Lisa Brenner

Photo by wired_gr via LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Serving students from Echo Park, Silver Lake and Atwater Village, John Marshall High School will return to a "traditional calendar" on Sept. 7 for the first time in 16 years. The Los Feliz-located high school has been on a "year-round, multi-track calendar" in order to accommodate its student population of 4500, however with the opening of Sonia Sotomayor High School in Glassell Park, that...

Seven men and one boy have been arrested on suspicion of gang-raping two girls in Ventura County, one in March and the other in April, according to LA Now. Reportedly the men met the victims on social networking sites and lured them to a home in Santa Paula. Police are seeking possible additional victims. Suspects Esteban Oseguera, Isaak Ek, Joseph Sandoval, Jonathan Gaona, Dion Mendoza, Carlos Ek, Adrian Garcia are all between the ages...

Photo by PhotoJenic via LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr In search of the grandest specimen in the city, GOOD and Hidden Los Angeles have partnered for a new contest to find L.A.'s Most Interesting Vintage Sign. "The most beautiful and bizarre" could mean anything from a a dazzling neon relic to the hand-painted name of your local market to those curious giant letters propped atop Beachwood. Says GOOD: Send us your best vintage...

Automobile Club of Southern California Los Angeles Map, 1915 (via Big Map Blog) The Automobile Club of Southern California has released a monstrously sized, downloadable map of Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Mountains that they commissioned back in good ol' 1915. Play with it on the Big Map Blog or keep a copy under the bed with the rest of your map porn collection. Southern California has a very special relationship with the...

Photo by polaroid-girl via LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr 41-year-old Francisco Solomon Sanchez, the Duarte man who committed suicide by jumping from a 210 Freeway overpass on Friday, made more than ten similar attempts in the past decade, according to the Pasadena Star-News. Sanchez was pronounced dead shortly after 4:15 p.m. Friday after leaping from a 210 Freeway overpass between Mountain Avenue and Buena Vista Street, Los Angeles County Department of Coroner Lt....

Andrew Gold, the SoCal-based singer-songwriter who penned the iconic Golden Girls theme, "Thank You For Being A Friend," as well as the 1977 hit "Lonely Boy," passed away at his Encino home on June 3 after suffering a heart attack in his sleep, according to the LA Times. He was 59. Burbank-born Gold, the child of Academy Award-winning composer Ernest Gold and singer Marni Nixon, was an influential collaborator with Linda Ronstadt considered "a...

Photo by Deborah Fitchett via Flickr Last weekend's Operation Pothole, an effort to fill 20,000 potholes around Los Angeles, was the largest to date, says Board Commissioner Andrea Alarcón, according to the LA Times. The fight against "asphalt atrophy," was carried out on Saturday and Sunday by an estimated 150 employees and 75 trucks that dispatched to neighborhoods across the city. They cleaned a...rectangle around the offending divots, applied a special glue, dropped asphalt...

Tonight in Extra Extra! Twilight Breaking Dawn trailer frenzy, Teen Wolf series debut, MTV Movie Awards at the Gibson, Disney deaths, X-Men box office, Leonard "The Dude" Nimoy doesn't want to do anything. Plus: Keep up with us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter: @LAist @LAistFood @LAistSports.

Photo by vauvau via Flickr With 83.2% approval, members of United Teachers Los Angeles voted in favor of a new, 1-year contract that includes temporary salary reductions, but spares thousands of jobs, union representatives announced this weekend, according to the LA Times. In all, 40,000 union members were eligible to vote -- 20,429 members voted in favor of the agreement, 4,127 voted against it. The contract seeks to ensure that "the majority of teachers,...

Photo by Non Paratus via LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr The Avenue of the Stars/Constellation route being considered for the subway's Westside extension would mean tunneling "through the heart of Century City," including underneath Beverly Hills High School. Though this option is attractive to prominent developers, it would dramatically alter plans Beverly Hills Unified School District has to renovate its outdated, "creaky and rattling," 22-acre campus, say district officials, according to the LA...

Tonight in Extra, Extra!! Bob Hope construction, IE teacher punched, Santa Monica skate team in NYC, layoff warnings sent to ALL Compton city employees, and a starring role for an Eagle Rock sandwich shop. Plus: Keep up with us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter: @LAist @LAistFood @LAistSports.

Photo by Candice (Bessie Smith) via LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr In an effort to ease congestion and as a token* of goodwill during July's upcoming 405 Freeway Fubar, Metro is offering free subway rides to help residents move about the region during the 53-hour shut down, Metro officials announced. Additionally, increased rail service is planned for all lines, and on the Orange Line busway for the weekend of July 15-17. An increase...