Gold

After Mark Gold left Leatherby's Café Rouge in Costa Mesa, where he earned three stars for the Patina Group restaurant in the Orange County Performing Arts Center, he started looking for a space to open his own place. Not easy. I heard he was scouring the Westside, looking here, there, everywhere. But then he got lucky. Karen and Quinn Hatfield of Hatfield's in L.A. decided they wanted a larger space and nabbed the former Red Pearl restaurant, (i.e., the original Citrus) on Melrose Avenue.

Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills said that Saturday's opening of a new work by Chris Burden, "One Ton, One Kilo," has been postponed indefinitely while the search continues for 220 pounds -- or about $3.3 million worth -- of gold bars needed to assemble the piece. The stash that Gagosian and Burden had secured for the exhibition got caught up in a civil action that federal authorities have brought against R. Allen Stanford, accused of running a Ponzi scheme. His assets, including Stanford Coins and Bullion, the company that sold Gagosian the required gold, have been frozen by court order.

Sitting like a turquoise gem in a bowl of hemlock, Sitka spruce and ice, Berners Bay has long been a jewel of Alaska's Tongass National Forest. In the spring, swarms of tiny eulachon rush in to spawn, and the bay floods with hundreds of killer whales, humpback whales and sea lions in hot pursuit, along with eagles and seabirds by the thousands. Fishermen flock to its herring, salmon and Dungeness crab. Its chilly, tranquil waters are a favorite destination for kayakers.

The price of gold surged to a record high Tuesday as investors' fears about the economy and the stock market added new luster to the metal's reputation as a haven. Near-term gold futures in New York rocketed $18.40 to $878 an ounce. That surpassed the intraday high of $873 reached in futures trading on Jan. 21, 1980 -- the last hurrah of gold's wild rally of that era.

Environmentalists want you to buy organic roses, and human rights groups tout conflict-free diamonds. Now, just in time for Valentine's Day, jewelry retailers are stepping up a campaign that aims to discourage the mining and sale of "dirty gold." A group of prominent jewelers including Tiffany & Co.

If you were hoping to buy gold for a lot less than $1,000 an ounce, you're getting your chance. But buying now may be akin to catching a falling anvil made of the stuff: You could easily get hurt, at least in the short run. Gold plummeted Monday, leading the latest sell-off in commodities as investors and traders continued to cash out of hard assets. Near-term gold futures in New York tumbled $36.30, or 4.2%, to $821.50 an ounce. That wiped out the last of the metal's year-to-date gains.

Merchants in downtown Los Angeles' Jewelry District gritted their teeth Wednesday as the price of gold soared $70.10 an ounce -- the highest-ever one-day gain in dollars -- and dashed even slim hopes that the struggling economy hadn't wiped out all customers. A gold chain that cost $450 last year at Acapulco Jewelry now costs $1,000 -- and isn't likely to be sold soon, said owner Raymond Cohan. "The economy's so bad customers can't even pay their mortgages.

High up a steep Sierra hillside that rises behind this Mother Lode town, past where the paved road runs out, tucked into a shadowy gulch covered with pines and cedars -- and far, far away from the financial calamities rocking Wall Street -- this was where Perry Cottingham could be found last week, engaged in that most seminal of California enterprises, mining for gold. Here was a man happy in his work.

Precious metals were the surprise winners in the financial markets Friday. Gold futures in New York rose $37.50, or 5.3%, to $742.40 an ounce, their biggest one-day gain since mid-September. Silver and platinum also surged. What's odd is that most other commodities were flat or down Friday, including oil. And the dollar was off just modestly against other major currencies; often, gold gets a big lift only when the greenback is sinking.