I’m actually posting this from a conference at the Annenberg Center at USC also being attended by Brian Humprhey of the LAFD Blog, who was able to give me a little bit of info on the fire:

• The fire is being reported as having started at 12:55pm, and is considered a multi-agency major emergency fire… the highest level a fire can be ranked. So far 50 acres have burned.

• 34 companies have been dispatched, with five personell in each company, meaning about 175 men on the ground battling the fire. Five choppers are providing air support.

• The original dispatch location was 3640 Barham Blvd.

A quick look at Flickr and my local contacts and I got a pretty good sense of what the fire looks like in 360.

Vidalia has a great set from the other side of the hill. Just search for Fire & Most Recent and there are some other great shots by folks sharing their views.

Flickr as usual is a great additional source for pics of breaking news, this time for the fire that Caryn and Tammara have posted about.

This is one is by Poreek and appears to be from somewhere a little south of Park LaBrea. More shots at her page.

Smoke is just billowing and billowing from a position a little to the north and west of the Hollywood sign (just over the ridge). There are gobs of helicopters dipping down behind the ridge, I’m guessing to dump water and a few positioned high (I’m guessing news copters).

Photo journalism courtesy of my officemate Bronwen & her camera phone.

Whoa! There’s a brush fire up at the Hollywood sign…. pretty huge it looks like….pix to follow… if I don’t have to evacuate.

There’s a brush fire near Burbank and Universal City on Friday (see ABC news) and you can see it all the way in Culver City!

More pics after the jump…
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The open studios at CalArts might not be until April 15 (Sunday from 2-7pm to be exact) but, like last year, their 2007 Open Studios website is online now…continue reading

The Wheel of Lunch, an interesting riff on Yahoo! Local, will let you spin a wheel to randomly pick a restaurant near your zip code, regardless of what meal you’re looking to score. My lady and I eat out quite a bit and deciding where to eat is a constant pain our asses. I would prefer a little more customizability, but this is still going to save us a lot of bickering. Looks like today I’m eating lunch at Alegria on Sunset!

Yet another culinary delight to be had in ever-emerging Eagle Rock: Mia Sushi.

Went there last night and had a truly amazing meal.

Among the highlights were the Firefish – superb yellowtail sashimi with jalapeno and ponzu sauce, and a host of Mia’s special rolls, which should not be missed. We had Bamboo Roll (sweet garlic albacore with crispy onions in a light lemon sauce), and many others. Everything was prepared and served to perfection.

Full menu on their website, which also allows for online reservations. Lots of great pics too, but it’s all in Flash so I couldn’t swipe any for this post.

Sushi bar, tables, and outside patio dining available. Yum!

Mia Sushi
4741 Eagle Rock Blvd.
(between Colorado and York)
323-256-2562

I’ve been traveling most of the last two weeks, was in San Francisco then San Diego. If you want more details on the nerdy tech conferences I was at those posts can be found on my own blog. Since it wasn’t LA related at all I didn’t want to hog up space here. The second leg of that trip I took at advantage of Amtrak and rode the train from LA to SD and then back again. I gotta say, for a trip about that length it’s probably the best option. If you’ve never taken a train out of Union Station in downtown it’s something you should do at least once just for the experience. There’s no way to describe how grand and old world feeling that building is until you’ve actually been there. As for the trip itself, Driving to San Diego is about 2 hours depending on the traffic, right? That’s kind of what I’ve measured the times I’ve done it – though it’s taken over 4 before when traffic was really bad. On Amtrak it’s $29 for the ticket, and $14 for the Business Class upgrade which is so totally worth it. The seats have TV screens and power outlets and the whole trip takes between 2.5 and 3 hours depending on which stops are on the route. I did this for the first time last year and it was such a relaxing way to travel that I’ve been looking forward to doing it again since then. One major set back which I realized this trip – you do get cell reception on the train. This has been a benefit in the past, but turns out when the guy sitting a few rows from you is taking full advantage of the beer they serve on the train and has to call every single person he knows to confirm the “bitchin’ party plans” they have for the weekend, yeah turns out it’s not so hot at that point. Viva la sound isolating earphones.

Photo by Makun Makun, used with Creative Commons.

Santos makes the case that as great as Bob’s Coffee and Doughnuts is at the Farmer’s Market, it doesn’t compare to Stan’s Doughnuts in Westwood, especially with their “peanut butter cup filled” variety.

Experience L.A. breaks down farmer’s markets easily accessible via stops along Metro’s Gold, Blue, and Red Lines.

“Blog Maverick” Marc Cuban notices that anyone checking out the subdomain sports.latimes.com is redirected to TheSportsNetwork.com, and asks the LA Times, “did you guys sell off your 404s?” On a side note, why doesn’t Cuban buy the Times? (h/t Atwater Village Newbie)

Come On, Feel the Nuys calls for a little love or just a rapaving of the brittle, pothole ridden roads in his neighborhood.

Fightin’ Mad Mary writes a complaint letter to the principal of the elementary school near her home regarding an out of control sprinkler head and the trash students leave in the street and asks “do you think that your kids in detention could pick up the mess as part of their punishment?” I anxiously await the follow up post!

Visiting from Portland, Malice666 writes “what the fuck!!! i thought L.A. was gonna be all crazy an shit! but it suckkkksss asssss!” But for damn good reason: she wasn’t allowed to go topless, let alone bucknaked, at a local strip club. Check out more insight from a stripper’s POV at her MySpace blog.

The demise of Jay’s Jayburger situated in the Hollywood/Silver Lake border regions at the corner of Virgil and Santa Monica Boulevard may have come to pass when the historic shack was unceremoniously shuttered a couple years ago, but an irrational glimmer of hope that it might return when all the remodeling dust settled was maintained by me in that aftermath. At least until that pipedream was finally and totally destroyed with the recent drive-by discovery that the place was in the prepatory process of being reincarnated as something called Sean’s Burger, replete with craptastic backlit-plastic masthead:

“Coming Soon!!!” The subsignage exclamates in ecstatic triplicate, and that’s fine. But below that much less conspicuously Sean’s dares to trumpet an alleged “Better Taste” and “Better Service,” and that’s just big hypothetical theoretical silly talk from a place still under wraps that hasn’t flipped a single patty yet deigns to pompously pronounce itself as a vast improvement over the cherished and mourned landmark whose popular namesake Jay Coffin served hundreds of thousands of them in the 36 years spent at that location.

P.S. For the wistfully nostalic, here’s a photo of a busy Jay’s I took in February 2005.

It boggles my mind how free and easy some people are with their email address and passwords. I had to read this more than once to believe it. The problem started when an LA based publisher of online lifestyle and entertainment magazines opps! made a mistake and exposed hundreds of emails and passwords of people who subscribed to their magazine. The error was made by Splash Magazine Worldwide, which publishes local versions of its magazines under URLs like NYCSplash.com and LASplash.com. It came up on Monday in unrelated Google searches if the search contained two of the keywords of a person’s name that had been exposed. Larry Davies, the publisher of the magazine says he doesn’t know how this security breach occured and his webmaster is supposed to take care of stuff like this. Uh, yeah. But when something of this magnitude goes down on your watch, YOU are guy who has to make it right.

Then again… who would ever give their email password to a magazine… or anyone else for that matter? Maybe I am getting something wrong here, but I can’t imagine givng that information out for any reason. You’re just begging for cybercrime to land in your lap!

A few weeks ago Mack Reed posted here about plans to install a traffic signal at the intersection of Monon Street and Hyperion Avenue in the wake of the tragic death of Silver Lake resident Bill Wingard who on January 20 was struck by a vehicle and killed while in the crosswalk between Trader Joe’s and Gelson’s (Cybele also had more on the subject here).

One of the first people on the scene of the accident to offer aid to Wingard was Trader Joe’s crewmember Adam Authier who stayed by Wingard’s side until paramedics arrived. Little more than a month later, on February 24, Authier was on Hyperion in Atwater Village bicycling home from work when he was struck by a motorist. Transported to County-USC Medical Center with serious injuries, Authier spent several days in ICU and now faces a long period of recovery — all without health insurance.

His crewmates at Trader Joe’s are partnering with the Company of Angels Theater (of which Wingard was a member) and have organized a benefit Sunday April 1 from 1 – 6 p.m. at the Grand Avenue Club (map) whose proceeds will go to Authier to help with his medical bills. In conjunction with the benefit, Stephen Box of Illuminate L.A. has announced the organization of a bike ride that will depart for the Grand Avenue Club from the Silver Lake Trader Joe’s at noon that Sunday.

[clicking is the path to enlightenment]

Need an authentic Hundu deity or two for your living room? How about a fully decked opium bed? Or maybe a few jeweled Indian wedding scarves?

If this sounds good to you then you should know the best place in LA to find this stuff is the Koan Collection. These guys scour the earth to bring you the best of old and new from India, Indonesia, Nepal, and Thailand.

And guess what? Today is the first day of their big weekend clearance sale.

Expect drastic markdowns on furniture, fabrics and accessories, and the people who run the place are super nice too.

Koan Collection
6109 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90038
(323).464.3735