Snow Tempest

There was a gang shooting in my neighborhood today. (Or at least, according to a neighbor that's what it was. This isn't confirmed by an official source.) Just after noon, I walked out of my building to my car, which was parked a few blocks away. Lots of people were out in the neighborhood on this warm Sunday. People walked by with dogs on leashes. A house had a castle-shaped moon bounce set up...

"My Scooby-Doo detectives are looking closely into that." -- Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sergeant Philip Brooks, on some details that didn't add up in Stefan Eriksson's story about a mysterious stranger named "Dietrich," whom Eriksson alleges was the one driving when his Ferrari crashed in Malibu this week....

We had a chance to stop by the farmer's market at Wilshire Boulevard and Mariposa Avenue on Friday morning. The little market bustled with workers from the nearby office towers and people who live in the neighborhood. The first spring produce was already available. We picked up some slim spears of new asparagus. The strawberries smelled nice, too, though we didn't buy any this time. Also, we haven't had great luck buying bread at...

We said it didn't add up. We also said George W. Bush was delusional for thinking he could have a war, tax cuts, and all kinds of fancy research all at once. Turns out he was planning a budget that pays for this stuff by cutting the growth of Medicare and education and policing programs, among other things. He's still delusional, though: just because you cut people's health care doesn't mean they don't get...

George W. Bush started off tonight's State of the Union address combative, then turned suddenly toward a whole list of fairly compelling bipartisan ideas. Bush really believes what he says, and believes that what he wants is best for the world, and he believes the purity of his intentions translates to the purity of his actions. Unfortunately, he makes enormous logical leaps, and he basically said tonight that he won't listen to anyone who...

The architecture critic Rayner Banham said that the only way to understand Los Angeles was in motion. The same may be true of understanding the LA economy -- how does it change, and how has it continued to change? Los Angeles is a huge city and keeps growing. There are very few large corporate headquarters left in Los Angeles since the end of the Cold War shrank the weapons factories and a lot of...

So you want to live in a gracious vintage apartment in the Mid-Wilshire or Koreatown or Hollywood area. It has hardwood floors, a built-in, non-functioning icebox, cool tiles, and you can take the subway downtown. So it was built during the Red Car era when Los Angeles had really good public transportation, before most people had cars, and so it doesn't come with a parking space. You can deal, right? Here are the pros...

Right now, it's kind of fun in a sad way that so many local record stores are closing. We dropped by the Aron's Records closing sale and picked up Outkast's ATLiens on CD for $2 and The Ventures' Swamp Rock on vinyl for $3 (we seem to have been in a Southern mood at the time). As of Thursday night, they still had a number of vinyl albums by the late, great Wilson Pickett....

Don't forget that today, November 8, is the Special Election. All the seemingly endless hoopla and commercials do, in fact, have a defined ending point. The Easy Voter guide and the Smart Voter guide offer nonpartisan summaries of the propositions that are a little shorter and easier to read than the ones on the official voters' guide. If you don't know where your polling place is, you can also look that up on the...

About a week and a half ago, we went on a sunset hike, and it was just as lovely as the phrase "sunset hike" promises, at least if hiking appeals to you. The hike was run by the Sierra Club 20s and 30s Singles Section, which one can join without joining the Sierra club proper. We had never been on a nighttime hike before, unless you count long treks from campfire to bunk at...