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Los Angeles, California
  The City of Los Angeles (from Spanish Los Ángeles, meaning The angels), also known as L.A., is the second largest city in the United States in terms of population, as well as one of the world's most important economic, cultural, and entertainment centers. It was incorporated as a city in California on April 4, 1850 and is the county seat of Los Angeles County. As of the 2000 census, it has a population of 3,694,820, but a May 1, 2005, California Department of Finance estimate shows the city's population at 3,957,875, with the metropolitan area at 17,545,623. The city is also large by geographic standards since it sprawls over more than 465 square miles (1200 square kilometers), making it larger than New York City or Chicago. In addition, Los Angeles can be considered to be an "Alpha" world city since it has hosted two Olympic Games and is home to world-renowned scientific and cultural institutions. Los Angeles is governed by a mayor and a 15-member council. The Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Public Library System and Los Angeles Unified School District are among the largest such organizations in the country. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power provides service to city residents and businesses. The economy of Los Angeles is driven by agriculture, petroleum, entertainment (motion pictures, television, and recorded music), aerospace, international trade, and tourism. It is one of the largest entry points for immigrants to the United States, and it contains people from every nation, making it one of world's most culturally-rich places. People are attracted to the city for its balmy weather, its vibrant lifestyle, its unique energy, and the opportunity to realize the "American Dream."
HistoryThe Los Angeles coastal area was occupied by the Tongva, Chumash, and even earlier Native American peoples for thousands of years. The Spanish first arrived in 1542, when Juan Cabrillo visited the area. In 1769, the Spanish returned to California to stay. In 1771, the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel was founded, thus establishing a permanent presence in the area and securing Spanish territory. On September 4, 1781, settlers from the San Gabriel Mission founded the town and named it El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de la Porciúncula, "The Town of Our Lady Queen of the Angels of the Small Portion". It remained a small mission and ranch town for decades.  Mexican independence from Spain was achieved in the 1820s, but the greatest change took place in present day Montebello after the Battle of Rio San Gabriel in 1847, which decided the fate of Los Angeles. Yankees gained control after they flooded into California during the Gold Rush and secured the subsequent admission of California into the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a city in 1850. Railroads arrived when the Southern Pacific completed its line to Los Angeles in 1876. Oil was discovered in 1892, and by 1923, Los Angeles was supplying one-quarter of the world's petroleum. Even more important to the city's growth was water. In 1913, William Mulholland completed the aqueduct that assured the city's growth and led to the annexation by the City of Los Angeles, starting in 1915, of dozens of neighboring communities without water supplies of their own. In the 1920s the motion picture and aviation industries both flocked to Los Angeles and helped to further develop it. The city was the proud host of the 1932 Summer Olympics. World War II brought new growth and prosperity to the city, although many of its Japanese-American residents were transported to internment camps for the duration of the war. This period also saw the arrival of the German Exiles, which included such notables as Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, and Lion Feuchtwagner. The postwar years saw an even greater boom as urban sprawl expanded into the San Fernando Valley. The Watts riots in 1965 reminded the country of the deep divisions that even the nation's youngest city faced. The XXIII Olympiad was successfully hosted in Los Angeles in 1984. The city was once again tested by the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. A city-wide vote on San Fernando Valley and Hollywood secession was defeated in 2002. Seismic activityLike most areas of California, Los Angeles's history is punctuated with major earthquakes. The most recent was the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which was centered in the northern San Fernando Valley. Coming less than two years after the L.A. riots, the Northridge earthquake was a severe emotional shock to Southern Californians, in addition to causing billions of dollars in physical damage. Other major earthquakes include the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake and the 1971 Sylmar earthquake. CultureLos Angeles is widely known as the entertainment capital of the world. Its largest entertainment industry is film production, but it is an important center for music, art, and architecture as well. As a major global metropolis, Los Angeles has evolved a unique culture and that is well-portrayed in popular media and is sometimes idealized as highly desirable. However, this culture has also inspired criticism that it is not really a unique culture, although most believe the contrary. For more criticism, see Arts and culture of Los Angeles: Criticism Residents of the city of Los Angeles are served by the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) and its branch locations. Residents of the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County and various cities within the county are served by the County of Los Angeles Public Library The LAPL is funded by voter approved bond and tax levy packages. The Main Library is located in downtown Los Angeles and has been recognized as a National Historic Site. See also: List of sites of interest in the Los Angeles area SportsLos Angeles is the home of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers men's basketball teams, the Los Angeles Sparks women's basketball team, the Los Angeles Kings hockey team, the Club Deportivo Chivas USA and Los Angeles Galaxy soccer teams, and the Los Angeles Avengers arena football team. Los Angeles has been without an NFL franchise since 1995 despite being the second biggest television market in North America. Anaheim, about 25 miles (40 km) to the south-east, is home to the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim hockey team and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim baseball team. At various times in history, however, the Angels have been known as the Los Angeles Angels (1961-1965), the California Angels (1965-1997), and the Anaheim Angels (1997-2004); talks in 2004 suggested the team was considering returning to the original name, over loud protests from the Anaheim government. In late December 2004 the name was officially changed to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in order to associate with the larger city while still complying with contractual obligations. Beach volleyball and windsurfing were both invented in the area (though predecessors of both were first invented in some form by Duke Kahanamoku in Hawaii). Venice, also known as Dogtown, is credited with being the birthplace of skateboarding and the place where rollerblading first became popular. Area beaches are popular with surfers, who have created their own subculture. Los Angeles has twice played host to the summer Olympic Games: in 1932 and in 1984. Los Angeles is perhaps the most mountainous metropolis in the world, with four mountain ranges partly inside city boundaries. Thousands of miles of trails crisscross the city and neighboring areas, providing exercise and wilderness access on foot, bike, or horse. Across the county a great variety of outdoor activities are available, such as skiing, rock climbing, gold panning, hang gliding, and windsurfing. Numerous outdoor clubs serve these sports, including the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club, which annually leads over 4,000 outings in the area. Flora Los Angeles is remarkably rich in native plant species. With its beaches, dunes, wetlands, hills, mountains, and rivers, the area contains a number of important biological communities. The largest area is coastal sage scrub, which covers the hillsides in combustible chaparral. Native plants include: California poppy, matilija poppy, toyon, coast live oak, giant wild rye grass, and hundreds of others. Unfortunately, many native species are so rare as to be endangered, such as the Los Angeles sunflower. There are many exotic flowers and flowering trees that are blooming year-round, with subtle colors, including the jacaranda, hibiscus, phlox, bougainvillea, coral tree blossoms and bird of paradise. If there were no city here, flower-growing could still flourish as an industry, as it does in Lompoc. Wisteria has been known to grow to house-lot-size, and in Descanso Gardens, there are forests of camellia trees. Orchids require special attention in this Mediterranean climate. MediaLos Angeles is served by the Los Angeles Times and La Opinión (the city's major Spanish-language paper.), as well as smaller regional newspapers, alternative weeklies and magazine, including the Los Angeles Newspaper Group's Daily News (which focuses coverage on the Valley), Village Voice Media's L.A. Weekly, L.A. City Beat, Los Angeles magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Los Angeles Daily Journal (legal industry paper), Variety, (show-biz industry paper), and Los Angeles Downtown News. In addition to the English and Spanish language papers, numerous local periodicals serve immigrant communities in their native languages, e.g. Korean, Persian, and Japanese. Most of the above papers are center-left or left in their political stance with the clear exception of the Daily News, which is center-right. One example of this is that the L.A. Times often does high-quality investigative journalism on important inner-city issues like healthcare and crime, while the L.A. Daily News is usually content to run wire stories on those issues, if it covers them at all. The L.A. Daily News also focuses on business issues, education, and crime. It strongly supports lowering taxes. Many cities adjacent to Los Angeles also have their own daily newspapers whose coverage and availability overlaps into certain Los Angeles neighborhoods. Examples include the Daily Breeze (serving the South Bay), and the Long Beach Press-Telegram. See: List of Los Angeles television stations Religion Los Angeles is home to adherents of many religions. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles leads the largest archdiocese in the country. Roger Cardinal Mahony oversaw construction of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, completed in 2002 at the north end of downtown. The Los Angeles Temple of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is their second largest temple and is located in West Los Angeles. Los Angeles has the second-largest Jewish community in the United States, rivaled only by New York City. The Azusa Street Revival (1906–1909) in Los Angeles was a key milestone in the history of the Pentecostal movement. Los Angeles's large multi-ethnic population has fostered some of the less common religions of North America. Immigrants from Asia, for example, have formed a number of significant Buddhist congregations. Today, the Church of Scientology has a major presence in Hollywood. The Self-Realization Fellowship is also based in Hollywood and has a private park in Pacific Palisades. Los Angeles is the home to a number of Neopagans, as well as adherents of various other mystical religions. One wing of the Theosophist movement is centered in Los Angeles, and another is set in neighboring Pasadena. The city has also been home to some very colorful religious leaders and icons. In the 1920s, Aimee Semple McPherson established a thriving evangelic ministry, with her Angelus Temple in Echo Park open to both black and white congregants. Billy Graham became a celebrity during a successful revival campaign in Los Angeles. Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God used to have its headquarters in Pasadena (and are now in Glendale). Until his death in 2005, Dr. Gene Scott was based near downtown. Los Angeles has been a destination for Swamis and Gurus as early as 1900, including Paramahansa Yogananda (1920). Maharishi Mahesh Yogi founded the Transcendental Meditation movement in Los Angeles in the late 1950s. Education  K-12 schoolsThe primary school district that serves Los Angeles is the Los Angeles Unified School District. After Proposition 13 in 1978, urban school districts had considerable trouble with funding and LAUSD became known for its underfunded, overcrowded and poorly maintained campuses. Wealthy and upper-middle-class parents placed their children in elite private schools like Harvard-Westlake, Crossroads School, The Buckley School, Milken Community High School, Chaminade High School, Louisville High School, Notre Dame High School, Loyola High School (Los Angeles), Brentwood School (Los Angeles), and Marlborough School, while middle-class families fled into suburban school districts beyond LAUSD boundaries. Since then, the LAUSD has embarked on an aggressive school construction program to relieve overcrowding, and has developed high-quality magnet schools to nurture talented students and encourage them to remain within the public school system. Colleges and universities
++Los Angeles Community College District Note: For more colleges and universities in the L.A. area, such as Caltech, see Los Angeles County, California#Colleges and universities. Law and government Law enforcementThe Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) polices the city of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department polices all unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County and some cities which have contracted for law enforcement services because they lack police departments of their own, including Calabasas, West Hollywood, and Compton. City governmentThe city has a mayor-council system. The current mayor is Antonio Villaraigosa. There are 15 city council districts. Other elected city officials include the city attorney, Rocky Delgadillo, and the city controller, Laura Chick. The city attorney prosecutes misdemeanors within the city limits. The district attorney, elected by the county voters, prosecutes misdemeanors in unincorporated areas and in 78 of the 88 cities in the county, as well as felonies everywhere in the county. The city government has been perceived as inefficient and ineffective by residents of some areas, which ultimately led to an unsuccessful secession movement by the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood in 2002. The main problem seems to be that the city administration in Downtown gives more priority to high-density neighborhoods like Mid-City and Downtown at the expense of its far-flung suburban neighborhoods. To make the government more responsive and to help encourage the cohesiveness of neighborhood communities, the city council has promoted the formation of neighborhood councils. These advisory councils were first proposed by city council member Joel Wachs in 1996 and were incorporated in the Charter Reform of 1999. The councils cover districts which are not necessarily identical to the traditional neighborhoods of Los Angeles, the borders of which often reflect those of cities that were annexed to Los Angeles (see Communities, neighborhoods and districts below). More than 90 neighborhood councils have been formed and all stakeholders in a district may vote for council members. Though the councils have little actual power, they are still official government bodies and so must abide by California's Brown Act that strictly governs the meetings of deliberative assemblies. These and other regulatory requirements have proven frustrating for activists unaccustomed to bureaucratic procedures. The first notable achievement of the neighborhood councils was their organized opposition in March 2004 to an 18% increase in water rates by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (a municipal monopoly), which led the city council to suspend the rate hike pending further study. See also: List of mayors of Los Angeles, California Legal system The Los Angeles County Superior Court has jurisdiction over all cases arising under state law, while the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California hears all federal cases. Both are headquartered in a large cluster of government buildings in the city's Civic Center. Unlike the largest city in the United States, New York, all of the city of Los Angeles and most of its important suburbs are located within a single county. As a result, both the county superior court and the federal district court are respectively the busiest courts of their type in the nation. Thanks to Hollywood, celebrities like O.J. Simpson are frequently seen in Los Angeles courts. In 2003, the tabloid television show Extra (based in nearby Glendale) found itself running so many reports on the legal problems of local celebrities that it spun them off into a separate show, Celebrity Justice. State cases are appealed to the Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District, which is also headquartered in the Civic Center, and then to the California Supreme Court, which is headquartered in San Francisco but also hears argument in Los Angeles (again, in the Civic Center). Federal cases are appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which hears them at its branch building in Pasadena. Of course, the court of last resort for both federal and state cases is the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. CrimeMany movies and songs about Los Angeles depict the city as home to a large number of gangsters and professional criminals. However, crime is steadily decreasing throughout most of the city, and it is considered to be much safer than other cities in the United States. According to a May 2001 Drug Threat Assessment by the National Drug Intelligence Center[1], Los Angeles County is home to 152,000 gang members organized into 1,350 gangs. In Los Angeles, car chases happen more often than in most major cities (sometimes a few times in one week). The city's complex freeway system makes it easier to go on for miles, while still remaining in the same general area. Other common crimes include: car-to-car shootings (see road rage), drive-by shootings, thrill killings, hit-and-run accidents, and carjackings. Numerous instances of all these crimes are documented on the LAPD press release Web site [2]. One interesting example is a report on ten freeway shootings within two months [3]. There are also some reports that 95 percent of all outstanding homicide warrants and 60 percent of outstanding felony warrants in the city are for illegal aliens[4] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
