Street Closings

The Los Angeles City Council has voted to start street-closing procedures near the future Belmont Learning Center, a proposed 5,300-student campus just west of downtown. A motion directing the Bureau of Engineering to initiate action on the street closings is significant because "this is the first concrete step the city has taken toward a very important project," said Councilman Mike Hernandez, whose district includes the planned "super high school."

BOSTON -- A eerie strangeness fell over the streets of Boston as the sun set Monday night. Police personnel in bright yellow vests directed traffic around a 15-block radius that remained closed around the site of Monday's twin bombings. Pedestrians wandered, as if lost. Ambulances stood at the ready up and down blocks of quiet brownstones near Copley Plaza, their lights flashing, sirens off. Police officers with machine guns stood guard at the Westin Hotel, where emergency personnel were based.

If ever we were looking for evidence of California's anti-business climate we have the perfect example in promoter Chris Pook's proposed San Diego Grand Prix and the San Diego Unified Port District's opposition to it. Pook wants to bring a sports car race to downtown San Diego in August of 1993. He has asked for nothing. No money, security, street closings, or street improvements to put on this event. He's paying for all of it. The only thing he has asked for is approval of his plan.

More than 100,000 pedalers and walkers are expected to descend on a 10-mile swath of city streets closed to motor vehicles as the third CicLAvia launches Sunday. The first CicLAvia was held last October and was instantly popular, and it appears the event may be expanded to other parts of greater Los Angeles as part of an effort to combat childhood obesity. The county Department of Public Health is sponsoring a behind-the-scenes tour during CicLAvia this weekend for representatives from six cities, including South Gate and Huntington Park, where more than a quarter of the child population was ranked as obese, according to a report from the agency.

More than 500,000 revelers are expected in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. for the third annual L.A. Fiesta Broadway, a celebration of Latino culture. The pre-Cinco de Mayo fiesta will cover 36 city blocks and cause a number of street closings. Traffic will not be allowed from 9 p.m. Saturday to 5 a.m. Monday from Temple Street on the north, Olympic Boulevard on the south, Main Street on the east and Olive Street on the west from Olympic Boulevard to 6th Street.

For six car-honking, exhaust-choked years, Andrew Bacigalupi has lived near the tortured twists of the Russian Hill block known as "the crookedest street in the world," often feeling like a captive of some chaotic carnival ride. Twenty-four hours a day, camera-toting tourists and day trippers flock to take their turns careening down the serpentine switchbacks of the street that is among the city's top draws.

New Yorkers on Monday largely shrugged off the weekend terror alarms, returning to work with as much good humor as could be expected on a morning in which they had to cope with commuting delays and other evidence of heightened security.

Bill Burke can laugh now about what he considers the worst snafu in Los Angeles Marathon history. Before one race in the event's early days, entrants had lined up by the thousands around the Biltmore Hotel to pick up their race day T-shirts, hopelessly snarling traffic. Seeing no way to get through the gridlock, the delivery driver turned around and returned to Long Beach, said Burke, the marathon's president. "My whole life flashed in front of me," he said.

A three-block stretch of Wilshire Boulevard will be closed to traffic over the weekend, officials announced. The stretch between Serrano Avenue and Manhattan Place will be closed to allow workers to remove the wood decking that has covered the street during Red Line construction.

With regard to the closing of Poli Street, the series of useless, ill-considered, knee-jerk reactions by most of the Ventura City Council continues to be sadly amusing to those of us who choose to live in the area. One thing does become quite obvious, though. These servants of ours haven't visited the neighborhood in ages. If they had, they would know that speed bumps aren't needed. Sunset Drive, especially between Foster and Hyland (avenues), is so rutted, ridged and pot-holed that any speed over 15 m.p.h.

Law enforcement and transit officials shut down four downtown San Francisco train stations and closed a swath of busy Market Street during the height of the evening commute Monday in response to a noisy protest. Market Street was choked with hundreds of pedestrians struggling to get home, stopping at each successive Bay Area Rapid Transit station entrance only to be turned away. Helicopters lumbered overhead and police in riot gear followed protesters east toward the San Francisco Bay. The stations were closed for about two hours during a demonstration against alleged BART police brutality and a decision by agency officials last week to cut underground cellphone service in an effort to quell an earlier protest.

. Sylwester Lemanski was this close to selling a $400,000 Lamborghini to a Wall Street investment banker. The customer had been eyeing the car for months at the dealership Lemanski manages. He had decided on the model and color -- a titanium Murcielago -- and needed only to sign on the bottom line. Then, as financial markets teetered in March and layoffs mounted on Wall Street, the customer started getting cold feet. Lemanski could feel the deal slipping away.

Greek and Turkish Cypriot authorities reopened Ledra Street in the divided capital, Nicosia, but were forced to close it for nearly two hours after a dispute over policing the road, a symbol of the island's partitioning. The reopening of the street, which was split in 1964, was meant to be a catalyst for peace negotiations between Greek Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat. Stefanos Stefanou, spokesman for the Greek Cypriot government, said Turkish Cypriot police illegally patrolled part of the street by entering a U.N.-controlled buffer zone.

Stocks finished mixed Wednesday after consumer prices showed a larger-than-expected increase in January and minutes from the Federal Reserve's last meeting showed the central bank considered but decided against taking a more dovish tone on the threat of inflation. The Nasdaq composite index closed at a six-year high, and the Dow Jones industrial average fell. Inflation again commanded Wall Street's attention, with the latest readings leaving some investors unnerved.

Motorists looking for irony in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday didn't have to drive far: Officials closed a block of Main Street at the end of a news conference by four elected officeholders, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, to announce the hiring of a transportation chief to ease traffic congestion. The mayor has said repeatedly that one of his major goals is to address the city's often-wicked traffic.

Hundreds are expected to attend services this morning for former Rep. Edward R. Roybal, a pioneering Latino officeholder and one of Los Angeles' most enduring political figures. A funeral Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles will begin with a walking procession from the Great Bronze Doors into the cathedral at 8:45 a.m. From 8 a.m. to noon the following streets near the cathedral, at 555 W. Temple St.

Several merchants are upset that a proposed farmers market on Ventura Place will close the street to traffic, and they say it may have a negative impact on their businesses. Twenty business owners signed a petition informing the City Council of their opposition to closing the street to vehicular traffic during a farmers market. They also said the city has not kept them informed about the proposal.

Vermont Avenue from Santa Monica Boulevard to Burns Avenue will be closed to weekend traffic for street resurfacing and will reopen at 6 a.m. Monday, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said. Pedestrians will have access to all homes and businesses during that time, MTA spokesman Gary Wosk said. The MTA will also repave about 100 feet of Willowbrook Avenue, east and west of Vermont Avenue, and a section of Lockwood Avenue east of Vermont Avenue.

New Yorkers on Monday largely shrugged off the weekend terror alarms, returning to work with as much good humor as could be expected on a morning in which they had to cope with commuting delays and other evidence of heightened security.

A construction crew working on a sidewalk Thursday accidentally ruptured a natural gas line, police said, causing a street closure and a traffic backup. The 2-inch pipe along Ellis Avenue was struck with a backhoe about 1:40 p.m., and the rupture forced the evacuation of several businesses, Sgt. Kevin Thomas said. Traffic in the area was snarled as drivers were diverted between Ward Street and the San Diego Freeway, he said. The street was reopened at 5 p.m., Thomas said.