Zach Behrens

Ocean View Boulevard just before 8 a.m. 2/6/10 Rain, and thus the threat of mudslides, has been an almost weekly event for Southern California this winter. And that has meant lots of evacuations, or at least the looming possibility, for foothill residents in or near burn areas of last year's Station Fire. By 10 p.m. tonight, before chances of rain are scheduled to begin, the County of Los Angeles intends to close public access...

Would you like to redraw the political district lines of California's state legislature? How about the lines for the Board of Equalization, which administers some taxes?

Johnny Pride A 26-year-old Santa Clarita City Council candidate was arrested last night in the city's Valencia neighborhood for various sexual acts with two 14-year-old girls, according to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. Johnny Pride is suspected of rape, lewd acts with a minor, sodomy, oral copulation of a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was held on $500,000 bail. On his apparent MySpace page, where he encourages people to...

Photo by Mousepotato via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr U.K.-based street artist D*Face gave Los Angeles some fun street art yesterday when at least two erie versions of the Oscar statue appeared atop Runyon Canyon and in the parking lot of Mel's Drive-In in Hollywood. The six-to-seven foot statues had skeleton faces and pieces of flesh were missing, exposing muscles and bone. The one located in Runyon said "Beauty Is Just A Slice Away"...

Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena | Photo by okarol via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr The woman who doused and lit an exotic dancer on fire in the Valley was sentenced to life in prison today. Live it up with the Complete Oscar Party Circuit Handbook Sheriff Lee Baca today released 200 inmates early, citing no place to put them. Gee, great: "Two Texas-based oil companies are supporting a campaign to suspend California's landmark...

Photo by Mousepotato via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr It appears London-based street artist D*Face is back in town, this time installing a 6-foot tall version of the Oscar statue with pieces of flesh missing, exposing muscle and bones, atop the trail in Runyon Canyon. "Beauty Is Just A Slice Away," a caption reads on the artwork. "I just hike that trail pretty much every morning and today, there it was," explained Mike, who...

Despite various studies about how unhealthy it is to live directly next to a freeway, L.A. officials keep approving dense residential buildings that way. Now LA Weekly is blowing the whistle: "Today, in fact, the Department of City Planning chief Gail Goldberg and the Office of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa concede to L.A. Weekly that nobody in City Hall is tracking, or can even estimate, the number of children who have moved into housing erected...

It is claimed to be the world's rarest butterfly and it lives here, albeit endangered. The Palos Verdes blue butterfly was listed as endangered in 1980--thanks to development, non-native plants and off-roading--but within a few years, many scientists believed it was extinct, according to Cooperative Conservation America. That was until 1994 when a UCLA researcher came upon some of the butterflies in San Pedro. In an effort to expand and restore the butterfly's population,...

The Scientology Building near Sunset/Vermont, nicknamed "Big Blue" | Photo by stephenfalk via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr Last month, six disgruntled former Scientology employees spoke out on the one-year anniversary of the Anonymous movement. At a panel inside the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood, the members described "workplace abuse, forced detention, isolation from outside family and friends and coerced abortion," reported the Los Feliz Ledger on Wednesday. The employees were within the church's...

Is RuPaul, seen here at his drag queen art show in 2009, bad for kids? | Photo by Tom Andrews/LAist Three caucasian teachers at a South L.A. elementary school have been placed on suspension after they allegedly had students hold signs of O.J. Simpson, RuPaul and Dennis Rodman in a Black History Month schoolyard parade alongside students carrying signs of people from an approved list like President Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela and Harriet Tubman....

Before the Asics sportswear ad was installed, a Chase ad was seen at the southeast corner, left, of Hollywood & Highland | Photo by jiazi via Flickr With the Oscars a few days away, it looks like Hollywood and Highland is becoming ground zero in the battle over supergraphics, the large advertisements that often cover whole facades of buildings. Current Los Angeles law bans the installation of news ones. But a large supergraphic installed...

At Adams & Washington | Photo by DrLAyZ via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Thomas Friedman today likened LAX to America's Decline. Starbucks wants to stick to coffee, not be the center of a gun debate. Budget cuts to Los Angeles County Sheriff's means upper management will be out on the streets patrolling with the rank and file deputies. Yes, even The Sheriff Lee Baca himself may pull you...