San Fernando Valley

Rep. Howard Berman crouched on a Sherman Oaks baseball field on a recent Saturday, striking a pose with two 4-year-old boys who had not yet had a chance to break in their uniforms. A few miles away, Rep. Brad Sherman clutched a boxed American flag that had flown over the nation's Capitol, to give to the players and parents gathered in Woodland Hills for the start of Little League season. The opening-day ceremonies were a far cry from the weighty matters that typically occupy the veteran Democratic congressmen: Iran's nuclear program, the staggering national debt, anxiety about the economy.

Two dozen high-performing Los Angeles schools are seeking to become charter campuses in search of more money and increased flexibility. The list reads like an honor roll of academic excellence. Every school has surpassed the state's target score of 800 on the Academic Performance Index, which is based on standardized tests. Although many of the schools considered the move in hopes of greater funding, campus officials said they also began to see the benefits of increased freedom over such things as curriculum, testing and schedules.

Word that Wal-Mart is opening a Neighborhood Market in Panorama City is getting a markedly different reception than the criticism heaped on a similar grocery-only store that the retailing giant plans to open in downtown Los Angeles. Residents of the northeast San Fernando Valley have watched as the recession turned once-thriving commercial hubs into vacant storefronts. The Vannord Center, a 90,000-square-foot-center at the corner of busy Van Nuys Boulevard and Nordhoff Street, has been hit particularly hard with more than half of its 30 tenants closing their doors.

Eager to live in an upscale neighborhood without paying rent or buying a home, Remy Martin Foster said he hit on the perfect solution: He bought an RV. "Mathematically it made the most sense," the unemployed 29-year-old said. "It was the best financial move I ever made. I started saving money immediately. " Trouble is, living in a vehicle on public streets is illegal. Ever since Foster began parking his camper on residential streets, first in Hollywood and then in the San Fernando Valley, the motor home dweller has been rousted from one spot to the next by annoyed neighbors and police.

The agency overseeing California's high-speed rail project reportedly plans to reduce the projected cost of the bullet train by $30 billion by connecting it with existing rail lines on the outskirts of Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Critics say the revised plan would not create the system that voters were promised when they approved $9 billion in public funding four years ago to get the project started. That plan was to allow passengers to ride without any transfers between the two metropolitan centers - at a total cost of $43 billion.

First published on April 24, 2011. Revised and expanded in early 2012. The San Fernando Valley is 260 square miles of suburbia. Actually, make that suburbia on nutritional supplements. And antidepressants. With perhaps a little cosmetic surgery south of Ventura Boulevard, where the big money is. Or maybe -- now that it's grown to more than 1.7 million people in nearly three dozen cities and neighborhoods rich and poor - the Valley isn't even a suburb anymore. It begins just 10 miles northwest of Los Angeles City Hall, sprawling west to the Simi Hills, north to the Santa Susana Mountains and east to the Verdugo and San Gabriel mountains.

Tree People, Coldwater Canyon Park, 12601 Mulholland Drive, Beverly Hills; (818) 753-4600, www.treepeople.org . Universal Studios Hollywood, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City; (818) 622-3750, www.universalstudioshollywood.com . Universal CityWalk, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City; (818) 622-4455, www.citywalkhollywood.com. Beverly Garland Holiday Inn, 4222 Vineland Ave., North Hollywood; (818) 980-8000 or (800) 238-3759, www.beverlygarland.com . $$ Hilton Los Angeles/ Universal City, 555 Universal Hollywood Drive, Universal City; (818)

Dianne F. Harrison, a veteran educator in Florida and California, has been named the new president of Cal State Northridge. Harrison will succeed Jolene Koester, who retired in December after 11 years in the post. Northridge provost Harold Hellenbrand has been serving as interim president. Since 2006, Harrison has been president of Cal State Monterey Bay, a campus of about 5,000 students located on the former Ft. Ord Army Base in Seaside. At Northridge, she will take the reins of one of the nation's largest public universities, with 34,000 students and a budget of more than $300 million.

The Safari Room lies about 24 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, in the thick of the overgrown suburban jungle that is the San Fernando Valley. Its plain white brick building serves as a mid-20th-century time capsule. Only the retro sign outside, which shows a wildly dancing witch doctor, hints at the classic lounge perfection inside. In addition to the Safari Room, the Valley is home to a number of blissfully unmolested lounges from the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Even when these antiquities have been spruced up — as is the case with the Tonga Hut in North Hollywood — they have often managed to maintain their essential old-school qualities.

Stacy Matulis doesn't see how one politician could represent everyone in the newly proposed 4th Los Angeles City Council District that stretches from the trendy neighborhoods northeast of downtown to the heart of the San Fernando Valley. She would know. The 33-year-old greets many of the baristas in her Silver Lake neighborhood by name, but she's also lived among the rows of strip malls in the Valley and teaches yoga to millionaires in their sprawling mansions in the Hollywood Hills.