World Class

Your choices in San Francisco hotels are overwhelming. The prices can be too. So during our staff visit to the City by the Bay, we looked for reasonably priced hotels that had charm, location or both. We came back with 14 ideas on places to bed down. It's not a complete list, but it is eclectic, like the city itself. Mystic Hotel. This property, which opened in April, stands on a tunnel-adjacent block of Stockton Street that you'll never see on a picture postcard, yet it has style, as do the Burritt Tavern bar and restaurant downstairs.

Bill Moody, who portrayed legendary pro wrestling manager Paul Bearer for years in WWE, passed away Tuesday night. Moody, 58, was a popular figure among other wrestlers, as can be witnessed by the number of tweets his passing drew from those in the pro wrestling community, many of which you can see below. WWE star John Cena : "I think most everyone in WWE has a great story about Paul Bearer. I have many, and will always cherish them. " WWE star Tyson Kidd : "Sad to hear about the passing of Paul Bearer.

Question: What is "World Class" ? Answer: You've seen the ads, watched the TV spots, read the blurbs! "World Class" is the bigger, bolder, transcendental new way to position a product or service in the internationally minded '90s! * Q: But what does "World Class" compare with, in a rational value system? A: It compares with everything else--and with nothing else! That's why it's World Class! * Q: A panel? A jury?

U.S. teammates Jack Davis and Harrison Dillard were locked in a close race in the final of the 110-meter hurdles at the Helsinki Olympics in July 1952 when Davis, who was barely ahead, banged into the ninth barrier and lost his slim lead. At the finish line, the sprinters were clocked at an identical 13.7 seconds, a new Olympic record. But a photo finish showed Dillard first by an eyelash. Four years later, Davis lined up in the starting blocks of the same event at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

Spectators came to UC Irvine Saturday afternoon expecting to see world-class performances. What they saw was a World Class show. Bob Kersee, coach of the Westwood-based World Class Athletic Club, saw his five athletes--Tonya Sedwick, Janeene Vickers, Gail Devers, Dannette Young and Jackie Joyner-Kersee--run away with four individual victories and sweep the day's two relays.

Sam Hall Kaplan's column "L.A.'s World-Class Housing Need" (Nov. 6) was wonderful! As an advocate for affordable housing, I believe we need to keep getting the message out over and over again. Why are we the only industrialized nation of the world without a family, health care and housing policy? Why do we allow homelessness to grow unchecked, while other nations house and feed their citizens with dignity and respect? EDWYNA SPIEGEL Los Angeles

In the spotlight: The '30s beach cottage in Beacon Bay that is home to geologist Peter Keller, president of the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, and his wife, Signe. Prominent on the Orange County arts scene, the couple relish the laid-back atmosphere they've created in a home accented with collected artifacts and contemporary works.

The Los Angeles Marathon is not a high-profile race, like its counterparts in Boston, New York, Chicago, Berlin and London. The course, which begins at Universal Studios and ends at Fifth and Flower streets, is too hilly and uneven to attract elite athletes. The early date -- six weeks before the historic Boston marathon and a month before major marathons in London and Rotterdam -- excludes it from the calendars of top distance runners. Its 8:15 a.m.

The simple act of shopping has become so fraught with contradictions, it's no wonder that we're all paralyzed. We don't know if it's patriotic to spend big or, in these uncertain economic times, wildly irresponsible. Sometimes it feels unsafe just going to the mall, and other times it's a source of reassurance to get out and mingle. Why can't shopping just be a relaxing day out? It still can be.

World Class Network Inc., an Irvine-based travel company shuttered in March as part of a nationwide crackdown on travel-related fraud, has agreed to abandon its multilevel tactics and reimburse more than $3 million to consumers.

In its glory days, the Forum was Southern California's preeminent entertainment venue, a behemoth with Roman columns where adoring fans came to see the likes of Wilt Chamberlain, Wayne Gretzky and Bob Dylan. But the famous round building fell on hard times. The Los Angeles Lakers and Kings moved downtown. Other venues in up-and-coming neighborhoods came along to nab the concert business. And, in the end, the Forum was bought by the Faithful Central Bible Church and all but forgotten.

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Oh, how badly I wanted to walk and see and smell and write about whatever it is that makes the Masters masterful. For we first-timers, on this first day of the tournament, it is almost mandatory. Craft an entire column that attempts to explain how there are golf tournaments, there is the Masters and never the twain shall meet. Sportswriting allows so few similar opportunities. Where else can you tell readers about a place that is color-coordinated in the greens of grass, the whites of sand and the blues of sky; where putting greens are more like green-carpeted gymnasium floors, after the water pipes below them have burst?

Along the 405 is L.A.'s version of a shining city on the hill -- a castle of culture in all its incarnations. The Getty Trust is more than its collections and museums; it's about worldwide research, preservation and philanthropy. Its new chief, James Cuno, blew in four months ago from the Windy City, where he headed the Art Institute of Chicago and, before that, Harvard's art museums. Cuno regards himself as something of a California kid, spending his teen years at Travis Air Force Base and later heading the Grunwald Center at UCLA.

Ringing arias? Definitely. Acting chops? Absolutely. Stage presence? Unquestionably. But where on a tenor checklist do you find the box to mark for "effortlessly scales 8-foot fences"? Currently generating critical raves and audible audience gasps at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Vittorio Grigolo, in his local debut starring in L.A. Opera's "Romeo and Juliet," is not your average earthbound Italian tenor. Excessive carb-loading is out, Cirque-like skills are in. The 34-year-old's physicality powers a vital Romeo rare in theater or ballet, much less in French Grand Opera's take on the tale.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will launch his new role as MTA board chairman today with a plan to add at least five more bus-only lanes along major Los Angeles County streets. The agency's first bus-only lane project along a chronically congested stretch of Wilshire Boulevard from downtown to the Westside was approved in June at a cost of $31.5 million, using mostly federal funds. The Wilshire proposal ran into stiff opposition from neighborhood groups and some businesses along the route, which worried that the bus-only lane would worsen traffic congestion and hamper customers' access to stores.

It's a pattern that the studios have been seeing for a while: a "franchise" movie opens to solid box office domestically and spectacular business internationally. And so it was with "Transformers: Dark of the Moon. " The third "Transformers" film, the first in the franchise to be released in 3-D, opened in the U.S. and Canada on Tuesday night and has since grossed $181.1 million, according to an estimate from distributor Paramount Pictures. While that's a decent domestic start for the film, the movie's six-day ticket sales still fell short of the second "Transformers" film, "Revenge of the Fallen.

The money can wait. It's all about the moments for Patrick Cantlay. Leading at the midpoint of a PGA Tour event as a teenager, completing a round that was six strokes better than anything Tiger Woods shot as an amateur . . . those are the once-in-a-lifetime experiences that can trump a six-figure paycheck. Besides, it's not as if Cantlay didn't grasp the ground rules of his amateur status before performances the last three weeks that otherwise would have earned him $215,897.

Somewhere up there in California heaven, Charles Fletcher Lummis is not a happy man. A journalist and an obsessive collector of all things Western, Lummis was a pioneer L.A. historian who defended the cultural heritage of our state and region against those who would insult, ignore or steal it. He founded the city's first museum and built its first important museum building in 1914. And today, his Southwest Museum still rises like a castle on a hillside overlooking Lummis' favorite corner of the city, the Arroyo Seco.