Results tagged “south bay” from Daily Link

Ford, the Chambers of Commerce and Cities of Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Torrance and Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors present the 2009 International Surf Festival July 31 through August 2. Area lifeguards and youth compete in challenges include bodysurfing, sand volleyball, paddleboarding and a 2-mile run.

Find out which events take place where and when here including the Dwight Crum Pier-to-Pier swim and the Velzy-Stevens Pier-to-Pier Paddleboard Championship. The site also has photos and results from past events.

With summer on the horizon, it's time to prepare that poolside or beach reading list.

Two Web sites that can give you some suggestions are Goodreads and This One Next.

Goodreads.com has a social networking feature. It lets you know what your friends are reading, have read or would like to read. It also alerts you to what are the most popular books — at least among members of Goodreads.

Currently, President Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" is being read by 2,651 members, and it's No. 10 on the reading list.

But Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" is No. 2 on the reading list, and other books in the series are Nos. 4, Number6 and Number 7. "The Host," the first book of her newest series, is No. 11.

The site also includes videos of author interviews and a database of upcoming literary events. Enter your zip code and the type of event and the results pop up in a list and on a map.

Goodreads also maintains several user groups to discuss literature by genre, geography or common interest.

The name of This One Next says it all. Type in the title and author of book and ask for suggestions. However, just a cursory check of the site found that the less popular the title, the more likely it will return an error message.

The site also will recommend CDs and videos, although its choices can seem a little odd — "The Sound of Music" draws a recommendation of "The River Wild" with Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon.

Both sites will link you to Amazon, so you can order a book, CD, DVD or an electronic download if you have a Kindle.

Last week, Chicago learned that its iconic Sears Tower -- the tallest building in the United States, is losing its name. Blair Kamin, at ChicagoTribune.com, said "The Sears name isn't just a tack-on. It stands for something.... The building's architecture reflects that past: It is strong, solid, democratic."

London-based insurer the Willis Group moved into the tower, and the investment firm that owns the skyscraper threw in a name change at no extra charge. It shall now be known as Willis Tower. Plus, Sears left the tower as its headquarters back in 1992.

The name change shows how skyscrapers stoke the imaginations and passions of both detractors and admirers. If you fall into the admirers camp, SkyscraperPage.com is for you. The site features an extensive database of building statistics and very well-drawn diagrams.

Locally, El Segundo has five buildings represented in the database. Several more near LAX are categorized within Los Angeles, which boasts 559 high-rises.

Register for the page and you can join in discussions on architecture and urbanism on the active forums.

Does the number 13 inspire a sense of dread? Do you find yourself missing work when the 13 th day of the month falls on a Friday? Seek professional help immediately.

Or, better yet, set your mind at ease by understanding the origins of Friday the 13 th, a date that was tied to ominous historical and mythological events and spawned a franchise of slasher movies. How Stuff Works explains the enduring legend of Friday the 13th. According to the article, the superstition has roots in fears of Fridays and the number 13 -- particularly in early Christian theology. One explanation: At the Last Supper, Judas, one of Jesus' 12 apostles, was the last to arrive, making him the 13th man at the party. Judas would go on to betray Jesus, who was crucified on a Friday. Earlier religious speculation posited that Friday was the day Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and when the Great Flood began.

According to Wikipedia's Friday the 13th article, the date has been considered unlucky to undertake voyages or start business ventures since the 14 th century.

The fear is widespread enough to have its own name, paraskevidekatriaphobia -- fear of Friday the 13th. It's not an official psychologically recognized disorder, but it is sure to make anyone a true stud or studette at a spelling bee.

So, what's the verdict on Friday the 13th as an unlucky day? It's all in the eye of the beholder. In the meantime, watch the "Friday the 13th" movie series on DVD.

Happy birthday to you! Now blow out the candles and make a wish.

If your wish happens to be getting more free stuff, FreeBirthdayTreats.com will make it come true.

The site was created by people interested in finding out which restaurants and other companies share in your celebration by offering gratis goodies.

The online database has categories for adults, kids and even pets.

Narrow down your search by entering the state, type of business and if you're looking for discounts, freebies or both.

You can also submit your own treats to the database or sign up for new offers to be delivered via e-mail.

Today marks the beginning of the Lenten season with Ash Wednesday. The day and the season are mostly associated with Roman Catholicism, but the tradition is also observed by denominations including, but not limited to, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists and Presbyterians. And, according to a Salt Lake Tribune article, many Protestant denominations that had once regarded Lent as a non-Biblical ritual are increasingly incorporating Lent into their observances.

Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches also observe Lent, though their observance began two days earlier on Ash Monday.

A common thread among all denominations is a period where Christians meditate on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ across a period of 40 days. Observers make a personal sacrifice during the season, and Lent commonly involves daily fasts and abstention from meat-eating.

Catholic Online has the messages and meanings of the Roman Catholic Lenten rite.

According to the Ash Wednesday page:

•The ashes, made from the charred palms used in the prior year's Palm Sunday, are a reminder of humankind's mortality. Ashes are placed on the forehead with the reminder that "Man is dust, and unto dust you shall return."

•The Catholic Church has a thorough code on the practices of fasting and abstinence. Fasting, or reducing the amount of food eaten during the Lenten period, must be observed by Catholics ages 18 to 59. Abstinence, or refraining from eating meat, is required of Catholics ages 14 and older on Ash Wednesday and the Fridays before Easter Sunday. The sick, pregnant and nursing women, and workers in jobs requiring strenuous manual labor are exempt from fast and abstinence.

•While Lent is a time of sacrifice, it is also a time for all observers to still carry out their obligations as students, workers and parents. So, no, vacations are not considered sacrifices.

For other questions regarding Lenten observance, Catholic Online has an FAQ page.

Daily Breeze columnist John Bogert, the sage of the South Bay, revealed a bombshell in his Jan. 8 column, "Too many are in the 'know-nothing' party." Among the startling revelations:

• The average score on a quiz administered by the American Civil Literacy Program, www.americancivicliteracy.org, was 49 percent out of a sample of a little more than 2,500 test-takers?
• This score was merely six (!) points lower than the average when said test was given to college educators -- people who had graduate- or doctorate-level scholarship in these subjects and later go on to teach this to the rest of us.
• The American Civil Literacy Program has mathematical proof verifying the Peter principle. A sample of 164 elected officials, on average, scored five points less than the general population.

Bogert, who admits to a "Jeffersonian" score when he took the test, provides a few questions to prep before taking the exam.

Now, tax your American knowledge. It's 33 multiple-choice questions and open-book, but there is the option of entering your ZIP code, income and education level.

Feel free to boast about your score in the comments.

The big day is at hand. The preparations are complete. The halls are decked, the chestnuts roasted on an open fire, the stockings stuffed, the gifts wrapped, and the eggs nogged.

Now rest, ye merry gentlemen and ladies before a computer and follow these links for some Yuletide joy.

FunTrivia, which in the title bar claims to be the "world's largest trivia and quiz site!," has a very special Christmastime quiz section. Try your hand at any of 30 quizzes that test Noel knowledge. They even track who has been naughty or nice — in this case right and wrong — and reveal how many cohorts answered the questions correctly. Good luck!

For those who wish to give their eye-hand coordination some exercise, free Web-based game repository Miniclip has a collection of games just right for the season.

These games are sure to have your bells jingling.

Only 22 percent of readers who took our online poll said they were planning to shop on Friday. If you're one of them, here's a list of mall hours and links to coupons and deals that will help you plan a strategy.

Del Amo Fashion Center deals
5 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Manhattan Village deals
9 a.m. to 9 p.m., but Macy's is open from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Promenade on the Peninsula deals
9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

South Bay Galleria deals
5 a.m. to 9 p.m.

SouthBay Pavilion in Carson deals
8 a.m. to 9 p.m., but several stores will be opening early, including Old Navy at 5 a.m.

If you're planning to go farther afield, here's a list from the Daily News' Bargain Hunter blog about malls in the Valley.

It's a bummer to get the kids all spiffed up for Santa, then get to the mall and find out he's on his lunch break. Waiting around does not make for good pictures. So here's our annual guide to Santa's office hours in the South Bay:

Del Amo Fashion Center
310-542-8525

Santa will be at the mall during business hours through Dec. 24.
Those hours are:
Mon to Fri: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Breaks from 1 to 2 p.m. and 5:15 to 6 p.m.
Sat: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Breaks from 1 to 2 p.m. and 5:15 to 6 p.m.
Sun: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Breaks from 2 to 3 p.m.

Galleria at South Bay
310-371-7546

Santa will be there through Dec. 24.
Now to Dec. 14:
Mon to Sat: 10 or 11 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m.
Sun: noon to 6 p.m. or 7 p.m.

Dec. 15 to Dec. 23: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Dec. 24: 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
See the Web site schedule because there are many minor variations on the hours and break times.
The Web site also has a detailed list of photo packages and prices.

Manhattan Village Mall
310-426-9899

Santa arrives Nov. 28 and stays until Dec. 24.
Mon to Sat: 11a.m. to 8 p.m., breaks at 1-2 p.m. and 4:15-4:45 p.m.
The Web site has a list of packages and prices.

Promenade on the Peninsula
310-541-0688

Pictures with Santa, on three Saturdays only: Nov. 29, Dec. 6 and Dec. 20, 1-4 p.m. each day.

Plaza El Segundo
310 647-3431

Santa has parked his sleigh next to Toy Jungle. For every photo with a border you buy, Toy Jungle and Vision Trust will donate $4 to buy toys for at-risk children.
Dec 11 to 13: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Dec. 14: Noon to 6 p.m.
Dec 18 to 20: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Dec. 21: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Dec 22 to 23: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Dec. 24: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

South Bay Pavilion at Carson
310-366-6636

Santa arrives on Nov. 28 and will hang around until Dec. 24. He'll be there from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. There may be slight variations in the hours but he will be there all day most days.

Check by phone or on the Web site where information on photo prices will be available in a few days.

Last week, the Daily Breeze's Sam Gnerre went through the archives and found photographs of old supermarkets, which inspired him to compile one of his many great Top 10 lists. He found the names of grocery stores that fed many households in the South Bay.

There was a time when supermarkets had names other than Ralphs, Vons or Albertsons, and a time when shopping at Whole Foods meant a whole year's salary and not just a whole paycheck.

Want to know whatever happened to such chains as Alpha Beta, The Boys and Smith's Food King? Their histories, along with other markets throughout North America, live on in Groceteria.

The site compiles a collection of photos and "commercial archaeology" from fans of grocery stores — a most ornery bunch. It also has a message board for fans to ask questions and share their own stories.

Grocery store fandom goes beyond Groceteria to the more photographically inclined. Flickr, the photo-sharing social network, has the group "Vintage Supermarkets, Grocery & Convenience Stores." It has a melange of old photos and present-day photos of older supermarkets extant and repurposed.

Bartering for goods may be something of the past, but Commuto is trying to bring trading back, Web-style.

With this online bartering system, you can post a wish list of items you want and put up a list of all that stuff collecting dust in your garage or attic. You'll eventually get automatic notifications whenever someone else posts something from your wish list.

Membership is free, and unlike eBay, it doesn't cost anything to post listings. Transactions don't even need shipping costs.

Mostly books, video games and DVDs are up for trade, but you can also find couture clothing and accessories, furniture and kitchen gadgets. (An espresso machine was up for grabs as of Monday; if you're lucky, it'll still be there.)

Commuto is more local than you might think. The program is still in its early stages, but there are already users in Torrance, Redondo Beach, Gardena, Rancho Palos Verdes and other cities.

Remember Josh Robbins? He's the Redondo Beach resident who set out to attend every Major League Baseball stadium, and to set a record by doing so -- in 27 days.

He was featured in the Daily Breeze on June 14, two days before he began his trip. Robbins is chronicling his adventure on his site, thirty27.com, which features a schedule and daily blog.

Robbins' odyssey began in Seattle, where the visiting Florida Marlins played the Mariners in interleague action. He has since seen 11 games, and the 12th is tonight in Cleveland, where the Indians play the San Francisco Giants.

He has been getting some media fame through his exploits, being interviewed by local media on his stops. Even the teams know about Robbins' adventure; he boasts that more than 20 of them even comped him free tickets.

Robbins is having a better time than the teams he visits for their home games. Out of the first 10 games on Robbins' itinerary, home teams have lost 7 times in games where he was in attendance.

Should reports of salmonella contamination have you saying "hold the tomatoes" forever? The outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul, an uncommon strain of the bacterium, has been responsible for more than 550 infectious cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since April. As a result, the fruits have been pulled from markets and restaurants. Five weeks after the first reports of an outbreak, what are your tomato-eating options?

Some varieties of tomatoes are safe to eat, and some of the suspected red plum, red Roma and red round tomatoes were not grown in contaminated areas. The Associated Press offers some advice on safe tomato consumption:

• Avoid raw red plum, red Roma or red round tomatoes unless they were grown in specific states or countries that Food and Drug Administration has cleared of suspicion. The Food and Drug Administration has a salmonella updates page.
• Opt for grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and tomatoes sold with the vine still attached. They are unaffected.
• Choose tomatoes and other fresh produce without bruises or other damage.
• Keep uncut tomatoes at room temperature for the best flavor. Once sliced, tomatoes must be refrigerated promptly, to avoid bacterial growth.
• Wash fresh tomatoes under running water just before eating them.
• If you think you may have eaten a contaminated tomato, the CDC maintains a page on the salmonella outbreak where you can compare your symptoms and read about treatment options.

Dining out has been made easier and more fun thanks to the web. Not only can databases make it easier to find restaurants, but interactivity allows us to share our experiences -- good and bad -- with fellow diners.

Listing/review sites are abundant, so the novelty has worn off and the quality of reviews by average Joes and Janes can be decidedly hit-and-miss.

For foodies, Eater LA strives to be the highly regarded sit-down restaurant in a world dominated by noisy fast-food dining sites.

Eater LA has its own community of reviewers, but it's a blog that writes and aggregates news about restaurants, chefs, critics and industry developments. The site is nicely polished, modeled on the template of sister sites Curbed LA for urban planning and Racked LA for shopping.

Our little corner of the world is modestly represented in the subcategories. So far, Eater has listings for the Del Reys, LAX, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and San Pedro. It will only be a matter of time before Eater readers and the internet as a whole discover Lawndale's restaurant scene.

Gas prices may have made Sunday drivers fewer and farther between, but there's still a great way to get out and enjoy some weekend cruising -- pedal power! Not only is riding a bike better for the environment, it's better for you. But where to ride? If you're tired or wary of clueless motorists making you fear for life and limb, give labikepaths.com a try. Choose anywhere from Los Angeles to northern Orange County, even out to Angeles National Forest, from a drop-down menu, and the site will show you your best options nearby. It even offers local weather, trail descriptions, cyclists' warnings and links to bike paths on Google maps. For even more information, check out the site's extensive list of cycling resources from community services to clubs -- even phone numbers for city bike assistance! Also available are recommended cycling books and a calendar of cycling events (if your group has something coming up, feel free to submit it). It's too expensive to drive around, but don't let that keep you inside.

If the Armed Forces Day activities in Torrance on Saturday have you in a military frame of mind, you can visit one of 19 military memorials in the South Bay to pay your respects to those who have served the country. Check our map of the memorials for details and directions.

Or read on for a text list.

If you're not aware by now, Bike to Work Week is May 12 through May 16. If the two-wheeler has been sitting in the garage throughout this week, there's no excuse not to bring it out today: Bike to Work Day.

This morning is when bicyclists are feted for using human-powered propulsion and the most energy efficient mode of transportation on Earth. Of Two Minds blogger Charles Hugh Smith estimates that a bicyclist can get and MPG of 900 -- yes nine hundred.

Pit stops are set up this morning to give thanks and free swag to bicyclists. In the South Bay, pit stops will be at the Aviation and El Segundo/Nash Metro Green Line stations and at Torrance City Hall, at Torrance Boulevard and Madrona Avenue. All of Los Angeles County's pit stops are plotted out on a Google Map.

Another freebie bicyclists might consider: free transit rides. South Bay bus and rail carriers offering free rides today are Metro, Beach Cities Transit, Los Angeles Department of Transportation and Torrance Transit. Gardena Municipal Bus Lines is also offering free rides, but its buses cannot accommodate bicycles.

The Century (105) Freeway provides a speedy link through southern Los Angeles County. It runs between LAX and Norwalk, and connects three freeways.

It also spawned one of the first major freeway revolts and a complicated legal battle that forced Caltrans to implement unprecedented legal remedies to the mostly low-income communities through where the 105 was built.

Photographer Jeff Gates provides a history lesson.

He shares photographs and essays of the drawn-out process of building Los Angeles County's last major freeway opening on his site, In Our Path. He began photographing the construction of the freeway in 1982, and interviewed residents in the path of the freeway who were displaced by freeway construction.

The Century Freeway, which was originally set to be completed by 1980, opened in 1993 after the state battled cities and residents in the courts. The freeway was ultimately built, but the state agreed to enter a consent decree that required replacing homes taken for the freeway, giving preferential hiring to nearby residents for construction, and integrating mass transit into the highway's design. The Metro Green Line, running in the freeway's median, opened in 1995.

The litigation brought on by construction of the freeway factored in slowing down highway expansion throughout the county.

Gates, a Los Angeles native now living on the East Coast, supplies images and writing on the construction of the freeway and Southern California's transition from the suburban boom started by the Pacific Electric streetcars and completed with the highway grid that largely replaced the traction.

May is Older Americans Month, sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services' Administration on Aging. When the celebration was established in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy, only 17 million living Americans had reached their 65th birthdays. Beginning in 2011, the first of 78 million baby boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964) will start transitioning into retirement, kicking off an expansion in the number of elderly people that will continue for decades. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, one out of every nine baby boomers will live to be at least age 90.

This year's theme is "Working Together for Strong, Healthy, and Supportive Communities." Celebrate older Americans in your community on Saturday, as the city of Torrance holds its ninth annual Senior Faire and Arts and Crafts Festival. The free event will feature arts and crafts, health screenings, food booths and more. It will be held at the Ken Miller Recreation Center, 3341 Torrance Blvd., from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Call 310-320-5918 for more information.