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 ...

Every so often somebody asks about the corroding civil defense sirens up on poles scattered all over Los Angeles. Well, Dennis Hanley knows all about them. They were air raid sirens first installed ...

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 ...

With Ayn Rand in the media conversation around Paul Ryan and the Republican convention, here's a look at the home that Rand used to occupy in Northridge. And what a house it was — if it still existed, ...

Richard Fausset will become the new Atlanta Bureau chief. Read more in this note from Alison Mitchell, Ethan Bronner and Peter Applebome. If the National Desk wanted to dream up the perfect person to ...

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, ...

The Krisel home last Thursday. Sam Lubell, The Architect's Newspaper. William Krisel, the modernist architect who designed many Los Angeles homes, had built his own midcentury masterpiece in 1955 on ...

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 ...

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 ...

When Daryl Gates ran the LAPD from 1978 to 1992 he also ran a worldwide political spying operation. And he lavished time on it, sometimes several hours each day, including all the dossiers and reports ...

LA Observed is a website devoted to independent reporting, informed commentary and selective linkage on Los Angeles news, media, politics, business, books and other topics. The site went live in May ...

Sports columnist T.J. Simers' rebirth with the Orange County Register lasted less than a year. He writes in Sunday's column that on Monday he will submit his paperwork for the "voluntary separation ...