Thursday, October 29, 2015

What's Doing In Canoga Park — Halloween!


Here's what's doin' on and around Halloween — this year scheduled for October 31st — in Canoga Park.
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Trunk or Treat
Many local churches will be hosting "Trunk or Treat" events for the little ones — parking lots full of cars with adults handing out treats to good little ghosts and goblins from the backs of their spookily-decorated vehicles. Additionally, some event sites will also feature vendors selling pre-heated, foil-wrapped, ready-to-eat 'street' food — prepared off-site with varying degrees of safe food-handling procedures — out of coolers from their trunks, while other locations will have trunk-salespeople offering a selection of electronics that have "fallen off a truck." At a few select venues, parents will enjoy perusing a wide variety of books, CDs, DVDs, and other items available for purchase and still sealed in their Amazon Prime boxes featuring West Hills addresses. Saturday afternoon to evening, various times & locations. Check your local place of worship for details.
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West Valley Spooky Historical Lecture
Renowned local CanogaParkologist, Bob Farrell of the Owensmouth/Canoga Historical League, will deliver a lecture titled "Canoga Park Legend & Lore," a Halloween-themed talk about the area's oft-spooky history, myths and urban legends — including the tale of the infamous Women's Club Lodgepole Pine, the tree rumored to have originally grown as straight as an arrow for decades but eventually taking on an increasingly gnarled, twisted and grotesque shape with each transgression the Canoga Park First Wednesday of the Month Women's Club commits upon the once peaceful surrounding neighborhood. Saturday evening, 8 p.m., Museum of the West Valley, 21606 Nordhoff Street, Canoga Park
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Pit Bull Apologist Group Hosts Halloween "Pittie" Party
PARGA, Pitbulls Are Really Gentle Animals, is hosting a Halloween "Pittie" Party, and invites local pit bull owners to dress up their "pitties" in fun costumes and bring them along. Club president Dawn Haberlind is hosting the event at her home, and requests a nominal $5 donation to help defray the cost of refreshments, with any funds left over going towards paying a personal injury settlement from a lawsuit won by "the greedy parents of some little girl selling cookies or something who startled my sweet wittle pittie Marauder by thoughtlessly ringing the doorbell." PARGA, Haberlind Residence, 8534 Eton Avenue, Saturday 5 pm - 10 pm.
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Historical Walking Tour & Live Reading
Dressed in wonderfully mismatched, anachronistic, and historically inaccurate finery, Canoga Park resident Brian Rauschebart hosts his second annual Halloween walking tour, where, inhabiting the role of the title character, he retraces Ichabod Crane-Fly's escape from the terrifying Unhitched Trailer, as described in Winnetka Irving's chilling tale "The Legend of Sleepy Topanga." Starts from Topanga Canyon Blvd at Nordhoff, 7 pm, Saturday evening.
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LAPD Topanga Division Announces Local Halloween Contest 
The Los Angeles Police Department's Topanga Division has announced the "Use Your Head And For God's Sake Don't Do Anything Stupid Just Because Halloween Falls On A Saturday Night This Year" contest, according to the LAPD West Valley Public Relations Support Officer In Charge of Press Releases, Reed N. Malloy. "We've already got our hands full on most Saturday nights around here, so for God's sake, with all the kids out on Halloween and everything else, just do everyone a favor and don't do anything stupid," says Malloy. The station is prepared to award hundreds of prizes, which include the acts of not being cited with a traffic violation, not going to jail, not being rushed to the emergency room, and even not ending up in the morgue — all simply by using basic intelligence, avoiding aggressive, drunken asshole behavior, and perhaps most difficult to many Los Angeles residents, showing common courtesy to others — even those you may not know. "We consider everyone who doesn't do anything stupid on Halloween a real Grand Prize winner," he adds. Topanga Division Halloween Contest, now through approximately 5 am Sunday November 1st, Canoga Park and surrounding area. All prizes are intangible concepts and non-transferable.
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Canoga Park Elementary To Hold Costume Dance Party
"Monster Mash" and "Love Potion Number 9," two perennial favorites of students, teachers and residents living within a quarter-mile of Canoga Park Elementary will not be heard broadcast over Ol' Blarey, the school's famous window-rattling, 128 dB public announcement system retrofitted from a World War II surplus air raid siren during Friday afternoon's after-school Halloween costume & dance party. "This year we were delighted to get DJ Noyze Ordnintz whose — let me get this right — baby mama's first baby daddy's third baby mama has a student here. I think that's correct. Anyway, he's doing the music and he's got a completely different playlist than our usual one," says Judy Maxwell, a teacher's aide with the school. "Rae Sremmurd, Li'l Wayne, Rick Ross, like that. It should be fun." Adds Principal Frank Guinto, on the way to his car, "After school hours, folks. After school hours. I have nothing whatsoever to do with any of this." Canoga Park Elementary Courtyard, Vassar between Cohasset and Valerio, Friday, 3-5 pm.
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Día De Los Muertos Festival Joins Forces With CicLAvia
Canoga Park's 15th Annual Día de Los Muertos Festival, or street fair, joins forces with popular bicycle event "CicLAvia" on Sunday November 1st. "It was a no-brainer," reports Murla Havemyer, head of Event Organizement with the Canoga Park Friendly Neighborhood Council. "They like having the streets closed for those bicycle things, and it turns out we're closing Sherman Way from Topanga Canyon Boulevard to Canoga for Día de Los Muertos anyway, you know, to make room for all the booths, artists, dancers, vendors, pedestrians and wall-to-wall classic cars, so it just makes sense to combine the two." Sunday November 1, 10 am to 5 pm, Sherman Way.
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If you have a Halloween event for the Canoga Park area you'd like to have included here, well, you're a little bit late, aren't you? Tell you what — we'll post it during the Thanksgiving rundown of community events instead and maybe next year you'll remember to get these things in on time, hmm?

Friday, October 23, 2015

News In Brief — October 23, 2015

A local round-up of news, condensed for quick digestion,
not unlike an off-brand soup from Dollar Tree.

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Correction:
In “Village at Topanga Grand Opening Brings Out Canoga Park Residents in Droves,” (September 16), we mentioned that “Pitbull was in attendance.”  The sentence should have read “A pitbull was in attendance.” We regret the error.

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Salvation Army Offers Hallowe’en Decor & More
Ghosts and goblins are haunting the aisles of the Canoga Park location of Salvation Army as the thrift store offers up Hallowe’en items for sale for the upcoming holiday (this year falling on the last day of the month). “We do have a number of costumes an’ punkins an’ decorations for your trick-or-treat,” notes Salvation Army donation intake coordinator Trenice Campbell. “There was even a little fairy-princess outfit on this rack I saw this morning, if your girl want to maybe go out as a fairy-princess for her trick-or-treat. ...Nope, it’s gone, I guess someone bought it! Ha! You gotta be fast around here! Ha! Well, we got other costumes an’ whatnot.” Salvation Army Family Store, 21381 Roscoe Blvd. Open Monday—Saturday.

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Controversial Fracking Comes to Canoga Park; Residents Delighted
A gas station on Saticoy Avenue, Peppy Gas, Cigarettes & Beef Jerky, has begun localized “fracking” —drilling, injecting water at enormous pressures, fracturing shale, processing the rocks to release the natural gas inside and refining it into high grade gasoline — entirely on-site. Residents report seeing lower gas prices already.

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Goodwill Offers Decor & More for Hallowe’en
Witches and warlocks are creeping the aisles of the Canoga Park location of Goodwill as the thrift store has opened what it calls its “Boo-tique,” (a funny take on the word “boutique”) and stocked it with Hallowe’en items galore, from bats to rats (thankfully not real), and everything in between. “There was totally like a full-on gorilla costume here last week that was f_cking insane!” notes Goodwill shopper Brian Rauschebart. “I was going to get it but I made myself promise this year to focus on vintage Beistle...? Yeeeah. That and the Todd Masters 'Oh Lantern' family of foam pumpkins from the 1980s but they are like suuuper-hard to find.” Goodwill Industries, 7107 Owensmouth Avenue. Open 7 days a week.

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Plumbing City Reaches Bittersweet Milestone With ‘Happy Holiday’ Sign
Local business leader Plumbing City on Canoga Avenue have officially passed the point where taking down their sign wishing customers and passersby alike a “Happy Holiday” before having to put it back up again makes any sense from a practical standpoint. “Technically, they probably blew past the point of no return with that in June,” notes Canoga Park Chamber of Commerce spokesperson Bernice Solverson. “But the missing H from ‘have’ gives it a nice sort of Dickensian touch, so we didn’t cite them.”

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Correction: 
In “Correction to ‘Village at Topanga Grand Opening Brings Out Canoga Park Residents in Droves,’” (October 23), we mentioned that “A pitbull was in attendance.”  The sentence should have read “Many pitbulls were in attendance.” We regret the error.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Local Nightclub's Autumn Season Debuts With 'F.U.C.K. the Neighborhood' Event

By Ingomar Schoenborn, Quilt staff



DATELINE: JORDAN AVENUE

The Canoga Park First Wednesday of the Month Women's Club is throwing open its doors tonight to host its first "Fellowship Unifies Community and Kompliments the Neighborhood" event of the fall season.
A flyer for Saturday's event.   Image: FreeNightclub-
FlyerTemplate.com (complimentary virus w/download)

While attendance inside the clubhouse is limited to those specifically invited, enormously high-powered speakers designed for a much larger venue will be pumping out the Club's signature event music (traditionally featuring thumping, window-rattling bass) across the neighborhood into the homes of everyone in a two-block radius. Those hoping to hear the festivities need not be in attendance nor, in fact, anywhere near the nightclub to experience them.

When reached for comment, club President in Charge of Neighborhood Cacophony Doreen Farber noted "Dennis Zine gave us an award once" before hanging up.

Once the event itself is over, those nearby will enjoy the Official "F.U.C.K. the Neighborhood" after-party, or "cleanup," which usually runs from midnight to about three a.m. in the club's parking lot and frequently involves a remarkably high number of garbage bags full of clanking beer bottles being dragged to and fro, then fro and to, and then to and fro again, elementary school aged-children running and screaming in the parking lot, a heated argument involving someone calling someone else a "ho" and either or both parties being "disrespected," and at least one vehicle idling for an extended period while its stereo plays music similar to and at levels near or exceeding that which was enjoyed at the party.

The popular hotspot will be hosting a series of similar events until the holiday / winter season begins in December, which is scheduled to feature more of the same but with occasional jingle bells accompanying the nightclub's familiar concrete-foundation-crumbling beat.