10 OC Restaurants to Take Out-of-Towners for Holidays

Now that Christmas is just a few days away, crowds at South Coast Plaza are growing bigger and trips to John Wayne Airport to pick up friends and family more frequent. As local hosts, we’re responsible for entertaining our guests, which can be a daunting task if they’re adamant about getting a real Orange County experience. If you want to …

Guatemala Venereal Disease Experiment Draws Petition by UCI Law Clinic

One of the many movies that never went anywhere beyond the inside of my own head was to be directed by Spike Lee, feature a frail Richard Pryor and be about the Tuskegee Experiments, the government's research from 1932-'72 in rural Alabama, where African-American men with syphilis thought they were getting free healthcare but were …

More Than Half of OC's Full-Time City and County Workers are in $100,000+ Club

A survey of 28 cities that account for 84 percent of Orange County’s population shows the average full-time city worker received $135,464 in total compensation in 2014, with 66 percent receiving $100,000 or more, according to a free market think tank project. Transparent California, a project of the nonpartisan Nevada Policy Research Institute, on Tuesday …

Orange County Christian Marketing Company Helps Push Controversial Film

When we wrote about The Principle in January, the controversial documentary about Earth's place in the Cosmos was soon to open at the AMC in Orange. The only other Orange County connection at that time (and an admittedly very slim one) was that The Principle executive producer and on screen talking head Robert Sungenis had been …

You've Heard of a Wrongful Death Lawsuit But a Wrongful Life Lawsuit?

We've posted hundreds of times on wrongful death cases, but a wrongful life case? I can't remember another before this one. Javier Sanchez and Samantha Hernandez are suing Long Beach Memorial Medical Center for wrongful life and wrongful birth, alleging the actions of a doctor overseeing the woman's prenatal care denied them the choice of having an abortion. The …

Surf Contest Judging? Surf City Company Has an App (and a National Contest) for That

Like taxi drivers, hoteliers and … gulp … print journalists, surf contest judges may soon find their livelihoods endangered by the digital age. That's because a national surf contest that began Tuesday is being “judged” by a computer app. ] Through the end of the year, 26 surfers between the ages of 13 and 16 …

Meet the SoCal Bikers Trying to Give Motorcycle Clubs a Better Image

“You know that Janis Joplin song where she says, 'Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose'?” asks Tombstone. He's the 68-year-old founder and chairman of an organization created to improve the image and foster alliances among the Southland's myriad motorcycle groups, the Southern California Confederation of Clubs (a.k.a. the Confederation or SCCOC). For …

Irvine's Phil and Emada Tingirides Pivot from Chris Dorner Nightmare to National Honor

The last time we heard from Emada and Phil Tingirides, they discussed the tense days they spent with their blended family of six children holed up in their Irvine home as La Palma's Christopher Dorner roamed Southern California hunting for cops and those like Phil Tingirides he believed had wronged him. The Weekly is hearing …

Lauren Ruth Ward

Within the first few seconds of Lauren Ruth Ward’s “Dizzy,” one thing is apparent: Ward is a breath of fresh air. In today’s electronic-heavy world of mainstream music, Ward brings us emotional pop-jazz fusion songs featuring real instruments and her full, raspy voice. Like Mayer Hawthorne and Leon Bridges, Ward has both raw talent and …

Ivan Derek Castaneda and Jesus Valdivia Cruz Have First-Degree Murder Convictions Reversed

A panel of Fourth District Court of Appeal justices reversed first-degree murder convictions of two men involved in a 2010 gang-related shooting at one of the Taqueria De Anda shops in Santa Ana. ] Jose Miguel Quiroz, OC Homicide No. 34: Dine and Death Ivan Derek Castaneda, 25, and Jesus Valdivia Cruz, 40, were convicted …