Parking

Just about every tourist-related business in Santa Monica sees dollar signs in Cirque du Soleil's return to a beachfront parking lot near the pier this fall. Everyone, that is, except the company that runs the Pacific Park amusement center. The 2-acre park, with a freshly renovated Ferris wheel and a roller coaster, has emerged as a major draw for the pier, city officials acknowledge. But now, it's squaring off against an even more powerful draw: Cirque du Soleil.

A court commissioner has nixed a Los Angeles law that cracked down on how long taco trucks and other food coaches could stay open up for business. The ordinance, approved by the City Council in 2006, forced operators to stay on the go: Trucks were prohibited from parking in the same spot in a residential neighborhood for more than half an hour or in a commercial area for more than an hour. A similar law adopted by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors was tossed out by a judge last year.

Adopting a budding trend in the NHL and taking it a step further, the Ducks on Monday froze all ticket prices for next season at current levels and froze food, beverage and parking prices at the Honda Center. The Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota Wild were in the forefront of freezing season-ticket prices for 2009-10, reflecting concern about the sour economy, with the Hurricanes locking in season-ticket holders' prices for three seasons.

Former construction worker John Dutchover found his own tiny piece of Brentwood last year, staking out a space on San Vicente Boulevard for the recreational vehicle that -- with a bed, refrigerator and microwave -- also serves as his home. The Gulf War veteran said he picked the spot largely because it was close to the leafy Veterans Affairs campus, where he receives medical treatment.

BACK in the 1970s, you could open a garage door -- manually, of course -- and find something quite extraordinary inside: a car or two. But you wouldn't want to try that today, not without an avalanche beacon. The mountain of junk accumulated in there has exiled vehicles to the curb, and the byproduct is a boundary battle among neighbors jockeying for that ever-more-elusive urban resource: a place to park the car.

The Dodgers' one-night return to the Coliseum has the team wrestling with a familiar problem -- parking. The Dodgers are offering round-trip shuttles from the Dodger Stadium parking lot to the Coliseum for Saturday's exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox. That wasn't an option in 1958, before the Dodgers' first game in Los Angeles.

Charitie McArthur says she bleeds Dodger blue. She thinks Vin Scully is a genius, wept with joy when Steve Finley's grand slam clinched a division title in 2004 and scored big when she got married at home plate at Dodger Stadium the following summer. But as the team returns to town this week for the new season, the 32-year-old teacher from Redondo Beach is already cringing. It's not the team's prospects that have her down, but the prospect of the bad traffic expected at this weekend's games.

Taco truck owners vowed to ignore a law passed by Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday making it a misdemeanor crime -- punishable by fines and jail -- to stay parked in one place for more than an hour. "They can try to move us, but we're not going to go," said Aleida De La Cruz, whose taco truck has been a family business for 20 years. "What are they going to do, take us all to jail?"

A no-show actor, singer or soloist at a performance can throw things into disarray. Ditto a missing parking lot. Since last month, the lot at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power building has been off the grid as far as Music Center patrons are concerned, resulting in some hassles and hasty dashes to make opening curtains.

YOUR favorite bar got you down lately? The miasma of dismal parking opportunities along the Canter's-dominated stretch of Fairfax Avenue has had you circling the Dime more times than you'd care to count. The last time you cozied up to the bartender at Frank 'n Hank's in Koreatown, a dart whizzed by so close to your ear that you could have come away with an unintended piercing.