Dirt

Restaurants typically do their best to keep their establishments clean. And in Los Angeles, we even grade our restaurants based on cleanliness. So it came as a surprise to see a restaurant in Japan serving actual dirt on the menu. And we're not talking about the small remnants that can cling to a piece of produce after it's been washed. Nor the trendy "dirt" -- made with ground  nuts and malt flour -- popularized by the Copenhagen restaurant Noma. It's real dirt. Ne Quittez Pas , a restaurant in Tokyo, is serving an entire menu devoted to dirt, reported Asian news site RocketNews24.com . The first course consists of a potato starch and dirt soup; the second, salad with dirt dressing, then an aspic with oriental clams and a top layer of sediment; and the fourth course, a dirt risotto with sea bass and burdock root.

Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky., has become the latest horse-racing track to announce that it is replacing its synthetic surface and returning to dirt. The Polytrack surface will be discarded after the end of the April meeting, replaced by a dirt surface for the fall. The Polytrack was installed in 2006. Del Mar plans to replace its Polytrack with dirt after this summer's meeting. Santa Anita previously switched back to dirt. The change should help Keeneland's bid for a Breeders' Cup. Owners have come to prefer a dirt surface . Several tracks had switched to synthetic surfaces with the intention of improving safety for horses, but statistics have been mixed about whether those surfaces produced a major improvement in safety.

Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky., has become the latest horse-racing track to announce that it is replacing its synthetic surface and returning to dirt. The Polytrack surface will be discarded after the end of the April meeting, replaced by a dirt surface for the fall. The Polytrack was installed in 2006. Del Mar plans to replace its Polytrack with dirt after this summer's meeting. Santa Anita previously switched back to dirt. The change should help Keeneland's bid for a Breeders' Cup. Owners have come to prefer a dirt surface . Several tracks had switched to synthetic surfaces with the intention of improving safety for horses, but statistics have been mixed about whether those surfaces produced a major improvement in safety.

A 54-year-old dirt bike rider whose disappearance in the Santa Clarita Valley prompted a multiagency search early Wednesday has been found safe at his home, authorities said. Antonio Marquez was reported missing around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, Santa Clarita police Sgt. Jeff Curran told KTLA-TV. He apparently returned home after crashing his dirt bike, according to a  tweet Wednesday morning from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Santa Clarita Valley Station.

Authorities began sifting through dirt in a New York City basement Saturday as part of a ongoing search for the remains of Etan Patz, the 6-year-old boy who vanished in 1979. The basement's concrete floor was removed Saturday morning and the area was broken into quadrants, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said in a telephone interview with the Times. Authorities dug 1 1/2 feet to 2 feet into the dirt floor, Browne said. The first quadrant had been sifted through and the second was underway at 5 p.m. Eastern time.

My first dirt bike was a chopped and lopped Suzuki 50, so I have always been favorably disposed toward this storied Japanese label. I became more so when, in the early 1970s, motocross champions like Joel Robert, Sylvain Geboers and Roger DeCoster abandoned their European bikes to ride for Suzuki -- and continued to win world championships. But I hadn't been on any Suzuki except for a street GSXR for ages, and didn't know what to expect when I got astride the company's 2013 DR650SE and DR-Z400S.

"Wayward Riders" (Feb. 24) describes the illegal use of dirt bikes in Potrero Creek preserve. A headline asks, "But Where Else Can They Go?" The answer is: to jail. About what other kinds of vandalism would such a question be asked? Tom Walsh Blue Jay, Calif.

In the third TV Sweeps week, it looks like the local ratings battle is developing into a two-way titillation contest between Channels 2 and 7. 2's taking a weeklong look at L.A. dating ("Checking out the Meet Market"). Reporter Steve Kmetko asks, "What's being served up in the Southland single scene? Are shoppers getting what they want?"

The Prelude to the Dream race is a throwback to the beginnings of stock-car racing. The seventh-annual event, held in Rossburg, Ohio, highlights modern-day superstars returning to the roots of car racing by competing on a dirt track in dirt late-model stock cars. This event allows avid fans to not only see the origins of the sport, but to also experience racing's biggest names performing outside their routine element. The drivers do not compete for points and winnings but for charity, as the 2012 pay-per-view proceeds will benefit Feed the Children.

A 54-year-old dirt bike rider whose disappearance in the Santa Clarita Valley prompted a multiagency search early Wednesday has been found safe at his home, authorities said. Antonio Marquez was reported missing around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, Santa Clarita police Sgt. Jeff Curran told KTLA-TV. He apparently returned home after crashing his dirt bike, according to a  tweet Wednesday morning from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Santa Clarita Valley Station.

Search and rescue crews are trying to locate a 54-year-old dirt bike rider who went missing overnight in Santa Clarita after calling family members to say he was traversing "treacherous trails," authorities said. Antonio Marquez was reported missing around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, Santa Clarita police Sgt. Jeff Curran told KTLA-TV . His family said they hadn't heard from him since 6:30 p.m., according to authorities. “He did have a cell phone, that was the last contact he had with the family,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Joshua Dubin.

They're known as Arabbers and their profession as Arabbing - words that are supposed to evoke the nomadic life of a street merchant. Arabbers sell fruit and vegetables from horse-drawn carts, much as the first Arabbers did when the profession took root in Baltimore after the Civil War as a way to provide blacks with work. Once a thriving niche with more than 40 stables across the city, the trade has declined to just three stables. The job of guiding a horse and a day's worth of inventory through city streets has always been hazardous.

So much for the grand experiment of having synthetic surfaces for horse racing in Southern California. The last holdout, Del Mar, plans to switch to a dirt surface in 2015, track president Joe Harper said Wednesday. After that, the only remaining synthetic track in the state will be Northern California's Golden Gate Fields. Santa Anita switched back to dirt in 2010. Hollywood Park has closed, and Los Alamitos and Fairplex already have dirt surfaces. In 2006, the California Horse Racing Board mandated that all the main thoroughbred tracks install a synthetic surface by the end of 2007 in an attempt to improve safety.

Director-cinematographer Lotfy Nathan takes a decidedly judgment-free approach to the provocative characters and situations in his urban documentary "12 O'Clock Boys. " Good thing? Maybe. But some viewers may not prove as neutral as they consider this unvarnished, kinetic, often disturbing portrait of illegal dirt bikers in inner-city Baltimore. For three years, starting in 2010, Nathan follows a brash kid named Pug, who's 13 at the start. His goal is to join the controversial local dirt-bike group called the 12 O'Clock Boys, so-named for driving their bikes straight up like the hands of a clock.

A motorcyclist died Tuesday afternoon when he veered off Angeles Forest Highway and crashed into a ravine, according to the California Highway Patrol. A witness reported that at 1 p.m., three northbound motorcyclists were traveling at high speeds on the highway near Mt. Emma Road when two of them passed the third on the left. That biker than overtook the two on the right, moving onto the dirt shoulder, where he hit a dirt berm. The motorcyclist, a 47-year-old Saugus man, went over the berm and tumbled down the hillside, sustaining fatal injuries, the highway patrol said.

As far as news releases go, the one the Los Angeles police union put out was highly unusual. It dealt with Brian C. Mulligan, a Hollywood executive turned banker, who had been arrested by LAPD officers. In the news release, the union portrayed Mulligan as a drug-abusing liar and accused him of trying to "shake down" the Police Department. The evidence? A secret recording that a police officer in nearby Glendale had made of Mulligan a few days before his arrest. Sounding agitated and paranoid, Mulligan admitted on the recording to using a potent type of bath salts, a synthetic drug that can cause paranoia.

Search and rescue crews are trying to locate a 54-year-old dirt bike rider who went missing overnight in Santa Clarita after calling family members to say he was traversing "treacherous trails," authorities said. Antonio Marquez was reported missing around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, Santa Clarita police Sgt. Jeff Curran told KTLA-TV . His family said they hadn't heard from him since 6:30 p.m., according to authorities. “He did have a cell phone, that was the last contact he had with the family,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Joshua Dubin.

A UC Davis study of horse deaths at California tracks has documented for the first time that thoroughbreds suffer a higher number of fatal hind rear injuries on race tracks with synthetic surfaces compared to dirt. In statistics compiled from 2008, nine thoroughbred deaths resulted from left rear injuries and 10 from right rear injuries on synthetic tracks. There was only one death on dirt from a hind rear injury, according to the study. The debate over dirt versus synthetic tracks has roiled the horse racing industry in recent years.

Goldencents, who earlier this year was considered a strong Kentucky Derby horse, set blistering early fractions and held on to win the Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile for trainer Doug O'Neill. Goldencents, winner of the Santa Anita Derby, went off at 6-1 in the Kentucky Derby but failed miserably, finishing 17th, almost 50 lengths behind after being eased. He came back two weeks later to win to finish fifth in the Preakness. Louisville basketball Coach Rick Pitino is part-owner of the horse.