Carolyn Kellogg

Take a deep breath -- the Coalition for Clean Air is having its Always in Fashion fundraiser tonight, Nov. 17. LA's bravest public servants hit the catwalk to model clothing manufactured in an eco-friendly way. Will City Councilman Tom La Bonge be sporting Timberland? Will Council President Alex Padilla be in Patagonia? Can you pick out the elected official in the picture above?* OK, it wasn't that hard. But the semi-professionalism is what makes...

20 musicians. One composer. 4 months to create, a year to rehearse, and one night of performance. Friday November 18, WACO will premiere Steve Gregoropoulos' Symphony #1. What does Steve have in common with (pictured) Beethoven? Well, they both write symphonies, they both have wild hair, and, um, they both write symphonies. Actually, Steve has only written one so far (hence the name, Symphony #1) but he tells LAist "Now I guess I gotta...

We thrift store shoppers have a problem. We want you to know we got that impeccable '60s fake white fur coat for a mere eight dollars, but we fear you might find it before we do. So we at LAist will, intermittently, tell you the vague locations of some fantastic thrift stores, and if you're enterprising enough to suss them out, well, you might deserve a vintage fake fur coat of your own.There's not...

Today at 1:24pm the blinds started swinging erratically. The window beam seemed to warp. Was this vertigo? Did someone slip us a mickey? "Hey," we called out into the cubliclesphere, "is anyone feeling an earthquake?" A yes and a no responded, then the email came from CalTech: 4.7 near Mettler, CA. Mettler is 23 miles south of Bakersfield (was Buck Owen's backyard buckling?) and 19 miles northwest of Gorman, where elks may have been...

When is an 88-year-old Chinese-American great-grandmother punk? When she is — was — Madame Wong. The proprietress of two seminal punk venues — Madame Wong's in Chinatown and Madame Wong's West across town — Esther Wong was possibly America's unlikeliest punk booker. She just decided one day that loud music might be good for business. Everybody played Madame Wong's: X, the Ramones, the GoGos, the Police, the Plimsouls, even a budding Guns-n-Roses. The Chinatown...

You may have heard that the owners of the Los Feliz haunt The Derby are hoping to sell the place. Instead of an icon of the swing dance world, instead of a cheapish but not unpleasant Louise's Trattoria, instead of a nice one-story restaurant with parking, the lot at the corner of Hillhurst and Los Feliz would house 88 condos piled into a claustrophobic 5-story monstrosity. Built in 1928, The Derby didn't become an...

If you need your NPR in the morning like you need coffee, you know the voice of Lisa Napoli. As one of the hosts of the Marketplace Morning Report, she delivers business news in a way that's bearable at 6:50am. Lisa's a journalist with somewhat terrifying multimedia skills: She's produced documentaries, reported for NPR, worked in television and written for the New York Times. Oh, yeah, she's done the internet thing, too. A New...

You might be an old hand at Texas Hold 'Em, have memorized Phil Gordon's poker tips and scored big in Vegas. So what? You've never taken down a champion. Now's your chance — in Koreatown. On July 22, you can go mano-á-mano with Tuan Le, the 27-year old World Poker Tour Champion of no-limit Texas Hold 'Em, for just a $50 buy-in. Last tournament he played, he walked away with more than $4 million....

This weekend maybe you stopped by the Lotus Festival in Echo Park. If so, you were treading on ground that once, way back before Clinton was elected president, was the domain of junkies and gang-bangers. Back then, Echo Park was populated by some crunchy hippies, a handful of ballsy hipsters, and a whole lot of Hispanic families. With idle teenagers. Some carried guns. 1993's Mi Vida Loca is Allison (ballsy hipster) Anders' second film....

If rumor and innuendo are to be believed, the nonprofit Self-Help Graphics and Art has been shut down. Artist/blogger Mark Vallen has the story of the state of the East LA landmark, which was founded by Chicano artists in the early '70s and became a center of the Chicano arts movement (punk rock, too). In recent years Self-Help Graphics has featured a gallery, gift shop and community arts classes in addition to its silkscreen...