Month: November 2008

A preview Bike Night will be held for experienced and novice riders to come and enjoy the festival in a vehicle free activity just for bike riders.

In a time of financial insecurity, food security can be your personal safety net. Visit Eco-Home for the last Eco-Home Tour of 2008 on Sunday, December 14 from 2 P.M. to 4:30 P.M. In addition to learning how to begin or expand your personal urban garden, the tour will also display new technologies that will … Continued

Local urban planner/community activist James Rojas is Building Sustainable L.A! His interactive urban planning art project allows participants to reinvasion a green LA by using a medley of found objects.  Participants are invited to place these objects on a plot plan of the city and become part of the constantly changing urban environment.  This project allows people get comfortable with the city and channel their inner urban planner, envisioning public and civic amenities.

Once regarded strictly as vandalism, Graffiti artwork has pervaded our culture, appearing on everything from public spaces to album covers, t-shirts to cell phone wall paper, corporate ads to presidential campaigns. So what makes this visual expression, sometimes seen only as a nuisance, an art form? Join some of L.A.'s most prominent "writers" and creative thinkers for a discussion of graff.

This colloquium will spotlight SurveyLA, the City of Los Angeles' groundbreaking citywide historic resources survey project that represents a coming-of-age for preservation in Los Angeles. The engaging author and architectural critic Alan Hess will share his reflections on preserving the "recent past" from the mid-20th-century – from "Googie-style" coffee shops to the 1950s ranch house. And developer John Given of The CIM Group will bring a private sector perspective on the challenges and opportunities of historic preservation and adaptive reuse projects. Seating is limited; please RSVP by Wednesday, November 19th to Alice Lepis at alepis@prodigy.net (preferred); also at 818.769.4179

In 1902 Southern California was a collection of small farm towns. It was waiting for something to pull it together. That something was The Pacific Electric. This Was Pacific Electric is the story of the rise and fall of the "The World's Greatest Electric Railway." It is a complete history starting in 1872 with L.A.'s first horse car line and continuing through the last Red Car in 1961. The story is told using rare film footage, hundred of photographs, animated maps and extensive interviews. In fact, the PE Red Cars operated along Glendale Boulevard right outside of this facility and today, LARHF has installed a mini-museum open to the public in the Belmont Station Apartments located at the south end of Glendale Blvd. where the PE tracks used to disappear into a subway tunnel leading to the Subway Terminal Building on Hill and 4th Streets. Presented by the Los Angeles Railroad Heritage Foundation. http://www.larhf.org/

San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency gave the go-ahead Tuesday to curbside parking reform that will encompass a quarter of the metered spaces in the city -- about 6,000 spots. Under the 18-month pilot, called SFpark, the agency will vary prices for on-street parking and city-owned lots based on demand, intending to reduce unnecessary car trips and cut down on cruising for spaces.

It's official.  Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) defeated Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) in the race to be chair of the House of Representatives Energy Committee.  This is good news for Californians interesting inlobbying on behalf of a greener energy policy, after all there are few people as influential as the Energy Committee Chair, and for the environment in general.