Vine Street

Hollywood. The name alone evokes images of glamour and movie stars. And the junction of Hollywood and Vine was ground zero--the best possible place to catch a film, glimpse a movie star, shop at a smart store or dine in one of the Southland's hottest spots, surrounded by celebrities. By the early 1960s, however, Hollywood's glitter was replaced by grit and the fabled crossroads became more a state-of-mind than a sought-after destination.

Five years ago Marcus Roberts, then 21, joined the Wynton Marsalis group as pianist and composer. Roberts, who was heard last year at Hollywood's Vine Street Bar & Grill during a leave of absence, has now left Marsalis permanently and is back at Vine Street (through Sunday), leading a unit that is similar to the one he presented previously.

The City Council on Friday approved both a 23-story condominium tower on the site of the vacant Spaghetti Factory restaurant in Hollywood and two billboard-sized signs on the building's south and west sides. The 305-unit project was approved despite objections from critics who argued that it had received too many exceptions to the city's planning and zoning rules, such as the location of the "supergraphics" -- signs to be stretched across vinyl on part of the building's exterior. The council simultaneously approved a higher density for the project and fewer parking spaces.

A Hollywood woman who had been chasing some burglars was shot by a policeman early Tuesday when she ignored the officer's orders and reached for a pistol in her waistband, according to Los Angeles police. Detectives said the 35-year-old woman, her husband and son had armed themselves and dashed into the street to chase some people they had seen breaking into their car. The burglars escaped, but moments later police responding to a "shots-fired" call confronted the family at Fountain Avenue and Vine Street.

When Adnan Essayli set out to paint the outside of his La Palma home, he wanted a color resembling gold-toned travertine, like the stone-walled homes in his native Beirut. He spent weeks searching for the perfect color -- with the same exacting attention to detail he had shown over three years of remodeling. Failing to find a color mimicking stone, he settled on a personalized mix of deep-toned golds, with red trim to highlight the windows. For a year, he has been happy with the color, unaware that some of his neighbors were seething over the suddenly incongruous house in an otherwise coordinated, earth-toned neighborhood.

You could go on and on about Hollywood and Vine, what with its Art Deco architecture, glorious radio and film history, celebrity sightings and sidewalks of gold stars. You could track the world-famous intersection's tragic downfall and then record the dignity with which it is now rising. But let's begin instead with the pigeons because Hollywood, after all, is a town of wonderfully eclectic characters here at one time or another -- not because of who they are but because of who they want to be.

Urban music is, stereotypically, beat-driven and heavy, pushing people's buttons as it pours out of somebody else's car radio. But twist the phrase -- into "Songs of the City," for example -- and suddenly, "urban" loses its funk. "Songs of the City" sounds like a folk-life anthology, not a radio format. It's genteel and almost pastoral.

Work is underway on a $105-million apartment and retail development at the crossroads of two major Los Angeles thoroughfares, Wilshire Boulevard and La Brea Avenue. The six-story complex called Wilshire at La Brea is being erected by San Francisco apartment developerBRE Properties Inc.It will house 480 residential units and fill the block at the southeast corner of the intersection. "Through careful planning, this project comes to market at the right time and provides much needed housing in an area already rich with valuable amenities and easy access to mass transit," BRE Vice President John Selindh said.