Home sales hurt again
The appreciation of Los Angeles County homes shrunk to its lowest level in six years last month while the number of homes sold -- 9,183 -- was the fewest in nine years.
That was a 21% drop from August 2005.
The August figures make the ninth straight month of declining year-over-year sales.
The median price of an L.A. County home rose 4.7% last month to $517,000, but that was the slowest appreciation in six years.
San Diego County, a bellwether because it was the first Southland housing market to heat up and then cool down, was worse off. That area had a 32% drop in home sales and a 2.2% decline in prices.
“It’s clear that a price correction is underway,” says one analyst. Page C1
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Bye-bye to 98 city billboards
The visual climate of the city will be changing as a result of a lawsuit settlement.
The settlement, which was approved by the L.A. City Council, requires two prominent billboard companies to dismantle at least 98 billboards around the city.
For years such signs have been criticized as among the foremost examples of visual clutter and blight in urban areas. Numerous fights have erupted as city officials have begun to regulate the signs.
According to the deal, two of the nation’s largest billboard companies, CBS Outdoors and Clear Channel Outdoors, will each remove 49 signs in unspecified locations.
They also agree to remove any billboard that does not have an approval permit on file with the city. Page B1
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Wildfire still threatens I-5
It’s a dense, smoky brush fire that has at times closed Interstate 5, the main north-south freeway on the West Coast.
Some 1,500 firefighters are struggling to keep the 27,000-acre blaze from hopping the interstate, moving into more developed areas about 18 miles south in the Santa Clarita Valley.
It’s not just the Angeles National Forest that’s endangered. The area contains critical cell phone, telephone and radio transmission facilities, plus high-voltage lines and underground oil pipelines.
Firefighters bulldozed brush, lighted backfires to deny the wildfire fuel and dropped water and fire retardant from planes. “It’s going to be a long fire,” says the Forest Service’s commander for the Day fire. Page B1
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Real life intrudes on crime show
“CSI: New York,” the crime scene investigation show, was filming in the historic Pacific Electric Building on South Main Street in downtown Los Angeles.
The building is a popular filming location, having been the newspaper office in Spiderman movies and a backdrop for productions seeking an East Coast feel on the West Coast.
Residents of the remodeled building have been complaining about a very real smell of death.
Wednesday, while the film crew was busy elsewhere in the building, the real-life mystery was solved. A maintenance worker found the decomposed body of a resident who hadn’t been seen in months. Cause of the death is yet to be determined. Page B4
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United by football
Camp Kilpatrick is a juvenile detention facility for boys in Malibu. It has a football team, the Mustangs, that plays other schools. Now there’s a movie, “Gridiron Gang,” about the early days of a team teaching self-respect through sports. Page D1
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CALENDAR WEEKEND
And it’s got a good beat you can contort to
We used to expect so little of the Cirque du Soleil performers. Merely the strength of Hercules, the flexibility of an octopus, the balance of a Flying Wallenda. But with more anatomy-defying productions than your fingers can count (there are five in Las Vegas alone), we need a new Cirque fix. Enter “Delirium,” with circus acts, sure, but also acrobats who can really sing and dance. Page E4
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BUSINESS
Slim pickings from the olive garden
Yes, kids, it’s fun to stick a bunch of olives on your fingers and wave them around your sister’s face like a big black bug! But if you like to play with your food, it’s going to cost your parents more to entertain you.
This year’s olive harvest is predicted to be the lowest in 25 years.
Some growers won’t pick any fruit at all, and the others will charge a lot more for it.
Both California regions that supply most of the country’s olives suffered extreme weather that prompted the crop loss. Coupled with competition from overseas, higher costs for fuel and acreage and the invasion of the olive fly, things look grim for the finger-food fan. Page C1
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Running a tab at the company store
So if you like martinis, let’s hope you prefer them with a twist. And, according to a new study, drinking them in the company of professional colleagues. Social drinkers, it says, have more charisma, more business contacts and a higher income.
Before you raise a toast to drinking on the job, consider: Does this denote social skills or simply more financial muscle to spend money at bars? Page C3
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SPORTS
He just wants to go out and play
Tales abound of parents who push their kids in sports to a point where the embarrassment and abuse make what used to be fun merely hard labor. Patrick O’Sullivan was a kid like that, a gifted hockey player whose father abused him physically and emotionally. In 2002, the 17-year-old said “enough.” Not of sports, but of his father. He filed assault charges, got a restraining order and went on with his hockey life.
Last season, he was the American Hockey League rookie of the year. Today, he’s a member of the Los Angeles Kings, a team so confident of his skills that it traded its top offensive player to put him on the roster. Page D1
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Tracks are betting on a new surface
What looks like dirt, is made of waxy sand and chunky rubber and smells like a junkyard?
The savior of California horse racing, that’s what. At least that’s what promoters hope will be the result of a new synthetic track that made its debut Wednesday at Hollywood Park. Resurfacing the state’s race tracks should reduce the number of euthanized horses, attract more trainers and owners and reinvigorate a shrinking fan base. Page D3
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HOME
Hanging garden of Silver Lake
Alberto Hernandez cultivates a garden both metaphorical and real. Armed with the gift of design that is botanical and figurative, Hernandez turned a patch of dirt into a refuge of wonder whose perverse marriage of the natural and the artificial enchanted the producers of “Quinceanera.” The movie features not only Hernandez’s garden, but a character whose powers of healing were inspired by its creator. To some people, his garden is just a movie set; to Hernandez, “It’s a dream of angels and perfection and how we want the world to be.” Page F1
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Love me, love my stuff
Collector Saul Levi so loves art that his tiny toilet room alone houses 15 paintings by luminaries including Dali and Leger. Objects of jade and ivory line the walls of his laundry room. Marsha Levine so loves clothing and accessories that her drawers and closets contain 500 pieces of vintage jewelry alone.
They are devoted to each other, spending most of 18 years enjoying each other’s company and artwork. But these like-minded connoisseurs live apart, primarily to curate the inanimate objects to which they also are committed. Page F1
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ON LATIMES.COM
The ‘tune in next’ mentality on TV
Take serials seriously: Thanks to the recent success of shows such as “Lost,” “24” and “Prison Break,” the new fall season is rife with shows based on serialized storytelling. With programs such as “The Nine,” “Jericho” and “Vanished” making their debuts this season, network executives are clearly hoping that the “tune in next week” device will keep audiences coming back. The Entertainment News page looks at some of the great serialized shows of the past, including “Soap,” the first half-hour serial comedy, “Twin Peaks,” with its moody atmosphere and unsolved mysteries, and “Dallas,” with its “Who shot J.R.?” cliffhanger. A look at how “Friends” helped break the boundary between soap opera and sitcom at latimes.com/entertainment
Monday Monday: Blue Notes bloggers Andrew and Brian Kamenetzky talk with Dodgers alum Rick Monday, stalwart of the squad that went to three World Series and won the championship in 1981, and author of a new book the Kamenetzkys call a must read for Dodgers fans. Memories from the dugout of Tommy, Fernando, the O’Malleys and Ron Cey, and your chance to discuss how today compares at
latimes.com/dodgersblog
