Downtown Los Angeles

The payday loan industry has found a new and lucrative source of business: the unemployed. Payday lenders, which typically provide workers with cash advances on their paychecks, are offering the same service to those covered by unemployment insurance. No job? No problem. A typical unemployed Californian receiving $300 a week in benefits can walk into one of hundreds of storefront operations statewide and walk out with $255 well before that government check arrives -- for a $45 fee. Annualized, that's an interest rate of 459%.

With work set to begin soon on a $1-billion luxury hotel in downtown Los Angeles, developer Korean Air revealed some details about the tower that is expected to dramatically alter the city's skyline. The skyscraper will be the second-tallest structure in Southern California at 70 stories, only slightly shorter than the US Bank Tower office building, said Yang Ho Cho, the chairman of Korean Air. The design is still a work in progress, but guests are expected to be whisked by high-speed elevators to the lobby on the 70th floor, where they will check in. The top floor will also have a restaurant, bar and infinity swimming pool.

Nissan Motor Co.is bringing back the storied Datsun brand, but American drivers are unlikely to see any new vehicles adorned with the name whose popularity in Southern California served as a springboard to international prominence. Nissan is positioning Datsun as a lower-cost brand in emerging markets. The new line will go on sale in India, Indonesia and Russia in 2014. The Datsun brand dates from 1931 as the nameplate of Japan's DAT Motorcar Co., which was purchased by Nissan in 1933.

Tens of thousands of cycling, hockey and basketball fans will converge at Staples Center in a weekend packed with post-season games and the final stage of the 2012 Amgen Tour of California - events that authorities are warning will close streets and delay traffic in the downtown Los Angeles area. The biggest wrench in traffic will be crowds overlapping for the Kings game and the bike race Sunday. Street closures were scheduled to begin after the Lakers game Saturday night - along Figueroa Street from Pico to Olympic boulevards and on Chick Hearn Court/11th Street from Flower Avenue to Georgia Street - when two pedestrian bridges will be erected so Kings fans can cross the bike route Sunday morning for Game 4 of the NHL Western conference finals.

Last of three parts No car, no work. That's the conclusion Lisa Twombly reached as she fought to hang on to her job as a caretaker for an elderly San Diego couple. Taking the bus and bumming rides from friends wasn't cutting it, and she was repeatedly late for work. Told she'd be fired if it happened again, Twombly put down $4,000 - all her savings - on a 9-year-old Chrysler Sebring with 95,000 miles. The dealership lent her the $2,600 balance at a steep 18% interest rate.

Social Security cards run about $20, green cards about $70 and a California driver's license between $60 and $250. The price jumps up for higher-quality documents, such as IDs with magnetic strips containing real information -- often from victims of identity theft. As the demand for counterfeit IDs skyrockets, the criminal organizations that produce them are increasingly relying on sophisticated technology to expand their operations and thwart authorities.

In the midday heat of downtown Los Angeles, Chris Johnson squints at the jeans-clad plastic buttocks of mannequins lined up in Fashion District storefronts. He's looking for something special: a horseshoe design stitched in the jeans' back pockets. He passes stores selling counterfeit Coach bags and Prada sunglasses, then heads down an alley to a store where two men are checking their cellphones and looking bored. "Have any True Religion, size 6?" he asks. One of the shopkeepers looks around to make sure no one else is nearby, then disappears into a back room.

If it weren't for the unobtrusive sign out front to tip off passersby, the so-called "Alley in the Valley" would remain a well-kept secret. Only those with a keen eye driving north on Reseda Boulevard would notice the sign at the corner of Oxnard Street. This "alley" is the San Fernando Valley's counterpart to discount shopping in downtown Los Angeles' Santee Alley. Fortunately, the Valley's alley is a much more intimate shopping enclave.

In Beverly Hills, a DMV agent confiscates a disabled parking placard from a woman leaving a fitness center. In downtown Los Angeles, a motorist launches into a rant about "evil" meter readers after acknowledging that he's using someone else's disabled parking pass. And in neighborhoods near UCLA, 17 students are stopped and questioned as they scurry to class, their cars parked in restricted zones, disabled parking badges dangling from their rear-view mirrors. Fraudulent use of disabled parking placards -- those blue or red badges that allow motorists to park for free or in specially reserved spaces -- has exploded in the last decade, according to state motor vehicle officials.

With tourism on the rise in downtown Los Angeles, construction is set to begin on a $172-million Marriott hotel complex that has even bigger aspirations than when it was announced almost a year ago. Downtown's thriving hotel market can be seen in the long-anticipated development near the L.A. Live entertainment complex and Staples Center, which has grown by a floor and 15 additional rooms from the original plan. Now set to be 23 stories, the tower on Olympic Boulevard will house a 174-room Courtyard by Marriott and a 218-room Residence Inn by Marriott under one roof when it opens in summer 2014.

While the legislature in Minnesota continued to work on a solution to keep the Vikings, AEG on Tuesday unveiled its latest vision for an NFL stadium in downtown Los Angeles. Two weeks remain in the public-comment period of AEG's environmental impact report on the concept, and the company hopes to have its approvals in place by late summer, with the goal of luring a football team back to L.A. next spring. AEG's is one of two competing stadium proposals, with the other in City of Industry.

Numerous streets in downtown Los Angeles and beyond will be closed Tuesday for May Day marches. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the following streets downtown will be affected, beginning as early as 7 a.m. and continuing until 7:30 p.m: •Broadway between 11th and Temple streets •Olympic Boulevard between Hill and Main streets •9th between Hill and Broadway •8th between Spring and Broadway ...

MPG Office Trust Inc., the largest office landlord in downtown Los Angeles, eked out a first-quarter profit propelled by property sales and debt forgiveness. The Los Angeles real estate investment trust — which also owns buildings in Glendale, Pasadena and Orange County — stuck to its strategy of letting go of properties that were heavily encumbered with debt. MPG finished the quarter that ended March 31 with a profit of $5.2 million, or 10 cents a share, compared with a loss of $39.5 million, or 81 cents a share, in the same period of 2011.

Former executives of office landlord MPG Office Trust Inc. have launched their own property company with the purchase of a landmark Los Angeles office building. Nelson and Christopher Rising of Rising Realty Partners expect their acquisition of Pacific Center at 6th and Olive streets to close Monday. Terms of the purchase from Alliance Commercial Partners were not revealed, but experts familiar with downtown real estate prices value the deal at $60 million. The new owners will change the name of the complex to the PacMutual Building, in keeping with origins of the Beaux Arts-style complex that can be traced to railroad tycoons Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins.

As cars whizzed by and trucks honked, two dozen members of the East Side Riders from Watts slowly pedaled their cruisers up Central Avenue early Sunday. Their destination was seven miles away: CicLAvia, a rare opportunity to enjoy 10 miles of car-free streets in downtown Los Angeles and beyond and to soak up the spirit of what turned out to be a citywide block party. "Watts in the house!" boomed a disc jockey as the group pulled into the African American Firefighter Museum and joined an estimated 100,000 people who biked, walked or skated block after block without having to dodge a car or bus. "Right now they're going to get a chance to ride the streets without cars interfering with their leisurely bike ride," John Jones said of his fellow Riders members.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will unveil a $16-million bike-share program Sunday that aims to put thousands of bicycles at hundreds of rental kiosks across the city. Initial plans are to add 400 stations and 4,000 bicycles over the next 18 to 24 months in areas around downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, Playa del Rey, Westwood and Venice Beach. The private investment from Bike Nation will not need any city money, according to the mayor's office and the company. Bike Nation has agreed to a minimum contract of 10 years.

Fast-food eateries are in the throes of drive-through Darwinism as more upscale upstarts, such as Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panera Bread Co., grab market share from the likes of Taco Bell, Subway and Wendy's. Chains that are fancier than fast-food options but cheaper than sit-down alternatives are part of a hybrid sector known as fast-casual that is maturing into one of the food industry's strongest. That category is tapping into growing demand for more healthful, specialty foods that are still speedily served and moderately priced.

The Art Deco-inspired Century City condominium tower expected to be the home of wealthy widow Candy Spelling and many other moneyed residents has been completed after nearly six years of planning, demolition and construction. With high-rise living still rarer in Los Angeles than in other international cities, the dramatic 41-story Century on Avenue of the Stars is targeted at a sliver of home buyers willing to spend as much for a condo as they would for a sumptuous home in an exclusive neighborhood such as Beverly Hills or Malibu.

First published on Jan. 30, 2011. Revised and expanded in January 2012. The tourists think big. Arriving in Southern California, they expect to conquer Disneyland and Hollywood, perhaps on the same day, in between the surfing and snowboarding. Then they get stuck in traffic. Then come the recriminations, the tears, the vows to visit an island next time. The locals think small. Tracing tight little loops between home and work, they dodge freeways and alien neighborhoods.

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 900 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles; (213) 763-3466, www.nhm.org . Central Library, 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles; (213) 228-7000, www.lapl.org/central . Bottega Louie Restaurant & Gourmet Market, 700 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles; (213) 802-1470, www.bottegalouie.com . $$ Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles; (213) 741-1151, www.lacclink.com . Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles; (213)