01/07/16 — Star Wars director J.J. Abrams confirmed rumors that he based the franchise’s latest character, Maz, on his Palisades Charter High School English teacher, the late Rose Gilbert. Pint-sized “Mama G,” who retired aged 94 in 2013, was known for her big glasses and even larger personality.
01/07/16 — Julian Wilshire, a fifth grader at Seven Arrows Elementary School, was named the best Minecraft video game player in the country. Super League Gaming, a Santa Monica company, organized the six-week contest across 40 movie theaters where contestants, aged between 7 and 15, demonstrated their “digital native” skills in outbuilding each other in the vast Minecraft universe.
01/21/16 — On Jan. 13, the Pacific Palisades Design Review Board approved Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village blueprints as the developer (and potential LA mayoral candidate, he revealed later in the year) listened in a relaxed fashion—he was, noted an analyst, unusually not wearing a tie.
01/21/16 — The local mountain lion known as P-19 gave birth to two kittens, a female registered as P-46 and a male sibling, P-47, in the western Santa Monica Mountains. The suspected dad, who was not around to raise the kittens, was probably P-12, P-19’s father. There are few mating choices as the National Park Service believes there are only around 15 mountain lions left in the local wild. In November, a rancher’s legally approved proposal to shoot a young male, P-45, who slaughtered 11 alpacas in Malibu, was abandoned after public protest.
02/04/16 — Comedian Kevin Nealon was named as the 29th Honorary Mayor of Pacific Palisades by the Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce. The “Saturday Night Live” and “Weeds” star promised to immediately start rehearsing his Fourth of July Parade wave. He succeeded Jake Steinfeld, of Body by Jake, who devised a Palisadian flag—white and blue—and campaigned for healthy, happy lifestyles. Nealon will hand over his waving stance to an as-yet unknown successor in January 2017.
03/03/16 — The city of Los Angeles auctioned off three out of 21 Via Bluffs homes it purchased to fund the long-awaited Potrero Canyon Park Fund, raising $6.5 million. After 30 years of engineering financial and political confusions, the park is due to open in the summer of 2019. Maybe.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.