Standard Hotel

Two couples, both from out of town, linger on the same park bench, gazing up at gauzy curtains in the windows of a 19-story hotel. They don't know each other, but there they are, on a sunny Labor Day afternoon, hoping to steal a glimpse of, well, for lack of a more delicate way to put it, naked people. Voyeurism became New York's hot attraction this summer after guests were photographed in the buff prancing about, even having sex, in front of floor-to-ceiling windows at the Standard Hotel in the hip Meatpacking District.

For a few terrifying moments in the early morning hours of the recent Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, authorities in Los Angeles were concerned that terrorists had launched an attack in a downtown subway station. Several people had been overcome by a cloud of noxious gas, causing at least two of them to begin vomiting and a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy to experience a burning sensation in his eyes and lungs.

Standard Hotel: A list in Friday's California section, with an article about the possible sale of the Times building, named several former corporate buildings in Los Angeles that have been put to new uses and said the Standard Hotel building once housed Standard Oil. The building was home to Superior Oil.