Mural or Graffiti? City Draws Line

L.A. is cracking down on wall art, ordering businesses to redo or remove works
by Daniel Hernandez
LA Times (original post 8.25.05)
8.31.06- Los Angeles is often called the mural capital of the world — and no place is this truer than on the streets of Boyle Heights, where hundreds of walls at pharmacies, general stores, guitar shops and even churches have been transformed into urban artwork.

The murals depict Mexican American history, advertise businesses and take the form of abstract art at the hands of graffiti taggers.

But now some residents complain that they cannot tell some of the murals from the illegal graffiti that have long plagued the area. So the city is cracking down.
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Grist: McRae and I can't wait for X Games

by Rob Wilkins
World Rally News
8.01.06- Nicky Grist has said that he and Colin McRae are really looking forward to the X Games Rally event in the USA this week, which runs from August 2-6.

Grist and McRae were confirmed for the event in Los Angeles, California, back in May, when the organisers announced that they would drive a Sobe No Fear Gold Energy Drink-backed Subaru Impreza WRX STI rally car prepared by Vermont SportsCar, the same group that manages the Subaru Rally Team USA for Subaru of America.

"We are off to California soon because we are competing in a competition called the 'X Games', which is a televised event through-out the US," Grist told Crash.net Radio recently at the Rallyday 2006. "It is the first time they have ever run it for rally cars.

"They have run it for motocross and tricks, where they do these rotating spins and all that kind of carry on, but now they are having this purpose made part for rally cars and it is the first time it is going to be used. They have invited us to go over there and compete against the top American championship runners, so we will see how we get on."
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Bad education: HBO's 'The Wire' fourth season hits the books

by Curt Holman
Creative Loafing
9.06.06- Since debuting in 2002, HBO's police procedural drama "The Wire" has doggedly picked up several honors, including a Peabody Award and an Emmy nomination for writing. Measured against the program's high standards and lofty ambitions, such honors seem almost comically inadequate. Where is "The Wire's" Pulitzer Prize? Where is its Nobel?

"The Wire" braves such enormous scope that it seems worthy of the company of literature more than other TV programs. On the surface, the cop show focuses on a special police wiretapping unit that targets West Baltimore drug dealers. But each 12- or 13-episode season attains a breadth and attention to detail like one of those Dickensian social realist novels championed by Tom Wolfe. Such established novelists as Dennis Lehane (Mystic River) and Richard Price (Clockers) write for the episodes, which become thrilling exposés of civic institutions. Police departments, dockworkers' unions and even drug gangs all emerge as dysfunctional fixtures of city life.
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L.A.'s famous graffitti hot spot, Belmont Tunnel, may become a sanctioned landmark

A relic of Los Angeles' Red Car trolley era has become a shrine of sorts to graffiti. Now a developer wants to build on the site.

by Daniel Hernandez
LA Times
8.31.06- In its heyday 60 years ago, the Belmont Tunnel was a prime passageway into Los Angeles, an early experiment in using a subway to move people across the city. Thousands of Red Car trolley passengers traversed it daily in their journey between downtown and Hollywood.

Today, the darkened tunnel set into a hill just west of downtown's gleaming skysers is an outpost of urban decay.

The ground is littered with garbage and spray-paint cans. A building that once served as an electric substation for the trolleys is now a hollow, reeking, concrete shell. And nearly every bit of paintable surface — walls, rails, even the bark on a few scruffy trees — is covered with graffiti.
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