Gift Shop

There are lots of online tools to help you send someone a virtual gift. But San Francisco start-up Karma knows you'd rather get the real thing. The company, which officially launched Tuesday, aims to make it quick and convenient to send someone a personal gift from a mobile device. With the company's free iPhone or Android app, users can gift shop from Karma's selection of offerings, which include Magnolia cupcakes, bottles of champagne and Moleskine journals. Other companies that have signed on include Kate Spade, Gund and Movietickets.com.

To write about this city is in some essential way to create it. Not in cement and steel, but in the imagination of its citizens, as well as in the minds of people who will never come here but who nevertheless carry an image of it in their heads. An image that is, in its way, as important as the concrete place where people live and sleep and look for places to park. So many people come to Los Angeles with an idea of the city, some apotheosis of the American Dream with palm trees plus a really nice car. Then they settle down into ordinary jobs and don't even understand the part of town they live in, let alone how it fits into the city as a whole or how the city started and grew.

Hardly anyone knows what he looks like and only a handful of people have seen his art. But at January's Sundance Film Festival, the little-known documentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop" -- featuring the enigmatic English guerrilla artist Banksy -- created a fan and media frenzy not seen in Park City, Utah, in quite some time. Hundreds lined up hours before the premiere in 15-degree weather for a chance at a much-coveted ticket. The story, told by Banksy -- known for keeping his real identity secret as well as for his spontaneous, politically disruptive and at times hilarious street art (think of graffiti stencils of two male police officers making out or the queen of England as a chimp)

There are lots of online tools to help you send someone a virtual gift. But San Francisco start-up Karma knows you'd rather get the real thing. The company, which officially launched Tuesday, aims to make it quick and convenient to send someone a personal gift from a mobile device. With the company's free iPhone or Android app, users can gift shop from Karma's selection of offerings, which include Magnolia cupcakes, bottles of champagne and Moleskine journals. Other companies that have signed on include Kate Spade, Gund and Movietickets.com.

Subversive, provocative and unexpected, "Exit Through the Gift Shop" delights in taking you by surprise, starting quietly but ending up in a hall of mirrors as unsettling as anything Lewis Carroll's Alice ever experienced. Even when you think you've figured this film out, you can't shake the notion that maybe you haven't. No director or screenwriters are listed in "Gift Shop's" credits, just the words "A Banksy Film," which refer to the notoriously secretive British street artist and master provocateur who's become world famous without giving up his anonymity.

If you want to help the environment, you can do more than toss your soda can in the right bin, says Nancy Bush, the owner of Harmony Works, a new gift shop in Redondo Beach. Every item in the shop is "Earth-friendly," Bush said, from vests made from old drapes to chopsticks made from fallen tree branches: "We want to show people you can purchase a gift for someone that can be recycled."

After voting in February to evict K. Lee Gifts from the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center, the City Council voted Tuesday to move the shop and give its owner, Kwang Lee, a six-year lease. Lee will move from the 900-square-foot shop she has occupied since 1988 to a 150-square-foot shop in an alcove area near the entry doors. The council had voted to rent Lee's space to Foster Assessment Center and Testing Services, a private company that provides job-placement services.

It could happen to almost anybody. You're browsing in a gift shop when your jacket brushes against a ceramic sugar-and-cream set on the shelf. It teeters, then falls. You lunge to save it. The set tumbles down. Crash. It shatters on the floor. That's exactly what happened recently to Kelli Zaehringer, a Glendale reader. She and her husband were shopping at a store in Solvang. Her husband was the culprit, and she wants to know if they were legally obligated to pay for the broken ceramic set, and how much they were obligated to pay. In this case, after some wrangling, the shop owner agreed to accept half of the $95 retail price, which was his cost.

Museum gift shops are gearing up for the holidays, their second-largest sales period, with unique gift ideas that range from imported folk art to high-tech office supplies. Summer is the heaviest sales time and the institutions count on gift-shop profits to keep the otherwise nonprofit organizations alive and well. Books are nearly every museum's biggest seller.

A Nevada brothel is cooking up some newfangled reasons for taking part in the world's oldest profession. The Kit Kat Ranch east of Carson City wants to expand into a Western-themed entertainment center, with a gift shop, sports bar, microbrewery, tanning salon and fitness center. Owners Burton Stanley and Frank Leonardi are proposing a 28,000-square-foot center with parking for tour buses. Surrounding buildings would have Western store fronts, awnings, boardwalks and signs.

Reporting from the Sierra Nevada foothills -- It was a dream to retire here — in a quaint little town atop a hillside, among the pines and the quail and the Main Street shops. When Kate Hamon arrived more than a decade ago, she had it all. Now she is on the phone with Kmart, hustling to get a job. "Please, please keep me in mind," she tells the manager. "I can start any time you like. " Work is hard to find around these parts, especially when you're 78 years old. PHOTOS: Lean times in Gold Rush country For many retirees such as Hamon who came to spend their golden years in California's Gold Rush region, life has not turned out the way they'd hoped.

It's the rare filmmaker who drops Schrodinger's Cat into everyday conversation. But Mike Cahill, the director and co-writer of the new science-fiction movie "Another Earth," has an affinity for the obscure. Walking the halls of Griffith Observatory on a recent weekday evening, he enthusiastically cited the scientific paradox — a riddle of sorts related to quantum mechanics — to explain a theme in his movie. Then, upon catching sight of one exhibit, he slapped his hands to his face with giddy delight.

Missouri State Penitentiary, 115 Lafayette Street, Jefferson City, Mo.; [866] 998-6998, http://www.missouripentours.com . Open March through November. The basic two-hour history tour is $12; ghost and overnight tours also offered for $25 and $100, respectively. Children 10 and younger not admitted. Children 14 and younger not allowed on ghost tours. Texas Prison Museum, 491 State Highway 75 N., Huntsville, Texas; [936] 295-2155, http://www.txprisonmuseum.org . Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Mondays-Saturdays; noon-5 p.m., Sundays.

ROAD TRIP Based on Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (27.5 mpg) and using AAA's survey-based average price of $3.90 a gallon for gas last week in California, this trip will cost you about $44.24 to drive the 312 miles from Los Angeles to Modesto. Antique Farm Equipment Museum , 4500 S. Laspina St., Tulare; (559) 688-1030. Fully restored tractors, plows and steam engines dating to the 1880s. Suggested donation $5 for adults, $3 for children. Open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

Top concessions (By gross receipts) Asilomar State Beach, conference center (Monterey County): $18.7 million Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, historic shopping district (San Diego County): $8.9 million Crystal Cove State Park, restored cottages and education programs (Orange County): $7.4 million Hearst San Simeon State Historic Park, catering (San Luis Obispo County): $4.8 million Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, lodging, restaurant, gift shop (Monterey County)

In the gift shops of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, miniature statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln sit next to toy U.S. soldiers beckoning tourists to take them home. But despite their uniquely American character, those items and many others are made in China, rankling two lawmakers who have been fighting to get the publically financed Smithsonian museums to sell more American-made products. It started in January, when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

A day after Pope John Paul II's visit to the San Fernando Mission, 72-year-old Sister Elena de los Santos and her nephew and sister scooped up nearly $140 worth of souvenirs from the mission's gift shop. "I would like to take everything blessed by the Pope back home with me," De Los Santos of Bogota, Colombia, said Thursday in Spanish--beaming at the array of merchandise she and her two family members had purchased.

One of Charlotte Lewin's priorities when she took over the gift shop at Temple Adat Elohim in Thousand Oaks in 1990 was to expand the merchandise selection. Her shop was limited to a single display case, some shelves, a couple of bookracks and for special occasions, such as Hanukkah, a portable table. But she was determined to fill the space. "I saw there were more Jewish people moving into the area and there were no gift shops oriented toward a Jewish line of products," Lewin said.

When we debate the endlessly tricky subjects of cultural patrimony and looted art, the pieces that usually come to mind are marble statues from classical antiquity or paintings stolen and stashed away during wartime. Not street art. And certainly not manhole covers. But thanks to Banksy, the elusive London-based artist, as well as fresh questions about the fate of Chandigarh, the Indian city designed in the 1950s by Modernist architect Le Corbusier, preparatory notes for a new chapter in this long story have shown up in the press in recent days.

The Las Vegas Hilton has a sweet special good through the end of the year: Rooms start at $49.95 for a midweek stay and come with such extras as drinks, breakfast and a discount on gift shop purchases. The deal: The Escape to Vegas package includes a room, two free cocktails at the hotel's Tempo Lounge, two free breakfast buffets, two free passes to the fitness center and a 15% discount in the hotel's gift shop. It's good for midweek stays; a two-night minimum is required.