This one's kind of odd considering I just posted the last one.
Hooray for West Hollywood
Skip the kitsch, head to star territory -- and hey, isn't that Kate Bosworth?
Shelley Fralic, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, September 30, 2006
LOS ANGELES - Forget Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and those cheesy concrete handprints.
Forget the double-decker bus tour of movie star homes.
Forget, too, the blocks-long Hollywood Walk of Fame, where Tom Cruise's bronze-plated star sits in the shadow of a Hooters and a Hamburger Hamlet.
Because if you really want to do Los Angeles these days, then you'll need to escape the shabby tourist trap that is Hollywood Boulevard and its tacky souvenir shops, and head west, where there's something of a Hollywood renaissance under way.
From the refurbished nightclubs along Sunset Strip to the hip, new shopping areas around Beverly Boulevard, West Hollywood is now the place to be, and be seen.
Celebrities and visitors alike are drifting toward the old haunts and hotels of yore, but also prompting an explosion of new development and hot spots to shop, sleep, dine, party and launch their new movies, television shows, CDs and books.
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The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, the beacon of Hollywood history, is today set against a booming backdrop of construction cranes and work sites, as loft conversions and revitalization projects score the skyline.
The vaunted hotel, just north of Sunset and across the street from the new Kodak Theater, is a majestic Spanish Revival built in the 1920s by a movie syndicate that included Douglas Fairbanks and Louis B. Mayer, to house East Coast stars shooting on location.
This is the place, with its cool dark interior and polished terra cotta tiles, where the first Academy Awards were held, where stars like Marilyn Monroe once lived, and where, more recently, movies like Beverly Hills Cop II and Charlie's Angels 2 were filmed.
Today, the hotel's famous pool, ringed by firepits, terry-covered lounges and private rooms, is home to a new generation of Hollywood royalty, the pretty young starlets and TV studs who recline poolside flanked by mojitos and hangers on.
On a mid-September weekend, the pool's Tropicana Bar is abuzz with preparation for the press junket of Jackass: Number Two.
Television crews, including host Daryn Jones of MTV Canada, jostle for position, awaiting the arrival of the movie's stars, Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O. Security is tight and even hotel guests require a wristband to enter the pool deck.
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There's no question that one comes to Hollywood, be it for business or pleasure, expecting to spot a celebrity.
The problem, of course, is that everyone is sun-tanned and skinny and looks famous and, holy cow, was that pin-thin Kate Bosworth who just walked by with an armful of shopping bags?
Probably, especially if your retail therapy finds you browsing Robertson Blvd., just before its zip code morphs into Beverly Hills.
The stores here are low-slung and modern, so hip they have names like Surly Girl, Yellowman and Camper.
It's here you'll find the Kitson empire, founded six years ago by Toronto-born Fraser Ross (Kitson's his middle name), a fashion franchise largely credited with revitalizing the once-dead retail zone.
Kitson's three stores (women, men, kids) are located within a stone's throw of each other, and are so in that rarely does a day go by without a visit from a member of the "it" crowd -- Tara Reid, Sierra, Brittany Murphy, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie are all customers -- whose shopping expeditions are religiously recorded by paparazzi and gleefully detailed in the tabs.
Jen Cooper, the 23-year-old manager of Kitson women, is explaining that theirs is one-stop fashion shopping, from clothing, makeup, shoes and accessories.
Prices range from about $50 for a basic T-shirt to $2,500 for a Mandalay dress.
It's here the infamous "team" tee was born, brain child of the owner and, along with the store's own Kitson line, the chain's biggest seller.
Team Jessica and Team Nick shirts, at $48 US each, are moving fast these days what with locals having to choose sides between just-divorced Newlyweds Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey.
Clearly, at $30, Team Aniston and Team Brangelina shirts are on the popularity wane, though Team Paris is holding strong at $48.
"We just can't keep those things stocked," says Cooper, who adds that Madonna was in not long ago to pick up Little Miss Kitson shoes for daughter Lourdes, while Hilton recently stopped by for a little spree.
"She's just so fun and so sweet," says Cooper.
The secret to Kitson's success?
"People like shopping where they feel like celebrities shop," says Cooper.
Well that. And the publicity.
Kitson is reportedly suing US Weekly magazine for intentionally omitting references to the store in its photographs of stars shopping there.
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Just down the street from the Kitson dynasty sits one of the hottest restaurants in southern California: The Ivy.
It's here, on the outdoor patio framed by a white picket fence and shaded by umbrellas, that celebs like Lindsay Lohan and Ben Affleck come to be fed, and publicly adored.
The weekday power lunch keeps the Ivy's valet parkers hopping, as a queue of Mercedes, Rolls-Royces, Escalades, BMWs and Corvettes unloads carload after carload of bony, blonde barely-clad young women, a parade of possibilities for America's Next Top Model.
The Ivy itself a lovely place, all roses and chintz, with deferential waiters in pink Polo shirts and white Levi's jeans.
There's a $20 minimum per table, but lunch is divine, fresh and artfully presented, from the kiwi frappe to the Louisiana crab cakes and caprese salad to the chocolate truffle cake.
It's a $50 ringside seat for spotting Hollywood royalty and the paparazzi that stalk them, though on this Tuesday the pickings are slim and the waiters aren't telling.
The wonder is that Al's Newsstand, across the street, can keep up.
It's five days since the U.S. debut of Suri Cruise, spawn of TomKat, in Vanity Fair, and hawker Eddy Becerril has moved nearly 1,500 copies of the magazine.
It is by no means the newsstand's biggest seller -- Becerril's personal best in five years was last fall's VF cover featuring Jennifer Aniston. He sold 500 in one day.
"This is Hollywood," he says, with a shrug. "It's all about the divorces and, now, the babies."
A cab ride away, on Rodeo Drive, the clean streets are quiet in the afternoon heat.
A Maserati, its licence plate boasting UBER-ICH, purrs down the Drive, which is only a few blocks long and is anchored on one end by the Beverly Wilshire hotel, where Julia Roberts famously snagged Richard Gere in Pretty Woman.
Strolling in the sun, and looking not the least bit out of place, is a handsome man wearing a crisp white hospital coat, green pants and matching green surgical booties over his leather loafers. Embroidered on his chest, in script, is his name, along with MD, Plastic Surgery.
There's far more action a few miles away at The Grove, a gorgeous outdoor shopping centre with a concierge, central fountain, movie theatre, outdoor cafes and a charming trolley for those not into walking.
This is a spotless big-money complex, with Nordstrom, Barney's New York, Pottery Barn Kids, American Girl Place, Abercrombie & Fitch, Anthropologie and Barnes & Noble, and it's no surprise to see Jon Cryer, star of Two and A Half Men, waiting at the entrance while the valet fetches his car.
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While the Ivy and Koi and Mr. Chow's are where new Hollywood gets its limited calories, you really haven't fit in until you hit the drive-through at In N' Out Burger.
This fast food joint is where Britney Spears packed on all that baby weight, and where Nicole Richie makes sure photographers capture her sucking on a milkshake.
It's also where our favourite heirhead, Paris Hilton, was headed in her Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren a few weeks back, in the wee hours, when she was busted for DUI, explaining to officers that she'd had only one drink all evening and really needed a burger because she hadn't eaten.
What's all the fuss about junk food, you might wonder.
Well, how about a fresh, warm bun, lean ground beef smothered in fried onions, melted cheese and Thousand Island sauce, served up with a stack of shoestring french fries, chopped from raw potatoes and cooked in hot oil right in front of you.
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