The boys on Larchmont in "False Alarms," with an LA Railway yellow car passing by. What is it about non-Angelenos becoming so obsessed with old filming locations that they spend years tracking down ...

Downtown chronicler Ed Fuentes blogs at View from a Loft that the sign for Gorky's Russian cafe still hangs over the corner of 8th and San Julian streets. It's kind of like looking back in time at the ...

Sandstone Retreat was a clothing-optional refuge in Topanga Canyon that began in the late 1960s and survived efforts by the county to shut it down. John Williamson opened the retreat with his wife, ...

There was a time — several decades actually — when cruising Van Nuys Boulevard at night to see and be seen was a major youth culture tradition in Los Angeles, and especially for teenagers (the real ...

Claud Beelman was one of those Los Angeles architects whose work spanned eras and dramatic changes in style. He encompassed noteworthy LA examples as different as the Eastern Columbia building ...

Freelance videojournalist Abraham Riesman was sent in 2012 to do a story for Punch on Paul Mazursky's morning gathering of old Hollywood hands (and a few younger ones) at Farmers Market. The table ...

Jeffrey Ressner began his journalism career as a messenger at the LA Weekly, and from 1993-2007 was a Time correspondent in Los Angeles. He was also a writer for Rolling Stone, US Weekly, the ...

John Dominis photo of publicity-averse actor Steve McQueen and wife Neile Adams soaking in a sulphur bath at Big Sur in 1963. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image. In the exalted circle of Life magazine ...

Two decades ago, a Los Angeles Public Library librarian named Carolyn Kozo Cole assumed responsibility for the library's treasured photograph collection. She found, time and again, that vast swaths of ...

Several LA Observed regulars knew right away that the mystery Jurgensen's Grocery sign I posted last week can be found on Glendon Avenue in Westwood Village. It's on the north-facing wall of the 1929 ...

Between 1964 and 1966, popular Los Angeles radio deejay Sam Riddle hosted a Saturday night dance show that was syndicated nationally from the KHJ studios in Hollywood. "Hollywood A Go-Go" featured ...

Westwood Village gained a new big store this week — one of the scaled-down urban Targets opening under the City banner. Its doors opened quietly on Tuesday, in the former Bullock's department store on ...