Young People Attempt to Party on the Westside, Fail [UPDATED]

A bunch of kids tried to have a party on the Westside last night, disturbing the efforts of at least one Holmby Hills resident trying to curl up with a biography of Steve Jobs.

Before we proceed any further, we're going to admit that yes, the story sounds like an April Fools' prank. But we're pretty sure the Los Angeles Times wouldn't do that, and certainly not on its L.A. Now blog. If it is a joke, we have three words for the Times: you got us! (A pair of stories this morning here and here did have us giggling in the spirit of the day.)

Last night's story begins with police shutting down a party in Beverly Hills. The night was still young, so the crowd made plans to keep the party going at a house in Holmby Hills. By the time they started rolling up, it was about 10:30 pm, which is about the time at least one Westside resident (but possibly more) was trying to put a dent in that Jobs biography. She called the police twice, requesting that officers bring their riot gear the second time. They obliged and managed to shut the party down—going 500-strong at one point—within an hour.

Now we don't blame neighbors for calling the cops on a huge noisy crowd that appeared out of nowhere, but for the sake of comedy, try to imagine a story about the same thing happening—a huge party shut down without incident—being written in this sort of tone in almost any other part of L.A. county. We've highlighted some of our favorite parts from the Times' story:

• First, there's that lede: "Mindy Newman was enjoying a peaceful night at home Saturday in Holmby Hills, reading a biography of the late Apple Computers co-founder Steve Jobs."
• Newman told the paper that the crowd forming in the streets was "like a swarm of bees." She added: “They were coming in cars. They were coming in cabs.”
• A pair of police officers arrived at the scene and everyone whipped out their phones and started singing. Newman described the scene this way: “These two women were in the middle and all these kids’ iPhones were like torches and they were waving them and singing, '... the police,' '... the police.' I was thinking, 'I don’t think Steve Jobs would like his iPhone to be used in that way.'”
• And the party ended exactly how you might have guessed: "Numerous juveniles were cited for curfew violations, possession of marijuana and smoking paraphernalia"

Good try, kids. Next time, read this sign.UPDATE 7:30 pm: We almost missed the updated story from the Times, which includes even more amazing gems. In this quote Newman imagines what Steve Jobs might have thought about this party on the Westside: "His spirit was here when these kids were out there with their iPhones. It was California, a rainbow of people. Everybody was there, and it just kept on growing and growing. It was all about kids going wild with technology." And then there's this update on *spoiler alert* how the night ended: "Mindy Newman never did finish her book about Steve Jobs."

UPDATE 7 pm: A man identifying himself on Twitter as Shaakir Joyce is happily taking credit for the Party that Pissed Off the Westside. As excited as he is with all the press his shin-dig has gotten, Joyce takes issue with us characterizing the party a failure: "deff not a fail tho lol 1600 ppl went."