Some of our best and most passionate writers step into the blogosphere to bring you news of all things environmental, like why Malibu is suing the Coastal Commission, or how the Gap fire affected the avocado crop, or what's happening to oysters. Definitely worth a look - and a bookmark. Click, click...Greenspace.
The sinkhole that stalled traffic on the Pasadena Freeway underscores some aging issue with what was L.A.'s first freeway. How bad is it? Here's this from The Times' Francisco Vara-Orta:
The nearly 70-year-old highway marked the beginning of Southern California's freeway system -- and it is one of the few roads in the country to have won national historic preservation status. But for all the art deco tunnels, graceful bridges and natural landscaping, state engineers say the 110 is straining against 21st century traffic conditions and sheer age. The freeway was built in an era when aesthetics in some ways trumped functionality. As a result, the 110 has no shoulders -- and lush plants and trees grow right next to the lanes. Often, Caltrans must step in to trim back trees, remove fallen debris and replace damaged signs smacked by vans and trucks driving down the narrow lanes. With no shoulder, this roadwork causes crews to close lanes and disrupt commuters, said Caltrans maintenance supervisor Rick Enriquez, who has been working on the Pasadena Freeway for the last eight years.
Over at The Daily Mirror, Larry Harnisch offers some great photos about the early days of the Pasadena Freeway. He has an early map that makes you wonder what is possible: "Note the Silver Lake Parkway, which was not built."
Chef Jeremy Tummel traded in his job at the Wine Cask in Santa Barbara to become the executive chef at downtown L.A.’s Latin fusion restaurant Ciudad to elevate his game.
He had no idea Google searches would be part of his new job duties. In a summer that seems to bring one food warning after another, chefs like Tummel say that awareness is job No. 1.
“I can’t ever remember a time in my career when you took [food safety] for granted,” he said. “But now it’s everything.”
Some pro soccer players bound for Los Angeles are being hailed as heroes. The FBI says members of a Major League Soccer team, the New England Revolution, helped subdue an out-of-control American Airlines passenger who stripped, put his clothes back on and then tried to open an emergency exit door. According to the Associated Press, the plane landed safely at LAX, and the team had some interesting stories to tell:
Craig Tornberg, the soccer team’s general manager, said he confronted the man as soon as he saw him emerge naked from one of the plane’s restrooms. "I said he should get back into the bathroom and put on his clothes," Tornberg said after the plane landed in Los Angeles. "He said something strange to me. He said, 'I don’t hear you. I don’t see you.'" Still, the man complied and got dressed, Tornberg said, before he "made a beeline for the emergency door." Tornberg said he, assistant coach Gwynne Williams and Michael Burns, the team’s vice president for player personnel, grabbed the man and forced him into a seat as a flight attendant ran to get restraints.
After a slow start, the Valencia orange harvest has picked up.
The California Farm Bureau says demand for the summer orange variety has increased in the domestic market, now that the California navel orange harvest has ended. A government report says most Valencias harvested earlier in the season were sold to export markets.
The report forecasts that California farms will produce 32 million cartons of Valencia oranges this season, up 39% from a year ago.
California Valencias are hot for two reasons.
The low value of the dollar compared with other currencies has juiced exports of California fruit. Additionally, hurricanes and citrus diseases in Florida have slashed that state's orange production in recent years. California agricultural officials are worried that one of those problems, citrus greening disease, could strike California's citrus groves because the Asian citrus psyllid, a tiny insect that spreads the disease, was discovered in residential orange trees recently just blocks south of the border in Tijuana.
Justice, finally, for a Redondo Beach police dog wounded in the line of duty. Jimmie Divo Lunceford, who stabbed the dog -- and made criminal threats against two ex-girlfriends -- was sentenced today to five years and eight months in prison. According to City News Service, the case involved a German shepherd named Valor:
The dog -- which was brought into court by its handler during the trial and referred to as Court Exhibit 7 -- was stabbed twice in the side of its neck last July 30 and had to undergo an hourlong surgery. Officers initially went to look for Lunceford a day earlier after getting reports about the threats, but police were not able to find him. Police were called to the home in Redondo Beach again about 5 a.m. July 30. Lunceford yelled at responding officers, telling them he had a knife and wanted them to shoot him, police said. The police dog was injured after being sent to try to subdue Lunceford, and the canine’s handler, Officer Ken Greenleaf, called the animal. Lunceford then dropped the knife and was arrested without incident, according to police. He has remained jailed since then.
Steve Hymon, writer of the always readable and handy Bottleneck Blog, was moved by a new movie release to take a flight of fancy today. What, he asks, would happen if Batman left Gotham City for the City of the Angels?
Imagining an interview with the caped crusader, Hymon quotes Batman explaining his move to the West Coast: "It's time to reinvent myself. The days may be bright and sunny but the nights are about to become very, very dark."
Check out the Bottleneck Blog as Hymon asks the question: Should Batman relocate to Los Angeles? (Along with this fanciful stuff, the post also contains some useful information about traffic trends in our region.)
We have a question ourselves: What movie will Bottleneck Blog tackle next? "Hellboy II"?
It was a long day for the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, whose board spent more than six hours Thursday sorting through such controversial matters as Blossom Plaza, a seven-story residential complex being built in Chinatown with $41 million in public money.
But the redevelopment board also did some business in the San Fernando Valley, voting to provide $9.8 million to bring a Costco and Best Buy shopping Center to Pacoima. The project, formally known as Plaza Pacoima, drew such supporters as Councilman Richard Alarcon, who held his 5-month-old daughter Camila as he courted the redevelopment board on the matter.
Plaza Pacoima will go up on Paxton Street next to the 118 Freeway on the site of a factory operated by Price Pfister, which manufactured faucets in the neighborhood for decades and closed its doors in 2001.
The site, which is currently contaminated, will be cleaned up by the developer, Primestor. The project will also get a freeway sign twice as tall as the city normally allows, according to redevelopment officials.
I've got the day off today, not blogging at all (easier said than done) so I'm cheating a bit and posting one of my own photos. Here's the Malibu dawn, the ocean turned rose and gold by the first sliver of sun.
There will be blogging on this site today, with The Times' metro staff pitching in, so please check back for an unexpected blend of links and stories about what's happening today in our corner of the world.
Starbucks' decision to close stores has shaken up the coffee-drinking world. Now Starbucks has listed all the stores to be closed. Locally, Ontario lost three; Mission Viejo, Fontana and Riverside, two each. The big loser: San Diego, which will see 10 stores shutter. Two Starbucks in the Crenshaw area of Los Angeles are going. Check out the full list.
Times staff writer
Hector Becerra waded in where many fear to tread when he asked why Asian children do better in school than Latinos and African Americans. E-mails poured in. Some questioned his scholarship; other wondered about his integrity, saying the article just reinforced stereotypes. But many engaged in a real and thoughtful conversation. Here's Hector:
But most e-mailers were thoughtful, even if they wondered why I
didn’t delve into other issues. One wrote that Asians "outperform the
rest of us" not just because of expectations, but because of their "willingness and ability to delay gratification."
That issue came up during my reporting, but I had limited space for
the story. Most of the time, it was Latino parents who brought it up.
Antonia Hernandez, 46, said that from when her children were very
young, she noticed that the Asian children seemed to wear less
expensive clothing than the Latino children.
"I see the Chinese children with cheap tennis shoes, even Payless,
and our kids, they want the best sneakers," Hernandez said. "They say, 'How am I going to wear those cheap shoes?' It’s different priorities."
I met Hernandez at a meeting at Lincoln High for the parents of students failing algebra, a graduation requirement.
The rest of the conversation is here. Click and join in...
In essence, the judge's order has completely paralyzed the Regional Water
Board and crippled it from carrying out its most important duties -- safeguarding
public health. Worried about swimming at polluted beaches? Apparently, Judge
Colaw isn’t. Forget about any enforcement of the regulations that mandate
beaches free of fecal bacteria. Sick and tired of those 10 feet high piles of
trash on the beach in Long Beach after the first flush? What about those
noxious algal blooms that reek to high heaven and choke off all aquatic life? The judge doesn’t seemingly care too much about those either.
I’m sure the state and the environmental community will soon appeal this
hellacious decision, but in the mean time, don’t count on any state effort to
keep our beaches and waterways clean. The Regional Water Board just cancelled a
workshop on the Ventura County stormwater permit, despite the fact that the
permit is long overdue.
YOU ARE HEREBY DIRECTED AND COMMANDED, UPON RECEIPT
OF THIS WRIT, IN ACCORDANCE WITH YOUR RESPECTIVE
OBLIGATIONS UNDER THE LAW:
"To void and set aside Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control
Board Resolution No. 2005-003, dated March 3, 2005, wherein the 2004 Triennial
Review of the Water Quality Control Plan for the Los Angeles Region ("Basin
Plan") was concluded..."
We posted a photo of some books about Islam that found their way into the religion editor's in-box a few days ago, an odd and revealing mix about what's hitting the store shelves. Today, we get a peek between the pages of one of them, Mark LeVine's "Heavy Metal Islam":
Heavy metal musicians in the Islamic world are not typical careerists but musical revolutionaries putting everything at risk for little payoff beyond dreams of free expression. The price has been high, writes LeVine. Morocco initially repressed the scene, convicting 14 metal fans in 2003 as Satanists recruiting "for an international cult of devil worship." In 1997, more than 100 players and fans were jailed in Egypt, where the grand mufti demanded they repent or be executed. (They were eventually released.) That same year in Iran, homes were raided and metal fans arrested.
Wouldn't it be better to actually recommend some thoughtful books on Islam, ones that could help people understand what Islam is actually about? There are many. Unfortunately the popular press is more interested in sensationalism, so people read this dribble instead.
For those who are actually interested in discovering something approximating the truth about Islam I would recommend: Islam: Religion, History and Civilization by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University.
Just learned that Jill Leovy, founder of the Homicide Report, the ground-breaking LAT blog that tries to chronicle every single murder in Los Angeles, is writing a book. No title yet.
Though inspired by the blog, Leovy's book won't be a recap. Instead, she'll use the knowledge gleaned from her work to look at race and murder rates, and to formulate a theory of her own about of the causes of inner-city warfare. Our lit-blogger, Carolyn Kellogg, gets some details:
Jacket Copy: Does your book chronicle all 845 murders in Los Angeles last year?
Jill Leovy: No. The book is not related to the Homicide Report blog, nor to my efforts to cover all homicides in Los Angeles County last year. (In reality, there were more then 900.) The book will be about the syndrome of high homicide rates among blacks in America, their causes and consequences.
Jacket Copy: Will you focus on a specific area or region?
JL: The book will be mostly reported out of Los Angeles, but it seeks to explain a national phenomenon. High homicide rates among blacks are everywhere ...
The full Q&A, in Jacket Copy, is here. And check out the Homicide Report, now in the capable hands of Ruben Vives.
For the sake of argument, let’s say some of us don’t want to be reminded every single hour of the day that the stock market is collapsing, taking our retirement income down like so much hair in the bathtub drain. Or that the economy not only does not rock, but is actually on the rocks. Or that a bank might turn out to be nothing more than a pretty building with no money in it.
What if we’d like to be blissfully unaware — at least for a few days — that instead of taking ocean cruises in retirement we’ll be living with relatives?
Good luck.
I’m trying to be one of those people. I don’t want to know how bad things are. At least, not know every hour or so. It’d be like your doctor calling you up several times a day saying, “You remember you have colitis, right?”
Turn on the TV, there it is. Talk radio, there it is. Pick up the newspaper, there it is. Talk to friends on the phone, there it is. The main headline in Wednesday’s Times: "Economic concerns deepen."
Even when you’re watching non-economic news on TV, those little trailers keep running across the bottom of the screen with the bad news, like dancing elves of torture. Or you’ll be watching a happy story on CNN or Fox and, before you can change channels, there’s the red arrow showing the Dow dropping again. How about a green arrow once in a while?
A couple of weeks ago, I told my financial adviser I didn’t want to look at my quarterly mutual fund statement. “Good idea,” he said. A few days later, though, when I said I needed to review my 401K at work but couldn’t do so without seeing how much I’d lost in recent months, he said, “We can’t hide our heads in the sand.”
We blogged the happy fluff-fest that ensued when Ryan Seacrest interviewed L.A.'s mayor yesterday. Now here's Which Way L.A.'s Warren Olney, asking some inconvenient questions.
How, exactly, despite a windfall reaped from that trash fee hike, did so little go to hiring new cops? Why, exactly, is Villaraigosa raising cash for his own website? And when, exactly, does the mayor, who travels extensively, plan to spend more time in our fair city? Does Olney get answers? Not exactly.
If KCRW's audio player doesn't work in Firefox, try listening in IE. Or you can check Olney's page to listen or download a podcast.
The northbound 110 Freeway in South Pasadena has been shut down for hours because a sinkhole (!) opened up in two of it's three (!!) lanes.
Again with the house flippers -- this time they're snapping up rock-bottom foreclosures in hopes of a modest $10k profit on resale.
Some Republicans are resisting the federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying it's just too much government interference.
An FBI Swat team arrests one of its own in Santa Ana, where a former agent is accused of discussing murder-for-hire and planning home invasion robberies in his quest to rob a "narcotics stash pad" in the OC.
A great little story about a Latino basketball team winning respect on the courts of Nickerson Gardens in Watts.
Thank goodness the NL West kind of, well, stinks, because it means the struggling Dodgers, three games under .500 and one of the lowest-scoring teams in all of baseball, still have a shot at winning it. Rah rah.
The open revolt by United Methodist pastors, who defy church doctrine against same-sex marriages, could cost them their careers.
Emmy nominations
are out and former critical fave, the doc drama, "Grey's Anatomy," got
left in the waiting room. Instead, shows like "Mad Men" and the Glenn
Close-led "Damages" made history by becoming the first-ever basic cable
shows to get a shot at the TV red carpet.
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