It’s that time of year again! Time to enjoy the most ridiculously under-priced IHOP pancakes and sausage and Starbucks coffee, all the while helping your neighborhood’s leading community service organization provide essential services to the less fortunate among us.

For a small $5 donation, you can enjoy delicious, unlimited IHOP pancakes, equally delicious but not quite as unlimited IHOP sausage, Starbucks coffee, raffle prizes, the great camaraderie of the community, and an overall fun time.

Amazing food, great people, helping the community…all for $5?!?!?! Seriously?!?!? I know, I know, $5 is very inexpensive for all of that, but we just want everyone to have fun.

100% of proceeds foes to our charitable account to help us continue to provide dinner to the sick children of the Ronald McDonald House, blankets to the battered women of the Good Shepherd Shelter, and after school programs for John Marshall and Hollywood High, plus much more.

Candidates for the 2013 Los Angeles Mayoral election in attendance will be (in alphabetical order): Ted Crisell, Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greuel, Kevin James, Addie Miller, Jan Perry and David “Zuma Dogg” Saltsburg.

Spanish-language interpreters will be available at the event. You may also submit questions to the candidates online here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGM2ZV9RZE1tLWJ5UG9vdjJuUjVQTkE6MQ#gid=0

The East Hollywood Mayoral Candidate Forum is organized by Thai Community Development Center and co-sponsored by the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and the California Community Foundation.

On Sunday, April 15, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., ten miles of city streets will be open exclusively to human-powered transportation, from East Hollywood’s “Hel-Mel” corner on Heliotrope and Melrose to Downtown Los Angeles to Boyle Heights, South Los Angeles and Olvera Street.

This year, the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council – the very first neighborhood council to endorse CicLAvia (as mentioned in the recent LA Weekly cover article) – will be celebrating five years of being a certified L.A. neighborhood council with a “High Five” Anniversary Pavilion on Heliotrope Drive and Clinton Street, with a display of EHNC’s activities and achievements through the years. There will also be free giveaways of EHNC stickers and bicycle spoke cards. And don’t forget to exchange “high-fives” with EHNC members as you pass by!

For more information on CicLAvia, visit www.ciclavia.org

The new farmer’s market will be located right at the Hollywood/Western Metro station plaza and run from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m. every Thursday.

Operated as a project of the Thai Community Development Center, the market is made possibly by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, support from Metro, McCormack Baron Salazar  and the East Hollywood and Hollywood Studio District neighborhood councils.

The market was created to provide more fresh food access in the neighborhood, and the vendors accept California state Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card payments.

The East Hollywood Certified Farmer’s Market will be the second certified farmer’s market serving our neighborhood. The first, the Los Angeles Medical Center Farmer’s Market, a project of Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, has been operating at Barnsdall Art Park every Wednesday from 12-6 p.m. since June 2009.

A parade, cultural dances, music entertainment, a fashion show, a beer garden, a Muay Thai (Kickboxing) ring, a children’s art pavilion, cultural displays, vendors and, of course, Thai food make the Songkran Festival not only one of East Hollywood’s biggest street festivals, but one of the largest in all of Los Angeles.

Don’t forget to stop by the EHNC’s outreach booth and also the Children’s Arts Pavilion at the festival, proudly sponsored by the EHNC!

For more information, visit www.thainewyear.com or check out the festival’s Facebook page.

Volunteers will meet at 5125 Harold Way (at Normandie) at 10 a.m. that day and beautify the Thai Town area.

For more information, contact TJ Suwanswetr at 323.468.2555 or Jennifer Tell at 323.481.0123.

Featured speakers at the meeting will bee LAPD Hollywood Division Captain Beatrice Girmala, Deputy City Attorney Tamar Galatzan and representatives from Councilmember Eric Garcetti’s CD13 office.

Attendees will also get a chance to meet the Neighborhood Watch Leaders from Hollywood Area. Updates on crime statistics, 2012 goals and Quality of Life reports will be given.  Community Policing, Neighborhood Watches, Auto crime and Crime Prevention will be discussed. Assistant Block Captains or persons interested in becoming Block Captains are also invited to attend this meeting.

For more information, call the LAPD Hollywood Division at 213.972.2971.

The final draft of the Virgil Village Traffic Calming Plan was released last week. The plan seeks to make   pedestrian, bicycle and auto traffic safety improvements, as well as streetscape additions to the half-mile Virgil Avenue corridor between Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose Avenue.

Click here to download the Virgil Village Traffic Calming Plan (14MB .PDF file, 100 pages)

Over the course of 2011, Long Beach-baed design firm Studio One Eleven, in conjunction with landscape architect Patricia Smith and transportation consultants Fehr and Peers have been at work designing the project, relying heavily on community input through three on-site public workshops along  Virgil that gauged priorities and needs from the eventual users of the project themselves.

The plan is comprised of proposed plaza spaces at the northeast and southwest corners of Santa Monica Boulevard and Virgil Avenue, Bicycle lanes and bike boxes, enhanced crosswalks, curb extensions, stormwater filtration parkways, additional Street trees and new street furniture in the form of trash cans, benches and bike racks.

The project is coordinated by Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative (LANI), which initially implemented a streetscape to Virgil Village in the 1990s. The project plan was funded by Caltrans grants. Further funding will be needed to implement the project.

Seeking to both increase its capacity and lower costs, the Bicycle Kitchen is aiming to purchase the 1,809 square foot building before its current lease expires in May. The location was previously the home of Alice’s Sapin-Sapin, a Filipino bakery. The organization has already raised $145,000 from grants and various fundraising activities, but needs to raise an additional $50,000 to secure a manageable mortgage. They have recently launched an appeal for donations from supporters on their web site.

The proposed park (design here) and community garden (known as the East Hollywood Gardening Achievement Center) are anticipated to be completed within the next two years.