Summer

The first Peking to Paris rally was run in 1907. Despite two thousand applicants, only 5 cars actually arrived at the dock in Beijing and the winner was an Italian prince named Scipione Borghese, who drove a 45 horsepower Italia. Apparently, he didn’t endear himself to his fellow competitors when, upon arriving at the first hotel in Mongolia and discovering that it had 5 …

Generations of Southern Californians have warmed themselves by the flickering light of the fire pits at the public beaches of Newport Beach. But now the city wants to eliminate them, calling the iconic devices a health hazard—and the South Coast Air Quality Management District might agree.
Standing in the city’s way, though, are beachgoers and the California Coastal Commission, who say the pits are an …

Below is video of Paralympian Angela Madsen during an early morning shot put training session at Lakewood High School.

The 2012 Olympic Games in London are over, but there’s still lots of sweating and cheering to do in the British capital as the Paralympic Games, the premiere international sporting event for the world’s disabled athletes, start in London. More than 4,000 athletes representing over 160 …

There are those who prefer to battle loneliness with a drink at a “clean well-lighted place” —as Hemingway put it—and then there are KCRW listeners, who clearly favor a side of grit and grime with their beer.
After we reported yesterday on dramatic changes coming to the legendary King Eddy Saloon, we got about 100 responses on our Facebook page. Comments ranged from remembrances of …

Los Angeles has become an epicenter of the art world, thanks in large part to the museums founded here in the post-war decades. These new museums have received global acclaim, but have had to grow and change quickly under intense public scrutiny. They have worked to balance popularity, critical success, and fiscal responsibility—as well as the question of which constituencies to put first. How …

UPDATED 8/14/12:
Today is the first day of school for students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Over the next few weeks, millions of students and teachers around California will be getting ready for the start of the new school year; and as teachers and staff gear up for another year of English, history, algebra, what-have-you, they’re facing another, bigger challenge—how to provide a …

On this week’s  Unfictional, we hear stories about “the shadow the Olympics cast over us” and what happens to people after they’ve had their Olympic moment. “There is no de-training program to introduce you to the real world again.”

First, KCRW’s Matt Holzman meets a man who won a gold medal at the Olympics in 1968. Surprisingly, he really doesn’t like to talk about it very much.

Andrew …

A Londoner by birth, but a resident of Los Angeles since the mid-nineties, it seemed appropriate and terrifically exciting to be attending two Olympic sporting events that I associate with Southern California: Basketball and Beach Volleyball. Tickets to the Olympics games are like gold dust so imagine my delight in finding two tickets courtesy of an American called Michael on Craigslist.  My nephew Tim, …

On Thursday at the Santa Monica Pier, you can get a slice of the usually pricey Cirque du Soleil…for free. The catch? There won’t be an acrobat contorting anywhere near by (at least not one employed by the famous performance group.)
It’s an evening showcasing musicians from various Cirque shows. There are seven of those shows on at the moment in Vegas alone, and Cirque’s …

Guy Adams is Los Angeles bureau chief for the British newspaper The Independent.  He’s been very vocal these last few days about his disapproval of NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. He’s far from the only one.
But now his Twitter account has been suspended, after he tweeted the work email of an NBC executive and NBC filed a complaint.
For more on this, KCRW’s Steve Chiotakis …

What’s the difference between a guy sitting on a street corner drinking a beer, and ladies serenely sipping blush while listening to summer music at an outdoor venue?
Well, as it turns out, nothing.  Which is why, for the first time in its 26 year history, the audience at free series-sandwiched-among-office towers, Grand Performances, has been warned: Put away the hootch, or you’ll get busted.
To …

If you’re the nervous type, then you probably don’t want to hear about the innumerable things that could go wrong when NASA’s $2.5 billion Curiosity rover descends from the outer Martian atmosphere to the surface of our red neighbor in the late night hours of August 5th. NASA itself has dubbed the landing “Seven Minutes of Terror.” From a heat shield that will have …

Willy Blackmore is Los Angeles Editor for Tasting Table. He sent this dispatch after his tasting tour of the Expo Line.

The exit signs that demarcate the 10 freeway are more helpful as markers of progress (or lack thereof) than as invitations into the neighborhoods at the end of each off-ramp. When traffic-bound on the 10, I treat Fairfax as my median, and know …

If Los Angeles seems a little quieter this weekend, that’s because it is. Some of Los Angeles’ best geek-culture focused institutions have headed down to sunny San Diego for this year’s Comic-Con. LA’s original comic book scene – one that brims with passion and excitement – will have a presence at the Con, even while many say it’s ballooned into an overblown pop culture …

Get out your SPF and bikini and get ready to stroll Ocean Front Walk in Venice this weekend for the other Venice Bienniale. Not content to have launched the Los Angeles version of the fabled art Biennials that occur in other cities, now the Hammer is extending “Made in LA 2012″ beyond the museum and gallery walls and out to the sand. Well, close …

It’s been an enormously destructive fire season in the American West, with tens of thousands of acres and hundreds of homes burned up in Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and other states. So far, California hasn’t had a big blaze, but all the ingredients, such as tinderbox dryness in wilderness areas and a lack of rain, are there to turn a small fire into a roaring …

Charlie Brown’s pal Schroeder in the comic strip Peanuts was inspired by him.  So were the Beatles.  It turns out Austrian artist Gustav Klimt was among the legions of people who dug Ludwig von Beethoven, a rock star in his day, too. So much so that Klimt painted a masterwork known as the Beethoven Frieze directly onto a wall during an exhibit in 1902.  …

In our final KCRW Summer Road Trip we trade motors for muscles. Our guest, Jennifer Klausner, is the director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.

She recommends a favorite cycling trip known as the “Fruit Loop.” It takes experienced riders (emphasis on experienced) from Pacific Coast Highway way up into the Santa Monica Mountains, where the reward for lots of pedaling and sweating are …

This post comes via Zócalo Public Square:
The Chlorinated Water and Scantily Clad Bodies of Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography 1945-1982
No dream of Southern California is complete without a swimming pool. What started as a totem of status and privacy became, in the postwar years, an affordable luxury for middle-class families who wanted a taste of the celebrity lifestyle. Even the empty pool …

For most of us, the roads we travel on are just that, roads, functional ways to get from the proverbial Point A to Point B. But for some people, there’s an awful lot of life history and memories bound up in certain stretches of pavement.
That’s the case with novelist Jervey Tervalon, author of such books as “Dead Above Ground,” “Understand This,” and “All the …