Anna Jones

If Kobe can fly to work, why not me?

I am flying westward over the Angeles Crest Mountains, the morning sun shining down over the San Fernando Valley as it spreads out below me and we bank south. The Cessna 152, aptly named "the Commuter," cruises at just over 3,500 feet as we travel from the Agua Dulce Airpark toward Santa Monica Airport -- a 47-mile trip that will put me just two miles from my office in Culver City.

Exhilaration rushes through me as the plane reaches optimal speed, or "trues out," at about 95 knots, the propeller spinning in a blur. The pilot, Michael Gold, checks in with air traffic control, effortlessly communicating a long string of flight information consisting of letters and numbers. I may be on my way to work, but this is definitely not an ordinary workday.

I don't usually commute by small plane. Other than the Lakers' Kobe Bryant -- who famously helicopters from Newport Beach to Staples Center -- who does? Since I started my job a year ago, in fact, I've been commuting almost 70 miles round-trip each day on L.A.'s jam-packed streets, spending, on average, three hours (or more) stuck in traffic on the 405.

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Zach Lipp

Opening Day at CityTarget Downtown

See also:
*Fugly Buildings: Our Series on the Most Hideous Buildings in L.A.
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*Our Best of L.A. issue and our Best of L.A. app

Target's new "City" store opened this week in the the sunken shopping center at the corner of 7th and Figueroa downtown. The multi-level indoor/outdoor retail center, originally designed by John Jerde Architects (famous for Horton Plaza in San Diego and the seizure-inducing light canopy in Las Vegas' downtown), sat nearly-abandoned for years, plagued by awful sight lines, practically-invisible store recognition signage for pedestrians, and a useless, teal-colored space frame structure up top.

But with Target moving in, there's hope for the sad old mall at 7th & Fig, and at the opening gala Wednesday, boosters were in high spirits. The the Mayor was there, ribbons got cut, the USC Trojan marching band played.

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Wendy Gilmartin

Artist Benjamin Scharf's POD

At its 7th annual art walk Saturday, Frogtown and the Elysian Valley Arts Collective invited groups of artists, designers and vendors to re-imagine and re-engineer 8 pre-fabricated storage "PODs" as exhibition spaces intermixed within the warehouses, riverfront, tight-knit single family homes, community gardens and art studios in the neighborhood.

Organizer and architect Tracy Stone, whose design offices are in Frogtown, says, "Our goal was to increase the number of artists at the walk, but also infill the walk with exhibitors so that there wasn't as much blank space between the studios and other workspaces, and the neighborhood."

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Alissa Walker

Six years ago, when I decided to abandon my car for a multi-modal cocktail of walking, biking and bus-riding, I lived in Hollywood. The pedestrian and transit parts came easy in my super-dense neighborhood, but biking terrified me -- rolling out of my driveway I was confronted with three routes, each of them moderately suicidal: the extended on-ramp for the 101 that is Highland Avenue, the dangerously narrow lanes of Franklin Avenue, or the unpredictable shitshow of Hollywood Boulevard.

But I soon discovered Yucca -- sweet, sweet Yucca, weaving a mellow east-west path through the heart of Hollywood that was surprisingly car-light. That's because the Department of Transportation had installed traffic diversions to keep motorists from using Yucca as a shortcut (and to prevent other unsavory behaviors). At a handful of intersections, concrete bollards and signage directed cars to turn right, while bikes could glide blissfully around them. It made the street a cyclist's wet dream. And in an interesting twist, the city has recently recognized this informal use with official infrastructural improvements, christening .8 miles of Yucca as L.A.'s first "bike-friendly street."

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Amanda Lewis

Her Birdjesty sits, complacent, watching over us.

In a city where green means go, yellow means go faster and red means go left, few take the time to examine the traffic signals. Most drivers glue their eyes to their phones before even coming to a full stop.

But sometimes the light will change and, if you're paying attention, you'll notice an avian silhouette stark against the blazing LED. The first time I saw one, I gasped aloud. Could other people see this, or was it just me? What joy! What furtive beauty!

L.A.'s omnipotent sunshine calls for full-circle visors around most lights, so the colors don't wash out and confuse drivers, giving birds plenty of room to perch, preen and nap. A few years ago I became infatuated with these rare and gorgeous silhouettes and began referring to the phenomenon as "her birdjesty," as though it's just one regal pigeon skipping from light to light, watching over the city as if she runs the place.

Her birdjesty always appears unexpectedly, and when she does my heart jolts with a private thrill, like I'm peering into the peephole of a Kinetoscope and seeing motion pictures for the very first time. Fred Armisen might say I'm being twee, but I can't help it: I love these pigeons.

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Wendy Gilmartin

Even before construction crews broke ground on the Orsini apartment complex back in 2001, its developers made themselves locally infamous for wriggling out of an inclusionary zoning provision that requires new residential apartment developments to contain at least 15 percent affordable units. (Attorneys on the developer's side argued the provision would cause "difficulties and hardships" by lowering the owners' cash flow.)

Flash forward 11 years later (and two additional phases and two enormous additional buildings later) and the Orsini apartments at Figueroa Street and Cesar Chavez Avenue downtown are currently more than 15 percent vacant. They also host one of the hottest parking garages in town for car break-ins and petty criminal activity.

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Sean J. O'Connell

Fountains can be found almost everywhere in downtown Los Angeles. The Department of Water and Power fortress has a sizable moat with eight sparkling, backlit blasts. The pool in front of the Central Library has a lizard skeleton coming up for air. Even the Bunker Hill steps have a trickle of water mocking those attempting to wheeze their way up its six flights.

But one of the best spritzing displays in downtown, the Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain, had up until this past weekend been largely unknown. Now it is a centerpoint of the newly revamped Grand Park, drawing a healthy dose of children, tourists and thirsty dogs to its thin layer of water. But few have considered what it will take to keep that water crystal clear from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.

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Photo by Joshua White

Amanda Ross-Ho's huge tie-dye T-shirt, called SKIES THE LIMIT (LEAVE ME ALONE)

This week, a flashing sign turns a basement into a danger zone, a veteran paparazzo exhibits his best shots and an exhibition at the MOCA Pacific Design Center outpost makes you feel you've swallowed Alice's shrinking potion.

5. Lazy Sunday music
Critic and professor Jan Tumlir has written about art rock, anti-bands and The Beatles. He also DJs at the Mandrake Bar on the first Wednesday of every month. He'll be DJing Sunday at Atwater Crossing, too, along with a group of other music-savvy writers and artists, like painter Bobbi Woods and sculptor-performer Emily Steinfeld. It'll be a low-key listening party run by people who think too much, but feel too much too. The theme is summer lethargy and boredom. The Platform @ ATX Kitchen, 3245 Casitas Ave.; Sun., July 8, 1-6 p.m. atwatercrossing.com.

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Wendy Gilmartin

At the busy corner of Olympic and Sawtelle sits a banal retail center that's typical of Los Angeles' low commercial-development standards, complete with all the elements of conventional, early-'90s design and construction. You've got your beige block, your beige stucco, your storefront glass, your copper and teal accents. But this building has that extra something that sets it apart from the others; a garish, eye-popping feature that really makes it an outlier -- its giant, glowing neon aquarium-seascape scene that comes blazing to life each evening after the sun sets.

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Photo by Joshua White

Charlotte Posenenske's steel sculpture Vierkantrohre Series D, 1967/2009

Resurrection is a theme this week. Artist Scott Benzel brings back Sharon Tate as a faux Maoist and Rob Sullivan revives local ghosts.

5. Nuclear wasteland art
When nuclear plants and uranium mills close, the leftover radioactive waste has to go somewhere. Scattered across the rural west are Uranium Disposal Cells, strange, angular, futuristic fields. They interrupt desert sand and some look like they belong in a Ridley Scott film. Fantastic black-and-white photographs of these cells are on view right now in Culver City, at the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI). 9331 Venice Blvd. (310) 839-5722, clui.org.

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