Open Space

This is one part of Silver Lake that has no lake view. In fact, the only views are from atop a corkscrew drive that looks out over a pair of freeways, the 5 and the 2. Residents, however, see this 10.2-acre stretch of undeveloped land - along Riverside Drive to the east and Corralitas Drive to the south - as a sanctuary. They also want to keep it that way. "For all the neighbors around here this is paradise," said longtime resident Russell Bates, standing in a meadow on what residents call the Corralitas Red Car property.

When Joe Borst bought a run-down 1952 house in Marina del Rey, he and girlfriend Maria Torres hoped to transform the 1,200-square-foot cookie-cutter plan into something that felt larger, more open and modern - a tall order given the limited budget. The couple could afford to renovate the house but not to expand it, so the mission became to rethink the floor plan - to leave the perimeter of the house intact, adjust how the existing space was used and make the most of the house's backyard.

As they celebrated the opening of downtown Los Angeles' new Grand Park on Thursday, local officials and civic leaders were already talking about the possibility of expanding the space and connecting it to other projects along Grand Avenue. The rectangular, 12-acre park, which stretches from the top of Bunker Hill to the base of City Hall, provides downtown with its first major green space, and officials hope it can become a new cultural hub for the region. For all the excitement about the park, officials said that they are aware of its limitations and that the current footprint should be only a first step.

For decades,the cascading strip of land in the heart of the Los Angeles Civic Center reflected a downtown where people commuted in each morning and cleared out by sunset. It was a collection of parking lots and little-used chunks of public space, hidden by the ramps of a parking garage. This week, after a $56-million renovation, that 12-acre rectangle from the top of Bunker Hill to the base of City Hall will be christened as L.A.'s Grand Park, providing downtown with its first sizable amount of open space.

Less than 24 hours after a historic docking, astronauts aboard the International Space Station clambered into SpaceX's unmanned Dragon spacecraft and began unloading supplies that were packed inside. Wearing oxygen masks as a precaution, the astronauts opened the hatch, slid the door open, and took delivery of the 1,014 pounds of food, water and clothing aboard Dragon. "Like the smell of a brand new car," said NASA astronaut Don Pettit, after going inside. Live coverage of the hatch opening, which included some of the first video footage from inside the cone-shaped Dragon, started Saturday shortly before 3 a.m PDT on the Hawthorne company's website and NASA TV. Delivering cargo wasn't SpaceX's key mission -- the space station is well-provisioned.

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.

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.

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...