Tents

California's coastline is full of colorfully named strands like Seal Beach, Pismo Beach and Muscle Beach. However, Tin Can Beach — a wacky monument to littering — is just a memory. The nickname for a 3½-mile stretch of sand just north of Huntington Beach, Tin Can Beach reached the heights of trashiness in the 1940s and '50s when it was the sometime domain of hobos, drinkers, free spirits and vacationers. They built cardboard shacks, erected tents and thought nothing of tossing used cans, bottles, paper plates and other debris to the ground.

This post has been updated. See below for details.  The riff that San Francisco rock band Thee Oh Sees presented at 3:50 p.m. at the closing moments of their rolling, frantic set, was still running through my head half an hour later, even though half a dozen rhythms from varying locales on the pitch of Coachella had entered it since. That's one tough damn riff, from a new song called "Dead Energy," bass-heavy, smooth-groove house beats 50 yards away in the Sahara tent. The band played a forceful bunch of songs -- at least judging by the four final ones that I saw -- that drove the tightly focused, crowd-surfing fans to adrenaline levels unimaginable the morning earlier.

MSR is the Porsche of backpacking tents.  These beauties, a brand of Cascade Designs, are sleek and comfy with cutting-edge construction that maximizes space and sturdiness while minimizing weight.  The new top-of-the-line double-occupancy model is the Carbon Reflex 2 , which weighs just 3 pounds, including poles, stakes and rain fly -- lighter than many one-person tents.  You get an airy body with twin double-zippered doors front and...

The heaviest place to be at Coachella 2013, from a sound perspective, wasn't in the sweet spot of the Main Stage rig while Phoenix was preparing for the arrival of R. Kelly, or at the heart of the Sahara stage during Baauer's big, dumb, joyous set of beat music, heavy on the synth riffs and dirty beats. It was nestled away near the food court in the Yuma tent, where four bass cabinets the size of Jeeps were parked in each corner of the room. The tent is the sixth and newest venue at the festival, and because it's fully enclosed, the bass can't escape.

My sympathy goes out to those young people from Avalon who are going to classes in tents ("Avalon Students Roughing It as Contamination Closes School," Sept. 26). We had the same situation. I graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1940. This was in Boyle Heights. There had been a large earthquake in the early 1930s. There simply wasn't enough money to repair all of the buildings. So, we had some of our classes in tents. The tent classes were just as good as the regular classes. No big deal!

JERUSALEM - About 250 Palestinian activists set up dozens of tents Friday on a large plot of land east of Jerusalem that Israel has designated as the site of a new settlement. The Palestinians hope the tent village - called Bab al-Shams, or Gate to the Sun - will prevent Israel from going forward with the E1 project, said a spokesman for the group, Abdullah abu Rahmeh. Israel plans to build thousands of housing units as part of the project, which Palestinians and much of the international community have condemned as a step that could disrupt travel between the northern and southern portions of the West Bank and make it more difficult for the Palestinians to create a cohesive state.

It takes more than the Oct. 1 earthquake to stop Ticor Title Insurance, which has been operating its Rosemead plant out of tents and trailers since a strong aftershock on Oct. 4. "I understand that the epicenter was across the street," Joann H. Shanley, a spokesman for the firm, said about the 4 a.m. aftershock. "But we got our tents set up that day, and there were no delays. Our computers were never down."

Tent City II, which has sheltered about 200 homeless people in downtown Los Angeles for the last week, will be vacated today but reoccupied Monday or Tuesday under a compromise agreement reached late Friday by organizer Ted Hayes and the state Department of General Services.

"Any camp," the artist and architectural visionary Constant Nieuwenhuys once argued, "is a form, however primitive, of a city. " There were times when 2011 seemed to be unfolding as a test of that proposition. Thanks to the Occupy Wall Street protests that began in Zuccotti Park in New York and spread quickly to Los Angeles and other cities, rising frustration over income inequality began to take on an unmistakable architectural and urban form. Forget the blobs, boxes, starchitects and destination buildings that dominated much of the last decade.

There will be no pink underwear. Late last year, officers from San Bernardino County's Central Juvenile Hall, the state's most crowded youth jail, took a trip to Arizona. About to become the first in California to house juvenile inmates in military-style tents, they arrived in Maricopa County, Ariz., where Sheriff Joe Arpaio runs famously unpleasant jails, forcing inmates to wear pink underwear, eat green bologna and live in tents that outrage civil rights activists.

Sometimes even the most devoted ravers outgrow their fairy wings and neon bikinis. The 160,000 people expected to attend Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival over the next two weekends will find a new electronic music tent with the kind of accouterments rarely seen at these venues - including air conditioning, a hardwood floor and comfy chairs. The new Yuma tent is a world apart from the bare grass floors and body heat of other tents, reflecting maturing tastes and older fans.

As the afternoon sun mercilessly beat down on Coachella 2013's kickoff Friday, temperatures soared above 90 degrees at the Empire Polo Club. But inside the festival's most conspicuous new upgrade, the Yuma Tent, it could have been midnight for all any of the several dozen dance enthusiasts raving inside the nightclub-like space would have known. Providing the only fully enclosed, air conditioned performance venue at the fest, the Yuma exerts a kind of louche cool -- all black lights and spinning disco balls with a backdrop of faux Caravaggio paintings taking up a back wall.

Controller Wendy Greuel pulled off a surprising coup last week when she secured the endorsement of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor despite an acknowledgment by many labor leaders that they feel closer philosophically to her opponent, Councilman Eric Garcetti. The endorsement was in many ways, though, more about Garcetti than about Greuel. Organized labor has been unhappy with Garcetti in part because he supported revisions to the city's pension rules that curbed benefits and raised the retirement age for new employees.

MSR is the Porsche of backpacking tents.  These beauties, a brand of Cascade Designs, are sleek and comfy with cutting-edge construction that maximizes space and sturdiness while minimizing weight.  The new top-of-the-line double-occupancy model is the Carbon Reflex 2 , which weighs just 3 pounds, including poles, stakes and rain fly -- lighter than many one-person tents.  You get an airy body with twin double-zippered doors front and...

Is it acceptable or unacceptable for an openly gay Boy Scout to share a tent with a heterosexual boy on an overnight camping trip? Is it acceptable or unacceptable for a lesbian to serve as a den leader for her son's Cub Scout den? Those are among the questions in a survey being distributed to 1.1 million Scout leaders, alumni, volunteers and parents as the Boy Scouts of America considers whether to lift its ban on gay membership. Two of the 13 questions concerning gays and Scouting are open-ended.

Picture this -- blue skies, a teal sea, white sand and palm trees swaying in the cool seaside breeze. And in the middle of it all, two giant white tents full of hundreds of people boozing it up and eating until they couldn't breathe. It's the South Beach Food and Wine Festival in a nutshell. Four days of food, wine and Food Network stars. There were too many events to hit them all, but here are the highlights from a festival binge in Miami: The Whole Foods Grand Tasting Village and Mastercard Grand Tasting Tents: These tents acted as the main festival hub where guests could have their favorite Food Network chefs sign cookbooks, or watch a cooking demonstration by Rachael Ray, Alex Guarnaschelli, Curtis Stone and more stars.

In 1995, I set off from Yosemite's Tuolumne Meadows toward Donahue Pass and the High Sierra country beyond. It was a splendid trip, and its memories, still vivid after 15 years, tugged at me like an old terrier longing for mountain trails that might be too steep for him now. Luckily, Yosemite National Park's High Sierra camps make it possible for old dogs like me to indulge youthful dreams of adventure without risking serious bodily injury. The five camps provide meals, canvas tents with beds, clean privies and hot showers.

CAIRO — The ragged effigy of a fallen leader dangles from a lamppost over the remnants of a dying revolution. Those left from the uprising that swelled through Tahrir Square last year and brought down Hosni Mubarak live in tents, harassed and cursed, but mostly forgotten. TV cameras no longer perch on balconies; the great banners have been spooled away. The slogans of rebellion have been pressed onto T-shirts, and tourists, their expressions saying they somehow expected more, take pictures, trying to summon the images that captivated the world those many months ago. But the joy has turned sullen, and the nation has slipped back to the burdens of life while these defiant few still hunker with their placards and rage.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israeli soldiers and border guards Saturday removed tents Palestinians had set up in an area south of Hebron, in the south of the West Bank, to protest Israeli plans to take over the land. The tent village named Canaan is the fifth that activists have set up in the last month on land they fear Israel intends to seize to build settlements. Israel has foiled each attempt. Mazen Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian activist at the Canaan village, said between 15 and 20 Palestinian and international activists made two attempts to set up the tents there.

NEW YORK -- Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had a welcome message for New Yorkers on Friday: Leave work early. If only the reason for his warning were something other than an approaching snowstorm, the third bout of foul weather to slam the city since Hurricane Sandy devastated it in late October. It was a message repeated by officials from New York up through northern New England, where blizzard warnings were in effect and where predictions of snowfall ranged from a foot to 3 feet.