Concrete

I enjoyed the "Pardon Our Dust" remodeling story in the Real Estate section ("Little Pink House Grows Up," June 8). I work with many remodels in my work as an engineer. This brings me to my pet peeve: You described a certain size of "cement blocks" being poured under the house to reinforce the upper story. Those were concrete blocks. Cement is only one of the four main ingredients in concrete, the others being sand, gravel and water. PAM FERGUSON

With an Amtrak Pacific Surfliner crossing over the new Trestles bridge on Monday morning, local transportation officials marked the completion of a multimillion-dollar project to replace the storied, but worn-down, wooden structure that has served as the gateway to a San Diego County beach regarded as a birthplace of Southern California's surf culture. The original Trestles, built in 1941, was an 858-foot stretch of wooden post-and-beam bridge. Although it remained strong, with more than 40 passenger and freight trains crossing per day, the trains were required to slow down to reduce vibration and wear and tear.

Those of us opposed to the Lang Dam project appreciate the coverage of our protest on Sunday afternoon and the article "Protesters Bemoan Loss of Oaks for Dam Project." Ventura County Supervisor Frank Schillo called me this morning to tell me the dam is not going to be made of concrete. I told him I would let you know this fact. Thanks again for making our feelings known, even if I was off-base with my facts! Penny Burley Camarillo

Pocket doors slide away to connect the indoors and outdoors at this sleek contemporary. Designed for entertaining, the modern house features a massive concrete fireplace, a glass-walled loft and walls of glass looking out onto the swimming pool and deck. Location: 1060 Woodland Drive, Beverly Hills 90210 Asking price: $6.995 million Year built: 2009 House size: Four bedrooms, 41/2 bathrooms, 5,868 square feet Lot size: 20,420 square feet Features: Porcelain tile floors, walnut floors, bar, breakfast bar, office, recessed lighting, media room, service entrance, alarm system About the area: In the first quarter, 60 single-family homes sold in the 90210 ZIP Code at a median price of $2.85 million, according to DataQuick.

Plans for a mall in Carson are way behind schedule, and the property owners are asking the city for permission to dump 775,000 cubic yards of dirt, asphalt and concrete onto the property as landfill to build up the site. The city Planning Commission has studied the proposal and recommended that the request be rejected. The commission meets July 22 to adopt a resolution on the project.

If Stephanie Bartron has her way, California's sea of patio concrete is going to start shrinking. When the Los Angeles landscape designer eyed her clients' slab behind a 1940s Atwater Village bungalow, she knew the concrete had to go. New hardscape and plants would have done the trick, sure, but digging out all that paving was costly, and the waste would just end up in the landfill. So, Bartron took a different approach. She hired a professional industrial saw operator to slice up the 20-by-20-foot patio into a grid of 18-inch squares.

When Charles Pankow Inc. quotes a price for a construction project, it is set in concrete--and the building itself more often than not is constructed of that material. Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the Altadena-based company has grown to the third-largest design/build firm in the nation, with 1987 contracts topping the $425-million mark. The biggest firm in the field last year, according to Building Design and Construction magazine, was Fluor Daniel, Greenville, S.C.

Concrete is the floor of choice for the urban jungle--inexpensive and built to last as long as a Roman road. But because it's ubiquitous and cheap and hard, concrete is sometimes looked down on as a paving, especially in upscale gardens. "When I told people I was going to concrete my yard, they said, 'Oh no!'" says Stefan Smith, a director of commercials and music videos who lives in Venice. A year later, naysayers have come around. "Now that plants are in, it's a softer place," Smith says.

The first track on the new Concrete Blonde album is about teen warfare and the toll exacted by urban violence. The second song is about the hyperactive hypocrisy of the cocaine and speed generation. And the third is about the love of money, money, money, muhnee. . . . Too bad the title "Los Angeles" already has been taken. Like the great band X before it, the slightly more mainstream Concrete Blonde speaks for its city in a time of transition, uniting fears of social ills and the dread of personal commitment in one pretty, supremely emotive package.

A critically acclaimed contemporary home designed by Eric Owen Moss has come on the market for the first time in Brentwood. Featured in books, magazines and television shows, the Lawson/Westen House is a geometric amalgamation of concrete, steel, glass and wood highlighted by a three-story truncated cone that rises over the kitchen. Moss, director of the Southern California Institute of Architecture, conceived the cylindrical Gateway Art Tower and other structures in Culver City's Hayden Tract, and his Los Angeles firm has designed museums, theaters and commercial buildings across the globe.

A group of downtown residents and their dogs were romping on a small patch of grass next to the glass edifice that headquarters the Los Angeles Police Department when the playful mood was broken. "Hey, hey, look out!" someone shouted. A dog off its leash ran into the street, and was causing drivers to swerve. A similar incident had occurred just hours before, one park visitor said, when another dog escaped its owner and ran into the street, only to be saved by a homeless person.

The congressional legislators who oversee the Food and Drug Administration and control the nation's coffers have shown again that they neither understand drug development nor the regulatory problems that plague it. In February, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski(D-Md.) unveiled a bipartisan bill intended to spur innovation in research and drug development for chronic, costly health conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, cancer, diabetes and heart disease. According to the press release, the bill will invest "in public-private partnerships to ensure scientists and researchers are able to develop new safe and effective drugs," shrink product development timelines, increase the number of drugs in the development pipeline and expedite the FDA review process.

When Karin Hauenstein led her three horses down Vine Street, the girls in short skirts stilled their stiletto-heeled sashays, the incense hawkers stopped calling out to passersby, and Trader Joe's shoppers gaped through the glass at the convoy clip-clopping up the far right lane. Whether anyone registered more than surprise is hard to say. But on that recent afternoon, Hauenstein was making a statement. The 39-year-old horse trainer has come south from Santa Barbara County to protest the commercial slaughter of horses.

For years, San Francisco's Ocean Beach has been under assault by such powerful surf that a fierce winter storm can scour away 25 feet of bluff in just days. The startling pace of the erosion near the San Francisco Zoo has compelled the city to spend $5 million to shore up the crumbling bluffs. The strategy has been simple: drop huge rocks and mounds of sand to protect the nearby Great Highway and the sewer pipes underneath from being destroyed by the crashing waves. But as the enormous rocks have piled up, adding to a jumble of concrete — chunks of curb and bits and pieces of gutters — from parking lots that have tumbled onto the shore, so too have the demands that the city get rid of it all and let the coastline retreat naturally.

When it comes to uses of bamboo, many think of chopsticks, panda food or patio furniture. Simon Velez, on the other hand, envisions bus stations, churches or bridges. The Bogota, Colombia-based architect is leading a global crusade for new uses of the plant, a giant member of the grass family, as a strong, eco-sustainable, aesthetically pleasing material that can substitute for wood and concrete in many projects. Velez was long a lonely advocate, with most of his colleagues viewing bamboo as fit only for use as a finishing material in matting or plywood.

Set on a corner lot in Manhattan Beach's Hill Section, this modernist house makes the most of walls of windows that frame the ocean views. The U-shaped concrete, steel and glass structure centers on a walled interior courtyard that the living space surrounds. Location: 904 Highview Ave., Manhattan Beach 90266 Asking price: $3.6 million Architect: Gerald Horn Year built: 1996 House size: Three bedrooms, 31/2 bathrooms, 3,643 square feet Lot size: 6,761 square feet Features: Solid teak wood windows, steel truss beams, living room fireplace, formal dining room, family room, two-car garage About the area: In the first half of the year, 177 single-family homes sold in the 90266 ZIP Code at a median price of $1,489,000, according to DataQuick.

I notice with shock that Caltrans is tearing out mature oleanders and other shrubs in the median strips of San Diego County freeways and replacing them with concrete dividers. One cannot think off-hand of any act by state government that will detract more from the beauty of people's everyday lives. Caltrans is actually removing the single most visible landscaping there is on public or private property. A majority of people travel on the freeway almost daily. One need only to drive from Los Angeles to San Diego to notice the tremendous visual difference landscaping in the median makes in breaking up and beautifying the enormous width of concrete and also screening cars coming the other way. The greenery is actually seen by and aids more people daily than all our parks and other landscaping combined.

Re "The flow of ideas," editorial, Oct. 2 My San Fernando Valley neighborhood and others throughout Los Angeles County would flood during heavy rains before the construction of the existing flood control system -- with the concrete-lined L.A. River as its foundation. Now The Times appears to want a "restored river, concrete stripped from its base, willows lining its banks." Such a free-of-concrete "restored river" would compromise the entire flood control system. The Times perceives the river in its current state as "one of the world's ugliest concrete-lined flood channels."

The 6th Street Bridge is history. The iconic structure, which stretches gracefully over the Los Angeles River, inspires rapturous words from poets and engineers. But it ails from a rare and incurable concrete cancer that is cracking and crumbling the monumental span. The doomed 1932 viaduct is the last built, the longest and — to many — the most iconic of the dozen historic bridges that vault the river east of downtown. It is a much-beloved and much-filmed symbol of a proud city that embraced elegance and the automobile.

How do you know when a protest movement is starting to scare the pants off the establishment? One clue is when the protesters are casually dismissed as hippies or rabble, or their principles redefined as class envy or as (that all-purpose insult) "un-American. " Nothing shows that as powerfully as the reaction to the Occupy Wall Street protests that have spread from the financial district in lower Manhattan to cities nationwide, including Los Angeles. Conservative politicians have condemned the Occupy Wall Street protesters as "mobs" supporting the "pitting of Americans against Americans" (Rep.