Zach Behrens

It's official and it's bad. From the LA Times: "The 10.1% jobless rate is the highest since June 1983 and not far below the 11% record set in November 1982 at the worst point of a severe recession, according to the governor's office. Job losses escalated in January, with the state's unemployment rate jumping by 1.4 percentage points from a revised 8.7% for December." How's everyone doing out there?...

Riding horseback in La Canada-Flintridge Verdugo Mountain Park is now the 6th largest park in Los Angeles, thanks to Councilwoman Wendy Greuel's $2.7 million expenditure of Proposition K money to purchase 225 acres of open space, securing it from outside development. The park is located in the northeast Valley at the edge of northern Glendale and is home to an annual hike and trail run in November. A little further east, a new half-mile...

The Richard Lillard Classroom is a path on both sides of the LA River between Fulton and Coldwater Canyon | Photo by Zach Behrens/LAist As over a year's work on a Studio City bridge comes to a close with a controversial ending with some home owners claiming it damaged their homes, the city will head West a few miles to the Fulton Avenue Bridge in Sherman Oaks over the Los Angeles River. Beginning March...

After experiencing the LA Fire Department's random online chat room yesterday, we decided to try it out for ourselves. So come join us here at this link (http://www.tinychat.com/9z09) and you can help form stories at LAist, ask questions about Los Angeles or just hangout. Note: Yes, this is totally random....

A minor car crash caused a fairly good sized power outage this morning, leaving 2,200 cusotmers without power in Westchester and Del Rey. The car hit and pulled a guide wire--the suspension wire usually seen at a 45-degree angle from the power pole to the sidewalk--causing the power to go out. Crews are on scene addressing the problem, but the LA Department of Water & Power has no estimate of when power will be...

David 'Zuma Dogg' Saltsburg Mayoral candidate David Saltsburg, most widely known as the Venice activist Zuma Dogg, was taken in for questioning last night by police as he arrived to a mayoral debate at the Claude Pepper Senior Center on La Cienega Boulevard. "The detectives interviewed and subsequently released the candidate pending review of this case by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office," an LAPD statement said. Earlier Thursday morning, Saltsburg allegedly threatened...

Photo: The Consumerist After December's debacle of Time Warner internet service outages, especially around 10 p.m., they started to strike again over the past week. "Over the past 7 days, hackers have launched a series of DOS attacks on Time Warner Cable's DNS servers, affecting customer experience in our Southern California and National regions," TWC wrote two days ago. They continued to say that "these attacks are not uncommon, especially for a network as...

A watermelon is only a watermelon until you depict it in the front lawn of the nation's most power man, who happens to black. "No Easter Egg hunt this year," read the subject line of an e-mail with this photo attached. It was sent by Dean Grose, the mayor of Los Alamitos, a small city of 12,000 people east of Long Beach. "I think he's saying that since there's a black president, there will...

Meet Chico and Barky | Photo by Jamie Pham/LA Zoo The LA Zoo is now home to two groups, or mobs, of Meerkats, who are native to southern Africa. Two reside in the cute-as-ever Winnick Family Children’s Zoo and four just arrived from the North Carolina Zoo making their home at the meerkat habitat. Why two areas? "Meerkats are highly territorial and rarely allow an outsider to join their group," a zoo news release...

Warren Furutani Pracitcing members of the Skih religion are required to carry five articles of faith which includes a small curved blade called a kirpan. Long Beach Assemblyman Warren Furutani has introduced Assembly Bill 504--if passed, it would force police officers to be trained on the faith, according to the LA Times. In a statement, Furutani said "[the bill] recognizes the state’s responsibility to protect religious freedoms, while ensuring public safety. The Sikh community...

Photo by jimw via Flickr "There is no strategic plan or vision which could result in an ineffective use of resources over the long-term," City Controller Laura Chick wrote in her summary findings released today (.pdf) on the city's strategy for fighting gang violence. A year ago she recommended (.pdf) that there be "a single point of accountability... a centralized, empowered entity--directly under the Mayor--" to oversee the millions of dollars being spent. But...

At a City Council Transportation Committee Meeting | Photo by alexbcthompson via Flickr In New York City, an elected councilmember gets paid $112,500; in San Francisco, $95,868; and in Chicago, $110,556. Save for a handful who opted out of a 2007 raise--Garcetti, Greuel, Janice Hahn and Weiss all get paid $171,648--the going salary is $178,789 and increasing. And that's just the beginning according to a scathing 7,000 word cover story from LA Weekly's Patrick...