Amanda Lewis

A Queen butterfly with a broken wing tragically rests on a plant at the Butterfly Pavilion on Sunday, April 8.

I've never been the kind of girl who was into butterflies. Somewhere between Mariah Carey's insipid song, those ugly-ass hair clips and the proliferation of tramp stamps, I got the message that butterflies represent a certain precious, feminine flightiness that I'm loath to be associated with.

But when I heard about the Butterfly Pavilion, an annual summer exhibit that opened Sunday in a 2,106-square-foot greenhouse on the lawn of the Natural History Museum, in which 25 people at a time mingle with more than 300 butterflies from 54 species for less than the price of a latte, I had to admit I was intrigued. Walking around in an enclosed space, surrounded by flapping patterned wings and the flora that love them? Plus, Vladimir Nabokov collected and studied butterflies. I figured I could make an exception to my no-butterflies rule just this once and spend a Sunday afternoon in their company.

Little did I know, slaughter awaited.

More >>

Courtesy E.J. Scott

Scott completing his second marathon of the year in Austin, Texas.

There is rain in the forecast this weekend, and that makes E.J. Scott nervous. He is supposed to run the 26.2-mile Los Angeles Marathon, a task that usually takes him five and a half hours. Exposure to the elements for that long is enough to make anyone a little anxious, but Scott is more worried the rain could waterlog his curtain.

"It's really long; I wrap it around my head a couple times so it's nice and thick, but when it gets wet, it gets really heavy and it might fall down," says Scott, whose face (when not covered in curtain) is recognizable from his work in the L.A. improv scene.

Scott has Choroideremia, a rare eye disease that has left him with just a fraction of the vision an average person has. "Most people can see about 90 degrees out of each eye and I'm at less than 20," he says.

More >>

Ted Soqui

Injured veterans practice adaptive rowing.

He was walking through the combat zone when he slipped and fell. Sgt. 1st Class Rorey Nichols landed hard on his lower back. He lay there for a while. He was alone, which was bad. But it was daytime, and he thanked God for that. Slipping sounds stupid. Slipping on your way to the chow hole while carrying 75 to 100 pounds of gear, on a so-called road in Afghanistan that's nothing but rocks and sand, sounds stupid and dangerous. He pulled himself up.

Nichols was no stranger to peril. He'd served in Iraq from 2005 to 2006 and learned that you could be sitting on the toilet when a stray bullet whizzes through the wall and kills you. Or lying in bed -- in which case not even a tattoo of the Archangel Michael can protect you. (Nichols got his on his right forearm when he first enlisted.) A decade and a half in the Army inures you to fear. But when he found out he'd broken his spine, for the first time in his life he was scared. Really scared.

Two years, three ruptured spinal discs and one fractured vertebra later, Nichols is standing barefoot on the dock at Peter Archer Rowing Center in Long Beach. He watches a group of injured soldiers gingerly pick their way onto a long, slim boat. They are learning how to row.

More >>

​
The reports that the mayor wants Occupy L.A. to leave City Hall raise the question: if they do have to leave, where would they go?

The occupiers have already expanded to obvious places like UCLA and Bank of America Plaza. L.A.'s own Wall Street has been slightly occupied for years now (it is smack in the middle of Skid Row, after all) and most of their other options seem worse than where they are. The city at one point offered office space at a former B. Dalton bookstore, though that offer was rescinded and rejected.

So what about those other places that we Angelenos love to hate, or the ones that we love to love a little too much -- the places that might as well be occupied?

Here are our suggestions for places in L.A. for the occupiers to consider.

More >>

Graham Kolbeins

Chris Weisbart welcomes visitors into his habitat from a sci-fi podium.

​
Here's a classic Sunday scenario: going to see an animal at the zoo. Except this time, the zoo is actually inside the Melrose Trading Post, a Sunday flea market held at Fairfax High School, and the animal is an eccentric artist. That's the idea behind experimental gallery Mastodon Mesa's new collaboration with the Trading Post, called Zōo.

Every Sunday, an artist will create a habitat for themselves in the morning and work in it throughout the day, attracting curious Trading Post-goers. Zōo began on September 4 with a one-month residency by graphic artist Tara Milch; it will continue over the next twelve months, and feature just as many artists and other undefinable makers-of-stuff.

More >>

Los Angeles Stairstreet Advocates

A group of stair-hiking enthusiasts crowd the narrow public path between two expensive hillside homes.

​
"Here's the beer bottles, here's the toilet paper," says Charles Fleming, gesturing to one side as we make our way down a thin concrete staircase set into the Echo Park hillside. An arms length away, the stairs border an elaborate terraced garden, one of the many private yards, decks and driveways in Los Angeles easily accessible from a public stairway.

When Fleming was compiling his 2010 L.A. Times bestseller Secret Stairs, a comprehensive guide to the nearly 450 public staircases built in the first decades of the 20th century to connect residents of hilly neighborhoods with public schools and transportation, he often encountered NIMBY-minded homeowners afraid the book would puncture the secluded bubble wealthy Angelenos seem to value so highly.

"Don't worry," he would tell them. "There's not going to be a big parade. Nobody's doing this but me."

More >>

Shannon Cottrell

Heal the Bay House in progress

​Update: After the unveiling of the house, Santa Monica cops and city code enforcement weren't happy. For more info see our post on our news blog: Graffiti House Celebrating Heal The Bay Targeted by Santa Monica Officials

In 2008, a deco-style fortress built in the '50s and originally belonging to a prominent family in Santa Monica fell into foreclosure in the middle of an extensive renovation. Until three months ago it stood vacant, an eerie house on a bluff with a homeless woman squatting the top floor. The terraced gardens in back had overgrown and were infested with rats. The neighbors on this otherwise upscale block wondered and complained.

Then came Adam Corlin, with a cause, a dare, and an endless supply of tarps. Corlin, a successful builder and a fourth generation Santa Monica resident, had his eye on this property, and when the price dropped to 50 percent of its original asking price, he jumped at the opportunity to own it.

But this was no ordinary flip -- Corlin had some time in his hacienda rehab schedule and wanted to raise awareness for his favorite charity, Heal the Bay, the environmental group working to restore Santa Monica Bay. In speaking to the organization, he knew it had to be different than the usual donation or doing volunteer work. He had a blank house in Santa Monica, he had resources to do something big, and he had just met a graf artist appropriately named Risk.

More >>

Flickr/Mats Haugen

​
Kiss your whites goodbye -- Labor Day is nearly upon us. To some of you, that means the end of summer; to others, the beginning of Indian summer. Either way, it's time to reflect on the calendar months traditionally associated with sunshine. To that end, most of you will spend the weekend drowning in beer and barbecue sauce, but for a waistline-friendly alternative that will leave you not so sad about the passage of time, here are 10 annoying things about summer in L.A...

More >>

Kelly Barrie, courtesy of LAXArt.

An ampersand, lurking on an abandoned lot in Culver City.

​

In case you haven't noticed, Culver City boasts a new strange addition to its cityscape: a giant ampersand on an abandoned lot on the corner of Washington and Centinela. It gets bonus points in strangeness for glowing in the dark. But this isn't just a bizarre art stunt -- the ampersand is linked to its twin in Venice, Italy, where it was installed for the Venice Biennale by L.A. conceptual artist Shannon Ebner.

As far as conceptualism goes, Ebner is knee-deep in it. Her Culver City ampersand (entitled and, per se and) is cryptic in its lack of context. As it turns out, Ebner has made a few ampersands before, notably in Milan. But this one, she explains, is slightly different.

More >>

L.J. Williamson

Only imperial stormtroopers are so precise.

​ Is there any venture that can't profit from a Star Wars tie-in, no matter how tenuous the connection?

Despite the goofiness factor of zoo-hosted "educational" talks about topics like the similarities between koalas and ewoks (Um... they're both fictional? No. They both carry spears? Wrong again. They both have fur? Ding ding ding!), nothing stopped excited children and fanboys alike from stacking into long lines, starting at the Zoo Drive offramp, at the L.A. Zoo's Star Wars day to snap photos with even bigger fanboys and girls than themselves, including members of costuming groups 501st Legion and Rebel Legion.

More >>

Tags:

darth vader, ewok, george lucas, han solo, los angeles zoo, princess leia, star wars, Stormtrooper