Lighting

Your choices in San Francisco hotels are overwhelming. The prices can be too. So during our staff visit to the City by the Bay, we looked for reasonably priced hotels that had charm, location or both. We came back with 14 ideas on places to bed down. It's not a complete list, but it is eclectic, like the city itself. Mystic Hotel. This property, which opened in April, stands on a tunnel-adjacent block of Stockton Street that you'll never see on a picture postcard, yet it has style, as do the Burritt Tavern bar and restaurant downstairs.

For Kings fans, Staples Center is exactly how the slogan goes: "The Sports and Entertainment Capital of the World. " For Danny Zollars, senior director of game operations, Staples Center before a Stanley Cup playoff game is just another day at the office, one with frigid temperatures and a massive TV screen to which he holds the remote. It's easy for fans to look up at the video board and take in the scene around them. But the scene behind the scenes involves hundreds of working hands, a command center with nearly as many monitors and Zollars, who coordinates it all. For every Oz, there must be a wizard behind the curtain.

Each year, Lamps Plus manufactures and sells about 3 million units of lighting products. But not all of the revenue comes in through the company's 40 retail stores. Lamps Plus Inc., through a division called Pacific Coast Lighting, is also the largest supplier of lighting for hotels in the country. Lamps Plus Centennial, another division, makes lamps for the home construction business.

WASHINGTON - He was a high school dropout, sometime junior college student and failed Army recruit. But Edward Joseph Snowden found his calling in America's spy services, using his computer skills to rise from a lowly security position to life as a well-paid private contractor for the National Security Agency. At age 29, he rented a bungalow with his girlfriend north of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and claimed to earn $200,000 a year. On Monday, hours after he admitted disclosing a trove of intelligence secrets to the media, Snowden checked out of the glitzy Mira Hotel in Hong Kong, where he had holed up for weeks, and dropped out of sight.

Lighting designer Jennifer Tipton met Sardono W. Kusumo, an Indonesian dancer and choreographer, in 2008 at a workshop she was giving in Java. Tipton, one of this country's preeminent designers, had participants reverse their usual roles: Lighting designers made dance pieces; choreographers lighted them. Returning to Jakarta later that year, Tipton discovered a different kind of artistic shift. Sardono, known for his intense physical style, had begun painting. He was producing massive canvases, up to 30 feet high.

Finding fixtures and lamps for period-influenced interiors can be just as important as choosing the furniture. "The biggest misconception I hear is that ‘I can't afford period lighting,' " Lara Spencer says. "But the truth is you can find really nice vintage fixtures for the same as or not much less than some mass-market reproductions if you just know where to look." She thinks of lighting as the "jewelry" that finishes a room — "a fun way to make a big statement," she says.

Question: Our condo homeowners association is debating whether to buy new lighting for all the hallways, which would cost just under $200,000, or repair the existing lights at a cost of about $15,000. In each case, should funds come from operating or reserve funds? How is the decision reached as to which path to take? Answer: Operating funds are collected to meet the association's day-to-day operating expenses, including utilities, gardening and routine maintenance such as replacing lightbulbs.

You can get great pictures from a phone or a point-and-shoot, and Kathy Pyon of the L.A. Times photo staff will tell you how. In a talk at the L.A. Times Travel Show, which she will repeat at 12:30 on Sunday, she told show attendees that the photos they were about to see were not enhanced. "Everything you see is from my phone or from my point and shoot," she said. So how do you get great photos out of the littlest gadgets? Three basic principles, she said: lighting, composition and moments.

Recently you published an editorial titled "Arrogance and Ignorance" (Sept. 15) dealing with the proposed lighting system at Lawrence Welk Village. As a friend of Palomar, I applaud your stand in keeping the light factor down. However, we are faced with another serious lighting addition to this area at the proposed "Water Park" to be constructed about a mile from Welk Village. Besides the added traffic hazard, it would seem that adding adequate lighting for such a large facility would be many times brighter than the increased lighting wanted by the management of Welk Mobile Home Park.

I find it insulting and offensive that in her article, "Lights and Latkes: The story of Hanukkah and how the holiday grew" (Dec. 1), Susan Friedland writes that "the candle lighting was probably borrowed from pagan solstice celebrations." According to Jewish law, the reason Hanukkah is celebrated by the lighting of menorahs is because our sages directed us to do so to commemorate the miracles that happened. I challenge Friedland to find a single reliable source that points to pagan worship as the reason.

So, there you are in the sunscreen aisle, where the number of products on the shelves is approximately equal to the number of grains of sand on a beach. How to choose? Read the labels. Your decision may still not be easy, but new labeling regulations should help. "The new regulations will make a significant difference," says Latanya Benjamin, a dermatologist at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University. "They standardize the basics of what to look for in a sunscreen.

He was headed downtown, traveling along the 110 when - just like in the cartoons - a light popped on over Pervaiz Lodhie's head. If this city truly wants to improve the look of the busy industrial landscape, he decided, it should at least replace the burned-out and flickering fluorescent tubes in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum & Sports Arena sign that towers 160 feet above the freeway. Lodhie then went a step further. He agreed to supply the light bulbs. Lodhie, who owns a Torrance-based LED lighting business, made the commitment when he met with representatives of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in early 2011 to discuss development of a "green corridor" between downtown Los Angeles and the harbor.

BEIJING - In China's southern Hainan province, a school principal and a housing authority official were arrested after they allegedly took six girls ages 11 to 13 out to sing karaoke, got them drunk and spent the night with them in a hotel. A principal in Anhui province was arrested on suspicion of molesting nine girls, and a 50-year-old math teacher in the same province was charged with raping a 7-year-old girl. A kindergarten security guard was arrested, accused of molesting children.

CHICAGO - It wasn't long ago that the Kings' Jonathan Quick had to listen and, presumably, read about all the other great goaltenders in the NHL. Especially from Kings Coach Darryl Sutter. Sutter raved about the All-Star goalie from his Calgary days, Miikka Kiprusoff, and made comparisons last season between Kiprusoff and Quick, suggesting Quick still had to prove his worth over a period of time. Again, last season, he shrewdly engaged in more motivational tactics with Quick, using the Sharks' Antti Niemi as the impetus.

Re "MTA vote seals the deal for Leimert Park light-rail stop," May 24 Hurray for the people of Leimert Park for getting a stop on the planned Crenshaw light-rail line - and for those of Chinatown, Little Tokyo and Mariachi Plaza, who previously won their own stations. Too bad that Los Angeles International Airport doesn't have its own "community members" to do battle over the idiotic decision to avoid the airport again in planning station locations. Years ago, whoever was in charge of building the Green Line apparently forgot that LAX existed.

"I'm home," a group of actors chanted on Sunday to beats hammered out on plastic buckets at a Metro Blue Line station in South-Central. For many members of the Watts Village Theater Company, the location was indeed home. Actors recited poems about growing up in nearby neighborhoods. The performance at the Willowbrook station marked the fourth straight year the theater company has appeared under a Metro program called Meet Me @Metro, which promotes the use of light rail. The first three years, the group appeared at Union Station downtown and near Long Beach and Pasadena.

Opera Pacific's performance of "The Flying Dutchman" may have been as good as Mark Swed's review indicated ("Wagner Brought to Life," Jan. 21). However, since I was forced to close my eyes and keep my head down for major portions of the second and third acts, I could not say. I'm sure the lighting effects were very impressive viewed from the orchestra section. I would recommend any director contemplating such displays in the future view them from all seats in the house. Having high-wattage stage lights aimed in one's face is more conducive to a nagging headache than a pleasant opera experience.

Holiday Stained Glass The story of Christmas is recounted in a rare display of turn-of-the-century stained-glass windows made in Germany in 1903. Forest Lawn Memorial Park and Museum, 1712 S. Glendale Ave., Glendale. Daily through Jan. 5, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. (800) 204-3131, Ext. 4781. Edgemar Christmas Tree Artist Anthony Schmitt's Christmas tree constructed entirely of shopping carts is on display in the outdoor courtyard of the Frank Gehry-designed center through holiday season.

After years spent fighting for a light-rail station in Leimert Park, South Los Angeles community members got their wish Thursday with the approval of full funding for a stop in the heart of L.A.'s African American community. To cheering and applause from dozens of supporters, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved $80 million for an underground station in Leimert Park Village along the planned north-south route of the Crenshaw Line. "The line goes through a very significant community, one with historic context," said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a director on the Metro board.

The 1920s vintage of this restored Spanish Revival-style house in Hollywood Hills is evident in its Malibu tile fireplace, period lighting and hand-crafted doors. A courtyard with a fountain sits off the media room of the walled and gated home. Location: 2125 Castilian Drive, Los Angeles 90068 Asking price: $2.695 million Year built: 1929 House size: Three bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms Lot size: 18,521 square feet Features: Formal dining room, fireplaces in the living room and library, breakfast room, butler's pantry, media room, master suite balcony, wood-beam ceilings, inlaid wood floors, terrace with pergola, panoramic views About the area: In the first quarter, 78 single-family homes sold in the 90068 ZIP Code at a median price of $950,000, according to DataQuick.