Don’t forget, this Thursday is our first ever End of the Year Party, celebrating the year that was and looking forward to the year that will be. As we announced yesterday, due to a last-minute change, we’ll be holding the event at a new location, not the church where we held our re-launch party in 2010.

The party begins at 6:30 at Earl’s Gourmet Grub, 12226 Venice Boulevard between Grand View Boulevard and Ocean View Avenue (or between Inglewood and Centinella for those using larger streets.)

Suggested donation is $25, but everything is on a sliding scale. For more information, check out the “top ten reasons” to party with Streetsblog we published earlier or sign up for the event on Facebook.  You might have noticed that the Streetsblogs are holding an end of the year fundraising drive, if you use that link you can donate ahead of time, but make sure that you specify that you want your donation to go to Los Angeles.

While Streetsblog has prospered, the City of Los Angeles has begun to move towards livability itself.  In the past year, ground broke on Expo Phase II in Santa Monica, the Gold Line Foothill Extension continued into the suburbs, Los Angeles embraced a Bus Only Lanes proposal for Downtown to Beverly Hills and a portion of the Westside, and implementation of the surprisingly-progressive Bike Plan has begun.  We’ve been there to cover it all, and we’ll be there into next year as debate on the Crenshaw Line and Westside Subway stays hot, new Bus Only Lane plans move forward, the City continues to figure out how to do bike planning and other stories break around the city.

But for a couple hours this Thursday, let’s celebrate how far we’ve come, and how much farther we’re going to go.  Join L.A. Streetsblog, our Streetsie Award winners Colin Bogart, Sunyoung Yang, Rye Baerg, Dana Gabbard and Brigham Yen (what’s-his-name is going to be in Asia) and many of the people that make Livable Streets advocacy so successful and so fun.  We’ll have food, New Belgium Beer, wine, non-alcoholic drinks and the premier of our Spanish Language Streetfilms by Social | Impact Consulting, LLC.