Photo by Zach Behrens/LAist *Update 5:00 p.m.* A beige Lexus SUV attempting to enter into the neighboring commercial building couldn't complete the turn, and mistakenly hit the accelerator rather than the brake. The motion sent the driver on a diagonal path through the awning of Barry's Tickets, then through the patio and front of Tokyo Ice, a sushi restaurant at 16161 Ventura Blvd. The business was preparing for its 5 o'clock opening and was......

Vegan Waffles and 'Chicken' | All Photos by Zach Behrens/LAist All good things come from the Valley first. Lucky for those who stay "over the hill," Executive Chef David Anderson at LA's fanciest and tastiest vegan affair in the Tarzana Safari Walk (yes, that's an official Los Angeles Neighborhood, city blue sign and all), there is plans to open up a new vegan eatery with full bar on the Westside according to VegNews, who......

Photo courtesy of Picturehouse Entertainment After the awful Fred Claus, Vince Vaughn owes us some laughs and Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland might be just the ticket. It follows Vaughn and four hand-picked comedians as they cross the country to play an exhausting 30 shows in 30 nights. There are a bevy of on-stage celebrity cameos and Vaughn never lets his out-sized persona......

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About the above picture: The Rawking Refuses To Stop!, a blog of all things Los Angeles pop culture and MP3, shares with us their best concert photos of 2007. Above, they sneak out of LA to New York to see Les Savy Fav at the Bowery Ballroom (we'll just say they did the same thing when they came here). Don't forget -- you still have today and tomorrow to enter our Rufus Wainwright/Belinda Carlisle......

As traffic worsens on Ventura Boulevard, a new L.A. City report found that developers could add 3 million square feet of commercial space to the Ventura Boulevard corridor under current zoning rules. If you thought getting from Sepulveda to Van Nuys down Ventura was bad before. Umph... Not sure what to buy that ragamuffin who has everything this holiday season? Franklin Avenue found a great set of Lego-ish toys featuring people in casts, babies......

Ever since I started writing food reviews, I have been haunted by Jonathan Gold. I would be researching pho for a post, and come across one of his articles, "Cinnamon, anise and the funk of simmering beef, the soup's unmistakable signature, perfumed the air." Sometimes Jonathan Gold just makes me want to stick a fork in my head. I used to play "Restaurant Roulette" on Ventura Boulevard, where I would just stop at random eateries.......

For 36 years, The Wiener Factory has been serving hot dogs out of their Sherman Oaks stand to loyal and new customers alike. Good for hot dog lovers, bad for residents craving Pinkberry:Officials with Pinkberry, a nonfat frozen-yogurt chain, were expected to tell a Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council panel Monday night that they wanted to raze the small hot-dog restaurant and build another Pinkberry store. "Historically, many things come and go. But we have......

When a new development is planned and traffic impact studies are needed, the developer hires the consultant, not the City. So you can see how residents are wary if the developer is in cahoots with the consultant to downplay results in favor of the development. And right some where:In Sherman Oaks, the local homeowners group was following a proposed 89-condo and 16,000-square-foot mixed-use project on Ventura Boulevard. The developer agreed to update an old......

It was one of those lovely Sunday mornings down in the Valley: sunny and clear, not yet hot enough to send San Fernando-ists scurrying indoors towards the comfort of central air conditioning. We were looking for a casual and parent-friendly place along Ventura Boulevard to enjoy some lunch and a cold beer with our nearest and dearest. Mexicali Cocina Cantina seemed to fit the bill: reasonably priced, easy parking, and a wide array of......

Ventura Boulevard tends to get all the buzz when talking up the Valley. Boutiques, restaurant after restaurant, salons, Starbucks with TV celebrities, etc. But what about the main street just north of Ventura - Moorpark Street? You can easily miss The Coffee Fix with it's anonymous facade on the inner southwest corner at Moorpark and Whitsett in Studio City. Directly across the street is the modern looking and newish Studio City library which dominates......

Studio City's Daichan is heaven for a Japanophile like me. It will quite possibly take a lifetime to eat my way through its massive menu that has countless selections based on the combined and varied influences of Japanese and Hawaiian cuisine. You'll find everything from basic sushi and sashimi dishes to traditional curry and katsu (like the popular breaded and fried pork) plates, along with dozens of tempting appetizers, noodle bowls, rice bowls, and......

Ahhh, the weekend breakfast. Such a noble--but frustrating--pursuit. Some joints get a rep for being "the" place to go when you've slept in and are craving carbs piled high on plates. We'd heard a lot about Studio City's Jumpin' Java. We'd heard it was super crowded, super delicious, and had super spotty service. After giving it a go, we'll say two out of three is how things ended up for us; blame it on......

The appeal of the indie coffehouse hasn't been fully exorcised from my 21st century modus operandi; I suppose I'm Gen X to the core, easily seduced by a yellow-lit room full of mismatched and well-worn furniture, singer-songwriter melodies emanating from low-fi boombox speakers, and walls bearing a wagon-train display of local artists' efforts. This is probably why I was recently tickled pink to rediscover Lulu's Beehive on the Sherman Oaks/Studio City borderline when I......

When we read New York Times' vacation on Ventura Blvd. last fall, we were happy the Valley got noticed with better geography skills than our local news outlets. And ever since La Di Da in West Hollywood closed (probably 'cause someone [see previous link] said its neighborhood was Miracle Mile), nothing in LA has been able to impress like Misti Chamkunthod's Brie mac and cheese (you can find Misti at The Backstage in Culver......

Enjoy Coke: In Mexico City, Mexican soldiers opened up the cargo hold of a commercial flight from Venezuela and found 128 black suitcases marked "private." But they weren't feeling polite: in the cases they found 5.5 tons of cocaine, worth $100 million or more. Wow, those were some big suitcases. Wacko crash in Encino: Some guy was driving a Crown Victoria all crazy down Ventura Boulevard, being pursued by police. He smashed into a......

This weekend we hit Aura: that Valley club on Ventura Boulevard above Peet's Coffee and Tea and behind Chin Chin. LA.com gives it a 323 chic rating with "its red velvet decor, maple floors, state-of-the-art sound and light system, and elevated DJ booth that sits in the middle of a sparkling glass bar." So wait, rewind...."maple floors"? You look at the floor and it looks like this used to be a dance studio for......

Okay, we know that it's kind of 2002 of us to get jazzed by Boba tea drinks, but we haven't really talked Boba here before, except the last time we had one--at the Chinese Food Festival this summer, and we constantly see puzzled faces when we tell someone we're craving Boba. That's because so many people don't know what Boba is. And we're talking about Boba today because we're hungover and have a vicious......

We don't tend to eat a heck of a lot of meat, chiefly because we don't crave it all that often, and are quite content in the land of fish and vegetables. But that's us, and even we break our own rules every now and then, especially when the reward is tender meat that slides off a bone oozing with spicy-sweet sauce and comes with a side of slaw. And we take our coleslaw......

Sushi lovers all over LA tend to favor Studio City's Katsu-ya when it comes to traditional and fresh sushi. While there's often a long wait for a table, whether for lunch or dinner, diners don't have to deal with the reputed militant chef of neighboring Nozawa. Of course, Katsu-ya and their outstanding quality are not news, but more like new to us; recently we snagged a table in this extremely popular Valley spot, and......

A trip to check out More Than Waffles was aimed at satisfying both the craving for a good breakfast and the desire to check out a new (to us) place. It's been a family owned and operated joint in the Encino Town Center since 1975. You'd think they'd have figured out a few things by now. It was late morning on a weekday, when the breakfast rush should be over and the crowds thinned......

If there's one thing we've learned about sushi from all our recent experience, it's that it's darn near impossible to find a decent sushi restaurant open for lunch on Sundays. We couldn't wait til dinner. We couldn't think of somewhere not too far over any of the hills in the 323 to try. So we roamed the valley floor until we stopped at Ahi Sushi on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. It was dim......

The fifth day of the fifth month means celebration time for anyone with ties to Mexico, or an affinity for international holidays that involve hard liquor and good food. Here in LA, Cinco de Mayo is a hugely popular Fiesta time, and with the holiday landing on a Thursday, there's sure to be celebrations running through the weekend. In honor of 05/05/05, LAist would like to mention 5 great Mexican restaurants where you can......

While local citizens are always their own experts on everything from restaurants to movie theaters to parking lots and gas stations, LAist finds that more people have more opinions about sweets than anything else in town. Most specifically donuts. (Or, doughnuts. Or, dough-nuts.) Last year, Daily Candy raved about a place in Sherman Oaks called Baby Donut (15030 Ventura Boulevard) where obsessive-compulsive doughnut eaters, those fed up with the generic corner stores or the......

There's a brand new bakery in Sherman Oaks and we can't get the flavor of its buttercream frosting out of our heads or stomachs. Leda's Bake Shop is right next to Señor Fred's on Ventura Boulevard just west of Woodman. We stumbled upon it after lunch yesterday. We didn't think it could be a better day after we sat directly across from Wanda Sykes and watched her toast margaritas mid-afternoon much like her "faux-reality"......

LAist woke up in the back seat of our car at six-thirty this morning, somewhere off Ventura Boulevard in the far west Valley, hugging a bottle of Jim Beam in our bloody, sliced-up hands and vowing never again to play a show in Santa Barbara on a Monday night. (We're pretty sure someone else drove us home.) The last thing we recall is a cute local girl leaving the crowd of sugardaddy-CEOs who were......

LAist sometimes gets an intense craving for sushi that cannot go unheeded. In a pinch those little plastic supermarket packs will do, but, let's face it, sometimes you just need the real deal. Ventura Boulevard from end to end boasts countless strip-mall sushi joints; miss the turn for one and another is a half a block away. But with sushi, any hole in the wall simply won't do. Freshness, value, and variety play a......

A piece in the Toronto Star of all papers about the appeal of vinyl records reminds us of one of our favorite local record shops, The Basement. Tucked away on Ventura near Van Nuys boulevard in Sherman Oaks, the hip hop focused record store features some of the coolest and little known live in-store events around town. We were there when Pigeon John and others rocked the mic and the energy of Los Angeles......

LA Fired Department Blog relays info of street closures as of early Monday morning as a result of this weekend's storms. Mulholland Drive is closed to through traffic between Laurel Canyon and Coldwater Canyon. ** Coldwater Canyon is closed to through traffic between the Beverly Hills city limits and Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. ** Beverly Glen Boulevard is closed to through traffic between the San Fernando Valley and Bel Air. ** Burbank Boulevard is......

With the holidays all around us, LAist has noticed that some people aren't fully embracing the "treat your fellow man respectfully and with love" concept. And so, we decided to take advantage of the stress and the chaos and the ill-will around town by seeing just how many annoyed dashboard notes we could elicit by parking in two spaces at once, too close to the driver's side doors, at awkward angles, double-parking and a......