounded like this: Silver Lake, a residential neighborhood just north of Downtown and adjacent to Los Feliz (home to the Los Angeles Zoo and Griffith Park), just to the west, has arty areas with unique cafes, theaters, graffiti, and art galleries -- all in equally plentiful proportions. The......

If you are on the Westside and thinking pastrami, you are probably thinking about Johnnie's on Sepulveda. If you are in South Los Angeles and you are thinking pastrami, you are definitely thinking about Johnny's on Adams. That's Johnny's with a "Y". Two blocks East of Crenshaw, Johnny's is conveniently located just a few blocks off the 10 freeway. This neighborhood stand has been serving up giant, monolithic pastrami dips since 1956. Even though......

Welcome to October! Metroblogging wants to know how you and your neighborhood will celebrate the run up to All Hallow's Eve. Kobe "I can't live with you, I can't live without you" Bryant was in a jolly mood today as the Lakers greeted the media at its El Segundo practice facility. Construction on a proposed child-care facility, once touted as the centerpiece to Panorama City redevelopment, is hampered by political and building delays. I......

Today in major LA Fire Department events: an early morning structure fire in North Hills sending smoke into the flight path of Van Nuys Airport, a big rig with a trailer overturned on the Southbound Harbor freeway causing a Sig Alert, and a medical emergency in the Hilton Hotel at Universal City where staff mixed ammonia & bleach solutions creating hydrochloric acid (oops!). Is it the second Thursday of the month? Ah, it is!......

In today's LAFD updates, a structure fire at Fuller and a passenger car is trapped underneath an 18-wheeler. Will fewer fast-food restaurants mean healthier citizens? The City Council will be asked to consider a moratorium on new chain restaurants in South Los Angeles. Oscar-winning actress (and first wife to Ronald Reagan) Jane Wyman died today at the age of 93 at her home in Rancho Mirage. Students at forty LAUSD schools will be competing......

Last year Kaiser Permanente donated $1.2 million to the city to help keep 15 city swimming pools open an extra two weeks at the end of the summer. This year Kaiser cut their donation by 90%, and still, magically the city announced that thanks to the HMO, 14 city pools will remain open two weeks longer than originally scheduled. Because of a $121,000 donation from Kaiser Permanente, 14 swimming pools operated by the Los......

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Wildfire Erupts in Los Angeles Fires erupted in the hills above Los Angeles, damaging or destroying several homes, as dangerous north winds swept dry Southern California. Farther inland, a blinding sandstorm triggered a deadly highway pileup. Wind speeds of more than 50 mph were propelling a 15-acre blaze in grass near expensive homes above the city of Beverly Hills, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Ron Myers said. Emmy-winning actor Roscoe Lee Browne dies at 81......

This dog delivers beer! Click here to find out how. Photo by C-Monster. Larry Birkhead to World: I told you so! Sleazy paparazzo beats off human parasite, fake prince, former bodyguard and clump of seaweed to prove he's Anna-Nicole's baby-daddy. -TMZ Howard Stern cozies up to Birkhead, says Papa Larry can spend as much time as he wants with little Mealticketlynn. World's #1 Mom Virgie Arthur expected to sue for custory. -TMZ MSNBC punishes......

- "Officials say a high school student scribbled graffiti on a bus that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other dignitaries were riding while promoting a school safety plan. Witnesses say the boy tagged the rear exit of the bus with a marker as the officials rode around a South Los Angeles school to showcase efforts to improve student safety in the gang-plagued neighborhood." No word if the little fella wrote LAist on the......

LAist keeps it real, others don't. We won't judge them for doing what they're doing but semantics doesn't solve the problems of gangs and crime and education and housing and disrespect. About three years ago the City of LA decided to officially change the name of the area known for 50 years as South Central Los Angeles to South Los Angeles. The reasoning is "South Central" had such a negative connotation that it was......

Today at 5:30 pm, Mayor Villaraigosa made a "State of the City" address -- sort of like the State of the Union address, but just for LA. In fact, the speech in many ways served as the inverse of this year's State of the Union address. "Angelenos, it's time for all of us to make the tough choices," said Mayor Villaraigosa. According to the Mayor, we're trying to stop violence and inequity, and we're......

It’s refreshing to see some Los Angeles theatre that has you leave debating what you just witnessed and experienced. Vagrant is not candy on a stick, rather a full-bodied glass of wine. Eerily scored (Twilight Zone meets Sin City), the anachronistic noir of South Los Angeles brings Larkin (Patrick Burleigh), an LAPD officer, into a dilapidated digital repair shop sketchy of its own existence. The shop’s front man, Meyer (Christopher Allport), is a man......

- The very cool Apartment Therapy now has an LA version. - This seems like an odd week to be profiling Chatsworth as an ideal place to buy a home. - Porn Valley gets the documentary treatment on Playboy starting this weekend and the documentary was done by the Wow Report folks. - What Latino-Black divide? South Los Angeles churches are seeing continued charity for Katrina across cultural lines. - Our friends at the......

There is so much to take in from the United Way LA and Los Angeles Urban League "State of Black LA" report that we don't know where to begin. Should we focus on the positive, like LA's extremely civic minded Black community that rates highest of any racial group in the county, or get caught up in the negative, like rating 4 points below the national average for equality (and quality of life). Los......

...the Beer Garden, that is. Back in June we applauded the impending summer opening of the New Otani Hotel's rooftop Beer Garden, and now that we've enjoyed some mugs of Kirin and some hibachi grilling, we're ready to laud this seasonal downtown hangout yet again. A few floors above the lobby level (not quite the roof, but a roof) is the hotel's lovely Japanese gardens, complete with waterfalls and streams, paper lanterns in bright......

First, when we said it was going to rain yesterday, we kind of lied. We got some bad intel. The showers are now not expected until tomorrow. We also should probably apologize to Seattlest for the crack we made about them and rain. This season, we have twice the waterfall as our northern friends so we'll just shut up about all that. While the aftermath of the Devin Brown shooting is interesting all on......

The Jae Yang murder case was essentially solved by a helpful phone tip according to Mary Frances Gurton in The Los Angeles Independent. Four of the five suspects were captured a couple weeks ago and the other suspect has been identified although not yet found. This murder is of specific interest to us because it happened near where lots of our friends live. They frequented that store and the murder was, of course, shocking.......