Free Republic

LOS ANGELES — Downtown in the City of Angels is looking more and more like a ghost town. The famed Los Angeles neighborhood has become a shadow of its former glory — with rows of boarded up shops, chain stores leaving in droves and hoards of drug-using vagrants sparking major safety concerns for shoppers and business owners alike. The Post can reveal that there are more than 100 vacant storefronts in the area’s Historic Core, which was the rip-roaring heart of the downtown shopping and entertainment district. A map of business closures in the Historic Core of LA / Donald...

Six Target stores in San Francisco are adjusting their times, opening hours later and closing hours earlier to try to curtail soaring theft.They join Walgreens, which has closed 17 stores over five years in direct response to criminal activity. Last month, a video went viral of a hooded and masked man riding his bike into a San Francisco branch of the chain, loading a trash bag with merchandise, and riding back out — past a powerless security guard and two others filming on their phones.Early Monday evening, at least nine men and women smashed cases and stripped shelves in San...

Writing in The Daily Beast Friday, House Democrat Gwen Moore of Milwaukee assails Sheriff David Clarke and his “flagrant grandstanding” on Fox News, accusing the sheriff of purveying inflammatory and ugly rhetoric in the debate over the relationship between policing and African-American communities. “The country is just now getting to know Sheriff Clarke, but I’m all too familiar with his inflammatory antics,” Moore writes “His proclivity for provocation coupled with his distorted view of black America has grown more extreme over the years, earning him numerous appearances on Fox News. He has helped the network spread a slew of dangerous...

Detroit Gets The Destination Nod Over Chicago DETROIT (WWJ) – Detroit is better than Chicago!! That’s according to at least one travel writer, who has compiled a list of over-rated destinations and suggested alternatives. While Michiganders can give you a plethora of choices in the state that are select and unique it’s always nice to get a nob from outsiders. Among the reasons David Landsel tells travelers to try the Motor City over the Windy City? World-class architecture, a great music scene, and cheaper and better beer. • Typical Detroit neighborhood • Community activists in Chicago promote "peace"

An Extremely Creepy Tour of an Abandoned Soviet Monument in Bulgaria Remember those derelict Bulgarian war memorials that resemble space fortresses? Well, it turns out they're just as otherworldly inside. Here's one intrepid urban explorer's journey into the shadowy corridors of the shuttered Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship memorial in Varna, Bulgaria. It's also a case study on why you never tour old Soviet monuments alone. In its Communist heyday, the "Park-Monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship" contained an eternal flame, a bomb shelter, and a tourism center. Loudspeakers would also blast Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 on constant loop. The center opened in...

A holdout in a developer's bid to acquire property for a shopping center is having her day in court. A hearing on whether the city has the right to take the home of June Thompson by eminent domain was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon before St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Timothy Wilson.

State prison officials have sent a warning to a large number of New Jersey urban police forces, saying their officers could become targets of attacks by violent street gangs. Department of Corrections investigators say the Bloods street gang is taking an "aggressive posture toward law enforcement" and has called for an "uprising" in New Jersey's largest cities and in the jails, according to internal documents distributed by prison officials to authorities around the state. In response, the State Police will host a meeting Monday to discuss the threat with local police officials, including those from cities where the threat seems...

ASBURY PARK — The owner of the Stone Pony, who once said waterfront developers would get control of it only “over my dead body,” has agreed to sell to them, putting the famed shore nightclub’s future in jeopardy — again. Domenic Santana will sell the building and transfer its liquor license to Asbury Partners, a company overseeing a $1.2 billion makeover of the city’s decrepit waterfront. Under the sale agreement, Asbury Partners could demolish the building, build a new club elsewhere in the city and call it the Stone Pony, while Santana would be allowed to use the name to...