Zach Behrens

AOL is launching a new neighborhood news service called Patch. It's hyper-local to the core, as they just hired a full time editor to live and breath Manhattan Beach day in, day out. Soon they'll launch a Redondo Beach version and so on, apparently. This type of reporting is much needed and if successful like Eric Richardson's blogdowntown, where city council agendas are scrutinized and development news is broke, this will be exciting. Kevin...

Get ready.Neil Patrick Harris' vision of the musical "Rent" will happen August 6th through 8th at the Hollywood Bowl, says the LA Times.. With wine flowing and the stars above, this show ought to be get crazy (have you been to the Sound of Music sing-a-longs? it's a riot). This will be Harris' first time directing a musical theatre production. But, of course, we all know his of wonderful his talents, thanks to the...

A streetcar in Portland | Photo by Zach Behrens/LAist Plans for a streetcar in downtown Los Angeles are moving along. The nonprofit charged with the project earlier this month applied for $25 million from a federal "urban circulator" grant. That course of action prompted the Metro board yesterday to take charge and become the lead agency for the environmental review, a document needed in order to proceed with the project. The project, which will...

In Santa Monica | Photo by Eric B. Shanks via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr And it has arrived: The annual 99 Things to Eat in L.A. Before You Die is out. Read it, live it. Actor Andrew Koenig, who played the role of Boner on the show "Growing Pains" was found dead in a Vancouver Park today after being reported missing last week. His dad said it was suicide. You've got education and...

Free Ballot by Helen Lundeberg When downtown's Bob Hope Patriotic Hall opens in 2012, it will not only be home to L.A. County’s Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, but also to three of Kent Twitchell's latest murals, the county's Arts Commission announced today. The works will celebrate lost murals by Helen Lundeberg, which were painted in 1942 during the Works Progress Administration and later destroyed after placed in storage in a neighboring building...

Photo by hall.chris25 via LAist Featured Photos on Flikcr Yesterday during the meeting of the Los Angeles City Council, alternatives to laying off up to 4,000 employees was discussed. But in order to see those results, the mantra of "sharing the sacrifice" reared its head again. LA Times' Steve Lopez poses the question: "Would you take a pay cut to save your co-workers' jobs?" A 10% cut to a worker paid $50,000 a year...

A second wave of rain is headed L.A.'s way tomorrow and the County of Los Angeles is preparing for the worst in the foothill neighborhoods. All county roads within the Station Fire burn area are expected to be closed to public access beginning Friday at 4 p.m., the Department of Public Works announced today. As the deadline approaches, officials will confirm the closures, pending the immediate weather. Evacuation also may be ordered to residents...

The LA Weekly says "Councilman Tom LaBonge registered his own dog this week after voicing an objection to a successful City Council motion to have animal services workers go after unregistered canines in the city." For LaBonge, it is a civil liberties issue. The motion at hand lets the Department of Animal Services work with the Department of Water and Power, which "maintains a customer database of households with dogs so that meter readers...

Reader submitted photo Not too long after city officials told a pair of Silver Lake residents that Phil Lumbang's popular "Hello!" mural must come down, a different mural in downtown's official Gallery Row neighborhood is targeted for removal today. Los Angeles artist Emmeric James Konrad's mural at the Down and Out Bar on Spring Street prompted a complaint, which alerted city officials to the illegal mural. Although the mural was apparently commissioned by the...

Introduced today by L.A.-based State Senator, Senate Bill 1255 seeks to bar the sales of sugar-sweetened sports drinks in public schools during school hours. “When California barred the sale of sugar-sweetened soda in 2004, the law did not apply to sugar-sweetened sports drinks. We need to close the loophole and make state law consistent,” said Padilla, noting that California has one of the fastest rates of increase in obesity of any state in the...

Reader submitted iPhone photo by Shamara Jones Get ready, Hollywood. Trader Joe's Hollywood & Vine location--more specifically, at 1600 North Vine--is scheduled to open sometime this year. This morning, LAist reader Shamara Jones caught a temporary sign being installed. "Super exciting!" she wrote in an e-mail. The new store is part of Hollywood's redevelopment, which most recently included the W Hotel & Residences at the same famous intersection....

Today marks the end of a nearly 20-year battle over creating a landfill, purportedly the largest in the world, next door to Joshua Tree National Park. The Department of the Interior today announced they will not appeal a 9th Circuit Court decision to ban a public lands be exchange with a company that wanted to create the Eagle Mountain landfill, which would be filled by 20,000 tons of trash from L.A. County via train...