The deets: 4.4, hit at 4:04 AM (numerologists take note), epicenter was Pico Rivera-ish. Looking around the web, it seems like nobody was hurt. Here are the data from the United States Geological Survey.

The upshot: Not too severe, but half the city, having felt the earthquake, looked at their alarm clocks and said, “ah, the hell with it, I’ll just get up,” will get really, really tired at around 2:00 in the afternoon today. So be aware of this if you’re driving or near heavy equipment at that time.

Seriously. If we are ever having a conversation, and at some point during this conversation you claim not to like pizza, I will look askance on any subsequent statements you make. Because you’re either a posing contrarian — in which j’accuse, dammit! — or your life experiences are so woefully extrinsic to my own that they cast a light of uncertainty onto all of our future interactions. Pizza is a pleasant constant, like sunshine or morning tumescence. If you don’t like it, there’s a good chance you’re part of the scouting vanguard of an impending alien invasion, and there are some things about humans you just can’t mimic. Nice try, you Cylon bastard.

I’m much more forgiving of people who don’t like good pizza, which is why I still have friends. I know guys from Cincinnati who think pizza should never flop over when you pick it up from the plate. I have friends from central Pennsylvania who think Pizza Hut is an acceptable option. I even have a native Texan friend who eats pizza by scraping the toppings off the crust with a fork. Whatever. Opinions differ.

Which is why I managed to retain my cool when my friend — we’ll call her “Heidi” to protect her anonymity, though just between us it’s her real name — struck up a conversation with my girlfriend Alanna and I the other day with this deceptively predicateless subject:

“So, guys, Mulberry Street Pizza…”

Knowing that Mulberry Street is generally — and wisely — agreed upon as the best pizza in Los Angeles, Alanna and I finished her sentence in unison:

“…I know, is awesome, right? Yes!”

And then, Heidi:

“…I was gonna say it sucked.”

Now, I like Heidi. I consider Heidi a good friend and a talented actress, which is why I initially thought she was putting us on. You know, actors like to practice their craft whenever they get a chance, and I thought she was simply playing an improvisational character with inadvisable taste in pizza. But no. She really didn’t like it. Which, as I’ve said, is cool; it’s not like she hates pizza altogether or anything. She’s no Cylon.

What followed, of course, was the conversation that always follows when someone expresses a strong opinion on a local pizza joint; three more people entered the conversation and injected their own feelings on the matter. Here, for your reading pleasure, are the highlights of that conversation.

Mulberry Street. Lots of people call this the gold standard for east coast pizza in LA, since it matches typical thin-crust pizzeria pizza from Boston on down to Philly. Some people will try to get you to call this “New York style pizza;” these people are likely New Yorkers themselves and should be stopped at all costs.

Vito’s. Alanna is a fan, though she claims that every time she’s had the chance to have Vito’s pizza it’s been three hours cold.

Garage Pizza. Another thin-crust wonder, the namesake pizza here is a cheeseburger pie topped with ground beef, pickles and Roma tomato slices. Much, much better than it sounds.

Damiano Mr. Pizza. The pride of Fairfax, this is another east coast pizza Mecca in LA.

Palermo’s. For fans of thicker crust, this is the place. Palermo’s piles on the cheese and toppings, so you may need to tackle this with a knife and fork.

Hard Times Pizza. Another thin-crust pizza, Hard Times again claims it serves “New York style pizza.” This is the way New York gets credit for everything: Once someone invents a dish, the New Yorkers come screaming up and name it. “This is some delicious New York style coq au vin!” you’ll hear them say. Or, “What a wonderful New York style Philly cheesesteak!”

Now, I’m not endorsing all of these places; I’ve actually never been to Vito’s, Hard Times or, despite my best efforts, Damiano. But this is what came up. My favorite, of course, is Mulberry Street, but as it’s in Beverly Hills and I live in Los Feliz, I tend to hit Garage Pizza more frequently (though Palermo’s is cheaper). But there they are.

So: When you get into the inevitable pizza conversation, what place do you mention first? What place is overrated?

Sea Monster Slides!

There are few things that I love more than a giant cement sea monster (those few things include giant cement dinosaurs, giant plaster donuts, and that’s about it).  And that is why I made the pilgrimage to San Gabriel this weekend, to Vincent Lugo Park, home of La Laguna de San Gabriel, better known as the Monster Park.  Metblogs covered the Monster Park a few years ago, when it was at risk of demolition, but it’s still standing, in no small part due to the fantastic work of the Friends of La Laguna, who were recently recognized by the LA Conservancy for their preservation efforts.  And god bless the Friends of La Laguna, because this place is basically amazing, and every child deserves the chance to play on a giant cement octopus.  The Monster Park is such a wonderful place – it’s such a departure from the sterile, unimaginative playground designs that you see everywhere.  I think that everyone should do themselves a favor and find a small child to take to La Laguna (please ask the small child’s parents for permission first).

Opening Day in 1965 - Courtesy of Friends of La Laguna

I also love this park because of its wacky, mid-century aesthetic.  The colors, the curving lines of the statues, and the unselfconscious whimiscalness remind me of the kind of mid-to-late-sixties animation you’d see in psychedelic movies like Yellow Submarine.  The park is the work of Mexican-American artist Benjamin Dominguez, who built several parks in and around California in the 1950s and 1960s.  The Monster Park is his last work, completed as he was turning 70, and I think that it stands as a testament that public art can be beautiful, and fun, and interactive.  And really, really awesome.

Eventually I found myself atop Bunker Hill, doing my best to avoid and placate the bike-bothered security guards first at the Music Center and then at California Plaza where I locked up and paid the 25-cent fair for the downhill trip on the funicular that would connect me to a meander through Grand Central Market.

Upon boarding I found myself standing behind a gentleman in a blindingly white leather blazer, and it didn’t take long to recognize him to be actor Nicolas Cage. Having been in the same high school drama class until he dropped out to go make “Valley Girl” and get his career launched, I toyed with the idea of asking if he remembered me and what brought him downtown, but instead I kept my yap snapped because I already knew the answer to the first question, and the the answer to the second dawned on me. He was probably on lunch between rehearsals for a little show called the 68th Academy Awards airing the next day from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, during which he would end up being presented with the best actor Oscar for “Leaving Las Vegas.”

As we disembarked onto to Hill Street, instead of making a fool of myself, I called out “Good luck tomorrow, Mr. Cage.”

“Huh? Oh. Thanks!” he said and we went our ways.

Coincidentally, he would star in “City of Angels” two years later, which features a scene with him standing on Hill Street with Angel’s Flight behind him, but wearing no angelically white coat.

I rode those short, steep rails several times after that in the six years it operated until the tragic accident in February 2001 that resulted in the death of a passenger and its closure. With the march of years since then my doubt grew whether historic cars Sinai and Olivet would ever roll again, but as of this morning  I’m thrilled that full-time operations have resumed (daily hours: 6:45 a.m. – 10 p.m.; one-way fare: 25 cents) and plan to board at my earliest opportunity… I’d hazard this time without Mr. Cage present.

OMG I have to run into Rite Aid real quick for my ointment

We like to post pictures here on Metblogs of the automotively challenged. Drivers who cannot park between the lines. We refer to them, affectionately, as Parking Tards.

But, friends, today we have something very special. A tard that overshoots the space completely, landing on the sidewalk.

Sherman Oaks. Riverside & Fulton.

Bravo.

Another angle of awesomeness after the jump.

I can park like this if I want because I drive a Lexus

This past Saturday the annual Fargo Street Hill Climb took place, organized by the Los Angeles Wheelmen. On a personal note, I’ve tried multiple years to make it up the 33% grade of what’s one of the steepest streets in the city/state/country/hemisphere/world/galaxy/universe, only to get psyched out staring up from the bottom of the massive frozen concrete-coated tsunami and miserably failing mid-way every time (here’s handlebar cam video of my 2006 attempt). On another personal note, my eyes went wide when I cracked open today’s paper. I’ve never seen the unique event get such mega-play in the LA Times, not only with a front page photo, but a story on its inside LATeXTRA section as well.

It’s enough to make me vow to try again next year.

Venice has always had a history of being the shady part of the west side. This isn’t news to anyone who lives there and honestly it’s that grit that attracted many of them there in the first place. But there’s a difference between a neighborhood that is a little rougher around the edges and one where you don’t feel safe in your own home. Due to an extremely cut back police force covering the area and a growing homeless population, increasingly, the latter is exactly how Venice residents are describing the situation.

You may think I’m over hyping things but if anything I’m playing them down. For four weeks now residents have been organizing a letter writing campaign where they are literally begging the Mayor, Councilman Rosendhal and many at the LAPD to please protect them. On Friday local site Yo Venice posted an open letter from a resident named Steve who was threatened by a homeless man at his own house:

…This man was trying to sleep behind our gate at our front door. I heard him trying to no open our front door to get inside our home. I was holding my baby. I confronted him to get off my properly and he then threatened to kill me… looked at my baby and told me he would kill her too. He claimed that the house was his. He took a swing at me as I stepped back away from my properly. He kicked our gate over and over as hard as he could…

Steve called 911 and after 45 minutes the police eventually showed up – which is actually an improvement. You might recall Tara posted on Metblogs in December about coming home and finding a homeless person blocking her entrance to her house. Her call to the police for help resulted in no officers ever coming by – even though this was only a few weeks after a Venice resident, pregnant with twins, was raped and murdered in her own home by a transient who just happened to pick her out.

With no one to protect them and a situation that is seemingly getting worse, if the LAPD and local politicians don’t do something to help soon they shouldn’t act surprised when residents are forced to take protecting their own and their family’s safety into their own hands. This situation can only get worse or better, which is it going to be?

L.A. – Where people plaster the sides of historic buildings with pictures of the Mad Hatter, and chase Twittering food through city streets.

The Daily Beast ranked the nation’s 57 largest metropolitan areas based on “psychiatrists per capita, stress, eccentricity and drinking levels.”

#27, Los Angeles

Psychiatrists per capita: 28
Stress: 22
Eccentricity: 5
Drinking: 53

Colorful Character: Candace Frazee and Steve Lubanski have transformed their home into a Bunny Museum, a shrine to over 23,000 bunny collectibles that include bunny-themed furniture, light fixtures, kitchenware, toiletries, books, and games.

Apparently, Cincinnati is #1 when it comes to crazy.

This proves my theory that all of those people that I see mumbling and stumbling on the streets of L.A. are actors from Ohio.

Photo from jek in the box’s photostream

I like this yard, socially responsible yet has the look and feel of a cottage garden.

Long live individuality and the space free of an HOA!

Pic by me and get’s bigger with a click.

A subway station? Here? Such a debate would have been absurd at a sleepy little corner like Wilshire & Crenshaw.

The year was 1934.

Photo from the USC Digital Library