GIGA GRANADA HILLS

Granada Preschool occupies a lovely, green, pastoral setting on Haskell Avenue just south of Chatsworth Street. The spacious grounds offer plenty of room for children to romp in the grass, sandboxes, and play yards, and the school is also home to several animals. Inside one classroom is a tank holding a bearded dragon, who patiently waits on his hot rock for the next delivery of crickets. Just outside another classroom stroll two laying hens, whose eggs provide a monthly fresh omelet breakfast for the teachers and their young students. Plenty of wild squirrels also frequent the grounds; they recently dined on pumpkins left over from the school's Halloween celebration. A giant tortoise munches the green grass in the shady central courtyard, and near the drinking fountain are Snickers and Oreo, two soft, fluffy rabbits, and their next door neighbors, a pair of snow-white geese. And then there's Doc. Doc is a turkey. For those unaccustomed to encountering turkeys not yet in s...

How is it possible that I never before noticed the phenomenon of the Cream Puff Turkey? Looking something like a cream puff swan put through a mutagenic process of unchecked cell division, there's not one, but two shops in Granada Hills that are proudly displaying these creatures: Ara's Pastry in the Old Town section of Chatsworth Street, and Vrej Pastry in the Trader Joe's center. I learned from speaking to the lovely lady manning the counter at Vrej that in parts of town with large Armenian populations, like Burbank and Glendale, the Cream Puff Turkey is a standard offering at Armenian/European bakeries -- a time-honored Armenian-American tradition, it seems. The bakeries even compete with one another for supremacy in the field of Cream Puff Turkey artistry. It's something like a war over there -- and in a Cream Puff Turkey war, everybody wins. The competition is so stiff that at first, Vrej didn't want to let me photograph their turkey -- I think they may have...

A few short months ago, I reported that Granada Hills had more medical marijuana dispensaries than it did Starbucks. That is true no longer. The landscape has quickly changed over the course of the past five months, and now there's only one place left in town to legally buy pot. One might think that any business owner would be pleased to have all of his competition eliminated. But Junior Martinez, the owner of California Herbal Providers, or CHP, located on Chatsworth near Encino Avenue, is actually feeling a lot of pressure, because he knows that as the last man standing, he's under intense scrutiny. "We're the only people they're watching -- and they're watching us like a hawk," he says. In the recent sweep that shut down every Granada Hills dispensary but one, how did CHP wind up as the sole survivor? "Because we play by the rules," Junior says plainly. "I'm not just some neighborhood drug dealer. We have all of our permits, we ...

View Larger Map If you have a child under the age of ten who was immunized at the H1N1 clinic we had in Granada Hills last month, it's time to have them immunized again; the CDC recommends that children under the age of ten receive two doses of vaccine, four weeks apart. No word yet on a second vaccine clinic in Granada Hills, but in nearby Pacoima, there will be a clinic today, held at the Ritchie Valens Recreation Center,10736 Laurel Canyon Blvd. Avoid long lines by delaying your visit until late afternoon; the clinic is open until 5:00 p.m. CDC H1N1 Information Page

Thursday night, Reseda Boulevard was completely shut down near Lassen -- it tangled up traffic for miles and made it tough to get in and out of Granada Hills. Rumors swirled about a car bomb, a bomb threat at CSUN, a bomb threat at the Fire Station. But the Daily Sundial reported the reason why: "a man drove up to the fire station, had a car full of explosives and wanted to get rid of them." Wow. Why let the bomb squad have all of the fun? If that guy had a car full of explosives, all he'd have to do is add a sleeping bag and a case of beer and head straight out of town on Highway 14, and he'd have all the makings of an excellent weekend in the desert.

Granada Hills resident Eileen Smulson never owned a dog -- or even thought of owning one -- until after she was in her fifties and her husband persuaded her to adopt a dog from the Petco in Porter Ranch. The dog, whom the couple named Ginger, quickly moved from a cold cage in a shelter to the couple's bedroom floor, and then to their bed. During a future visit to the West Valley Animal Shelter with a friend, Eileen noticed a sign that said the shelter needed donations of blankets and towels for the animals -- they had no budget to provide these items. Eileen, who had extensive experience working with charities, decided to try to collect fifty or a hundred blankets for the shelter. Within a month, that turned into 400 blankets, and in another two weeks the number doubled again as Eileen began placing drop-off boxes in local pet stores. The Daily News wrote a story on her project, called " Operation Blankets Of Love ," and the operation has snowballed into a full time job...

An oasis of cute in an otherwise homely shopping center, Good Pho You is like so many experiences one has in Granada Hills: a pleasant surprise hidden beneath an unglamourous exterior. But that's always been the name of the game in GH: scratching the surface. Located near the busy intersection of Balboa and Chatsworth, this Vietnamese noodle shop's sign doesn't face Balboa Boulevard; it faces the Casitas Care Center, so it's easy to miss from a speeding car unless you're speeding to visit your hundred- year-old grandma. But the positive Yelp reviews didn't steer me wrong; this place delivers the goods. Hooray for pho! I had the #4: the pho for "Meatball Lovers," because its name described me. I love meatballs of all stripes, but I especially adore the sproing-y textured Vietnamese style that give your teeth a jolly, bouncy feeling as you eat them. They fight back as you chew, but it's more of a giggly pillow fight than a slugfest. Toss so...