Zach Behrens

Photo by Maggie Hoffman via Flickr As we told you earlier this week, Saturday is the insanely popular Grilled Cheese Invitational and we've got some new details about food vendors and lines for you. As grilled cheese competitors try to win approval of judges, festival goers can munch on the free food provided by sponsors, like Tillamook Cheese and other corporations, or hit the food court area. And that's where it gets exciting--here's the...

Rock and reality TV star Bret Michaels is listed in critical condition today after suffering a brain hemorrhage last night, KTLA is reporting. Apparently, Michaels was "complaining of an excruciating headache" on Thursday night before being rushed to a local hospital. Last week the diabetic celebrity had an emergency appendectom, but it is unknown if today's case is related to that. "I have a pretty good threshold for pain, but this one hurts," he...

Photo by mark sebastian via Flickr When the L.A. City Council last week approved an electricity rate hike, it was done quickly and without public notice. Citing an emergency--the Board of Water and Power commissioners were meeting the next day--the city council took action at the end of a meeting already in progress. Now, "longtime City Council gadfly Joyce Dillard has sent letters to council president Eric Garcetti and City Attorney Carmen Trutanich alleging...

Wilshire Bus-Only Lane Project Map via Metro | See larger version here (.pdf) The Los Angeles City Council today will decide to direct staff to lay out detailed plans and needs to ensure that the Wilshire Boulevard Bus-Only Lanes Project--dedicated peak-hour lanes between Santa Monica and the Pico-Union neighborhood--becomes a reality in a few years. At a committee meeting on Wednesday, city transportation staff told councilmembers that construction could began as early as Spring...

Photo by @sevenphoto via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Long Beach has a lot of bike paths and lanes and yesterday they got about two more miles worth. In celebration of Earth Day and in anticipation of National Bike Month (Long Beach will host a bicycle festival and film festival), the city unveiled the Bixby Road Bike Lane between Country Club Drive to Cherry Avenue. It will connect riders to Los Cerritos...

Photo by denisetaylor☼ via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Starting Sunday and lasting through October, the region's biggest public art project will begin to take shape. By Mid-May "Summer of Color" will have turned 158 lifeguard towers on 31 miles of California coast into vibrant floral pieces of public art. On Sunday, volunteers will paint tower railings with one of five colors: yellow, rumba orange, sweat pea, Toronto blue, and crocus petal...

Photo by RobeRt Vega via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Metro will hold a public meeting about the upcoming fare change on May 8th, but the agency has emphasized that it is not a hearing where decisions will be made. The fares are going up, whether you like it or not, they said yesterday. "Transportation agency directors had approved this summer’s fare change three years ago as part of a two-step fare...

Photo by Open Air Control Testing Ground via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Earth Day or not, the move to build 12 major transit projects in 10 years--instead of 30 as they are currently planned for--was wholly supported by the Metro Board of Directors today. The 30/10 Plan, as touted by Mayor (and cheerleader) Antonio Villaraigosa, would ask congress to loan billions of dollars upfront for the projects with a guarantee of...

As usual, the LAPD is out to get drunk drivers this weekend. Tonight, the department's West Traffic Bureau will conduct a checkpoint on Lincoln Avenue between Washington and Maxella, which straddles the border between Los Angeles city limits and the unincororated Marina Del Rey (and if you really want to get nerdy, we'd call this the Del Rey neighborhood). The checkpoint, which will run from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m., is in response to...

Pulitzer Prize-winning Jonathan Gold of LA Weekly today acknowledges that naming the best mac and cheese in L.A. is a battle between foodies, but he gives a big nod to Larkin's in Eagle Rock. And it's Larkin Mackie himself who recently opened a mac & cheese-dedicated restaurant in downtown which Gold visited: "It is superb drunk food — on weekends, Mac & Cheeza stays open until 2 a.m. And you get a shot at...

A flight between Los Angeles and Florida this morning was diverted to Albuquerque, New Mexico after a passenger allegedly tried to open a cabin door, says the Associated Press. The FBI believes that 46-year-old Stanley Dwayne Sheffield's actions were not related to terrorism, but he will likely face charges. Delta flight 2148 landed in New Mexico around 1:30 a.m., but eventually made it to Tampa by 4 a.m....

Roman Polanski must physically be in Los Angeles when he gets sentenced for 1977 incident of having sex with a 13-year-old girl. The director was hoping to be sentenced in absentia while in Switzerland, where he is currently under house arrest, but an appeals court yesterday ruled against that. A Swiss judge said he wouldn't force Polanski to the U.S. until a court ruled. Now that it has, Polanski may finally set foot in...