Zach Behrens

Emergency sewer repairs under the intersection of Third Street and San Vicente Boulevard will make daytime traffic near the Beverly Center a bit of a headache for the next six weeks. Lanes will be narrowed and left turns will be banned during the 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. construction hours, according to the Beverly Hills Courier. During off-hours, street traffic should be back to normal....

There's been a more aggressive Beyond Coal movement going on in L.A. this year and this month, news comes of a Beyond Cars one. At LA Beyond Cars: A Global Perspective on Rail and Space exhibit at The Jewel Box in downtown, a party will be held on August 18th where organizers are challenging attendees to use alternative transportation. "That's right—our goal is to make this a completely car-free party," writes GOOD Magazine, which...

LAPD this summer is aggressively trying to rid the roads of drunk drivers by holding a mixture of announced and unannounced checkpoints every weekend. Tonight, they tip their hats to one of them going going on between 6 p.m. and 1 a.m. near USC's campus and Exposition Park at Figueroa Street and 41st Street. "Our message is simple: if we catch you driving drunk, you will be arrested," says the LAPD....

Photo by strph via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr Following in the footsteps of New York City, tour buses may have to quiet down in residential neighborhoods if one city councilmember gets his way. Neighbors of celebrity homes of past and present are annoyed at hearing tour operators speaking over the megaphone, sometimes with blaring theme music. “I’m a supporter of the tourism industry of Los Angeles,” said Councilmember Tom LaBonge, who introduced a...

Photo by Chris_Lott via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr After seven people became sick due to an E. coli contamination, a Modesto company recalled one million pounds of beef today. Besides Ralphs and Grand Central Market, where can you shop for food Downtown? L.A.'s El Sereno has a new gateway monument sign welcoming people to the eastside neighborhood. A shooting suspect today barricaded himself in a residence, leading to a seven hour police standoff...

Photo by N10Z via Flickr It still has to be approved by the county and Grand Avenue Authority, but philanthropist Eli Broad's museum concept took a step this morning when it was unanimously approved by the Los Angeles City Council. To be located on top where parking lot currently sits, next to Walt Disney Concert Hall and across the street from MOCA, plans call for 30,000 to 35,000 square feet of exhibition space in...

As promised, L.A. City Controller Wendy Greuel has posted the salaries of all city employees to her website in wake of the city of Bell scandal where its city manager, for example, was being paid nearly $800,000. The 547-page document (.pdf) only shows approved annual salaries and not actual compensation, which may be affected by voluntary salary cuts, furloughs, overtime, etc. Greuel says the list will soon be updated to reflect those changes. But...

Image via PE A one-year-old Pomeranian puppy's life has been saved after going under a $1,165 gender reassignment operation. Red, who was found on the streets of San Bernardino, was born as a pseudo hermaphrodite, meaning he was born with partially formed male and female reproductive organs, according to the Press Enterprise. Facing euthanasia because his condition would likely lead to infection or cancer, a woman stepped in and donated the money for the...

L.A. is losing another bookstore, at least physically. On August 21st, Dawson's Bookshop will leave Larchmont Boulevard for the world wide web. "Starting this weekend until August 21, the store is having a moving sale with over 3,000 titles on sale for up to 75%. Expect to find a lot of photography books," notes neighborhood style blog Mondette. The once-downtown store celebrated its 100th birthday in 2005, making it the city's oldest bookstore....

Photo by sera_leaving via Flickr On duty, off duty, sex in the narcotics office, group sex at Union Hall, physical abuse. There's a lot going on in a $500,000 claim (.pdf) filed by a strip club drink server against the city of Rialto. In it, Nancy Holtgreve of the Spearmint Rhino strip club says the "city fostered and perpetuated a culture of unwanted sexual harassment of women by male police officers," according to the...

Photo by Gamma Infinity via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr Elena Kagan's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court was approved by the U.S. Senate today, paving the way for the first time the high court will have three women. Sharrows can now be found on Abbot Kinney in Venice. A proposal for a downtown development includes two skyscrapers being electronic billboards of sorts themselves. Headline of the day: "Man allegedly goes into LAPD station,...

A water main that broke Thursday night shut down a popular stretch of 6th Street in downtown. At about 8:30 p.m., a 12-inch cast iron main broke, flooding the street, sidewalks and some businesses between Main and Los Angeles streets. Business such as Cole's French Dip and The Varnish, two popular bars, were forced to close. Water main breaks became somewhat of an epidemic in Los Angeles last year beginning September when a break...