On November 14, 15 and 16, locals will have the opportunity to check out Nissan’s first ever zero-emissions electric car, the LEAF. This will be the first public unveiling of the LEAF in North America. You can check it out this weekend at the following locations:

Nissan's New Electric Car Debuts in LA this Weekend

November 14, 2009 10am – 9pm
Third Street Promenade
1351 3rd Street Promenade
Santa Monica, CA

November 15, 2009 11am – 8pm
Americana at Brand
233 S. Brand Blvd.
Glendale, CA

November 16, 2009 9am – 5pm
University Southern California
3501 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA

According to Nissan, the LEAF handles and accelerates like a V6 and has a top speed of up to 90mph. It will have an average range of 100 miles per charge and the battery will charge in 4-8 hours on a 220V home charging unit. At quick-charge stations, it will charge to 80% in about 26 minutes. Although Nissan has not released exact information on pricing, they say that they are “targeting a price in the range of other typical family sedans.” The LEAF will be on the road in some states in 2010, with mass-production beginning in 2012.

To attend one of the unveiling events this weekend, register on their website here.

LADWP is offering its customers free landscape classes focused on using ideal vegetation for our climate. The California Friendly Landscape Workshop will show you how to choose the right plants and conserve water in Southern California.

Class sizes are limited, so you must RSVP immediately.

I love these cheeky little trucks tossing barbs at the competition.  But I think Fresh and Easy would get more mileage (no pun) on the fact that their little trucks run on an eco-friendly bio-diesel if that was more prominent than the barbs.  Pic by me with the trusty cell phone cam, it does get bigger with a click.

This is happening in the hills above Calabasas, in the West Valley, so I have a soft spot for this new Halloween attraction. Plus, they incorporate actual real-life ghost storytelling into the event, which is crazy cool.

Looks spooky already: Gillette Ranch from above.

The Haunted Hayride was started by a couple gals who were transplants from the midwest & east coast, and who missed the Halloween hayrides they’d had in their childhoods. In addition to being super spooky ’cause it’s, well, in the woods and all, it has your standard scares and scream-inducing surprises. It also has readings of ghost stories, a carnival sideshow,  cider & candy apples, so I’m sold.

They’re getting well-known names to do the ghost story sessions, and it looks like Amy Smart will be doing this Friday’s reading.

They’ve given me a discount to pass on to you, our loyal Metblogs readers. When you buy your tix online, you’ll have the option to enter a promotional code: type in “Metblogs” for five bucks off! You’re welcome.

Remember last week when I posted that rant about the garbage piling up next door? Well thanks to my friend Jonathan’s intel, I was able to track down the owner of the business and they hauled away all of the trash today! This renews my belief in the notion that one person (with the help of some well connected friends) can make a difference. I’d like to thank the owner of Natural Mind, Arnaud Ozharun for taking my complaint seriously, but above all, for taking action. Drinks are on me!

Trash Pile No Longer Clutters Natural Mind's Parking Lot

What happened to the freakin’ week? I meant to post about this days ago so just in case you haven’t read about it elsewhere, and have even the slightest interest in pedaling around this place we call home here’s what’s happening October 2 at 8 p.m. at Little Tokyo’s Aratani/Japanese American Theater (244 S. San Pedro St.):

The Library Foundation of Los Angeles, as part of its ALOUD series of lectures, readings, performances, and discussions is presenting “Cities, Bicycles and the Future of Getting Around” featuring musician and author of “Bicycle Diaries” David Byrne and guests Bicycle Kitchen Co-Founder Jimmy Lizama, UCLA Professor of Urban Planning Donald Shoup, along with LADOT Senior Bicycle Coordinator LADOT Senior Bicycle Coordinator (or as I like to call her: Fully Assimilated Bureaucratician) Michelle Mowery. She’s absolutely FAB-ulous.

Be a part of what I expect will be a spirited conversation on how we can shape this city into a more bike-friendly place and less car-adoring like Audi insultingly did in this Los Angeles-filmed ad currently spoiling the airwaves:

Tickets are $25 and proceeeds will go to support ALOUD’s free programs at the Central Library. Bicycle valet parking provided by the L.A. County Bike Coalition.

Pile of garbage in the NaturalMind parking lot, as seen from an apartment complex driveway next door

It wasn’t easy for me to find any information on the business that is moving into this space. A Google search didn’t reveal much, but I eventually found a post on SilverLakeNews.com announcing the grand opening of “NaturalMind” in September 2009 (with September almost over I assume they have fallen behind, as the building remains vacant).

From what I can tell, NaturalMind is going to be some kind of beauty salon, owned by a guy named Arnaud Ozharun. I found his e-mail address on the SilverLakeNews.com post, which I assume he wrote. Unfortunately, the e-mails I sent him were returned with this message, “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently: arnaud@naturalmind.com.”

On SilverLakeNews.com, Ozharun posted a rather lengthy description of his business and also of himself, describing NaturalMind as, “A utopian take on beauty.” Which made me laugh out loud when you consider the pile of garbage he has been forcing his neighbors to look at for months now.

“Natural Mind is a place to contemplate things other than oneself, yet change.” - Arnaud Ozharun

Whatever dude. I’m a reasonable person when it comes to things like this and I understand that, from time-to-time, it is necessary to deal with certain urban inconveniences, such as construction. I’m totally fine with that. What really bothers me is the garbage. Aside from the fact that it is likely harboring vermin, it’s (more…)

As the Station Fire still lingers over these last weeks, only now finally almost fully contained, I’ve pointed many folks to the dramatic images of the pyrocumulus clouds that have come out of it, especially the time-lapse images of these clouds developing.  Like many folks new to having such large fires quite so close, I only learned about the pyrocumulus mechanism with this fire.  One thing that is dramatic in this phenomenon (apart from the sufficiently dramatic itching eyes, headaches, and sore throats that all my friends seem to share) is its striking resemblance to an H-Bomb blast.

I am not the first to note this resemblance, of course.  Not even the first Metblogs author to do so.  Nor the first to think and write about the identity of the thermodynamic mechanism of the formation of an H-Bomb’s mushroom cloud over the course of seconds, and the fire’s formation of one over the course of days or weeks.

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So in case it didn’t blip on your radar, the LA County Bike Coalition (LACBC) is staging the first-ever official Los Angeles Bike & Pedestrian Count this week. In the grand scheme of the city’s transportation issues, this may seem like a whole bunch of nothing much, but trust me, this count is a never-done-before big deal whose hard data can be put to use not only to demonstrate that people do walk and bike in L.A., but more importantly to encourage cyclist and pedestrian inclusion in urban planning.

With all the commuter cycling I do I figured I’d better step up and volunteer my services as a tallyman. So I visited the LA Bike Count website, picked a time and an intersection, printed out the necessary forms and instructions, and arrived at the interesection of 8th and La Brea at 7 a.m. this morning to spend the next 2.5 hours adding up the walkers and the pedalers.

By the time 9:30 a.m. rolled around I’d finished up with 141 pedestrians and 58 cyclists (23 of whom rode on the sidewalks; 22 without helmets; 5 of them female; and 1 dude who was actually smoking a cigarette and riding in flipflops — I try not to judge but what the hell is up with that?).

I deviated from my usual route home this evening to drop off the results to the LACBC’s headquarters on Spring Street downtown, and though my work is done if you’re reading this suddenly jonesing to get your tally on and help with this historic process (that may or may not include the occasional nicotine-addicted hipster pedaling around in a poor choice of footwear), you can help this Saturday from 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. So scope out some intersections found on this map, and if there’s one that’s in need of a counter, contact the LACBC’s Yogi Hendlin to find out if it’s still available.

Certainly the timelapse video footage screencap’d on the left that I caught of the Station Fire late Sunday afternoon from the roof of my Silver Lake house is neither as compelling nor as dramatic as others made much closer to the devastation being wrought.

But it immediately reminded me of the timelapse video screencap’d on the right that I made a couple days shy of two years ago from the exact same location of the exact same landscape, only this time the billowing clouds were strictly meteorological in nature, not pyrological.

Both videos are available after the jump, and it’s interesting to see them play out together from a then-and-now perspective.

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