Neighborhood

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

Kareen Sandoval was among the first to spot her tree, a skinny little thing about 9 feet tall with dark shimmering leaves. "Look how beautiful you are," she said, reaching for the trunk. "I want you to grow big and strong and never get knocked down. " Along 8th Street in Westlake on Saturday, volunteers planted 62 trees, but this was about more than mere beautification. Every tree honored a mother from the neighborhood, each one a woman whose volunteer work has made a difference in Westlake and Pico-Union, just west of downtown Los Angeles.

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

Just off the trendy Melrose strip, on the western edge of Hollywood, is a refuge of tree-lined streets where neighbors greet each other by name and young couples start families and stick around into their golden years. Lately, it has also become a battlefront in a broader clash of conflicting imperatives: how to balance a government push to keep the aging and disabled out of institutions against community desires to protect the character and value of residential neighborhoods, particularly in a shaky housing market.

A new sign hangs at the corner of 3rd Street and New Hampshire Avenue in Central Los Angeles: Little Bangladesh. Just behind it is a small shopping plaza with a Salvadoran restaurant, a pizza joint, a former Korean cigarette shop and a restaurant that serves teriyaki chicken, burritos and boba drinks. Across the street are more Korean- and Mexican-themed businesses. The nearest store with a clear connection to Bangladesh, Bengal Liquors, is a block away. All told, there are fewer than a dozen shops owned by or catering to Bangladeshis along this working-class commercial strip flanked by apartment buildings.

Bill Moss is the kind of cop who doesn't walk away from a job well done. Which is why, two years after he and a group of Kodiak Street residents drove a gang away, Moss is on a personal crusade to keep the street safe--even though he's been moved to a police job elsewhere in Anaheim. After work one evening a week, he returns to Kodiak, joining about 20 men, women and children to walk through the area, flashlights on and eyes peeled for signs of trouble.

Tucked between Sunset and San Vicente boulevards lies a leafy Brentwood neighborhood whose ranch homes, driveway basketball hoops and occasional picket fence are a far cry from the nearby luxe enclaves of Bel-Air and Beverly Park. Yet this tract of upper-middle-class Los Angeles is in the midst of a change — a heightened version of the transformation that has turned other parts of the Westside from neighborhoods that were once merely prosperous into playgrounds for the superrich.

Customer Carl Weissenberg went down to the corner market Sunday--not to shop, but to help stock the shelves at Boccato's Groceries. "I don't want Frank worrying about the store," said Weissenberg, an airline employee. "I want him to know things are being taken care of." That's the way things are these days at the tiny Hermosa Beach grocery store as owner Frank Boccato lies suffering from cancer.

Poverty and obesity appear to go hand in hand - and now, a new paper shows that poor people who move out of low-income housing into better neighborhoods are much less likely to be obese or have diabetes than people who stay behind. Here's an explanation of the research, published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine. But it's not just living in and interacting with a different environment that matters: Social networks exert a powerful influence on obesity trends as well.

As far as neighborhood welcomes go, this one was a bit rough. James Jackson knew as much, but in Detroit's bleak Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood, there isn't much time for subtlety these days. "Just so you know," he told his newly moved-in neighbor. "There's probably gonna be some shooting tonight." An older woman across the street had testified in court that morning against associates of a suspected drug dealer who was purportedly known to shoot up witnesses' homes. Anticipating revenge, Jackson had promised the woman he'd stand watch.

They had names like Rebuild L.A., Community Coalition, the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance. Their goals were nearly identical: provide new jobs and services to an underserved community. Improve neighborhoods. Build better relationships. The aftermath of the 1992 riots was a galvanizing moment for community activism, spawning groups formed out of City Hall, churches and local nonprofits. Some have endured over the last two decades, shifting their priorities as the city changed.

The line for a free breakfast snaked around Glide United Memorial Methodist Church. Police busted two men in a restaurant doorway. Panhandlers provided a neighborhood soundtrack. It was Sunday morning in the Tenderloin, and Mark Ellinger had pictures to take. Clutching a camera in his meaty right hand, cigarette poking out between his fingers, the photographer marveled at the carved stone lintel of the Marathon Hotel. He gestured toward the building that once housed famed madam Tessie Wall's last "parlor house.

The Federal Communications Commission has ruled in favor of Bloomberg Television in its bitter fight with Comcast Corp. over where its business channel was carried on the cable giant's systems. In a ruling issued by the agency's Media Bureau on Wednesday, the FCC agreed with Bloomberg that Comcast is required to place the business network in the same neighborhood as other news channels, particularly those owned by Comcast, including CNBC and MSNBC. "We agree with Bloomberg that the plain language of the condition suggests that the commission intended that the condition would apply to Comcast's existing channel lineups," the FCC said.

In 1985, Los Angeles rapper Toddy Tee released what could be considered West Coast hip-hop's opening salvo against police brutality in black neighborhoods. The electro-grooved "Batterram," named for the battering ram that then-LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates used to smash into homes of suspected drug dealers, was a hit on local radio station KDAY-AM. The track went on to become a protest anthem in minority neighborhoods around the city where the device was often deployed against homes that were later proved drug-free: "You're mistakin' my pad for a rockhouse / Well, I know to you we all look the same / But I'm not the one slingin' caine / I work nine to five and ain't a damn thing changed …" rapped Toddy Tee. The L.A. riots of 1992 arrived with its soundtrack in place.

Cautious growth among white-collar firms kept the Los Angeles County office market flat in the first quarter as average rents and occupancy remained unchanged from a year earlier. A handful of neighborhoods such as Santa Monica, Pasadena and Glendale are tightening in favor of landlords, but others remain relative bargains for renters. "Santa Monica is a classic example of where there is a flood of activity by technology-minded companies that have really created an extensive demand, driving down vacancy and driving up rental rates," said Neal Resnick, managing director of property brokerage Avison Young.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced plans to open a grocery store in Panorama City, part of a big push by the nation's largest retailer into the highly competitive Southland grocery business. The 31,000-square-foot store will be located in the Vannord Center at 14530 Nordhoff St. in the vacant space once occupied by Valley Foods Warehouse, the company said Monday. "There is no doubt that Panorama City residents need more affordable grocery options," said Wal-Mart spokesman Steven Restivo.

When Ron and Belinda Oglesby moved into Carson's Carousel neighborhood in 2003, they saw a solid, middle-class area where homeowners set down roots and lived for decades, where Santa Claus paraded through the streets on a firetruck and children returned to buy their own homes. This, they told themselves, was the perfect place to raise their three kids. Six years later, they noticed workmen drilling holes and leaving cryptic white marks on the streets. By last summer, they had discovered what the sudden activity meant: Preliminary tests under the direction of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board had found dangerous levels of potentially explosive methane gas and benzene under the 285 homes of the Carousel tract.

Before the shooting, David Serbeck and Reginald Campos were pillars of their community, living at opposite ends of an unfinished development here at the edge of Salt Lake City's sprawl. Serbeck, a genial 37-year-old father of two and former Army sniper, welcomed new arrivals to the neighborhood by offering to help install their sprinkler systems or work on their yards. Campos, a 43-year-old CPA and father of four, tried to forge a community in his neighborhood by warning new residents about a spate of mailbox thefts and lobbying authorities to investigate the incidents.

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.

Last year, Ming Qu and Ying Wu set off on a well-trod path for success-seeking Chinese. They left their native country, enrolled at a prestigious American university and plowed toward degrees that could ensure them respect - and a better future - when they returned home. The USC graduate students, focused intently on their electrical engineering program, hunkered down in a neighborhood just west of campus. It was quieter, a better atmosphere for studying, residents said. But it was also widely considered less safe.