A couple of the chapters in my 2001 book, The San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb, deal with the history of the Los Angeles Aqueduct and how abundant water changed the city and the valley. It holds ...

Wilshire Boulevard is a natural place for Sunday's Ciclavia — it runs through the heart of the city's geography, history and culture. I'm a bit biased. I wrote a book on the role of Wilshire Boulevard ...

Women in MacArthur Park in 1968. William Reagh took 40,000 photographs of Los Angeles and Southern California from the 1930s until 1991, chronicling a time of huge change in the cityscape and the ...

Jimi Hendrix at Devonshire Downs, June 22, 1969. Photo courtesy of Steve Roth archive/Ventura Boulevard magazine I've written several times about Newport '69, the rock festival in the middle of the ...

Top photo: Gary Leonard. Others: LA Observed. Click on any photo to see it larger. There wasn't much to see or buy — it was the second weekend of the sale at the Bob and Dolores Hope estate, and there ...

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 ...

SF Muni's F car. LA Observed photo. It wasn't until I was in the Army (my gap year before college — actually two years) that this Los Angeles native realized that Angelenos and Northern Californians ...

Johnny Perez came out of San Antonio as the drummer of the 1960s band Sir Douglas Quintet, which had hits with 'She's About a Mover" and "Mendocino." Perez landed in Topanga Canyon and more recently ...

Willie Nelson, beardless and braidless, at the Palomino in 1970. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images at LA Magazine's website Before everyone forgets that LA's music lore includes North Hollywood, Los ...

Even the Mayans didn't believe the world would end today. But there is a cool semi-ancient, quasi-celestial event that happens around here on the winter solstice. By legend, anyway, today is when the ...

David Davis, who writes about sports for Los Angeles Magazine, the LA Times and other publications — and an emeritus contributor to LA Observed — has a new ebook published this week about a fairly ...