Los Angeles isn’t particularly well known for its streetlights. Maybe it should be. Not because we have the most streetlights (today that number hovers around 220,000, while Chicago’s ...

In 1978, Los Angeles agreed to host the 1984 Summer Olympics and, as described in the official report of the games, a small, secretive organizing committee formed to oversee the delivery and ...

The stories behind LA’s famous (and strange) street names The origins are both common and weird, from cult leaders to old Mexican ranchos to the pets and family members of real estate subdividers ...

The Olympics fixed LA’s traffic problem—can the 2028 games do it permanently? Transportation solutions deployed for the 1984 Summer Olympics are even more relevant today ...

Surfrider Beach was the domain of a small, rag-tag group of surfing pioneers—until a teenager nicknamed "Gidget" burst onto the scene.

Crenshaw Boulevard rising For decades, the ’Shaw has been the historic main street of black Los Angeles. Now the communities fighting to celebrate its legacy are ready to make it ...

More than half a century after publishing the collections that established her reputation as a gimlet-eyed cultural critic—Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album—Joan Didion continues ...

13 of the best noir films set in Los Angeles Laced with corruption in the 1940s and ’50s, LA became the birthplace for the literary and cinematic style ...

The pride of West Adams Thanks to Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co., thousands of black Californians—in a time of profound racial discrimination—were able to obtain home loans and build ...

For those looking to shake up their Halloween routine, may we suggest a leisurely cemetery tour. While all of LA’s graveyards have their fair share of celebs interred, Hollywood Forever Cemetery ...

The “ booster era ” of Los Angeles spanned roughly 40 years, from 1885 to 1925. Over these pivotal decades, rough-hewn and optimistic pioneering city leaders worked with creative writers, real ...

Los Angeles was Raymond Chandler’s muse, mistress, and his making. For his famous anti-hero, private eye Philip Marlowe, it is a torturous, nasty place filled with “tough-looking palm trees ...