Articles about “laist”

We asked for your stories, and you delivered a clear message: "Plan your postpartum better than your birth." Here's how.

We want the best podcast ideas out there, and we have a feeling it might come from you.

Herb Scannell sought the job because audio is experiencing a "renaissance." He said KPCC, through its broadcast and digital journalism, is filling an increasingly important civic role as many print outlets struggle.

We asked for your breastfeeding stories and more than 100 of you responded. Here's what we learned.

We wept. We cursed the heavens. We regrouped.

We want people who are deeply engaged in Los Angeles and in their communities to contribute to the site. Here's what to know if you're interested.

This is a very special day.

We're hiring an editor with reporting and blogging skills who can cover a range of topics, from hard news to arts and food.

We're hiring an editor with reporting and blogging skills who can cover a range of topics, from hard news to arts and food.

We're hiring an editor with reporting and blogging skills who can cover a range of topics, from hard news to arts and food.

Mark Oliver "E" Everett, an L.A. indie rock fixture along with his band Eels, plays the Henry Fonda Theatre tonight. We talked to him about the tour, the band's latest album, and where in L.A. he goes after a show.

On Wednesday, we drew your attention to a how-to video featuring a scantily clad young lady putting chains on tires. The video was posted by Bear Mountain Resort on YouTube, and it stars 24-year-old Lauren Lunday.

When local author Anna David set out to follow the advice in former Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown's 1962 book, "Sex and the Single Girl," she hoped that in the tome of a controversial magazine guru, she'd find the unlikely key to love and happiness. Instead, in her new book, "Falling For Me," David details the bumpy ups and downs of adhering to the wisdom of a woman who once wrote that, "you may have to have a tiny touch of anorexia nervosa to maintain an ideal weight."

We didn't win an LA Weekly Web Award this year and we're thrilled about it... because our readers did! Among the most important assets to LAist are the photos and stories contributed by our eclectic and perceptive community of readers. Many of the photos we use with our stories every day are sourced from the LAist Featured Photos Pool on Flickr, a crowdsourced archive of photos relevant to Los Angeles which now includes nearly 70,000 photos shared by a community of more than 1,500 readers.

Head Lip, Wayne Coyne, shares his thoughts on mentally preparing for a double album, the ultimate stage show, the power of the PC to enable music-making weirdos, and why completist collectors’ angst doesn’t faze him one bit.

Prince is now at roughly the halfway mark of his planned “21 Nights” stint, with eleven shows at the Forum and two sets at the Troubadour under his belt. We thought we’d check in on That Skinny MF With The High Voice once again and see how his extended LA residency is progressing....

During Devo’s set at Club Nokia on Saturday, bassist Jerry Casale at one point asked the crowd for a witness: “You all know now that De-Evolution real, don’t you?” As the screams of affirmation came roaring down from the balcony, Casale briefly resembled a mutant Oral Roberts basking in the glow of his congregation. “Are we not men?” “WE ARE DEVO!”

I’m not sure if anyone but me had images of the workers in Wisconsin in their heads while Gang Of Four was in the middle of a steaming version of “To Hell With Poverty” at the Music Box, but there sure were a lot of fists in the air for the lyric “In this land/ right now/ some are insane/ and they’re in charge.” Sometimes, a coincidence of timing can make a performance of a thirty year old track positively zeitgeist-capturing.

When the band finished their version of Love’s “Along Again Or” aided by a mariachi horn section I was pretty sure we’d seen the highlight of an already strong show. Then, front man Joey Burns called out “Here’s one for D. Boon!,” and burst into the Minutemen classic “Corona,” taking a gringo punk rock imagining of Mexican music and sending it straight back to Mexico with a straight face. It was perhaps the finest only-in-LA moment...

“I don’t like hypnotics. I’m doing a non-hypnotic music, to break up the catatonic state. And I think there is one, right now.” - Don Van Vliet to Paul Moyer, 1980 Trying to explain the world of Captain Beefheart to the uninitiated is a fruitless task. The music that Don Van Vliet and his shifting crew of dedicated accomplices known as the Magic Band unleashed between 1965 and 1982 defies description and confounds any attempts at drawing a valid comparison. The phrase “Beefheart-like” has come to be used as shorthand by music writers trying to describe any old thing with a bent toward oddball beats and dissonant chords, but it’s impossible to get a sense of what Beefheart is about by listening to any or all of the bands trying to live up to that description.

I was twelve years old when The Wall came out, and while the theme of desperate alienation was familiar enough to any pre-teen kid, the way the thing ended - with the lead character turning into a fascist dictator - didn’t make a lot of sense at the time. It was years later, when I heard Roger Waters tell a story about the night when he spat in the face of a fan who was trying to climb onto his stage at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, that the whole concept came into focus. It’s a dark, personal piece of music about about the part of himself that Waters would ordinarily address to his analyst, that dark corner of his soul that secretly wanted to see barbed wire fences across his stage to keep his customers from getting within spittin’ distance.

Before Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson, Angelinos of all ages hungrily awaited news of Fatty Arbuckle and the Black Dahlia, and before TMZ and Perez Hilton fit in our pockets, there was the afternoon edition of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. Trafficking in the salacious and the spectacular and operating out of a building boasting hand-painted gold leaf in the lobby, the Herald-Examiner and its home said ‘LA’ like no other paper could.

It is almost impossible to overstate the effect that Ornette Coleman had on the world of American music in the late 1950s. Coleman’s early records for Atlantic - using a band formed in LA, with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins, trading the drum seat with Ed Blackwell - declared complete freedom from jazz convention, including the restrictions of tonality itself, while remaining rooted in the blues at its deepest level...

John Cale’s return to Los Angeles for the first American performance of his landmark 1973 album Paris 1919 includes a reunion with the UCLA Philharmonia, the same group that gave the original recording its lush, expansive orchestration. While the evening promises guest appearances from alt-rock heartthrobs Ben Gibbard and Mark Lanegan, the real treat on offer is the rare opportunity to hear some of rock’s most incredibly ambitious, grandly realized songs performed properly. And...

When the inevitable Hardcore Hall Of Fame hosts its opening ceremonies at the Huntington Beach Quality Inn’s main ballroom in spring of 2014 (even as debate over the eventual location of the actual Hall is still being debated in the letters pages of Maximum Rock And Roll), Bad Brains will be among its first inductees. From the time of their first recordings in 1979, the influence these DC Rastafarians held over a swath of pimply white teenagers was equivalent to any band of their era: Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Minor Threat, DOA, anybody. Their sheer other-ness, the fact that they didn’t look or sound anything like the other bands, their ability to bust into a reggae jam at any moment, served notice that this scene could be expanded in any direction its participants wanted to take it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Rush, whose current lineup solidified in 1973 with the addition of drummer Neil Peart, are now # 2 in the running for longest-lasting famous rock band that never broke up or changed their lineup. That’s a four year gap from ZZ Top (formed Texas, 1969), who are also showing no signs of going anywhere - in fact they played the Pacific Amphitheater just a few days after this show. But they’d better keep eating right and exercising if they don’t want to be overtaken.

Prog rock seems to be the last unexplored outpost for indie musicians, the one remaining genre that hasn’t been plundered to death by previous generations, which may explain its recent resurgence in popular awareness. The last twelve months alone have seen Genesis inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame (though it’s worth noting that the same kind of rock establishment that chose Jethro Tull over Metallica at the 1988 Grammys has seen fit to induct Metallica into the Hall Of Fame in advance of Tull themselves, or any other progressos), American (mostly East Coast) appearances from Van Der Graaf Generator, the Gentle Giant-derived Three Friends and Neu! offshoot Hallogallo 2010, and the first show since the late 1990s by the proggiest progs that ever progged: Emerson, Lake and Palmer. This 4-CD box set compiles live performances from across their history, with each of the first three discs representing a different era (early seventies, late seventies, and their 1990s reunion tours) and the fourth compiling fan-recorded audience tapes across all the eras.

For a band that’s been filling arenas for thirty years, a proper Rush documentary has been a long time coming. Blame it on the band’s supposed lack of “general appeal”. Adored by intellectual heshers and aspiring shredmeisters, reviled by professional journalists and ignored by the rock mainstream, you have to admit: they did it their way. Somehow, three brainy, unprepossessing, somewhat geeky Canadians with an intact sense of humor managed to become, as bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee puts it, “the most popular cult band in the world.” Even a non-fan like my friend Richard, who claims never to have heard one of their songs in its entirety, was still able to look at the cover of this DVD and say, “That guy has a lot of chorus on his guitar, that guy has a really high voice, and that guy’s a really good drummer.” They don’t lack mainstream awareness, just mainstream appreciation. But Beyond The Lighted Stage puts them into a context where hopefully even those left cold by 15/8 time signatures can appreciate them as artists, unconventional, unwavering in their conviction.

Brazillian maestro Sergio Mendes has made the Hollywood Bowl something of a second home ever since his 1968 debut. On Friday night, midway through his set, he declared it “my favorite place in the world.” And the love is reciprocated almost annually; in the past five seasons alone, he’s been on three of them. It’s easy to see why the mutual love affair continues; Mendes’ breezy bossa nova sounds are the perfect soundtrack for a summer evening involving a bandshell, a picnic dinner, and a glass of wine.

Number one among auto mechanics nationwide, Steve Miller is one of those American institutions whose songs will forever be identified with the age of Classic Rock. In contrast to some of the outsize personalities that emerged in the late sixties and early seventies, Miller never wore capes or hosted fireworks shows. He might be rock’s ultimate everyman; while he hasn’t had a hit since 1981’s “Abracadabra”, he’s got enough juice in his catalog to spend every summer putting on his Casual Friday duds, hoisting his Bud to the sky and finding the feel-good groove in any style he tries on. Not even the cretins wearing “Disco Sucks” buttons in 1978 could resist “Swingtown”, whose beat, bass line and lyrics could have been ripped straight from the Commodores, yet sits easily alongside the straightahead cowbell rockers, blues vamps, mariachi ballads and spaced-out hippie meditations that make up his greatest hits. In Miller’s hands, it’s all as American as Creedence.

Englishman Bert Jansch, for nearly fifty years considered one of the world’s great practitioners of the acoustic guitar, has been spending an unusual amount of time in the United States this year, much of it as the guest and opening act of Neil Young. Young not only acknowledged Jansch’s “Needle of Death” as the source of an untintentional/ subliminal rip in his own “Ambulance Blues” years ago, he’s brought Jansch on stage to perform as a duet, as if to erase any lingering doubts: even I rip off some stuff once in a while, and some of it was from this guy. (One only wishes Jimmy Page might be as generous with the acknowlegements.)

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Part of the reason why I may have been so resistant to Oasis’ cheeky British charms in the 1990s was the sheer size of the hype that accompanied them, suggesting that not only were they the greatest thing since the Beatles, but better than the ACTUAL Beatles...

The Buzzcocks’ Saturday night appearance at Club Nokia, featuring a scheduled run-through of their first two albums in their entirety, reached its emotional climax about fifteen minutes into their set, as guitarist Pete Shelley led the band through the military/ waltz beat of “Sixteen” and intoned the lines: “And I wish I was sixteen again/ Cause things would be such fun All the things you do and that are said/ Well they’re much more fun than when you’re twenty-wa-wa-wa-wa-one!”

Cheryl Anne Meyer, left;Tara Landon, right (Image provided by Amy Levy PR) Would you take dating advice from an actress and a model? Maybe not right off the bat, because it seems like their point of view on snagging a man might be a bit...well...skewed. But actress Cheryl Anne Meyer, 25, and model Tara Landon, 25, have set out to change that. Their recently published joint effort, "The Red Flag Rulebook," is a pocket-sized...

It’s a good thing the Specials made it into Los Angeles before the volcanic ash cloud grounded all flights from the UK, or there would be a squadron of California boot boys swimming across the ocean to beat the crap out of Iceland right now. The atmosphere inside an unusually tightly-clamped Club Nokia fifteen minutes before showtime was tense and hot, as hundreds of patrons were ushered up to the balcony due to overcrowding downstairs, only to find that every seat had been filled. Lots of them looked like they might have a go with the security, or each other, as they roamed the aisles, ready to eat someone alive in order to take their spot. But as the band took the stage and hit the opening notes of “Do The Dog”, all the tension diffused as the balcony began to bounce up and down and people partied where they stood.

Make no mistake: the eight songs at the core of this reissue are required listening for anyone more than casually acquainted with rock and roll, a declaration of total freedom that has hardly been equalled in the thirty-five years of punk rock that followed it. (And if that sounds like feverish praise, the album that came before it, Funhouse, is...

Paul McCartney came to the Hollywood Bowl with a stacked deck. Certainly the man’s written an improbable number of memorable songs on his own in the last fifty years. But advance news that he’d expanded his horizons to include a John song AND a George song among his selections (sorry, Ringo) suddenly increased the possibilities for the set list to near-infinity. Would he stick to the tried and true piano ballads that have anchored his live shows for twenty years? Would he blow all our minds and break out weird favorites from the catalog like “I Want To Tell You” and “Sun King”, or garage stompers like “I’m Down” and “Bad Boy”? Revive his saccharine MTV staples like “Spies Like Us”?

Even though Kinks headmaster Ray Davies had traded a loud electric band for an intimate, acoustic duo format, and found himself in this moment performing for a crowd of dinner patrons still finishing their chicken pot pies, the singer made it clear that this night was not going to be a classical recital demanding their silent attention...

"We've never been a cool band... we've been a cross between Radiohead and the Jonas Brothers, and that's not a bad thing," acknowledged Castledoor frontman Nate Cole during their set on Monday night at Spaceland. As mentioned previously, with Gabe Combs and wife Coury's imminent departure, it was the band's final show

We are extremely proud to announce that LAist is presenting its first show ever, and a great show at that. Tonight Eagle Rock-bred indie rock outfit Princeton (LAist Interview) and Silver Lake's own indie pop stalwarts Castledoor...

“Hi folks, I’m Randy - the lead singer of the Residents! Over here is Chuck, and that’s Bob over there on the guitar.” Well what do you know? The world’s most famous anonymous musicians have just outed themselves on stage at the Music Box… kind of...

Female Performer of the Year winner Tori Black, accompanied by Tee Reel, at XBIZ Awards 2010 Last night, local adult publication XBIZ held their eighth annual XBIZ Awards in Hollywood. Newly relocated this year to Avalon from Boulevard 3, the celebratory industry gala presented awards in 67 categories, including Feature Movie of the Year (Adam & Eve's The 8th Day), Female Performer of the Year (Tori Black), Female Acting Performance of the Year (Kimberly...

On Wednesday night, singer-songwriter and One Tree Hill actress Kate Voegele performed a sold-out show at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood (also on the bill that night were Josiah Leming, Terra Naomi, and Joey Degraw). Now a Los Angeles resident, Voegele noted how great her return was to the venue, not unlike Katy Perry a year ago....

It's not very often that local songstress supergroup The Living Sisters, comprised of Lavender Diamond's Becky Stark, Eleni Mandell, and The Bird and the Bee's Inara George, perform live, so it's little wonder that they drew a packed house on Tuesday night at the Bootleg Theater as part of Ferraby Lionheart's month-long residency. "Their sweet songs imbued with the cadences of doo-wop, classic country, and folk evoke a nostalgia for the pure and simple...

Vintage Hollywood postcard showing the Fred Harvey Restaurant The property at 1743 N. Cahuenga Boulevard [map], on a strip of street in Hollywood we often call the Cahuenga Corridor of late, is boarded up these days and undergoing yet another transformation. Over the past decade it's been the site of numerous trendy Hollywood hot spots, where paparazzi gather to ambush stars and heiresses with their flashes and coaxing into the wee hours. Paint it...

Joey Brass, Tony De Sergio, Evan Stone, Jada Fire, Keni Styles, and Cheyne Collins in 'This Ain't 'Star Trek' XXX #2' Yesterday, in a San Fernando Valley soundstage, director Axel Braun began production on Hustler Video's This Ain't 'Star Trek' XXX #2. While much of the cast have returned -- Evan Stone as Captain Kirk, Tony De Sergio as Spock, Cheyne Collins as Bones, Anthony Rosano as Scotty, and Jada Fire as Uhura --...

At this point in their career, Sonic Youth present a paradox: they’re radicals that are also reliable entertainers. However far out they might go, they eventually come back to something that sounds vaguely like 1987’s “Schizophrenia”: fast, strummy guitar lines, a hazy vocal track, a driving rhythm section, harmonies twisting like vines, a colossal racket wrapped around a deceptively catchy tune that threatens to explode at any moment. The intent is to expand the number...

Koga/LAist Last night at Busbys East, adult actress Lexi Belle hosted red carpet interviews for AVN Live at Belladonna and Kimberly Kane's "Winter Wonderland" benefit, which raised thousands of dollars for the embattled Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation. Look for additional photos on LAist in the near future....

Photo by jeffkingla via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Last week came the news that the Clinton family (yes, Clinton) had decided to sell the building that has housed Clifton's Cafeteria, known as Clifton's Brookdale because of its whimsical forest themed decor, since 1935. Although few people admit to finding the food offered at the last of the Clifton's Cafeterias a gastronomic revelation, the news brought the immediate fear that this would...

On August 1, 1939, California Attorney General Earl Warren sent 250 local and state officers to raid four gambling ships anchored off the coast of Santa Monica and Long Beach. The Tango and Showboat idled off Long Beach while the Texas and the Rex anchored off Santa Monica. Local and state authorities, riding in Fish and Game boats and 16 rented water taxis, easily boarded the Tango, the Showboat and the Texas. Once aboard, raiding officers eagerly threw roulette wheels, dice tables, black jack tables and slot machines into the Pacific Ocean. Upon approaching the S.S. Rex, officers were greeted with armed gunmen and high-pressure fire hoses. A nine-day standoff ensued, which newspaper men dubbed "The Battle of Santa Monica Bay."

Parking stub, park pamphlets, etc. from the early era of the park (Vintage Disneyland Tickets) Once upon a time, Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley boasted its own theme park. The theme, ostensibly: Beer. Well, what else would you make the central focus of an amusement park located on the property of a major brewery? So how did beautiful Van Nuys, California wind up home to the lush, tropical, family-fun oriented Busch Gardens from 1966-1979?...

The Cocoanut Grove, a supper club where the rich and famous dined and danced, opened 3 months after the Ambassador Hotel, in April 1921. It was designed in Moorish style. The palm trees that decorated the room were rumored to have come from the Rudolph Valentino film, The Sheik and they had stuffed monkeys hanging from them. The ceiling was painted midnight blue and sparkling stars were strewn across its firmament....

As late as 2005, the Ambassador sat on twenty-four acres of land on Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown. It was set far back from the street and had the haunted look of old castles. It drew the eye as only someplace ruined, someplace steeped in history can. Blinded, it was worn with crumbling at the edges, bound by a perimeter of chain link fences. It was a fabulous ghost and it could have been a...

Photo by resedabear via Flickr These days we're all a-Twitter about food on wheels. From comforting classics like ice cream novelties to tacos with an Korean twist, we seem to love the idea of finding food on our own two feet and the vendors' four wheels. But before Los Angeles was a tangle of freeways and cars getting food items from a truck was actually a way of life. While some of us may...

In Los Angeles, we knock things down. We build them the way we like them. We believe in creating a world the way we think it should be. It's this ethic that has destroyed some of our more famous landmarks, Pickfair was dismantled by Pia Zadora, the original Brown Derby may, at the time of this writing, be a dry cleaner. In a place where people come to reinvent themselves no one has much...

Growing up on the East Coast I recognized early in life that doughnut culture orbited around the sugary planet called “Dunkin Donuts.” Some of my earliest memories were commercials featuring a gentlemen (who resembled both Super Mario and Hitler) who would exclaim softly through a grin, “it’s time to make the donuts.” Los Angeles didn't seem to have an equivalent character, nor a universally agreed upon doughnut hub. I observed the undiscerning masses finding satisfaction in the city's numerous, tiny independent doughnut shops (whose wares looked to all have rolled off the same assembly line in Palmdale.) But it didn’t take long to figure out that the most prominent doughnut in LA was three stories tall and stale as hell (see picture above.)

Yesterday was officially National Doughnut (or Donut) Day, but there's no reason to not carry the spirit of celebration over to your weekend, which is why today we're looking at the story behind one of our city's most well known structures.

Photo by erinpk, via Flickr. Hollyhock House is a wonder wrought by Frank Lloyd Wright for our fair city. Though old Frank was a dick in person, he was unquestionably one of the more prominent architects of the twentieth century. Usually associated with his midwestern "Prairie Houses" (very influential in the arts and crafts movement, they were extended, low buildings with sloping roofs and deep terraces and overhangs. These, incidentally, were also an early...

By Gareen Darakjian Apparently, “smooth” is a way of life for Brazilians as evidenced by their two most significant contributions to the aesthetics industry. Unlike its more painful counterpart, the Brazilian Blowout, developed by celebrity stylist and native Sao Paoloan Mauricio Ribeiro, is a virtually painless chemical straightening and de-frizzing process that actually improves the condition of your hair. The single application treatment offers an alternative to more caustic and inconvenient hair straightening such as...

Department of City Planning We live in a city filled with thousands of landmarks, but whether it's just our proclivity for changing courses like our capricious weather patterns, or it's a matter of life imitating the kind of art that put us on the map, even when we call something a "landmark" it doesn't mean it's even here anymore. Or, really, that it even makes sense. Such is the case with one of the...

Pickfair in its glory days. As any fan of LAistory knows, Los Angeles is a city of vanished places. We tear free of the past, and generally, whatever comes next, is not as fabulous or interesting as what was there before. The same holds true for the property called Pickfair. Superstars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks purchased the property at 1143 Summit Drive, in the San Ysidro Canyon in 1919. It was fifteen acres...

The Pan Pacific Auditorium in 1937 (Photo via the Los Angeles Public Library) Imagine a structure hailed for its exterior design that took 60 days to build, was trafficked by hundreds of thousands of people for almost four decades, spent 17 years abandoned with an uncertain fate, contributed to the launch of LA's preservation movement, and took one night to burn to the ground. One structure that once stood in Los Angeles fits precisely...

View LAist's LAistory Map in a larger map Our team of researchers* are still knee-deep in material prepping for the next big entry in our series, so in the meanwhile, we thought we'd assemble this map that locates the places and events we've covered so far as LAistory closes in on its 1-year anniversary. Many of the places we've covered aren't even there anymore, but some vestiges remain in the form of buildings re-purposed or...

Paradise then, yes. Paved now, yes. 8150-8152 Sunset Blvd at Crescent Heights "Don’t it always seem to go / That you don't know what you’ve got / ‘Til it's gone / They paved paradise / And put up a parking lot" --Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi" Urban legend has it that folk music legend and "lady of the canyon" Joni Mitchell penned her 1970 song "Big Yellow Taxi,"--an eerily cheerful lament about green space...

from City of Culver City's website After Fatty Arbuckle's career was deep-sixed by one of the biggest scandals of its day, he tried his hands at a few things, not the least of which was Fatty Arbuckle's Plantation Cafe. Built at 11700 Washington Boulevard in Culver City, across the street from the site of Arbuckle's elementary school. Lavishly decorated by the head of the MGM art department, the cafe opened in 1928 with star...

Photo by dtaylor123 via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr There are plenty of ways you can reach out and connect with Los Angeles' vast and fascinating history beyond the confines of our weekly LAistory column. Whether it be through joining a preservation group, taking a walking tour, visiting a museum or historic site, or opening up the pages of a book, LA's stories are often within our grasp. For LAistory, while we...

Tail O' The Pup in better days, from their website. We in Los Angeles like our big food. Big, architectural, junk food that is. Perhaps the king of big food is the Tail 'o the Pup, a hot dog stand designed in the shape of a hot dog in a bun. Already moved once from its original location where the Beverly Center now stands, the Tail O'the Pup was declared by the City of...

Crowds gather outside Schwab's on Sunset in 1950 (Photo: Underwood & Underwood/Corbis) It was just over a year ago when the doors closed for good at the Virgin Megastore in the retail complex towering over the southeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights. For many, it was the end of an era; the music store was the much-lauded anchor of the stores at 8000 Sunset and a regular stop for locals, celebs, starry-eyed...

Unfortunately, you were born too late. You missed the alligator farm. At the turn of the century, the Lincoln Heights neighborhood popular as a weekend get away for Angelenos. In 1907, Francis Earnest and his partner, Joe "Alligator" Campbell opened an alligator farm (It was right next door to their ostrich farm. I'm not kidding.) With 2000 alligators and a smattering of turtles, iguanas and snakes, the farm offered such attractions as watching the...

William Desmond Taylor William Desmond Taylor lived the kind of life that would be tough to live today, in our era of numbers and cards and facial recognition software. In the end, he paid a steep price for that life and so did Hollywood. Maybe he even lived many lives. He was an antiques dealer, panned for gold, he spent time in either the British or Canadian armies during World War I. He was...

Once upon a time, when UCLA's roots were barely sinking into the grounds of a blossoming area called Westwood, there was an outdoor skating rink open year-round for pros and amateurs alike.

Photo used with permission of M. London. In 1849, a flood of people came to California to cash in on the gold rush. They spent years bent over rivers, sifting for gold. Sometimes they made a fortune. Others, they came away empty handed. In this town, perseverance can really pay. Or sometimes it just gets you even more screwed. The “Dan the Miner” Statue has stood in Carthay Square since 1925 and has certainly...

NOFX mosh pit/Ian Dickinson for LAist After twenty-five years of punk rock, PCP and hippie bashing, Fat Mike and the boys of LA-born NOFX haven't stopped their fight to uphold the tenets of the punk ethos. Having played three shows at the Henry Fonda last week, the band highlighted songs from every era of their history, never once failing to entertain the crowd with their signature hilarious, immature and oftentimes bigoted banter. But Mike...

Call it a sign of the times: The property on the southeast corner of Wilshire and Highland bears a giant banner bearing the word "Foreclosure." Foreclosures, sadly, aren't uncommon, but this property seems like a bit of a curiosity, though, if you take a closer look. It's bordered by a low fence, and clearly used as a business, but among all the other offices, restaurants, and retailers in the neighborhood, it seems to be built...

All cities have the things they’ve plowed under. In Los Angeles, we still have whole neighborhoods that are named after things that aren’t there anymore. The Carthay area is named after a legendary movie palace, the Carthay Circle Theater. Other areas are also named after movie theaters, like Picfair, but Carthay Circle was considered on par with Grauman’s Chinese and second to none. A first run, road-show house, Carthay Circle was built in 1926,...

Image from "Hollywood 1900-1950 in Vintage Postcards" Arcadia Publishing/ (No publisher of image given) As Los Angeles began to reach out in all directions from its tenuous core in the early part of the 20th Century, the city became a place for families and for visitors, and finding ways to make money off keeping them entertained was a frequent pursuit of many visionaries and entrepreneurs. Although a massive theme park like Disneyland didn't come...

Ken Kesey told us that “Some things are true, even if they never really happen.” What if a woman was never killed in a house that looks like it might gobble you up if you’re not careful? What if that crime felt true? Then where are you? Well, the answer is, of course, Los Angeles. The Sowden House was built in 1926, for artist and photographer, John Sowden. He wanted a startling space with...

Shopping "experiences" like those Rick Caruso has developed in Los Angeles certainly give locals a lot to grouse about, but aside from the perils of modern living (see: Muffin tops, American Girl, and Uggs), these outdoor hyper-designed environments aren't anything new. Of course we can go back hundreds and hundreds of years and note that shopping outdoors in a village-esque atmosphere was a way of life--mainly because you lived in that village--but we can...

Photo of iPhone calendar and other apps by re-ality via flickr. Here’s just a sampling of what's up in January…we’ll add interesting events as we get them so keep checking back. You want your event considered? Drop us a line with the details. Wednesday, Jan. 7 Focus on Female Directors @ the Egyptian Theatre Art Professor Denis Dutton @ ALOUD at Central Library Thursday, Jan. 8 The Art of Looking Discussion (Rococo paintings) @...

Photo by Marc Wanamaker/Bison Archives Hiking through the Hollywood Hills, one finds a lot of garbage. There's the usual bottles and cans of various types, old bits of carpeting, couches, bones, bicycles, even old cars sometimes. They all have (little h) history. Someone had to truck it up there and leave it, either to get rid of it, or to live in it, whatever. But very little has (capital H) History to it. Though...

Depending on what time you're visiting LAist today, things might be a little screwy. We're going through some changes by upgrading our blogging software and doing some graphic redesigning. Our tech team, led by the best man to do the job, Neil Epstein, are working hard to get us through this as fast and smoothly as possible. Housekeeping: This is a good time to remind that you can read us via RSS (subscribe at http://laist.com/index.rdf)...

It all started with the ostriches. Well, not really, but don't you think it should have? In fact, Griffith Park started with a curse. When the original owner of Griffith Park, Don Antonio Feliz died of small pox in 1863, he left his extensive land holdings to Don Antonio Coronel. Subsequently, his blind, destitute 17 year old niece, Dona Petronilla, cursed the land -- great misfortune would come to whoever owned it. One by one,...

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle had the dubious distinction of being the movie business' first scandal. Born in Kansas in 1887, Roscoe Arbuckle (who only used the name "Fatty" professionally, and otherwise detested it) was catapulted to fame in Mack Sennett's Keystone Cops movies. He made famous the "pie in the face" gag so familiar to many of us. For a larger gentleman, he was an astonishingly graceful tumbler, and was said to have a lovely singing...

Changed my life. | Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight Maybe the best thing about writing for LAist is that we are constantly encouraged by our extraordinarily generous editors to reach out into the scary ether and be personal with our stories. Sure, it doesn't always work out as we intended--we always eventually, clumsily embarrass ourselves a bit by being too personal--but it's great that we have such a liberal outlet for our thoughts. Earlier this...

The wooden pier in Seal Beach | Photo by Kate Cohen/SealBeachDaily Donna Wares is a travel writer, a former editor at the LA Times and most recently, a neighborhood blogger in Seal Beach. Her enthusiasm for California is evident in her projects and it was thanks to her book that we participated in Santa Barbara Car Free. With a long weekend ahead and many people sticking around instead of traveling, we decided to ask...

Downtown Los Angeles has been going through a massive period of renewal and development over the last several years in what can be thought of as an attempt to revive what was once the true core of our city. From high rise high-end condos and lofts to the entertainment "campus" of LA Live, there are more reasons now than in recent memory to live or visit Downtown. However, if we flip through the pages of...

The Sklar Brothers star in the hilarious web series Back On Topps. Photo courtesy The Tornante Company. Randy and Jason Sklar are two faces that you probably recognize; and not just because they share the same face. Born as identical twins, the pair have decided to stick with it, and have achieved a surprising level of comedic success, without having a 'good-looking one' to fall back on. They have since gone on to appear...

Last Thursday, British soul singer Alice Russell MySpace) returned to the Hotel Cafe (MySpace) in Hollywood, headlining an evening that was supported by locals Emi Meyer (MySpace), Lelia Broussard (MySpace), and followed by Jesca Hoop (MySpace). The show was LAist's pick for Tonight in Rock, and included covers of "Seven Nation Army" and "Crazy". Russell joins the next wave of female British singers that include KT Tunstall, Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash, Duffy,...

Los Angeles-based trio Street Drum Corps are living proof that the Hollywood rock star dream can never die. Widely recognized as the "punk rock Stomp" group that plays every stage from drum circles to huge arenas, the boys of SDC are right where they want to be; opening for LA metal gods Motley Crüe. With the show coming up this Friday, we got a chance to speak with front man Bobby Alt about the bands...

Just like there was an original "It" Girl, there was also an original "platinum blonde." Jean Harlow was born Harlean Harlow Carpenter on March 3, 1911 in Kansas City Missouri. Her father was a dentist from a blue collar background, while her mother was from a rich family. These were only the beginnings of their differences and her mother grew very unhappy in the marriage, eventually turning most of her attention to her daughter. Harlean...

Old Spanish Kitchen photo used with permission by eyetwist via Flickr Some ghosts (though it's a little late in the season for it) aren't what you think. They aren't wailing waifs or glowing skulls. They're a restaurant called the Spanish Kitchen. I'm not talking about the Spanish Kitchen on La Cienega -- decorated like there's a South America Land in Disneyland and it's in it, though they have a sign that is an authentic...

What better way to celebrate Halloween than to talk about Harry Houdini, the greatest magician who ever lived. He died on Halloween in 1926 and on that day for 10 years thereafter, his wife tried to contact him by holding seances. He starred in a few early movies even -- mostly silent pics and serials. And he lived here for a time, though he was based mostly out of New York. These days, magicians...

In our weekly LAistory series we take a look at the people, places, and events in our city's amazing history. Our topics range from the long-forgotten, old familiar, or completely new to Angelenos, and hopefully our work reminds you that although our city is rich with history. Some of you may want to learn more and do your own digging...so this week we're bringing you some cool historical events that are happening that can help...

The name "Baldwin" shows up here and there around the City and County of Los Angeles, like in Baldwin Hills, or on Baldwin Avenue, which runs from El Monte through Temple City and into the foothills in Sierra Madre. Well the Baldwin in question is Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin, a man who made a name for himself as a real estate maven and as a bit of a wild card in the late 1800s and...

October has an event for everyone. Don't believe us? See below. / Awesome photo of Union Station by el daverino via LAist's flickr pool. Oct. 1 Larry Charles presents his film Religulous @ the Aero Theatre Oct. 2 Don't Blame Me I Voted for Helen Gahagan Douglas staged reading @ the Landmark A Taste of Downtown Burbank @ Downtown Burbank Focus On Female Directors: Five to Watch @ the Aero Theatre Executive Order Karaoke...