Los Angeles Magazine - May 2023

TALES FROM THE CRYPT THE TOUR GUIDE WHO KNOWS WHERE ALL THE BODIES ARE BURIED

THE GAMBLER THE O.C. CON ARTIST WHO SPENT MILLIONS OF PILFERED DOLLARS ON THE VEGAS SLOTS

THE PENSKE PAPERS

HOW A PRESS-SHY MOTORSPORTS HEIR BECAME ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL PUBLISHERS IN THE WORLD

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L D AN — S E V A E. S? K W A R I W A E Y A E LIGHT H A T T S G N O AVI GGLES T N OUT TH E L S I D E N G H T ST R U E A S E T U R R O C S JAME AS LATE-NI ST LEFT PL HO PLUS T S A L HE T GREAT ESCAPES: L L I W Take a trip to BY

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world-class spas

Five brunch spots to take Mom to on Mother’s Day $5.95 M AY 2 0 2 3 L A M AG .CO M

SCREEN GEMS: L.A.’s best movie experiences

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M AY 202 3

Features 44

Requiem for a Dude

A decade after shaking up the L.A. Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel is exiting for a gig at the New York Phil.

BY M AT T H E W S P E C KTO R

62 Good Night, Late Night!

James Corden is leaving his show (and L.A.). Is it time TV put the rest of the time slot to bed?

BY B R I A N ST E LT E R

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Candid Camera

Nobody captured L.A. in the ’60s and ’70s like photographer Julian Wasser.

BY M I C H A E L WA L K E R

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F R O M T H E D A M I A N I B O O K T H E WAY W E W E R E B Y J U L I A N WA S S E R

Mr. Big

Jay Penske now controls some of the most influential media brands in Hollywood, music, art, and fashion.

Here’s how an eccentric, press-shy racing heir pulled it off.

BY ST E V E A P P L E F O R D

DO THE TWIST

Jayne Mansfield at the Whisky a Go Go. 4 L A M AG.C OM

P H O T O G R A P H B Y J U L I A N WA S S E R

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M AY 202 3

Buzz King’s Ransom

› A casino-loving Orange

F I N DI NG Z E N

Tools of the pampering trade at Golden Door resort spa.

County con artist allegedly made off with millions she bilked from friends and investors.

But Sara King isn’t ready to fold just yet.

BY MICHELE MCPHEE PAGE 15

The Brief

› Marianne Williamson

loses her cool; Joshua Tree says no way to teepees and yurts; fashion designers join the Great Resignation; and the Ronni Chasen murder case reexamined.

PAGE 18

Tales from the Crypt

› As a tour guide at

Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Karie Bible knows where all the bodies are buried.

BY BEN KAWALLER PAGE 20

Counter Measures

› Granite countertops,

cliché of the zillion-dollar spec house, are being challenged by ecofriendlier alternatives.

BY TARA WEINGARTEN PAGE 22

Ask Chris › When L.A. pets die,

Incoming!

how are their remains handled? Our resident historian answers your burning questions.

BY CHRIS NICHOLS PAGE 92

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AU G US T IMAG E S

› Comic Kevin Hart is dead serious about turning vegan dishes into happy meals for omnivores; works by pop artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat make a splash in downtown L.A.; unwind in style at five luxurious spas; check out our recommended postpandemic movie experiences.

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Editor’s Note

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BY MAER ROSHAN

A C K I N 1 9 6 1 , when the first

issue of Los Angeles rolled off the presses, late-night TV was a relatively new invention.

Jack Paar was hosting NBC’s The Tonight Show (Johnny Carson wouldn’t take over for another year), and his only competition in that sleepy time slot were the old movies the other networks would occasionally rerun into the wee hours—when they weren’t airing staticky test patterns.

Much has changed in the ensuing 60 years, with late-night TV evolving into one of the most ferocious battlefields in showbiz, peaking in the 1990s, when the brawl over who would inherit Carson’s chair became such a Game of Thrones-like blood sport that HBO made a movie about it (The Late Shift, based on Bill Carter’s best-seller).

In this month’s issue, veteran media writer Brian Stelter looks into James Corden’s exit from CBS’s The Late Late Show and what his decampment signals about the uncertain future of the talk show genre, which now

12 L A M A G . C O M

Does late-night TV have a future?

Or are old movies and test patterns about to make a comeback?

draws just a fraction of the audience it did when Paar was in his prime. (Paar drew 11 million viewers a night, more than ten times Corden’s audience.) Does late-night TV have a future? Or are old movies and test patterns about to make a comeback?

This May, we also introduce you to the most powerful publishing mogul you’ve probably never heard of: Jay Penske, the notoriously press-shy racing and trucking heir who has spent the last decade snapping up dozens of distressed but iconic media properties—Rolling Stone, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Artforum, Women’s Wear Daily, and, most recently, Vox Media, owner of New York magazine. Penske’s West L.A.-based company, Penske Media Corporation, is now one of the largest publishing empires in the world. (He also co-owns South by Southwest, Dick Clark Productions, and the Golden Globes.) Like late-night TV, print media has undergone seismic changes over the last 60 years, with its fortunes looking increasingly uncertain.

What’s Penske’s game plan? What does he see in publishing’s future that nobody else has divined? Is it a good idea to have one man control the most important pop culture titles in America?

Elsewhere in this issue: our exclusive interview with Sara King, the hard-partying, headline-grabbing Orange County lawyer who allegedly gambled away millions of other people’s money in a mad Las Vegas slot-machine spree that she blames partly on her ex-husband, a grandson of the last Shah of Iran’s twin sister. Also, a portfolio of photos by Julian Wasser, the legendary shutterbug who captured L.A. life in the ’60s and ’70s—whether it was Marcel Duchamp playing chess with a nude Eve Babitz or Robert F. Kennedy’s final moments at the Ambassador Hotel. And don’t miss Matthew Specktor’s clear-eyed appraisal of Gustavo Dudamel, the charismatic soon-to-be ex-conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic.

While life in L.A. is eternally evolving, one thing remains certain: There will always be a need for smart, thoughtful journalism of the sort we strive to put between these pages.

Maer Roshan, Editor-in-Chief P H O T O G R A P H E D B Y L E N K A U L R I C H O VA

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THERE’S SOMETHING BRIGHT IN THE

2023

2023

2023

FOUR YEARS IN A ROW. It’s one thing to be honored as an esteemed Forbes Travel Guide award-winning resort. It’s another to be honored for four years in a row.

A G U A C A L I E N T E C A S I N O S . C O M | R E S E R VAT I O N S 8 8 8 . 9 9 9. 1 9 9 5

05.23

King’s Ransom A CASINO-LOVING ORANGE COUNTY CON ARTIST WITH TIES TO THE SHAH OF IRAN ALLEGEDLY MADE OFF WITH MILLIONS SHE BILKED FROM FRIENDS AND INVESTORS. BUT SARA KING ISN’T READY TO FOLD JUST YET

G E T T Y I M AG E S

BY MICHELE MCPHEE

I L LU S T R AT E D BY NAT H A N A R I Z O NA

L A M AG . C O M 1 5

|

CRIME

I

for $400,000) to much-less-affluent November 11, 2022, victims (like a former assistant from and Sara King was whom she ripped off $10,000). relaxing in an infinity Even her soon-to-be ex-husband, bathtub, her long blond onetime Hollywood restaurateur hair tied in a messy Kamran Pahlavi, would later describe bun, her ears studded with casinoher as a “female Bernie Madoff.” chip-sized diamonds. Then she heard “She is charismatic. She is beautiful. anxious barks from her goldendoodle, She is smart. That’s why it was easy for Kula, followed by frantic pounding at her, stealing from her friends,” says forthe entrance of her 2,400-square-foot mer assistant, Yumiko Sturdivant. “She villa at Wynn Las Vegas. loved money, and she has no soul.”

The 39-year-old Newport Beach For her part, King admits to a lawyer wrapped her petite frame in a gambling problem but denies any thick Wynn robe and opened the door intentional wrongdoing. “Did I get a to find the hotel manager flanked by little wrapped up? I did,” she acknowlsecurity guards waiting outside her edges while sipping a Chardonnay $5,000-a-night accommodations, in the lobby of the 1 Hotel on Sunset which had been comped for her off Boulevard on a rainy day this past and on for more than six months.

March, looking oddly poised for a The villa, with its panoramic view of woman battling a slew of civil suits and Wynn’s championship-length golf awaiting likely criminal charges. “I feel course, was among the many perks she like I am in a nightmare.” enjoyed as one of the casino’s “whales,” Originally, King, a Loyola Law a high-roller who could be counted on School graduate who became a licensed to regularly wager—and mostly lose— attorney in 2014, didn’t come to Vegas tens of thousands of dollars a night. to gamble; she came to expand her “I opened the door, and the manhard money lending business, a comager said, ‘We are going to ask you to pletely legal, if ethically iffy, operation leave,’ ” King recalls of the evening of that extended lines of credit to highher eviction during an exclusive interrisk clients, typically secured by bigview with Los Angeticket collateral items les. “I invited them in like luxury cars and and told them to sit Rolexes. Such lendtheir asses down, that ers can be found just “She is it was going to take about anywhere, but charismatic. a minute for me to they’re everywhere in She is beautiful. pack. I was panicked Vegas, as much a part inside, but I was not of the Strip as showShe is smart. showing panic.” girls and ornate water But she loved She had every reafountains. money, and she son to panic. Because “She was getting it turned out that the a lending license in has no soul.” woman who had once Nevada, which would called herself “the slot have been great for whisperer,” who had business, and she was been bragging for months about how supposedly finding new clients,” says she’d figured out a system for beatPahlavi, a grandson of Iranian Princess ing the casinos, was about to make Ashraf Pahlavi, the late Shah’s twin national headlines as a notorious con sister (Pahlavi’s mother was a revoluartist, accused of fraudulently gamtionary who was cut off from the fambling away tens of millions of dollars ily fortune). But he recalls how King of stolen money. Her patsies allegedly quickly fell for the allure of the casino. ranged from multimillionaire bank“She was constantly coming back to ers (like the Swiss financier whom she the room with grand prizes, saying she took for $10.2 million) to family friends cracked the code of these machines, (like the L.A. surgeon whom she snared calling herself the slot whisperer.”

1 6 L A M AG . C O M

T W A S twilight on

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Those first few months in Vegas were indeed dizzying. Pahlavi and King whiled away late nights in a glorious blur of round-the-clock gambling, dining gratis at Wynn’s best restaurants and attending free events, including a golf match where King cozied up to NFL star quarterbacks Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Josh Allen, and Patrick Mahomes.

Pahlavi admits he enjoyed the perks of King’s lavish lifestyle almost as much as his wife did but claims to have had very little to do with her lending company, other than keeping its books and—as it happened—introducing King to her biggest victim. That would be Pahlavi’s old friend Laurent Reiss, the Swiss banker who ended up losing $10.2 million in King’s company, King Family Lending, lured by her promises of quick 10 percent interest returns.

Reiss made a total of 92 investments with King before realizing that much of his money was being swallowed up in the lawyer’s growing obsession—the thousands-a-spin slot machines that line the casino’s high-roller rooms.

CO U R T E SY: R O N A L D R I C H A R D S

BUZZ

3

C A S I N O R OYA L E

1. Accused Vegas swindler Sara King at The Match golf event alongside NFL star quarterbacks (from left) Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, and Josh Allen in June 2022. 2. King after she was evicted from Wynn Las Vegas, holing up across the street at Resorts World. 3. King with her goldendoodle, Kula. 4., 5. Luxury autos and watches used as collateral in King’s hard money lending operation. 6. King with her soon-to-be ex-husband, onetime West Hollywood restaurateur (and Iranian prince) Kamran Pahlavi.

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“I have a brain for algorithms, a knack for math,” King insists, despite all evidence to the contrary. “I had a winning system.”

Except she kept losing. And as Reiss’s money dried up, she turned to other investors to bankroll her gambling habit and whale-sized lifestyle, which included head-to-toe Dior outfits and a leased Rolls-Royce. There was, for instance, the Pasadena surgeon, Amal Obaid-Schmid, who had helped King’s father with his cancer treatments. The surgeon and her husband, Steffen, were Wynn regulars and became fast friends with King and Pahlavi, sharing shopping trips and dinners. It was during one of those excursions that King pitched them on investing $400,000, their life savings.

“She told us she normally didn’t open up deals to people that are not billionaires,” the surgeon tells Los Angeles.

“We trusted her. She was a lawyer running a licensed business. But we lost everything. I was devastated. I thought she was my friend.”

Sturdivant thought King was more

than a friend; she looked up to her as a “big sister.” Until she invested and lost $10,000, a single slot spin for King but a fortune to her former assistant.

Now Sturdivant calls King “the Anna Delvey of Orange County,” comparing her with the New York City scamster made famous by the Netflix miniseries Inventing Anna. Both Sturdivant and the surgeon are talking to the FBI. Even after her alleged scamming was uncovered in November and King was evicted from Wynn, she continued to gamble, or at least to try to, popping 150 milligrams of Adderall a day to keep herself going. Just three months later, in February, she was caught attempting to sneak back into Wynn.

Despite dyeing her hair and disguising herself in a hoodie and a baseball cap, the hotel’s eye-in-the-sky facial recognition security system spotted her right away, and she was ejected.

Nowadays, when she’s not sipping wine at Los Angeles hotel bars with reporters, she’s back where she started, in Orange County, living alone in a tiny apartment paid for by her

6

parents. “It’s not the villa,” she says, “but I’m grateful.”

Pahlavi, fed up with her gambling, left her around the time she was booted from Wynn and moved to Marrakech (in a suit of her own, King claims he made off with some of her money, a charge he denies). “She was sick,” he says. “All she wanted to do was gamble.”

Not only has she lost her Vegas villa, King also has had to give up the digs she leased—for $8,900 a month—in a Sunset Boulevard luxury high-rise in L.A. The diamonds are gone, too, as is her closet full of couture (she sold it all to the RealReal). Her Rolls-Royce was repossessed, and the company she was leasing it from is suing her for tampering with its odometer.

She says her bank account—which, at the height of her alleged larceny, was filled with tens of millions of dollars— now holds a grand total of $11.98.

“If I could pay everyone back, I would,” she insists, maintaining she never intended to hurt anyone. “My nature is to take care of everyone. If I could make everyone whole, I would.”

L A M AG . C O M 1 7

The Brief N E W S & N O T E S F R O M A L L OV E R

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON LOSES HER COOL A NEW REPORT CLAIMS THE SPIRITUAL GURU TURNED PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IS ANYTHING BUT ENLIGHTENED WHEN IT COMES TO HER TEMPER YOU THOUGHT Donald Trump had

a nasty temper?

Try catching Marianne Williamson on a bad day . . . or pretty much any day. According to an investigation by Politico, which interviewed a dozen former campaign aides to the self-help guru turned 2020 presidential candidate—and, as of her announcement in March, a 2024 contender as well—Williamson, 70, has such out-of-control anger issues that she once had to be rushed to urgent care with a swollen hand after banging her fist on a car door during a prolonged tantrum.

“It would be foaming, 1 8 L A M AG . C O M

spitting, uncontrollable rage,” one ex-staffer told the political website.

“It was traumatic. The experience, in the end, was terrifying.”

Others recounted incidents of phone throwing, verbal abuse (including weight-shaming), and shouting so loudly in a hotel room that hotel staffers knocked on the door to try to quiet her down. One former aide said the campaign team traveled with NDA forms at the ready in case the candidate lost it during cab rides and drivers needed to be silenced.

The author of 14 books about spiritual enlightenment, Williamson has been a fixture in Hollywood for

decades—she now lives in Beverly Hills—providing guidance to the likes of Oprah Winfrey and even officiating at Elizabeth Taylor’s 1991 wedding to construction worker Larry Fortensky.

She made an even bigger splash when she threw her hat in the ring during the 2020 race, running on an agenda so far left that she made Bernie Sanders look like Mussolini (she called for the establishment of a federal Department of Peace to solve foreign conflicts with nonmilitary solutions).

Her 2024 run seems unlikely to be any more successful than her last one, when she never topped single digits in the polls. She’s currently Joe Biden’s only challenger for the Democratic nomination, but she’s running about 70 points behind him. And these latest revelations about her temper aren’t likely to help,

D E S E RT T O P P I N G S

although, to be fair, she has responded with characteristic pluck.

“If I can be a bitch at the office at times, I don’t think anybody’s happy about it,” she told the BBC. “[But] I’m not running for sainthood here. I’m running for president.”

JOSHUA TREE SAYS NO WAY TO TEEPEES AND YURTS Y O U M AY WA N T T O

hold off packing for that glamping trip to Joshua Tree. A plan to build a luxe camping compound in the Flamingo Heights part of the desert—complete with 75 teepee-like tents and yurts, a 10,000-squarefoot restaurant, a music venue, and a helipad—was nixed in March by the San Bernardino County Planning Commission after thousands of locals signed a petition against it and dozens of others turned up to protest at the meeting.

“These projects are made by developers who don’t live in the area

A rendering of the Wonder Inn, which may or may not be built in Joshua Tree.

W I L L I A M S O N : P I X E L P U S H E R S /G E T T Y I M AG E S ; D E S E R T I N N : FAC E B O O K .CO M / WO N D E RVA L L E YS N A K E

A N G E R M A NAG E M E N T

Spiritual guru and presidential candidate Williamson blows her top, according to Politico.

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and who don’t have as much respect for it,” says Caroline Partamian, one of the petition signers. “We feel there will be no more community to invest in if these types of projects come about.”

The glamping site, put forward by RoBott Land Company, is just one of a slew of proposed tourist attractions that developers started pitching during the pandemic, when Joshua Tree became an even more popular vacation retreat for Angelenos and other urban dwellers. Its nixing by the planning commission puts a question mark on other pending developments, including the Wonder Inn Luxury Resort, a 42,000-squarefoot hotel envisioned for Wonder Valley. Partamian is confident she and her fellow petitioners can put a stop to that, too.

“We went in [to the vote] knowing this wasn’t going to be the end of it,” she says. “But it was such a beautiful day of feeling reminded why we are such advocates for the land here.” — L AU R E N A B U N A S SA R

THE GREAT RESIGNATION GETS FASHIONABLE W H AT D O Tom Ford, Alessandro Michele, and Jeremy Scott have in com-

mon, aside from designing some of the past decade’s most flamboyant and expensive outfits? All three have recently departed their top jobs at some of the world’s toniest luxury fashion houses.

S C H M AT T E L AT E R

Ford, Scott, and Michele ditch their jobs.

Ford, 61, sold his eponymous clothing and beauty brand to Estée Lauder in November, for a reported $2.8 billion.

Although he was supposed to stick around as creative director through 2023, sources say he’s already skedaddled and is instead hard at work developing his third feature film (after directing stints on 2009’s A Single Man and 2016’s Nocturnal Animals). Also in November, Michele, 50, decamped from Gucci, where he had been top dog for eight years; he’s been replaced by new creative director Sabato De Sarno. And Scott, 47, announced his departure from Moschino in March, after ten years of dressing celebs like Miley Cyrus, Madonna, and Katy Perry.

He’s now collaborating with Hyundai on an art exhibition in Seoul that evidently involves windshield wipers, hubcaps, and seat belts. No joke.

—MERLE GINSBERG

IS IT TIME TO REOPEN THE RONNI CHASEN MURDER CASE? IT’S BEEN 13 YEARS

since Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen was gunned down in Beverly Hills while driving home from a movie premiere in 2010, but questions about her murder still linger.

Why, for instance, would her alleged killer— Harold Martin Smith, a convicted purse snatcher who ended up shooting himself in the head when police approached him in a flophouse—commit the drive-by from a bicycle? And on Sunset Boulevard, no less, one of the least bicycle-friendly streets in L.A.? Could the murder have had anything to do with Chasen’s brother, B-movie director Larry Cohen, who allegedly owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in gambling debts before his death in 2019 and might have benefited from inheriting some of his sister’s

97%

$6 million estate?

Or were mob-connected Russian film investors somehow behind it all?

Trial lawyer Kelly Hyman hopes to get to the bottom of all this with Once Upon a Crime in Hollywood: The Ronni Chasen Story, her new six-part podcast that features interviews with the popular publicist’s friends and family, including Jill Gatsby, Chasen’s niece.

“Jill believes there’s more to learn about who killed her aunt,” Hyman tells Los Angeles. “She and some of Ronni’s friends believe the Beverly Hills Police Department had little to no experience with murder, that they closed it without checking out other, very clear avenues.”

Hyman won’t go so far as to call it a conspiracy, but she hints that there’s

C O L D C A S E H E AT S U P

Who really killed Ronni Chasen?

more to this mystery than has been unearthed so far—and that Chasen’s killer may still be at large.

“I can tell you that Jill and friends are very nervous about talking about this,” she says. “They’re scared their lives could be in danger.” — M .G .

L A M AG . C O M 1 9

Buzz

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TH E I N S I DE STORY

Tales From The Crypt AS A TOUR GUIDE AT HOLLYWOOD FOREVER CEMETERY, KARIE BIBLE KNOWS WHERE ALL THE BODIES ARE BURIED . . . AND WHY VISITORS LEAVE QUARTERS ON BUGSY SIEGEL’S GRAVE B Y B E N K AWA L L E R P H O T O G R A P H E D BY C O R I NA M A R I E

2 0 L A M AG . C O M

K

A R I E B I B L E arrived in L.A. in 2000

with a film degree and a reverence for Hollywood history, hoping to be an independent film producer. Instead, she’s spent the last 20 years working the graveyard shift—literally—as a guide at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, final resting place for legends like Rudolph Valentino, Marion Davies, Johnny Ramone, and countless others. Here, she takes Los Angeles on a private tour of the most glamorous plots on Earth.

Is there a grave that gets the most attention or is most popular?

We get new people, and things, of course, change.

Johnny Ramone is extremely popular. Vampira is very popular. But Valentino still has not lost any of his power to enchant people. I had an audience of teenage girls recently, and when I was telling them about the uproar after the death of Valentino in 1926, I looked out and saw a sea of blank stares. So I said, “OK, what celebrity would flip your cookies if they just walked into this mausoleum?”

And they said, “Beyonce.”

I said, “Let’s say tomorrow morning, your iPhone buzzed ‘Beyonce is dead.’ ” Then one of the girls started crying.

And I’m like, “No, Beyonce is fine. She’s better than fine.

She’s Beyonce. But what if?”

And then, you could have heard a pin drop.

Christina Hendricks all took it as part of a group one day. It was a little surreal.

But the next morning, a tabloid called me, “I hear these people took your tour.” And I was like, “How did you know?” I guess they had these people with long lenses hiding out and photographing everything, and I had no idea. One actress hired me for a private tour. She had a list so long of every classic Hollywood star she wanted to see. And I told her, “This is about three private tours instead of one.”

But she knew her history, and she was ready. She knew exactly what she was gonna get to see. And she was very well informed. I try to treat celebrities like everybody else. I just don’t want to violate their privacy. I’m sure they get that constantly, and that’s got to be an exhausting way to live your life.

Do you ever find this place depressing?

For me, being in a cemetery gives me a profound appreciation for life. We’ve got movies, concerts; we’ve got the Day of the Dead; we have ducks, geese, swans, peacocks, squirrels, cats. I mean, there’s just so much life flowing through this place.

I heard that sometimes people will get dug up after death and moved to a chicer cemetery. Does this happen?

Sometimes people want loved ones to be disinterred and moved elsewhere. Judy Garland, for example, was in New York. And then her daughters Lorna and Liza, and the family decided to disinter Judy and bring her back here. They wanted room for the kids. Lorna and [son] Joey, who were kids when

Do you have a lot of celebrities on the tour?

Emma Stone, Andrew Garfield, January Jones, and

she died, wanted to be with their mom someday. I think Judy is going to be a huge draw for the neighborhood.

What’s the most disturbing story that you pull out on these tours?

I talk about Jayne Mansfield.

While she and others were in a car, there was something shrouding their view, I guess, and they went underneath an 18-wheeler. Now they have a bar on the back of 18-wheelers called the “Mansfield bar” so that cars don’t go underneath a tractor-trailer like that. Three of her kids were in the backseat that night, and they escaped with minor injuries. One of them

People leave stuffed gorillas for Fay Wray and Bugs Bunny toys and carrots for Mel Blanc. was her daughter Mariska Hargitay of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. She was three when that happened.

Can you imagine?

What do people make of touring this setting?

This one lady was so shocked. I didn’t mean to be condescending, but I said, “What exactly did you think this all was?” I did my little spiel about how this is still a fully working cemetery. She said, “I’m sorry, what did you say?” I said, “Well, it’s a fully functioning—.” She says, “What?!” And I said, “You do realize what this is, right?” I kind of wonder if, since it’s

L.A., people have the sense that maybe everything’s just a movie set.

What are some of the odd things that you’ve seen people leave on celebrity graves?

Sometimes people leave stuffed gorillas on Fay Wray, who was in King Kong.

Sometimes people leave Tasmanian devils or Bugs Bunny toys or even carrots on Mel Blanc. Oh, Bugsy Siegel, or Benjamin Siegel, he’s on the night tour that I do. People leave dollars, quarters, cigars, gambling chips, cigarettes, incense; they kiss the headstone.

Someone told me that it’s a karma thing—you leave the money, and then you go to Vegas for the weekend.

Does doing this make you think more about your own death?

During lockdown, I had a lot more time to think than I normally would. I live alone.

My whole family’s 3,000 miles away in Georgia. And I started thinking, “Shit, what if I got [COVID-19], and I died tomorrow? So I called up the cemetery, and I bought my own niche. I think being death-positive is actually a good thing. It kind of felt good in a weird way to go, “OK, I’ve made some plans,” because a lot of people think they’re gonna live forever.

And we know that’s not true.

Do you think you’re weird?

[Laughs] I don’t know. But others might. I think it’s all relative like Morticia Addams once said: “What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.”

What a great quote.

Isn’t it? I saw that, and I was like, “I feel so seen!”

L A M AG . C O M 2 1

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2 2 L A M AG . C O M

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PAGE 32

› Unique PLANT FOOD

CO U R T E SY H A R T H O U S E

Hart Healthy

theaters revive moviegoers

PAGE 36

› Pasadena

shopping gets a close-up

PAGE 42

COMIC KEVIN HART IS DEAD SERIOUS ABOUT TURNING VEGAN DISHES INTO HAPPY MEALS FOR OMNIVORES

BY CHRIS NICHOLS

L A M AG . C O M 2 5

Y

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PLANT FOOD

The idea for the chain came to Hart while he was recovering from a car crash his Netflix specials, his in Malibu in 2019, which sent him to the comedy podcasts, and cerhospital with a fractured spine. “When tainly his ubiquitous Chase you come close to that light—and that cash-back credit-card light that I’m talking about is death—you commercials. But have you ever tried his value life differently,” he told podcaster Deluxe Crispy Chick’n sandwich?

Joe Rogan shortly after his recuperation.

You soon will. Kevin Hart, the hardest“During rehab, he incorporated more working man in showbiz — and, now, in plant-based foods into his diet,” Hooper the vegan fast-food game — is opening a says. “He was trying to make changes but third Hart House restaurant, this one at found that on the road, [vegan] options Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue, were not as prevalent. So we in what was once, ironically, a designed this menu for flexiMcDonald’s drive-through. tarians and omnivores. We’re “We’ve got In-N-Out and “We trying to convince the 97 perChick-fil-A across the street,” designed this cent of America who don’t says Hart’s partner in the eat vegan to indulge.” growing chain, Andy Hooper, menu for producer Scott Lowe, who began his career at flexitarians.” whoFilm switched to a meatless Burger King. “This is us showdiet after his father’s recent ing we’re going toe-to-toe heart surgery, has sampled with established restaurants.” a Hart House burger and appreciates the Hart and Hooper started Hart familiar tastes of the brioche bun and House—which serves plant-based burgcaramelized onions. “It’s pretty close to an ers and other healthy offerings made Islands burger,” he says. “The cheese is very with a formulation of pea protein, chickconvincing. You can feel the oil on your peas, and soy—last year with a restaulips, and that’s accurate.” rant in Westchester, quickly followed Locations in Orange County and by another in Monrovia. All three share near USC are in the works, with plans colorful, graphic interiors inspired by to spread nationwide. “He thinks about the mid-century aesthetic of L.A.’s early 50 years from now,” says Hooper of fast-food stands, but with a funkier Hart’s intentions. “ ‘How do I do someatmosphere filled with James Brown thing of consequence and use my reach and the Jackson 5 tunes piped in on the and celebrity for good?’ ” house speakers.

O U ’ V E S E E N his movies,

H AV E I T YO U R WAY

Hart’s happy meals include plant-based alternatives to beef burgers and chicken fingers.

Vegan in L.A. Burgerlords C H I NAT OW N

● Instead of serving

Impossible or Beyond (the two biggest brands of supermarket veggie burgers), this Chinatown staple makes its own plantbased patty.

943 N. Broadway, burgerlords.com.

Doomie’s H O L LY WO O D

● This minimall spot

features decadent, sloppy masterpieces that have all the greasy guilt of junk food with none of the beef.

1253 Vine St., doomiesrestaurants.com.

Monty’s E C H O PA R K

● The rock-and-roll

atmosphere might be a little grating, but the fresh, locally sourced produce elevates the burgers at this hipster spot.

1533 W. Sunset Blvd., montysgoodburger.com.

Mr. Charlie’s H A N C O C K PA R K

● A high-design art

installation masquerading as a parody of the Golden Arches—and a burger joint. Enjoy a Frowny Meal with a Not a Cheeseburger inside.

612 N. La Brea Ave., mrcharlies.co.

2 6 L A M AG . C O M

H A R T: CO U R T E SY H A R T H O U S E ; M R . C H A R L I E ’ S : A A R O N H A X TO N

Incoming

Incoming

|

HAPPENINGS

THE TO-DO LIST A MERMAID, DANCING QUEENS, AND A SALUTE TO THE (GRATEFUL) DEAD: IT’S JUST ANOTHER MAY IN L.A.

BY JOR DA N R I E F E

CO N V E N T I O N

Drama Queens

› With drag queens under attack

from coast to coast, L.A. is a safe space for RuPaul’s DragCon, an annual celebration of gender-fluid culture.

Meet queens that inspire and pop stars in sizzling attire while RuPaul herself sets the place on fire with a personal appearance. Including about 230 exhibitors, there’s something for everyone, whether it’s goth art from Bat in Your Belfry, lubricants by Boy Butter, or apparel by Dirt Squirrel.

Royal Pains

from Hollywood’s ranks.

The exhibition Blacklist:

OUTDOORS

County Fair began in

A Bridgerton Story.

shines a spotlight on congressional proceedings, investigations, churlish politicians, and hapless filmmakers. Skirball Cultural Center, May 4 to September 3, skirball.org.

ST R E A M I N G

› Just when the steam has cleared from your TV screen, Shonda Rhimes and the good people at Netflix raise the temperature again with Queen Charlotte: This time, the focus is on young Queen Charlotte’s marriage to King George and the social upheaval that follows. Netflix, May 4, netflix.com.

The Hollywood Red Scare

› Back when the L.A. 1922, it was an agricultural event, and there’s still a little of that pioneer spirit to be sampled, including livestock beauty contests and local produce. Not so pioneer are lowriders, a full calendar of concerts, and even fine arts at the Millard Sheets Art Center. Pomona Fairplex, May 5 to 29, lacountyfair.com.

ART

Seeing Red

› ”Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” That was the infamous question posed by Washington cowards who decided to weed out “radicals”

L . A. COU NTY FAI R PETTI NG ZOO

Fair Deal

BOOK

Tomfoolery

› Tom Hanks penned The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece, a

novel about a subject he knows a little something about: the making of a star-studded,

INDIA AMARTEIFIO IN QUEEN C H A R LOT T E : A B R I D G E RTO N STO RY

multimillion-dollar superhero movie and the comic books that inspired it. Out May 9.

OPERA

Pride & Envy

› Verdi’s masterpiece Otello, based on the

Shakespeare classic,

comes to life with an outstanding cast led by acclaimed tenor Russell Thomas in the title role, one of the most challenging in the repertoire. Soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen makes her company debut as Desdemona, and Igor

DRAG: COURTESY DRAGCON; BRIDGERTON: LIAM DANIEL/NETFLIX ©2022; FAIR: COURTESY LA COUNTY FAIR; DANCE: JOSH ROSE; FOURTEEN: COURTESY HARPERCOLLINS; SIOUX: STEVE RAPPORT/GETTY IMAGES;

L. A. Convention Center, May 12 to 13, la.rupaulsdragcon.com.

D R AG R AC E

RuPaul with queeny participants.

ART

T H E AT E R

› It wasn’t all toiling

› Charles Fuller’s 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning A Soldier’s Play hits town in this 2020 Tony Award-winning Best Revival directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon. A Black sergeant is murdered on a Louisiana Army base in 1944, and the search for his killer, led by Broadway’s Norm Lewis, results in uncomfortable truths.

Ahmanson Theatre, May 23 to June 25, centertheatregroup.org.

Not So Dark Ages in mud, disease, and tyranny. No, sometimes the Middle Ages were a damn good time, and these manuscripts prove it. Play and Pastimes in the Middle Ages features the clos-

est European patrons ever got to Instagram— images of pastimes we can all relate to, like chess and jousting. The Getty, May 16 to August 6, getty.edu.

Killing Time

CO N C E R T

Grateful Stead

› Not the Dead but a

reasonable facsimile, Dead & Company hits the area for two nights sans the late lead guitarist Jerry Garcia and original bassist Phil Lesh. But original members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, and Bob Weir will be there, accompanied by former Allman Brothers bassist Oteil Burbridge and John Mayer rocking lead guitar. Kia Forum, May 19 to 20, thekiaforum.com.

M OV I E

Fish Outta Water

› Pop star Halle Bailey sings like a fish in The Little Mermaid, a liveaction adaptation of the animated Disney classic.

Joining her are Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina, Javier Bardem, and Melissa McCarthy. In theaters May 26.

BOOK

COVID Relief

› No one wants to revisit the early days of COVID-19, unless they’re accompanied by our greatest living writers.

Margaret Atwood, Celeste Ng, Dave Eggers, John Grisham, R.L. Stine, David Byrne, Neil Gaiman, Rachel Kushner, Candace Bushnell, Scott Turow, and many others each wrote a character in Fourteen Days, a compelling novel set in a Lower East Side tenement. Out May 30.

S I O U XS I E SIOUX

T H E AT E R

Swinging Alice

Golovatenko sings Iago.

L.A. Opera, May 13 to June 4, laopera.org.

DA N C E

Modern Love

› Renowned choreographer Benjamin Millepied presents L.A. Dance Project: Romeo & Juliet Suite, a new version of

the Shakespeare classic

set to Prokofiev’s beloved score. Twelve of the company’s 16 dancers represent the warring families in this minimalist production, with a rotating cast playing the star-crossed lovers as a heterosexual couple, two men, and two women. Segerstrom Center for the Arts, May 12 to 14, scfta.org.

L . A . DA N C E P R OJ E C T: ROMEO & J U L I E T SU I T E

› Making its Music Center debut, Momix: Alice, a family-friendly blend of acrobatics, magic, and dance inspired by the Lewis Carroll classic, features the usual Wonderland suspects: a languorous Caterpillar, a quadrille-dancing lobster, frantic White Rabbits, and a mad Queen of Hearts. Ahmanson Theatre, May 19 to 21, musiccenter.org.

OUTDOORS

Strawberry Fields Forever

› Have you ever tried a strawberry nacho?

The expected and unexpected can be consumed at the California Strawberry Festival .

It will host more than 50 food booths, concerts, cooking demos, arts and crafts, and Strawberryland, featuring free rides for kids. Ventura County Fairgrounds, May 20 to 21, castrawberryfestival.org.

CO N C E R T

In Goth We Trust

› Drape yourself in black, the color of the Cruel World Festival, a 1980s goth, new

wave, and punk gathering with retro acts like Iggy Pop, Billy Idol, Siouxsie Sioux, Adam Ant, Echo & the Bunnymen, and other bands about whom you’ve wondered, “Whatever happened to . . . ?”

Brookside at the Rose Bowl, May 20, cruelworldfest.com.

L A M AG . C O M 2 9

Incoming

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MIXED MEDIA

Twin Peak

PLAYING TROUBLED AND TROUBLING TWINS IN AMAZON’S REMAKE OF DEAD RINGERS, RACHEL WEISZ TURNS IN PERFORMANCES THAT MARK THE PINNACLE OF HER CAREER

R

BY STEVE ERICKSON

A C H E L W E I S Z H A S never played a charmenstrual maelstrom of birth matter, stillborn children, acter like Elliot Mantle. In nearly 60 movies, and gore-splattered mothers dead from childbirth. If you plays, and TV shows over 30 years, she’s been don’t find this daunting enough, there awaits dinner parties likelier to play Beverly Mantle, Elliot’s twin that would give Buñuel nightmares, where vicious billionon the new Amazon TV series Dead Ringers. airesses host galleries of the beautiful and damned that Beverly is quieter, sensitive, feet so planted on the ground could eat the cast of Succession for breakfast and for whom as to seem weighed down by the gravity of life as much as nihilism is a fashion choice. Dead Ringers is the perfect the gravity of Earth; you would call her prim only in comseries for those who fret The Handmaid’s Tale has gotten parison with her sister. Elliot is all appetite, eating everyone a little too lighthearted. As written by executive producer else’s leftovers after plowing through her own debauched Alice Birch (a Succession writer, as it happens), the female feast of the moment. She’s cast also says “fuck” enough everything-everywhere-allto give Martin Scorsese a run at-once in the form of a single for his manhood. person, consuming nonstop What can’t be overlooked sex, booze, and blow; even in all this, however, is Weisz’s her gynecological practice work, which constitutes is another extracurricular something of a tour de force. frenzy where she coaxes her Its range extends beyond her patients’ husbands to expose able endeavors onstage as themselves whenever the Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar expectant mother is out of Desire in British Named Desire; the room.

TV’s Worricker trilogy, where Elliot and Beverly are she was the most impresgynecologists at the same sive of several high-profile hospital in the same city, actresses; and on the movie where they live together in screen as a doomed palace the same apartment. Obvious intriguer in The Favourite, sides of a single coin that, a librarian tracking down flipped in the air, might come ancient Egyptian secrets in down any moment as two, Mummy and a humanThe Mummy, the twins occasionally swap rights activist martyred in identities and sexual orientaGardener for The Constant Gardener, tions when Beverly literally which she won an Oscar. lets down her hair and Elliot None of those perforpins hers up. Based on the mances quite predicted the 1988 David Cronenberg feaferocity and wit of the Dead She’s everything-everywhereture of the same title (which Ringers role(s) she’s taken all-at-once in a single person. itself was based on a book over from the original movie’s based on a true story), Dead Jeremy Irons (the best work Ringers is the most recent he’s ever done), with Weisz entry in a prevailing television phenomenon: smart, wellmanaging to locate the dual personalities in each twin while written, and well-acted shows about horrible people named distinguishing the sisters from each other. Even when Elliot Mantle or Roy or Soprano or Lannister or White—from the impersonates Beverly in dress, appearance, and manner, Jersey Shore to the desolate spaces of New Mexico to the Weisz successfully communicates the true persona lurking castles and ruins of dystopian futures and futuristic Middle within both, as well as the coexisting implication that there’s Ages—amid other horrible people with no true persona there at all.

S I S T E R S AC T whom they do and say increasingly horThe last time TV acting was this complex and accomRachel Weisz rible things. plished, it was Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany ten years portrays twin gynecologists Caught up in the current TV sweepago—another example of an actor better than the show she played by Jeremy stakes in which every show attempts was in. For an actress even as familiar as Weisz, it’s a singuIrons in the 1988 original. to outdark the other, Dead Ringers is a lar achievement, times two.

3 0 L A M AG . C O M

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ON EXHIBIT

Pop Goes the Art Scene

WORKS BY KEITH HARING AND JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, STARS OF NEW YORK’S DOWNTOWN HEYDAY IN THE ’80S, ARE MAKING A SECOND SPLASH IN DTLA

BY MICHAEL SLENSKE

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1 . , 6 . : I VA N E K ATA M A S H V I L I ; 2 . : U N T I T L E D, 1 9 8 2 . E N A M E L A N D DAYG LO O N M E TA L . P R I VAT E CO L L E C T I O N / © K E I T H H A R I N G FO U N DAT I O N ;

T

HE L OS ANGELES art world is in a New York state of mind. One that partied at the Mudd Club, battled the AIDS crisis and Reagan’s culture wars, and watched Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring paint the East Village.

“It was the last generation that had to be in the same place physically if you wanted to learn about the avant garde,” says artist Kenny Scharf. “You couldn’t just get it on your phone.”

Angelenos have been coming together of late to reconnect with those voices. Last fall, John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres exhibited their plaster-cast portraits of South Bronx 1 residents at Charlie James Gallery in Chinatown. Scharf, born and based-again in L.A., reprised his Cosmic Cavern (grown out of the Cosmic Closet he made with Haring in the Bryant Park townhouse they once shared) at Honor Fraser last summer. This winter, gallerist Jeffrey Deitch hosted a retrospective for the “gothic futurist” graffiti writer Rammellzee at his Hollywood headquarters. And during L.A. Art Week, the Cubo-Expressionist George Condo christened Hauser & Wirth’s new West Hollywood megagallery inside the former Heritage Classics car showroom.

“I think there’s a lot about the 1980s that feels particularly relevant again today,” says Sarah Loyer, exhibitions manager at the Broad, where she curated Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody, opening May 27. “A lot of the issues that Haring addresses in his work are complex issues that remain central 6 today: environmentalism, capitalism, sexuality, and race.”

As an outwardly gay street artist, Haring rose to prominence in the New York scene by pasting cut-up collages around the city that reframed daily headlines (think “Reagan which can get lost amid the Pop sensibility of his work. To Slain by Hero Cop”) or meeting the public along its daily comwit: Loyer paired Haring’s Pop Shop, the SoHo curio store mute with his iconic Subway Drawings. Between 1980 and where he sold wares to the masses, opposite his capitalist-pig 1985, Haring made 5,000 of these chalk paintings. She also focused on his attenline illustrations on matte black advertising tion to race and sexuality. (During the run, blanks along the train platforms, where he Broad will also show works by several “There’s a lot about the introduced his “radiant baby” and “dancing Haring contemporaries.) the 1980s that dog” figures.

A blockbuster 1982 solo debut at Tony I F A R T I S F O R E V E R Y B O D Y seeks to feels particularly Shafrazi Gallery turned Haring into a global forge a deeper understanding of Haring’s relevant today.” superstar, one who had Madonna unveil her deeper pursuits, then the L.A. edition of Like a Virgin album at his birthday party Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure, wearing a pink leather suit he’d painted. which opened in March and is curated by That suit and some Subway Drawings paintings—along with the artist’s sisters, Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, is dozens of other rarely seen works—will be on view at Art Is an attempt to offer a more humanistic understanding of their for Everybody. As the first L.A. museum retrospective for trailblazing brother, whose life was cut short when he died of a the artist, it also focuses on Haring’s political engagement, drug overdose in 1988 at age 27. During the ensuing decades,

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NEWSPAPER FRAGMENTS AND TAPE ON PAPER. ©KEITH HARING FOUNDATION

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Basquiat’s neo-Expressionist paintings have made him one of the most influential and expensive artists in history.

Though they wanted their brother’s takes on Black history, social justice, and the era’s culture wars on full display, Basquiat’s sisters also see their maiden curatorial effort as a “love letter” to a visionary sibling. “There was a tenderness to the creation of this show, and it was really about adding Jean-Michel’s humanity to the story for the people who only knew him from the ’80s,” says Basquiat. Adds Heriveaux, “We thought it was important that Jean-Michel’s life didn’t just end at a guy who had a lot of girlfriends, who had combative relationships with his dealers.”

Set inside the Frank Gehry-designed Grand L.A., King Pleasure features nearly 200 rarely seen drawings, paintings, and bits of ephemera dating back to Basquiat’s childhood from the family’s personal collection. It debuted in New York last spring.

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1. Basquiat’s studio, re-created as part of the King Pleasure show; 2. untitled Haring painting from 1982; 3. Haring’s 1984 capitalist pig; 4. Madonna’s pink leather jacket; 5. a collage by Haring from 1980; 6. Basquiat works made from a fence outside his Venice studio.

“But we’re also focusing more on the L.A. side of the story,” says Basquiat. Their brother lived in L.A. for brief spells beginning in 1982, when he came here with Madonna, who lived with him at the Venice home of Larry Gagosian.

In fact, L.A. is where he produced some of his most iconic works, including his fence paintings, which began with two he made from the derelict patio he deconstructed outside his former Venice studio at the corner of Market and Speedway.

“There’s a lot of warmth and another side of Jean that you don’t normally get to see,” says Scharf, one of the 210,000 people who saw King Pleasure during its triumphant ninemonth New York run. “They had the Palladium bar and a replica of their childhood kitchen and his studio with all these real paintings just thrown about all over the floor. I was at that studio—they did a great job. It’s so sentimental, but in a beautiful way.”

L A M AG . C O M 3 3

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WELLNESS

WHEN IT COMES TO SERIOUS R AND R, NOTHING BEATS A LUXURIOUS SPA IN A DREAMY LOCALE. LUCKILY, WE ALREADY LIVE IN ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACES ON EARTH. SO, WHETHER YOU PREFER A STAYCATION OR A ROAD TRIP, HERE ARE FIVE RETREATS IN AND AROUND L.A.

BY RACHEL MARLOWE

● Fairmont Spa Century Plaza » True to its reputation as the “Hotel of the Future” (it was the first in L.A. to have color televisions when it opened in 1966), the recently revamped Fairmont Century 3 4 L A M AG . C O M

Plaza features a spa with cuttingedge wellness services. Standout offerings include biohacking treatments, designed by antiaging expert Dr. Oz Garcia, that combine an antigravity bed in an infrared sauna with neuroscience technology, Normatec

lymphatic drainage pants, LED light therapy, and neuroacoustics.

The Sunset massage incorporates acupressure and joint-release therapy, vibrational sound healing, and silken color therapy. And at the in-house Dr. Rita Rakus clinic— the award-winning

Harley Street doctor’s North American flagship—the Avenue of the Stars “Super Power” Facial utilizes the Dr. Rita Jetlift system, based on jet propulsion technology, to deliver streams of Growth Factor Serum and Argireline (aka liquid Botox) at a speed of more than 200 meters per second to reduce wrinkles in record time. » 2025 Avenue of the Stars, Century City, fairmontcentury plaza.com.

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Golden Door

» Fresh off a multimillion-dollar renovation and complete overhaul of the wellness destination’s iconic bathhouse and pools, Golden Door is now more Zen than ever.

Three nights is the minimum stay at this 600-acre ryokan-inspired property where, alongside facials, waxing, manis, pedis, and hair salon services, you will find Swedish, Thai, lomilomi, and Ayurvedic massage, EMDR healing,

breathwork, and hypnotherapy.

New amenities include a soaking tub with the choice of a warm cherry-blossom infusion that delivers antioxidants and skin-smoothing benefits or a mood-boosting cold plunge with Epsom salts for muscle recovery, better sleep, and an enhanced immune system. A wet room used for scrubs and the spa’s exceptional body treatments houses a seven-hose Vichy shower, while a LightStim LED experience room

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GREAT ESCAPES

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offers a full-body treatment to promote overall wellness and peak physiological function. » 777 Deer Springs Rd., San Marcos, goldendoor.com.

● Qua Baths & Spa » As with all things Vegas, “Go big, or go home” seems to be the motto at this 50,000square-foot Caesars Palace spa inspired by the ancient Roman tradition of relaxation (and decadence). Highlights

include men’s and women’s baths featuring three mineral-enriched pools: a warm tepidarium, a hot caldarium, and an icy frigidarium. Guests can also hang out in the Arctic Ice Room, where snowflakes cascade from the ceiling and a fountain dispenses shaved ice chips, or they can sweat it out on heated ceramic benches in the Laconium Room. With 51 treatment studios, two wet rooms with Vichy showers, a cedar sauna, an herbal steam room, a whirlpool, and a tea lounge, you can fill an entire weekend at Qua. Signature treatments include the Cleopatra Golden Goddess Facial, which incorporates 24-karat gold for a winning glow, and the Gentlemen’s Poker Facial, which promises to smooth

away stress and fine lines caused by frittering away money at the hotel’s legendary casino. » 3570 S. Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas, caesars.com

● Rancho La Puerta » Just three miles south of the U.S. border, Rancho La Puerta was founded as a health camp in 1940 and pioneered the modern wellness movement. Back then, guests brought their own tents and could pay $35 for a week or $17.50 if they helped with chores, such as working in the garden. Today, the 4,000-acre ranch has three swimming pools, four tennis courts, five hot tubs, saunas, steam rooms, and 11 gyms for restorative Pilates,

yoga, qigong, and tai chi classes. The men’s and women’s health centers offer a full range of spa services, including mountain sage hot stone massages; a Xocolatl Skin Replenishment ritual with cacao, the ancient Mexican food of the gods; and a signature body wrap with aromatic herbs. Although guests can still help

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1. Golden Door in San Marcos.

2. Rancho La Puerta in Baja California.

3. Two Bunch Palms in Desert Hot Springs.

4. Qua Baths & Spa at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

5. Fairmont Spa Century Plaza in Century City.

harvest crops in the property’s six-acre organic garden, now they pay for the privilege. » Baja Calif., Mexico, rancholapuerta.com.

● Two Bunch Palms » Located on top of a 600-year-old natural spring and one of the country’s purest aquifers,

Two Bunch Palms is famous for its mineral pools, in which low-sulfur, lithium-rich water emerges from the earth at temperatures above 100 degrees. After an extensive renovation, the hotel has tripled its bathing options with the addition of new concrete and teak mineral tubs and a fully redesigned spa with nine treatment rooms dotting the property. Instead of the formalities associated with traditional spas, the vibe is relaxed, and the spa menu is 100 percent California woo-woo with an Adaptogen Wrap, a full-body mud mask containing ashwagandha and chaga; a Good Herb CBD Facial, which uses the healing properties of CBD to pull out toxins, minimize inflammation, and brighten the complexion; sound baths with symphonic and planetary gongs and alchemy crystal Himalayan singing bowls; and sage cleanses. » 67425 Two Bunch Palms Trail, Desert Hot Springs, twobunchpalms.com.

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M OV I E S

R O O F TO P C I N E M A C LU B / R OW DT L A

Spring Screening AS ANGELENOS ADJUST TO RUBBING SHOULDERS AGAIN WITH PERFECT STRANGERS, WE PRESENT THE MOST UNIQUE MOVIE EXPERIENCES IN TOWN

AMERICAN C I N E M AT H E Q U E

● A self-proclaimed “year-round film festi-

val,” this L.A.-based nonprofit organization focuses on bringing cinephiles together to celebrate the art of cinema. Screenings are regularly held at the Aero Theatre and the Los Feliz 3 Theatre. The Egyptian Theatre is currently closed until further notice. Follow the group’s Instagram or visit its website for updates on films, discussions, book signings, and other events. ($8 to $13) > Multiple locations, americancinematheque.com.

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BRAIN DEAD STUDIOS

● Built as a silent-film theater in 1942,

Brain Dead Studios has become a meeting ground for film, food, and fashion enthusiasts alike. Each month, it releases a calendar of selected films based on a theme. Recent screenings billed under “XXX” included Showgirls and Barbarella.

Visit the Slammers Cafe patio for coffee, food, and sweets, or shop at the store upstairs, where you’ll find clothing, accessories, and vinyl records. ($12) > 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Beverly Grove, studios.wearebraindead.com.

CINESPIA

● Famous for events at Hollywood

Forever Cemetery, Cinespia will celebrate its twenty-second anniversary this summer with picnic-style movie showings held also at the Greek Theatre and Los Angeles State Historic Park. As with Street Food Cinema, guests are encouraged to bring a blanket or low-seated chairs. Last year’s offerings included Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ghostbusters, and Twilight. A highlight was special screenings at the French Baroquestyled Los Angeles Theatre, built in 1931. ($22) > Multiple locations, cinespia.org.

R O O F TO P : CO U R T E SY R O O F TO P C I N E M A C LU B / R OW DT L A

B Y N ATA L I E M A L I N S

BRAIN DEAD ST U D I O S

ST R E E T F O O D C I N E M A

ST R E E T FO O D : CO U R T E SY ST R E E T FO O D C I N E M A ; B R A I N D E A D : CO U R T E SY B R A I N D E A D ST U D I O S ; C I N E S P I A : K E L LY L E E B A R R E T T/ © C I N E S P I A .O R G ; A M E R I C A N : E M M A M C I N T Y R E /G E T T Y I M AG E S

A M E R I C A N C I N E M AT H E Q U E

D AV I D G E F F E N T H E AT E R

● Located at the Academy Museum of

Motion Pictures, this 34,000-square-foot state-of-the-art theater seats nearly 1,000 people and presents acclaimed films, old and new. Experience the Sunday Supper menu at Fanny’s restaurant, which currently pairs Italian wine with Godfather-inspired dishes such as Don Vito Corleone’s Bread and Olive Oil and Clemenza’s Sunday Gravy. ($5 to $10) > 6067 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-City, academymuseum.org.

IPIC WESTWOOD

● If theaters adopted the luxury tenets of air travel, then Ipic would qualify as firstclass. Seating is spacious and plusher than most home couches. A side table accommodates all the accoutrements of a movie experience or an actual meal, like spicy tuna on crispy rice and tandoori chicken skewers. Feeling chilly? At the touch of a button,

a server will deliver a blanket. This kind of pampering doesn’t come cheap. Membership costs $29, but the payoff in discounted tickets and peace of mind is immediate. ($12 to $25) > Multiple locations, ipic.com.

MELROSE ROOFTOP T H E AT R E

● Cozy up on warm summer nights and

experience rooftop cinema where some of America’s favorite films were born. Nestled in West Hollywood on the roof of E.P. & L.P. restaurant, the venue offers several viewing experiences, such as the ultimate date night, which includes reserved beanbag chairs, champagne, blankets, gelato, charcuterie, popcorn, and candy. ($25 to $199) > 603 N. La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood, melroserooftoptheatre.com.

ROOF TOP CIN EM A CLU B

● Whether you’re visiting the Arts District or

the Downtown Historic Core location, expect

CINESPIA

a spectacular view of the L.A. skyline alongside Hollywood’s cult classics, which range from family-appropriate The Sandlot to adult favorite Pulp Fiction. You can grab vegan popcorn and a beer or mocktail. For a more immersive experience, try the wireless headphones. There’s even extra-cushy seating for the more sensitive tuchus. ($20 to $25) > ROW DTLA, 777 S. Alameda St.; Level Hotel, 888 S. Olive St., rooftopcinemaclub.com.

STREET FOOD CINEMA

● Street Food Cinema brings together

some of the city’s best street-food vendors and fan-favorite films to the Autry Museum, Los Angeles State Historic Park, Will Rogers State Historic Park, and other noteworthy sites. This month, it’ll show Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and host separate Golden Girls-themed nights, screening several acclaimed episodes featuring the silver-haired darlings. ($25 to $119) > Multiple locations, streetfoodcinema.com.

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W H E R E TO E AT N OW

New & Notable Flor Y Solera A RT S D I S T R I C T

● At this chic tapas bar

from the team behind the Factory Kitchen, chef Mònica Angelats brings a new level of Spanish cooking to L.A. The food is delicate while also offering comforting dishes like her signature fideus rossejats amb cloïsses, a Catalan toasted noodle dish with clams and aioli.

1335 E. 6th St., florysolera.com.

LA DOLCE VITA, ONCE A FAVORITE HANGOUT OF FRANK SINATRA, IS BACK WITH A BANG B Y H E A T H E R P L A T T

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E H I N D T H E WA L L S of the windowless Barman Building in Beverly Hills, La Dolce Vita— the legendary restaurant and Frank Sinatra-Sammy Davis Jr. hangout that opened in 1966 but closed in March 2020 because of the pandemic—is back.

The front door, with its massive cheetahshaped handle, swings ajar to reveal a luscious new dining room, and maître d’ Christos Kalabogias (formerly of Tower Bar) hands you an aperitivo.

“We wanted to really maintain the integrity of what this room was, but to give it our spin,” says new owner Marc Rose of his and business partner Med Abrous’s renovation of the 79-seat celebrity haunt once frequented by everyone from the Reagans to Tom Ford to George Raft (who, like Sinatra, was an original investor).

Abrous and Rose of Call Mom—the company behind the Spare Room, Genghis Cohen, and Panorama Room—are only the third owners since B A DA B I N G the place opened Enjoy a gin cockdecades ago. For them, tail like Come Fly today’s restaurant is an With Me from the bar. The drinks homage to both its initial evoke a bygone incarnation and their era. And the decor? own roots at East Coast Fugget about it.

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Italian red-sauce restaurants—the kind of places they grew up going to as childhood friends in New York City. But in this new rendition, the restaurateurs acknowledge its sense of place in Los Angeles.

“This is a cinematic Italian restaurant.

We are in Hollywood,” says Rose. The space conjures the feeling of Scorsese’s Casino, and the menu, spearheaded by chef Nick Russo (E.P. & L.P.), is designed to please the Beverly Hills palate. Along with classics like spaghetti and meatballs, ricotta-and-spinach-stuffed manicotti, and veal parmigiana, the menu offers bright, lighter fare with plenty of seafood like bigeye tuna tartare and branzino piccata. Russo fine-tuned eggplant caponata with black currants, chopped Marcona almonds, and basil served with imported buffalo mozzarella. A less-creamy, moretangy Caesar salad fits comfortably into the neighborhood. The bucatini al limone is made with preserved lemon and couldn’t be more lemon-forward.

“It is a good vibe in this room already,” says Rose, “and we’re very blessed and lucky to have it.”

9785 S. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, ladolcevitabeverlyhills.com.

P H O T O G R A P H BY S H E L BY M O O R E

W E S T H O L LY WO O D

● East Coast oysters are

flown in daily to this outpost of the Dallas-based seafood restaurant. Cozy, blue booths make for a nostalgic experience along with ice-cold martinis, cheeseburgers, and truffleParmesan fries.

9255 W. Sunset Blvd., hudsonhousehp.com.

Lingua Franca F R O G T OW N

● Wax Paper owners

Lauren and Peter Lemos’s long-awaited CaliforniaItalian food destination is finally here, serving comforting fare like rootbeer-braised beef cheek ragu, miso-grilled opah, and grilled pork collar with brown-butter corn bread.

2990 Allesandro St., linguafrancaco.com.

F LO R Y S O L E R A : C A R LO S C H AV E Z VO L P E

The Italian Job

Hudson House

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L O W LY S T E P AWAY from the stove. Steer clear

of the microwave. Don’t even think about brewing coffee. Mother’s Day calls for brunch, but not prepared by well-meaning family. Leave this meal to the professionals. Here are five places to take moms (and grandmas) for brunch on Mother’s Day. And if you can’t get your act together to make it happen now, these restaurants are open year-round.

1. AGNES RESTAURANT & CHEESERY

A cheese board is a great way to start before indulging in the creative takes on comfort food.

Sticky toffee pancakes and créme brûlée toast with whipped chèvre and orange blossom honey are sweet in all the right ways. » 40 W. Green St., Pasadena, 626-389-3839, agnesla.com.

2. A L L DAY BA BY

Look, Ma, No Cooking!

FIVE ELEGANT EATERIES THAT WILL ADD A DASH OF PANACHE TO MOTHER’S DAY BRUNCH

This spot is best known for biscuit sandwiches with scrambled eggs, American cheese, and strawberry jam, but every menu item is best in class. Don’t miss the stupendous weekend-only cinnamon roll sporting labneh frosting. » 3200 W. Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake, 323-741-0082, alldaybabyla.com.

3. ASTERID

L.A. native Ray Garcia honors the Korean community with a short rib bibimbap and crispy rice served in a sizzling castiron skillet. He demonstrates a

deft touch with lighter fare, like salads and bigeye tuna tataki with avocado, yuzu kosho, and cactus fruit on nori rafts. » 141 S. Grand Ave., downtown, 213-972-3535, asteridla.com.

4. DAMIAN

The menu is fueled by California ingredients and features highlights like tuna tostadas with cucumber and chile toreado and crispy fried chicken coated in pasilla honey.

Compelling desserts include kouign-amann piped with cajeta. » 2132 E. 7th Pl., downtown, 213-270-0178, damiandtla.com.

5. RYLA

Weekend brunch includesa rosy tuna poke tostada served atop avocado puree with black sesame furikake. Japanese-style fried chicken gets the Nashville hotchicken treatment. The Taiwanese egg crepe, another crowdpleaser, features a scallion pancake cradling cheesy eggs and Nueske’s bacon. » 1220 Hermosa Ave., Hermosa Beach, 424-247-9881, eatryla.com.

B Y J O S H UA L U R I E F L A PJAC K E D

Ricotta, blueberries, pistachios, and maple syrup elevate All Day Baby’s hotcake.

P H O T O G R A P H BY NATA S H A L E E

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H OW I G O T T H AT L O O K

Ginger Spice BENJAMIN FARRINGTON CUT HIS SARTORIAL TEETH AS A SALES SPECIALIST AT VINCE, THEN AS A SUPERVISOR AT ITALIAN LUXURY BRAND BOTTEGA VENETA. LAST YEAR, THOUGH, THE RED-HEADED 33-YEAR-OLD STYLIST WENT INDEPENDENT, STARTING UP HIS OWN BRAND—THE APTLY NAMED GINGER TART, A CURATED COLLECTION OF VINTAGE ITEMS THAT ADHERE TO HIS SIMPLE YET NUANCED FASHION PHILOSOPHY: “IT’S ALL ABOUT EFFORTLESS EASE, WITH A DOSE OF CAMP.”

BY JULIUS MILLER

• GROOMING

“I go to an old-style barber shop in Palm Springs called Luigi’s. They’ve been in business 30 years! With a haircut, beard sculpting, and straight-razor shaves, I walk out feeling like a new person.”

• N E C K L AC E

“I call this my ‘diamondstore diamond,’ but I have yet to confirm if it is real or not. I found it at Berda Paradise in Silver Lake.”

• TURTLENECK

“I found this vintage merino wool black turtleneck at a charity shop in Palm Springs.

I feel like Steve Jobs wearing it . . . just powerful.”

• B E LT

“This is a vintage handwoven belt from Kenneth Cole. I think it’s from the ’80s or early ’90s, but I just love the whipstitch detail and the big silver buckle.”

• C LU TC H “This is Maison Margiela, and it’s called the glam-slam pouch—it’s super puffy and padded. I thought the graffiti was super interesting, and I love the texture on it as well.”

• PA N T S “These pants are linen silk with a bit of hemp to them, which gives them a sheen appearance. They’re from a Belgian designer named Jan-Jan Van Essche, and I got them on sale from Ssense.”

• OV E R COAT

“This is a special calfskin leather Bottega Veneta coat by Daniel Lee. This was from his very first runway collection with the brand in 2019.

When I first saw it, I was obsessed.

Eventually, I was able to get it for a steal.”

• SHOES

“I found them at an Out of the Closet in West Hollywood, and they still had their original Barneys New York tag. I’ll keep them forever—it’s a men’s Mary Jane shoe, which is very bizarre.”

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P H O T O G R A P H E D BY L E N K A U L R I C H OVA

By Hummingbird Nest

Breathtaking Mountain & Vineyard Views A brand-new wedding and private event venue at Hummingbird Nest. The QVineyard package includes a 24-hour site rental, all essential rental items, a bridal dressing suite, and luxury restrooms. 2023 Saturday’s still available! photos by Gloria Mesa Photography & Rene Zadori Photography

HUMMINGBIRDNESTEVENTS

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I N F O @ H B N E S T. C O M

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N E I G H B O R H O O D WAT C H

Old Town Gets With It

PASADENA’S FORMERLY SLEEPY HISTORICAL DISTRICT IS NOW A HOTBED OF CHIC EATERIES, SERIOUS SHOPPING, AND MULTICULTURAL DELIGHTS B Y M E R L E G I N S B E R G

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O B O DY ’ S S U R E when the shorthand for Pasadena—“Old Town”—morphed into “Old Pasadena.” But Pasadenans will chide you if you get it wrong. This idyllic neighborhood 11 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, known for Victorian, Arts and Crafts, and Art Deco mansions; the landmark homes of wealthy families like the Wrigleys and the Gambles; the Rose Parade (dating back to 1890) and the Rose Bowl, is now more identified with the Jet Propulsion Lab and NASA, Caltech, the Norton Simon Museum, and ArtCenter College of Design. But with a suddenly spritely food and shopping culture popping up, plus some oldies but goodies, it’s attracting both Old Pas locals as well as the new Pas curious.

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There’s a plethora of designer resale shops around SoCal, but if you get off on scouting that Golden Fleece of a deal, head to Ritz Resale.

Owner Jennifer Simmons’s late mother founded Ritz, and now the younger Simmons presides over rooms stuffed with amazing finds (many from celeb closets). Spotted recently: handbags by Fendi ($249), Lanvin ($349), and Dior ($389); tops by Fuzzi by Jean Paul Gaultier ($75); a lace Chanel jacket ($1,900); and Prada sunglasses ($75). » 2028 E. Villa St., ritzresale.com.

Why is old-school Southern cobbler better than pie?

Because it’s got crust on both the bottom and top! Peach, berry, cherry, and apple honeybaked cobblers are made lovingly by proprietor Clifton Powell, his wife, and their grown daughter in the backroom oven. Order warm for buttery crusts (and be sure to preorder for holidays). You can also grab one à la mode to go—plus homemade seafood gumbo and all manner of barbecue and sides. » 33 N. Catalina Ave., thegourmetcobblerfactory.com.

Ritz Resale

The Gourmet Cobbler Factory

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One Colorado

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When famed Cantonese chef Peter Lai (Hong Kong’s Peninsula Hotel, San Gabriel’s Embassy Kitchen) and GM Ken Mak took over Pasadena’s Colette last November, the brunch spot instantly morphed into a packed house for cravers of unique new age/fusion Cantonese cuisine.

While the menu’s packed with gourmet varieties of dim sum, fried rice, and more, the most awe-inspiring dishesare “off the menu”—like Lai’s lobster sticky rice. It’s complicated, crunchy, and packs a punch—as does its price tag: over $200 per meal. » 975 N. Michillinda Ave., colettepasadena.com.

Talk about a one-track mind. The 70-year-old self-described leading model hobby store both nationally and internationally is like a time machine trip back into American railroad history. If you’re not a true miniature train/railroad enthusiast, you will be by the time you leave. If the old railroad signs, books, set pieces, and detailed railcar parts don’t get you, owners Fred Hill and Brian Brooks and their stories will make a devotee out of you. » 2490 E. Colorado Blvd., thewhistlestop.com.

Colette

Something’s always cooking at Old Pasadena’s historic Victorian shopping complex, chockablock with restaurants and stores in no less than 243,508 square feet of prime Old Pas real estate. The newest addition is jeweler Gorjana, with L.A.’s Alo Yoga, Vuori (performance apparel), and Brilliant Earth (ethically sourced diamonds) opening later this year. In June, there will be outdoor concerts every Saturday and, in July, Saturday movies for the whole family. » 41 Hugus Alley, onecolorado.com.

The Whistle Stop

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Octavia’s Bookshelf

This past February, former marketing exec Nikki High realized her decade-long dream of opening a BIPOCauthor-themed bookstore in her hometown of Pasadena.

“I was always a reader,” High says. “Always in the library or bookstore.” Octavia’s is L.A.’s only Black-woman-owned bookstore based on literary authors like High’s namesake inspiration, Pasadena native Octavia Butler, particularly with Leimert Park’s Eso Won books shuttering after three decades. » 1361 N. Hill Ave., octaviasbookshelf.com.

P H O T O G R A P H E D BY T H O M A S D R O TA R

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Local Legends

B Y M AT T H E W S P E C K T O R

Requiem for a Dude A DECADE AFTER SHAKING UP THE LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC , GUSTAVO DUDAMEL IS EXITING FOR A GIG AS CONDUC TOR OF THE NEW YORK PHIL. AS L. A .

CONTEMPL ATES HIS DEPARTURE, THE 42-YEAR-OLD VENEZUEL AN FORMER PRODIGY LEAVES BEHIND A LOT OF MEMOR ABLE MUSIC—AND AN UNCERTAIN LEGACY

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T H E WA R BE T W E E N

New York and Los Angeles has gone on for so long, it is practically an institution of its own by now. Each city tends still to expose the uncertainties and insecurities of the other.

Los Angeles, not New York, may be the real cultural capital at this point, with an artistic history as rich throughout the past century as any other world city, but somehow the American imagination’s compass remains primed to New York.

This is what makes Gustavo Dudamel’s departure from the Los Angeles Philharmonic so vexing. It picks at old P H O T O G R A P H E D B Y S L AVA M O G U T I N

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questions and old wounds. Not only is the conductor leaving us, after all; he is leaving us for New York, where he will assume the position of music director at the New York Philharmonic once his contract here expires. On Dudamel’s trip to Manhattan in March, which amounted to a victory lap to mark his appointment, reporters fussed over his famous mop of curly hair, pressed him to declare his loyalty to the Yankees or the Mets, and treated him like, well, a star. (In response, Dudamel blurted, “I feel like Mickey Mouse!” a comment that seemed to propose both that L.A.’s celebrity values may have infiltrated him as well as some ambivalence about this fact.)

Dudamel is a star, of course: a boy genius who led his first orchestra at 12 and assumed the music directorship of the L.A. Phil in 2009, when he was 28, whose blend of exuberance, invention, and radiant charisma—leavened with just enough introspection—seems to match perfectly the city’s own. Born in Venezuela, he is a product of El Sistema, the country’s renowned publicly funded music education program, and his own dedication to 46 L A M AG.C OM

midlife divorce. (Dudamel divorced childhood music education, both as his wife of nine years in 2015 and the longtime artistic director of the married María Valverde, a Spanish Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra film star, less than two years later.) at home and as director of Youth What if—one runs the risk of sour Orchestra Los Angeles (established grapes here, but the question must in 2007 and modeled on El Sistema), be asked—Dudamel’s departure made him a perfect fit for a city as isn’t quite the crippling blow to our diverse and vibrant as this one. If ever city many have prothere was a conductor posed? What if (even suited to grow the philif we might be asking harmonic’s audience and Not only this question from a the audience for classidefensive position not cal music beyond their is Dudamel unlike that of a jilted traditional demographleaving us, romantic partner—after ics—white, wealthy, and he’s leaving all, cities can have their older—it was Dudamel, feelings hurt, too) he or “the Dude,” as we us for wasn’t actually that have come to rather proNew York. spectacular as a conprietarily call him. ductor? What if he was But what of that starmerely facile, and his dom? Celebrity has a conducting lacked emotional depth? tendency to reduce talent, even of More than one critic has suggested the most prodigious kind, to a series as much—that all that star power has of narrow gestures, a sort of mimeoserved to cover up the ultimate sin graph of itself. The Dude sure seemed for any artist, let alone a composer, to embrace the L.A. lifestyle, to take which is to say, a certain shallowness, quickly to Soho House and Osteria which is, of course, the accusation Mozza, and having a hot dog at Pink’s that has been lobbed at Los Angeles named in his honor. And although and Los Angelenos since the dawn of anyone’s romantic life is truly nobody time. Aha, this city’s detractors sneer. else’s business, to undergo that other He was a perfect fit for L.A.!

Los Angeles rite of passage, the

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1. Dudamel rehearses the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra.

2. His honorary Pink’s hot dog, “The Dude.” 3. Immortalized on The Simpsons.

It’s a prickly line of inquiry, and if I number myself largely among the lovelorn, having been charmed by Dudamel’s face beaming down from innumerable billboards since his arrival, by his clear and obvious joy whenever he assumed the podium at the Phil, by the mix of playfulness and pensiveness, the vivid sense of metaphor he displays with his orchestra (“Make it sound more like champagne, less like moonshine!” he exhorts in the 2022 documentary ¡Viva Maestro!), that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth pursuing. No less than Alex Ross, the New Yorker’s esteemed, longtime classical music critic, wrote a recent column opining that Dudamel’s move to New York might not be such a great prize after all, noting that, as far back as 2009, the conductor’s style had struck him as “controlled, sometimes a little predictable” and declaring that Dudamel’s work has failed to mature since. The Wall Street Journal’s David Mermelstein recently observed that, with a few notable exceptions, he’s remained unmoved by the conductor’s work, citing a “clumsily staged” rendition of Wagner as a particular nadir and calling his readings “voluptuous but vague.” This may be simply a matter of tempering expectations or hidebound critics abreacting to Dudamel’s appointment, part of the result of what the New York Times complained recently was the creeping transformation of Manhattan into an imitation Los Angeles.

The truth is, this isn’t the first time the New York Phil has taken cues from its mirror institution on the opposite coast. Indeed, everything from its recruitment of Deborah Borda, the L.A. Philharmonic’s former chief executive; the renovation of its auditorium along the lines of our own Walt Disney Concert Hall; even its rumored consideration of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Dudamel’s predecessor here, as a candidate to lead its orchestra (not to mention its tapping former L.A. Phil wunderkind Zubin Mehta as conductor in 1978), suggests a set of cultural insecurities that might be running the other way for once. But whatever Dudamel might mean to Manhattan and a philharmonic with its own dazzling

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lineage of leaders, from Mahler to Boulez to Leonard Bernstein (whom Dudamel credits as a profound inspiration dating back to his childhood in Venezuela), isn’t really our concern.

Rather, what does he mean to us as Angelenos? Whether his departure is or isn’t a blow to the soul of the city, what in either case do we stand to gain or lose? How might we replace him? And what kind of legacy does this now-middle-aged maestro who, when he arrived 14 years ago, was still an unproven, if undeniable, sensation, leave behind?

Fourteen years—it will be 17 by the time Dudamel actually departs, at the end of the 2025-2026 season— is a long time, long enough to leave a mark upon not just the institution of the L.A. Philharmonic, but upon the city itself. Former longtime member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky, whose advocacy for music and the arts in L.A. stretches back decades (among other things, Yaroslavsky was a key mover in the renovation of the Hollywood Bowl in the 1990s and the construction of Disney hall), put it to me this way: “He mined the cultural diversity of this city in a profound way. The imprint he has made, not just on the classical music scene, but on the way we can bring people together through the arts, will be with this city forever.”

If the Los Angeles Philharmonic is, as Zachary Woolfe wrote in the New York Times in 2018, “the most important orchestra in America.

Period,” then Dudamel is an enormous part of how it came to be that way. Dudamel and Borda, his most passionate advocate—their stories cannot be disentangled, really, as it was she who oversaw his hiring when she was chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and who, now, has hired him away in her current role as chief executive officer at the New York Philharmonic—have unquestionably reshaped classical music in Los Angeles. “The Germans have a word for it,” Borda told me, “which I’m not going to be able to pronounce, but it means ‘a talent you hear once in a hundred years.’ Gustavo was that.

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and an artist in what should be his midcareer prime. As one insider on the Los Angeles cultural scene who’d been praising Dudamel’s enormous talent, energy, and charisma told me: “People want him to be extraordinary. And for the most part, he is.”

For the most part. The phrase gives one the feeling that it is possible to be damned with extreme and not just faint praise, that the size of an artist’s talent—even a generational one—can remain somehow incommensurate with that of his reputation. The conveyer belt to stardom started in this instance exceedingly early, as Dudamel became music director of the Simón Bolívar youth orchestra when he S TA R T R E AT M E N T was all of 18 and his fame grew Dudamel with wife María Valverde exponentially from there. When this and son Martin. is the case, particularly in classical music—where prodigies have been He brings a joy and a level of comexalted and mythologized since munication with both orchestra and the days of Telemann, Mozart, and audience. That kind of combustion is Rossini—a magical thinking starts what you look for.” to crowd the picture. As Woolfe put But if the L.A. Phil wasn’t exactly it: “Reliance on personalities has moribund when Borda assumed its been a problem in classical music reins in 2000—the Finnish conducand certainly here in America for a tor-composer Salonen had already long, long time.” established himself as How, then, to trithe orchestra’s music angulate Dudamel’s director, and construcIs Dudamel talent alongside his tion was underway charisma and reputaon Disney hall—she difficult tion, and how to do it was the driving force to replace? against the backdrop who reshaped the “No,” one of a city that has Philharmonic into an a reputation for feedinstitution for the new insider said ing charisma until century. By erasing its flatly. it turns into its dark multimillion-dollar opposite, vanity? A deficit, commissioning young conductor with increasing amounts of star qualities, one who arrives in new music by contemporary composLos Angeles not quite fully formed ers, sharpening the institution’s reach but with all the promise in the into the world of youth education, world? One could take an ungenerand—above all—by hiring Dudamel, ous view, squint, and see in it only Borda oversaw the Phil’s ascent into the composer’s frizzy curls and warda truly world-class institution. robe, with its meticulously chosen But the question remains as California casual accents, even to whether Dudamel’s detractors his preference for exactly the right have a point. No one can deny kind of local delicacy (a profile the conductor’s ability—he is, as that ran in this magazine in 2019 Woolfe told me recently, a “genrecounted that Dudamel ducked out erational talent”—but it’s fair to on a fancy reception during his question whether he has been able first visit to Los Angeles and highto maximize that talent, to truly tailed it to Pink’s for a chili dog fulfill its promise during the years instead). If “the Dude,” as he became that have seen him transform from a prodigy into a public personality (CO N T I N U E D O N PAG E 9 1 )

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and enhance the overall campus through a native-plant-focused landscaping program.

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The Late Late Show host is leaving the airwaves—and Los Angeles—as the late-night format struggles to stay awake. Will the last talk show host left please turn out the lights?

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WHEN JAMES CORDEN FIRST

arrived on late-night television, it felt a bit like CBS had invited a total stranger into America’s bedrooms.

Nobody had a clue who he was, except for maybe a handful of theater buffs who’d seen him strut his stuff in a few Broadway productions. He certainly didn’t look or sound anything like the beanpole-shaped, midwestern-twanged talk show hosts—the Jack Paars, the Johnny Carsons, the David Lettermans—who’d filled the late-night airwaves for so many years before him.

I mean, he was British. What was that about?

Nine years later, though, as Corden, 44, prepares to depart The Late Late Show and return to Britain, it’s hard to imagine the time slot—or Los Angeles, where he’s made his home since former CBS head Les Moonves plucked him from relative obscurity and hired him for the hosting gig—without his infectious, knucklehead energy.

Carpool Karaoke, Drop the Mic, Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts (you know, when Corden made celebrities choose between answering embarrassing questions or eating gross foods like dried caterpillars or ghost pepper hot sauce). It all made must-see TV out of an otherwise dying time slot.

Last April, when he first announced his plans to depart the show, both he and the f lacks at CBS tried to make it cr ystal clear that he was leaving entirely of his own accord. He thanked his “extraordinarily patient” L A M AG . C O M 6 3

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1. Corden’s Carpool Karaoke with First Lady Michelle Obama netted 82 million views on YouTube. 2. Vogue editor Anna Wintour plays Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts in a 2017 segment. 3. Tom Cruise puts Corden through fighter jet school in 2022.

bosses at the network for their understanding while he agonized over the decision. Most of the stories written about his exit focused on CBS’s efforts to dissuade him from going. The Daily Mail quoted a CBS source who said, “We desperately tried to keep him for longer, but James only wanted to do one final year.” Deadline reported that the network had dangled two- and three-year contract extensions, but Corden declined. CBS CEO George Cheeks exclaimed, “We wish he could stay longer.”

That night last April when Corden told viewers that he was leaving the show, he sounded like a man struggling w ith an ex istentia l cr isis, admitting it was the hardest decision he’d ever made and vowing to “go out with a bang,” which he most certainly

will. His final show, on April 28, will be preceded by a three-hour primetime special, with Tom Cruise, who most recently appeared on the show to teach Corden how to fly a fighter jet, reportedly joining Corden for a musical number at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood.

But beneath all this hoopla and hyperbole and well-deserved celebration, there’s one essential bit of information that nobody at CBS or on The Late Late Show is daring to say out loud (at least, not on the record).

And that is, Corden’s show was wildly unprofitable and may well have been heading to the chopping block whether he stayed or not.

Well-placed sources tell me The Late Late Show was costing $60 million to $65 million a year to produce

but was netting less than $45 million.

“It was simply not sustainable,” says one executive. “CBS could not afford him anymore.”

Even if Corden had wanted to stay in his seat, there was bound to be a latenight reckoning. He would have faced a multimillion-dollar pay cut or painful staff reductions or both, according to two sources who worked with him closely. No wonder he wanted to move back home to England.

Television budgets are typically well-kept secrets inside major media companies like Paramount Global, which owns CBS, so reporters have to rely on a different set of data to judge a show’s success: Nielsen ratings. There, too, a reckoning was obvious. In the pre-cable, pre-internet era, Carson could draw 10 million viewers a night.

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client who guests on a late-night show and barely hears from anyone afterward. A question hovers in the air: “Was anyone watching?” Was it worth getting dressed and manicured and made up?

Another question: After Corden is gone, is there any reason for late-night TV to continue? Or has the culture, like Corden himself, moved on?

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MOST HISTORIES OF LATE-NIGHT

As competition mounted, Letterman averaged 3 million to 5 million. Now, all three 11:30 p.m. stars—Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, and Jimmy K immel—rea ch 5 million, combined. That shrinkage has hurt the 12:30 a.m. shows, too. When Corden debuted, in 2015, he was averaging around 1.6 million viewers. Lately, he’s down to 700,000 to 800,000 a night and fewer than 200,000 viewers in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic that advertisers (and publicists) most covet.

Late-night shows used to be the engine that propelled pop culture. An appearance on Carson or Letterman could make or break a comic’s career.

An apology on Jay Leno’s show could save a career ( just ask Hugh Grant).

But that influence has evaporated.

Every publicist has a story about a

begin with The Tonight Show and Steve Allen, its first host (followed by Jack Paar, then Carson, then Leno, then Fallon). But the genre owes a huge debt to Pepsodent, which sponsored a massively popular late-night radio variety show hosted by Bob Hope. The show, which first aired in 1938, featured many now-familiar late-night staples—a stand-up host, a topical monologue, songs, guests, and gags. It was a massive hit. Hope and his crew provided something that’s perpetually in demand: companionship.

In the early years of television, stars like Allen brought the same approach to the small screen. The Tonight Show was called Tonight when it launched in 1954, in symmetry with NBC’s morning show, Today, which had launched two years earlier.

Allen’s success stirred competition from CBS and ABC, but NBC maintained decades of late-night dominance after the droll, Nebraska-born Carson (a former magician) signed on to host The Tonight Show in 1962, a perch he maintained for 30 years.

Carson’s power and stature is impossible to fathom now. He could carve careers out of a single appearance (George Carlin, Andy Kaufman, Jim Carrey, Bill Maher, Eddie Murphy, Ellen DeGeneres, Roseanne Barr, Drew Carey, Jerry Seinfeld, not to mention Leno and Letterman—they all got a boost on The Tonight Show).

His final show, in 1992, netted more than 50 million viewers. At this point, the Carson era has been over for even longer than it lasted, but he is still The One: Almost every person I called for this story invoked his name.

“Johnny was the king,” says Rob Burnett, a longtime executive producer of Letterman’s The Late Show. “And when he was doing his show, it was

GREG GUTFELD

His Fox show, Gutfeld!, is the most-watched latenight show, with about 2.1 million viewers.

J I M M Y FA L L O N

The Tonight Show draws about 1.06 million viewers a night on NBC.

STEPHEN COLBERT

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert averages about 1.3 million viewers a night on CBS.

JIMMY KIMMEL

Jimmy Kimmel Live! pulls in about 1.6 million viewers a night on ABC.

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the only thing to watch at 11:30.” This was partly because the other networks tried and failed to mount successful competitors and partly because there were only a handful of networks at the time. Even in the post-Carson era, when Leno and Letterman feuded for late-night primacy, “it was sort of like you ran a restaurant with an exit off I-5,” Burnett says. “That doesn’t exist anymore. There isn’t an I-5. There are a thousand different interstates and back roads.” When I tried that analogy on a Corden staffer, they blurted out, “Yes—and people don’t even need to get in their cars anymore!”

But the atomization of television and all other media is nothing new.

The more interesting and instructive story is about how late-night hosts like Corden have adjusted—and whether they can keep going in the long term.

Some previous hosts are skeptical.

Craig Kilborn was the inaugural host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, between 1996 and 1998, and then the second host of The Late Late Show, following Tom Snyder, between 1999 and 2004. When I got ahold of him, he was in Joshua Tree, camping in a 1995 Volkswagen EuroVan. “Let me be tactful and somewhat gentle because I know and admire the guys currently working in late-night,” Kilborn said, “but when I left late-night, it was an easy decision and an exhilarating one. And now it’s even a stronger feeling.” He said he felt, even back then, that late-night formats had become redundant, and the increasingly strident political commentaries on shows were rankling to him.

“It seems late-night is becoming more and more obsolete,” Kilborn says. “I’ve talked about it with my comedy-writer friends, and we simply don’t watch latenight anymore. Haven’t watched them for years.”

Kilborn was succeeded, in 2005, by Craig Ferguson, who evidently has a very different view. Earlier this year, he

H E R E ’S J O H N N Y !

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1. The Tonight Show’s first host, Steve Allen, who sat at the desk from 1954 to 1957. 2. Joan Rivers was one of the show’s most frequent guest hosts— until she signed with Fox for her own talk show in the mid-1980s and incurred the wrath of Johnny Carson. 3. David Letterman starting his career on Carson’s sofa in 1979.

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“I don’t know, because of how fractured we are, if [a show like Jon Stewart’s] will ever happen again.

Can a cultural juggernaut like that happen again?”

partnered with Sony to pitch a syndicated late-night series called Channel Surf. It sounds like a variation on the old E! format Talk Soup; Ferguson calls it “a TV show which contains clips of questionable moments from other TV shows, thus creating a spectacular visual turducken of stupid.” Sony hopes to launch the series this fall; it is unclear if any stations have signed up yet.

Ferguson’s tenure on The Late Late Show ended in 2014, shortly after he was passed over for Letterman’s chair in favor of Stephen Colbert. CBS gave no serious thought to canning the show or changing formats. “Back then, it still made financial sense, meaning it still made a profit,” a CBS executive says.

Corden was a brilliant pick, though not without risk: As Bill Carter, the preeminent reporter on the late-night beat, wrote on the day of his hiring, “Most Americans have probably neither seen nor heard of Mr. Corden, unless they made it to Broadway two seasons ago and caught his Tony Award-winning per formance in One Man, Two Guvnors or ran into some episodes of a BBC series he co-created called Gavin & Stacey.”

He was an unknown, yes, but CBS executives, particularly Moonves, loved Corden’s range: actor, comedian, singer, award-show host, writer, producer. And Corden loved the big American stage: It greatly expanded his fame and gave him a chance to rehab his brand, which was summarized by multiple British newspapers as “arrogant jerk.” He admitted, in a 2020 interview with The New Yorker, that he behaved “like a brat” at an earlier stage of his life. “It’s so intoxicating, that first flush of fame,” he said. “And I think it’s even more intoxicating if you’re not bred for it.”

Every comedian wrestles with demons, but the version of Corden on CBS was exceptionally well-adjusted.

He crooned and danced and charmed his way through every episode of The

Late Late Show, delivering what the network liked to call the “ultimate latenight afterparty.”

That the party didn’t start until the supremely strange hour of 12:37 a.m. and that there were fewer and fewer people coming, well, those factors were out of Corden’s control. What he could control was the content. Late-night “eats content like crazy,” says television writer Nell Scovell. “When you’re doing a show four or five nights a week, you just have to generate so much content, and that’s why writing staffs balloon.”

Corden succeeded at the content game; his Late Late Show was genuinely innovative, I felt, with viral karaoke rides being merely the most prominent example. It was capital E entertainment. But Scovell convinced me that far more innovation is needed if the late-night party is to go on, with or without Corden. “They keep giving us the same thing,” she says, “the same desk, the same Trump jokes, the same guests. It needs to evolve.”

THERE IS ONE TV-STAR-SIZED

asterisk to the defeatist dialogue about late-night. America’s other 12:37 a.m. host, NBC’s Seth Meyers, articulated it best in an awards-season interview with one of the trades. “One thing I should really stress is how bad I am at predicting the future based on the present,” he remarked. “I would have told you five years ago, certainly, latenight is back and better than ever.”

That’s true—cable and streaming platforms were full of talk show experiments. New entrants like Desus & Mero and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee were sources of excitement and employment for hundreds of people, and after the departure of Jon Stewart, the producers of The Daily Show ably reinvented that program with Trevor Noah as host.

Noah departed in December, but

The Daily Show may point a path forward for the genre as a whole. Way back when Kilborn manned the desk, the show specialized in news of the weird. “And then, Jon Stewart said, ‘Let’s try something a little different,’ ” says producer Miles Kahn, who spent nine years at the show. “He did Meet the Press, but with comedy. He found contradictions and put them on the air and made jokes about them. Jon became a juggernaut because nobody else was doing what Jon was doing. He invented a lane. I don’t know, because of how fractured we are, if that will ever happen again. Can a cultural juggernaut like that happen again?”

Probably not, and even if it’s possible to invent a new lane, the traffic these days is pretty horrendous. “The landscape got overly saturated with political-leaning late-night comedy,” says Kahn. “Not that any of it was bad.

It was all good! But the market just got oversaturated.”

I heard the same sentiment from a dozen others in the business. Burnett, whose daughter works on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, says, “The hosts are extremely talented, the writing is excellent, but they all have the same problem: There are now 5,000 other things to watch.” Burnett recounted when local stations started to rerun sitcoms like Seinfeld and Frasier against Letterman and Leno.

“I very distinctly remember that our ratings took a hit,” he said. And that was 20 years ago! “Now these shows are competing against The White Lotus and Ted Lasso and every single other thing that’s on television.” It’s even worse than that: The shows are competing against TikTok, Twitch, and OnlyFans.

Talking with these TV insiders, I realized the ecosystem has changed in ways so profound that most analyses of television miss them altogether. “There was a time,” Burnett says, “when the only time you could get a glimpse of celebs was on these late-night shows.”

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Now I’m liable to unfollow A-listers on Instagram when they post too often.

Talk shows, he adds, “are built to have a somewhat passive audience. People relax, spend some time with a host they love, and fall asleep. But now people watch television much more actively.

They seek out the shows that they want to seek out.”

The notion of a show being constructed with a specific time slot in mind seems woefully obsolete. “It was late at night: That used to be the whole point,” Scovell says. “But time doesn’t flow like that anymore.”

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about a Carson-like multi-decade marathon in late-night. He initially planned to do the show for just five years. After that, he reupped for two more. He told an interviewer that he wondered “how healthy it is to do these shows for that long,” adding, “I’m not sure it’s healthy to have a standing ovation every day.”

Corden, by then, had three children and a dreamlike Los Angeles life, but he wanted more time to actually live.

Quite simply, “the schedule held him back from the shows and movies he wanted to do,” one of his friends told me. He was also yearning to spend more time back in Britain. When he sat down with Fallon a few months ago, he said, “I’m just leaving the show primarily because we’re a long way from home, and we really want our children to know what it’s like to grow up in London, to have a solid relationship with their grandparents, and that is time that you don’t get back, really.”

His team declined my interview requests, perhaps because he wants to let the final episode speak for itself, or maybe because he doesn’t want to be asked about Balthazar anymore (turns out that second flush of fame can be pretty intoxicating, too, at least

judging from last year’s mini-scandal over Corden’s behavior at the New York restaurant). Several friends and colleagues told me he is feeling confident about both the decision and his departure date, just a few days before a potential writers’ strike. The Late Late Show continues to perform well on YouTube, where each episode is sliced into five to ten bite-sized pieces. One staffer likened the show to “a collection of clips,” in much the same way the music industry prioritizes singles over albums: “We try to make sure every episode has a single to release.”

That’s what has happened to latenight writ large, particularly with the old guard who once ruled the time slot: Their shows have been broken down into component pieces, or else reconfigured into other shapes. Letterman still holds forth with guests, but on Netflix five or six times a year. Leno still scratches his famous chin, but on a Fox game show. Kilborn, who helms an interview podcast, says the only latenight-type show he still watches is Real Time with Bill Maher—but, of course, one of Maher’s many advantages is that

he has to fill only one night a week, like Saturday Night Live and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

Officially, broadcasters all remain committed to the late-night time slot.

Indeed, when I asked CBS’s George Cheeks about it, he responded in an email that late-night “is integral to the DNA of broadcast television, and that won’t change. . . . Business headwinds create creative challenges, but latenight is a great place for leading-edge entertainment, influential voices, and, especially at 12:30, innovative creative swings.” But with time slots mattering less and less and on-demand shelf life mattering more, maybe some daily shows will resize themselves as weeklies or morph into other formats.

When Corden announced his exit, Meyers said he was curious about what CBS would do with the time slot: “The turnover happens so rarely, so it will be fascinating to see what the data point on the axis is.” Fascinating and, for Meyers, likely discouraging.

I’m told CBS brass met with a number of up-and-coming comics and commentators, but the network ultimately

“It was late at night: That used to be the whole point. But time doesn’t flow like that anymore.”

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PA R E N TS : B R U C E G L I K A S / F I L M M AG I C ; K I D S : A L L E N B E R E ZOVS KY/G E T T Y I M AG E S ; J U L I A C A R E Y: N I K I N I KO LOVA / F I L M M AG I C

CO R D E N N E V E R FA N TAS I Z E D

decided, despite Cheeks’s cheerleading for the format, to retire the Late Late brand altogether. The replacement is a slick piece of corporate synergy: a new version of a mothballed Comedy Central brand called @midnight, a panel show where comedians play meme-y games like “Texts from Last Night” and “Free on Craigslist.”

As of early April, the contracts were still being negotiated, but I was told it is all but a done deal. Paramount views it as a format “that can travel,” in C-suite speak, with better odds of being an on-demand winner. And it will cost about half as much to produce as The Late Late Show.

CAN ANYONE OR ANYTHING STILL

draw a respectable audience between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. on American television? The answer is yes, but it may make most late-night veterans queasy.

Two years ago, Fox News launched 2

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Gutfeld! at 11 p.m., hosted by “libertarian” comedian Greg Gutfeld, the Puck to Fox’s aging audience.

When Gutfeld’s show debuted on April 5, 2021, Fox’s ratings in the time slot started climbing rapidly. Although Gutfeld! starts earlier than Colbert, Fallon, and Kimmel, making it a notquite-fair fight, Fox positioned the show as a late-night slayer. And Gutfeld does, in fact, attract as many as 2.5 million viewers a night. Of course, Fox appeals to red America, while virtually every other late-night show has to battle one another for the blue audience.

But that has not stopped Gutfeld from taking a victory lap: His next book is titled The King of Late Night. Through a spokesperson, Gutfeld (who, full disclosure, routinely mocks me on TV) told me his brand of comedy is giving late-night a new lease on life. “Thanks to our show,” he said, “I predict you’re going to see a correction—a healthy, necessary shift back toward comedy and away from the nauseating, pretentious virtue signaling that replaced comedy on Kimmel and Colbert.”

From my vantage point, Gutfeld’s ratings have hit a ceiling, with little if any further room to grow, but it’s a high-enough ceiling to merit recognition. And his success has come at the same time that buzzed-about liberal shows like Samantha Bee’s have come to an end. “We shot the last episode on an iPhone,” Kahn noted, because Bee was sick with COVID-19 but still wanted to host from home. Bee was one of a very small number of women in late-night. Eric Deggans, the TV critic for NPR, reacted to the cancellation by writing, “It seems the space for original content in late-night TV is slowly shrinking. And it’s happening just as women and people of color are getting real opportunities to join the party.”

When I asked Scovell about obvious candidates for the Late Late job that now no longer exists, she named two

C R E D I TS T K H E R E A N D H E R E

M A N A B O U T T OW N S

1. Corden with his mother and father, Margaret and Malcolm, at a Broadway afterparty for One Man, Two Guvnors in New York in 2012. 2. With his kids, Max and Carey, at a Laker game in Los Angeles earlier this year. 3. In London, in 2014, with his wife, producer Julia Carey, at the Arqiva British Academy Television Awards.

P H O T O G R A P H E D BY F I R S T L A S T NA M E T K

Black women: Ziwe, who hosts a variety series on Paramount’s Showtime network, and Amber Ruffin, who had an eponymous show on NBC’s Peacock streaming service. Both women “are so deserving of a chance,” she said, “and they’ve already proven they can do it.”

There is one other area of unlikely growth after dark, and it’s at The Daily Show, which is enjoying double-digit ratings increases since Noah’s departure in December. Every week, the show features a different guest host— Sarah Silverman, Al Franken, Leslie Jones, Hasan Minhaj, Chelsea Handler, the list goes on—and every week is captivating. Kal Penn, who hosted in mid-March, told Variety, “I love that all of the guest hosts so far have brought something unique to their week. No single week is anywhere near what the other weeks are like.” Penn, naturally, said he would love the job full-time, but as Comedy Central lines up guest hosts through at least May, it is beginning to look less like a tryout process and more like a new template for the show.

“Back in the early days,” Bee once said, The Daily Show “felt like a startup.”

The guest-host game has restored that energy. Plus, as a Paramount executive remarked to me, “it’s a potential way of keeping costs down.” The rotation means “you’re not paying someone $20 million a year.”

When I was stretching for the right word to describe the state of latenight—the word is not death, but it’s . . . what?—Bill Carter came up with it immediately. “Diminution,” he said.

Not dead, but diminished. And I would add: desperate for some innovation.

The format has been deconstructed because the traditional TV schedule has been turned into a mere suggestion.

Every brilliant Corden bit now exists somewhere inside an endless library of videos. Adele’s Carpool Karaoke, from his second year, has 260 million views. One Direction, Justin Bieber, and Sia are all above 150 million.

YouTube views and Nielsen ratings are apples and oranges, to be sure, but on YouTube, Corden won Carson-sized audiences and beyond hundreds of times during his tenure. And as one Late Late staffer pointed out to me, the clips will always be there.

Television is frustratingly fleeting, but the internet is forever. We might not always have late-night, but we’ll always have late-night on YouTube.

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d i d n a C Camera photographs

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sser

by Julian Wa

WHISKY A GO GO 1964

Although known for his celebrity portraits, Wasser was at heart a street photographer, snatching indelible images as they unfolded before his unrelenting eye.

Who else could have framed this adroit composition immortalizing a typical night at the Whisky, complete with a Jaguar XKE purring out front?

Nobody captur ed L.A. in the ’60s and ’70s like Julian Was ser L A M AG . C O M 7 1

J

J U L I A N WA S S E R started his career as a teenager photographing crime scenes in Washington D.C.,

frequently in the company of the legendary news photographer Weegee. By the time Wasser was in his early 20s, his hustle and sheer talent led Time magazine to tap him as their man in L.A. When not shooting riots in Watts and on the Sunset Strip, or one of the last photos of Robert Kennedy before his assassination at the Ambassador Hotel, Wasser increasingly found a home photographing the demimonde of L.A.’s contemporary art, rock, and movie scenes, capturing indelible images of Steve McQueen, Jack Nicholson, Eve Babitz, and Joan Didion. By the time of his death in February, at 89, he had joined the ranks of top photojournalists of his generation like Garry Winogrand and David Bailey. “My father lived life on his own terms,” his daughter, Alexi Wasser, wrote. “He loved making wisecracks, being inappropriate—and taking photos.”

Text by MICHAEL WALKER 7 2 L A M AG . C O M

JOAN DIDION AND QUINTANA 1968

Wasser’s photographs of Didion posing with her Corvette are among the most iconic of the L.A. literary lioness. But this intimate portrait, shot on assignment for Time, of Didion with her young daughter, Quintana, at home in Malibu, was “my favorite picture ever,” she later told Vogue.

“Julian took beautiful pictures. Anybody who had their picture taken by Julian was blessed.”

ç

MARCEL DUCHAMP, EVE BABITZ 1963

Tasked with shooting Duchamp’s landmark exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum, Wasser convinced fellow L.A. scenester Babitz to pose naked with the artist in a fuzzy homage to his Nude Descending a Staircase. Babitz agreed solely to discomfit the museum’s director, with whom she was having an affair.

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THE JACKSON 5 1 9 70

Wasser’s rapport with artists and L.A.’s teeming roster of talent led to a steady stream of magazine assignments for the versatile photographer. As with the Jackson 5, seen here letting loose near the Beverly Hills home where they’d relocated from Gary, Indiana, after breaking out with hits like “I Want You Back.”

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ARTISTS AS ROCK STARS ROBERT F. KENNEDY 1968

Minutes before Kennedy was assassinated in the kitchen of L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel after celebrating his victory in the 1968 California Democratic presidential primary, Wasser photographed what in retrospect would be remembered as the final moment of optimism in one of the ’60s’ darkest years.

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1963

Wasser knew his way around L.A.’s 1960s art crowd, which led him to scenes like this: Ferus Gallery owner Irving Blum (background), painter and sculptor Billy Al Bengston, and Dennis Hopper palling around with the then almost famous Andy Warhol.

THE WEEGEE INFLUENCE 1 9 70

Wasser was based in two Beverly Hills apartments packed with police scanners squawking dispatches. He might be shooting People portraits by day, but at night, the streets beckoned.

How else to account for his shot of this anonymous police pursuit outside Musso & Frank?

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

WATTS RIOTS

1963

On assignment for Time, Wasser turned his lens on King addressing a civil rights rally in South Central L.A. President Barack Obama later purchased Wasser’s original of this photo, which hung in the White House throughout his administration.

1965

HOLLYWOOD STILL LIFE 1963

Two women forced to share a stool at Lee Drugs, flanked by two oblivious “gentlemen,” one dressed as a dentist and the other wearing a fedora indoors?

It’s the sort of found composition, and most of all the implied story it tells, that Wasser relished photographing.

When Watts erupted, Wasser worked the streets for his East Coast news outlets. Many of his shots, such as this one of looters under arrest, depicted white police turning their guns on Black residents, underscoring the toxic social dynamic that had fueled the unrest.

JAY PENSKE NOW CONTROLS SOME OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL MEDIA BRANDS IN HOLLYWOOD, MUSIC, ART, AND FASHION. HERE’S HOW AN ECCENTRIC, PRESS-SHY RACING HEIR PULLED IT OFF B Y

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THE CAR WAS DESIGNED TO MAKE AN impression, low to the ground and coated in shiny black and gold, rolling out to a worldwide virtual audience last December to some tense electronic beats and stylishly frantic camera work. The debut of the newest all-electric Formula E race car from the DS Penske team was fittingly high-tech, with zooming close-ups of the dagger-shaped vehicle’s carbon fiber wings and fins, the big threaded tires. And painted in an elegant font around the cockpit was a familiar logo with a certain cultural cache: Rolling Stone.

On the nose was another famous name: Variety. And in back were more: Vibe, Billboard, Robb Report, Sportico and Variety twice again, with WWD painted at a smaller scale on both sides. The titles are notably literate in a racing world more accustomed to sponsors like Pennzoil, but here, they also represented pride of ownership for team principal Jay Penske, whose day job is chairman and CEO of his everexpanding namesake Penske Media Corporation.

The Los Angeles company is owner of all those publications and more, from a near-monopoly of the Hollywood news trades to leading websites and magazines on art, music, TV, fashion, beauty, and real estate. PMC is also a producer of live events and now majority owner of the South by Southwest festivals of music, film, and technology in Austin, Texas. In January, PMC subsidiary Penske Media Eldrige announced the purchase of Dick Clark Productions and, with it, such legacy shows as the Golden Globes, the American Music Awards and the annual ratings juggernaut Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. In February, Penske led PMC to unexpectedly invest $100 million to become the largest shareholder in Vox Media, which owns the New York magazine title and multiple online brands, from tech site the Verge to the feel-good animal videos of the Dodo.

Penske, now 44, grew up in Detroit and New York around racing, as the youngest son of motorsports icon Roger Penske, billionaire owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, IndyCar and various championship-winning Penske Racing teams. Jay Penske has kept his hand in the family racing business by creating his own path, leaning into the future by going all-electric in 2014. So there he was, facing the camera a few months ago in a brief but rare public appearance during the team’s 15-minute online presentation, praising the new thirdgeneration Formula E car, an open-wheel machine with a top speed of 200 mph.

“Our engineers, our mechanics, and everyone on our development team have worked tirelessly to get this car ready to race,” said Penske, handsome and fit in a team shirt covered with the logos of the same PMC brands. He praised the vehicle, a collaboration between Penske Autosports and DS Automobiles in France. Then he was gone.

Meanwile, things are only getting busier at the office. For the last 14 years, Penske has carefully accumulated media brands at a time when the conventional wisdom—usually the worst kind—suggests that traditional print and online news media are in intractible decline. But Penske saw only

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opportunity amid a landscape of fading or undervalued titles, and he typically leads them to new financial viability where others have fallen short. As Penske builds this empire, it’s been a long time since he’s had time to sit with a book in the antiquarian bookshop he owned for years in the hills above Los Angeles. “He’s extremely, extremely busy,” says Variety COO Dea Lawrence. “He’s on planes, he’s flying, he’s a dealmaker, he works constantly. He’s the hardest-working person I know.”

“Anybody who who’s putting money into fact-based journalism today is an angel,” says Stephen Galloway, former executive editor of the Hollywood Reporter and now dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film & Media Arts.

“He made an incredibly smart move in gobbling up as many trade outlets as possible that would effectively give him a monopoly on the business of entertainment news.”

It’s not just a business monopoly, but a cultural one.

Penske’s trajectory began with the 2009 purchase of Deadline, the trenchant online site covering Hollywood, from its founder, the notorious entertainment journalist Nikki Finke, remembered months after her death last year as both trailblazer and “terrorist.” (Finke told the world Penske paid $12 million for what was then a mostly oneperson operation; the actual price was just below $1 million, according to one knowledgeable insider.)

Then came Variety in 2012, Billboard and the Hollywood Reporter in 2020, along with a growing number of entertainment news sites like IndieWire.

FA M I LY A F FA I R

From left: Racing icon and founder of the $32 billion family trucking empire, Roger Penske did not, with his youngest son’s approval, underwrite Jay’s media ventures. Penske at a Forumua E race in Uruguay. Despite controlling most of Hollywood’s trade publications, Penske is seldom seen on the town, as in this rare night out wife Elaine Irwin and with Diane von Fürstenburg.

don’t go in as predators. We go in as nurturing new parents who recognize the importance of the brand we’re acquiring and how we can help bring it to the next step,” says Gerry Byrne, PMC’s vice-chairman.

While other publishers are retrenching, Penske is doubling down: Rolling Stone and Variety now employ more staffers than ever; in 2022, Variety notched the strongest revenues in its 117-year history. “When I started in the New York office, there were four or five reporters—now we have 15,” says Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh. Shunning the spotlight, Penske makes a point of meeting with every employee at every new property, seeking ideas and input from inside. “The thing about Jay is, he asks really tough questions,” says Setoodeh. “So you have to be prepared. You can’t bluff your way through a conversation with him.” Still, to most outsiders, he remains a handsome cypher.

Penske is rarely photographed on a red carpet, though he’s been seen inside exclusive events, like the annual Clive Davis pre-Grammy party at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and at an Elton John performance at the Biden White House last fall.

As publisher of the Hollywood trades and WWD, he’s certainly invited to every premiere and fashion show, can easily score entrée to the Oscars or Cannes, but you’re more likely to spot him from a distance at a Formula E racetrack. Working from L.A. instead of the publishing power corridors of Manhattan, Penske has already amassed more titles than Conde Nast’s Si Newhouse did in his prime, yet he is still no better known to most publsihing insiders than he is to the public, who if aware of the Penske name at all associates it with the family’s ubiquitous trucks with the distinctive PENSKE logo. (It’s notable that Jay Penske’s branch of the family business is identified through the discrete acronym PMC.)

R O G E R P E N S K E : I S C I M AG E S & A R C H I V E S V I A G E T T Y I M AG E S ; P E N S K E : M I C H A E L B U C K N E R / VA R I E T Y; I RW I N : WO N WO O L E E /Z U M A W I R E ; VO N F U R ST E N B E R G : B RYA N B E D D E R / F I L M M AG I C

WORKING FROM L.A. INSTEAD OF THE PUBLISHING HIVES OF MANHATTAN, PENSKE HAS QUIETLY AMASSED MORE TITLES THAN CONDE NAST’S SI NEWHOUSE OWNED IN HIS PRIME. They are part of Penske’s ongoing accumulation throughout the past decade, from Women’s Wear Daily to, most recently, Artforum.

“He’s built a company, and he’s stuck with it,” says Richard Rushfield, founder of the online entertainment news upstart the Ankler. “He’s gone beyond the amount of time a mere dilettante would hang around.” But Rushfeld is wary of the concentration of titles Penske has amassed in entertainment.

“Monopoly has never been good for any business, and for reporters in particular,” he warns.

In the classic arc of fictional media titans, Penske appears to still be in the optimistic early years of Charles Foster Kane.

From all accounts, he actively rejects the style of moguldom as perfected by his predecessors, the Murdochs and Bloombergs, who bludgeoned the public with their family brands and edifice-naming charitable largesse, and actively sought to be kingmakers and, in doing so, become kings themselves (or, in case of Michael Bloomberg, mayor). Despite his ravenous acquisitions spree, Penske fashions himself as the anti-mogul.

He scrupulously adheres to journalistic standards and seems to value his editorial staff. Some reporters at his titles still haul in major salaries—Kim Masters at the Hollywood Reporter is said to earn almost $400,000 a year. His ongoing accumulation of media follows a steady search of the marketplace for opportunities with struggling or undervalued brands. “We

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Owning all these media outlets is coincidentally a good way for an especially private mogul to ensure that he doesn’t often appear in their pages. It’s a posture that seems unlikely to survive as Penske’s empire expands while stepping into music festivals (including last year’s LA3C in Los Angeles State Historic Park and Life is Beautiful in Las Vegas) and major television events through Dick Clark Productions. The owner of any one of these entities is by definition a public figure, and the expectations for the company’s namesake to explain himself will only increase. (Penske declined multiple invitations from Los Angeles to talk on the record.)

For now, Penske speaks to the world mostly through press releases, but the few who have met with him at length typically describe him as good company, a smart guy with a plan, a mensch. But his silence leaves empty spaces for confusion and misinformation. Penske has been identified as a Trump supporter and major Republican contributor. He’s neither and, in fact, cohosted what was supposed to be a Hillary Clinton victory party on Election Night 2016. More recently, he was pilloried in the literary world for closing down beloved Bookforum magazine when he merely didn’t choose to buy it, while picking up sister publication Artforum.

It was also initially reported, even by some PMC publications, that Penske had accepted money from the same Public Investment Fund directly overseen by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which recently handed Jared Kushner’s investment firm a staggering $2 billion.

PMC aggressively pushed back, noting the funds came from the Saudi Research Media Group, which has investments with Bloomberg and Hearst, and is a public company audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. And the money came two years before the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi that turned the Saudi prince into a pariah.

Regardless, some remain uncomfortable with the Saudi connection. “At a time when others would not take it, he lined up to take it, and it’s fueled a lot of this growth,” notes one knowledgeable media insider.

A

S ON ‘ SUCCESSION ,’ EMPIRES SEEM TO RUN IN the family. Penske’s father, Roger, retired as a race car driver while still in his 20s to begin his larger career in the 1960s, which grew from car dealerships to truck leasing, now with revenues of $32 billion. At 86, and with no plans to retire, the Penske patriarch only recently laid out a succession plan with his two older sons–Greg and Roger Jr.– positioned to take the lead, while Jay, the youngest, charted a personal path on several fronts. Both father and son have stated that Roger provided no funding for PMC, which presently has about 1,800 employees.

Penske’s parents met in a Colorado ski shop. His mother, Kathy, was an English teacher. Jay played high school hockey and lacrosse and was a voracious reader, given to quoting philsophers in casual conversation. He showed flashes of rebellion—he was kicked out of an exclusive prep school for misbehavior—and was disinclined to follow his elder siblings into the family business, starting instead a short-lived racing 8 0 L A M AG . C O M

title, one of his few publishing failures. In his 20s, he dated actresses Gina Gershon and Lara Flynn Boyle, who nicknamed him “Jaybird.” His early days in L.A. media were greeted with skepticism, and he was brutally dismissed by Gawker (“The Hard-Partying Si Newhouse Wannabe of Bel Air”).

In 2012, he married supermodel Elaine Erwin and fully settled into Los Angeles as a family man and a captain of industry, but he’s not publicly active in local politics. He endorsed no one in last year’s mayoral contest, though he’s known Rick Caruso for years. In 2019, his father was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House by Donald Trump, drawing a group of family members into the Oval Office. Standing in back, Jay inevitably stood out, looking like Bruce Wayne or a movie producer in a dark blue suit.

After graduating in 2001 from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Penske landed in the Bay Area for his first successful venture, as cofounder of Firefly Mobile, which made cell phones for kids. He then relaunched and sold the successful email portal Mail.com and headed south to Los Angeles to buy Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily, a crucial first step in building Penske Media. He personally recruited the top editors, poaching Variety’s veteran film reporter Mike Fleming to become Deadline co-editor-in-chief with Hollywood Reporter TV writer Nellie Andreeva.

“Like everybody, I had a complicated relationship with Nikki, but she was great at what she did,” Fleming says of the difficult decision to jump ship after 20 years at Variety, where he’d been hired by Peter Bart. “Jay has lived up 100 percent to everything he said to me, kept his word and then some.”

As the new media company began to grow, Penske invested time and money in Dragon Books, a lovingly furnished antiquarian book store located next to a Starbucks near the corner of Beverly Glen and Mulholland Drive. Penske would often work from there anytime he wasn’t in the Deadline office. (One neighborhood customer, Kiss cofounder Gene Simmons, bought a first edition of The Lord of the Rings for his son, Nick.) Penske kept Dragon Books going for 17 years, until PMC grew too large and his daughter was born.

With the help of a loan from Daniel S. Loeb’s hedge fund, Third Point, Penske made his first shocking move: buying Variety in 2012 for about $25 million, less than half of the $60 million paid when it previously sold in 1987. He started with changes in the executive offices, recruiting Michelle Sobrino, Variety’s first female publisher, and veteran entertainment journalist Claudia Eller as co-editor-in-chief. Penske ended the online paywall for most content and killed the foundering Daily Variety in 2013 but surprised many by ugrading the weekly print edition into a glossy magazine that survives a decade later. Many of these changes had been in discussion for years, but it was Penske who finally pulled the trigger, upending the stasis he mocked as “NATO”–or “no action, talk only.”

The acquisitions of Deadline and Variety were only beginning. In a move that sparked antitrust concerns from the Department of Justice, PMC signed a $225 million deal in 2020 to aquire 80 percent of Media Rights Capital, parent company of the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard. The Reporter’s editor-in-chief, Janice Min, had earlier made a splash by transforming the tired trade into a glossy lifestyle title and later embarked on a similar revamp at Billboard.

But according to one insider, both publications had been losing more than $20 million every year for more than a decade

prior to PMC buying them. After PMC took control, there were meaningful cuts to the lavish photography and feature-writing budgets and layoffs of non-editorial employees.

With PMC’s addition of the Hollywood Reporter, the two historic Hollywood trades were owned by the same entity for the first time. Unlike other media consolidations, there was no advantage to consolidating or finding “synergies” because maintaining the status quo is essential, as studios buy lucrative “For Your Consideration” ads in all of the trades rather than just one.

And even as the awards shows themselves have lost audience share, the FYC ad campaigns target a much smaller constituency. Which means the Oscars could regress all the way back to a nice dinner at the Cocoanut Grove, and it wouldn’t affect ad sales.

“It’s conceivable that as the awards become nothing but an inside vanity game that these granular little trade publications may be the last thing standing because they make economic sense,” says a journalist at one of the PMC trades. Another industry source complains, “[Penske’s] got Variety, Deadline, Hollywood Reporter, and IndieWire all doing the same story, written by different people. That is only a real business if the FYC market is justifying it. And it has.” Counters Variety’s Setoodeh, “It’s as competitive as it’s ever been. And if that means getting a scoop on a story from [the Hollywood Reporter], it’s all hands on deck. My staff doesn’t want to lose that story to anyone, even if it’s another brand in the building.”

B

UYING ROLLING Stone was another turning point for Penske and PMC, bringing into the fold a title with deep history and lasting influence, with a general readership deeply engaged with pop culture and politics, hiphop, Hollywood and rock and roll. Over the years, Penske has told friends and colleagues about an uncle

THE CULTURE VULTURE IN LESS THAN A DECADE, THE L.A.-BASED MOGUL HAS SNAGGED SOME OF THE WORLD’S MOST ICONIC MEDIA BRANDS, OFTEN AT BARGAIN-BASEMENT PRICES

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Scandal-challenged awards-show perennial

Included in purchase of Dick Clark Productions

Annual Las Vegas music and arts festival

Media hub for women’s lifestyle titles

Aka Boy Genius Report; gadgets, tech, attitude

Dominant music biz title, founded in 1984

Legendary 1960s rock and news title

Lifestyle news aimed at the filthy rich

Conceived in 1973

by Dick Clark

Online video awards, another DCP pickup

Real estate news site acquired with Vox Media

Beauty industry trade magazine and website

Handicapping site for Hollywood awards

Second banana of Hollywood trades

First mainstream Blackoriented music mag

World’s oldest art mag, established in 1902

Preeminent alt music and culture conference

Beloved Cannes festival hospitality center

TV news website cofounded by PMC

Business news for the sports industry

Reports on raw materials for fashion biz

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8 2 L A M AG . C O M

G A R C E T T I : J E R R I T T C L A R K / W I R E I M AG E ; CO O L I D G E : M I C H A E L KOVAC /G E T T Y I M AG E S FO R M O Ë T A N D C H A N D O N ; W E N N E R : J E S S E D I T T M A R / R E D UX

up in Portland, a lifelong music lover and musician, who used to send him cassettes of classic rock. His uncle once urged the youngest Penske that if he wanted to be cool, he had to read Rolling Stone.

When Penske approached owner Wenner Media, it was in precarious financial health in part from selling a 50 percent share of Us magazine and then buying it back from Disney, adding new

debt to the company. There was also a devastating loss in a defamation lawsuit over a 9,000-word Rolling Stone investigative article about a gang rape at the University of Virginia that turned out to be false. At first, the magazine’s founder, Jann Wenner, sold 49 percent of the company to BandLab Technologies, a Singaporean company, which left him in control of his magazines, but he ultimately chose to sell the remainder. There were many suiters for that 51 percent stake, said to include music industry titan Irving Azoff. Equally surprising was who didn’t bid–Conde Nast and Hearst, experienced publishers of general interest magazines–suggesting the uncertain position Rolling Stone was in by the end of 2017.

The winning bid went to PMC. Penske ultimately purchased the remaining 49 percent of ownership in 2019. When the deal with Wenner Media closed, Penske told friends, he called his uncle and sang to him “The Cover of ‘Rolling Stone,’ ” the hit by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show. The magazine was his.

C A R : D S P E N S K E ; P M G B U I L D I N G : A A R O N P/ B AU E R - G R I F F I N /G C I M AG E S ; R E E V E S : F R A Z E R H A R R I S O N /G E T T Y I M AG E S FO R SXSW

TOP GEAR

Clockwise, from top left: Team Penske’s flagship Formula E race car sports the logos of Variety, Billboard, and other PMC titles. The PMC headquarters in West Los Angeles. Keanu Reeves at South by Southwest—PMC bought a 50 percent stake in the festival in 2021. Penske with then-Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2018. Jennifer Coolidge celebrates at the Golden Globes, now owned by PMC through its acquisition of Dick Clark Productions. Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner with his son, Gus, the magazine’s current CEO. Penske purchased a stake in the struggling title in 2017, convinced there was still life in the brand.

G A R C E T T I : J E R R I T T C L A R K / W I R E I M AG E ; CO O L I D G E : M I C H A E L KOVAC /G E T T Y I M AG E S FO R M O Ë T A N D C H A N D O N ; W E N N E R : J E S S E D I T T M A R / R E D UX

In his 2022 memoir, Like a Rolling Stone, Wenner described the new owner as “a good-looking young man with a terrible haircut. . . . I was impressed with his energy, ambition, and smarts.” But he was alarmed by changes in the new era: “Jay took direct control of the editorial budget and enjoyed cutting costs. . . . many of our good writers were forced out. The new mantra was clear: What counted was not the power of the printed word but the number of ‘hits’ on the website.” Wenner was notoriously slow to embrace the web and, for several years, even licensed Rollingstone.com to RealNetworks. Penske hired a new top editor for the magazine and website, Noah Shachtman, who spent seven years leading the hard-charging Daily Beast, who emphasized the magazine’s political reporting, drawing new eyeballs to the site. Wenner’s son, Gus, remains as Rolling Stone’s CEO. Penske’s interests in general readership publications has continued with PMC’s $100 million investment in February

in Vox Media, in a deal that, true to the Penske playbook, valued Vox at half of what it was just seven years earlier. Vox already runs New York, its flagship magazine, with multiple sub-brands (Vulture, Intelligencer, the Cut) that enjoy large, engaged readerships. New York has a history as celebrated as Rolling Stone’s but, in the last year, Vox has seen falling ad revenue and the furlough of 7 percent of its staff. At a time when many legacy media brands are teetering financially, Penske has apparently figured some things out in the digital age. “We’re learning from each other,” says Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff. “I’m certainly impressed with how he is able to both run quality publications and a quality business that respects the product, respects the employees, and respects the business partners.”

Part of that involves Penske personally meeting with every employee at a newly acquired business for 30 minutes each. He held about 200 meetings just with the staff of SXSW, says Byrne. “Jay makes it a point to sit down with every person who is part of the enterprise that’s coming into the Penske Media operation–from the editor-in-chief to the publisher to the person who’s cleaning the floors at night,” says Byrne.

Not every act of kindness has been appreciated. One Thanksgiving, Penske bought a spread from the Beverly Hills Hotel and personally delivered the meal to Finke, a notorious shut-in. Hours later, she called, enraged that chocolate cake was included, since she was diabetic. “She said I was trying to kill her,” Penske told the New York Times. A day or two later, Finke posted on Deadline: “Jay Penske is the worst CEO in history.” Penske allowed the post to remain on the site he now owned, and today has a printout of the words framed in his office. Finke and Penske continued working together another three years. Their relationship was a peculiar mix of professional and personal, employer and problem child. When she died last year in hospice, Penske was one of only two people who turned up to pay their respects.

A

T THE RACETRACK, THINGS ARE ALWAYS CLEAR, win or lose. Penske picks up an ePrix trophy in India one weekend, then finishes second in the next contest in Cape Town. After racing a few years with IndyCar, he was among the first to secure a franchise when the Formula E championship began in 2014. He seems committed, even if electric racing has generated the same skepticism he’s faced from publishers convinced that investing in legacy publications with storied brands but uncertain business models is a sucker’s play. Now that even the Dodge Challenger muscle car is phasing out internal combustion engines after next year, it’s clear which argument is winning in automobiles. Penske’s strategy in publishing is vulnerable to pitfalls known and yet to be revealed, but so far, he appears to be on the the right track.

“I don’t know how to run a newspaper,” Orson Wells, as Charles Foster Kane, confessed eight decades ago in Citizen Kane. “I just try everything I can think of.”

If Jay Penske were talking, he just might agree.

L A M AG . C O M 8 3

THE HOT LIST

Pea Shoots & Chives at Yangban PAGE 86

A CO N S TA N T LY U P DAT ED R O U N D U P O F L . A .’ S M OS T E S S EN T I A L E AT ER I E S

WEST ❂ Angelini Ristorante PACIFIC PALISADES » Italian $$$

Chef Gino Angelini has taken his Italian osteria to the Westside in partnership with Amici Brentwood’s Tancredi Deluca. The Maine lobster salad with pomegranate seeds and citrus dressing and the classic service (branzino filleted tableside, anyone?) recall the Beverly Boulevard location, only now with patio seating and an ocean breeze. 1038 N. Swarthmore Ave., 424-238-5870, or angelinipalisades.com. Full bar.

❂ Cento Pasta Bar WEST ADAMS » Italian $$

Avner Levi’s thrilling pasta menu offers surprising appetizers like cauliflower with Castelvetrano olives, Marcona almonds, Cara Cara oranges, and golden raisins, but Levi’s talents extend to hearty entrées like braised short ribs over creamy polenta. 4921 W. Adams Blvd., 323-998-0404, or centopasta.com. Wine.

✤ Dear Jane’s MARINA DEL REY » Seafood $$$$

The sister restaurant to Dear John’s has a lively formal dining area offering a view of the marina. The room evokes a feeling of special occasions, with mannered tableside service for items like shrimp Louie salad, which gets drenched in a citrusy, homemade Thousand Island-like dressing. There also are seafood towers, fish sticks with caviar, Dungeness crab cakes, oysters Rockefeller, and a list of classic dishes like trout amandine, fish-and-chips, and cioppino.

13950 Panay Way, 310-301-6442, or dearjanesla.com.

Full bar.

❂ Dono

SANTA MONICA » Spanish $$

At chef Brendan Collins’s new ode to the Iberian Peninsula, large plates of seafood paella and lamb shank tagine are best paired with

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THE BREAKDOWN WEST

EAST

Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Century City, Culver City, Malibu, Marina del Rey, Mar Vista, Palms, Santa Monica, Venice, West L.A., Westwood

Atwater Village, Eagle Rock, East L.A., Echo Park, Glassell Park, Glendale, Highland Park, Lincoln Heights, Los Feliz, Pasadena, San Gabriel Valley, Silver Lake

DOWNTOWN Aliso Village, Arts District, Bunker Hill, Chinatown, Historic Core, Little Tokyo, South Park

CENTRAL Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw, Beverly Grove, East Hollywood, Fairfax District, Hancock Park, Hollywood, Jefferson Park, Koreatown, Mid City, Mid-Wilshire, Pico-Robertson, Virgil Village, West Hollywood

T H E VA L L E Y Agoura Hills, Burbank, Calabasas, Encino, North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Toluca Lake, Van Nuys, Woodland HIlls

SOUTH Bell, Compton, El Segundo, Gardena, Hermosa Beach, Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Torrance, Watts

✤ 2023 Best New Restaurant Winner ❂ Has Outdoor Seating $ $$ $$$ $$$$

I N E X P E N S I V E (Meals under $10) M O D E R A T E (Mostly under $20) E X P E N S I V E (Mostly under $30) V E R Y E X P E N S I V E ($30 and above)

Price classifications are approximate and based on the cost of a typical main course that serves one.

For restaurants primarily offering multicourse family meals, the cost per person of such a meal is used.

Restaurant hours are changing frequently. Check websites or social media accounts for the most current information.

2023

gin and tonics by bar director Gabriella Mlynarcyk. 2460 Wilshire Blvd., 424-722-0583, or donorestaurant.com. Full bar.

❂ The Hideaway BEVERLY HILLS » Steak House $$$

Hollywood actors Ryan Phillippe and Evan Ross invested in this clubby ode-to-1970s-Baja California Mexican steak house, where cocktail king Julian Cox makes margaritas to sip alongside snapper ceviche or New York Wagyu steak with chimichurri. 421 N. Rodeo Dr., 310-974-8020, or thehideawaybeverlyhills.com. Full bar.

❂ Juliet

CULVER CITY » French $$$$ Seafood-forward French fare like tuna carpaccio with olives and tonnato pair well with a made-in-Franceonly wine list. Open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, this all-day café is a true homage to the Parisian lifestyle. 8888 Washington Blvd., 310-643-5853, or juliet.la.

Full bar.

Lulu

WESTWOOD » American $$$ Lulu offers an ever-changing, daily, three-course lunch for $45, with a similar dinner launch in early 2022. On a recent Monday, the prix fixe meal began with crisp romaine leaves in a balanced, creamy anchovy dressing. A main-course chicken thigh came exactingly braised in a comforting broth and with polenta, wild mushrooms, and tiny turnips. A lemon tart with a dusting of lime zest and a dollop of crème fraîche made for a bright ending. 10899 Wilshire Blvd., 424-999-4870, or lulu.restaurant. Full bar.

❂ Paloma Venice VENICE » Mediterranean $$$$

This newcomer serves organic, Californiaproduce-driven Mediterranean dishes that include spinach ravioli and avocado-infused hummus.

Three seating options (indoor, patio, or bar) make this beachside destination a hit in the making.

600 Venice Blvd., 310-405-6385, or paloma-venice.com.

Full bar.

YA N G B A N : DY L A N +J E N I

MAY

Ramen Nagi CENTURY CITY » Ramen $$

One of Japan’s most popular ramen chains has opened its first SoCal outpost, in the Century City mall. The classic tonkatsu is the bowl to order. 10250 Santa Monica Blvd., Ste. 2850, or ramennagiusa.com. Also at 400 S. Baldwin Ave., Ste. D2, Arcadia. No alcohol.

❂ Willie Mae’s VENICE » Southern $$

It’s the restaurant’s first outpost outside of New Orleans, and founder Willie Mae Seaton’s great-granddaughter Kerry Seaton Stewart is serving her signature fried chicken along with mac and cheese and corn bread. 324 Lincoln Blvd., 310-392-2766, or williemaesnola.com. No alcohol.

DOWNTOWN ✤❂ Asterid BUNKER HILL » American $$

A departure from the extensive fare chef Ray Garcia offered at his previous restaurants, Garcia’s expertise gets condensed into a modern Californialeaning menu with dazzling seasonal starters like sunchoke rösti with crème fraîche and strawberry pepper jam. The chicken liver mousse is covered with a bouquet of grape compote, sliced pear, pickled pearl onions, and mustard, and served with sliced toasted sourdough. 141 S. Grand Ave., 213-972-3535, or asteridla.com. Full bar.

C H E F FAV O R I T E S

PAU L C H U N G

ANGLER LOS ANGELES

❂ Café Basque DOWNTOWN » French $$$$

Daniel Rose of New York’s Le Coucou brings his award-winning cooking to downtown’s Hoxton hotel. Here, flavors of the southwest coast of France are the star. Try traditional Txangurro (spider crab) gratin with tomato and Armagnac or rockfish stew with mussels, shrimp, and saffron.

1060 S. Broadway, 213-725-5900, or cafebasque.com.

Full bar.

✤❂ Camphor ARTS DISTRICT » French/Indian $$$$

Camphor is, at its core, a French bistro where plump oysters are served in a bath of amaretto mignonette and the beef tartare comes with a side of tempura-fried herbs. Chefs Max Boonthanakit and Lijo George aim to bring something completely new to L.A.—that is, something distinctively not L.A. Camphor’s access to the spices from George’s southern Indian homeland makes it a standout. 923 E. 3rd St., Ste. 109, 213-626-8888, or camphor.la. Full bar.

❂ De La Nonna ARTS DISTRICT » Pizza $

This pop-up turned brick-and-mortar is a destination for its delicious, crunchy rectangular pizzas alone. But there’s also a lovely, sprawling patio, warm service, and a substantial selection of natural wines. 710 E. 4th Pl., 213-221-1268, or delanonna.com. Full bar.

Kaviar

ARTS DISTRICT » Sushi $$$$ Sushi has never been more glamorous, or gilded.

Melt-in-your-mouth toro (or A5 Wagyu, if you’re in more of a beef mood) garnished with caviar and gold flakes, along with attentive service, makes this downtown newcomer the ultimate in luxury dining. 449 S. Hewitt St., 213-221-7078, or kaviarrestaurants.com. Also at 70 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, 626-605-0330. Full bar.

NATALEE THAI CUISINE www.nataleethai.com 10101 Venice Blvd., Culver City 998 S. Robertson Blvd., Beverly Hills

(310) 202-7003 (310) 855-9380

❂ Kodō

ARTS DISTRICT » Japanese $$$ Don’t be fooled by the restaurant’s visual tranquility. The energy of Kodō, which translates to “heartbeat,” is boisterous because the chef, Yoya Takahashi, wanted to stay true to what a Kyoto-style izakaya would be—a fun place with traditional Japanese bar fare. A Caesar salad of Little Gem lettuce is blanketed with bonito flakes.

The off-menu toro, served with a tangy cilantro sauce, minced tomato, and cucumber, has the kind of fatty, melt-in-your-mouth quality you can’t forget. 710 S. Santa Fe Ave., 213-302-8010, or kodo.la.

Full bar.

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❂ Mandolin Taverna ARTS DISTRICT » Mediterranean $$

Margherita pizza RONAN

“The pizza doesn’t fall apart as you eat, but it’s delicate enough to enjoy the chew and sourness from the dough.” $21, 7315 Melrose Ave., Fairfax District, ronanla.com.

Naeng Myun

C H U N G : J A K O B L AY M A N

YUCHUN

“My go-to dishes are the mul naeng myun (noodles and vinegar broth) or bibim naeng myun (spicy mixed version). The broth is served ice cold, and the

mustard and vinegar provide a great balance.” $16.71, 3185 W. Olympic Blvd., Koreatown, 213-382-3815.

Borekas

BOREKAS SEPHARDIC PASTRIES

“They’re crispy, flaky, buttery, and packed with incredible flavor.

I generally like to get pinukim or the cultured cheese and za’atar.” $12, 15030 Ventura Blvd., Ste. 25, Sherman Oaks, 818-688-4588.

— H E AT H E R P L AT T

The first L.A. outpost of Miami’s Mandolin Aegean Bistro, this coastal Mediterranean-style eatery, with its sprawling garden space, is a lovely place to eat Turkish- and Greek-influenced dishes like zucchini-squash blossom flatbreads with pistachio tahini. 1000 S. Santa Fe Ave., or mandolinmiami.com. Full bar.

Pearl River Deli CHINATOWN » Cantonese $

Chef Johnny Lee’s Cantonese comfort food moves to Chinatown’s Central Plaza, where his famous Hainan chicken rice joins rotating specials like the orange-chicken fried sandwich, nutty sesame dandan noodles, and char siu spare ribs. 935 Mei Ling Way, 213-372-5485, or @prd_la. No alcohol.

❂ Pizzeria Bianco ARTS DISTRICT » Pizza $

Chris Bianco’s L.A. debut at Row DTLA is a hit.

During the day, a line forms for slices of his New York-style takeout pizza. At night, it’s full-service dining, featuring the wood-fired pizza Bianco made famous. 1320 E. 7th St., Ste. 100, 213-372-5155, or pizzeriabianco.com. Beer and wine.

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Dr. Caster is one of the most respected Lasik specialists in the United States. Dr. Caster has corrected the eyesight of many of the world’s top professional athletes and celebrities, and he can help you, too!

CasterEye.com 9100 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 265E Beverly Hills (310) 274-1221 | info@CasterVision.com

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Hot List

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R E STAU RA N T G U I D E

✤❂ San Laurel BUNKER HILL » California/Spanish $$$$

Chef José Andrés’s new restaurant serves pleasing California cuisine that shows off Spanish flavors.

Sea urchin with raw scallops in a pool of gazpacho consommé gets a dazzling dollop of caviar. The food seems relatively down-to-earth considering the molecular gastronomy that made Andrés famous, the cocktails are whimsical. 100 S. Grand Ave., 213-349-8585, or sanlaurel.com. Full bar.

❂ Yangban Society ARTS DISTRICT » Korean $$

Two alums of the great Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa have opened a 5,000-square-foot Korean American deli and market. Whether you’re craving hot smoked trout or a rice bowl with banchan, you’ll be satisfied. 712 S. Santa Fe Ave., 213-866-1987, or yangbanla.com. Full bar.

CENTRAL Angler

BEVERLY GROVE » Seafood $$$

The San Francisco original is reopening its L.A. location with a completely transformed space.

Now under the helm of chef Paul Chung, the menu stays true to Angler’s hearth-fired cooking but with touches of Chung’s Korean heritage, like seaweed rice with cured yolk, trout roe, and caviar. 8500 Beverly Blvd., Ste. 117, 424-332-4082, or anglerla.com. Full bar.

Bicyclette

PICO-ROBERTSON » French $$$

Walter and Margarita Manzke’s delightful, delicious follow-up to République brings a bit of Paris to Pico. The menu is stocked with exactingly executed

bistro standards: onion soup with oozy cheese, hearty short-rib bourguignon, and a luxurious bouillabaisse. Margarita’s baguettes and beautiful desserts are as great as ever. Resisting Bicyclette’s charms is futile. 9575 W. Pico Blvd., 424-500-9575, or bicyclettela.com. Full bar.

❂ Butcher’s Daughter WEST HOLLYWOOD » Vegetarian $$

The new location of this plant-based empire dazzles. Cocktails are the star along with veggie versions of carnivore food like carrot “lox,” eggplant “oysters,” and cauliflower “strip steak.” 8755 Melrose Ave., 310-707-1630, or thebutchersdaughter.com. Also at 1205 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, 310-981-3004. Full bar.

❂ Casa Madera

WEST HOLLYWOOD » Mexican Coastal $$$$

The menu, is described as “Mexican cuisine with Mediterranean influence.” It features an array of starters like whipped aubergine with pita slices and braised Wagyu meatballs; an extensive raw bar with standouts like the hamachi serrano marinated in fresh lime with cucumber and pickled onions; and duck carnitas tacos followed by unexpected mains like the Wagyu “top cap”—an extremely tender top cut of of the rib-eye steak that pairs well with the confit truffle potatoes. Mondrian hotel, 8440 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, 310-878-0814, or thecasamadera.com.

Full bar.

❂ Caviar Kaspia BEVERLY GROVE » Eclectic $$$$

This offshoot of the Parisian caviar maison offers all the same glamour with a touch of L.A. ease. This means Dungeness crab crostini topped with caviar,

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and California chopped salad with green goddess caviar dressing. 8475 Melrose Pl., 844-952-3229, or caviarkaspiala.com. Full bar.

❂ Fanny’s

MID-WILSHIRE » French $$$

Captains in suits push carts of French washedrind cheeses and carve thick slices of côte de boeuf tableside. Chef Raphael Francois sends out perfect twists on Caesar salad and plays around with menu items like hamachi crudo on a bed of sweet pickled grapes, and jicama with brown butter and cilantro.

6067 Wilshire Blvd., 323-930-3080, or fannysla.com.

Full bar.

❂ Grandmaster Recorders HOLLYWOOD » Italian/Australian $$$

Aussie chefs Monty and Jaci Koludrovic are serving Italianish fare—insalata di pesce, sourdough cavatelli with lamb—in a space that was once a renowned recording studio. 1518 N. Cahuenga Blvd., 323-963-7800, or grandmasterrecorders.com. Full bar.

❂ Ka’Teen HOLLYWOOD » Mexican $$$

Wes Avila made a name for himself downtown with Guerilla Tacos and Angry Egret Dinette. In December, he went Hollywood with this chic, Yucatán-inspired spot in the new Tommie hotel.

Dishes include potato taquitos with avocado salsa and lamb neck barbacoa. Tommie Hollywood, 6516 Selma Ave., 323-410-6360, or kateenla.com.

Full bar.

✤ Kinn

KOREATOWN » Korean $$$

Chef Ki Kim uses curated ingredients to delicately weave together Korean flavors into

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dishes that exist in a genre all their own. At $72 for six courses, Kinn’s is one of the more affordable tasting menus around and includes an evolving, playful menu of thoughtfully crafted dishes like yellowtail in a bath of oyster sauce and charcoal-grilled Wagyu short ribs. 3905 W. 6th St., 213-291-0888, or kinn.la. Beer and wine.

✤❂ Kuya Lord

EAST HOLLYWOOD » Filipino $$$ The shareable trays are a great way to experience a selection of proteins—sweet or savory sausage, grilled Caledonia blue prawns in garlic crab sauce, or chef Lord Maynard Llera’s famous lucenachon (crispy roasted pork belly)—all while sampling glistening chami noodles, tomato-cucumber salad, and wonderfully bright and vinegary pickled green papaya. Finish a meal here with tangy and sweet Filipino Calamansi key lime pie with pandan whipped cream. 5003 Melrose Ave., or kuyalord.com.

No alcohol.

❂ Mes Amis HOLLYWOOD » French $$$

With nods to Paris and Lyon by way of the nearby Hollywood Farmers’ Market, acclaimed chef Lincoln Carson creates a lively environment with upscale brasserie food and cocktails. 1541 Wilcox Ave., 323-410-6200, or mesamisla.com. Full bar.

Meteora

HANCOCK PARK » Eclectic $$$$ Chef Jordan Kahn sees Meteora as a restaurant about rediscovery. A vegetable option includes fire-cooked stone fruit served with crispy brassica leaves, grilled roses, quark, cured duck breast, and lettuce leaves for wrapping. There’s the most

perfectly grilled sea bream wrapped in banana leaf.

The staff, dressed in white or light earth tones, are clearly trained with precision in mind. 6703 Melrose Ave., 323-402-4311, or meteora.la. Full bar.

Mother Tongue WEST HOLLYWOOD » Eclectic $$$

This eatery inside a fitness club uses healthy ingredients to create international comfort food.

It’s all cooked by Michael Mina with immense flavor. 960 N. La Brea Ave., 213-319-7850, or hellomothertongue.com. Full bar.

✤ Mother Wolf HOLLYWOOD » Italian $$$

With its open kitchen, Mother Wolf is like theater, where chef Evan Funke’s talent and enthusiasm for perfecting Italian cooking is the star. Because he already had a major presence locally with his Venice restaurant, Felix, many are familiar with Funke’s ricotta-and-Parmesan-stuffed squash blossoms paired with an earthy glass of Nebbiolo.

1545 Wilcox Ave., 323-410-6060, or motherwolfla.com.

Full bar.

❂ Mr. T Los Angeles HOLLYWOOD » French $$$

This Hollywood spinoff of the popular Parisian restaurant is already buzzing. The global menu gets California flair from bright dishes like the Chip N Dip, a pretty bowl of crème fraîche, herbs, pickled daikon, and trout roe. 953 N. Sycamore Ave., 310-953-4934, or mrtrestaurants.com. Full bar.

✤❂ n/soto MID CITY » Japanese $$$

Chef-owners Niki Nakayama and Carole IidaNakayama’s izakaya-inspired restaurant, n/soto,

offers all of the precision and excellence that earned the pair two Michelin stars for n/naka, their modern kaiseki establishment. But n/soto exudes a more casual, relaxed spirit. Skewers are, of course, the heart of an izakaya, and the tender lamb chops and grilled shiitake mushrooms stand out. The room is filled with diners who know to order the miso-baked bone marrow with umeboshi onigiri rice balls—it lands at most tables. For dessert, the melon float—a bright-green, soda fountain-style coupe—turns heads. 4566 W. Washington Blvd., 323-879-9455, or n-soto.com. Full bar.

Pizzeria Sei

PICO-ROBERTSON » Pizza $$

Providence alum William Joo tosses his own take on Neapolitan pizzas at this tiny storefront. Lucky guests snag seats at the counter and watch as pies topped with whole olives, anchovies, and garlic bubble in the oven.

8781 W. Pico Blvd., 424-279-9800, or pizzeriasei.com.

No alcohol.

✤❂ Saffy’s

EAST HOLLYWOOD » Middle Eastern $$$$

Chef Ori Menashe has described the food—shawarma plus lamb, pork, and chicken kabobs cooked on a wood-burning stove—to be the most like what he and his wife, Genevieve Gergis, might serve to guests in their home. The meat-centric menu is complemented by vegetable-forward sides like green falafel with tahini served atop puddles of a beet zhoug. Gergis’s pastry menu is short and, well, sweet: bergamot-chocolate cake with rose ganache, orange blossom creme caramel, and undoubtedly the best soft-serve around. 4845 Fountain Ave., 424-699-4845, or saffysla.com. Full bar.

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VOLUNTEER TODAY AND SPARK THE CHANGE OF TOMORROW. LAWorks.com A special thank you to the following organizations for their generous support of L.A. Works.

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❂ Saltie Girl

WEST HOLLYWOOD » Seafood $$$

This L.A. outpost of the Boston original is already buzzing. Oysters, tinned fish, New England classics like lobster rolls with chips, and clam chowder keep it true to its New England roots while playful creations like fried lobster and waffles are a nod to its local surroundings. 8615 Sunset Blvd., saltiegirl.com.

Full bar.

Tacos Don Manolito HOLLYWOOD » Tacos $$

One of Mexico City’s biggest chains opened its first U.S. location, in Hollywood, in October. Its signature Campechano taco is meaty bliss, with chorizo, chicharrón, and cecina. 5553 W. Sunset Blvd., 323-366-2688, tacosdm.com. No alcohol.

Trophies Burger Club FAIRFAX » Burgers $

Everything on the menu is under $10 at this retro burger joint. Chef Geo Delgado (Everson Royce Bar, Burgers 99) is a burger expert and will offer a few variations on the classic ketchup, mustard, diced onions, and pickles. 519 N. Fairfax Ave., trophiesburgerclub.com. No alcohol.

Tokki

KOREATOWN » Korean $$

Chef Sunny Jang, whose résumé includes the acclaimed Quince in San Francisco, is in the kitchen at this ambitious modern Korean restaurant. Fried rice cakes mingle with both Korean gochujang sauce and Spanish manchego cheese. Kalbi steak comes with truffle aioli.

3465 W. 6th St., 818-527-2213, or tokki-la.com. Soju and sake.

Workshop Kitchen + Bar Fairfax District » American $$$$

This Los Angeles outpost of the beloved Palm Springs original offers chef-owner Michael Beckman’s seasonal, French-influenced cooking in a former printing facility remodeled with a striking modern interor, lofty ceilings, and podlike concrete booths. 127 S. La Brea Ave., 323-413-2255, or workshopkitchenbar.com.

Full bar.

EAST ❂ Agnes Restaurant & Cheesery PASADENA » Eclectic $$

This low-key charmer—the work of two alums of acclaimed San Francisco Italian joint Flour + Water—deftly mixes midwestern hospitality and European technique. The casual lunch is all about cheese and charcuterie boards and sandwiches. At dinner, excellent pastas, smartly prepared proteins, thoughtfully selected wines, and great cocktails join the party on the spacious patio.

40 W. Green St., 626-389-3839, or agnesla.com.

Full bar.

❂ Bacetti Trattoria ECHO PARK » Italian $$

Chef Joel Stovall, formerly of Orsa & Winston, uses California produce in his ode-to-Rome menu at this upscale neighborhood stunner.

Sunchokes tossed with dates, sunflower seeds, and za’atar surprise, while the al dente rigatoni all’amatriciana comforts. 1509 Echo Park Ave., 213-995-6090, or bacetti-la.com. Full bar.

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Bar Moruno SILVER LAKE » Spanish Tapas $$

Osteria Mozza alums Chris Feldmeier and David Rosoff have revived their much-lauded tapas spot, this time in Silver Lake. Meals typically start with Iberian tinned fish and are best paired with playful martinis. 3705 Sunset Blvd., 323-546-0505, or barmoruno-la.com.

Full bar.

❂ Bub and Grandma’s GLASSELL PARK » Sandwiches $$

This sub shop serves brisket sandwiches made with the same crusty loaves of sourdough and squares of ciabatta that owner Andy Kadin sells to 150 of L.A.’s most prominent restaurants.

Kadin refers to the sandwiches as “Bub subs,” which pastry chef Christopher Lier, from Osteria and Pizzeria Mozza, spent at least six months developing. Chef Zach Jarrett heads the kitchen at Bub and Grandma’s, which currently serves breakfast and lunch. 3507 Eagle Rock Blvd., or bubandgrandmas.com. No alcohol.

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The name “Chelou,” French slang for “unexpected,” “strange,” or “weird,” suits this refreshingly relaxed bistro that also serves well-balanced cocktails and a rotating list of small-production wines. The menu, which chef Douglas Rankin describes as “haute Parisian cuisine,” embraces the European sensibility in four parts: tapas, smaller plates, larger mains, and desserts. The prices allow for frequent visits, and the food certainly does too. 37 S. El Molino Ave., 626-808-4976, or barchelou.com. Full bar.

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❂ Causita

SILVER LAKE » Peruvian/Japanese $$$

Ricardo Zarate’s Japanese-influenced Peruvian cooking now has a home in the heart of Silver Lake.

Here, sushi-style fresh fish is served atop potatoes, and thick udon noodles arrive smothered in Peruvian pesto. 3709 Sunset Blvd., 323-546-0505, or causita-la.com. Full bar.

Dunsmoor

GLASSELL PARK » Southern American $$

“We don’t use processed foods because we try to work within the limitations from before the Gilded Age.” This culinary ethos is the force behind Brian Dunsmoor’s new restaurant, where his devotion to “heritage cookery” is on full display and activity centers on a wood-fired hearth.

3501 Eagle Rock Blvd., 323-686-6027, or dunsmoor.la.

Beer and wine.

Encanto LOS FELIZ » Mexican $$

With its dark and moody interior, Encanto is a welcome addition to the neighborhood, with California-Mexican dishes like dry-aged whole branzino with mole verde and thyme as well as a steady flow of mezcal margaritas. 2121 Hillhurst Ave., 323-741-0140, or encanto.la. Full bar.

❂ Jin Cook GLENDALE » Korean $

K-Town has the highest concentration of Korean food in the U.S., but it doesn’t get all the hits. Jin Cook works wonders with “authentic Korean soul food” in Glendale. This homey restaurant brings sparkle to dishes like spicy pork. Thinly sliced meat arrives sizzling in a stone bowl and then gets

crusty and caramelized and reaches hyperdrive when showered with shredded mozzarella, which magically melds with the spicy meat and enables cheese pulls galore. 310 N. Brand Blvd., 818-637-7822, or jincooks.com. Beer.

Konbi Ni

ECHO PARK » Japanese $$ The sandwich counter once known for its perfect egg salad sandwiches and chocolate croissants has reinvented itself. After a yearslong pandemic pivot to takeout only, the tiny spot is now serving pre fixe Japanese breakfast, including kabocha squash and grilled fish. 1463 W. Sunset Blvd., konbi.co.

No alcohol.

❂ Mírate LOS FELIZ » Mexican $$$

Mírate prepares inventive food that tells a story. It grinds its own masa for tortillas and uses grain from the Tehachapi Heritage Grain Project. Thick-cut yucca fries come drenched in cheesy, meaty queso.

Generous bowls of hamachi aguachile ceviche with black lime and tomatillo is fresh and bright, and pairs nicely with a frothy sour papaya tequila cocktail. 1712 N. Vermont Ave., 323-649-7937, or mirate.la.

Full bar.

Monarch ARCADIA » Cantonese $$$$

Designer Humberto Leon, who opened Chifa in 2020, and his family are serving Hong Konginspired dishes like fried rice with jumbo shrimp and fish roe; braised curry lamb shanks; and Wagyu filet mignon tartare in a chic bar and dining room. 1212 S. Baldwin Ave., 626-596-2818, or monarch-sgv.com. Full bar.

SOCIAL 25

MAY

LearnAboutWine Presents

The STARS of Napa Valley 2023 Thursday, May 25 Tesse Restaurant, West Hollywood

❂ Moo’s Craft Barbecue LINCOLN HEIGHTS » Barbecue $

Some of the best Texas barbecue is actually in L.A. where Andrew and Michelle Muñoz weave in their Mexican-Angeleno roots with dishes like a cheese-and-poblano-filled beef and pork verde sausage. 2118 N. Broadway, 323-686-4133, or mooscraftbarbecue.com. Beer and wine.

Pijja Palace SILVER LAKE » Indian-American $

Indian-American restaurateur Avish Naran brings pizza and pasta featuring the flavors of his childhood to a strip-mall sports bar. The innovative menu includes Malai rigatoni with tomato-masala sauce, pizza topped with chicken tikka, and cardamom-and-cookies soft serve. 2711 W. Sunset Blvd., or pijjapalace.com. Full bar.

THE VALLEY ❂ Black Market Liquor Bar STUDIO CITY » New American $$

Some nights, it seems as if half the Valley is here, enjoying the colorful patio. Top Chef graduate Antonia Lofaso’s Italian chops are visible in the buxom ricotta gnudi with brown butter and pistachios. The deep-fried fluffernutter sandwich is a reminder that food, like life, should not be taken too seriously. 11915 Ventura Blvd., 818-446-2533, or blackmarketliquorbar.com. Full bar.

❂ The Brothers Sushi WOODLAND HILLS » Sushi $$$

This hidden gem, reinvigorated when chef Mark Okuda took the helm in 2018, is worth traveling

PROMOTION

01

JUN

Fondle Project Launch Party Thursday, June 1, 7 – 10 p.m.

Studio B @ The Bergamont, Santa Monica

The Napa Valley is coming to Los Angeles for a night of wine tasting, appetizers and charity! Join LearnAboutWine in welcoming the Napa Valley Vintners at Tesse Restaurant on May 25. Taste dozens of top wines with owners, winemakers and producers in attendance.

The event will be held on the outdoor patio with a spectacular view of the city; and will include paired, tray pass appetizers.100% of auction and raffle proceeds benefit Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Gina Lamanna, a breast cancer survivor and entrepreneur, has launched The Fondle Project Campaign for women to be their own advocates for breast health.

Featuring breast cancer survivors from various backgrounds, The Fondle Project aims to normalize self-examination and promote body positivity, strength and empowerment. The campaign was inspired

by Lamanna’s own story of self-detection after false-negative mammograms and misdiagnosis. In partnership with female-founded fashion brands, the campaign will donate 10% of sales to cancer organizations.

For tickets and more information visit learnaboutwine.com

thefondleproject.com @thefondleproject

03

JUN

18th Annual LAWineFest Saturday, June 3, 2 – 6 p.m.

Sunday, June 4, 1 – 5 p.m.

Harry Bridges Memorial Park by the Queen Mary, Long Beach

Sip - Explore - Enjoy! The 18th annual LAWineFest returns to Long Beach.

Choose from hundreds of California and International wines + craft brews to taste. Explore artisan and lifestyle exhibitors and delectable food purveyors while enjoying a sunny day by the Los Angeles Harbor with live music.

For tickets and more information visit lawinefest.com/squadup-tickets

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for. The excellent omakase is available in the restaurant, on the patio, or to go. You can also order à la carte or get non-sushi items like soy-glazed grilled chicken. 21418 Ventura Blvd., 818-456-4509, or thebrotherssushi.com. Beer, sake, and wine.

Hank’s

BURBANK » Bagels $

The L.A. bagel revolution continues at this stylish spot that serves up carefully constructed sandwiches. Tomato, aioli, and maple-glazed bacon elevate a simple bacon, egg, and cheese, while a classic gravlax construction has thoughtful touches like salted cucumbers and pickled onions. Grab a tub of Hank’s “angry” spread—a spicy, slightly sweet concoction—to have in your fridge. 4315 W. Riverside Dr., 818-588-3693, or hanksbagels.com. Also at 13545 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, 818-588-3693. No alcohol.

Tel Aviv Authentic Kitchen ENCINO » Middle Eastern $

Deeply comforting Israeli skewers, kabobs, and merguez come with a colorful and tasty array of salads showcasing produce like red cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, and pumpkin.

The spicy sauces on the side work well with anyand everything. 17630 Ventura Blvd., 747-444-7001, or telavivkoshergrill.com. No alcohol.

SOUTH ❂ Ali’i Fish Company EL SEGUNDO » Seafood $$

This small, unassuming spot shames all the glossy poke purveyors popping up around town that serve mediocre versions of the Hawaiian dish.

Glistening cubes of tuna, flown in fresh from the Islands daily, remind you how great poke can be.

The smoked-ahi dip with house-made potato chips is not to be missed. 409 E. Grand Ave., 310-616-3484, or aliifishco.com. Also at 4437 Sepulveda Blvd., Torrance, 310-540-2323. Beer and wine.

MARKETPLACE ADVENTURES & DESTINATIONS

NUDE

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❂ Fishing With Dynamite MANHATTAN BEACH » Seafood $$$

A premium raw bar near the beach shouldn’t be unusual, but it is. The same goes for velvety clam chowder; here, it achieves smoky richness—you can thank the Nueske’s bacon for that—without any of the floury glop. 1148 Manhattan Ave., 310-893-6299, or eatfwd.com. Full bar.

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❂ Little Coyote LONG BEACH » Pizza $

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That most amazing slice of pizza you had that one very drunken, late night in your early twenties in New York lives on . . . in Long Beach. The crust is carby perfection: tangy, crispy, thin but with a healthy puff. The concise menu doesn’t offer any revelations about what should be atop pizza but, instead, perfects the usual suspects. 2118 E. 4th St., 562-434-2009, or littlecoyotelbc.com. Also at 3500 Los Coyotes Diagonal, 562-352-1555. Beer and wine.

✤❂ RYLA

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HERMOSA BEACH » Eclectic $$$$ There is nothing fussy or pretentious about the menu at RYLA. The fried rice comes flecked with sweet Chinese sausage and pickled ginger and is buried in a thick dusting of shaved black truffles from Burgundy. Start a meal with Hokkaido milk bread with fish roe-nori spread and make your way down the menu to a main dish like the grilled New Zealand Tai snapper that comes in a pool of limecoconut broth with mussels, daikon, and Fresno chiles. 1220 Hermosa Ave., 424-247-9881, or eatryla.com.Full bar.

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Requiem for a Dude CO N T I N U E D F R O M PAG E 4 9

known, with its cool, Big Lebowski-an overtones, seems a little on the nose, well, maybe it’s not unfair to be suspicious.

But the real key to assessing Dudamel’s time here might lie not just in his work with the orchestra, but also in his work beyond it, namely the interest he’s brought to the project of education, specifically his work with Youth Orchestra Los Angeles. YOLA had already begun before Dudamel arrived—it was established in 2007—and it has grown over the last decade and a half from an embryonic program of 80 students into one that now serves more than 1,700, with a dedicated facility in Inglewood. A cynic might dismiss Dudamel’s attention to this program as yet another canny bit of civic optics, like an athlete breezing through a children’s hospital. But anyone with a sense of the conductor’s biography and of how important El Sistema, YOLA’s model, remains to him, would understand there’s more to it than that. “Music is not just a passion to him—it’s a cause,” Yaroslavsky told me. “He’s a proselytizer. And when you proselytize, who do you go after? You go after the young.”

It’s easy for an American to be cynical about Dudamel’s frequent limning of music as a social unifier, his belief that “culture creates a better world, and . . . music is a fundamental right.” But El Sistema, that crucible in which Dudamel was forged under the watchful eye of his beloved mentor (and the program’s founder) Jose Antonio Abreu, is an organization of deep political importance. “There’s nothing in America that really compares,” Ted Braun,

has happened to coincide with a who directed the ¡Viva Maestro! kind of golden era for the arts—or documentary, told me. El Sistema is certainly for arts funding—in Los funded by Venezuela’s social welfare Angeles. The past few decades have budget rather than its cultural arts seen the construction of Disney hall, budget, which means it is viewed by the expansion of the Los Angeles many Venezuelans as not a luxury County Museum of Art, and the but a necessity. Certainly, it was one openings of the Getty Center and for the young Dudamel, who began the Broad Stage, to name just a few studying under Abreu at age four and landmarks on our renewed artistic has remained intimately involved landscape. Dudamel’s presence has with El Sistema ever since. The one seemed somehow of a piece with hiccup came in 2017, when Dudamel’s this: emergent, exciting, and filled cautious criticism of the Maduro with boundless promise. Borda government’s repressive tactics led was quick to remind me that for a to the cancellation of the Bolívar conductor to remain in his post for youth orchestra’s tour dates abroad 17 years is almost unheard of these and, ultimately, to Dudamel’s being days in classical music and expressed banned from his home country for her supreme confidence, as others years. (He was finally able to return did, in Chad Smith, the L.A. Phil’s in 2022.) Dudamel’s critique was current chief executive, and mild, indeed. In an op-ed written for his ability to seek out and secure an the Los Angeles Times, he noted his exciting replacement. “respect” for the Venezuelan governThe Dude will be 45 when he ment before claiming he didn’t “agree leaves Los Angeles and will have with every decision they make.” It’s spent almost as many years here as exactly the sort of delicate pronouncehe did in Venezuela. Artists need ment you’d expect from a movie star to grow, but so do institutions and or a corporate president, only there so do cities. Whether or not L.A. has is a difference between being a celebproved for Dudamel to be largely a rity and being the cultural avatar of a steppingstone on his nation. El Sistema is, as way to what some might it has always been, a lifeconsider a larger, more line for people to find “People desirable stage in New joy and self-expression York, his departure crethat grows harder want him to ates opportunity, which than ever to locate under be extrain turn can engender repressive political ordinary— growth. Who specifically conditions. will replace him? No So, will Dudamel’s for the most one yet knows. Mirga name ultimately etch part, he is.”

Gražinytė-Tyla, the itself in the enduring panLithuanian conductor theon of artists whose who leads the City of work has defined L.A.’s culBirmingham Symphony Orchestra, tural history alongside Schoenberg’s, is a name that comes up a lot, but so Klemperer’s, or Stravinsky’s, say (or do plenty of others (Andrés OrozcoJoan Didion’s, Walter Mosley’s, Simon Estrada, Roderick Cox, Susanna Rodia’s)? Perhaps not. When I asked Mälkki), in such profusion as to make whether the conductor will be difficult speculation largely meaningless. for the Phil to replace, one insider But at a time when culture and hesitated not at all before answering capital seem to run closer together with a flat “no.” than ever before, when it is increasBut to lean upon Dudamel’s irreingly possible to confuse money placeability or to project a kind of and magnetism with meaning, it is messianic stature onto him seems worth remembering what Dudamel, like the wrong metric to assess the whose passion and private interimpact of an artist whose work is, ests always did seem to run a little after all, orchestral and who, for all closer to the ground—chili dogs, not his star qualities, seems to lack the caviar—taught us also: Things in L.A. narcissistic self-focus of so many tend to grow organically, and in that superstars and to possess something regard it is always the music, far more far more rare: an authentic generosthan the maestro, that matters. ity. His tenure at the Philharmonic L A M A G . C O M 91

Q: When pets die in L.A., how are their remains handled?

FOREVER HOME

Film star Doris Hill and a friend visit Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in 1929.

A:

Since it’s illegal to bury Fido in the backyard, you have three options: the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, your local vet, or a private pet undertaker. Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas, for example, will wash and groom your pets, place them in a satin-lined casket, and arrange a private viewing in the slumber room before burial or cremation. A call to 311 will summon a sanitation worker to pick up dogs and cats as well as goldfish, coyotes, and roosters. According to bureau spokesman Nat Isaac, they’re all dumped into a pit at a rendering plant in Vernon and “ground to mush.” The oil is squeezed out and sold as fuel to cement plants in Mexico. The remaining powder is marketed as fertilizer in Indonesia. Calling the city is free; a vet costs about $70; and a pet undertaker can set you back around $2,000.

Q: What happened to the elephants at Hollywood and Highland?

A: The pair of 32-foot fiberglass pachyderms loomed high above the mall’s Babylon Court for two 9 2 L A M AG . C O M

decades until they were removed in a recent remodel.

Based on woodand-plaster props from the silent epic Intolerance, the Babylon Court statues were intended as a tribute to film

history. According to designer Jack Illes, the movie’s original elephants were abandoned in 1916 on the corner of Hollywood and Sunset and became one of Hollywood’s first

tourist attractions.

Decades later, Illes remembered them from a book in his grandfather’s library and left his job at Disney to resurrect them at the mall.

Now he feels their loss. “They broke them up by hand with hammers,” he says. “You’d think they would airlift them out of there.”

Q: What are those white Jaguars with sensors driving around L.A.?

A: The $70,000 SUVs wearing a giant baseball cap of gizmos belong to Waymo, the autonomous-car company launched

by Google in 2009.

Since October, they have been running test drives with routes taking them through downtown, Westwood, and Koreatown.

Once they get DMV approval, the electric Jags will become driverless alternatives to Uber and Lyft, with similar prices, no tips, and no attitude. “I’ve had drivers tell me they won’t go to certain areas,” says Waymo’s Olivia Chang. “The Waymo driver doesn’t care. We’ll be in all neighborhoods, from Beverly Hills to San Pedro.”

CHRIS’S PICK

LAPL Is 150!

PARTY HEARTY AT THE LIBRARY ● The founders of

the Los Angeles Public Library met at a downtown theater because, of course, L.A. had a theater before it had a library. They had been gifted 750 books and needed a place to put them. So in 1872, they rented a room above a Spring Street saloon, and an institution was born. The 150th anniversary celebration wraps up this month at Central Library with the exhibition LAPL150—Our Story Is Yours, showcasing the city’s history with images selected from more than 3 million in the library’s collection.

You can join the festivities by singing along to a birthday playlist at the library’s music streamer, Freegal, or play with a 3D printer and a laser cutter downtown and craft some crazy windup birthday cake.

All for free. Happy birthday, LAPL. —CHRIS NICHOLS

VOLUME 68, NUMBER 5. LOS ANGELES (ISSN 1522-9149) is published monthly by Los Angeles Magazine, LLC. Principal office: 644 S. Figueroa St., 3rd Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90017. Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA, and additional mailing offices. The one-year domestic subscription price is $14.95. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to LOS ANGELES, 1965 E. Avis Dr., Madison Heights, MI 48071. Not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or other materials, which must be accompanied by return postage. SUBSCRIBERS: If the Postal Service alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. Copyright © 2023 Los Angeles Magazine, LLC. All rights reserved. Best of L.A.® is a registered trademark of Los Angeles Magazine, LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part of any text, photograph, or illustration without written permission from the publisher is strictly prohibited. SUBSCRIBER SERVICE 866-660-6247. GST #R133004424. PRINTED IN THE USA.

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Chloe Kim Two-time winter games gold medalist, member of the all-star squad

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