Open Space

I would like to congratulate the Ventura County Board of Supervisors on what will be regarded as a historic vote to back the creation of an open-space district. I believe this action by our supervisors will be as critical to the long-term quality of life in Ventura County as the previous voter approval of the SOAR initiative. In deciding to vote for an open-space district, much was made by our elected officials of the overwhelming support by county residents for open-space preservation both at the ballot box and in polls.

MUSIC Dance your heart out in the desert at the 10th Annual Joshua Tree Music Festival. This fantastic roster of bands including Fork Knox Five, Gaudi, Breakestra and MC Rai is guaranteed to satisfy all your world-music and open-space cravings. The Joshua Tree Lake Campground, 2601 Sunfair Road, Joshua Tree. Various times, Fri. to Sun. $120. http://www.joshuatreemusicfestival.com.

Thousand Oaks Mayor Andy Fox's recent "outrage" at the implication he is playing politics by jumping on the open-space initiative bandwagon now once it had qualified for the ballot strikes me as disingenuous. I wish he had been as sensitive to the "public's clear support" of the measure last month when he voted against placing the initiative on the ballot, which would have saved thousands of the taxpayers' dollars spent to qualify the initiative. And I wish Mayor Fox had been aware of the citizens' clear support for maintaining open space and parks for our children and grandchildren when he voted in favor of the Adventist project in Newbury Park, in the process trading away city-owned open space.

Justin Lin, who directed the "Fast and the Furious" films, has bought actor-director-producer Vincent Gallo's penthouse in downtown L.A. for $2.6 million. The four-level loft features exposed brick walls, floating staircases and an in-unit elevator. There are two bedrooms and 21/2 bathrooms in the 4,300-square-foot open plan space. Three outdoor living areas add 3,100 square feet of space. The penthouse in the former National Biscuit Co. building was once leased to actor Nicolas Cage.

MUSIC Dance your heart out in the desert at the 10th Annual Joshua Tree Music Festival. This fantastic roster of bands including Fork Knox Five, Gaudi, Breakestra and MC Rai is guaranteed to satisfy all your world-music and open-space cravings. The Joshua Tree Lake Campground, 2601 Sunfair Road, Joshua Tree. Various times, Fri. to Sun. $120. http://www.joshuatreemusicfestival.com.

First Hollywood floated the plan. Now, Santa Monica is talking about adding open space by building over freeways. City officials in Santa Monica are exploring the idea of "capping" the 10 Freeway between 17th and 14th avenues as a way to add seven acres of land to the city and possibly create more open space. The City Council voted Tuesday night to authorize city staff to submit an application to the state for $250,000 in grant money to fund a feasibility study for the idea.

I was amazed by Orange County Planning Commissioner Teresa Smith's comments about the 1,746-dwelling development approved for East Orange ("City Planners Vote to Back Irvine Co. Project in Orange," Sept. 20). She says the commissioners agree they would rather preserve the open space, but since they choose to live in such a wealthy area, they have to accept development. One has to wonder how rich you really are if you don't have access to open space in your community. WENDY JAMES Burbank

John D. Olmsted, a naturalist who led efforts to preserve Northern California nature areas, open space and trails, died of liver cancer March 8 at his home in Nevada City, Calif. He was 73. Inspired by conservationist John Muir, Olmsted spent more than 40 years pursuing his dream of a trans-California hiking trail ? roughly paralleling Highway 20 ? from Lake Tahoe to the Pacific Ocean. He proposed creating a public-land corridor that would connect a chain of natural landscapes stretching across Northern California.

Laguna Beach officials recently reached an out-of-court settlement with a developer on "purchasing half of 471 acres of open space for $3.9 million." Why is the space so valuable when the officials within the past few months couldn't (or wouldn't) participate in highway improvements on Laguna Canyon Road? How can they consider open space more valuable than saving human lives? DAVID M. SCOTT Huntington Beach

A spectacular stretch of Northern California coastline that includes ocean-side bluffs, beaches, rolling hills and redwood groves will be permanently protected from development under a landmark deal approved by the state Coastal Commission. Nearly 10 square miles of untouched shoreline, wooded glens, streams and farmland in northern Santa Cruz County, extending several miles inland, will be transferred to the state and federal governments, which will operate it as open space and preserve portions for agriculture.

On a cold, wet afternoon two cowboys trudge across a muddy street in a western town carrying saddles on their backs as a loudspeaker blasts Jim Croce's hit song "I Got a Name. " The scene was being played out at the historic Melody Ranch in Santa Clarita, where director Quentin Tarantino was filming his upcoming western "Django Unchained," starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx. "It's a blast shooting here," Tarantino said during a break from shooting. "Most other western towns look like dollhouses.

Los Angeles' civic argument over billboards covers many nuanced positions and attitudes, but stripped to the bare essentials, it often seems to come down to these two competing worldviews: One side sees Los Angeles as a city up for bid. It sees advertisers ready to cover every public space with garish billboards — lighted, digitized, turning every commute to work and every drive to the grocery store into a succession of pitches for movies, cut-rate...

Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday approved plans for the second phase of a controversial development near Six Flags Magic Mountain in the Santa Clarita Valley. The Mission Village segment of the Newhall Ranch project will contain nearly 4,000 housing units, an elementary school, 580 acres of open space and three preserves designed to protect a rare species of flowers. Newhall Ranch was first approved by supervisors in 2003 after nearly seven years of debate but has been mired in legal challenges and debate since.

Nobody likes to live near a landfill. But somebody has to. The residents of the northeastern San Fernando Valley who ring the grassy expanse of Lopez Canyon, once one of the city's biggest garbage dumps, lived unhappily with this industrial intrusion for two decades. From 1975 to 1996, trucks rumbled across the 400-acre property, dumping a total of 16.5 million tons of trash. After it closed, the city promised the long-suffering residents that the land would be designated as open space and, when environmentally safe, would be turned into a park and recreation area.

The North Facility of Pitchess Detention Center was once home to some 1,600 men. Now it holds just two. The lucky pair can choose from any of a hundred open beds for a nap. There's never a line to use the jailhouse pay phones. And come meal time, there's always enough for seconds. Amid steep budget cuts, L.A. County jails have been forced to shed inmates in droves, more than any other jail system in the nation. That drop is most striking at the Castaic facility, where the Sheriff's Department has cut the inmate count to the bare minimum needed to keep the lockup from falling into disrepair.

Big changes are coming to Exposition Park. The Endeavour space shuttle, NASA announced last month, will be moving to the California Science Center campus -- though not to Frank Gehry's cramped 1984 Air and Space Gallery, whose future is, well, up in the air. The UCLA basketball team will take up temporary residence this fall at Welton Becket's 1959 Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, another candidate for future demolition. And a new Metro light-rail line along Exposition Boulevard, nearly complete, will knit the park into the regional transit grid even as its impact at ground level promises to be something of a disaster.

Saying it became a chore to drive a particular car probably wouldn't catch your attention. Telling you that car was the 2011 Bentley Continental GT with a $215,675 price tag might. For four days and just over 200 miles, I was witness to a car with face-stretching acceleration, the road presence of a gilded tank and the social panache of a silver screen starlet. And I found nearly the whole experience tedious. Yes, you're reading this right. It's possible to get tired of driving a 12-cylinder leviathan that has enough power to send the space shuttle Endeavor into orbit.