Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick is bringing up one of LAist's favorite topics: Los Angeles. The once City Councilwoman (and probably future City Councilwoman when she runs and probably wins) wanted Los Angeles to be tourist friendly and not just for tourists, but for residents. "When I first got elected, I asked why we weren't doing more to market Los Angeles," Chick was quoted saying in the Daily News. "I recently went to Chicago......

Photo of Dresden Dolls by LuckyO2 via flickr. Regarding the Sunset Junction Music Festival, there is more line-up news: "Health, the Happy Hollows, Radars to the Sky, the Henry Clay People and Gram Rabbit are a handful of the locals said to be playing the festival," reported Kevin Bronson at Soundboard, LA Times' music blog. Sacramento eight-piece !!! will also be playing (more headliners and news on the festival can be found here). On......

More music festivals are lining up the summer. Yesterday, the new Sunset Strip Music Festival and Sunset Junction were brought up. Today, let's talk Make Music Pasadena: A Fête De La Muique Event on Saturday, June 21st. The festival is free with headliners split between four stages: The Raveonettes, Dengue Fever, Kinky, The Little Ones, Nortec Collective, Jesca Hoop, Division Day and Everest. Also, this weekend is Topanga Days featuring Living Sisters (Inara George, Eleni......

Photo by Joey Maloney at last year's Sunset Junction | View all of his photos here Everyone loves (great music) or loves to hate (parking for local residents, admission) the annual Sunset Junction Street Festival, which hits Silver Lake come this August 23 and 24. And this year's schedule so far is shaping up to be quite excellent: Cold War Kids, Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, Issac Hayes, Kinky, Broken Social Scene and The Black Keyes......

Celebrate your weekend. | Photo by ronnie44052 via Flickr Not everyone is going to Coachella this weekend. For those who choose to stay put in Los Angeles, the city is literally filled with events this weekend: AltBuild Expo at SaMo Civic Auditorium: an eco-friendy building & design expo LA Times Festival of Books at UCLA: a must see & do Fiesta Broadway at Downtown: party!......

National Strawberry Day. Go for it. And a fun event for you strawberry lovers is coming up on May 17 & 18th -- the 25th Annual California Strawberry Festival in Oxnard. Strawberry Beer! You can't beat that now, can you? This beer is specially made for the festival only. Photo by Paraflyer via Flickr.......

CSC's Juan José Haedo and High Road's Mark Cavendish stretch for position. Cavendish took 6th and Haedo 7th. | Photo by Matt Cohen San Francisco based photographer Matt Cohen reports from yesterday's Tour of California with photos and explanations of what happened: On its seventh and final stage yesterday at the 2008 AMGEN Tour of California, riders raced from Santa Clarita to Pasadena, often in very heavy rain. The 93-mile Stage 7 was the......

All photos by Scott Groller This weekend, the AMGEN Tour of California hit two Los Angeles area cities, Santa Clarita, yesterday, and Pasadena, today. Photographer Scott Groller was kind enough to share some photos from the finish line of Stage 6 in the Valencia neighborhood of Santa Clarita. The cyclists traveled 105.4 miles from Santa Barbara for a ride that lasted over four hours.......

This week Zach Behrens became the sixth editor of LAist. Behrens is no stranger to LAist staff or readers -- he was Co-Editor for nearly a year before taking the reins from Tony Pierce and contributed more than 1100 posts since 2005. We asked Zach a variety of questions to put in perspective how and why he came to be editor of the best city blog this side of the Hudson. Andy: When and why......

Fire up your Nimbus 2000 and fly to the Biltmore! So. Cal. Pagan or just Pagan Curious? Either way, put down that turkey leg and skip those crowded malls, the 9th Annual Pagan Days Fest is this weekend at The Millenium Biltmore Hotel, 506 So. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, 90071. This witchy convention, organized by those crafty folks at Panpipes Magickal Market Place, begins Friday night with a (ticketed) meet and greet dinner and......

You still have until 6pm tonight to get over to MacArthur Park and hit the tamale festival! I'm even thinking about going back again for the one treat I missed, and then I realized that I would have to be crazy to do that. So, I will probably see you there! The tamale eating contest is at 1pm. If things go the way they do on TV, I'm sure it will make you never......

Osamu Tezuka's classic animated short was always one of my favorites, back when I was hitting animation film festivals. It doesn't quite have the punch of the bigscreen, but is stunning nonetheless.......

By now you've probably heard that this year's Vegoose was a smashing success. Pretty much everything about the show was great; plenty of booze, food, facilities, and the availability of televised sports (for the adamant college football/NFL/World Series fans willing to miss their favorite bands to catch the score.) The crowd seemed highly content throughout the whole show, save for a few rumbles between Red Sox and Rockies fans. Lucky for us, LAist got......

In it's 3rd year of existence, this past weekend's Vegoose Music Festival featured quite the impressive lineup. Boasting the final North American Show of the ever incredible Daft Punk and the final stop of Rage Against the Machine's reunion (tour), the fest also included great performances from Gogol Bordello, Muse, M.I.A. and many, many more. Follow the jump for tonnnns (literally) of pics of Muse, Queens of the Stone Age, M.I.A., Gogol Bordello, Queens......

This past weekend, Vegas's own Sam Boyd Stadium was home to the 3rd annual Vegoose music festival which featured a few small-time bands you may have heard of, like Rage Against the Machine, Daft Punk, Muse, Iggy and the Stooges, and more! LAist made the obligatory road trip out to Sin City to bring you some coverage on one of the more succsessful new music fests, (which, by the way, is brought to us......

As one blogger so delicately phrased it, "CMJ goes out with a whimper". There wasn't a whole lot I wanted to see on Day Five of CMJ. So I rested my weary bones, wandered around Williamsburg, and caught a couple of shows. One highlight was Ha Ha Tonka's performance at Union Pool in Williamsburg at a homey, jam-packed venue. I believe there was a BBQ going on as well. Williamsburg was lovely, flourishing with......

Day Four began with jazz hands. I started off at Cake Shop to see NY native Patrick Cleandenim. He struck my interest with his brand of flamboyant, jazz-infused pop. However, it'd be nearly impossible for him to replicate the orchestral backing live and thus his live performance seemed a bit flat. Regardless, Patrick is destined for large things. His latest effort Baby, Come Home was recorded in Kansas at a studio I am quite......

Whew! We're a little more than half-way through this music marathon in New York and I'm starting to realize how similar this experience is to an actual marathon. It requires a lot of endurance, patience, and you'll wish you were an amputee afterwards. With two more days left, I'm still yearning for more and I'm certain that CMJ's final days will sate me. Yesterday started off a bit slow. I began my trek in......

Yesterday commenced with an LA bang. I started off at the Indaba music loft again because they have been hosting a plethora of good (free!) shows. There's something comforting about watching bands from someone else's living room. I showed up around mid-day to catch one of my favorite LA bands Division Day. Front man Rohner Segnitz and the boys ran through a pleasant acoustic set. With drummer Kevin Lenhart on shakers, Division Day sounded......

I've always dreamed of attending the CMJ, the annual New York gathering of pretty much every band in the entire universe. The people over at Fader are saying CMJ should be an acronym for Conquering Many Jams. I'm just not sure if I'll be doing the conquering. With thousands of bands to choose from, It's more than likely that the music will be conquering me. As I arrive at the Puck building on Lafayette......

This could be the end (maybe temporary end) of your local street festival, maybe even make your block party a bit more costly. It also could mean changes for major festivals like Sunset Junction. Yesterday, Karen Sisson, the Los Angeles City Administrative Officer (she's in charge of the money), told City Council that due to an increasing amount of financial concerns, they should "freeze all new spending and end the politically popular practice of......

LAist had the opportunity to catch up with Jonny Coleman, curator of Art Crawl X and also founder of Found Gallery in Silverlake this week to ask him some questions about the art walk this weekend, what not to miss, and why this art walk is sure to kick ass. What is Art Crawl X? Art Crawl X is the tenth annual art walk on the Eastside [excluding downtown]. The Crawl includes both conventional......

Art walks, Food fairs, fashion, and film. It's fall in LA, and for another weekend we can forget about our lack of playoff-worthy baseball teams and professional football and take advantage of our final three weeks of Daylight Saving Time. The fun begins tonight, so you best start the weekend now. Downtown Art Walk Thursday, Noon - 9 p.m.: On the second Thursday of every month, Angelenos stroll up and down Spring and Main......

As Halloween draws ever close, what better way to spend an evening than having the shit scared out of you in a movie theater? Screamfest, in my opinion the best horror film festival out there, begins tomorrow in Hollywood. Screenings on tap include George Romero's brand new Diary of the Dead, Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3-D, the director's cut of Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, 30 Days of Night and the terrifically spooky......

Are you still dusting off playa dust off your clothes? Do you still find yourself putting on glow sticks when you go out at night? Are you having trouble going to sleep without that techno lullaby buzzing inside your ear? Do you find yourself standing in the middle of a street looking for an art car to come by and pick you up? Well, fret no more burner friend, dust off those bunny ears,......

There was so much choice at this year's Detour Festival as French Electro duo Justice and British Indie darlings Bloc Party topped the bill however, one couldn't help but compare this year's lineup to last year's, the inaugural year, which featured Beck and Queens of the Stone Age and smaller acts like Of Montreal, Blonde Redhead, Basement Jaxx among others. While sporting more acts and another stage the overall quality or the acts was......

The Detour Festival was ok. I didn't stay for very long because my girlfriend and I felt like cattle, and were tired of doing the unavoidable million laps around City Hall. Basically we echo all the sentiments previously put forth by our faithful editor, Tony Pierce. After the jump enjoy over 60 pics of such bands and big shots as: Kinky, Janeane Garofalo, Autolux, The Ravonettes, and Perry Ferrell's Satellite Party. All Photos by......

Nearly two weeks ago, I traveled eastward on an excursion to the Lone Star State. I expected Texas to be a hostile experience filled with unnecessarily aggressive, booze-fueled behemoths. You know the truck driving, cowboy kind. My weekend trip proved it to be quite the opposite. I arrived at LaGrave Field, home of Ft. Worth's AAA baseball team, bright and early for the 3rd annual Wall of Sound Festival. Considering all of our Spector......

The old folks will blather on about what they think is wrong with Detour, but they're wrong, as always. The real problem is you have fenced off part of downtown LA, which is a weird concept but one we can roll with. But then you fence off part of the fenced off part for people who omg want to drink a beer. Other events do this too, but those events suck. Face it. Real......

Your pets want the house to themselves today. Some of yesterday's festivals like Detour, NoHo Scene and the Eagle Rock Music Festival are over with. Yet Sunday, here in Los Angeles, is still a busy day. Events continuing from yesterday's Weekend Festival Guide: Brewery Art Walk and TarFest Jazz at Drew 10:30 a.m. - 10:00 p.m.: In it's 17th year, the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science's popular music and charity event......