Exposition Park

Surrounded by swirling, half-naked bodies and engulfed by waves of digital drum and bass, Latifa Hussan, 21, and her boyfriend, Cruz Rios, 22, were explaining what had made them drive down from Fresno at 6 a.m. for the Electric Daisy Carnival. It wasn't just the all-star lineup of DJs such as will.i.am, Kaskade and Deadmau5, or the Mardi Gras atmosphere at the electronic music festival, purportedly North America's largest, which drew 185,000 people to the L.A. Memorial Coliseum and Exposition Park on Friday and Saturday.

Norm Johnson, a former UCLA place-kicker, was checking television listings the other day and one thing jumped out at him. "The 1981 UCLA-USC game was on college football classics," Johnson said. "I was upset. " Sure. Blocked field goal, no Rose Bowl — it was a bad day. But that wasn't the reason Johnson was upset. "I would love to see that game," he said. "I have never seen the replay. " Why he would like to relive a 30-year-old nightmare isn't clear. One second he was lining up a 46-yard field goal to send the Bruins to Rose Bowl.

I was exceedingly pleased to read the comments of four randomly selected men and women on the Platform topic of "South-Central: Are Whites' Fears Justified?" (Voices, July 18). They all agreed in their responses that there is a false perception of our area. The truth is that the Los Angeles Police Department statistics show that there is no safer place in the city than the Exposition Park area when there is an event at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum or Sports Arena. Fans can expect significant law enforcement personnel and customer assistance personnel on duty at Raiders and USC football at the Coliseum, Clippers and USC basketball at the Sports Arena and special events at those facilities and in Exposition Park.

On Tuesday, the California Science Center will be one step closer to receiving what officials believe will be one of its most prized possessions — the retired space shuttle Endeavour. Officials will hold a ceremony at the center to formally transfer ownership of NASA's newest space shuttle — worth $1,980,674,785 — to the state-run museum near downtown Los Angeles. The museum is still working out how it will get Endeavour to L.A. and what its new home will look like. Museum President Jeffrey N. Rudolph told The Times that by late next year he hopes Endeavour will be paraded from Los Angeles International Airport to the museum on surface streets.

Only a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles, there was once a mustard field, an agricultural fairground and mansions belonging to the city's most prominent families. Of course, that was more than 100 years ago. Today, the area known as Exposition Park contains a mix of the old and the new: Queen Anne-style homes within blocks of the new California Science Center and the 3-D Imax theater. Friday Start by getting a taste of the past.

Why not dig up the Exposition Park rose garden? This city has been tearing down, digging up, and paving over all that is beautiful (but not commercially significant) for at least the entire 25 years of my life. I find it hard to believe that a parking structure will make the rose garden " . . . more beautiful than ever." Wouldn't a park and shuttle bus system work? Isn't there another site? I like the football games and I visit the museums, but I'd rather take the bus than park my car on a paved-over flower bed. MICHELE LEVIN Los Angeles

Like a trained naturalist, 11-year-old Randi Bonner focused her gaze on the small ball of dust and tiny twigs until she uncovered the skeletal remains of a small mouse. "Look, I found the head!" Randi yelled across to her partner as they dissected owl pellets--the regurgitated remains of small rodents eaten by owls. "It seems kind of disgusting at first 'cause you think an owl spit it up, but it's really cool 'cause of all the bones you find."

To improve economic and social conditions in cities, local decision makers are constantly looking for ways to stimulate job growth. What policy makers desire most are strategies that result in high-wage employment opportunities with minimum adverse environmental consequences such as air pollution and traffic. Programs designed to reduce unemployment in inner-city locations are, of course, particularly desirable.

Selling art through billboards may sound avant-garde, but officials at the California Afro-American Museum hope it will capture the attention of commuters--and draw visitors and money to the museum at Exposition Park. Forty billboards featuring Romare Beardon's "Quilting Time" were unveiled last week throughout Los Angeles County as part of the museum's first fund-raising campaign.

He was the founder and chairman of the board of Calabasas-based ValleyCrest Landscape Cos., the nation's largest landscape services company, whose projects have included the gardens at the Getty Center and the rooftop community garden at Walt Disney Concert Hall. But Burton S. Sperber preferred being called the "head gardener. " Sperber, a Malibu resident whose lifelong love of magic rivaled his passion for horticulture, died Friday of complications from surgery at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, said company spokesman Dennis Kaiser.

Exposition Park is a petting zoo of L.A. design. Sports venues and museums represent Beaux-Arts, Art Deco, postwar and post-postwar styles. On the way is a grim postmodern Metro stop. Sadly missing in this Soviet block of ponderous architecture is some Disney flair, L.A.'s unique tradition of entertainment style. Now that changes are being considered, city planners might remember the popular Wee Hoose 'Mang the Heather. The rose garden east of the Natural History Museum has been a public park since 1913.

Big changes are coming to Exposition Park. The Endeavour space shuttle, NASA announced last month, will be moving to the California Science Center campus -- though not to Frank Gehry's cramped 1984 Air and Space Gallery, whose future is, well, up in the air. The UCLA basketball team will take up temporary residence this fall at Welton Becket's 1959 Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, another candidate for future demolition. And a new Metro light-rail line along Exposition Boulevard, nearly complete, will knit the park into the regional transit grid even as its impact at ground level promises to be something of a disaster.

Waging the biggest fundraising campaign in its history in the face of stiff economic headwinds hasn't been easy for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, but director Jane Pisano was optimistic Thursday while announcing that the goal has been raised from $115 million to $135 million to allow for new nature-oriented attractions, a parking structure and additional seismic improvements. Projected as a five-year fundraising and renovation project when it began in 2007, the campaign, now dubbed "NHM Next," has been extended to 2013, when the Exposition Park museum will celebrate its centennial.

'Mummies of the World' Where: California Science Center in Exposition Park, two blocks west of the Harbor Freeway at the Exposition Boulevard exit When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily through Nov. 28 Price: Adults $19.50, teens and seniors $16.50, children 4-12 $12.50, children younger than 3 free (Discounts for museum members) Info: Advance reservations highly recommended; can be made online at http://www.californiasciencecenter.org or by calling (323) SCIENCE

More than 100 people were taken to hospitals and dozens were arrested during a two-day electronic music festival at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and at Exposition Park, authorities said. The 14th annual Electric Daisy Carnival, which featured carnival rides, five stages and performances by Moby, Will.i.am, Steve Aoki and Deadmau5, drew a total of 185,000 people on Friday and Saturday, said Alexandra Greenberg, a publicist for the event. Because of the size of the event, paramedics were stationed at an on-site command post, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Devin Gales said.

Surrounded by swirling, half-naked bodies and engulfed by waves of digital drum and bass, Latifa Hussan, 21, and her boyfriend, Cruz Rios, 22, were explaining what had made them drive down from Fresno at 6 a.m. for the Electric Daisy Carnival. It wasn't just the all-star lineup of DJs such as will.i.am, Kaskade and Deadmau5, or the Mardi Gras atmosphere at the electronic music festival, purportedly North America's largest, which drew 185,000 people to the L.A. Memorial Coliseum and Exposition Park on Friday and Saturday.

Electric Daisy Carnival Where: Exposition Park and L.A. Memorial Coliseum When: 1 p.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday Price: $149 (for both Friday and Saturday); $85 (Saturday only) Info: http://www.electricdaisycarnival.com