On the evening of June 26, with the right kind of ears, a steady, collective groan could be heard from thousands of gay Republicans throughout California…followed by an eerie silence. Their man, Senator John McCain, decided to play small ball in his quest for the White House, and came out with a two-line endorsement of the anti-gay marriage ballot measure, now officially known as Proposition 8. It was a move, according to one political strategist, to “solidify his base.” But over the coming months, it can easily be spun into something much more different.

(Photo courtesy of John McCain 2008)

No one on the governing board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had the courage to tell it like it is to the warring factions that showed up Thursday to push their pet transit projects.

The message to the people who want to extend the Gold Line to mars, via Ontario airport, would have gone something like this:

“We’re afraid of you. Your backers in Congress have juice and are 1,000 percent behind you. They’ll leapfrog your lame-ass, low ridership project over the much more greatly needed Expo Line to Santa Monica. They might even steal money from the divine Subway to the Sea.”

You can tell it's going to be The Silly Season in Los Angeles, from now to November, when Antonio Villaraigosa, whose growth-at-any-cost development beliefs have added tens of thousands of crowded new apartments to this overbuilt city, blames L.A.'s attention-getting traffic on the War in Iraq.

Yep. He actually told Steve Hymon, that highly readable guy over at the L.A. Times, that voters need to approve a big, fat sales tax increase in November to build more mass transit, particularly since the White House isn't investing in infrastructure because "we're a nation at war."

The mayor's dissembling and buck-passing was bizarre for two reasons.

On June 25, this blog reported on a mass email sent around the city by Robert Weiss calling for a boycott of the Ahmanson Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum and the Kirk Douglas Theatre, until Center Theatre Group, which administers the three theaters, makes a policy statement vigorously opposing the contribution of $400,000 by Ahmanson Theatre benefactor Howard Ahmanson to the organization sponsoring the anti-gay marriage amendment on the November ballot.

A multi-agency task force of 500 law enforcement officers swooped down on members of the Avenues gang on Drew Street early Wednesday morning. The crackdown netted 32 members or associates of the “Drew Street” clique of the Avenues.

The operation, which began at 4 a.m., stemmed from a massive 157-page federal racketeering indictment targeting 70 members of the gang who lived on Drew Street in northeast Los Angeles. Federal and local law enforcement officers served 25 federal search warrants, and picked up 32 Avenues gang members and associates in the pre-dawn raids. Twenty-six of the gang members who were indicted were already in local and federal custody including Maria “Chata” Leon who is reputed to be the matriarch of a large family of drug dealing gang members.

Maria "Chata" Leon

The indictment of Leon and her extended family for mostly drug related charges was a coup for local law enforcement officials who spent years trying to break up the control the family had over the Drew Street community.

The big neon sign at the Stonewall Inn is gone now, and the world famous gay bar has undergone a complete renovation. But it will always be the sacred ground where an angry bunch of drag queens and effeminate gay men pushed back after New York City police officers raided the place, and subsequently started the modern gay rights movement. The official date of the Stonewall Riots, according to a plaque outside the bar, is Friday, June 27, 1969.

At Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street, a few yards away from the Stonewall Inn, crowds tangled with police for several nights in late June, 1969.

I’d never tell Mayor V the real reason I jump at the chance to ride the rails with him. I want to be there when the Big One brings the Red Line to a halt, stranding the mayor and me hundreds of feet underground for days. Under those conditions, I’ll offer him a bottle of water from my emergency stash for every question he answers honestly and completely.

Under treacherous conditions for the whole truth Wednesday morning – the train kept moving – I did my best to help the mayor plot his political future and solve the city’s traffic horrors.

On the subway ride back downtown after the news conference at the North Hollywood station, where he sat in the driver’s seat and honked the horn on one of the new RapidBus Lines, I chided Mayor V for giving his usual, flippant, I-love-my-job response to a radio reporter who had asked if is running for governor in 2010.

“But I really do love my job.”

A multi-agency task force of 500 law enforcement officers swooped down on members of the avenues gang on Drew Street yesterday morning. The crackdown netted 32 members or associates of the “Drew Street” clique of the avenues.

The operation, which began at 4 a.m., stemmed from a massive 157-page federal racketeering indictment targeting 70 members of the gang who lived on Drew Street in northeast Los Angeles. Federal and local law enforcement officers served 25 federal search warrants, and picked up 32 avenues gang members and associates in the pre-dawn raid. Twenty-six of the gang members who were indicted were already in local and federal custody including Maria “Chatta” Leon who is reputed to be the matriarch of a large family of drug-dealing gang members.

Her son, Francisco “Pancho” Real, the leader of the gang and the lead defendant in the indictment, was arrested along with some of his brothers. According to prosecutors, Mexican Mafia members authorized Francisco Real to take control of the area last summer.

Despite the massive sweep, more than a dozen gang members remain at large. They include:

Jose "Minor" Alvarado

A multi-agency task force of 500 law enforcement officers swooped down on members of the avenues gang on Drew Street early this morning. The crackdown netted 32 members or associates of the “Drew Street” clique of the avenues.

The operation, which began at 4 a.m., stemmed from a massive 157-page federal racketeering indictment targeting 70 members of the gang who lived on Drew Street in northeast Los Angeles. Federal and local law enforcement officers served 25 federal search warrants, and picked up 32 avenues gang members and associates in the pre-dawn raids. Twenty-six of the gang members who were indicted were already in local and federal custody including Maria “Chatta” Leon who is reputed to be the matriarch of a large family of drug-dealing gang members.

Her son, Francisco “Pancho” Real, the leader of the gang and the lead defendant in the indictment, was arrested along with some of his brothers. According to prosecutors, Mexican Mafia members authorized Francisco Real to take control of the area last summer.

Guns confiscated during the raid

Amidst waves of student, faculty and alumni protests over soaring tuition rates and alleged capital mismanagement, trustees of the Art Center College of Design announced yesterday that Richard Koshalek's contract as president won't be renewed when it terminates at the end of next year. The move was a bit of a shock, as many on campus figured Koshalek was a lock to remain at Art Center and continue his plans to build a $50 million Frank Gehry designed library and research center.

Koshalek was the primary advocate of the building, and with his departure from the college eminent, the future of the DRC, as the building was to be called, remains unclear. In an online statement posted on Art Center's website, Chairman of the Board of Trustees John Puerner said that "the DRC, [is] now being reevaluated and reprioritized by the facilities and finance committees of the Board."

The Mayor's office is denying to the Weekly reports on other local
websites that he has a long-concealed tattoo reading “Born To Raise Hell.” Antonio got slammed on Tuesday by the Mayor Sam blog over a controversy boiling up in the Los Angeles Fire Department, first reported right here, in which firefighters are being ordered to wear long sleeves or even bandages to cover their tattoos.

After the Daily News wrote about the controversy on Tuesday, Mayor Sam went to town slamming the LAFD’s “no show” tattoo policy, then wrote:

"And it's amazing to consider, when we have a mayor who reportedly never is seen without his shirt off nor wearing short sleeves because he sports gang tattoos from his youth."

Gang tattoos? If only! The allegation stems from a website called Bruin Alumni Association, which insists the mayor got his tattoo while a radical student at UCLA.

Robert Weiss was outraged upon reading Tim Rutten's Op-Ed in the L.A. Times that Howard Ahmanson had contributed $400 million to California Protect Marriage – the organization sponsoring the State ballot initiative on the November ballot that will attempt to reverse the California Supreme Court's recent ruling giving legal sanction to same-sex marriages across the state.

Former Beverly Hills matchmaker Virginia Graham told the LA Weekly that she has a date with CNN.

CNN contacted Graham after reading, Beverly Hills Matchmaker Spills About Manson Family Member Susan Atkins, she said. Graham’s upcoming interview will likely focus on her prison chat fest with Atkins who she shared a dorm room with at the Sybil Brand Institute for Women in the fall of 1969.

Atkins stabbed to death a pregnant Sharon Tate a gruesome 16 times at Tate’s Benedict Canyon mansion in the summer of 1969. Atkins told Graham that the 26-year-old actress begged for her life and the life of her unborn child.

“She told me this thing with great glee,” said Graham who was in jail for writing a bad check. “When I first saw her she was doing cartwheels up and down the aisle. She was in a total state of happiness. Truthfully I thought she was in for a drug bust.”

Before the party crowd showed up at 717 Olympic—the new luxury apartment high rise on Olympic Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles near Staples Center—Dan Glenn and Rob Bartusch walked over to the poolside bar and asked for a couple of stiff drinks. They were the swimsuit models for the evening, and Glenn, a handsome and muscular guy, was feeling somewhat self-conscious.

“I’m walking around a bunch of people I don’t know in a very tight swimsuit,” said Glenn, an actor who lives in Hollywood, “so, yeah, I’m a little nervous.”

Rob Bartusch, left, prepares to meet his audience with fellow model Dan Glenn.

Today's front page Daily News prominently features a Q and A with Tennie Pierce, the former firefighter who sued the city of Los Angeles over a prank in which he was fed dog food, conducted by the paper's award-winning reporter Beth Barrett.

Normally, Barrett is a great digger and reporter, very tough on her subjects, and many people think she should have won this weekend's Southern California Journalism Award for Hard News, which instead went to perfectly professional but not earth-shattering fire coverage by a huge team of Los Angeles Times reporters.

Barrett blew the lid off Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's affair with now-departed Telemundo anchor Mirthala Salinas. Some political analysts believe Barrett's scoop assured that Villaraigosa will not run for governor of California.

But Barrett's softball interview leaves out most of the key controversies swirling around Tennie Pierce, and some of those controversies helped discredit Pierce in the eyes of the public.

A week, almost to the hour, after the first gay couple legally wed in Los Angeles County, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will finally preside over a same sex marriage. American Beauty producer Bruce Cohen, who won an Oscar for the film, and New York art consultant Gabriel Catone will take their vows downtown at City Hall. Cohen and Villaraigosa had both been major supporters of former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

By the end of last week, the gays got married...even in San Diego County. But things turned a little weird for San Diego County Clerk Greg Smith, who was confronted with at least 14 employees who said same sex weddings and their religious beliefs did not mix. It was the first time gay marriage opponents successfully, and boldly, played the religion card at his office...and possibly anywhere else in the state.

Last Tuesday, at West Hollywood Park, gay couples made their own religious statements as they prepared to wed.

You can't rely on the official media to learn much of what's going on in Russia. The government owns all Russian TV stations, on which never is heard a discouraging word. Jon Stewart-style political satire has disappeared from the airwaves. Those pundits who dared to challenge government policy haven't been banned, because this is an open democratic society. For some inexplicable reason, they've simply all chosen to stay off the air. Call it a mystery of the East.

For real intel, you have to go street Blogs, i.e. cab drivers. The guy shuttling me this week from Sheremetyevo Airport to the northeast suburb of Ismailovsky Park said he didn't vote in the last presidential election on March 2, which put Vladimir Putin's young, appointed heir, Dmitry Medvedev, in the president's throne. The cabby said he didn't know anybody who bothered to vote.

It's stone fruit season!

Hollywood's Farmer's Market is huge, delicious, pretty easy to get to from many parts of town, and nicely scheduled for Sunday mornings.

Still plenty of this season's cherries left.

And after you've got your bags of fruit you can check in at Amoeba or join a protest in front of the CNN building.

Mr. Ha's apples. If you ever hear someone in LA really raving about how amazing an apple tastes, it's a good bet that they got it from his farm. Once I watched Mr. Ha hand feeding slices of different apples into Jake Gyllenhaal's mouth. It was, umm, strange.

More deliciousness after the jump.

After a recent L.A. Times story revealed that Judge Alex Kozinski maintained a bawdy Web site while he was presiding over a federal obscenity trial, law bloggers are still grappling with the ensuing scandal that forced Kozinski to recuse himself from U.S. v. Isaacs. The legal eagles have reduced to handy parables the actions of disgruntled lawyer Cyrus Sanai, who tipped off the Times in order to bring down Kozinski, and the debate over whether or not the judge had a reasonable expectation of privacy when his site could be accessed by the public. Some of the more vivid analogies appear below. They do not compare Kozinski or Sanai to a summer’s day.