In 1981, a young writer named David Brodsly described the Los Angeles freeway as one of the city's indispensible metaphors, “one of the few parts capable of standing for the whole.” He argued that the freeway had expanded “the realm of the accessible” for drivers in Southern California — that it was a powerfully democratic force, in essence — and lent “a new clarity” to a vast metropolitan region that newcomers had long found illegible and tough to grasp.

With a little help from his friends, the L.A. producer's label took the beats scene to the world (and Kendrick Lamar's speed-dial).

About 13,000 people on public assistance tumble into homelessness every month in Los Angeles County, according to a new study that experts say provides the clearest picture yet of extreme poverty in the region. Although many quickly find work or rely on family to get off the streets, the number experiencing "continuous, unremitting, chronic homelessness" continues to grow, even after 10,000 people were housed over the last three years, according to the report...

The Los Angeles Police Department will begin rolling out body cameras next month, the first stage of a program that will eventually become the largest in the U.S. The LAPD, which has been studying the technology for two years, will begin introducing the first batch of a total of 7,000 cameras next week, according to the LA Times. The first 860 cameras, paid for by private donations of around $1.5 million, will be gradually deployed over the next month.

On any given day in artist Lauren Bon’s Metabolic Studio, a cavernous warehouse on the edge of Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles, you’re as likely to run into a water-rights attorney, a well-connected political fixer, a staffer from a city agency, an engineer, a fabricator, or even a brewer, as you are the artist... By Jon Christensen.

A golden moon hung over the city, and as night deepened the crowd lounging off Hope Street grew giddy. People swigged beer, marijuana spiced the air, hip-hop streamed from a sound system. It felt like a gritty picnic, minus food. A yell from a guy with a Hawaiian shirt and a clipboard signalled business, however, and the hundred-strong crowd promptly lined the sidewalk, expectant. The race was about to begin. About two dozen riders, many in Lycra, some in jeans...

Filmed in the Montemarte districts' subterranean Social Club in Paris, check out the first video from elusive LA producer and vocalist, ZHU. Directed and Edited by ZHU.

If scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena are correct, a moderately-sized earthquake is expected within the next two-and-a-half years. JPL experts predict a possible 5.0 magnitude quake in Los Angeles, but say it very well could be stronger. JPL geophysicist Dr. Andrea Donnellan, along with seven other scientists, has been using radar and GPS to measure Southern California’s chances for a sizable earthquake, and has made a sobering hypothesis about another big one.

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to require gun owners to store their firearms in locked containers or install trigger locks when not using them. Under the ordinance, handguns will need to be disabled and kept on the owner's person or within close enough proximity that it is in the owner's control. The measure aims to prevent guns from falling into the hands of children who may accidentally fire the weapons.

On January 27, 2013, 21-year-old Elisa Lam stepped off a train from San Diego in downtown Los Angeles, gathered her belongings, and walked to a hostel on Main Street. It was, like most every mid-winter day in LA, sunny and in the mid-60s, the kind of weather that makes people never want to leave. Under such conditions — when a warm, low-angle winter sun softens the entire landscape — it’s possible to not fully absorb the reality that this 54-block section of LA...

A look at the lavish 100,000-square-foot gigamansion that is under construction on a hilltop in Bel Air for no one in particular.

Special suite at LAX will let stars and the world’s wealthy glide directly from their limo to their first-class seat without having to interact with the public. Welcome to the 1%’s new airport terminal. Los Angeles international airport on Thursday won approval to build a special terminal to allow celebrities, sports stars and the world’s wealthy to glide directly from their chauffeur-driven limo to their first-class seat without having to interact with any of the general travelling public.

Nov 19 A security alert over a report of an unauthorized person trying to board a JetBlue Airways plane at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday apparently was triggered by an off-duty pilot who ended up taking another flight instead, airport police said. The situation at the airport unfolded when an individual dressed in a pilot's uniform was seen by an airline employee attempting to enter a New York-bound JetBlue flight through...

A Los Angeles undertaker wants to end our estrangement from death by bringing corpses back home. By Rebecca Mead.

Carrie Kirshman and Nina Giovannitti were close neighbors at their Spanish villa apartments in Fairfax, sharing keys, collecting each other's mail and tending to a communal garden in the backyard. Their rent-controlled building allowed them to enjoy below-market rents of less than $2,000 a month for their two-bedroom pads in the upscale neighborhood. That came to an end in late 2013 when the owners evicted them under the Ellis Act, a state law that allows...

They were soft-spoken teenagers — next-door neighbors growing up in a suburban tract in Riverside. But the bond Syed Rizwan Farook and Enrique Marquez formed a decade ago was tight. They began visiting a local mosque, discussing Islamic radicalism and amassing weapons and explosives. Then, four years before the San Bernardino massacre, they hatched terrifying schemes, according to federal prosecutors.

One of the worst environmental disasters of the decade is currently underway in a quiet community 25 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Putrid, methane-rich natural gas has been spewing into the air at an estimated rate of nearly 1,300 metric tons per day for over two months. Experts are calling it the climate version of the BP oil spill, and the leak isn’t going to be contained anytime soon.

A mysterious mansion hidden in the hills of Los Angeles remains frozen in time since December 6, 1959. During that dark night, a doctor murdered his wife in a frenzied hammer attack, and then killed himself. Fifty years later, visitors started reporting paranormal activity. Now the abandoned house is the focus of an Internet obsession. This is the true story of 2475 Glendower Place. By Jeff Maysh.

Since a gas leak erupted outside LA on October 23rd, over 83,000 metric tons of methane have escaped to the atmosphere, prompting public officials to evacuate the neighboring community of Porter Ranch. But as a disturbing new analysis shows, a much broader swath of LA is now drowning in methane. The Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET) is a Cambridge-based nonprofit that’s been shedding light on leaky natural gas infrastructure for years.

Dorner's rampage, targeting officers and their families, set the law enforcement community on edge for more than a week. Thinking they had spotted his pickup truck, the LAPD officers opened fire shortly before 6 a.m. on Feb. 7, 2013, shooting the truck Margie Hernandez and Emma Carranza were inside and injuring both of them. In a memo released Wednesday, the L.A. County District Attorney's Office said there was "insufficient admissible evidence to prove beyond...