L.A.s

Now searching for a new owner: Downtown Los Angeles high-rise rich in colorful anecdotes from its history, albeit most quite haunting. Offers units overlooking Skid Row, many stubbornly vacant. Best known for the Netflix series about the dead body found in a water tank on its roof. The building is the infamous Cecil Hotel, which was transformed in recent years into a privately funded supportive-housing complex for the formerly homeless. A new owner wouldn’t technically acquire the property at 640 S. Main Street but would…

Justin Timberlake will come back around to the Los Angeles Wiltern — at no cost to his fans. The “Selfish” and “Cry Me a River” pop star, 43, revealed on Wednesday that he will take over the popular Koreatown venue for a one-night show March 13. Timberlake posted the news via Instagram, sharing photos of posters advertising his show, a snippet of Sam Elliott describing Los Angeles in the “Big Lebowski,” and new music from his forthcoming album, “Everything I Thought It Was.” The 10-time Grammy winner shared the link to…

A series of powerful storms brought Los Angeles close to having its wettest February ever recorded.Another storm is moving in Monday afternoon. Forecasters have been downgrading projections for the storm for days, and it’s looking less and less likely that it will provide enough rain to make history. The latest forecast calls for less than a half an inch of rain through Tuesday, with snow levels hovering around 7,000 feet.Even so, the last month has been remarkable. Downtown Los Angeles has recorded an incredible…

On Saturday night in Hollywood, the rising electronic musician Mindchatter performed to 1,200 people at a sold-out Fonda Theatre. He wrapped up a bit after 11 p.m., and by midnight he was back onstage at the Spotlight just a few blocks down Hollywood Boulevard.To judge by the lines outside, much of the Fonda’s crowd followed him back to this brand-new 300-capacity venue, which resurrects the original name of the bar at 1601 N. Cahuenga Ave. The Spotlight was once one of L.A.’s oldest gay bars, a rough-and-ready beacon…

When it came to forecasting L.A.’s biggest winter storm of the season, local meteorologists had a secret weapon: experience.For sure, there was plenty of computer modeling available to indicate the Southland was in for a severe — and potentially dangerous — soaking. But based on their expertise, forecasters at the National Weather Service in Oxnard correctly anticipated that even the machine-calculated, eye-popping rain totals were probably an underprediction. When it comes to such a serious storm event, getting the…

It’s the 30-story elephant on the Los Angeles skyline — and seemingly no one, including Mayor Karen Bass, has decided what to do about it. The Oceanwide Plaza luxury development has stood next to Crypto.com Arena vacant and half-finished since 2019, when its Chinese developer, having already spent $1.1 billion on it, ran out of money.   In December, three L.A. taggers — Akua, Sour and Castle — broke into the highest of Oceanwide’s three towers and spray-painted their names across its floor-to-ceiling…

OK, so her fans didn’t wear wrist-to-elbow bead bracelets, and she didn’t exhort them to register to vote — although her husband crusaded ardently for giving women the vote.In spite of those shortcomings, the most famous California singer you probably never heard of did perform for the king and queen of England, sing at Carnegie Hall and in the grand opera houses of Europe, and record her voice for some techie named Thomas Edison.Her name was Ellen Beach Yaw. She was a coloratura soprano with an almost freakish vocal…

One of the most vexing factors contributing to Los Angeles’ homelessness problem is the lack of affordable places for people coming off the streets.Part of the solution is supposed to be housing that’s been in Skid Row for more than a century. Single-room occupancy hotels, or SROs, are made up of small rooms with shared bathrooms. With monthly rents often measured in hundreds of dollars rather than thousands, SROs are considered the first rung of housing above homelessness, tailored to help the 4,400 people now…

Rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson is no fan of L.A. County’s reinstated zero-bail policy. “LA is finished,” he said in an Instagram post.In late May, a Los Angeles County judge issued a preliminary injunction against cash bail for people suspected of most nonviolent misdemeanors who had been arrested but not yet arraigned.In the cash bail system, bail amounts are set by a predetermined schedule, not by a person’s ability to pay. Those unable to pay bail or secure a bond must remain in custody.The injunction stemmed from a…

Before Measure ULA took effect in April, some wealthy residents scrambled to avoid paying the new “mansion tax” that would fund affordable housing and homelessness prevention. Even celebrities known for their liberal ideals and humanitarian crusades happened to sell, for whatever reason, right before the tax went into effect.As the mad dash became public, there was one question on many people’s minds. Why? Even before voters passed the measure, bringing a 4% transfer tax on all property sales above $5 million and 5.5%…