​The Friends For Fullerton's Future blog is asking people to show up to tomorrow's city council meeting with a copy of the OCWeekly in hand. Since there is a three-minute limit per person during the public comment section, each person will pick up reading where the last person left off, the blog suggests. More >>

​Ricardo Dagoberto Diaz-Nivarez's mother was sentenced in the spring to 25 years to life in state prison for plotting with her son the 2005 robbery and murder of Mario Hernandez, a 78-year-old Santa Ana jewelry salesman whose body was never found.

Today, a jury deadlocked 10-2 in favor of convicting the 26-year-old Garden Grove resident, prompting Judge Richard F. Toohey in Santa Ana to declare a mistrial. The judge also scheduled a Nov. 4 hearing to set a new trial date.

More >>

More >>

​Go behind the scenes of our Summer Guide 2011 (click here to read it in its entirety!) cover shoot with photographer Star Foreman.

After the jump: Models! Bikinis! Balboa!
More >>

​Orange County residents have bemoaned the encroachment of suburbia and loss of our orange groves for decades. In 1963's Historical Volume and Reference Works: Including Biographical Sketches of Leading Citizens, a three-volume compendium of Orange County history, author Mildred Yorba MacArthur--scion of two pioneering OC families--wrote an essay titled "The Vanishing Orange?" where she called the county "the land of disappearing citrus groves" and longed for the days "when an orange was something to be eaten, not poured from a can." At the time, though, there were still more than 28,000 acres of Valencias left. She held out hope that South County--still largely rural then--might "keep the citrus industry alive for many years."

Behind the jump: See where OC's last orange groves stand. 
More >>

​What says "Father's Day in Orange County" more than sons who've followed their dads' respective footsteps into the worlds of surfing, music and seafood? For our special Father's Day issue (click here to read it in its entirety), we talked to some of the most prominent families in Orange County. Happy Father's Day from (and to) the Fletchers (Herbie, sons Christian and Nathan, grandson Greyson), the Freeses (Stan, sons Josh and Jason) and the Lewises (Mark and son Sam).

After the jump: Check out our video interviews with each extraordinary family.
More >>

More >>

Chasen Marshall/OC Weekly

​At its monthly meeting last Thursday morning, the board of directors of the Orange County Fair & Event Center announced its pledge to work to prevent the sale of the Orange County Fairgrounds. That would be the same board which, a year and nine months prior, on July 21, 2009, secretly created a non-profit foundation in hopes of purchasing (and privatizing) the 150 acres of land.More >>

Photo: Tom Cozad

Clay Crandal: from cover boy to sponsored surfer.

More >>

​This week's cover story about Soka University in Aliso Viejo has generated a firestorm of reader comments. The piece discusses the university's first 10 years of existence, as well as the controversial history of the Japan-based, lay Buddhist organization that founded it, Soka Gakkai International (SGI).

Because the story deals with complaints by professors at the university that the spiritual teachings of SGI create a difficult working atmosphere for non-SGI members, we certainly expected a strong negative response from many students, faculty and staff. And we got that in the story's online comments, even though (or, perhaps, because) staff writer Michelle Woo's piece was well-written and well-reported.

What we hadn't expected was getting accused of being racists for the image we used on the cover--but we've gotten plenty of that, too.

More >>