The word itself — hometown — probably strikes many as inappropriate when used to describe Los Angeles. There is something cozy and sentimental about the term and the kind of place it conjures. I am the first to admit that L.A. is neither cozy nor sentimental. And yet it is my hometown. A creature of its gentle, sunny winters and Coppertone summers, I have lived for the past thirty-five years with my husband, Karl, in a small cottage in Brentwood, one street over from the block where I spent my adolescence with my divorced mom and my sister. I have never called anywhere else home and never wanted to.
I know that might sound strange. Many find Los Angeles daunting, ungraspable, centerless — the ultimate anticity. Even L.A.'s most celebrated chroniclers, Nathanael West and Raymond Chandler and Joan Didion, wrote about the negative side, evoking a vast city of disconnected people and hot winds — the fabled Santa Anas that blow in from the desert, usually in the fall, riling the imaginations of arsonists as well as writers.
Yes, my hometown can seem impenetrable, not to mention earthquake-prone. And, yes, it is ground zero for the celebrity culture, home base for the spoiled rehab princesses and their entourages — a city, in short, easy to caricature. But to do so is to miss its essence, its allure. There is a sense of freedom in Los Angeles that I have never felt in any other major metropolis. That's partly because of its sprawling size: just under 500 square miles when you include the cities of Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Culver City and Beverly Hills in the mix with unincorporated neighborhoods such as Hollywood and Brentwood. Another part of its appeal is its locale, at the western end of the continent, far from the Old World and its expectations. When I was growing up, nobody ever asked me where my parents had gone to school, and later, nobody asked me where I'd gone to college. I love that above all, the irreverence, that sense of pedigrees be damned. Make your way; vent your talent. Every generation here is a first generation.
The other thing I love is L.A.'s extraordinary natural beauty. People so often miss that, too. There are, admittedly, endless freeways and any number of charmless, low-slung mini-malls, not to mention smog (much reduced in recent years). And one cannot forget the Malibu wildfires (whose destruction is spread by the Santa Ana winds) and the periodic mud slides. But at base, this is a wild and beautiful city, from the coastal hills and canyons where I routinely hike with friends, to the wide, sandy beaches where I spent every summer of my youth, learning to bodysurf and to flirt with the sun-burnished surfer boys. The climate, of course, is a huge asset: a tempered sunshine most seasons. Contrary to popular belief, there are seasons; they just slip gently one into the next. Anyone with native nerve endings can pick up these seasonal changes in a heartbeat.
I love, too, the ongoing, optimistic spill of people into this basin. But the city can be tough. I live a few blocks from the house where Marilyn Monroe committed suicide, and I occasionally wander by it on one of my walks. Such places are bracing examples of the flip side of fame, a counterpoint to those sidewalk stars in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre, in Hollywood. When people come here to visit, I take them to both Grauman's and the small Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, where Monroe, Natalie Wood and a slew of other celebrities are buried (along with, I might add, my father, actor turned director Don Taylor, who died in 1998). Tucked, aptly enough, behind the Avco Center movie houses, on Wilshire Boulevard, the graveyard is this city's version of a historic burial ground. I often pop in to have a few words with my dad before or after a film, the ritual of the quintessential L.A. daughter.
I cannot pretend, of course, that it is still the city of my childhood. It has twice the population it had in 1950 — almost four million. Small bungalows like mine have given way to huge, swollen Cape Cod "cottages" and mammoth Tuscan villas with thirty-foot-tall front doors. The house we bought in 1972 for $52,000 would be a $2 million teardown today. Real estate has gone mad, further separating the haves and have-nots. Many who grew up in Los Angeles cannot afford to live here now.
Worst of all is the steering-wheel-gripping gridlock on both the freeways and the surface streets. The sheer number of cars has changed — for the worse — the nature of the city and how we live in it. It has cut into that feeling of freedom, of spontaneity.
There is an upside to the traffic issue, and it's not just my sunny Southern Californian genes talking. Because people want to cut down on their driving, neighborhoods have taken on a new importance. In effect, L.A. has gone from being a blur of suburbs to a city of communities, each with its signature sushi joints and coffeehouses (not the chains but delightful independent ones). Right now Venice is hot, as is Culver City, on the Westside. On the Eastside there is Silver Lake, and — the biggest surprise to those of us who have lived here forever — there is Downtown, where the big, old early-20th-century office buildings are being carved into lofts.
Downtown has become culture central, with the first-rate Los Angeles Opera company and the first-rate Los Angeles Philharmonic, which is housed in Frank Gehry's swirly silver gem of a building, Walt Disney Concert Hall. Led for sixteen years by the charismatic Esa-Pekka Salonen, the orchestra will get the hottest young conductor on the planet as music director when Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel, an exuberant twenty-seven-year-old, takes over in 2009, another cultural bragging right for the city. All through L.A. now there are galleries, like Santa Monica's wonderful Bergamot Station Arts Center, an eight-acre collection of thirty-five galleries as well as the Santa Monica Arts Center, located in an old trolley-car station, and theaters, like the Geffen Playhouse, in Westwood, or the Fountain Theatre, in Hollywood. There are even cultural and political salons, like the one that author and blog queen Arianna Huffington runs in her house up the street from mine in Brentwood.
Brentwood, also, has changed wildly in recent years, in some ways negatively (that traffic again and a few too many hyper-Botoxed women), but in others decidedly for the better. There is now a string of really good Italian restaurants and a couple of hip Japanese places within walking distance of my house. I can also easily walk to one of the country's great independent booksellers, Dutton's Brentwood Bookstore, and to my local weekly farmers market (such markets are everywhere), with its seductive organic produce, artichokes and avocados and every lettuce imaginable, plus great street food, including my favorite: thick, corny pupusas, the Salvadoran version of tortillas, stuffed with cheese, meat and beans.
No question, this is a much more ethnically complex city than it once was, with a population that is now nearly half Latino and led by a Latino mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. It also has the highest percentage of foreign-born residents of any American city, along with every cuisine — from Korean to Oaxacan to Persian — and fusion thereof. The airport (LAX) is the No. 1 point of entry for immigrants in the country, and on any given day you can hear, emanating from restaurants and stores and on street corners, a hum of exile, the languages and sometimes haunting music of people who have left other places to try their luck here.
I have cherished spots — old and new — all over this city, but the one I visit most is the palisades overlooking the ocean in Santa Monica. I try to catch the sunset there many an evening, the lights of Malibu just coming on up the coast, the little Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier spinning through the sky. You can breathe there, the great throbbing city behind you — the whole country, for that matter. Similarly, I try to get into the mountains at least twice a week, to Topanga Canyon or Will Rogers State Historic Park, my big yellow Lab, Dixon, beside me. You can hear a coyote howl and smell the sage and marvel that you are in the heart of one of the world's big, bustling cities.
I also try to get a cultural hit at least once a month. At the top of the list is Disney Hall, because the acoustics are as stunning as the building. Among the many museums, my personal pick is the Norton Simon, in neighboring Pasadena, which has one of the country's great collections of European, East Indian and Southeast Asian art and a two-acre sculpture garden, where voluptuous nudes by Aristide Maillol recline around a generous pond. One thing I could see over and over — which is often displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) — is artist Edward Kienholz's Back Seat Dodge '38, a sculpture that shows a couple having sex in the backseat of a foreshortened automobile. I remember when I first saw it, in my late teens, the voyeuristic thrill, the sense that this was the defining representation of Southern Californian art.
Eating in Los Angeles is now a cultural experience too. For dinner, my husband and I prefer first-rate simple, as we call it, like our neighborhood joint Osteria Latini, which offers terrific pastas (the linguini with Santa Barbara prawns or Maine lobster is my favorite) and risottos in a cozy setting. We also like the tagliatelle Bolognese or sliced rib eye with arugula just up the street at Palmeri. Farther east, in West Hollywood, is my top-choice "let's celebrate" restaurant, Lucques, where co-owner and chef Suzanne Goin serves elegant, fresh California-Mediterranean food, notably the not-to-be-missed short ribs. The "devil's chicken" with Dijon mustard is a close second. We love the softly lit patio at night. In Beverly Hills, I like the Grill on the Alley, famous for its Hollywood power-broker lunches: agents, stars, deal makers. We prefer it for dinner, since by nighttime it decompresses, turns more familial. The food is straightforward but excellent (chops, short ribs, charbroiled tuna, great salads), and the waiters are been-there-forever old-school without the crustiness.
For lunch I can go fancy or down-home: a lobster club and a glass of Champagne on the lovely patio of the Restaurant at the Hotel Bel-Air or a bargain plate of chilaquiles (fried tortilla strips) in green tomatillo sauce at ¡Lotería! Grill, a counter-service stall in the Fairfax Farmers Market that offers some of the most authentic Mexican food in L.A. For breakfast I am usually happy with a fresh croissant and an iced espresso at my local café Amandine Patissiere, but on some days crave the diabolically good egg-in-the-hole (an egg inside brioche toast, with gooey fontina cheese and turkey sausage) at the power-breakfast restaurant Belvedere at the Peninsula Beverly Hills (which also serves elegant, expensive dinners). When we're in our Raymond Chandler mood, we go Downtown to the 1921 Pacific Dining Car for steak and eggs; it's like going back in time. My bakery of choice is Sweet Lady Jane, on Melrose Avenue, where we get our family birthday cakes and where the gorgeous cupcakes, with their swirly icing flowers, are worth the fight through traffic. For ice-cream confections like espresso à la mode or a butterscotch sundae, Milk, on Beverly Boulevard, is the place. You can also get a salad or a sandwich there, but purists should not miss the sublime vanilla-bean ice cream. For beautiful bonbons, I favor the relatively new Boule, on North La Cienaga Boulevard, where a quartet of diminutive handcrafted chocolates (don't miss the kind with pistachios) comes in a little blue box — overtones of Tiffany's.
For clothes I can do no better than Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. There are high-end boutiques, like Mélange and Savannah, with beautiful designer items unavailable elsewhere. There is also a Michael Stars casual-wear shop and my stand-by for pretty, not-overpriced work and party clothes (Italian pants, great jackets), Darylle B. There are, for respite, a number of nice cafés, too.
I must mention a boutique-rich stretch of 3rd Street not far from the Fairfax Farmers Market that I particularly like, right around the 8300 block. There's a great breakfast or lunch to be had at Joan's on Third (great takeout, too, with a wonderful cheese selection), and across the street, there's the Cook's Library, the only cookbook-exclusive store in the city, with a superb selection of new and out-of-print titles. I have a weakness for browsing at Fred Segal nearby on Melrose, a fiercely trendy and expensive cluster of specialty boutiques (hats, jewelry, cashmere sweaters), though I prefer its Santa Monica offshoot, with its swanky new day spa.
As for spas, Kinara, in West Hollywood, has a beautiful patio, where you can lunch on ordered-in fare from one of the good local eateries. The hotels tend to have top-notch spas, as well. The luxurious pedicure at the Peninsula hotel, offered outside in a private poolside cabana, is beyond pampering. Similarly, the massages and facials at Shutters Hotel on the Beach, in Santa Monica, are excellent.
I have not stayed in any of these hotels, but my friends have been happy in all of them. The Peninsula has an in-town European feeling, with lovely accommodations, while Shutters is the classic beach experience — muted resort-Colonial decor with ocean views from many rooms. The Hotel Bel-Air is an ultraromantic hideaway with a dark, clubby bar. One of the best birthday parties I ever went to was a raucous sit-down dinner for eight held in Table One, a private, glass-walled room just off the Bel-Air's kitchen.
In truth, my favorite birthdays have been celebrated in my own backyard, by our little swimming pool, on a jasmine-scented summer evening with family and friends, with a feast of local street-market fare, a thick grilled prime steak and a great California Syrah. That to me is L.A. living at its best. My happiest evenings all the way back to childhood are those barbecues, coming, as they often did then, after a long, sandy day at the beach. I try these days not to let my nostalgia for the city that was overwhelm my affection for the exciting, sophisticated and sometimes trying place it has become. There's no point. I'm stuck. I'm home.
Bergamot Station Arts Center, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica; bergamotstation.com.
Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Avenue, Hollywood; 323-663-1525; fountaintheatre.com.
Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Avenue, Westwood; 310-208-5454; geffenplayhouse.com.
Grauman's Chinese Theatre, 6925 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood; 323-464-8111; manntheatres.com.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles; 323-857-6000; lacma.org.
Norton Simon Museum, 411 West Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena; 626-449-6840; nortonsimon.org.
Santa Monica Pier, Santa Monica; 310-458-8900; santamonicapier.org.
Topanga Canyon, accessible through Topanga State Park, Topanga; 310-455-2465.
Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 South Grand Avenue, Downtown; 323-850-2000; laphil.com.
Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, 1218 Glendon Avenue, Westwood; 310-474-1579.
Will Rogers State Historic Park, 1501 Will Rogers State Park Road, Pacific Palisades; 310-454-8212.
Amandine Patissiere, 12225 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles; 310-979-3211.
Belvedere at the Peninsula Beverly Hills, 9882 South Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Hills; 310-788-2306; beverlyhills.peninsula.com.
Boule, 420 North La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles; 310-289-9977; boulela.com.
Fairfax Farmers Market, 6333 West 3rd Street, Los Angeles; 323-933-9211; farmersmarketla.com.
Grill on the Alley, 9560 Dayton Way, Beverly Hills; 310-276-0615; thegrill.com.
Joan's on Third, 8350 West 3rd Street, Los Angeles; 323-655-2285; joansonthird.com.
¡Lotería! Grill, Stall No. 322 at the Fairfax Farmers Market, 6333 West 3rd Street, Los Angeles; 323-930-2211.
Lucques, 8474 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood; 323-655-6277; lucques.com.
Milk, 7290 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles; 323-939-6455; themilkshop.com.
Osteria Latini, 11712 San Vicente Boulevard, Brentwood; 310-826-9222; osterialatini.com.
Pacific Dining Car, 1310 West 6th Street, Downtown; 213-483-6000; pacificdiningcar.com.
Palmeri, 11650 San Vicente Boulevard, Brentwood; 310-442-8446.
Restaurant at the Hotel Bel-Air, 701 Stone Canyon Road, Bel-Air; 310-472-1211; hotelbelair.com.
Sweet Lady Jane, 8360 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles; 323-653-7145; sweetladyjane.com.
Cook's Library, 8373 West 3rd Street, Los Angeles; 323-655-3141; cookslibrary.com.
Darylle B, 1128 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica; 310-395-7215.
Dutton's Brentwood Bookstore, 11975 San Vicente Boulevard, Brentwood; 310-476-6263; duttonsbrentwood.com.
Fred Segal, 8100 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles; 323-651-4129; and 500 Broadway, Santa Monica; 310-395-9792; fredsegal.com.
Mélange, 1117 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica; 310-451-7792; shopmelange.com.
Michael Stars, 1233 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica; 310-260-5558; michaelstars.com.
Savannah, 706 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica; 310-458-2095.
Hotel Bel-Air (address as above); 310-472-1211; hotelbelair.com.
Kinara Spa, 656 North Robertson Boulevard, West Hollywood; 310-657-9188; kinaraspa.com.
Peninsula Beverly Hills (address as above); 310-788-2306; beverlyhills.peninsula.com.
Shutters Hotel on the Beach, 1 Pico Boulevard, Santa Monica; 310-458-0030; shuttersonthebeach.com.