Parks

Rob Hunter leaned over his canary yellow, orange-flamed dune buggy 20 yards from the lapping Pismo Beach surf and ticked off specs with palpable pride. "This baby is a 400 horsepower V-8," he beamed. "It's got an LS1 Corvette engine . . . and perfectly balanced 50/50, just like a Corvette is." Any time Hunter, 48, can piece together a few spare days, he and his family camp here in the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area, known to most duners as "Pismo."

Just in time for the summer tourist throngs, mimes, musicians and balloon-animal shapers have been newly empowered to bring their entertainments and tip jars to public parks. In a ruling with potentially wide implications for street artists throughout the West, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday struck down curbs imposed by Seattle on those performing at the popular Seattle Center, home of the landmark Space Needle.

Thirteen-year-old Kevin Cedano steps onto the stoop of the Ohio Hotel. "Watch out for the doo-doo." The words tumble out through the peach fuzz on Kevin's upper lip. They come with no hint of judgment, or pain. He might as well be warning you about a pothole or a low-lying tree branch, though the deposit has been left outside his home, and not by a dog but a woman in a blue cardigan who is now toddling off down Ceres Avenue in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles has yet to spend $129 million paid by real estate developers over the last decade to create new parks in the city's fastest-growing neighborhoods, according to an audit released Thursday by City Controller Laura Chick. Chick said the Department of Recreation and Parks should move faster in spending the so-called Quimby fees, which are collected from condominium builders, to take advantage of the real estate downturn.

When Mark Rios takes the microphone Tuesday evening at a public hearing inside Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, he'll be presenting two very different designs for the new civic park downtown. The first is what his Los Angeles firm, Rios Clementi Hale Studios, calls a "base" plan, for which the projected $56-million cost is already in hand -- paid by Related Cos. as part of its deal to develop a commercial project with Frank Gehry across Grand Avenue from Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The City Council this week unanimously approved construction of an unusual urban wetland park on an old Metropolitan Transportation Authority maintenance yard in South Los Angeles. The South Los Angeles Wetlands Park project will cost $19 million in proceeds from bond issues for parks and clean water and will take up to two years to build, city officials said. It will include a small lake, marshes with native plants, footpaths, a community center and a winding waterway.

Environmentalist Roy van de Hoek was hauled into court and threatened with prison the last time he tried to eradicate an invasive, nonnative plant in Los Angeles' endangered Ballona Wetlands area. So it's no surprise that the 51-year-old biologist is treading lightly these days as he tries to remove another nonnative from a tiny park at the edge of the sensitive nature preserve. This time the intruder is a hand-painted sign reading "Titmouse Park" that was planted there 20 years ago.

Irvine's Great Park may be behind schedule, but not for lack of plans. The Orange County Great Park board Thursday approved spending $60 million by summer 2009 to build a park around its tethered balloon ride, demolish buildings, create a wildlife corridor and continue designing the 1,347-acre project planned for the closed El Toro Marine base.

IT COULD very well be a mirage: A trick of the glaring morning sun or something misread in the pre-caffeinated early morning haze. But no. Upon closer inspection, that brown-and-white sign, hanging just beneath the red slash of the "No Left/U-Turn" symbol on a sparsely landscaped traffic island, proclaims exactly what you first thought: "The Islands of LA Nat'l Park."

Eight Los Angeles parks will stay open until midnight from Fourth of July to Labor Day under Summer Night Lights, an anti-gang program launched Monday by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The $950,000 program, part of the mayor's plan to bring social services to high-crime neighborhoods, will run from Wednesday to Sunday starting at 4 p.m. It will bring sports, arts classes and movie screenings to children between 9 and 17 at eight of the city's 390 parks, mayoral aides said.