Downtown Los Angeles has been having a great 'moment' in three years. But with so many new businesses in the neighborhood, how to decrypt the best from the rest? Easy! Let us be your guide.
Later, a nail salon from the future, ice cream shake for bicycles, a store of macaron Ladurée that gives a run for its money and much more!
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THE ANGELES - community Salvadorans in Los Angeles on Saturday celebrated the opening of a plaza in honor of a Catholic Archbishop who was assassinated in 1980 during the bloody civil war in el Salvador for 12 years.
The monument's $350,000 in MacArthur Park Monsignor Oscar a. Romero, who was loved by his defense of the poor, will feature a statue of him and his contributions. He is expected to be completed in three months, the Los Angeles Times reported (http://lat.ms/12gKvRM).
'MacArthur Park has lots of history and a lot of memories for the Central American community, ' Carlos Vaquerano told the Times.
Vaquerano is the executive director of the Salvadoran American educational leadership & Fund, a non-profit that has been monitoring the project, which was first imagined seven years ago.
Many of the refugees of the war fled to the United States and some settled in Los Angeles Westlake and Pico-Union neighborhood. The area organized protests against the civil war and it has become one of the largest concentrations of Central Americans in the United States.
Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti said the monument will show the support of the city at the beginning of the Rosemary.
"This is more than a monument of a man," he said in a statement. "This is a memorial that salutes the courage, humanitarianism and the rights of the poor."
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Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com
The Sundance Film Festival is coming to Los Angeles. A mini version of it, anyway -- and far from its usually snow-covered locale.
From Aug. 8 to 11, the Sundance Institute is presenting Next Weekend, spotlighting a series of features from last January's Park City, Utah, shindig, as well as some choice offerings from other festivals, a pair of world premieres and shorts and panels.
"We've been wanting to do something in L.A. for a few years, and when the Sundance Cinemas took over the Sunset 5 (8000 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood), that was a great opportunity for us to work with them and to have a hub for the festival here," said Trevor Groth, director of programming for the institute.
"They've got a great communal area there at the cinema for people to come and talk about films."
"But we also wanted to expand and reach different communities as well," Groth added. "That's why we are doing our Next Sunday, which we're calling it, where we're taking films from the festival out to different organizations around L.A., like Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax, MOCA downtown, UCLA's Hammer and the Aero on the Westside. And obviously, a big one for us is our kickoff event, which we're doing at the Hollywood Forever cemetery."
That Thursday opener will be "American Movie," the 1999 documentary about no-budget filmmaker Mark Borchardt, along with a screening of "Coven," the short Borchardt was making while the doc was being shot.
Borchardt epitomizes the spirit of Next, a four-year-old section of the Park City festival that spotlights the bold, new visions in American independent cinema that the first L.A. Sundance program also celebrates.
Over the weekend, such acclaimed Utah-screened works as "A Teacher," "Blue Caprice," "Cutie and the Boxer" and "This Is Martin Bonner" will make their L.A. debuts at the Sunset 5 and, in some cases, the other venues.
Still, don't expect this to lead to a full-blown version of the Sundance Festival, just with better weather.
"There are existing festivals in L.A. that do a great job with very diverse programming: the L.A. Film Festival, the AFI, Outfest," Groth noted. "This, for us, was very focused and about helping these films that don't have huge marketing budgets to make a splash here."
Tickets to most Next Weekend programs are $15. To purchase and for more information, go to sundance.org/tickets.
bob.strauss@dailynews.com
@bscritic on Twitter ___
Related on HuffPost: Subscribe Leichman high school officials woke up to a surprise tomorrow on Monday, when it was discovered that the Los Angeles institution for students with special needs had suffered the weekend.
The vandalism contained a series of offensive messages of graffiti, including a statement that read "Kill Obama?" and was perceived by some as a threat against the President. In addition, there were representations of swastikas, pumps and anti-mensajes of the Police Department of Los Angeles, as a sign of KTLA-TV video.
While President Obama was in Los Angeles on Friday, it is not clear if the vandalism is related to their visit, according to LAist.
The school serves several hundred young people with disabilities between the ages of 14 and 22, but the students did not have to see the vandalism because it is summer school and has not yet begun summer school, reports KTLA. Officials discovered the damage on his arrival early in the morning.
"Is a horrible thing walk on any campus and see an example of the kind of hatred that exists in the world," said the Director of the school of Giovanni Triviño, by the Los Angeles Daily News.
In total, expected that the damage to the school costs about $2,500, advises a local CBS outlet.
The school, which has a surveillance camera, was also vandalized in May. The Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles school police are investigating both events, according to the Daily News of Los Angeles.
