Playgrounds

The OPENING of a new playground can bring joy to a neighborhood, and visitors to the popular Lake Balboa recreation area were given a reason to celebrate June 9 as a state-of-the-art playground was unveiled at the Anthony Beilenson Park (better known as Lake Balboa Park). It had been nearly two years since slides, swings and monkey bars had graced the shores of Lake Balboa -- when the existing playground had been deemed unsafe -- so families were especially delighted by the arrival of a universally accessible playground -- the 15th in L.A. designed by the nonprofit foundation Shane's Inspiration, under the direction of the L.A. City Council.

Dangerous levels of lead have been found under a parking lot that the Los Angeles Unified School District plans to turn into playing fields for Virgil Middle School, reigniting the ire of project opponents. The district plans to move the school's current playing fields to build an elementary school on the site. Past reports have found contaminants on the land and groundwater under the future fields, which now contain commercial property and Virgil's teacher parking lot.

ON FIRST APPROACH, Surf City USA seems an awful lot like Anytown, USA. Drive down Huntington Beach's main thoroughfare, Beach Boulevard, and you'll encounter a Wal-Mart and Big Lots, McDonald's and Burger King, Bally's Total Fitness and one car dealership after another.

CALLUSED palms and bandaged fingers; broken fingernails stained black with dirt -- Hollywood actor and director Emilio Estevez proudly shows off his vineyard worker hands as he walks the vine rows. Four years ago, Estevez planted this half-acre Pinot Noir vineyard around his Malibu home.

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.

When you decide to vacation in a distant or exotic locale, if you're anything like me, you investigate, you plan, you drive your spouse nuts with all the research. But for getaways close to home, I've always tended to go for the easy and familiar. Over and over.

Nearly half a century ago, a 20-year-old Southern Californian named Michael Rubel decided for reasons all his own to build a stone castle with a clock tower. So he bought a 2 1/2 -acre citrus orchard in the foothills of his hometown and embarked on a project that would take up nearly the next 30 years of his life.

A man engaged in a yearlong war of words with families using a playground next to his home has been ordered to stop harassing children and their parents. A court commissioner granted a three-year restraining order to parents who said they were tired of Art Maxwell's making their kids cry. They contended that Maxwell videotaped families and gave dirty looks to patrons of the Becky Temko tot lot.

DASHES of white light flicked on one by one as the installation crew at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego worked its way across an expansive wall, mounting custom-built fluorescent fixtures in a syncopated, fragmented diagonal grid. On the eve of the museum's Robert Irwin exhibition, the largest since MoCA's retrospective in 1993, the 79-year-old artist, in trademark baseball cap and jeans, paced the space with barely tempered eagerness. A birth was imminent.

Quickest way to the top right now in the Bowl Championship Series: don't play anybody. Sit tight and let the standings come to you. Take a water break. Yes, Ohio State is getting hammered for claiming No. 1 after beating the likes of Youngstown State, Akron and Kent State -- but at least those are real teams. Yes, Kansas moved up four BCS spots to No. 9 after a win at Colorado, as if that's never been done before, but at least the Kansas victories involved footballs and chin straps and trainers.