Streets

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

A bleary-eyed Chui Hom tripped down her apartment stairs at 8 a.m. sharp and started her car. She didn't get far. The vehicle inched across Riverside Terrace, a narrow one-way lane in Echo Park, and stopped on the other side. Hom is part of Los Angeles' Great Street-Sweeping Do-Si-Do. Twice a week, residents of Koreatown, Pico-Union and other neighborhoods with more apartments than parking spaces race to their cars, hoping to move them before parking enforcement officers arrive and ticket them for blocking street sweepers.

"Selling L.A. " reality show viewers may wonder if any of the featured homes actually sell. Although perhaps not in time for the closing credits, some houses under consideration for the show do find a buyer outside the roving eye of the camera. One home that agent Rebekah Schwartz was promoting to HGTV for its 15 minutes of fame was the Marina del Rey pad that former Laker Lamar Odom rented a few years back. Listed at $1.995 million in January, it closed early this month at $1.825 million.

U.S. stocks slid in early trading following renewed concerns about Greece being forced out of the euro common currency. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 87 points, or 0.7%, to 12,416, shortly after the opening bell. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index was down 7 points, or 0.6%, to 1,309. The technology-focused Nasdaq was down 14 points, or 0.5%, to 2,825. Major European stock markets were down about 2%.

There's a steep price to pay for living on Eldred Street. You have cars that run away. Truck cargos that roll away. Mail carriers who fade away. Visitors who turn around and go away. "To live here, you learn what you can and can't do," said Ric Phiegh, whose Highland Park home is on the steepest street in Los Angeles. In a city bisected by a mountain range and laced with hills and ridges, that distinction is high praise.

Mayor Patricia Bates called for a change Thursday in a law that bans skateboarding in the street and criticized as "unwarranted" the arrests of two skateboarding teen-agers who were handcuffed and photographed by sheriff's deputies. "I just feel the action was certainly unwarranted, given the circumstances and age of the children," Bates said, referring to the two 15-year-olds who were arrested last week as they skateboarded along busy Niguel Road.

Like its creator and star Sacha Baron Cohen, the comedy of "The Dictator" is mercurial to the extreme and as crude as the massive oil reserves of Wadiya, the fictional North African nation where his latest movie prank begins. By turns hysterical, heretical, guilty, innocent, silly, sophisticated, teasing and tedious, the film follows the power-mad leader Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen as he loses his bearings, his beard and his heart in New York City. "The Dictator" underscores both Baron Cohen's genius and his folly, and delivers the actor's signature blend of scatological outrage, sagacity and at least one full-frontal assault with a flaccid unmentionable.

Nobody does hip like the bicyclists of San Francisco's Mission District. Weaving in and out of traffic with their Timbuk2 messenger bags slung over one shoulder, they make even a bike helmet look cool. Until recently, emulating them took a big dose of fearlessness. But now that the city has completed a spiffy new bike corridor along Valencia Street — home to some of the hippest and flattest Mission real estate — even those who require training wheels can be Mission bicyclistas for a day, including out-of-towners with rented rides.

The names of many Los Angeles streets have changed repeatedly over the years, reflecting the city's transformation from a tiny Mexican colonial town to a booming metropolis. Some streets, predictably, honor war heroes and explorers. But others have been named for trees, actors, land developers and--in one case--the proximity of a bullfighting ring. These days, it is not easy to change the name of a street.

Eight years ago, as I watched a building near my work be converted from vacant offices into lofts, I couldn't stop thinking about it. If I lived there, in that beautiful old building, I could walk less than a block to work. That micro-distance was important: Any farther and I wouldn't have felt safe walking home after dark. There were no streetlights on the block back then. Homeless people curled up in doorways and under cardboard boxes. On the sidewalk was a row of public outhouses, which I soon realized were "owned" by drug dealers.

Facebook is having a better day on Wall Street. The social networking site's stock is up more than $1, or about 3.5%, to around $32 in early trading Wednesday on its fourth day as a public company. As of Tuesday, Facebook's stock had fallen about 26% since its debut on the Nasdaq stock market Friday. The stock briefly rose to about $42 from its initial public offering price of $38. Facebook's IPO has been tumultuous. Its first day of trading was marred by glitches with Nasdaq trading.

Congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg on his surprise wedding last Saturday. I certainly hope his marriage gets off to a better start than Friday’s initial public offering of shares in his social networking colossus, Facebook.  Wall Street analysts are now saying the opening share price of $38 was too high for investors wary of buying into a business that delivers millions of messages and photos from college drinking parties but produces a comparatively modest revenue stream.

WASHINGTON — Already grappling with regulatory reviews of its troubled initial public offering, Facebook Inc. and the Wall Street banks that shepherded the deal are now under fire from lawmakers and lawyers. Two congressional committees said Wednesday that they would conduct preliminary inquiries into the IPO. And attorneys filed two separate lawsuits alleging that average investors were misled in the days before Facebook shares began trading Friday. "Shareholders suffered billions of dollars in losses," said Darren Robbins, a partner in the San Diego law firm of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dow, which filed one of the suits.

As Facebook shares continued their slide, regulators launched inquiries into whether privileged Wall Street insiders were alerted to the company's weakening financial projections, leading them to shun the stock or dump shares just as buying was opened to the public. Morgan Stanley, which led the Wall Street effort to bring the social network public, came under fire following reports that the bank had told some favored clients that the bank was cutting its revenue estimates for Facebook.

A Disposition to Be Rich How a Small-Town Pastor's Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States Geoffrey C. Ward Alfred A. Knopf: 415 pp., $28.95. In 1863, the young Ferdinand Ward was alone with his mother in their parsonage in Geneseo, N.Y., his minister father and older brother both off to war and his older sister visiting relatives out of town. Diphtheria swept through the village, killing friends and neighbors, and each mail delivery carried the risk of disaster - would it include a notice that one of the Ward men had been killed?

DELHI, INDIA - Delhi, India, is closed today. My guide, a solemn man named C.K. Gupta, is deeply apologetic. It is, he informs me, not a holiday, but a peaceful protest. "Too high prices in the shops. " It is 2010, and I am in Delhi on vacation. It is my first time here. Receiving this piece of early-morning information, I am all set for empty sidewalks. The occasional whining ambulance. Maybe a bus. But when we leave my rented car near the Defence Colony, it is impossible to move.

The city hipsters sipping expensive coffee and chatting on cellphones did not give a second look at the two young men cutting across a Hollywood courtyard on their way to bed down in a nearby park. AJ, 23, and his boyfriend, Alex, 21, hide their blankets and duffel bags in bushes. They shower every morning at a drop-in center and pick out outfits from a closet full of used yet youthful attire. "If I could be invisible, I would," AJ said. "I feel ashamed to admit that I'm homeless.

Marshal Larry Talvy's phone rang. There was trouble in town. A bunch of men in black dusters with guns were walking down Allen Street. Again. Talvy bolted uphill to the town's main drag, strode toward the armed men and laid down the law, New West style. Show me your permit, he said, or you'll be ticketed for an illegal street performance. It's been 127 years since Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp fought the Clantons and McLouries at the O.K.

Go with a guide who knows local street food and, if possible, can help you find relatively clean stalls. According to customers I talked with, quality street-food vendors can often be found near universities and railway stations. For the sake of food safety, choose hot snacks. Try to get them when they've just come out of the griddle or fryer. It's best to avoid eating meat, even if it's well cooked. I failed to follow this last rule: It's usually smart to avoid chutneys and juices and to discard raw items such as onion and tomatoes . travel@latimes.com

WASHINGTON - Aiming squarely at GOP critics of Wall Street reform, President Obama said Saturday that investment bank JPMorgan's stunning $2-billion loss serves as a reminder of the importance of Washington's role in preventing another financial crisis. The 2010 financial overhaul law counts among Obama's signature legislative achievements, but it continues to come under attack by Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail, including likely presidential nominee Mitt Romney, as an example of government overreach.