Carolyn Kellogg

Hollywood hills residents have teamed up with preservationists to try to stop luxury homes from being built on the hillside above the Hollywood sign. The LA Times reports that the property was bought for $1.7 million by Chicago developers in 2002; activists are halfway to raising $6 million to buy the land back and turn it into a park. LA's median home price topped $500,000 in the last quarter of 2005, making our city...

If you want to search for treaure in LA, you'll need a bicycle, $6, a backpack, a Polaroid with film, a couple of friends and the afternoon of Sunday March 12th. The very first LA Treasure Hunt will benefit the Union Rescue Mission, and it's bikes only. No cars allowed. This is brought to you by the people who did the LA Scavenger Hunt, which was considered fun by some and disorganized by others....

Is half a Ferrari better than none at all? Only Stefan Eriksson, the guy who crashed this one in Malibu, knows for sure. It looks like a half of a redesign to us: the LA Times rolls out some design changes on its website. LA Observed has the happy memo from editor Joe Sappell. The LA Times discovers Gustavo Arellano, the OC Weekly's Ask A Mexican columnist. Did this interview spark the paper's interest? Daily...

We get a lot of press releases here at LAist, and it isn't like us to simply repeat them. But when it comes to telling you about the Sarah Silverman performance at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater tomorrow night at 9:30pm (5 bucks!), we have to pass this along intact: The first time Sarah Silverman performed at UCB Theatre, she nonchalantly unwrapped a tampon while performing her material, took a sip of water, put...

Sure, we've all heard that not enough people are using the Gold Line. But here's photographic evidence that public transportation does work for some Angelenos, from photoblogger Binary LA....

Some of the world's smartest, most creative and interesting people are getting together today up in Monterey for the TED conference. The 3-day, $4000+ coffee klatch is invite only (we're sure ours got lost in our spam folder). At that price you'd think it might be a hard sell, but lots of people think it's worth it: the first 500 seats for the 2007 conference are already gone. What makes TED so great? This...

The 6 ports that have been cleared for purchase by the United Arab Emirates do not include Los Angeles-Long Beach. But Rep. Jane Harman was objecting in Wilmington yesterday anyway. Say the company you work for has sold something that it may know doesn't work. Say you come across papers that you think show the company has willingly put these broken things on the market. Say you're just a temp, and say the broken...

Rising star Martin Ludlow is stepping down from his post as the head of the Los Angeles Federation of Labor after an investigation that seems to have found campaign spending improprieties in his 2003 bid for the LA City Council. Apparently he illegally used union funds to support his campaign work. He may be asked to pay more than a quarter million in fines and restitution for using about $53,000 inappropriately. The LA AFLCIO website...

At 2am officials got a call of stink in downtown LA but found nothing. But 12 hours later a "black tarry substance" was coming up through the ground, manhole covers and sidewalks along Olive Street. Oozing. Bubbling, even. 120 feet of Olive St has cracked and risen about 18 inches. An apartment building was evacuated; it may not be able to withstand the shifting ground. Exactly what the smell or substance is, where it's...

New York writer-performer Jonathan Ames is gracing our fair city this week and while he's in town he's doing some good. His performance at 826LA tonight will benefit the fab literacy organization, and your part is just 10 bucks. Ames' latest book is I love You More Than You Know, essays that are funny (college swordsmanship), scary (cockroach in the bathtub) and geniunely racy ("her ass was round and firm and white.") Some are...