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Friday is National Arbor Day: a day to celebrate trees. When we look around Los Angeles today with its beautiful tree-filled parks and palm-lined streets, it's hard to imagine it being any different.
When it comes to cats versus dogs, or birds, rabbits, and horses, what makes your pet special? Is it all your love and nurturing? Its abject cuteness and sass? What if you could receive a blessing for your pet—more special still?
Chinatown in Los Angeles has been demeaned and misunderstood for about a century and a half.
The Big Read this year is The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu.
It's a rare instance when a junior high school yearbook has implications on the social history of a city so when you see it, it’s pretty amazing; the winter 1937 edition of the John Burroughs Junior High School yearbook, Burr, is one such anomaly.
When you work at Central Library, at some point in your career, you will be taken on a stairwell safety tour which guides you through a maze of long lonely corridors snaking under and around the staff side of our beloved building. When it was my turn, I had to ask, is this place haunted?
It's the day lots of adults look forward to, and lots of kids dread. After a summer of fun, it's time to start setting that alarm again, shop for supplies, and go back to school!
![A close-up shot is lined up by the director and cameraman during a Maverick shoot on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, [1961]. Valley Times Collection](https://www.lapl.org/sites/default/files/styles/blog_latest_list_120x90/public/blogs/2025-10/backyardheader.jpg?itok=a85BKXVl "A close-up shot is lined up by the director and cameraman during a Maverick shoot on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, [1961]. Valley Times Collection")
In January 1947, KTLA Channel 5, Los Angeles's first commercial television station, aired its first broadcast, and the Herald Express newspaper was there to report the milestone event.
Long before Divine, Charles Pierce, Craig Russell, Jim Bailey, or any contestant on ‘Drag Race’ brought the art of drag performance to mainstream audiences, there was Julian Eltinge. Although remembered (mostly) by historians of queer history, he has been largely forgotten by the mainstream public.