The Newsroom
Theodore Kang
City Hall Reporter · With the Times since 2012
Theodore Kang has covered Los Angeles City Hall for the Times since 2012, which means he has read more planning documents than any living person should. He believes every city budget is a mystery novel where the butler is always parking.
Recent work
- Vine Street Gets Its Bike Lanes, 3–2, With a Year of Counting Attached, and the Walk of Fame Clause Turns Out to Exist
The special session did what it promised: a yes or a no. Harlan Beaufort was the yes, on the condition that the merchants' parking count be run for real. And the city attorney found the liquidated-damages clause — $1,200 a day — along with three change orders that moved the date it counts from.
September 17, 2026
- At 6:40 on a Wednesday Morning, the Bench Finally Goes
Twenty-two minutes, three men and a truck ended fifteen years of a bus bench boxing in Marisol Quintero's newsstand. Her tape says forty-one inches. The inspector comes September 24. Cornell Biggs has a new seat, fourteen feet east.
September 10, 2026
- In One Crowded Afternoon, the Committee Pays for the Bench, Patches the Vending Gap and Schedules the Fight It Has Been Avoiding
Back from recess, the council committee spent three hours on four items and finished three: $4,850 for the bench move, 'pending counts as compliance' through December 31, and an up-or-down bike-lane vote set for September 16. The Walk of Fame motion ran out of afternoon — again.
August 26, 2026
- The Bond Campaign Holds Its First Event in the Room It Is Campaigning For, and the First Question Is the One They Practiced
About 120 people came to the reading room Saturday. The volunteers kept the one rule — promise the building, never the hours — and the campaign left with a new commitment it did not plan to make: asking the system to publish how the 34 branches were chosen.
August 23, 2026
- It Is August, Which Means October: The Costume Shop Begins Its Long Climb to Halloween
The racks are still wide apart and the fitting curtain is still unattended, but the buying is done, the mending has started, and the owner has made her annual guess about what the season will want. She gives herself even odds.
August 18, 2026
- The Bench Can Move by Mid-September After All. That Will Be $4,850, and Three Offices Agree It Should Be Paid by One of the Others
The street-furniture company's written answer reached the city Wednesday: ordinary service gets to Hollywood in late October, past the newsstand's deadline — unless someone invokes the contract's expedited clause and pays the fee. Everyone at City Hall wants the money found. Nobody wants it found in their budget.
August 13, 2026
- A Month Into the Vending Overhaul, the City's Line Moves and the County's Does Not
Hollywood's permit counter is running ahead of projections; the county health queue behind it is not, and the difference lands on September 30. Meanwhile, the bus bench blocking the Boulevard's last newsstand turns out to have a clock of its own.
August 11, 2026
- Council Members Call the Walk of Fame Contractor to Account, and Ask Where the Penalty Clause Went
A motion filed Thursday demands a public accounting of the terrazzo restoration's third delay. Its authors say they have found no liquidated-damages provision in the contract — and the city cannot yet tell them whether one exists.
August 7, 2026
- Library Bond Language Is Set for November, Minus One Contested Sentence
The measure heading to voters will fund construction and seismic work at 34 branches, Hollywood's among them. A clause promising to protect operating hours did not survive the drafting.
August 4, 2026
- Three Storefronts Open, Two Go Dark, and One Has Been Waiting on a Permit Since March
The Boulevard's vacancy rate ticked down again this quarter. The ledger behind the number is a good deal more mixed, and one line of it has not moved in five months.
July 30, 2026
- A Shade Ordinance Returns to Committee, With Hollywood's Bus Stops as Exhibit A
A proposal to require shade at transit stops and along new commercial frontage has been drafted twice and passed never. This week's heat put it back on an agenda, and produced a number nobody disputes: 61 percent.
July 30, 2026
- Two Weeks Into the New Vending Rules: 41 Permits, One Counter, and a Line That Starts at Seven
Hollywood is the test case for the city's rewritten sidewalk vending system. The first fortnight has produced fewer permits than expected, for a reason nobody wrote into the ordinance.
July 26, 2026
- The Vine Street Bike Lane Deadlock Will Stand for Five Weeks, Because the Committee Has No August Date
A 2-to-2 committee vote held the plan for further study. The study has no author, no deadline and no meeting to return to until late August — and both sides are using the gap.
July 23, 2026
- Council Committee Deadlocks Over Vine Street Protected Bike Lanes
A plan to convert a mile of Vine from four lanes to three, removing about ninety parking spaces, split a City Council committee 2 to 2 and was held for further study.
July 16, 2026
- Los Angeles Overhauls Sidewalk Vending, With Hollywood as the Test Case
A City Council committee advanced a cheaper, tiered permit system for the sidewalk vendors who crowd Hollywood's streets, the densest such corridor in the city.
July 15, 2026
- LED Retrofit Reaches Hollywood's Historic Street Lamps, and a Fight Over the Glow
The Bureau of Street Lighting wants to convert the neighborhood's ornamental cast-iron lamps to LED. Preservationists say the savings are real and the light is wrong.
July 11, 2026
- A County Library Bond Heads to November, With Hollywood's Branch on the List
Measure supporters say the bond would pay to expand and seismically retrofit dozens of branches. Here is what the money would and would not do for the local library.
July 8, 2026
- Up on the Roofs: Hollywood's Bars Keep Climbing, and the Wages Don't Follow
A wave of rooftop bars and restaurants above Hollywood Boulevard has added tables, views and jobs — most of them the kind that depend on a good night and a generous crowd.
July 3, 2026
- Enforcement Sweep Cites 60 Hollywood Short-Term Rentals
The two-week action was the neighborhood's largest since the city's home-sharing rules took effect, targeting whole-unit listings that investigators say operate as unlicensed hotels.
July 2, 2026
- Office-to-Housing Conversion Rules Advance, With Two Boulevard Buildings in View
An update to the city's adaptive-reuse rules cleared committee, naming two long-vacant Hollywood Boulevard office buildings as early conversion candidates.
July 1, 2026
- Boulevard Retail Vacancy Edges Down for the First Time Since 2022
A three-point drop in empty storefronts along Hollywood Boulevard is too small to call a recovery, the people who track it say, and too overdue to ignore.
June 25, 2026
- Council Weighs Waiving Film-Permit Fees to Keep Small Shoots in Town
A proposed 18-month trial would waive municipal permit fees for small productions, aimed at the friction driving modest shoots out of Los Angeles.
June 24, 2026
- The Summer Pothole Blitz, by the Numbers, and the Potholes It Won't Reach
Street Services says its crews patched more than nine thousand potholes across the district in six weeks. Residents point out the count says nothing about which streets got skipped.
June 19, 2026
- Funding Advances for a Redesign of the Hollywood/Vine Station Plaza
A regional board moved roughly $18 million toward widening sidewalks and adding shade above the subway stop, though merchants have heard plaza promises before.
June 18, 2026
- Fire Station 82 Gets Its Seismic Upgrade, Years After the First Request
The council approved money to retrofit the aging Hollywood firehouse, a project its crews have asked for since an inspection flagged the apparatus bay as a risk.
June 11, 2026
- Floor by Floor, a Boulevard Hotel Comes Back — and Brings the Old Trades With It
The restoration of a 1920s Hollywood hotel is proceeding one story at a time, employing plasterers, tile setters and other trades that modern construction rarely calls for.
June 9, 2026
- A Shuttered Diner Becomes Five Delivery Restaurants, and No Dining Room
The old Vine Street coffee shop reopened this spring as a ghost kitchen running five delivery-only brands from one stove. The block gained the jobs and lost the counter.
June 8, 2026
- Following the Quarters: Where Hollywood's Meter Money Actually Goes
Budget records show the roughly $11 million a year from Hollywood's meters flows into a citywide fund — and a chunk of it leaves the neighborhood entirely.
June 5, 2026
- Council Committee Weighs Keeping Hollywood's Sidewalk Dining Decks for Good
The pandemic-era platforms that spilled onto parking spaces and sidewalks were meant to be temporary. A committee is now debating what a permanent program should cost, and who pays.
March 13, 2026
- An Audit of Hollywood's Sign District Finds Sloppy Oversight and Missing Fees
The city allowed bigger, brighter advertising along part of the boulevard in exchange for fees and monitoring. An audit finds expired permits, fees it cannot confirm were collected, and sign companies left to report on themselves.
March 4, 2026
- After January's Storms, a Push to Clear the Drains Before the Next One
Flooding at a handful of familiar low spots has revived a perennial fight over how often the city cleans its catch basins, and who pays when the crews fall behind.
February 4, 2026
- The Holiday Rush Is Over. Now Comes the Long Part.
Boulevard merchants who leaned on three good December weeks are bracing for the January and February stretch that has grown leaner every year.
December 30, 2025
- Boulevard Repaving Slips to Spring, and the City Wants to Know Why
At a Public Works committee hearing, transportation officials and the contractor blamed buried utilities and autumn rain for a Hollywood Boulevard project that has already missed its first deadline.
December 16, 2025
- Council Weighs Relief for Boulevard Businesses Worn Down by the Dig
A motion from Councilmember Alicia Rendón would set up a small-business fund for merchants along the torn-up stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, where a repaving job has outlasted its schedule.
November 18, 2025
- Hollywood Issues Hundreds of Vending Citations. Almost None Are Paid, Records Show.
Enforcement data reviewed by a council committee reveal a wide gap between tickets written and fines collected. Vendors say the permit system is unreachable; brick-and-mortar merchants say the citations are the only tool they have.
November 4, 2025
- Hollywood Library Retrofit Runs Over Budget; Council Panel Adds $2.4 Million
The reading room has been closed since December 2024 for seismic and mechanical work. Officials now say hidden structural problems pushed the cost up and the reopening into next year.
October 15, 2025
- For a Costume Shop, October Is the Whole Year
A cluttered rental and resale shop makes the bulk of its living in a handful of autumn weeks. Its owner spends the other eleven months getting ready for the ones that pay the rent.
October 10, 2025
- A Hillside Neighborhood Asks the City to Ration Its Curbs by Permit
Residents near Beachwood Canyon want a permit district to reclaim parking they say is swallowed by sign-seekers and commuters. Neighbors on the same streets worry the fee will shut out their own guests.
October 8, 2025
- Council Committee Presses for a Firm Finish Date on the Walk of Fame
Two months into the terrazzo repaving, a council committee asked the hard questions about cost and schedule. Staff said the work was on track; members asked what happens when the ground says otherwise.
July 22, 2025
- A Crosswalk Requested Years Ago Is Still Stuck in the City's Queue
Parents near a Hollywood elementary school learned this week roughly where their long-standing request stands: far down a ranked list, behind corners with a documented crash history. The formula, one mother said, waits for the collision it is meant to prevent.
July 1, 2025
- Promised Skate Park Under the 101 Misses Another Deadline as Staff Seek More Time
City staff were due to bring the council a firm construction schedule this month for the long-delayed skate park. Instead they asked for a further review, and the families who have waited years left with little new to hold.
June 26, 2025
- As the City Budget Tightens, Hollywood's Small Projects Wait to Learn Their Fate
With a shortfall shadowing the spring budget, the neighborhood improvements that live on the margins — a skate park, sidewalk repairs, tree trimming — are the ones most exposed.
May 21, 2025
- After Two Collisions Near a Hollywood Elementary, the City Weighs Speed Humps and a Signal
A council committee heard three hours of testimony on a plan to slow traffic on a residential corridor where parents say drivers treat the street as a shortcut.
May 20, 2025
- A Small Recording Studio Survives by Saying Yes to Almost Anyone
The big rooms that recorded the hits are mostly gone. A modest Hollywood studio hangs on by tracking local bands one week and podcast hosts the next.
May 17, 2025
- Council Weighs Stiffer Penalties for Tour Vans Clogging the Boulevard
Citation data show tickets against open-top tour vehicles cluster tightly at a few chokepoints near Highland and Vine. Operators say the city eliminated the loading zones and then wrote them up for stopping where the zones used to be.
April 15, 2025
- A Boulevard Diner Changes Hands, and Its New Owner Vows Not to Change It
After forty years behind the counter, the couple who ran a beloved Hollywood coffee shop have sold to a longtime cook — who says the menu, the booths and the regulars' usual seats are staying put.
March 25, 2025
- Promised Skate Park Under the 101 Draws Frustration at Council Hearing
Residents told a council committee the neighborhood has waited more than a decade for a skate park that keeps stalling on funding, drainage and review. A council office says it is close. It has said so before.
March 19, 2025
- A City-Owned Parking Lot Is Floated for Housing, and the Neighborhood Splits
A council motion asks staff to study building affordable apartments on a municipal lot near the Boulevard. Supporters call it obvious. Merchants who rely on the spaces call it a threat.
March 12, 2025
- Barricades Go Up Around the Boulevard as the Academy Awards Approach
With Sunday's ceremony at the Dolby Theatre, the blocks around Hollywood and Highland brace for rolling closures. Businesses outside the security perimeter say the show empties their sidewalks more than it fills them.
February 27, 2025
- City Weighs New Limits on the Open-Top Tour Vans Idling Along the Boulevard
Residents and merchants have complained for years about the amplified narration and diesel idling of the star-map buses. A council committee took up a proposal to move and thin them.
February 5, 2025
- Hollywood's Broken Sidewalks Outpace the Budget to Fix Them, Records Show
The backlog of sidewalk-repair requests has grown every year since the pandemic while the money to clear it stays flat. A council committee heard this week that new damage is reported faster than crews can patch it.
September 10, 2024
- A Low-Power Hollywood Radio Station Keeps Itself on the Air, Barely
KHWD broadcasts to a few square miles on a shoestring, kept alive by volunteers, a handful of small sponsors and a transmitter that needs constant coaxing.
June 22, 2024
- In the New City Budget, Hollywood Keeps Its Pothole Money and Loses Some Library Hours
The council adopted a spending plan for the coming year on Tuesday. For Hollywood it means more street resurfacing and tree trimming, and shorter weeknight hours at two branch libraries.
June 11, 2024
- A Park Over the 101 Gets Another Study, and Another Year Without Money
City staff briefed a council committee on the long-imagined deck park capping the Hollywood Freeway. The design has advanced. The funding has not.
April 24, 2024