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In 1981, Johnny Johnson marched into the storefront headquarters of the tiny Sativa-Los Angeles County Water District in Willowbrook to complain about his water being shut off. He ended up deciding to run for a seat on the water board. Johnson has been a leader of the district ever since. Now 68, he oversees a staff of six full-time employees, including his wife and stepdaughter. For years, the district has operated without a budget, an auditor or a general manager. It can't afford to install water meters at the 1,500 homes it serves just north of Compton.

For the past 21/2 years, Bill Miller of Malibu Kitchen has had a hard-and-fast rule at his upscale deli: If you're on your cellphone when you reach the head of the line, he won't serve you. In fact, he's posted a prominent sign at the counter: "You decide which is more important. Ordering food or talking on the cellphone. You won't be waited on until the phone is off and put away. " That, he says, has earned him a reputation as the "Deli Nazi. " Eva, a 42-seat eatery on Beverly Boulevard, made headlines last summer when it decided on a softer approach to curbing cellular use - offering its customers a 5% discount off their meal for turning in their phones at the door.

When you talk to Texas expatriates about the food they miss most from home, after a few grumbly sentences about Los Angeles chili, and barbecue, and coffee-shop chicken-fried steak, it comes down to the queso every time. I am not one of those writers who harps on authenticity, and when I have a shot or two of tequila in me, I can even admit the merits of Tex-Mex as a regional Mexican cuisine. Migas , the spicy Tex-Mex equivalent of chilaquiles , are among the greatest breakfast foods ever invented.

As waiting rooms in other parts of the U.S. have been clogged with sniffling, feverish hordes, California has seemed to avoid the worst of this year's flu - so far. But that may change, as officials in California said this week that flu activity in the state had reached “a widespread level,” and that the number of visits to doctors and hospitals for the treatment of flu-like illness was higher than usual for mid-January.  (For more on...

In a move to address the slumping academic performance of incoming ninth-grade students, charter school operator Green Dot Public School is proposing to reorganize Locke High School in Watts. The Locke campus is split into five small schools. Rather than dividing the ninth-grade students among the five, most new freshmen will be placed in a single academy on the campus. One of the schools, Animo Watts, will continue to serve ninth through 12th grade. There will be three 10th-through-12th-grade academies and the charter group wants to open a new middle school in the area to better prepare incoming students, Green Dot announced.

If you want to understand Bestia, you should probably take a look at the cassoeula , a version of a traditional cabbage stew popular in Milan. At Alfredo de Gran San Bernardo, the Milanese businessmen's restaurant where I first tried the dish, cassoeula was delicious but austere, a sort of cabbagey pot-au-feu whose highlight was a slippery scrap of boiled pig's forehead. At Bestia, chef Ori Menashe's cassoeula is no less austere: pork ribs, veal ribs and sausage presented in a crock of strong broth; meat simmered almost to gelatin, greens cooked to the point where they tear at the touch of a fork.

NEW YORK -- The investor presentation featured protein shakes and granola bars, entreaties for more hugs in the world, and accusations of lies and snobbery, all to counter a $1-billion bet that Herbalife, the Southern California company, will soon go down the tubes. Who says Wall Street is more boring these days? The presentation was the latest move in a battle between Herbalife, which sells nutrition powders, bars and vitamins through a network of individual distributors, and Bill Ackman, founder and chief of Pershing Square Capital Management.

As the White House prepares to unveil its recommendations this month to combat gun violence, advocates of reform are already working to generate public pressure for gun control policies that have long been stalled in Congress. On Tuesday, the second anniversary of a Tucson shooting that left six dead and 13 injured, including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), several groups launched fresh offensives on the airwaves and in print. The highest-profile effort came from Giffords, who introduced a campaign along with her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, to counter the influence of the gun-rights lobby.

Have you ever had the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich at the new Storefront Deli in Los Feliz? Because that sandwich, less made from scratch than reverse-engineered from a meat lover's fondest late-summer daydreams, is at the heart of one of the strongest culinary movements in the country at the moment: the radical reinvention of everyday dishes by deconstructing them and rebuilding them to the tiniest detail. The Storefront BLT is built on bread baked in-house by Pete Scherer, lightly toasted to a delicate crunch, layered with house-made mayonnaise and heirloom tomatoes, and heaped with thick slabs of bacon cured by owners Zak Walters and Chris Phelps.

The first responsibility of any great restaurant is to keep you in the bubble, the soft-serve cocoon of illusion where you forget the world exists for anything but your pleasure. And the newly redesigned Spago, from the moment you toss your keys to the valet to the moment you stagger back out again, gives good bubble. The thick prime rib steak sings with the flavors of blood, age and char; the tagliatelle with white truffles perfumes half the observable universe when its glass dome is whisked away.