Elise Thompson

Zero One Gallery | All photos by Elise Thompson for LAist Remember the good old days, when you would just end up at a random artspace downtown sometime after midnight? People would be walking around wearing bowler hats and bunny suits while loud noise/music/artistic expression screeched out from the next room. So you would wander into the next room and find someone bellydancing or putting on a burlesque show. And you would think to...

Liquid Kitty's annual punk rock BBQs have been such a success, this Sunday they are hosting a special Winter BBQ. What better to chase away the rain than with colorful drinks and hard-core thrash? Some dogs on the grill? Done! And all for the low, low, price of FREE. Liquid Kitty's BBQs are famous for reuniting long-lost 80s classics and this one is no exception. This year is marked by the return of old-school locals,...

The fruit is just right | All photos by Elise Thompson for LAist Once upon a time Millie's was the only game in town. Sure, there was the House of Pies and the coffee shop on Sunset that is now some kind of brewpub -- but no one ever went there. Millie's had a strong family vibe. Everyone in the neighborhood considered it home. Most of the servers were local musicians, and everyone knew...

Launched last October by Neil Kohan, Max Wanger, and Margaux Elliott, Just One Plate is pretty self-explanatory. They select one plate from some of the top restaurants in town, including Grace, Fraiche, Bastide and La Cachette. They glam things up with some professional-quality food photography, and include a detailed recipe for each dish. It is one beautiful and classy-looking website. The goal is to update the site weekly. Upcoming restaurants include the Saddle Peak Lodge...

I discovered this street art on 8th, just west of Grand in downtown LA last week. But where is the chair? It looks like Brooklyn chalk artist Ellis Gallagher has decided to grace Los Angeles with his presence and art. His cryptic signature, "© Ellis G. 2007" seems to be barely decipherable on the other side of the parking meter, along with "NYC". Well-known artist Michael Neff has identified it for me as an authentic...

The main theme of the seminal grunge documentary Hype! is how something that by its very nature was anti-commercial became commercialized. One thing that particularly struck me about Hype! was the grunge scene's intense resentment against the greater culture for appropriating the look and style elements of their subculture. Anti-fashion became the fashion. It lost all meaning. It fell victim to something I call the "Punk Rock Quincy" phenomenon. That feeling of resentment strikes a...

A Fontana man was robbed at gunpoint Sunday night, according to The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. The suspect escaped with a bag of tacos. The victim, a 35-year-old Fontana man, had just bought about $20 in tacos from a stand at San Bernardino and Fontana avenues and was riding home when the bandit confronted him. "He approached him from behind, saying, `Give me your tacos,"' said police Sgt. Jeff Decker. "He grabbed the bag of...

Photo provided to the press by the family of Eileen Orta For the second time in two months, police and rescue workers overlooked a woman's dead body in a vehicle that was in their possession. The Pomona Police Department announced today that the body of 22-year-old Eileen Nicole Ponce-Orta was discovered inside of her van on Friday. Police initially summoned the Orta family to remove the illegally parked vehicle before it was impounded. In...

We've spent the last two weeks critiquing the DineLA restaurants. Last week I just happened to run into a restauranteur who was participating in DineLA. Being the ever-prepared girl reporter that I am, I whipped out my digital recorder and did an on-the-spot interview. It seems only fair that the restaurants get the last word. (Names of specific dishes have been omitted to help protect the innocent). How has DineLA changed the type of...

At the Movie Guide Awards last week, I had the chance to quiz Buzz Aldrin on a number of topics, including his statement that he saw a panel fly off of the spacecraft. I asked him if he gets tired of people asking him about the moon landing, or if he gets annoyed by people repeating Armstrong's famous phrase, "The Eagle has landed." I guess I assumed people shout that at him from cars,...