GIGA GRANADA HILLS

Every weekday from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m., Lead Pastor Darrell Maston and his crew give out free coffee and hot chocolate from the parking lot of Center Church, at the corner of San Jose and Louise, directly across the street from Patrick Henry Middle School. So what kind of hoop are they gonna try to make you jump through? After all, we're not talking drip here, we're talking cappuccinos and espressos . I wanted to get to the bottom of this, so I headed to the portable coffee cart and peppered the boss man with questions. What are you doing here, and why? We are handing out free espresso drinks and hot chocolate, and on Thursdays we do Krispy Kremes, and it's all free. We roll out here about 6:30, get it set up by 7:00. We're doing it just 'cause we want to be a blessing to our community, and let them know we're here. People wonder why we're doing it, and it's pretty much as easy as that, just to be a blessing. Today we did 120 drinks in about 45 ...

This tray was full until I got there. Granada Hills has a newly-opened pastry shop, and if you love baklava, get there ASAP. Royal Pastry, on Zelzah just south of Chatsworth, specializes in Turkish and Armenian pastries, and they make their baklava and boreg(both the cheese and spinach varieties) with a special variety of dough imported from Turkey. Everything else is baked fresh on the premises. "It's the butter," says Ani, the shop's head baker, when asked about what gave Royal Pastry's baklava an almost cheeselike richness and meltingly moist texture, without the tooth-punishing syrupy sweetness the dessert can sometimes possess. Both the cheese and spinach boreg had the same uncommon moistness as the shop's baklava, with tender centers almost reminiscent of freshly made noodles, but with flaky (not soggy!) pastry on top and underneath. The shop has all of the tarts, cakes, and cookies one would expect, and a few unexpected items, like imported Turkish cand...

Yep, they're in GH AGAIN tonight, 10:30-1:00. Don't bother getting in line until at least 11:30. I might hit them on the way home from the Pixies show -- see you there!

Old Granada Hills Residents' Group will be welcoming L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich to speak at Granada Hills High School this Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. Hopefully, the discussion will be more productive than the one in this video , that leaves little question as to why Trutanich has often been referred to as a "bully": Woman: "Hi. I'm a medical marijuana patient in Los Angeles, and..." Trutanich: "How do you like smoking pesticides?" Woman: "Well, I don't. I believe that in order to say that this is a public health issue you have to have at least one emergency room in the city saying that..." Trutanich: "So let me see if I get this right: let your children play with lead toys." Woman: "What are the FDA guidelines, sir? The FDA Guidelines that you reference, it is my understanding, that with organic material, ten pounds is required..." Trutanich: "Wrong! You're wrong!" Mom...

If you're like me, the phrase "campaign donors" evokes images of a distant race of beings living in an alternate universe of $1,000-per-plate dinners, formalwear, and filthy backdoor influence. Obama's highly Internet-connected campaign dented that image to a certain degree; he was fond of making reference to a kindly little old lady who sent him three dollars. Granada Hills resident Tom Crowl wants to take the power of small donations even further: down to the 25-cent level. The theory is that when every citizen's resources are pooled, every citizen can have an impact -- no matter what their income level. Tom writes: "The Chagora financial function is designed as one tool, I believe an essential one for addressing a problem in influence capability. It's a way to make giving them a piece of your mind an every day experience. Frequency of participation is essential to being part of a community! But, more importantly, it's a part of a broader fra...

Mike Spasoff is a tireless servant to this community -- at least for a few months out of the year -- and that's good enough for me. It's also more than good enough for the 600 trick-or-treaters he delights and terrifies with the elaborate, Disney-rivaling, pirate-themed yard display at his house on San Fernando Mission Boulevard (near Shoshone). When I was a kid, I used to always wish someone in the neighborhood would do something beyond carving a pumpkin. Fortunately, kids in Mike's neighborhood will never have to cope with that same unfulfilled sense of longing that I always had. What makes you want to invest the time, money, and resources into such an elaborate production? I can remember the magic of walking the streets of our neighborhood each Halloween and the excitement of finding a house that did something more than just a jack-o-lantern or a cardboard skeleton. My parents and I always made a special effort to do something extra but it wasn't until we moved to...