I was standing in a long line at the ATM on the parking lot side of the Sunset & Vine WaMu when I noticed an LAPD car circle around the parking lot and then pull up to the red zone just to the right of the access ramp. The driver left the car running, got out and came and stood in the painfully-slow-and-not-moving-very-fast line. We had time to chat. Lots of time to chat.......

That was an eighth of some $80 weed. 510 Kush. Photo by Anti/LAist digg_url = 'http://digg.com/world_news/California_to_Legalize_Weed_for_Everyone'; There is an initiative in the works that could end up on the November ballot that allows for marijuana to be sold to anyone, and anywhere that already sells alcohol. Its being called The Inalienable Rights Enforcement Initiative. From the full text of the measure: This initiative will amend the Constitution of California to defend and safeguard the......

As gas prices hit all-time highs, so is the Internal Revenue Service's mileage rate standard, which is currently 50.5 cents. Next Tuesday, it will be raised to 58.5 cents, a move that is usually saved for the Fall, but like with Hurricane Katrina when gas prices spiked, the IRS made a mid-year adjustment, which will last through the end of the year. Current gas prices in Los Angeles have been averaging out to a steady......

Surfing on the Wall, by Carlito_Brigante via LAist Featured Photos Pool on Flickr. In the wee hours of the morning, a cop driving west on Victory Boulevard in Van Nuys crashed his patrol car into a tree in order to avoid a collision with another driver who was believed to have been under the influence. The suspected DUI driver allegedly was driving away from a bar, and got away after the cop's crash. A......

Photo by Here in Van Nuys via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency is testifying to a Congress panel that he was not pressured into shutting down California's attempts to create its own global-warming laws: "It was Johnson's first appearance on Capitol Hill since he acted last month, and he drew the ire of not only Boxer, his usual critic, but other Democratic senators whose states......

Mr. Negative is tired of watching the GOP candidates pussy-foot around the hardcore questions that YouTube and CNN are dishing. Mr. Negative ain't stupid, he knows what you're really saying. With immigration reform failing, will I have a job? Yes, there are still openings at Wal-Mart...but they don't provide health insurance. Actually most corporations are moving towards eliminating all benefits for the working class. But $1.99 tube socks, you just can't fuckin' beat that!......

This sounds fun... or not: the Apartment Owners Association Convention is this week at the convention center downtown. Here's another fun fact: they will be discussing how they can get the California rent control laws abolished, according to a number of housing advocate groups, including the locally based Coalition for Economic Survival and Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights, in a press release this week: Dozens of seniors, elected officials, mobilehome tenants and tenants’ rights......

Hide the knives, Joan Didion: the Santa Anas are coming! The Santa Anas are coming! The new assistant director over at the Los Angeles branch of the FBI has experience in the domestic terror, white-collar crime, and foreign relations divisions; he has also spent time in Mexico City as an FBI legal attache. This week's Sign of the Apocalypse: kids as young as thirteen and fourteen are now getting into the paparazzi business. We......

Steve Hymon at the LA Times is asking if anyone out there has any ideas for funding the 'subway to the sea', which is estimated to cost around $5-billion. The scary thing about even just $1-billion is that it equals out to one thousand x one million. So to fund the Purple Line, you've got to dole out $1-million dollars five-thousand times over. Eek! So here is one crazy idea: Sure, simple math dictates......

It seems the Bush's appointed Transportation Secretary, Mary Peters, has something in common with Mayor Villaraigosa's appointed Department of Transportation head, Gloria Jeff: both are for goods movement, but not always for the people. Luckily, Jeff has not started any major wars with bicyclists like Peters' has, according to an article in Salon, with her current political rhetoric:In an Aug. 15 appearance on PBS's "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," Peters spoke against a proposal to......

OUT TODAY: Junior Senior - Hey Hey My My Yo Yo (Rykodisc) [MP3]: “We R The Handclaps” via Fluxblog Eisley - Combinations (Reprise / Wea) [MP3]: “Invasion” via Lullabyes Linda Thompson - Versatile Heart (Rounder) [MP3]: “Beauty (feat Antony)” via Homo Eclectic The Wildbirds - Golden Daze (Universal Republic) [MP3]: “Way Down Low” via Come Pick Me Up You Say Party! We Say Die! - Lose All Time (Paper Bag) [MP3]: “Giant Hands” via......

It doesn't get much better than this. For those of you looking to score a (legal) break on your 2007 taxes, 93.1 Jack FM is offering 50 pairs of tax-deductible pit tickets for "Jack's Second Show." The concert will take place on Aug. 18 at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater and will feature Stevie Nicks, ZZ Top, Sugar Ray, Stray Cats and The Pretenders. The first 50 people to purchase a pair of $500 pit......

While Sacramento scrambles to cut hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for public transportation and other programs around the state, a serious group of underground marijuana professionals are offering to pay at least a billion dollars in taxes, if only California would legalize pot. A coalition of California marijuana growers and dealers has offered Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger one billion dollars to solve the current state budget crisis. The group, calling itself Let Us......

Once while driving down the freeway from Santa Clarita into the LA over the Newhall Pass, I came upon a boat. No, not some truck pulling a boat. But a speed boat sitting in lane one (that's the furthest left lane). It obviously became detached from a vehicle. But where were they? There was no one pulled over looking distraught. DID THEY NOT NOTICE?!!? So I called 911 because that is what you are......

Guest Day Editor LA City Nerd will be joining LAist with a few posts throughout the day. Read the introductory interview here and check out the nerd's blog. As most citizens know, the taxes they pay support the services the government provides. On April 15th, people line up to pay Uncle Sam and the State with income taxes that support things like the FDA and Caltrans, respectively. But when it comes to the City, the......

I received an e-mail today from Netflix. Usually I delete those messages right away, assuming they're advertising something or encouraging me to sell Netflix to my friends. But the subject line on this one caught my eye: "We're lowering the price of your Netflix plan!" ME?? MY NETFLIX PLAN IS CHEAPER?!? YAY!! I have the one-at-a-time unlimited plan (meaning I get one DVD at a time, but as many as I can watch and......

Santa Clarita may have no business tax like Los Angeles, but they really have it in for signs. A 1990 sign ordinance does not allow tall billboard like signs (like the ones you may see from the freeway) within city limits. Until last year, the city gave businesses an opportunity to take down their signs within a long grace period. Then they got hardcore: On Thursday, March 16, 2006, the City of Santa Clarita......

Earlier this month, Pennsylvania Gov. Rendell "ordered the partial government shutdown because without an approved budget, the state no longer had authority to spend money on nonessential services." What did that mean? Even with a $650 million surplus, nonessential service employees got some time off work unpaid. That meant state DMVs, roadwork, park rangers, etc. Not an ideal situation, but Rendell pulled the dramatic card gaining national headlines. Now what if Gov. Schwarzenegger did that......

And this 'Subway to the Sea' is not just about funding at this point and time. Try planning studies, preliminary engineering, and environmental clearance according to Metro CEO Roger Snoble in the LA Times. But hey, all those steps take funding. Villaraigosa's office over the last year has been quietly gauging whether the public would agree to foot the bill. In one of the many private polls it has commissioned on a variety of......

Between the competitive NL West, the blazin’ Brewers, and the surging Indians, there are more compelling stories out there than what A-Rod’s bitter wife wore to a game and what the Bronx Bums aren’t doing....

In a move only baffling if you thought that President Bush and his administration had hit rock bottom, today the President gave Scooter Libby a get out of jail free card on his convictions of obstruction of justice and perjury. But it's deeper than all of that. Scooter Libby was convicted on a National Security charge prosecuted by a Republican prosecutor and sentenced by a Republican judge. Libby was helping to cover up the......

Ken Layne is the West Coast editor of Wonkette.com. Each week he makes another ridiculous claim about his LAist feature: This week, it's apparently a real-estate column or something! How about paying $1,500 a month for 30 years for a no-bedroom loft over a single-car garage in a cramped corner of Echo Park? With six grand per year in property taxes and insurance and maintenance, that's $24,000 a year for three decades -- $720,000 in......

A resident in our neighbor city to the north is using YouTube to advocate against a proposed tax by the City of Santa Clarita to help purchase open space. Both sides have good points (nature is good/over development is bad vs. the program sunsets in 30 years, therefore the city can then sell(out) for development) and some very weak ones too (development causes crime vs. "it's really not a green belt"). This is the......

- Happy Mother's Day! 88-year-old grandma of six, Rose Gilbert, is the "oldest full-time teacher in Los Angeles Unified School District, apparently the oldest in California and one of the oldest in the nation." - Talking the future of Little Tokyo. - A profile of the husband-wife team that owns the paparazzi agency, X17, Inc. - More on the 'kinda' palm tree ban. - Threatening to blow up a newspaper building because you didn't......

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......

You know that nagging feeling that maybe that online tax filing software didn't fully do the trick? I'm nearly certain I filed my taxes weeks early (which felt weird in itself) only to continually receive e-mails from TurboTax with subjects screaming "TIME IS RUNNING OUT!" and "12 Days Left, User ID enclosed." I'm pretty sure these are the result of the "free version" I sampled at TurboTax online before biting the bullet and installing......

LAist just cruised by our local post office in Los Feliz and we were pleasantly surprised by how short the lines were there. Far better than a normal Tuesday - probably because all of the counters were open for business - imagine that!. For those of you who like to live on the edge, as long as your envelopes to the IRS are postmarked by today you're cool. The following Nine post offices are......

Although you don't need to have your taxes postmarked until tomorrow (thanks again, Honest Abe!), those of you who feel the need to haul 200 baby shower invites into the post office oughtta think again - this is stand in line to mail off your taxes time, and unless you are some sadist intent on being glared at by a bunch of your neighbors, come back on Wednesday with your colorful envelopes. Good Los......

Now that the winds seem to have subsided, we're ready to dive into what promises to be a beautiful weekend, and we're pretty much ready for it to start now. Say it with us: T.G.I.F! Doesn't that feel good? We thought we'd tell you what we were up to this weekend, in case you needed a little inspiration, or in case you wanted to tell us something else you think we can't afford to......

Curated by… Guy Maddin Bizarro Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin (Tales From The Gimli Hospital, Careful, The Saddest Music In The World) has been invited to curate a program of films culled from the extensive collection of the UCLA Film Archive. His choices include On Dangerous Ground, Make Way for Tomorrow, Ministry of Fear and a slew of his own short films, all of which will screen over the next couple of weeks. But tonight Maddin......