West Hollywood Ca

This is a story about yogurt, but it is also about entrepreneurship, financial and cultural expectations, beating the heat, beating the caloric system and parking. It's a feel-good story about an ambitious 32-year-old Korean woman whose small business has become successful beyond all reasonable expectations. And it's a feel-bad story about a sleepy neighborhood attacked, out of nowhere, by an army of frozen-yogurt fiends.

The Republican National Committee is investigating the expenditure of nearly $2,000 in party funds at a racy West Hollywood nightclub, a party spokesman said Monday. RNC spokesman Doug Heye acknowledged that the party had reimbursed Erik Brown, president of a Southern California firm that has provided direct mail services to political campaigns, for a Jan. 31 outing at Voyeur West Hollywood. The club, inspired by the film "Eyes Wide Shut," is intended to be "risque and provocative" and "a combination of intimidation and sexuality," one of its partners, David Koral, told The Times in October.

There's battle lines being drawn. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong. Young people speaking their minds, Getting so much resistance from behind. I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down. -- "For What It's Worth" Stephen Stills Gangsters, nightclubs and rock 'n' roll make up much of the Sunset Strip's colorful history -- along with a little-remembered tussle in 1966 that became known as "the Sunset Strip riots."

Three hours into the race, it was the butt scooter that nearly did Scott Ramsay in. "Burniiing!" he hollered to his teammate Fatima Santos. "I'm cramping up! We gotta keep moving. Let's go!" As the couple rushed from a West Hollywood park toward the finish line in Pershing Square, it was obvious they would not take first or probably even 50th place in Saturday's fourth annual Great Urban Race. But no matter. For many of the 700 or so racers who signed up, it was less about the finish line than the wacky adventures on the way. A combination scavenger hunt, brain teaser, obstacle course and footrace, the event unfolded like a masquerade party with a to-do list.

Actor Johnny Depp sometimes takes a dim view of American politics. But now he's taking an even dimmer view of West Hollywood politicians. The "Pirates of the Caribbean" star is in a legal sword fight with city officials who have authorized a Sunset Strip construction project that he insists would ruin a scenic view from an area of his $5.4-million Hollywood Hills property.

Plans for a 27-bed West Hollywood rehab center have neighbors demanding to know how a luxury facility offering drug and alcohol treatment to an elite clientele could end up within blocks of one of the city's most famous nightlife scenes. "We're half a block from all the bars and clubs on Santa Monica Boulevard, and there are drug dealers that trawl the neighborhood, especially at the weekend," said Norma Sandler, who has lived in an apartment on the same street as the proposed Klean West Hollywood treatment center for more than 30 years.

The blue pucker martinis are being iced and shaken. Guests, some armed with their monthly rent checks, pour into building manager Marc Yeber's silver and sapphire minimalist living room, part of a 1927 apartment building by architect Leland Bryant, designer of the landmark Argyle Hotel. It's just another Tuesday-night gathering -- a contemporary design version of the Algonquin Round Table -- at the Four Gables in West Hollywood.

As rivalries go, it's not up there with the Dodgers and the Giants or even Donald Regan and Nancy Reagan. But Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, which have coexisted fairly peacefully for decades, have by some accounts developed an escalating competition for restaurant-goers, shoppers and just plain attention since West Hollywood incorporated four years ago and began an aggressive image-building campaign.

The Republican National Committee is investigating the expenditure of nearly $2,000 in party funds at a racy West Hollywood nightclub, a party spokesman said Monday. RNC spokesman Doug Heye acknowledged that the party had reimbursed Erik Brown, president of a Southern California firm that has provided direct mail services to political campaigns, for a Jan. 31 outing at Voyeur West Hollywood. The club, inspired by the film "Eyes Wide Shut," is intended to be "risque and provocative" and "a combination of intimidation and sexuality," one of its partners, David Koral, told The Times in October.

There's no conniving Amanda Woodward -- Heather Locklear's "Melrose Place" character -- in the building. Not yet, anyway. But residents of the Rob Clark, a new condo conversion in West Hollywood, say life there often imitates the campy '90s TV show where the overwrought dramas of successful, wildly attractive twentysomethings played out inside an L.A. apartment complex.

West Hollywood burnished its reputation as a national leader in animal rights legislation Tuesday night when the City Council unanimously approved an ordinance to prohibit most sales of cats and dogs in "companion animal" (pet) stores. The fact that no city pet stores now sell the animals didn't dampen supporters' enthusiasm for the measure. Local and national animal rights activists celebrated the news, saying they hoped it would spark similar efforts elsewhere. "This definitely calls for champagne," Carole Raphaelle Davis, West Coast director of the Companion Animal Protection Society, said before the vote.

Plans for a 27-bed West Hollywood rehab center have neighbors demanding to know how a luxury facility offering drug and alcohol treatment to an elite clientele could end up within blocks of one of the city's most famous nightlife scenes. "We're half a block from all the bars and clubs on Santa Monica Boulevard, and there are drug dealers that trawl the neighborhood, especially at the weekend," said Norma Sandler, who has lived in an apartment on the same street as the proposed Klean West Hollywood treatment center for more than 30 years.

If you plan on protesting a ban on same-sex marriage, what better place than West Hollywood, a town known nationwide as a center for gay activism and politics? But go there on vacation? West Hollywood -- where more than a third of the population identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender -- is well-known to locals and draws many visitors from around the state. But it's not a major national or international destination. Now the city, eager to shore up revenues, wants to expand its reach.

A bronze marker engraved with a quote from Nelson Mandela will be placed at a park in West Hollywood where some of the first same-sex marriages in California were performed. The City Council plans to unveil the rectangular plaque at its Sept. 8 meeting before permanently installing it at West Hollywood Park off North San Vicente Boulevard, a site which was full of pride June 17, 2008, when same-sex couples could legally marry for the first time in California. "It happened on a single day but it went on for months," said Jeffrey Prang, the West Hollywood councilman who thought of the plaque.

It's billed as the most exclusive new club in Los Angeles. But some neighbors in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills don't want the late-night carousing, traffic jams or paparazzi they fear will accompany the opening of the Los Angeles chapter of the decidedly British, members-only SoHo House. More than 80 residents have signed an appeal by the West Hollywood-Beverly Hills Neighborhood Assn. against allowing SoHo House to move into the top two floors of Luckman Plaza at 9200 Sunset Blvd.

These are tough times for real estate agents, who say some cities make it tougher than it has to be. Real estate agent Ronald Shore is mounting a campaign -- both with signatures and on the Internet -- against a West Hollywood ordinance that he says limits the ability of prospective buyers to find homes for sale while driving on city streets.

Federal authorities have seized 250 counterfeit $1-billion banknotes from a West Hollywood apartment as part of a currency smuggling investigation, officials said Tuesday. The bogus Federal Reserve notes carry 1934 issue dates and are stained to look old. "They are a replication of 1934 Grover Cleveland $1,000 bills -- manipulated to look like $1 billion," said James Todak, deputy special agent in charge for the Secret Service in Los Angeles.

In some ways, life was easier for Trev Broudy in September, when he was hooked up to machines in the intensive care unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. As he was rushed into surgery, as he lay in a coma, as friends and family held prayer vigils, his pain was obvious. Now, the handsome 34-year-old looks and sounds as fine as anyone, only he isn't and never will be. The baseball cap on his head covers a thick, horseshoe-shaped scar.

Patients of a West Hollywood dermatologist became unwitting guinea pigs for an experimental drug when the doctor began secretly injecting them with an unapproved substitute for Botox, federal authorities allege. Dr. David Cary Hansen was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles in connection with an alleged scheme to treat patients with an experimental form of the popular wrinkle reducer that was labeled "Not for Human Use."

The Body Shop, a landmark strip club famed for giving Sunset Boulevard nude dancing and hundreds of struggling actresses work, was shuttered Wednesday after a dawn fire burned through its roof. A cleaning crew discovered smoke billowing from a side door of the West Hollywood building when they arrived at 6:45 a.m. No one was inside when the blaze began in the attic, the owner said. The kitchen, dressing room and office were seriously damaged.