The small, circular island at the center of the iconic traffic circle at the heart of Old Towne Orange is one of the town’s most prominent celebrities (step aside, Amber Lynn). The Plaza or the Circle ...

Go ahead, call us a bunch of culture-less, lily-white suburbanites with a partiality to flip-flops and right-wing politics. Those kind of labels never cease to amuse us. Because one thing that ...

To properly orient infamous talk-show host Wally George within the history of Orange County, it's best to paraphrase the introduction of a fellow pop-culture icon with a cult following. So, with ...

Standing on what was a quiet orange grove more than half a century ago is a small faux grass hut. A diverse crowd gathers outside: tourists wearing mouse ears, children savoring the sweet tang of a ...

Rodney Alcala is a man stuck in a time warp, his flowing silver hair, granny glasses, beige blazer and jeans reminiscent of a creative-writing professor circa 1980, the year he began life behind bars.

Jeff Hakman and Bob McKnight were worried—they couldn’t get the trunks quite right. For weeks during the latter half of 1976, the twentysomethings had fumbled with sewing machines in a Spartan shed ...

Christopher John Aragon, who pleaded guilty in March to leading a crime ring that stole thousands of personal identities for counterfeit credit cards used to buy high-end goods that were re-sold ...

As he walked briskly along a downtown Santa Ana sidewalk for our first meeting on a toasty, cloudless February 2014 afternoon, criminal defense attorney Scott Sanders’ brain generated waves of ...

It’s no secret that heavy metal music can be a bit morbid and macabre. Heavy metal artists have never been afraid to musically confront mortality, pain, suffering and other grim topics by creating ...

The two men in front of a booth at the Body Art Expo convention in Pomona resembled homeboys straight out of American Me: black tank tops, backward baseball caps, dark-gray shorts, each heavily ...

“Santa's real. . . . It's the stories that are fake.” —Uncle Bill, grandma's house, Christmas 1957 Ric Erwin, “Singin' Santa,” the most vibrant performing professional Santa Claus I've ever met, is ...

Just across the street from Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley, in the middle of the city's suburban placidity, exists what's probably the most anomalous collection of street names in Orange County.