Conceptual view of a generic high speed rail station interior. | Photo by NC3D for the California High Speed Rail Authority This weekend, it was reported that the Sierra Club is still undecided on Proposition 1, which would authorize a $9.95 billion bond for High Speed Rail (as in less than three years to train it from Los Angeles to San Francisco). Sierra, along with the Conservation League, feel that the train's route through......

Going into F8 (the Facebook Developers Conference) yesterday, there was an expectation of learning something new and exciting about the uses of Facebook as a means of building a business, evangelizing a movement or business or brand (in LA all of that means preaching to others about yourself) and how Facebook now is going to help application developers make money on its platform.......

Photo by maxedaperture via Flickr Remember Walkscore, the website where you type in your address and the spit out a score rating the walkability of your neighborhood? Today, they released America's Most Walkable Neighborhoods and Los Angeles came out at #9. #9?!?! Well, it's not for the city as a whole, but rather for certain neighborhoods, specifically Mid City West, Downtown, Hollywood. Ahead one step of Los Angeles is Long Beach at number 8......

What High Speed Rail could look like in Burbank | Image by CHSR The California High-Speed Rail Authority announced the completion of the route yesterday. The project has been some 10 years in the making and this November, Proposition 1 (pdf) on the ballot will help determine the future of the project that would take passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in about 2 hours and 40 minutes by 2030. The last step......

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom took his first official steps to run for Governor by launching an exploratory committee today. He is the first Democrat to formally do so. Attorney General Jerry Brown also plans on trying to replace Schwarzenegger and as for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, he has been "discussed as a possible candidate, although he faces reelection in 2009, which could complicate any run for higher office," says the LA Times.......

Fundraising events when re-election campaigns are imminent are nothing all that noteworthy, unless you happen to be the Mayor of Los Angeles getting cash in another Mayor's territory, namely Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco. Tonight at the Neiman-Marcus store in SF's Union Square, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will be the central feature of an "invitation-only champagne reception" which is "expected to raise tens of thousands of dollars for his re-election bid next spring," reports SF......

California Shuttle Bus, a self-proclaimed "upscale" transport connecting Los Angeles and the Bay Area, has announced a new $5 service for those of us who would like to get from LA to SF without the hassle of high gas prices and expensive airfares. The new prices take effect beginning next Monday; the shuttle company is also offering expanded hours and pick-up/drop-off services for certain Westside neighborhoods. From the press release: "We have noticed increasing......

Struggling to attract customers with two in-and-out San Francisco flights a day, the Palmdale Regional Airport (which is owned by the city of Los Angeles) announced an additional two in-and-out flights in order to establish more flight frequency to draw customers. Staring September 3, there will be two morning flights, one afternoon and one evening flight from Palmdale plus two morning and two evening flights from San Francisco. Flights currently operate under capacity (last month......

Interchangeable wedding cake toppers as seen at the Renellie warehouse in Costa Mesa, CA (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) The big day has arrived and today, as of 5:01 p.m., the first same-sex couples in California will be married. But like in most counties, Los Angeles County will not officially begin ceremonies until tomorrow morning. Only three counties throughout the state -- Alameda, Sonoma and Yolo -- opted keep offices open after hours to perform marriages.......

Photo by manmadepants via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Atlanta may have received top honors this time around, but Los Angeles and San Francisco linger at the back of the top ten list for worst commutes in the country, according to a report released by Forbes. And to that, they compare some LA vs. SF statistics: Commuting Efficiency: "Los Angeles checks in at 20%. In San Francisco, an extremely efficient city, 28%......

Photo by Steve Deger via Flickr Thrifty bus service is not making the grade for Angelenos on the go to other cities via coach bus. "Maybe, truth be told, we were unable to get them out of their cars," Dale Moser, president of Megabus, told the LA Times about Californians not "warming up" to the service. "Quite frankly, the ridership hasn't been as robust as we'd like. We might just have to discontinue [the......

So, which city is more eco-friendly when it comes to building codes? After reading the LA Times, San Francisco comes out the winner, but that's not to say Los Angeles is some black hole of environmental actions. Both Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom want their respective cities to be the greenest in the country (doesn't every mayor say they want that?). Villaraigosa wants to lower greenhouse gases to 35%......

LAist has been at ad:tech SF 2008 this week - this is the second part of our report. ad:tech featured several keynotes and "power panels" (not to be confused with a fuse box) that were remarkable. There was an emphasis on how companies can effectively maintain their brand in this new media era of blogs, forums, and podcasts. Day one started off with Keynote Roundtable: The Art of Conversation - Building Great Brands in the......

LAist is at ad:tech SF to cover developments in media as well as how advertisers are planning on targeting you everywhere-anytime. There are ad:tech conferences all over the world but this is the big one with their annual awards ceremony and everything - winners were announced tonight and are HERE. (see tomorrow's post). If you think this is boring you should be aware that the method by which every ad is delivered to you on......

After this weekend's exposition games against the Boston Red Sox (the highlight being Saturday's Coliseum game), today was the first season game of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Playing against the San Francisco Giants, the Dodgers took it home at 5-0. Today was Joe Torre's debut game as manager. Says the Associated Press: "Torre, who grew up a Giants' fan in Brooklyn, managed the Yankees to 12 straight postseason appearances, including four World Series championships before......

Update, 5:32 p.m.: SFist reports that the bridge has reopened and the crash site has been cleared. Overall, nine people were injured, two of them with life-threatening injuries, including the infant. Check SFist for continuing updates to the storySan Francisco sister-site of or LAist, SFist, is reporting that all Southbound lanes of the Golden Gate Bridge are closed, and most northbound lanes were "moving very slowly" due to a motorcycle accident involving multiple cars on......

Just in time for St Paddy's Day, we check out some of the Irish coffees around town. Screw green beer. That stuff will kill you. After drinking many Irish Coffees in the name of serious scientific research, I have discovered a good Irish coffee relies on two relatively simple elements: the freshness of the coffee and use of real heavy cream #1 Tom Bergin's Tom Bergin's is known as the home of Irish coffee, at......

If you used to "Wake Up, San Francisco" but now wake up to a whole new reality, Bob Saget is still your man. This weekend Saget gave the most outrageous stand-up performance I've ever seen. While most people now realize that he works blue, it's impossible to capture just how dirty his comedy gets. Saget flew on stage with a mile-a-minute routine. He opened by using the mike as a phallace, and that was......

After a 5-month investigation, the Associated Press found that Los Angeles drinking water has traces of Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications. "To be sure," the AP noted "the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose." Across the nation, the report found tainted water supplies in 24 major metropolitan areas, five of those in California: Los Angeles: 2 (meprobamate and phenytoin)......

Photograph of investigation at Times Square recruiting center by kerfuffle & zeitgeist on Flickr Gothamist found that an explosive set off outside the Times Square army recruiting center may be similar to five past bombings in New York City.Seattlest worried when severed right feet and bottles of rat poison started washing up on local beaches.Shanghaiist was surprised by Bjork's rooting for Tibetan independence at her concert (see video), and the political fallout has only......

In 2000, California voters passed Proposition 22, which denied the freedom to marry for gay, lesbian and transgender couples. Today, the California Supreme Court heard oral arguments challenging that law. Maybe you remember back when Gavin Newsom, former Mayor of San Francisco, provided marriage licenses to same-sex couples and then those licenses were revoked. His actions were a challenge -- albeit one that didn't pan out -- to the law. Now, if the Court votes......

Photo by Andy Sternberg/LAist A posthumous tribute wall dedicated to singer/songwriter Elliott Smith sat defaced by graffiti for months on end -- LAist said enough, so did the fans and city council.SFist was surprised to learn that chronic presidential candidate Ralph Nader picked former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez as his running mate.Phillyist explored the possibilities of green cleaning.In the latest edition of Reel Toronto, a bi-weekly feature looking at films shot in Toronto......

Many LAist staffers, contributors and readers were deeply troubled by the news of Dutton's closure. We all have a favorite memory of Dutton's - a particular book we discovered there, an admired author we met at a reading, a certain afternoon spent browsing. We'd like to honor the many unique memories of Dutton's that we all share with a series of posts about what Dutton's meant to us and what it meant to you. Our......

This past week, LAist got a chance to travel up to San Francisco to check out the Game Developers Conference. GDC is universally known as one of the most fun and exciting of the industry's gatherings, where publishers, press, and lecture attendees convene to discover the latest in gaming technology. This year we got to see a ton of kickass stuff, including an exclusive look at the new Street Fighter title from Capcom and......

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......

"Banksy phone booth crashes Downtown LA?" by xxjetlab via LAist Featured Photos Pool on Flickr Five are dead and one person was hurt in an apparent murder-suicide in Yorba Linda, close to the Richard Nixon Library. A 14-year-old called in to report that his father had shot him. Police later found that the gunman shot his wife and 3 of his children before turning the gun on himself. As we have pointed out before,......

Photo credit: sniderscion Torontoist spent its week uncovering who was behind mysterious ads for a drug called "Obay" that popped up across the country (Scientology? Frank Shepard Fairey?), first tracing them to an advocacy group called Colleges Ontario and then confirming their suspicions a few days later.Phillyist learned how to put on a puppet show – it's not as easy as you might think!Shanghaiist discovers that the average starting monthly pay for fresh graduates......

Bargain airliner Skybus is adding a route into Burbank's Bob Hope Airport starting Monday. The airline has two US hubs, and has been operating flights to and from the one in Columbus, Ohio for some time now, and is now linking BUR with its other hub in Greensboro, North Carolina. The big draw with Skybus is that they sell ten seats on every flight for $10 each (plus all those pesky fees and taxes, of......

Photo by _e.t. via Flickr Whether you are a carnivore or herbivore, the question these days is about your locavore status. Does the word sound familiar to you? It won the 2007 New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year Award. Via VegNews Magazine: If you really want to lighten your carbon footprint, don' just go vegan, go locavore. That means buying food locally to avoid the burning of fossil fuels entailed by long-distance......

The last time, it was locally based artist Shepard Fairey. This time, it's the Coachella Valley natives Carlos Ramirez and Armando Lerma, known as The Date Farmers. Upper Playground, a San Francisco based online store and collective of artists, has asked the Date Farmers to create a campaign poster to be mass-distributed on offset posters throughout Texas prior to the primary on March 4th. "For too long we have been plagued by mediocrity and incompetence......