Andy Sternberg

It took less than 48 hours for a friend of LAist to bring the first V.C. 23123 infraction ticket into LAist HQ. And yes, 23123 is the much-vaunted "Hand-Held Wireless Telephone: Prohibited Use. "The phone rang and I naturally picked it up," said our friend. "My client said it'll be real quick. But it wasn't quick enough." The ticket doesn't indicate a dollar amount (and according to the driver, the phone was actually in his...

The Long Beach Fire Dept.'s Arson Division is searching for suspects on the city's west side where more than a dozen small fires were started late Monday night/early Tuesday morning. "With the time of day and the close proximity to residences, any of these fires could have turned into something far more serious, even fatal," said LBFD Batallion Chief Frank Hayes. Fires were set to vehicles and in trash cans although no serious damage was...

Moe, the 42-year-old chimpanzee that escaped from Jungle Exotics in Devore over the weekend, was under the care of an animal trainer who was sued for animal cruelty and later barred from working with chimps in a December 2006 settlement, according to the Animal Legal Defense Fund. In a letter received by LAist, ALDF representative Lisa Franzetta explained:Moe was living at Jungle Exotics, which is the location of Amazing Animal Productions. Amazing Animal Productions...

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's not-just-a-coffee-but-a-lifestyle plans for global domination continue to crumble. Best known for making coffee really expensive, Starbucks will close 600 "underperforming" stores and lay off 12,000 employees in the U.S. The company that over-franchised to the point of putting your favorite ma and pa coffeeshops out of business since 1971 is swimming in a hot brown sea of bad news. Recently Starbucks backed off its short-lived promise deliver good music and...

All southbound lanes will be closed at Burbank Boulevard until at least 1 p.m. due to an multi-car accident, including a private ambulance near the junction of the 405 and the 101 around 11 a.m., according to SigAlert.com. "Seven patients were transported to area hospitals suffering from a range of injuries from minor to critical," according to the LAFD, one child was among the injured, and one person had to be extricated from a vehicle....

A 34-year-old chimpanzee that was raised in a West Covina family's home for three decades escaped from a wildlife sanctuary in San Bernardino County Friday night. Animal control officials and volunteers searched the nearby San Bernardino National Forest Saturday St. James Davis brought Moe home from Tanzania in the 1960s, after the chimp's mother was killed by poachers, and he and his wife raised the chimp in their West Covina home as if he were...

President Bush today declared the entire state of California to be in a state of emergency and ordered 75 percent federal funding for firefighting efforts. "I just took off with the plane down from Los Angeles and, literally from Los Angeles all the way up here, there was smoke, so you can see that there's fire everywhere," Gov. Schwarzenegger noted in an earlier request for federal aid. "This fire season has started with a vengeance,''...

A trio of hopeful NBA stars who played their college year(s) in Los Angeles were drafted #3, #4, and #5 in the NBA draft tonight. Following the predictable 1-2 draft picks of Derrick Rose (to Chicago) and Michael Beasley (to Miami), O.J. Mayo, who starred as a freshman guard at USC last year was selected by Minnesota with the #3 pick. UCLA teammates Russell Westbrook, a defensive whiz and the first pick in this years...

For the past few months we've noticed our friends randomly appearing in sidebar ads on Facebook and thought, "ZOMG Zuckerberg, are we all being used so you can pick up all of our friends for your third-party app-monkeys? At left, you see Tom Lewis aka TV Junkie purporting to endorse a Facebook App. Sure, he probably is a Facebook "fan" of the app but we doubt he realizes that his image is being used in...

Nic Adler (left), Mario Maglieri, and Lou Adler at the House of Blues. The elder Adler was honored along with fellow Sunset Strip icons Maglieri and Elmer Valentine on the eve of the 1st Sunset Strip Music Festival. | Photo via The Roxy. Nic Adler grew up at The Roxy. His father, Lou Adler, opened the club the year Nic was born. He would spend his afternoons after school at the club and grew...