Downtown and Hollywood are about to get an infusion of stylishness overnight stay options, as hotel mega-chain Marriott has announced plans to partner up with Ian Schrager to bring new boutique hotels to LA called Edition. Schrager, who first danced into the pop-culture spotlight as a co-creator of New York's legendary Studio 54, has made a name for himself since the 80s as a hotelier, and is credited as the innovator of the "boutique" hotel......

In a year of great documentaries, Sharkwater resides in the very top tier. It is a passionate advocacy film about the immense slaughter of sharks currently going on in the world's oceans. Sharks are caught in 60-mile long lines, have their fins cut off and then are simply dumped back in the ocean to rot. I recently had the opportunity to speak with the film's writer, director and narrator, Rob Stewart. You originally started......

After much anticipation, this afternoon marked the opening day of Chicago's Intelligentsia Coffee in Silver Lake at their new Sunset Junction location. I've been looking forward to this opening since the announcement of their arrival some months ago, mainly because after falling in love with their bean roasts while on vacation in the Windy City last year, ordering bags of beans for home brewing via the internets was getting to cost me a pretty penny.......

George Lucas is notoriously stringent when it comes to copyright and trademark issues, but it looks like the director has finally realized that remix is the aesthetic of the new millennium, or at least this first decade of it. The Wall Street Journal reported that Lucasfilm is taking approximately 250 clips from the various Star Wars movies and making them available to fans who want to download and use them in Internet mash-ups, re-mixes and......

First it was spinach, then Taco Bell lettuce, then last week peanut butter, quickly followed by the chicken breast strips. Now the spotlight has shown its disapproving face on cantaloupes that were shipped to LA and Frisco. A wholesale produce importer on Friday recalled several thousand cartons of cantaloupes after some tested positive for salmonella. Castle Produce said the recall covered roughly 2,560 cartons of cantaloupes delivered on or after Feb. 16 to wholesalers......

#63 Two-time NASCAR champ pulled out his dipstick and peed on a car in a Daytona Beach parking garage - Local 6 #64 Four men are using submachine guns to hold up check cashing locales in Orlando - Local 6 #65 Family on a plane trying to leave Florida to get back home to Massachusetts is kicked off the plane because their 3 yr old is crying too much - ABC #66 Cocoa Beach......

Surprising nobody, USC's All-American wide receiver Dwayne Jarrett announced that he will forgo his final year of eligibility and enter the NFL Draft. The 6'5" Jarrett had an especially strong second half of the 2006 season, after healing from a shoulder injury, and set the Pac-10 record for career touchdowns (41 touchdowns in 38 games) while becoming USC's all-time receptions leader with 216 catches for 3,138 yards. He crowned his college career by winning the......

The news trucks were gathered en masse as the USC football team returned to campus a week after handily winning the Rose Bowl, but the mood was decidedly somber. The team met privately for about an hour and mourned with a priest before special teams assistant coach Dan Anno -- representing the team and the Danelo family -- addressed the press on the steps of Heritage Hall, flanked by Mario Danelo's closest teammates. "Obviously......

Today the LA Times reports on the internal LAPD debate about what to do with Skid Row. Clearcut clean up the worst areas, like 6th and San Julian, by removing everyone (to where)? Or target the criminals in those areas? We don't know what the best solution might be, but we can't wait to hear what downtown activist Brady Westwater thinks. Yesterday janitors at NBC-Universal picketed Citywalk — not because it sucks, but to......

Who cares about the Olympic Games or the Dodgers pennant race, when we can talk LA Galaxy soccer! Well, that has to be the talk of LA today, as the Galaxy made a controversial move to fire head coach Sigi Schmid. Guess being in first place wasn't good enough. We here at LAist cannot fathom why the Galaxy would ever fire Schmid. Sure the Galaxy were on a five game winless streak, and lost......