Happy Meals, a new semi-regular series where I, an LA native, revisit places I ate as a kid, indulge in food and nostalgia, and see what’s changed and what hasn’t. When I was a kid, we lived near Lake Hollywood, so Honeybaked was about three minutes from our house. My earliest memories of the place was picking up sams there and heading to the beach. I developed my beach taste on the east coast.......

View Larger Map If you've noticed northbound Hollywood Way closed in Burbank between Riverside Drive and Alameda Avenue, get used to it -- it's scheduled to reopen in October. Caltrans tells the Burbank Leader that they advise commuters to use Pass and Verdugo Avenues in the interim. A new onramp is being built on the 134 freeway to help congestion flow on the busy artery near major studios and the Los Angeles city border in......

To have a continuous bike path along the LA River, it must pass next to Universal Studios. The maroon line marks the disputed path. Back in an October 2006 interview with the mysterious LA City Nerd, we asked a question of hope: when can we realistically bike commute via the LA River Trail from the Valley to Downtown LA? The nerd was not optimistic saying that "the LA River trail may never connect completely......

You saw that right, except for the date: It's Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl IV, airing all day Super Bowl Sunday. Not only is this a fun idea on their part (why subject your shows to poor overall ratings?), it's mesmerisingly watchable and a great way to keep the kids and pets occupied and away from your guests and food. Or maybe you're not (gasp) a football fan and just want to veg out? I......

The LA Times reports that copper thieves have been stealing the wire from streetlights in areas across the city where they think they can get away with it. Scratch that, where they can get away with it. The bikepath along the LA River was such a target that the City of LA's Department of Public Works welded the boxes at the base of the streetlights shut. Didn't work. The copper thefts continued. At at......

Earlier this week I made a right turn out of a parking lot in order to avoid waiting a lifetime to make a near-impossible left turn. I found myself on a quiet side street in lovely Toluca Lake, and eyeballed my trusty GPS navigation screen in order to see if the road I'd taken would connect me through to a street I knew would hook me up with Riverside Drive and send me on my......

We couldn't do a proper tribute to Late Night Eats in Los Angeles without a visit to the original Late Night Eats establishment, the one that started it all, the restaurant that embodies the very essence of car-hopping, car-worshiping SoCal burger culture: Bob's Big Boy. The Big Boy Burger was born in Glendale in 1936, the brainchild of Bob Wian (I know, the alliteration is getting a bit much for me too); the Burbank branch......

View Larger Map Ventura Blvd. is well served by three bus lines, the 750, 150 and 240. During the day on a weekday, you can pretty much walk to a stop and find a bus coming. To the north of the Valley's famous boulevard is the Orange Line, which during the same times of day seems to run every few seconds (it's only at 12 a.m. am I waiting longer than 10 minutes). Sandwiched between......

- You don't have to be in snow to say "mush." Try urban mushing in Costa Mesa. - "Cardinal Roger M. Mahony today apologized to victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Los Angeles Archdiocese." - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa skips his monthly appearance on KABC-TV's Eyewitness Newsmakers because of personal questions. - By the 1930s, the Los Angeles streetcar system had nearly 600 miles of track and used more than 1,200 cars. Downtown......

Universal City, CA - Announced last fall, it is supposed to be the Century City of the Valley. And according to a group named The NBC Universal MTA Project Working Group (a coalition of the surrounding community organizations), it will have 1.47 million square feet of new commercial and residential space, office towers (up to 24 stories tall), a 34 story (445 feet tall) condominium & hotel tower. They also contend that there will......

- Attention Blacks - Dreamworks wants you to audition to be Donkey for the Broadway production of Shrek - Defamer - Was Mayor Tony up to the same monkeybusiness that the Frisco Mayor admitted to? - LA Observed - Now that we know where the Westside of LA begins (La Cienega), has the Associated Press determined that Toluca Lake is in the Hollywood Hills? - LA Brain Terrain - Muslim man in Van Nuys......

Hey, remember when we were all like "Hey LAist peeps! We're moving to Hollywood! In only thirty days! YEAH BABY!" and everything was going great and we got some good tips on movers (Delancey Street) and neighborhoods? And if you'd asked me if thought I was going to be able to make it by July 1st I'd be all like "YOU KNOW IT!!!" Yeah, well, as of eleven o'clock this morning, that was how......

Yesterday thousands of people participated in the weekend long Big Sunday event: Community service erupted across Southern California during a Big Sunday volunteer weekend billed as the largest volunteer give-back in the nation. "Normally, I'd be in bed with my wife, asleep," Dexter Conner, 28, of Toluca Lake said while raking soil to create a "hidden garden" in North Hollywood. "I'm just trying to help out when I can." And help out they did......

A brush fire broke out just over an hour ago in the Hollywood Hills between Universal City, Burbank, and Toluca Lake. The fire broke out around the 3600 block of North Barham Blvd (shown above) according to KTLA. Nothing huge at this point, no evacs, but we're hearing about alot of smoke in the air -- and it ain't no barbecue. The chopper video shows flames creeping closer and closer to traffic. LAFD spokesman......

It's certainly not the biggest farmer's market around--in fact it's pretty close to fledgling. Operational since last fall, the Toluca Lake Certified Farmer's Market takes over just one tiny block on Sancola, north of Riverside Drive. There are a few produce stands featuring excellent, although somewhat limited, selections of fresh local fruits and veggies, as well as at least one floral stand, craftsmakers with wares from soy candles to jewelry, tamales, baked goods, and......

What were we thinking? Just a quick jaunt to our neighborhood Trader Joe's to grab some nibbly things and vino and appetizers (and, okay, some stuff to brown bag for work lunches this week) and we'd be in and out in plenty of time to catch the Red Carpet Arrival brouhaha on any of a handful of channels. Of course, everyone and their mother--like the gal and her mother we kept bumping into around every......

Throughout this series, we will be asking fellow bloggers about their thoughts on Moorpark Street. LACityNerd summarizes a good list for us to start off with: When I think of Moorpark Street, I think of... -The most visible & concentrated destruction after the 1994 earthquake - especially looking up and down the streets as one rides along it Fulton and Van Nuys Blvd. -A short cut/alternate to Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake during rush......

Why focus on what seemingly and maybe a random street (to some) in the south rim of the Valley? Why look into the food, the drinks, the people, the graffiti artists and the neighborhoods along this street that one might call a collector, but these days, could easily be called an arterial street. Stuck between the 101/134 freeways and Ventura Blvd., Moorpark is just a way to avoid traffic for many. Ventura Blvd. gets......

New Rule: If you build your house to be a castle in a nice and quaint residential neighborhood, your 3rd Amendment rights are stricken. This house on Hortense St. in West Toluca Lake (come on, it's really NoHo) just made our day. We wish we could live next door and tell our friends when giving directions, "Just look for the house to the left of the castle." Is this L.A. Insensitivity or just what......

Academically speaking, the above title (a quote from one of our commenters) is correct and it only took 15 comments to get there! Not every part of the valley is within city limits (haha, Wiki left out West Toluca Lake!) of the City of Los Angeles (as pointed out: there is Bizarrebank, Glendale, City of San Fernando, the occasional unincorporated Los Angeles County, etc). Should New York City be our example? If you live......

The Daily News looks at the legacy of African-Americans in the valley (it's a little grim). Our favorite part is the story of Ida Kinney, now 101 years old; her grandparents were slaves in Arkansas. She was the first African-American woman to get a job at Lockheed's Burbank plant during World War II, and got a white friend to front for her in order to buy her home on an all-white block. Where she......