Guest Contributor

Salam Shalom The personal and the political are stuck with each other in actor-playwright Saleem’s 1996 Harvey Fierstein Award-winning Salam Shalom, now running in a new, substantially revised version at the Greenway Court Theater in West Hollywood. Thrown together as roommates in UCLA graduate student housing...

by Jon Peters, special to LAist This Saturday night, the Egyptian Theatre is presenting its annual African American Filmmakers Celebration, a collection of shorts curated by Hollywood Shorts, a local film outreach organization. This year features five selections, many of which have already racked up awards on the festival circuit.

Tomorrow night Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre presents a rare gem from the Czechoslovak New Wave, Intimate Lighting, directed by Ivan Passer. (Passer is perhaps best known as Milos Forman’s co-writer on such classics as...

If you’re an aspiring filmmaker, and you’ve got the money, get yourself down to the DGA on Sunset, for Film Independent’s FILMMAKER FORUM. Admission for Sunday is costly ($180 for members, $200 for non-members), but rewarding and interesting to say the least.

Banned in its own country, its participating artists imprisoned and removed from their jobs, the underground Belarus Free Theatre troupe challenges the repressive powers of “Europe’s last dictatorship” with clandestine productions staged in private apartments, bars, and other inconspicuous locations around the nation’s capital city of Minsk. On occasions when the Belarusian KGB has been tipped off to these performances, state police raids have culminated in the arrests of company members as well as those who just came to see the show.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace by Lyle Zimskind for LAist Because even the Infinite Summer must come to an end, Skylight Books is throwing a party on this first day of autumn, as readers participating in the season-long virtual book club reading of David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus, Infinite Jest, finally reach page 981. Literate revelers, whether they’ve finished the book or not, are invited to sample the same cookies that Wallace himself...

The Department of Street Services doesn’t have the authority to remove abandoned bikes on the 3,000 city-owned bike racks in L.A., officials say. Many business owners complain about the eyesore of bicycle skeletons left on racks in front of their stores, but current laws don’t allow the city to touch them. During this week’s Transportation Committee meeting, cyclists suggested creating a system for bikes similar to car parking meters and time limit enforcements, and doing away with the ban on parking bikes on meters.

Long known as a beach volleyball Mecca, Manhattan Beach has, over the last several years, also been cultivating itself as a destination for boutique shopping akin to trendy locales like Robertson Blvd. and Sunset Junction further north, but with the laid back feel of the beach. We stopped in at Cami on Highland Ave. this weekend and found a treasure trove of jeans (marked down to $70), maxi dresses ($175-390) & gauzy summer shirts ($69-125) on offer, as well as eye-catching jewelry and accessories, including a wall of handbags worth making the trip down to the South Bay for.

Brooklyn’s School of Seven Bells returned to L.A. last night with their tribaldelic dream-pop. If you haven’t been initiated into this cultish trio, School of Seven Bells is guitarist Ben Curtis (formerly of Secret Machines) and identical twin vocalists Claudia and Alejandra Dehaza (formerly of artsy vocal group On! Air! Library!). The sisters intertwine harmonies in styles tough to pigeonhole, except to say they are exactingly crafted (with hints of everything from The Roches to the Bulgarian Women’s Choir). Curtis jabs heavily processed chords and splashes bright colors. And everything rests on electronic beats that feel one step ahead of trends.

Los Angeles, as many metropolitan areas around the country, has lost a number of independent bookstores over the past few years. They have closed for a variety of reason—many spurred by financial difficulties or other unavoidable events, such as Long Beach’s literary institution Acres of Books which met its end after being forced out by a redevelopment project.

For the past week or so Burger King has been stickering their bags with a small announcement that burger shots would be free yesterday between11am-2pm The promo has been reported across the country from Honolulu to Manhattan. Just after 2pm Santa Monica's lone Burger King on Pico showed no signs of a mob scene- no post Woodstock like trash strewn about the lot. Just business as usual. It seems that one free shot wasn't...

It's Valentine's Day and that means it's time to break out the bubbles. You take your valentine to a nice dinner, and are confronted with a confusing array of choices. It's easy to get confused. Champagne is bubbly, true, but there are lots of bubbles out there. You look at the wine list next to the Valentine’s Dinner menu and see your Favorite French Champagne names… Piper, Chandon, Mumm, Roederer…. in the ‘California’ section....