Redondo Beach's Latest Community News

Tucked away inside the cozy Brentwood Country Mart is Diesel, A Bookstore. Although the store is small, lots of great books are packed inside the Diesel walls. For those of you who enjoy supporting local stores, Diesel carries a fine selection of books. A bustling site during the day, this bookstore has a children’s section, biography, art, politics, photography, education, travel, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, cookbooks, note cards and more.

If you’re looking for a title they don’t have, the sales associates are more than happy to order it for you and give you a call when it arrives. Since it’s humble openings in the 1980s, Diesel has hosted many impressive authors for events and signings, including Adrienne Rich, Michael Moore, Chuck Palahnuik, David Sedaris, Charles Baxter and the mighty Kareem-Abdul Jabbar.

Bookworms looking for inspiration should check out the Staff Recomme

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There’s more than surf that’s up in Huntington Beach. The town that calls itself Surf City USA, after the famed Jan & Dean tune, is in the art market business – or rather the flea-by-the--sea business on Fridays when it sets up Art-A-Faire by the pier on Pacific Coast Highway. This is where surf meets Mamasita’s salsa and Plant Creations by Kim, if you like moss hanging from a seashell on a rope for $50.

Art-a-Faire runs Fridays, all year,  from 10 am to 7 pm for anyone in search of the real OC, the stuff of locals. It’s a buffet of tents two blocks long against the 1,856-foot-long Huntington pier. It’s free and informal as the first block runs the gamut of crafts and the second brings the feastwalk of foods. Even if you take it slow, however, you won’t need more than an hour to shop it out.

You’ll find surf art full of orange painted sunsets, wall art i

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Steve Ross, author of Happy Yoga: 7 Reasons Why There’s Nothing to Worry About, founded Brentwood’s Maha Yoga. He keeps a smile on his face, and it translates through his yoga practice and his studio. The word “maha” means “supreme” or “great”, which is the reaction the founder and instructors hope to give you after a Maha Yoga experience.

Customers rave that Steve’s positive energy is unparalleled, and practicing yoga with him is indeed a happy and invigorating outlet. The Maha Yoga class schedule features about seven classes daily, with classes for beginners and higher levels clearly marked. Classes generally groove to an upbeat tempo, with energizing music and lots of positivity.

This is not a yoga studio for those who like to hear only the sounds of crickets during their practic

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Ladies, do you ever wish you could visit a make-up expert for your date night? Do you want a fresh face for a cocktail party, wedding day or special event? The brilliant minds at Makeup & GO! have you covered. Conveniently located on San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood, this insanely cool concept allows you to walk in and get glamorous under the precision of professional makeup artists. Women will know how special this concept is, especially when professionals with top-notch products work their beauty magic.

The best part of the deal is that there’s no makeup purchase necessary, unlike getting makeup done by professionals at department stores. Walk-ins are welcome, or you can make an appointment to ensure that you’re beautified on time. If you need an appointment outside of the store’s hours, the sales associates will happily set one up for you.

Makeup & GO! services include ai

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Only in LA would you find a store dedicated to the care and feeding of dolls. Maybe FAO Schwartz started the tradition with its mesmerizing window displays and then the veritable palaces for Barbie. But American Girl Place takes the hearts and imaginations of excitable pre-teens a few steps further with a two-story department store just for …. Her.

SHE is Kit Kittredge or Samantha or Molly or Chrissa or any of nearly two dozen “just like you” dolls born of the same basic mold but differing in skin color, hair, clothes, eye color to become the must-have item (at $110 a pop) for girls who want to be girls.

Parents beware. Enter American Girl Place at The Grove at your own risk. The “no” word is not an option when there is a young one in hand. This pavilion has a beauty parlor on the first floor where, for $15, your girl’s girl can get a bob or a braid set or a do for the day before you head to the second floor where the gloves truly

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If you want to see homes where buffalo roam, the Island of Santa Catalina, some 22 miles off the coast of LA, is your closest port of call. Buffalo brought over the Pacific for any number of westerns filmed here, have spawned and thrived and lived a happy and protected life ever since.

For visitors to the island, life can be pretty happy too – no cars are allowed on the 22x8 mile stretch of high and rugged land. Rather, golf carts do the honors of ferrying folks – and their luggage – from the heliport and hydrofoil docks to the hotels and attractions in Avalon.

Santa Catalina is not one of Southern California's best-kept secrets. Word has been out for the majority of this past century and sending celebrities, yachtsman and tourists to the island to soak up the sun on private cove beaches where water temperatures average 72 degrees in summer and underwater visibility is easily 40 feet.

Rather, the Catalina experience is one of timelessness an

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Make studio audience magic in LA as a clapping and laughing member of a taping, whether The Jay Leno Show, the Jimmy Kimmel Show, The Late Show with Craig Ferguson, even the venerable Price is Right. 

Getting in is as simple as getting a table at Mozza on Melrose. Go on line, make a reservation, get to the venue early, get on line – and wait. And wait. Unless, of course, you know someone. Although the producers never guarantee a seat (first in, first seated) they rarely turn anyone away. Of course, once in, you don’t just sit there. You work. You laugh loudly and frequently. You clap loudly and frequently too.

Tapings last just a bit longer than the show just in case something has to be changed or fixed, and in some cases, such as Real Time with Bill Mahar, the show is taped live and what you see is what airs.

At CBS, where a number of taping

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MGM Mirage’s “hair apparent” has earned the moniker of “Makeover King” from the biggest salons in Hollywood. Kim Vo, whose hair caressing products now have an exclusive presence at Barney’s, has a hair lair in Las Vegas at the Mirage Hotel, complete with “mojito hairtinis” for thirsty manes and “bayalage” hair painting treatments by the King himself every Monday. Kim Vo Salon keeps a Carnaby Street meets Studio 16 appeal in wide-open spaces decked in black, whites and yellows, dusted throughout in a silvery sheen.

This darling of the gossip shows, is known for paintbrush swishes and strips on such swear-by-him clients as Kate Hudson, Goldie Hawn, Kim Cattrall, Angela Bassett, Sylvester Stallone, and Jenny McCarthy. A style station for “The Daily 10” on E! and his regular appearances on ABC’s “Extreme Makeover” is at the ready – a hidden camera behind the half

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Santa Monica has put a little style and pomp into the art of beach going by opening a “private” beach club for the rest of us. The Annenberg Community Beach House opened in 2009 with a dose of sleek and edgy architecture, a cool pool, rentable beach gear and a swatch of littoral opened only to a daily quota of first come first admitted bathers.

Not only is this a spot with a view, a clean beach, a California style café with tables on the sand and a healthy lifestyle menu, a place to rent sand chairs, beach umbrellas, boogie boards, volley balls, soccer balls, beach tennis rackets – ok they don’t rent bicycles or skates – but it is also a place for stories.

This is a beach house with a past. The Annenberg Community Beach House sits on the site of the 1920s beach estate built by William Randolph Hearst for actress Marion Davies (free tours available every Monday at 11 am and 1 pm). The Davies estate featured a mansion of 100-plus ro

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The ball game is only a stone’s throw away at LA’s Dodger Stadium. The legendary Elysian Park venue offers home games this summer scheduled for half the days in the month and, when coupled with those infamous steaming Dodger Dogs, the darkening blue twilight of the Southern California skies, and the sparkling city skyline off in the distance, a series of innings watching the Dodgers play a home game closes in on the edge of perfection.

Since 1962, Dodger Stadium, baseball's third-oldest, has been the home turf of some of the greatest names in baseball -- Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and such current greats as Derek Lowe, Nomar Garciaparra and Rafael Furcal make the stadium an attraction. This 56,000-seat icon of American sports history offers regular tours for a behind-the-scenes run through restricted and non-public areas with the chance to view the Stadium from new and exclusive perspectives.

Some highlights of the 90-minute walking tour include: a trip d

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Who knew LA had it’s own little Napa deep in the rolling foothills and canyons of the mountains of Malibu? It turns out that above the surf and the saturation of Bay Watch homes are magical glens of rolling vineyards raising the grapes for labels that pour at some of the finest tables in town. 

One of those spots is Malibu Wines, which offers a tasting venue for Malibu Family Wines owned by the Semler and DeJoria families (yes, the king of hair care loves a good grape) for some home grown merlots, syrahs, cabernets, roses and sauvignon blancs and limited collections worth traveling for.

The secret wine caves here produce two labels that get a decent amount of attention: Semler and Saddlerock (the 2007 Semler Sauvignon Blanc, $23, described as restrained, mineral-laden, Italian-style, and pairing well with food, received recent mention in the New York Times as a recommendation by food and wine writer Jamie Gross). All can be tried and tasted in grassy groun

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Functions follow form on the second Thursdays of each month as downtown Los Angeles comes alive with art. LA’s Downtown Art Walk, happening since 2004, is now a tradition in this city as commercial art galleries, museums and non-profit arts venues open their doors for fun and profit on these days from noon to 10 pm, allowing artists to showcase their wares and self-proclaimed performance artists to come out into the streets and be seen.

Downtown Los Angeles has been developing a hidden, but celebrated art scene since the 1970s when Judy Chicago took over an entire block with a renovated industrial loft gallery that lit a match and set the budding arts community on fire. Since that time, several streets bordering Little Tokyo and Pershing Square have become ground zero for Bohemia LA style and the city has pitched in with marketing support, space and the tabbing of a district on Main and Spring streets as Gallery Row.

The tour is a free, self-guided event (a pri

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For those who would prefer to hike with the stars, Runyon Canyon “peaking” out above the Hollywood neon should be the path of choice for nature shows and the latest in exercise chic. The three-mile roundtrip hike ascends about 400 feet to views that can see all the way to Catalina Island on a clear day. 

The paths in this 160-acre park once belonged to Errol Flynn and meandered past the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed poolhouse, where his celebrity friends frolicked until it all burned up in 1978. Pieces of the house, garden, pool and tennis courts are still there and make entertaining diversion from the natural landscape. 

In true Hollywood fashion, the walk starts out as an amble under towering palm trees. A grassy meadow gated off from the walkers serves as a comely place to relax, read or do yoga in a dog-free zone.

But the rest of the canyon and trails up the mountain have all literally gone to the dogs. This place is THE place for

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Pools pair with pampering when it comes to cool things to be done under the Vegas sun. While some pools are all scene and no simmering others put the focus on the cabanas, the ice chips, the rub and the aromas. 

The Spa has moved outside at Caesars and Flamingo and a little pleasure in an already pleasurable day can go along way for preparing for what the evening brings. 

Qua Baths & Spa at Caesars uses chilled stones and Pure Fiji ice chip-infused sugar scrubs.  Each treatment is performed in a private cabana adjacent to the newly opened Garden of the Gods pool complex.  Services range from a simple suntan oil application to a more indulgent cabana massage.

Take the Tops and Tails treatment. It targets the head, hands and feet. A coconut or mango sugar scrub infused with ice chips cools the body and relaxes the mind while hands and feet are then massaged with rich body lotions to moisturize and soothe. 20 minutes -- $70.

The R

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 Los Angeles is where the X Games 16 is going down this year.  Of course the events will be broadcast on both espn and espn 2 but there is nothing like seeing a 20 foot back flip on roller blades in person.  The event is sure to attract a large crowd and is sure to not disappoint. Events will range from everything to Bmx and moto-x all the way to rally car events.  Oh and be sure to watch out for the "Mega Ramp" in the skateboard Big Air Competition.

There will be full days of events and competitions from Thursday the 29th to till Sunday.  Tickets are for sale via ticketmaster and start as low as nine dollars.

Parents rave about Santa Monica’s Canyon Charter Elementary School, and many students grow and learn in the classrooms, in the hallways, in the lunchroom and on the playground.

The teachers are described as dedicated and enthusiastic, and students gain necessary knowledge as well as real-world application at this Pacific Palisades elementary school. As a part of the school’s mission statement, “the curriculum emphasizes academic excellence, high-level thinking, communication skills, personal growth, and positive social values.” The school’s history is rich and vibrant, dating back to its humble, one-room school house beginnings in 1894. In 1993, Canyon Elementary School gained the “charter” status.

Canyon believes in exposing children to the arts at a young age, and students receive a sampling of music, art, theatre and dance. There is also an Italian language program on the horizon. The school is part of the Los Ange

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Santa Monica College is a two-year community college that works hard to place students at UCLA, USC and other four-year institutions once their work at SMC is finished.

SMC has many practical programs to start off your studies, including pre-professional degrees such as pre-dental, pre-medical, pre-law, pre-pharmacy, pre-chiropractic, pre-veterinary and teacher preparation. Other departments at SMC include ESL (English as a Second Language), Music, Photography, Design Technology, Physics, Theatre Arts, English, History, Health Sciences, Cosmetology, Dance, Communications, Business, Fashion Design and Merchandising, Chemistry, Education, Computer Science, Psychology, Mathematics and Engineering.

Students at SMC are encouraged to participant in on-campus clubs. There are a wide variety of clubs available, and it is likely that students will find a club to suit their passions. Between the Association of Latin American Students, the Environmental Protection Club,

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The Palomar Hotel in Westwood caters to pets and their peeps with a variety of amenities that keeps the barks coming. Where few hotels put out the welcome sign to Fido, Palomar, a Kimpton property, puts pets on the pillow, regardless of size, weight or breed, with such complimentary extras as Pooper Scooper bags, a walking map, an in-room bowl for food and water, even a doggie bed for convenience and comfort – although you might not find the high threadcount sheets. The hotel has Dog walking and sitting services available and can point energetic owners toward to an exercise park nearby.

There’s no additional charge for pets and no deposit is required. The hotel has a list of nearby veterinarians and practitioners for such services as animal acupuncture and pet massages and people can get in their share of pampering as well at the Palomar with the menu of in-room spa services offered. Massage, facials and body treatments can be had without shuffling a slipper. Ker

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 “Boutique” is not the first thing that comes to mind when discussing the latest debut for a hotel in Las Vegas but Vegas, as we all know, has something for everyone. 

So for those who are looking for a little East Village, a little Cambridge, a mini-Berkeley or artsy Montreal off the Strip, step inside the 62-room Artisan Hotel. 

The property, located just south of the Las Vegas Strip on Sahara Avenue, has just received a magnificent makeover and now lives up to its promise as a-one-of-a-kind hideaway under the neon. 

Find floor-to-ceiling walls here covered in eclectic art and paintings behind the gilded gothic doors of the main entrance.  As eyes adjust to the romantic illumination of sparkling chandeliers and flickering candles it’s like entering 1914 Monmartre, an elegant salon of absinthe and decadent indulgence.

No two rooms or suites are alike in this hotel. Each is themed with artwork from noted Euro

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 Vegas is expert at the art of creating a sense of royalty for the common man. Limos, champagne, celeb-chef dining, high limit hospitality – it’s all part of the game that makes Las Vegas go ‘round.The latest entrée into the king-for-a-day vacation is the Las Vegas Hilton, which just recently opened its Classic Suites Collection to the  high-flying tourist.

For years, The Classic Suites Collection at the Las Vegas Hilton was reserved exclusively for celebrities, high rollers and VIPs.  Not now, the 46 distinctive suites designs provide VIP stays for Joe the rock star as easily as Joe the plumber.

For the ultimate VIP experience, the Hilton’s premier accommodations include the three spacious Sky Villas that are actually palatial residences ranging from 12,000 to 15,400 square feet.

Tastes run from “maison chic” in the hotel’s Park Avenue Suites, which mirror luxurious New York City apartment livin

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Ladies of all ages, shapes, sizes and interests can have a day away with family and friends at M Resort and Spa Mio.

Basically, a Spa Girlfriend package by M Resort and its Spa Mio presents a fun and affordable way for four fab friends to bond under the shade of a cabana, in the shadow of the spa, and by the splash of the pool for Champagne, updos, make-up, mani-pedis and a hardy and healthy massage each.

The total price for a day of female spa and bonding comes to $1,500 (plus tips) and that includes the requisite VIP pool cabana (a $150 value), chauffeured wheels from resort to resort, a bottle of bubbly, a 50-minute massage, a 50-minute manicure and a 50-minute pedicure for each person. Also count in a complimentary pair of fashion-first Oka b. sandals for everyone and fun with beauty experts in make-up experiments, hair-dos and don’ts, and beauty products.

No hurry. Plenty of time to put this gig together. The package is good through October and als

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You can go there for the cinematic drama of it all – the rooftop lounge screens movies here on Sunday nights at 8 pm. Or you can go for the cinematic elbows of it all as Palihouse in West Hollywood seems to be taking on the sheen formerly resigned to the Chateau Marmont crowd in this town.

A little younger (opened in 2008), a little smaller (only 36 studios and suites in this glam-town pied-a-terre); a little smarter (what can you say about rooftop screening in a Sunset Blvd. venue just steps away from the film making machinery); and with all the requisite chic required to gain the attention of the local celestials in the neighborhood (think: Sarah Silverman, Salma Hayek, Neil Patrick Harris, Jimmy Kimmel, Matthew Perry and Jaime King on the sightings list), Palihouse is an formidable force for what Hollywood hospitality can do. 

Even if rooftop movies are not your thing (did we tell you about the accompanying picnic supper and cocktails that precede them?

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