Both Reason Magazine and The Desert Dispatch have chimed in on the LAPD's crackdown on bacon-wrapped hot dog vendors in Hollywood last Friday night. "Most disturbing is that apparently, the police simply destroyed all the carts and all the contents without involving that crazy little creation we have here in the United States called 'the justice system,'” wrote the Dispatch in an editorial. Reason writes that this "story has everything: class warfare, racism, protection rackets,......

Let's Be Frank serves the best hot dogs in LA. The Frank Dog or Spicy Brat Dog come on a grilled fresh baked bun from Acme Bread. These organic grass-fed beauties are perfect. Most days you'll find, owner Sue Moore standing behind the grill. She offers organic grilled onions, sauerkraut, mustard, ketchup, and sometimes amazing spicy home-made pickles. A Let's Be Frank dog = happiness. Let's Be Frank Helms Bakery Complex Helms Avenue, between Venice......

"I cannot even begin to describe the ecstasy involved in the consumption of this greasy food product," Marshall Astor said of his Chili Dog from the Original Tommy's on Rampart. It is "like God's own Chili Dog." Submit your 'Eye Nosh' food photos and mini-reviews to LAist via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr.......

Photo by highervision via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr This evening a public viewing will be held for slain LA High football star Jamiel Shaw, with funeral services to follow tomorrow. Shaw's tragic murder has prompted many LA residents to refocus on the senselessness of gang-related violence. Go, stop, go, stop: Commuters northbound on the 57 and the 605 transitioning to the 210 westbound this morning were greeted by the new traffic......

We always hear about Improv Everywhere pulling crazy stunts off in New York City, like five-minutes of frozen time at Grand Central or no-pants on the subway. Well, after a small improvised pillow fight at the Glendale mall (video below), the new LA Chapter of the collaborative pulled off their first major mission: a spontaneous musical at Baldwin Hills Mall, starting off with the Hot Dog On A Stick girl. Eventually a cast of......

It's February 29th -- Happy Leap Day! While others are pondering mysteries like "what happens to a baby born on February 29th?" and "Does this have anything to do with last night's episode of 'Lost'?", we're going to take the opportunity to teach you a shiny new word! It's called intercalation, and it's what Julius Caesar did back in the day to fix the wacky Roman calendar system: inserting extra units of time (in......

Hey, you know what's great? Hot dogs! You know what's even better? A new hot dog stand in a college neighborhood! Encino favorite The Stand has just opened a new location in Westwood, bringing a new flavor to UCLA's backyard. As a former Westwood resident, I can definitely tell you that there's always room for another cheap, unique, and fast eatery in town, and The Stand looks like it will deliver the hot doggy......

Photo by Tom Andrews via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr The LA Times has the latest and more details on the deadly stand-off in the Valley that left one SWAT team member, Randal Simmons, and four others dead. Okay, this is just terribly, terribly, terribly wrong: why is the city cracking down so hard on street vendors who sell bacon wrapped hot dogs? Police continue to search for three kidnappers who abducted......

Orange County's fast-food favored son, Carl Karcher, died yesterday at the age of 90. It started as a hot dog cart, and grew to eventually become a ubiquitous fast-food mega-chain with the trademarked happy star. We all know Carl's Jr. as the place to get big burgers for a few bucks, but for Ohio-born Carl Karcher, things really kicked off in Anaheim in 1945 when he and his wife Margaret opened Carl's Drive-In Barbecue, which......

It's the end of another year and LA has lost yet another handful of important buildings. LA Weekly has the goods on the "big ones" that were lost this year including the Ambassador Hotel and Cocoanut Grove, Trader Vic's, Johnie's Broiler, Mann National Theatre and our personal vote for deepest loss of the year, Tail o' the Pup. It seems we're not the only ones who mourn the loss of our favorite hot dog......

After a five-week hiatus, LAist is back to taking you on its weekly trip down to Orange County to uncover the unique dining experiences that await adventurous eaters willing to explore beyond the county line. I’ve always had a certain fascination with crepes. Not sure exactly why, perhaps it’s the simple elegance that a crepe has, its delicate buckwheat consistency and taste that can be deliciously served with virtually any kind of filling, whether sweet......

Molly's Charbroiled Burger, a rickety burger shack on Vine between Selma and Hollywood, is one of those funny little places that is both totally ordinary and totally L.A. -- run by Koreans, with a Mexican line cook, who serve up good old American burgers, fries, hot dogs, burritos, and, um, bulgogi plates. Students at the neighboring film and recording schools swear by the breakfast burritos -- cozy bundles of egg, french-fry hash browns, bacon,......

For 36 years, The Wiener Factory has been serving hot dogs out of their Sherman Oaks stand to loyal and new customers alike. Good for hot dog lovers, bad for residents craving Pinkberry:Officials with Pinkberry, a nonfat frozen-yogurt chain, were expected to tell a Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council panel Monday night that they wanted to raze the small hot-dog restaurant and build another Pinkberry store. "Historically, many things come and go. But we have......

The main draw of this Thai restaurant is the humongous hot dog perched next to the oddly-paired moniker Thai Town Express. The hot dog is a relic of its past as Red’s Hot Dog, and the waitress said that the lease stipulations forbid its removal. Late on a recent Sunday evening, my dinner companion and I were the only diners, but plenty of curious tourists stopped by the fast-food Thai restaurant to snap pictures......

We're still kind of obsessed with the cooking videos over at imcooked, especially the oddly soothing clips of Thai street vendors cooking their wares: in the video above, check out a fried mussel dish prepared in less than four minutes. The LA Times heads north this week to seek out culinary finds in Ventura and Santa Barbara, respectively: first at new vegan restaurant, Mary's Secret Garden, and then at the Santa Barbara outpost of......

If Hollywood's Thai Town has a center, it is the bustling block of Thailand Plaza. The two-story Plaza houses not only a restaurant, but is home to a Thai bookstore and a giant, well-stocked grocery. Thailand Plaza is easily identifiable by its elaborately decorated shrine to the Thai Buddha of four faces. Off to the side stands a spirit house, meant to entice spirits to take up residence. The idea is they will be so......

Pink's, shminks. No, honestly. Who wants to stand in that line on a hot summer afternoon just to get a middling dog covered in shitty chili on top of an untreated white flour bun? Not me, dudes and dudettes: but I sure will walk far (twenty minutes tops, depending on footwear and levels of drunkenness) for a Skooby's Hot Dog. I want my bun infused with garlic, my dog compact with flavor and deep-fried......

Leslie Landis is an enigma, wrapped in a vintage coat, eating a hot dog, wrapped in bacon. This LA-based interior decorator with rising “it-girl” status has gained widespread attention for her fiercely held aesthetic and unmatched intellectual understanding of design. She boasts a devout social following that rivals Andy’s Factory, and her Silver Lake bicycle gang is not to be trifled with either. Leading the ascent of LA’s art elite with a modern bent that......

Earlier this year, International Creative Management (ICM) and Creative Artists Agency (CAA) moved their offices from Beverly HIlls to within the city limits of Los Angeles in Century City. Score one for LA where expensive high power lunches turn in to tax revenue for city coffers (we're talking "a side of assorted mushrooms sells for $21 and a Wagyu rib-eye costs $98"). One problem though, Century City choices were slim for Hollywood agents: The......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

Can you eat 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes? Well, Joey Chestnut of Vallejo, CA can - he was this year's champion of the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest , beating out six-time winner Takeru Kobayashi for the Mustard Belt. Our good friends over at Gothamist liveblogged the whole affair, which took place yesterday at Coney Island (natch); even Mayor Bloomberg himself showed up to check out the dog-tastic proceedings. Kobayashi has been......

Like most people, I have gone through my vegetarian phases, my vegan phases and the worst of all - my low-carb phase. So my cooking is pretty versatile. I have a lot of vegan friends who love barbecues, and it only takes a few minor changes to make them more comfortable. Even if you are super-carnivorous, you can still host a barbecue that will make your vegan friends happy. First of all, you want......

Hot dogs and pizza. I may be the last of a dying breed of carnivores in Southern California, so whenever I get a chance to eat not just white, red, but pink kosher meat, I take it! Yep, at Costco you can get a Hebrew National hot dog AND drink for only $1.50. All that sweet goodness for only that much? It’s true and scrumptious. If you’re not into biting the juiciest hot dog......

Dodgers 5, Pirates 4 - Brad Penny was taxed for four runs in six innings, but Los Angeles cashed in with three runs in the seventh and two in the eighth to keep his record at 7-1. Andre Ethier hit the two-run shot that put the Dodgers ahead for good. Grady Little watched most of the game from the clubhouse after arguing with the ump in the fourth. He's the fifth major league manager to......

Did any of you catch Bobby Flay's Throwdown the other night? It's the show where he goes to different cities across the world and challenges some legendary food purveyor that his version of whatever traditional city food they're making will win a blind taste test. Usually, he loses, cause I mean COME ON: can anybody really make a cheese steak better than a Philly native? What about fish n' chips from some grotty bar......

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us. Austinist has a chat with the ever-fashionable Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, and managed to catch some local fashionistas making......

Every time I’m driving up La Brea and I see that line of hungry hot-dog cravers snaking up the street, I gotta shake my head – seriously, people? You’d wait in that line? For a hot dog? And for Christ’s sake, where are all you people parking? Don’t get me wrong – I love Pink’s as much as the next girl, and I’ve certainly indulged in my fair share of that famous chili cheesiness......

- (1) Go to Circuit City today after 2pm, (2) ask if they have Super Paper Mario in stock, (3) if they don't have it in stock ask and then receive a Circuit City $20 gift card, (4) dance around with your free $20, (5) thank your pals at LAist and at - Joystiq - A state panel in Oxnard basically killed any hope for a floating offshore natural gas terminal to be built......

With a weekend 3-game sweep of the elderly San Francisco Giants under their collective belt, the Dodgers (4-2) open their regular season home schedule at Dodger Stadium this afternoon against the Colorado Rockies (3-3). Prized off-season acquisition Jason Schmidt (1-0) is scheduled to start, and his first pitch is scheduled for 1:10pm. For those taking an extra long lunch today (and you know who you are, as this one's already sold out), here's what......

Austinist gets arty with an interactive guide to SXSW, loved some local art galleries and a new art exhibit and lamented the possible loss of "Friday Night Lights" production to New Mexico. Bostonist was happy they finally found an Anna Nicole Smith connection to their fair city and that an Apple Store was opening up. They were less happy that new rules have been established limiting underage shows and that their Governor spending a......