NoHo West

Valley Plaza was a shopping center in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, one of the first in the San Fernando Valley, opened in 1951. In the mid-1950s it claimed to be the largest shopping center on the West Coast of the United States and the third-largest in the country. It was located along Laurel Canyon Boulevard from Oxnard to Vanowen, and west along Victory Boulevard. Like its competitor Panorama City Shopping Center to the north, Valley Plaza started with one core development and grew over time to market, under the single name "Valley Plaza", a collection of adjacent retail developments with multiple developers, owners, and opening dates.

The North Hollywood shootout was a confrontation between two heavily armed and armored bank robbers, Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Mătăsăreanu, and members of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in the North Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California, United States on February 28, 1997. Both robbers were killed, twelve police officers and eight civilians were injured, and numerous vehicles and other property were damaged or destroyed by the nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition fired by the robbers and police.At 9:16 a.m., Phillips and Mătăsăreanu entered and robbed Bank of America's North Hollywood branch. The two robbers were confronted by LAPD officers when they exited the bank and a shootout between the officers and robbers ensued. The robbers attempted to flee the scene, Phillips on foot and Mătăsăreanu in their getaway vehicle, while continuing to exchange fire with the officers. The shootout continued onto a residential street adjacent to the bank until Phillips, mortally wounded, succumbed to a self-inflicted gunshot wound; Mătăsăreanu was incapacitated by officers three blocks away and subsequently bled to death before the arrival of paramedics more than an hour later. Phillips and Mătăsăreanu are believed to have robbed at least two other banks using similar methods for entry past "bullet-proof" security doors, taking control of the entire bank, and firing weapons illegally modified to enable fully-automatic fire. They were also suspects in two armored car robberies.Standard issue sidearms carried by most local patrol officers at the time were 9mm pistols or .38 Special revolvers; some patrol cars were also equipped with a 12-gauge shotgun. Phillips and Mătăsăreanu carried Norinco Type 56 rifles (a Chinese AK-47 variant), a Bushmaster XM-15 Dissipator with a 100-round drum magazine, and a Heckler & Koch HK91 rifle, all of which had been illegally modified to be select-fire capable, as well as a Beretta 92FS pistol. The robbers wore homemade body armor which successfully protected them from handgun rounds and shotgun pellets fired by the responding officers. A law enforcement SWAT team eventually arrived with higher-caliber weapons, but they had little effect on the heavy body armor used by the two perpetrators. The SWAT team also commandeered an armored car to evacuate the wounded. Several officers additionally equipped themselves with AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles from a nearby firearms dealer. The incident sparked debate on the need for patrol officers to upgrade their firepower in preparation for similar situations in the future.Due to the large number of injuries and rounds fired, equipment used by the robbers, and overall length of the shootout, it is regarded as one of the most intense and significant gun battles in U.S. police history. Combined, the two men had fired approximately 1,100 rounds in total, while approximately 650 rounds were fired by police. Another estimate is that a total of nearly 2,000 rounds were fired collectively.

Laurel Canyon/Valley Village station is a station on the G Line of the Los Angeles Metro Busway system. It is named after adjacent Laurel Canyon Boulevard, and the Valley Village district of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley.

The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, Inc., or LASFS, is a science fiction and fantasy fan society that meets in the Los Angeles area. The current meeting place can be found on the LASFS website. LASFS is the oldest continuously operating science fiction club in the world, helped considerably in that record by being one of the few to have owned a clubhouse. The organization continues to hold regular weekly meetings on Thursdays. The club maintains a private lending library of books, videos, and other genre-related materials, for use by members. Members of the club have run the World Science Fiction Convention several times, initiated the regional science-fiction convention Westercon, and hosts a yearly science fiction convention called Loscon. It maintains a web site and discussion forum, publishes (at irregular intervals) an amateur magazine called Shangri L'Affaires, and hosts the collations of a weekly amateur press association, APA-L. The LASFS monthly newsletter, De Profundis, is named for the club motto, De Profundis ad Astra ("From the Depths to the Stars") and is available (in PDF format) for reading at the LASFS website, or can be obtained by writing its editor/publisher, Marty Cantor.

Laurel Canyon Boulevard is a major street in the city of Los Angeles. It starts off at Polk Street in Sylmar in the northern San Fernando Valley near the junction of the San Diego (Interstate 405) and the Golden State (I-5)) freeways. Laurel Canyon Boulevard bypasses the city of San Fernando to the west, running parallel to I-5 in the vicinity of Pacoima and Arleta. The portion through Sun Valley passes through rock quarries and a great deal of open space. From the intersection with Webb Avenue, Laurel Canyon Boulevard heads due south, cutting through North Hollywood, closely following the Hollywood Freeway (SR 170). Laurel Canyon Boulevard passes through the Valley Village neighborhood, one mile (1.6 km) west of the Hollywood Split (the intersection of the Hollywood (U.S. 101/SR 170) and Ventura (U.S. 101/SR 134) freeways). This would have been the start of the proposed Laurel Canyon Freeway, which would have provided a direct freeway connection from the southeastern San Fernando Valley to the Los Angeles International Airport. The proposed route was along the current routing of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, but the emergence of the Laurel Canyon neighborhood as a movie star enclave doomed the project, as did local opposition. Laurel Canyon itself found counterculture fame in the 1960s as home to many of L.A.'s top rock musicians, such as Frank Zappa. The bohemian spirit endures; every year, residents gather for a group photograph at the country market. Laurel Canyon Boulevard was also immortalized by The Doors in their 1968 song "Love Street." Laurel Canyon Boulevard crosses Laurel Canyon G Line station at its intersection with Chandler Boulevard in Valley Village. Laurel Canyon Boulevard is served by Metro Local lines 218 (south of Ventura Boulevard) and 230 (north of Ventura Boulevard). South of Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, Laurel Canyon Boulevard ascends the Santa Monica Mountains, where it maintains a width of four lanes until the intersection of Mulholland Drive. The road climbs up Lookout Mountain before descending into West Hollywood, passing through Hollywood Boulevard. Laurel Canyon Boulevard’s southern terminus is at its intersection with Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights Boulevard. Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon Avenue to the west between the southern San Fernando Valley and West Hollywood are also popular alternate routes to the Hollywood Freeway (US 101) during rush hour.

North Hollywood High School (NHHS) is a public high school in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California United States. It is located in the San Fernando Valley and enrolls approximately 2,500 students. Several neighborhoods, including most of North Hollywood, Valley Village, Studio City and Sun Valley, send students to this school. NHHS is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The school principal is Ricardo Rosales.

Valley Village is a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, located within the San Fernando Valley.

Valley Glen is a neighborhood in southeastern section of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, California. Once part of Van Nuys and North Hollywood, it became a separate neighborhood in 1998. Valley Glen is home to Los Angeles Valley College and the Great Wall of Los Angeles, a half-mile-long California-history mural listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Valley Torah High School is an Orthodox Jewish high school located in Valley Village, California. The school has two separate divisions (in different buildings and locations): a Boys Division, and a Girls Division. The current Rosh Yeshiva is Rabbi Avraham Stulberger. Valley Torah is hashkafically aligned with the Chofetz Chaim school of thought, which is a subset of Litvishe Haredi Judaism rooted in the Musar movement of 19th-century Lithuanian Jewry.

Dutton's Books was an independent bookstore located in Valley Village, Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. It was known for its friendly and knowledgeable staff, sizeable and affordable used book collection, rare books, and its owners Dave and Judy Dutton. There were two Dutton's locations in the San Fernando Valley, the other located in Burbank, California, but the Valley Village location was the larger of the two. Opened in 1960, on the corner of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Magnolia Boulevard in a former liquor store, by Dave Dutton's parents, the store was eventually taken over by Dave and his wife Judy in the mid-1970s. It served as one of the San Fernando Valley's best independent bookstores. They offered services such as book buyback, book signings, and in-store reading events with community authors. Owners Dave and Judy were extremely knowledgeable and were happy to speak with customers regarding literature, Southern California history or any other topic. The store also provided many books for various movie and television sets. Steady customers, friendly staff, and welcoming owners made the store an ideal place to while away a Sunday afternoon. As with most independent bookstores, the impact of discount stores such as Walmart and Costco as well as competition from Amazon led to the closing of Dutton's in 2006. The Burbank location closed a year earlier. While there are still some independent bookstores located in the San Fernando Valley, the loss of Dutton's was a difficult blow to owners, customers, and employees alike.

North Hollywood a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California in the San Fernando Valley with residential blocks and the NoHo Arts District. Arts in NoHo include the El Portal Theatre as well as many new playhouses, art galleries, sound studios, and the Academy of TV Arts and Sciences. North Hollywood is one of the few subway-accessible neighborhoods in Los Angeles. North Hollywood was established by the Lankershim Ranch Land and Water Company in 1887. It was first named Toluca before being renamed Lankershim in 1896 and finally North Hollywood in 1927.

The NoHo Arts District is a community in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, that is home to contemporary theaters, art galleries, cafes, and shops. The community is generally bounded by Hatteras Street to the north, Cahuenga Blvd to the east, Tujunga Ave to the west, and Camarillo Street to the south. The area features more than twenty professional theaters, producing new work and classics, diverse art galleries, public art, and professional dance studios. The district also features the largest concentration of music recording venues west of the Mississippi. A Metro Rail station is located here, the North Hollywood station of the B Line, and serves as the terminus of the Metro G Line busway. Business and theater owners in the Universal City/North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce established a theater and arts district in 1992 with support from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. They chose "NoHo", a play off the well-known SoHo Arts District neighborhood of New York City. The NoHo Arts District, in conjunction with greater North Hollywood, is being transformed into a regional center, in large part as a result of the construction of Metro Stations for the B Line and the G Line, two lines that have made the neighborhood into a regional hub for the San Fernando Valley. Medium- and high-density developments are being built around the Metro Station, making the Arts District a center of citywide development, with the intent of creating a walkable urban village. North Hollywood's landscape (and the Art's District as a result) has been transformed in recent years, with condominium towers (including a fifteen-story building on Lankershim Boulevard being built in the midst of older one-story bungalows and small apartment complexes. The theater district includes two new large venues that expand upon existing theaters, the redesigned NoHo Arts Center (formerly the American Renegade Theatre) and the redesigned Historical El Portal. They add to the existing 31 theaters located in and around the NoHo Arts District. NoHo Commons, developed by J.H. Snyder Company, is located near the NoHo Arts District's commercial core and subway station. The $100-million, 292-unit loft apartment project by Snyder was the first segment to be completed of NoHo Commons, part of a "transit village" taking form at the terminus of the Metro B Line subway and the G Line busway. The NoHo Commons construction and development consisted of three phases, completing with the construction of a Laemmle Theatre. Phase III also consisted of the construction of an eight-story office on the corner of Lankershim and Weddington in 2009. The building's primary tenant is currently the Art Institute of California-Hollywood. NoHo 14, a 180-unit, fourteen-story apartment building, was built in 2004 as one of the first large-scale developments in the neighborhood. The historic North Hollywood train depot at Lankershim and Chandler Boulevards was restored in 2014 for $3.6 million. It is a Southern Pacific Railroad standard design, a One Story Combination Depot No. 15 or 21. The train depot, dating to 1896, sits on land owned by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, across from the Metro Red Line subway station and next to the terminus of the Orange Line bus line. Currently the NoHo Arts District, in conjunction with the Community Redevelopment Agency-Los Angeles, is working on beautification efforts to make the area more appealing to businesses. The current focus is primarily on revamping store fronts on Lankershim Blvd and Magnolia Blvd with Burbank Blvd to follow. In the future, North Hollywood plans a $1 billion mixed-use development at Lankershim and Chandler, surrounding the Metro Red and Orange line terminals. The project would re-develop 15.6 acres (63,000 m2) with 600,000 square feet (56,000 m2) of commercial space and nearly 1500 residential units in three high-rise towers. The project was awarded to Trammell Crow Company and High Street Residential by the Los Angeles Metro board.