Neighborhoods

Re "L.A. neighborhoods, you're on the map," Feb. 19 I was both delighted and disappointed by your article on mapping out Los Angeles neighborhoods. In 2002, we posted the first online neighborhood map of Los Angeles, which has since been viewed close to 2 million times. A year ago, we further revised and detailed our map and published it as a poster-sized wall map. As far as I can determine, it is the first-ever privately published wall map detailing the neighborhoods of L.A. The Times' article makes it appear as though yours is the first serious effort to map out L.A. neighborhoods.

Park Estates in Long Beach has gained a reputation as a serene, inland neighborhood in the 60 years since it was developed. Bounded by Bellflower Boulevard on the east, Clark Avenue on the west, Atherton Street on the north and Pacific Coast Highway on the south, the community is protected by walls and landscaping much like a castle from the Middle Ages. Without the right coordinates punched into a GPS, it might take a while to find one of its three entrances. -- Beginnings Along with many other neighborhoods in Long Beach, Park Estates was the brainchild of Lloyd S. Whaley.

Mapping L.A.: An article in Wednesday's Section A about The Times' new map of Los Angeles neighborhoods misspelled the last name of lepidopterist Julian P. Donahue as Donohue.

The City Council offered the city's network of neighborhood councils new power to propose legislation Tuesday -- but only if each of their members fills out conflict-of-interest forms describing their income, real estate holdings and stock market investments. Under the two-year pilot program, each of the city's 89 neighborhood councils will be allowed to introduce three "council files" -- documents sent to the City Council for review and possibly a vote -- per year. The council approved the program despite fierce opposition from business groups, who said many neighborhood councils are too dysfunctional to be allowed more sway over city policy.

The company's brochure features an aerial shot of the Balboa Peninsula and describes its 90-day drug and alcohol recovery program as "located in the warm, healing climate of Southern California." It's that kind of promise -- in this case from Sober Living by the Sea -- that has made Newport Beach an unlikely capital for drug- and alcohol-free homes.

Conquest Student Housing, a firm accused of using intimidation and fraud against rival developers of off-campus student housing near USC, has agreed to stop challenging any competitors' projects within two miles of the school. USC and allied developers described the settlement, which was announced Friday, as a victory over a potential monopoly in the off-campus apartment business and as a step to provide more much-needed housing.

One young mother from Tillamook gathers her five children and drives two scenic miles to go beachcombing at a quaint hideaway off U.S. Highway 101. Another young Tillamook mother slips into a skimpy, form-fitting black gown and steers to the same town to dance for tips at the only exotic club on the northern Oregon coast. They, along with strip-club patrons, visiting families, longtime residents and retirees, mix it up in this quiet community.

Neighborhood activists in the northeast San Fernando Valley thought they scored a major victory in 1995, when they persuaded Los Angeles officials to approve zoning rules to keep new buildings on Foothill Boulevard from blocking their hillside views.

I am sitting with Stephanie. Three days in a row now we have met. We click together like Legos. Her lips taste like strawberries. -- The little chess table was an afterthought. Languishing in a South Pasadena antique shop, it was a fake -- "reproduction" is the polite term -- but it looked the part, with a broad, fluted base and engravings of ferns on the corners. A man named Tom Trellis picked it up in the spring of 2004. Trellis was a corporate guy, not a foodie, with a pedigree in human resources, not goat cheese.