Aw….And they came all the way from Wisconsin (the dirt all over the car proved it.) Sorry dudes!

(Seen in the parking lot of Norm’s on Pico tonight.)

A brand new NFL stadium right next to L.A. Live. Los Angeles hosting the Super Bowl in 2016. The World Cup in 2022. Bigger conventions. More jobs.

AEG’s Tim Leiweke is talking about it. Exciting, no?

Already, there are fears of gridlock, declining property values, and general mayhem from some of the self-proclaimed pioneer loft-dwellers. Here are but a few comments from Curbed:

I think it would bring gridlock for days—–and make the area less pedestrian friendly.

Its not like we have a lot of available open space around here. i’m not opposed to commercial, but a stadium seems to big. nothing green around there.

I love living downtown but bringing in the sporting low life that comes with 10′s of thousands of football fans can destroy downtown.

My favorite complaint that I hear whenever something new is being developed Downtown, is about someone “losing the view” from their building. Because everyone moves to the heart of a city for sunshine and rolling meadows. Peace and quiet. Solitude.

I’m curious to know what you think. Is this a good idea? If you live Downtown, are you are for or against an NFL stadium/event center being built next to L.A. Live?

Fight Crew vs. Sirens by Stalkerazzi

The L.A. Kings’ hockey season is just getting started; the L.A. Dodgers’ baseball season is mercifully drawing to a close. The L.A. Derby Dolls‘ roller derby season is in high gear, though, and this Saturday night you can see the most exciting sport in Los Angeles as the Fight Crew battle the Sirens in a race toward the 2010 Championship (in December.) Keep reading to find out how you can win your free tickets.

Banked track roller derby is an aggressive, fast-paced, full-contact sport. These women may look nice all dolled up in skates and fishnets, but do not be fooled. They are fierce competitors who give everything they’ve got on the track in order to achieve victory.

If you’ve already been to the Doll Factory, then you know. If you haven’t, you just have to experience it for yourself. Surrounded by the roar of a sold out crowd, you’ll watch a high-speed chase on the track that will leave you breathless. Before the game and at half time, you’ll enjoy various food vendors including Hot Dog On A Stick and Garage Pizza, ice cold beer from Alex’s Bar, and a vendor village packed with jewelery, t-shirts, skate gear, and all sorts of other stuff. There’s even a live band at half-time (Eternal Youth.)

Here is a preview of Saturday night’s bout:

What: L.A. Derby Dolls Fight Crew vs. Sirens
When: Saturday, 2 October 2010. Doors open 6:00pm, bout starts 8:00pm.
Where: The Doll Factory, 1910 West Temple Street, Los Angeles.
Why: Most exciting sport in L.A. You won’t find more fun anywhere (with your pants on.)
How: Get tickets online now! The L.A. Derby Dolls sell out every bout.

Now for the prizes:

I’ve got a pair of tickets for Saturday’s bout plus a Derby Dolls t-shirt for one lucky winner. All you have to do is leave a comment below telling me who your favorite Fight Crew or Sirens skater or Enforcers ref is. (You’ll find the team rosters at the links above; Enforcers below.) Contest ends Thursday, 30 September, at 9:00am pdt. Keep an eye on your inbox Thursday, as the winner will need to reply to my email asap.

Good luck to all. Don’t want to chance winning? Don’t let the bout sell out without you. Get your tickets online now.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I may be a bit biased toward the sport of women’s banked track roller derby, and the L.A. Derby Dolls specifically. I am a member of the Enforcers (referee team.) In truth, I’d have been happy to tell you how awesome it is, long before I ever became a ref.)

Tucked behind the Monrovia School District offices lies Julian D Fisher Park.  It is one of many pocket parks dotting Monrovia, but this one is special because of its 3 regulation size basketball courts.  Good enough that it is listed on the “Courts of the World” web as a place to go for pick up games and just enjoy the sport.

Bringing it closer to home for me, the Monrovia Mountaineers, a competitive travel basketball team for 14 and under age kids uses it for practice when local gyms aren’t available.   We (as in my youngest child who is a Mountaineer) are at this park for practices with his team several times a week.

Mountaineers practice early on a Sunday morning.

There is also a nice Picnic Pavilion and play ground area to round out the usefulness of this pocket park.  Fair warning, this park is packed in the evenings and on weekends.  Week day mornings you tend to find the odd Mom and kidlet in the play area.  Parking is limited on Almond Avenue, but not completely impossible to find a space within walking distance of the entrance to the park.

Easy access from 210 Fwy via Myrtle or Mountain Ave exits.

If you look at a map of Culver City, you’ll see there is an arm that reaches to the Pacific Ocean. This is “Culver West” and it’s nestled between Mar Vista and Marina Del Rey.

There is a sweet gem in that arm called Culver West-Alexander Park and if you are in the neighborhood and looking for a great spot to spend an afternoon, you will love this one.

I remember this park from the very early 90′s as I used to work in the Marina. The big field seen here used to have a baseball diamond and one year I spent many an early morning practicing softball with our company team. (Go Hurlers!) Even without a baseball diamond, you can NOT get bored at this park. I dare you!

There are basketball and tennis courts, BBQ pits and picnic tables, tons of jungle gyms and swings and even a community center. If you are a Westsider, check this spot out, bring the kids and grandparents and a big picnic. You never know what you’ll see here.

How to get there (click on the image to go to the Google Map):

You want sports? We got sports!  One tennis and two paddle tennis courts (this is where my honey and I play a lot.)

Here’s a close up of the mural at the end of the tennis court. It’s like being inside Wii Tennis!

In case you were wondering:

And also:

This happy mural greets  you when you park on Moore street. Handball courts (three) are here on the backside of the tennis court.

Wider shot of Basketball and handball courts with informal running path in front.

Close on the Mural at the Basketball court:

Plenty of stuff for the kids to clamber over and around:

And when it’s time to eat, there are plenty of shady spots to spread out and grill up some yummy picnic food.

There is plenty of parking on Moore Street and also in a small lot near the jungle gym/tennis court side of the park.

Alas, Fido will need to stay on the designated path. But it’s a sweet path!

And if you need to just chill in a grassy, shady spot, there is plenty of that too.

Read more about Richard Alexander, after whom the park was named. (Click picture for bigger version.)

Stop by some time! It’s a gorgeous little park and it’s all yours.

(If you already know and love Paddle Tennis, bear with me for a moment.)

It’s not Ping-Pong. It’s not Platform Tennis. It’s not Paddleball or Beach Paddle or even something called Padel. Paddle Tennis is its own game and has been around since 1898, invented in Michigan by a man named Frank Peer Beal. (Read a full history here.)

Paddle Tennis is a blast and in these hot sunny summer days, if you love tennis, you might find yourself stymied by full courts and long wait times to play. However, if you shift your game a tiny bit, you can find wide open (and best of all: FREE) Paddle Tennis courts all over LA. And all those half dead tennis balls you have lying around? They are required for Paddle Tennis. Look at you — recycling while you play. (Your dogs may be upset while they wait for their shot at the deflated balls, however.)

If you are already playing tennis at public courts, you may have seen the smaller Paddle Tennis courts alongside the regular courts. If not, here is a map for just some of the public courts available. The map does not include my current favorite court in Culver City: Culver West Park, just south of Washington on Wade or Moore streets. (The park itself is a little gem with a big jungle gym for the kids, a huge lawn (used to be a baseball diamond) a dog walk track, 1 tennis court, 2 paddle tennis courts, and 2 handball courts, plus restrooms and an indoor community room.)

Venice is a hot spot for Paddle Tennis and the home of Power Paddle, the last all wood paddles on the market (seen above). Brian Lee is the owner of the company and former five time paddle tennis champion, taking over from his father who started making the paddles to improve his own game. (Full disclosure, my husband I use Power Paddles, though I didn’t realize they were locally made by Mr. Lee when I started writing this article!)

Paddle Tennis is great sports for kids to learn with the smaller courts and paddles. And since you only need a paddle, a few balls and a willing partner, it doesn’t have to be expensive to start. Give it a try! If you need a partner, I’m an amateur, but I can give good rally.

For full rules, info and player rankings, visit the US Paddle Tennis Association.

(Oh and if you think the smaller court and deflated balls make this some kind of rinky-dink retired granny sport, watch this video.)

Go out and play!

The Lakers are the Kings of LA today!  The game last night was simply epic. They played with heart, soul and fire and kept us on the edge of our seat til the very end!  Congratulations to the new champions!  Whew!  That was a great ride!  THAT was entertainment!

I had a friend who wanted to watch the game at a sports bar with his buddies and they left TWO hours beforehand to get a seat and had to go to five bars before they found one they could squeeze into!  He called us at 8am this morning to share the crazy shenanigans of the drunken crowd.  Me, I watched it in the sweet comfort of my own home so I could laugh at my love, Dan the Man jumping around in front of the TV waving his fists every five minutes.  There’s something inherently tender about your guy getting full of testosterone watching his team.

And Ron-Ron, you earned your jersey!  So sweet, thanking his wife, his mom and his psychiatrist!

What a game!  Every single Laker player contributed in his own way.  Fisher pulling out that three, Pau, never giving up and Kobe rallying in the last quarter!  Thank You.  I am honored to be a fan of this awesome team!

GO LAKERS!

Every now and then we Trojans have to join up with those annoying Bruins on some things (and not just hating on Cal). This weekend, we join together on a sad note – mourning the loss of former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden.

John Wooden and Bill Walton, 1970. Photo courtesy Vedia on Flickr.

I’ve been making some plans lately for the upcoming World Cup. I don’t follow soccer (football?) but I wanted to take part in the magnificent exercise in sports fandom that will be USA vs. England. Whatever their sport, fans tend to unite over great communal experiences like the World Cup, the Olympics, the Super Bowl or the Lakers in the finals.

We, as lovers of sport, also unite in recognizing legends, regardless of rivalry or affiliation. We all recognize the greatness that was John Wooden.

And all of us, Bruins, Trojans, whatever, felt our hearts sink a bit at the news that Wooden was “gravely ill”, and then when he eventually passed away last night. He may have been 99 years old and hadn’t coached in decades, but the loss of Wooden still leaves a big gaping hole in the sports world. Coaches with his level of success and, more importantly, his level of influence are one-in-a-million.

Well before I moved to California and learned about Trojans vs. Bruins (and on which side I stood), I learned about Wooden. I remember my 7th grade basketball coach preaching his wisdom to us in the locker room. His name is all over buildings in Westwood. My favorite monument to him is the bust carved out of wood that sits in the lobby at ESPN Zone in Anaheim (the “wooden Wooden”). He’s practically required reading for teachers and coaches of all levels.

Wooden represented the best of UCLA, of basketball, of Los Angeles, hell, all of sports in general. While normally I would be reveling in seeing the Bruins cope with a loss (like, say, in a football game), this time, I, and fans everywhere, will be right there with them.

On June 18th, start your politically incorrect internal combustion engines for the 2010  Rental Car Rally (RCR), a 36-hour competitive road trip from Los Angeles to Tombstone, AZ.

RCR is a single leg competitive road trip in which teams of costumed players compete for cash and prizes. There is no set route, but each team must hit pre-defined checkpoints, the locations of which will be revealed in the rally booklet provided at the starting line. Each team must furnish photographic evidence of each checkpoint. Teams are scored by a combination of odometer reading, team style and hijinks (details on the RCR web site).

The event is organized by Supreme Commander, the co-founder of a huge, ludicrous water gun tournament, StreetWars, which I personally participated in a few years ago, and The Pants, who throws big video game parties.

The race begins Friday, June 18 and ends Sunday, June 20. A “Basic Team Ticket” will cost you $179 and includes entrance to the rally, admission to the rally pre-party, with drink specials and a briefcase stocked with mischief-making swag (which you can use to mess with the other teams). Each ticket covers one vehicle and unlimited teammates.

To register for the race or for more information, visit the RCR web site at rentalcarrally.com.

Read the rest of this entry →

This past Memorial Day morning I did my annual bike ride across town to Los Angeles National Cemetery, followed by a visit to LACMA (admission of which was free thanks to Target, who apparently foots the bill at the museum when holidays fall on Mondays — make a note of that). After checking out some of the art there the next destination was The Village Idiot, my next-door neighbor Dean Malouf’s restaurant on Melrose where we found excellent food and drink and this huge and awesome chalk-filled masterpiece detailing all the Group Stage matches in South Africa that will be broadcast* there between June 11 – 25  (pictured at right; click to ginormify), which Dean told me took about four hours to complete.

While I’m not much of a soccer fan, chances are good that I’ll wake up my inner hooligan by rolling over to a couple of these 7 a.m. weekday matches, probably South Africa v. Mexico, Spain v. Switzerland, and USA v. Algeria.

* While originally they were considering being open for the 4:30 a.m. matches, common sense prevailed and they’ve decided such sleep deprivation was just crazy.

Man oh man, for a couple of local teams the CIF championship has turned into a national debate on sportsmanship.  The short version is that a pole vaulter from South Pas had just “won” the  Rio Hondo championship at the meet they hosted.  Not so fast says coach Knowles from Monrovia, your gal was wearing jewelry which is against the rules and she should be disqualified.  The refs agreed and voila Monrovia won the Rio Hondo championship.  Full story here.

The offending jewelry?  A hand knotted twine “friendship bracelet”.

Controversy ensued, South Pas has its collective panties in a knot, even swearing in the comments (recall South Pas is a “no cuss zone”).  Even national media has come out on this one.   (I fall into the camp its just kids sports and it shouldn’t have been a disqualification but even that upset some).

What say you on the topic?

Here’s what it looked like in timelapse from the roof of our house (while my wife Susan and I stood out on Sunset having a lot of fun cheering everyone on and calling participants by the names on their bibs as they passed… but that’s another video):

If the YouTube version is slow to load a slightly better-resolution of the clip’s available as a Quicktime file, here.

At least three of my friends, possibly more now, have entered this year’s Warrior Dash and I plan to be there to cheer them on, April 11 in Lake Elsinore, CA.

About an hour’s drive from Los Angeles, the event will take place over two days, April 10 and 11. Warriors will dash, leap and climb over 12 hellish obstacles stretched out over three miles. They will jump over flames, wade through a bog, scramble under barbed wire and more.

Those who participate in the Dash will receive an official fuzzy, horned Warrior helmet, free beer and many other spoils. If you think you have what it takes to be a Warrior, there is still time to enter, just visit their web site at warriordash.com. The cost to participate is $75. After March 15 it will cost you $85, until April 5 when registration officially closes.

I suppose it was inevitable.  This past year, social networking shot through the roof, with everyone and her grandmother (literally) on Facebook.  That is in addition to the explosive popularity of Twitter, as well as websites pumping out up-to-the-minute news 24/7.  At the same time, the old media NBC television network decided to tape delay its Winter Olympics broadcast on the West Coast, apparently three hours behind the East Coast, even though the events are taking place in our time zone.  And finally, as do many others I’m sure, I multitask when watching television, laptop in front of me, news headlines and social networks (and Vancouver Metblogs) never more than a click away.  All of these phenomena have come crashing together this month like a perfect storm, threatening to spoil my Olympics.

The problem is, I keep learning the results from these Internet sources hours before seeing them for myself.  I learned of Hannah Kearney’s mogul skiing gold medal, Apolo Ohno’s record-tying silver medal in speed skating, and the generous figure skating judges doling out high scores to skaters who fell during their short program, all before seeing it on tv.  I tried appealing to my Twitter peeps who aren’t located on the West Coast not to post Olympics results, but they seem to need to do so, as if their reactions won’t count unless shared electronically and immediately.

I’m sure some of you are more computer-advanced than I, and can tell us how to get a great webcast of the Games on our computer in real time, even on our big-screen hdtv.  If so, I would love to hear the solutions.  I investigated this briefly, and did not find a satisfactory solution — for example, the online ads I saw were even more annoying than those on NBC.

I’m afraid the only solution I have found to watch the Winter Games unspoiled by spoilers is the most radical solution of staying off the Internet altogether.

Thursday night, the 2009-2010 College Football Season culminated in the National Championship BCS Title Game, held right here at the Rose Bowl. Though I don’t have connections to either Alabama’s Crimson Tide or the Texas Longhorns (besides my unreasonable dislike towards the Longhorns), I decided to drop a sizable chunk of change and attend the game. I didn’t have to travel; they brought the game to me, so why not?

Photo by me! I even upgraded from my usual cell phone camera for this special occasion.

Thing is, much like the Rose Parade last week, I’ve never gone to the Rose Bowl as just a spectator, either, so it was a completely new experience for me. I went crazy taking pictures inside and outside the stadium and reveling in the gorgeous weather and how easy it was to simply walk there from Old Town Pasadena. But as I took in the tailgating scene and then settled into my seat for the game, I realized… I was, like, the only person who actually lives here.

That’s a slight exaggeration, of course (I’m pretty sure I did see Jason Schwartzman. He’s an actor, he does live here, right?). I’m sure there’s Alabama fans in LA, and there are tons of Texas alumni in this town. But damned if I wasn’t surrounded by a bunch of tourists the entire night. The people I sat near were dudes who flew in from Austin, people who possessed awesome/ridiculous Southern accents, or were the brothers (one a Crimson Tide fan, one a Longhorns fan) who drove up from San Diego.

Read the rest of this entry →