Wilshire Boulevard

The eight statues that stand guard outside the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple have made it a distinctive part of Wilshire Boulevard for more than 30 years. But soon after an Easter program, the temple--which housed National Guard troops during the 1992 riots and has been used for funerals of police officers--will be fenced off and closed.

Asefeh Shirafkan slumped in her seat on an MTA Rapid Bus as it rumbled down Wilshire Boulevard. Tired from a long day at work, she was resigned to a grinding, two-hour trip from West Los Angeles to Glendale that she described as thoroughly depressing. But as she looked out the window at a thicket of gridlocked cars, her mood lightened. "I cannot believe how fast this bus is going," said Shirafkan, an assistant at a mortgage company. "What a relief just to not be in that mess.

In an admitted "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" vote, the Los Angeles Planning Commission has rejected the design of a Wilshire Boulevard high-rise condominium as incompatible with the neighborhood. It was the first time the commissioners could remember a project being vetoed based on its looks. The 3-2 vote of the commission Thursday upheld the view of the Westwood Design Review Board, which has twice said the futuristic-looking 109-unit, 22-story project proposed for 10733 Wilshire Blvd.

My mother doesn't like to talk to me on the phone when I'm driving, so she made her point that the world is in worse shape than she'd ever seen it in her 80-plus years, then hung up. I diluted her grim words with rock radio and was thoroughly enjoying an Eagles' song I'd hated in 1975 when a man in a Dodge Caravan honked and motioned for me to roll down my window. Actually, for the sake of accuracy, I didn't notice he drove a Caravan until later, when I was homicidally tailing him up and down side streets.

They were built as God's mighty fortresses, massive edifices that once housed the biggest, wealthiest, most influential, white Protestant congregations in Los Angeles. But beneath the soaring steeples that have been neighborhood fixtures for decades, the giant churches on Wilshire Boulevard between Hoover Street and Highland Avenue have undergone a dramatic transformation, swept by the same ethnic and economic forces that are reshaping all of Los Angeles.

Six months after a controversial set of bus-only lanes opened on Wilshire Boulevard, transportation officials are clashing over whether the experimental transit route should become permanent. Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials, touting the benefits to transit riders, hope to make the mile-long lanes permanent in West Los Angeles and to create more lanes along other major streets. "We are going to have to inconvenience some people ...

Businessman Jay Handal blames the bus-only lanes for making traffic "miserably worse" along Wilshire Boulevard. Why, he grouses, should motorists driving the nearly one-mile stretch of Wilshire have to wait longer so buses can zoom past them in dedicated traffic lanes? Because, transit officials counter, those few frustrating minutes could eventually show the way to reducing the number of cars on one of the nation's most congested corridors.

The board was for it. The rabbi was for it. It seemed to make good economic sense. But then the congregation spoke. In a narrow vote Sunday, the members of land-rich, cash-poor Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills rejected an offer to marry their synagogue to Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the oldest and possibly the richest Jewish congregation in Los Angeles.

Refighting a battle that already has been lost several times, a vocal band of local elected officials, architects and others are trying to prevent the Metro Orange Line subway from being diverted--perhaps permanently--south of Wilshire Boulevard and away from the county art museum. County transit officials, bending to the will of two powerful congressmen, have proposed to steer the next westward extension of the city's nascent subway system away from a station now under construction at Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue toward the intersection of Pico and San Vicente boulevards.

Saks Fifth Avenue executives said last week that they are willing to build a shopping bridge across a Beverly Hills street in order to expand their showcase store along Wilshire Boulevard. The proposal was welcomed by a spokesman for a nearby homeowners group whose members had protested Saks' earlier proposal to build a new wing on a parking lot next to a residential neighborhood.