City Councilman Tom LaBonge participating in cover up. Literally.

An LAPD “community alert” sent to me moments ago reads:

On February 11, 2010 the Hollywood sign will be covered up for an international campaign. The sign will be covered until further notice.

Do not be alarmed, the sign will remain in place and there will be no changes done to the sign. This is just an informational e-mail so we do not receive phone calls from worried citizens.

Carolyn Ramsay with Councilman Tom LaBonge’s office would provide me with no additional information besides that they were participating in the secretive event. “You’ll have to wait til Thursday,” Carolyn repeated to me when I pressed for information.

*UPDATE 4:59pm: The media point person with the Hollywood sign itself, Betsy Isroelit, told me that the sign cover up would have nothing to do with an Amnesty International announced day of support for human rights Iran also scheduled for the 11th, or the Winter Olympics, beginning the following day. Zach at LAist is also digging into this.

Worth nothing: Carolyn insisted this has nothing to do with the fake Hollywood sign vandalism that pop star Ke$ha hoaxed her fans with a few days ago. Viral video after the jump.

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Everytime I drive past this little house in Duarte I have to double take the 6 foot tall headless angel.  Next to the flag pole, framed by a partial fence.

Pic by me and does get bigger with a click.  I love these home-owners that decorate with a zeal an HOA would never approve of.

Living in the center of the film and television industry, there are some fun games we get to play, like the “That Guy” game, where you run into a random actor out and about who you can’t quite place, and whichever of your friends figures it out first without resorting to IMDB wins. Another great game is “Name That Location”, wherein you can recognize the exact location a show is using for those remote scenes, not only showing off your photographic memory, but also destroying the fictional world the show has created and disrupting its narrative. It’s fun!

Now, it’s one thing to recognize local landmarks being used in a film, but I find it especially fun seeing my own neighborhood represented on the big screen (or TV. or laptop screen.). Eagle Rock is used all the time for exteriors, as many blocks are easily disguised as Small Town, Anywhere, USA. But interiors are harder to spot on TV – I knew it was Cindy’s Diner (which quite possibly gets more business as a shooting location than a restaurant) in those AT&T ads with Luke Wilson, but only because I saw Wilson standing outside in the parking lot while the commercial was being shot.

But this weekend while catching up on The Office, I spotted another local business (Can you guess it? Identity revealed after the jump):

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click to embiggen, image courtesy of Stephen Coleman.

Photographer Stephen Coleman got up into the neighborhoods below the Mullaly Flood Basin that over flowed in the early morning hours on Saturday.  His images of the devastation is pretty amazing.  I feel for those home owners and their recovery that lies ahead.  I hope that the storms set for this week aren’t as strong and don’t add to their misery.

Photographs can be seen in two sets Mudflow A and Mudflow B.

Photograph “Paradise Valley” used with permission of Stephen Coleman.

I can’t find verification but either I heard it through the blogvine or simply have imagined that Councilman Eric Garcetti is looking into a beautification project for East Hollywood’s untility boxes, similar to the one done a couple years ago around Silver Lake and Historic Filipinotown.

If indeed I’m not making that up, in the interim we have some artists from the Positive Message Division of the Department of DIY who have undertaken the charming decoration of the box pictured at right (click to enlargify) found on the southeast corner of Virgil and Lexington (pinpoint map).

I finally stopped my dawdling and immortalized it while biking home Thursday night because even though it’s been there for more than a month, there’s just no telling when it might become the target of taggers or seen by some assbackward county supervisor who would no doubt place a rush order for the federal stimulus funds needed to paint it out.

The backside of the box reads: “December 28, 2009,  Love N Respect,” and it’s signed by Michael, Emilio and Diana. Bravo to them. More please.

Yesterday marked my one year anniversary in Los Angeles and when I thought about how I spent it, I realized I spent the majority of my spare time in restaurants. I think a great way to get to know a city as large as Los Angeles is to seek out great food and boy did I do that!

I’m vegetarian and my dude Sean is vegan so we probably do a lot more scouring than omnivores do. Vegan does not equal rabbit food as so many like to joke, in fact, I believe that vegans have a much more refined palate than non-vegans. And when vegans get together, 99.9% of the time they will talk about food and where to get the good stuff.

Here is a list of my favorite restaurants that we frequent and that serve vegan food (in alphabetical order):

BabyCakes: Desserts: Downtown: Cupcakes Cupcakes Cupcakes. Oh they also serve donuts and cookies and brownies. Vegan and gluten free options. The gals who work there are adorable.

Bawarchi Indian Kitchen: Indian: Culver City: I recommend getting the $8 dinner. Your taste buds, stomach, and wallet will thank you.

Bulan Thai Vegetarian Kitchen: Thai: West Hollywood and Silver Lake: I could eat their chicken satay all the day long. Mmm, I want some just thinking about it.

M Cafe: Macrobiotics: Culver City and West Hollywood: The Tofu Benedict and French Toast are a great way to start the day. Their tempeh bacon is my favorite. I took a class on how to make it but haven’t actually attempted it yet…

The Meet Market... Read more

Hello from the beautiful West Valley, where we have everything we need to weather the storm.

Feel free to share links to your rainy-day photos in the comments, below.

The LA Weekly is tackling one of my old favorite topics: carrying a gun in Los Angeles. They are specifically talking about carrying one in Starbucks but it’s worth taking the opportunity to discuss the larger issue. Yes, carrying a gun in Los Angeles is legal in a variety of different situations. For anyone who can legally own a gun, carrying the gun exposed and unloaded (though you can also carry the ammo separately) is completely legal assuming you aren’t near a handful of places like a school or bank where it suddenly becomes very illegal. This is a right granted by not just the US constitution but also the CA constitution which you can read more about on CaliforniaOpenCarry.org.

There are many arguments for and against carrying a gun openly. The immediate reaction I hear most often is that it’s a great way to get shot by a police officer. That’s actually not really something to worry about as no officer in his or her right might is going to risk their job by shooting someone for legally carrying a holstered weapon. Now pulling the thing out and waving it around is another story all together. In fact here is a Los Angeles District Attorney memo and a Los Angeles Sheriff Dept memo about open carry explaining it is legal and explaining to officers what actions they can and can’t take. Read more

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Overnight in my corner of LA  some 3 7/8″ of rain fell.  The National Weather Service via The Weather Channel calls for more storms through this evening.  Thunderstorms, water spouts (potentially), urban and burn zone flooding are all in store.  I plan on staying in with the Tivo and video games until I absolutely have to go out this afternoon.  Be safe.  Stay dry(ish).

It tastes a lot better than it looks.

Here’s how you can tell I’m not originally from California: I don’t like avocado on my burgers.

Really. I enjoy avocado in general. It’s nature’s answer to butter. And I’m the guy at the party who sits down on the couch and makes sweet love to a bowl of chips and guacamole until everyone in the room is staring. But I just don’t think avocado and burgers mix. Something about the cool smoothness of the avocado manages to distract my mouth from the burger and the remaining toppings, and then my mouth gets confused and angry and resolves to keep saying stupid things, like that maybe a flat tax wouldn’t be such a bad idea, or that those jeans aren’t doing my girlfriend’s hips any favors.

So I avoid avocado when I’m ordering burgers. I also avoid iceberg lettuce, but for entirely different reasons I’ll get into another time.

Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about avocado when I go to Five Guys Burgers & Fries, one of the most recent east coast transplants. A smallish, DC-based burger chain best described as In-n-Out East, Five Guys was voted “best burger in Baltimore,” which is a great endorsement, if only because it allows me to imagine that I’m eating burgers and fries with Omar Little or Bunk and McNulty.

Five guys (fairly) recently opened up a restaurant in Carson, so I decided to give it a try after spending my Sunday morning with a crowd of kindergartners and their parents for reasons I’ll get into another time. The verdict? While In-n-Out probably won’t be losing market share anytime soon, Five Guys is goooooooood.

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The scene was set in the lobby of a bustling train station. But, this was not New York. Or, Chicago.

It was Los Angeles. The year was 1956.

Photo from the USC Digital Library

Finally someone started running the statistics on this.

Alex over at Westsidebikeside has the scoop:

“LAPD Sergeant David Krumer and Commander David Doan sorted through massive collision data for 2008, and found that in 2008, 23% of bike involved traffic collisions are Hit & Run – 3% were misdemeanor and 20% were felony. This was just one statistic of many in a report on bike collisions in LA in 2008. You can see a preliminary report here – BikeTrafficCollisions2008“

This is a great step considering the history between the LAPD and cyclists.

That mad scientist looking set up manned by Intelligentisa Venice’s Chris Owens is just one of the reasons I love that place. If you enjoy coffee watch that, as well as this espresso one and then thank whatever god you believe in that you live in the same city as this amazing establishment. Billions of people around the world are not so fortunate.

I guess I’m starting to turn local after three years, because, when a friend from another part of the country came to visit, I really wanted to show off my part of town.  Since the visit was only for about 36 hours, and we both needed to spend some of that time working, I gave the quick highlights tour of my West Side neighborhoods.

This included plenty of walking around the Marina del Rey boat channel, Venice Beach, Palisades Park in Santa Monica, The Third Street Promenade, and one of my favorite streets, Adelaide Drive, with spectacular views of Santa Monica Canyon, the Santa Monica Mountains, and the Pacific Ocean. On Thursday night, we showed up pretty late at Natalee Thai on Venice Blvd., and had a really good meal.
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As LACMA wraps up its terrific The Apocalyptic Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky film series (which I covered earlier) you may be asking yourself, how else can I immerse myself in the life and work of this Russian cinematic master? Well, comrade, the film gods have smiled upon you today.

Moscow-born and Los Angeles-bred filmmaker Dmitri Trakovsky has arranged for a pair of additional screenings for both this weekend and next of his documentary Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky (see the schedule for exact times and locations), which explores Tarkovsky’s enigmatic declaration that death doesn’t exist.

Yes, you read that right: Death. Doesn’t. Exist.

Chew on that during Super Bowl halftime.

Image: A laughing Tarkovsky. Relax your eyes to see him in 3D.