Los Angeles magazine - November 2021 by The Lifestyle Magazines of SoCal

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SHROOMS! SHAMANS! KOSHER LSD! WHY THE WHOLE CITY IS SUDDENLY TRIPPING OUT BY PETER KIEFER

NOVEMBER 2021

MOCA’S MUSICAL CHAIRS

L.A.’S HOTTEST HAIRCUTS

NOV E M BE R 2021

VA L L E Y G I R L

“Friday night was sports night,” remembers photographer Rick McCloskey. “Saturday night was date night, and Wednesday night was cruise night.”

Features 56

Smoking: A Love Story

Psychedelic City

An Affair to Dismember

Wednesday Night Lights

One man’s harrowing, hacking odyssey through Los Angeles—and how this city of lights finally helped him conquer his addiction.

Housewives in the Hills are doing it. Hipsters in Los Feliz, too. Why L.A. became ground zero for a new hallucinogen boom, with ayahuasca ceremonies now as common as barbecues. But is microdosing shrooms really the answer to what ails Angelenos?

A journalist spent 20 years on the trail of Robert Durst, the eccentric real-estate heir accused of murdering three people, including his wife. The journalist’s quest ended with her testimony in the trial that finally brought the wily millionaire to justice.

For one night a week in the San Fernando Valley, teenagers ruled the road.

BY PETER KIEFER

B Y L I S A D E PA U LO

B Y C L AY T O N F OX

4 L A M AG . C O M

P H OTOS BY R I C K M C C LO S K E Y TEXT BY CHRIS NICHOLS

P H O T O BY R I C K M C C L O S K E Y

NOV E M BE R 2021

Buzz FULL COURT MESS » A year after he took office, George Gascón was the most despised DA in America. Here’s how the campaign to recall him went down in ﬂames. BY HILLEL ARON PAGE 15

THE BRIEF » The guy who took a bullet for Lady Gaga’s bulldogs has slipped his leash; MOCA’s Klaus

Biesenbach has beelined it for Berlin; Mad Max cars at auction; Is COVID killing live music in L.A.? PAGE 18

TIKTOK DOUGH » L.A. real estate agents are turning to house porn to market high-end properties on the ubiquitous app. BY ALEXANDRIA ABRAMIAN PAGE 20

Ask Chris M A K I NG THE CUTS

Butcher Romeo Cervantes of Hardy’s Meat Market has a loyal fanbase of barbecue lovers.

Incoming!

» L.A.’s a doughnut town, so why is Dunkin’ so late to the game? Why is that restaurant at the airport called the Theme Building? Did the 99 Cents Only store change its name because prices rose? Our resident historian answers all your burning questions. BY CHRIS NICHOLS PAGE 116

hot spot for margaritas, pasta, and a party; Billie Eilish’s best tracks; Natasha Rothwell is ready for life after Insecure; top salons share their must-have haircuts PAG E 2 3 ON THE COVER P H O T O G R A P H E D BY SA M C O M E N

Illustrated by Justin Metz Produced by Walrus

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STO C K A RT: G E T T Y I M AG E S

» The tastiest Thanksgiving birds to take out; a new Culver City

Maer Roshan

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Shizukuishi. A land of majestic white birch groves. A spring of constant inspiration for Grand Seiko. Here, light and shadow are in dynamic harmony. And Time is etched with intricate precision. Here, the TAKUMI infuse the essence of Nature into each and every timepiece, bringing its true beauty to life.

Shizukuishi, Iwate Prefecture

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10 L A M AG . C O M

Editor’s Note

BY MAER ROSHAN

L A S T Y E A R , when we were all

still in lockdown, I started hearing from friends and acquaintances about a novel way of breaking free without ever leaving home. A relative in Santa Monica raved about a party drug that chipped away at decades of repressed trauma. A Type-A college buddy who ended up in Hollywood rang to regale me with stories about his adventures microdosing psilocybin—not in a quest to attain spiritual clarity, but because it helped him “kick ass at work.” Even after the lockdown ended, I kept hearing tales of backyard mushroom parties in the Hollywood Hills and mind-blowing Bufo retreats in Costa Rica. Suddenly the whole city seemed awash in psychedelics. Now, in certain quarters of Silver Lake and Beverly Hills, shamans have become as indispensable as shrinks (and decidely more expensive). L.A. has always led the world when it comes to pharmacological innovation. But as Peter Kiefer reports in this month’s cover story, the people driving the city’s latest psychedelic surge are a far cry from Ken Kesey and the grungy gang of ’60s-era day-trippers. There’s something weirdly wholesome about this new generation of spiritual seekers—the sort of folks who bravely imbibe all manner of exotic potions but take a very dim view of gluten and processed foods. Take Brandee and Damien Sabella, the picture-perfect psychedelic evangelists who kick off Kiefer’s story. They live with their blended brood of ﬁve children in an unpretentious 1 2 L A M AG . C O M

“In certain quarters of the city, shamans are becoming as indispensable as shrinks (and decidedly more expensive).”

Malibu compound that features a giant skate ramp where the tennis court used to be. Notwithstanding their hipster tats and New Age lingo, they exude an endearingly earnest Brady Bunch vibe—like if Mike and Carol had moved the fam to a $9-million Point Dume compound and guzzled ayahuasca like it was iced tea. Like others who’ve found salvation in psychedelics, the Sabellas are true believers who describe their journey in almost religious tones. They’ve climbed the mountain and seen the promised land. Wouldn’t you love to come along? Honestly, I was a bit skeptical at first. I’ve covered a lot of drug stories over the years—as a journalist working here and in Manhattan, it comes with the territory. (New York magazine proclaimed that cocaine was back three times in the seven years I worked there.) But I’ve also seen firsthand the devastation and misery that addiction can bring to people long after the media spotlight swings away. Psychedelics don’t seem to be anywhere as addictive as other drugs, but any substance that offers hours of otherworldly bliss can’t be entirely immune from abuse. People will go to great lengths for a reprieve from life’s aches and pains. Which raises another thing worth thinking about. Twelve-step groups often preach that people turn to substances to escape uncomfortable realities. “Isn’t it better,” they argue, “to confront the uncomfortable?” Perhaps. But the more I learn about psychedelics, the more I’m coming around. A mounting body of scientific evidence suggests that some of these drugs, if properly administered, can perform miracles in treating depression and anxiety and a range of other emotional and psychological issues, including, ironically, addiction itself. Besides, there are some realities these days— like, say, that news report about a group of anti-vaxxers who “liberated” a COVID patient from his hospital only to watch him die the next day—that are maybe worth running away from, or at least shutting out for a few hours. At this notably dumb and divisive moment in our collective history, anything that fosters harmonious enlightenment is OK with me. In any case, whatever mindset you happen to be in, there’s likely something in the following pages to elevate your mood: from a wistful photo portfolio of the street-racing teens of Van Nuys in the 1970s to a Real World: Los Angeles reunion to a tour of the best New York-style pizza in town. As the shamans say, “Namaste.”

Maer Roshan, Editor-in-Chief P H O T O G R A P H E D BY E L I SA B E T H CA R E N

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Full Court Mess A YEAR AFTER HE TOOK OFFICE, GEORGE GASCÓN WAS THE MOST DESPISED DA IN AMERICA. HERE’S HOW THE CAMPAIGN TO RECALL HIM WENT DOWN IN FLAMES B Y H I L L E L A R O N Z I L L U S T R AT E D B Y P E T E R A R K L E

L A M AG . C O M 15

POLITICS

C A L I F O R N I A WA S in the midst of “recall fever” earlier this year as a loose array of conservative groups launched surprisingly strong campaigns targeting the governor and dozens of other state and local officials. Then they came for George Gascón. But behind the scenes, one woman ultimately controlled the campaign to recall the combative 67-year-old, who in March defeated Jackie Lacey, the incumbent DA and the first African American and woman to hold the top law enforcement post in the city’s history, on a bold progressive platform to end mass incarceration, reduce sentences for criminals, and prosecute cops for misconduct. Gascón’s bête noire turns out to be not a seasoned political operative but an amateur pseudoactivist and law-enforcement booster named Heather Carbone. Though she took steps to hide her name from the official Gascón recall commitishly walked back some of them, agreeing to allow sentenctee’s public paperwork, eight sources with ties to the operation ing enhancements for some hate crimes. Less than 100 days confirmed that she was the person who called the shots. There into his first term, a survey taken by UCLA’s Luskin School of is no indication that she was actually paid for her work. Public Affairs found that just 31 percent of voters approved of Carbone declined to comment for this story except to say his job performance; 32 percent disapproved. His numbers that she “helped on the recall campaign and ran the Facebook were even worse than those of Alex Villanueva, the controgroup.” She insists that “other people” ran the campaign versial L.A. County sheriff who has been mired in a series of though that was contradicted by nearly everyone interviewed. scandals since his own surprise victory. How did a political neophyte come to manage one of the “[Gascón] brought a huge wrecking ball to the entire highest-profile recall campaigns in the state? criminal justice system—virtually all aspects of it,” says forFirst, it’s instructive to revisit the remarkable circumstances mer DA Steve Cooley, Lacey’s predecessor, who, with forthat led to Gascón’s election and his subsequent repudiation by mer city councilman Dennis Zine, became the public face critics and even his most ardent supporters. of the Gascón recall effort. The campaign was able to raise Lacey began the race for the DA’s office with the enthusimore than $1 million (with six-figure checks from pro-Trump astic endorsement of California’s Democratic establishment. developer Geoff Palmer, hotel heir Anthony Pritzker, and oil But as the race dragged on and anti-cop heir Robert Day), thanks in part to the protests across the city intensified followendorsement of Tania Owen, the widow ing George Floyd’s murder, Lacey’s close of a slain sheriff’s department sergeant, How a political ties to law enforcement became a liabiland Desiree Andrade, whose son was bruneophyte came ity. After finishing a distant second in the tally murdered by gang members. Both March open primary, Gascón went on to said Gascón’s reforms would reduce the to manage handily defeat her in the general election. sentences of their loved ones’ killers. one of California’s Immediately upon taking office last Then came Heather Carbone. highest-profile December, Gascón announced a slew of Until recently, Carbone operated a initiatives that upended decades of estabFacebook page, Defend the LAPD. The recall campaigns. lished policy; he did away with cash bail Recall Gascón campaign was started (the cancellation of which voters had there. After filing the paperwork in March, just rejected by statewide referendum) organizers had 160 days to obtain at least and sentencing enhancements that can add years or even 579,062 valid signatures from registered L.A. County voters. decades for gang affiliation, use of a firearm, or hate motiCollecting such a large cache is no easy task. To succeed, orgavation. Minors would no longer be tried as adults, prosecunizers needed to raise between five million and eight million tors could no longer seek the death penalty. The backlash dollars to fund a small army of signature gatherers. But the was fierce—from crime victims, from law enforcement, from campaign waited until the 160-day clock had already started judges. Even Gascón’s supporters were rattled by the swift before raising money and hiring professional consultants. This and sweeping nature of his reforms. LGBTQ leaders were so time-consuming gaffe garnered media coverage but little in the incensed about his abolition of hate-crime enhancements way of actual signatures. that they held a press conference to decry the move. Less But according to several volunteers, things took an ugly than two weeks after announcing the policies, Gascón sheepturn early in the campaign when a rift formed between 16 L A M AG . C O M

A L S E I B / LO S A N G E L E S T I M E S V I A G E T T Y I M AG E

BUZZ

TO P A N D G E O R G E G AS CÓ N : I R FA N K H A N / LO S A N G E L E S T I M E S V I A G E T T Y I M AG E S ; P R OT E ST E R : JAS O N A R M O N D/ LO S A N G E L E S T I M E S V I A G E T T Y I M AG E S

DA D R A M A Clockwise from opposite page: Desiree Andrade (left), whose son was murdered, at a rally to recall Gascón in April; L.A. County Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami, a vocal Gascón critic, with Larry Elder; an anti-Gascon protest in Beverly Hills; the DA at a press conference in June.

Carbone and organizers who were put off by what they considered her controlling and divisive manner. “Her communication style was abrasive,” says Karen Roseberry, a former educator and volunteer. “She was unwilling to compromise or be open to other points of view.” Fed up with Carbone’s theatrics, Roseberry quit Recall George Gascón in April and started Recall Gascón Now, a more modestly ﬁnanced rival that gathered signatures for the same petition. The similar names led to confusion among volunteers and lots of angry bickering on social media. On Facebook, Carbone warned supporters not to volunteer for the breakaway group and railed against its leaders. Referring to Roseberry, Carbone wrote, “She is a volunteer who got upset we didn’t hire her. She’s not well is the best way to say it. She has stolen from us and the campaign attorney sent her a cease and desist.” When asked why there were two groups engaged in the same effort, Carbone responded that the other campaign was “falsely using our campaign endorsements and they have been emailing and texting people who did not give them permission to do so. They are trying to get money.” “An inordinate amount of effort and attention was put on trying to sabotage the efforts of any other group working toward the recall,” says Roseberry. “If it was not part of Heather’s group, the legitimacy was questioned.” Adds Marc Debbaudt, the former president of the L.A. Association of District Attorneys, “The goal was to collect the signatures, and it doesn’t matter how you get them.” But the campaign had bigger problems. After an impressive start, fundraising stalled. Police unions had spent millions to prevent Gascón’s election in the ﬁrst place and balked at spending more to recall him, partly because their internal

polling showed removing Gascón would be a tough sell. But they were also put off by the campaign’s infighting. A cryptically worded press release from the sheriff ’s deputies union, ALADS, said the union was aware of “at least four different groups involved in the effort to recall Gascón. Are they working in harmony toward a common goal? No comment.” Adds a prosecutor involved with the first campaign, “Heather had all kinds of fights with the unions. It didn’t help that the LAPPL [the LAPD’s union] issued a cease and desist letter to her.” On September 16, with only 200,000 signatures gathered, the campaign announced they were forming a new PAC and yet another campaign, Recall District Attorney George Gascón, and letting the clock run out on the old petition. The new group’s organizers include all the same names from the first group—Andrade, Owen, Cooley, Zine, and former deputy DA Sam Dordulian—minus one: Carbone. “I think Heather wasn’t a really experienced person, and I think the people behind it now are little more experienced,” says Jon Hatami, a prosecutor not working for the recall campaign who has been vocal in his disdain for Gascón. “I would not comment on any sort of personnel matters,” says Cooley. “A lot of people contributed to a lot of good things in the first effort. It got started late because it was strictly a grassroots, volunteer, Facebook kind of thing. It took a while to get the professionals. That will not happen with this effort.” Those professionals include Tim Lineberger, the campaign spokesman, and Jeff Corless, the new campaign strategist. Both were hired while Carbone was still in charge, and both worked on Larry Elder’s campaign to recall Governor Newsom. They are staying on with the campaign and were recently joined by a new campaign manager, Gregory Foster. Asked about the recall reboot, Gascón’s campaign manager, Jamarah Hayner, was quick to point out that “578,000 [signatures] is a really difficult number to hit. Unless you were somehow able to redistrict Orange County into L.A., you’re going to have a hard time.” Gascón himself seems nonplussed by the drama. He thinks the campaign against him was sparked by the Newsom recall and further fueled by the persistent belief among local Trump supporters that Biden had stolen the presidential election. “It’s that never-ending unwillingness to accept a democratic process,” Gascón says of his opponents. “They could not gather enough signatures by a long shot. They blame it on, well, ‘We need to regroup and reset.’ OK, I’m sure you can. Have at it, and we’ll fight you if you can get the signatures.” L A M AG . C O M 17

N E WS & N OT E S F R O M A L L OV E R

FISCHER CUT BAIT

Gaga’s wounded dog walker hits the road.

EVERY DOG WALKER HAS HIS DAY THE GUY WHO TOOK A BULLET FOR LADY GAGA’S BULLDOGS HAS SLIPPED HIS LEASH AND EMBARKED ON A HEALING JOURNEY B Y R E B E K A H B R A N D E S

“exploring this country while seeking out communities that support the process of growing from trauma . . . dog walker—the guy This includes retreat centers, who took a bullet to the chest trauma programs, queer last March when poochnaphealers, creatives, and spiripers snatched her beloved tual leaders.“ French bulldogs. The singer, The response to Fischer’s who was in Italy at the time, plea has been both heartoffered a half-million-dollar warming (728 donors have reward for the return of her already exceeded his goals, canines (they were recovchipping in a total of $45,702 ered a week later) and paid so far—enough to trade for Fischer’s medical bills in the van for an SUV while he recuperated with a trailer) and at her Hollywood alarming, with more Hills home. than a few comSix months later, menters apparently Fischer, 40, is physifurious at Gaga, cally better but who is reportedly remains emotionally G AG A G E T S I T worth $361 million, a work in progress. The backlash for not springing for In fact, the man Gaga over pop star’s Fischer’s full spiritual once praised as “a purloined pets. healing journey. “This hero” now says he feels beautiful man almost died “unsupported, abandoned, protecting your dogs,” stewed homeless.” So he’s been one Instagram poster. “You crowdfunding a $40,000 put up half a million dollars to healing journey while drivget the dogs back, surely you ing a 20-year-old rental van can support him ﬁnancially.” across the United States. His Fumed another, “Lady Gaga plan, as he describes it on too busy focusing on herself his GoFundMe page, involves REMEMBER Ryan Fischer? He was Lady Gaga’s

18 L A M AG . C O M

to even realize there are other people in the world.” Fischer, though, is somewhat more forgiving, even though Gaga rebuffed him when his assistant—yes, the dog walker had an assistant—tried to bill her for six months of Fischer’s severance. “I’m very grateful for what [Gaga has] given me. She’s a great friend,” he tells Los Angeles. “Her house is like a second home to me. It was an amazing place to heal.” As for Gaga turning down his severance, Fischer has no comment other than that he’s been “very supported by my assistant. She’s always been there for me. I’ve been supported by everyone.”

KLAUS THE DOOR ON YOUR WAY OUT L I K E C O N T E M P O RA RY

art, Klaus Biesenbach is an acquired taste. Since he took over as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles in February 2018, the German-born, 54-year-old eccentric—affectionally known as Cashmere Klaus—has drawn a lot of ﬁre for paying more attention to his celebrity pals (like Yoko Ono and Patti Smith) than to increasing diversity at an institution headed by a long succession of white men. After curator Mia Locks quit last April (emailing the staff that “MOCA’s leadership is not yet ready to fully embrace IDEA,” an acronym for inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility), K L AUS I N C H A RG E

MOCA’s Biesenbach with artist Alexandra Grant and Keanu Reeves.

followed by the resignation of human resources director Carlos Virmontes (also citing a “hostile environment”), Biesenbach was given a new job title, artistic director. The change was seen by many in the art world as a demotion, as the MOCA board launched a search for a partner to help Biesenbach run the museum in what was being presented as a new power-sharing leadership structure. Turns out there won’t be much sharing, at least not in the immediate future. Just days after MOCA announced on September 2 that Johanna Burton, director of the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, was being brought on as executive director, Biesenbach quit MOCA to return to Berlin and run Neue Nationalgalerie and the Museum of the 20th Century. Although Biesenbach initially praised Burton’s hiring—“I personally could not have asked for a more gifted and inspiring person to lead MOCA with,” he posted on Instagram—his sudden resignation raised more than a few eyebrows. As one Angeleno familiar with the inner workings of the institution put it to Los Angeles: “He must have been very insulted by this demotion to have sharpened his knives like this, just wait-

L A DY G AG A : W I R E I M AG E ; K L AU S B I E S E N B AC H : G E T T Y I M AG E S ; RYA N F I S C H E R : @ VA L L E YO F T H E D O G S

The Brief

DAMAGES SOUGHT BY MODEL LINDA EVANGELISTA IN HER LAWSUIT AGAINST ZELTIQ COOLSCULPTING, AFTER A ROUTINE “FREEZE THE FAT” PROCEDURE THAT WENT HORRIBLY AWRY. THE 54-YEAR-OLD MANNEQUIN, WHO FAMOUSLY REMARKED THAT SHE WOULDN’T GET OUT OF BED FOR $10,000, CLAIMS SHE’S RARELY LEFT HER HOUSE SINCE THE BOTCHED 2016 OPERATION LEFT HER “HORRIBLY DISFIGURED.”

ing for the perfect moment to resign. Who knew he had it in him? It kind of makes me like him a little more.” Of course, the last 19 months have been challenging for MOCA, which was hemorrhaging money during the pandemic shutdowns (it laid off 97 part-time employees) as Biesenbach ran the show via Zoom from his famously minimalistic downtown-adjacent loft (where, until recently, he lived with his pet goose, Cupcakes). But he leaves L.A. with some accomplishments under his belt, such

now, but more than $4.6 million for a 1973 Ford Falcon? Granted it’s had only one previous owner and it comes with nifty after-market addons, like a rear-mounted machine gun, but still . . . Mad Max’s old Razor Cola, along with a dozen other vehicles from 2016’s Mad Max: Fury Road—including the War Rig, the monster truck Charlize Theron drove in the ﬁlm, and the Gigahorse, which is actually two ’59 Cadillac Coupe DeVille’s welded together— are up for sale at a tender auction by Australia’s Lloyd’s

$50M

received more than 200 bids—one from 13 friends in Australia who chipped in to make an offer and another from a couple of U.S. buyers who said they wanted to drive the vehicles to Burning Man—and has narrowed it down to 25. Money isn’t the only criteria; Lloyd’s hopes to sell the collection as a set. Whether the names of the winners will be revealed is unclear, but don’t be surprised if you spot one ﬁlling up at your neighborhood Gas N Go. —ANDY LEWIS

The same happened to members of Korn and Slipknot singer Corey Taylor, who became “very, very sick” the day after ﬁnishing a solo tour. Soon after, Nine Inch Nails canceled its 2021 dates, Neil Young pulled out of Farm Aid, Garth Brooks canceled the rest of his stadium dates

IS COVID KILLING LIVE MUSIC IN L.A.? A F T E R A L O N G season of

M A X E D O U T The Gigahorse was one of 13 vehicles (well, 14 since this one

M A D M AX : CO U RT E SY L LOY D ’ S AU C T I O N E E R S ; DAV E G R O H L : G E T T Y I M AG E S

is actually two ’59 Cadillac DeVilles welded together) up for sale in Australia.

as bringing in new board members like Berlin megacollector Julia Stoschek and heavyweight New York philanthropist Marina Kellen French. By mid-September, however, Biesenbach was already in Berlin for the ﬁrst time in two years, posting a photo from the studio of artist Olafur Eliasson. His grin was positively Cheshire. — M I C H A E L S E L E N S K E

FOR SALE: 1973 FORD FALCON: ASKING $4.6 MIL W E ’ V E H E A R D the market for used cars is tough right

Auctioneers, which anticipates that the vehicles will pull in even more than the original Batmobile’s record $4.6 million sticker price. More than 130 vehicles were built for the movie, but most—no surprise—were destroyed during ﬁlming. The ones that went on the auction block were the so-called hero versions: cars used for glamour shots, though they all run. “I was standing beside the Gigahorse when it started up,” notes Lloyd’s curator Frank Cheney. “Honestly, I don’t know whether I had a bowel movement or a heart attack.” Lloyd’s reports that it has

despair in what was once a $28 billion worldwide livemusic industry, the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines ﬁnally allowed artists and venues to rush back into action: major tours were announced, tickets were selling out, clubs across Los Angeles were full again. “It was like when World War II ended, and everybody was just partying in the streets,” says John Giovanazzi, longtime independent promoter of industrial, goth, and postpunk events in L.A. That euphoria didn’t last long, as the highly contagious Delta variant shocked the music world back into reality. Even L.A.’s leading rock and roll cheerleader, Dave Grohl, had to reschedule a Foo Fighters concert at the Forum in July when a band associate tested positive. Then Kiss leaders Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, both fully vaccinated, caught the virus and postponed several shows.

T U N I NG O U T

Even Dave Grohl can’t conquer COVID.

this year, and Stevie Nicks postponed her tour, saying: “While I’m vaccinated, at my age I am still being extremely cautious.” Even artists who have gone on with the show have found the audiences thinning. By August, clubs in L.A. were experiencing 30 percent no-shows by fans who bought tickets but stayed home. Tickets to concerts catering to fans under 30 have bounced back, but older audiences are wary. Still, with the end of pandemic unemployment insurance, many less-famous, independent musicians say they have no choice but to return to the road. “It’s like Russian roulette,” says guitarist Dimitri Coats, who manages punk veterans the Circle Jerks, currently on tour. “Some musicians are saying, ‘We’ve got to make a living, and we’re going.’ ” —STEVE APPLEFORD L A M AG . C O M 19

BUZZ

S U R R E A L E S TAT E

TikTok Dough

What an Ocean View Will Cost You In . . .

L.A. REAL ESTATE AGENTS ARE TURNING TO HOUSE PORN TO MARKET HIGH-END PROPERTIES ON THE UBIQUITOUS APP

3.7 M

BY ALEXANDRIA ABRAMIAN

knows what plays on TikTok: Jetliner views. Inﬁnity-edge pools. Gigantic price tags. “The real estate in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills offers an incredible amount of content,” says the 32-yearold, London-born Compass agent whose TikTok channel, @housesgram, boasts more than 150,000 followers. Ranging from efforts cringeworthy to nearly cinematic, Hutchinson and a growing number of L.A. real estate agents are turning to TikTok P E E P S S H OW

Zillionaires and paupers are lusting after hot L.A. properties on TikTok.

to market seven- and eight-ﬁgure properties, some now within reach for TikTok “stars” like Addison Rae and the D’Amelio sisters, whose excruciating videos and cash-outs, like the Hulu series The D’Amelio Show, earn them millions. With Instagram banned in China, TikTok has also emerged as a plausible platform for attracting billionaire Asian “whales” whose jones for highend L.A. real estate is legend. “If I see ﬁve houses in a day and they’re all above $10 million, I’ll shoot all the pools, sync up the clips, and say, ‘Pick your pool,’ ” says Hutchinson. “There are two advantages to that: people are watching until the end of the video, and your engagement goes through the roof because they’re responding.” The Agency’s Brandon Piller agrees that swollen price tags and over-the-top design make for the stickiest TikTok fodder. “If we have a house that we’re selling and we’re doing an event, I’ll take a video of it, and within a couple of minutes I’ll have something to post,” says Piller, 25, whose TikTok channel, @pillerproperties, has nabbed 322,000 followers and more than 3 million likes. Both agents say that while the exposure is great, they’re playing a long game. “Most of the people on TikTok can’t afford these homes,” says Hutchinson. “In three years, however, it’s going to appeal to an older demographic, aka my buyers.”

SA N P E D R O SIZE 4,215 square feet HIGHLIGHTS Perched high on the bluffs of San Pedro, this 1976 ranch has emerged from an extensive renovation. All six bathrooms as well as the kitchen are updated with fixtures and finishes that never detract from the main event: uninterrupted views of the Pacific inside and out. 1 YEAR AGO $2M

⁄ TODAY $3.7M

CONTACT Keith Kelley, 310-707-2124; Bill Davis,

310-545-2490; both at Palm Realty Boutique

8.5M

M A N H AT TA N B E AC H SIZE 2,740 square feet HIGHLIGHTS Corner the ocean-view market in

this split-level townhouse that has the unusual feature of ocean views from straight ahead and to the north along Manhattan Beach’s coveted Strand. Recently renovated, the updated townhome accentuates the coastal views with skylights and three private decks. 1 YEAR AGO $5M

⁄ TODAY $8.5M

CONTACT Shawn Dugan, Strand Hill,

Christie’s International, 310-265-3428; Shannon Sackley, Vista Sotheby’s International, 310-529-8101

55M

M A L I BU SIZE 7,160 square feet HIGHLIGHTS With 130 feet of Malibu beach

H OT TA K E S I

JUAN LONGFELLOW, DEASY PENNER PODLEY

> How do L.A. buyers react when a choice Richard Neutra house hits the market? They lose their minds. So says the irrepressible Longfellow, self-appointed king of the red-hot Eastside real estate market. “Lovell House, probably one of the top four Neutras in L.A., is in escrow for $8 million,” he says. (It later sold for $8.75 million.) “To restore this, however, is going to be north of $5 million. That’s a lot of money for a 4,800-square-foot house.”

frontage, this three-story estate includes more than half an acre of prime real estate. Two living rooms (one upstairs, one on the main ﬂoor), two kitchens, and a seemingly endless expanse of glass walls make this Chad Oppenheim-designed house worthy of beach bragging rights. 1 YEAR AGO $25M

⁄ TODAY $55M

CONTACT Chris Cortazzo, Compass, 310-457-3995 20 L A M AG . C O M

T I KTO K : @ P I L L E R P R O P E RT I E S ; J UA N LO N G F E L LOW: D E A N C A R P E N T I E R ; SA N P E D R O : Z I L LOW.CO M ; M A L I B U : M I K E H E L F R I C H

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FA S H I O N • F U N

Plus C H E A P E AT S

Any Way You Slice It SOCAL’S PIZZA SCENE IS GETTING HOTTER AND GREASIER. TURN THE PAGE FOR EIGHT NEW YORK-STYLE PIES THAT RIVAL BROOKLYN’S BEST

> How The Real World: Los Angeles changed reality TV PAGE 34

> The Go-Go’s musical, a Cinderella opera, and four other reasons to go to the theater now PAGE 42

> The city’s top stylists and their must-have haircuts PAGE 48

BY H EAT H E R PL AT T

P H O T O G R A P H E D B Y KYLE MORE NO

L A M AG . C O M 23

Incoming

TRENDS 8. DA N N Y B O Y ’S FA M O U S O R I G I N A L P I Z Z A

F OR DA N I E L HOL Z M A N ,

it all comes down to the water temperature. When the native New Yorker makes the dough at his recently opened Danny Boy’s Famous Original Pizza in downtown Los Angeles, he uses water that is precisely 41 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the temperature that water comes out of the tap in New York City, he says, and using the same water temp helps to make authentic NYC-style pizzas on the West Coast. “The length of fermentation based on the temperature of the dough after you mix it gives it a specific kind of tang,” says Holzman, who notes that tap water temperature in Los Angeles is more variable because the pipes aren’t buried as deeply as they are in the Big Apple. Holzman spent decades working at top New York City fine-dining restaurants like Le Bernardin and then went on to launch a phenomenally successful casual concept there, the Meatball Shop. Now he’s focused on bringing authentic versions of his hometown pies to Angelenos. It’s not just the flavor of the dough that’s important. He also has precise ideas about a pizza slice’s structure. “You should be able to pick it up, and it should not fall, and when you fold it, it should crack but not break,” he says. “That’s kind of what defines a New York slice.” Danny Boy’s is the latest among a growing number of New York-style pizzerias invading Los Angeles. Work up an appetite and order up.

» Daniel Holzman’s ultrawide, perfectly foldable, tangy-crusted slices nail it. The pizza shop even smells like a place in NYC. The menu keeps things delightfully simple: the must-order is a pizza topped with Holzman’s excellent meatballs. 330 S. Hope St., downtown, dannyboysfamousoriginalpizza.com.

7. P R I M E P I Z Z A

» First opened in 2014 on Fairfax, Prime dominates the NYCstyle game in L.A. with four locations. No-frills slices have a slightly lighter crust and an ideal cheesesauce-dough ratio, vividly conjuring a latenight spot you might drunkenly stumble into in the East Village. Multiple locations, primepizza.la.

6. T O M AT O P I E PIZZA JOINT

» At its locations in Silver Lake, South Pasadena, and Woodland Hills, this local chainlet serves big, foldable, crowd-pleasing slices. It’s not pizza you’d endure a long, smelly subway ride for, but if it’s in your neighborhood, consider yourself lucky. Multiple locations, tomatopiepizzajoint.com.

5. V I T O ’ S P I Z Z A

» New Jersey native Vito di Donato’s eponymous spot captures the old-school vibe of an East Coast pizzeria that hasn’t changed its decor since the Dodgers were in Brooklyn. Aficionados might claim that the crust is a touch too thin, but the pizza zis inarguably delicious. 846 N. La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood, vitopizza.com. 24 L A M AG . C O M

P H O T O G R A P H E D B Y KYLE MORE NO

1. L I T T L E C OYO T E

» The joint quickly distinguished itself when it debuted last year, and it just opened a second location. Chef Jack Leahy went to culinary school in New York and spent the early part of the pandemic obsessing over pizza crust. The result is a dreamy pie that tastes so New York, you practically have to pay a ridiculous broker’s fee for the pleasure of consuming it. 2118 E. 4th St., Long Beach, and 3500 Los Coyotes Diagonal, Long Beach, littlecoyotelbc.com.

2. L B K

» When this outpost of Luzzo’s Brooklyn opened in 2018, it had water shipped in from New York to make its Neapolitan-meets-NYCstyle pizzas. It now uses a filtration system that replicates New York water. (Delicious!) Pies are cooked in a traditional coal oven and topped with the same cheese and sauces used at the New York location. This pizza is your bicoastal friend who can’t decide where he wants to live. 4359 Tujunga Ave., Studio City, lbkpizzala.com.

3. F U L L P R O O F P I Z Z A AT L O D G E B R E A D C O.

» Currently a pop-up, Full Proof is set to open a stand-alone location in Beverly Hills. The dough is made with whole-grain flour and a natural sourdough starter, making for a darker crust and more of a Cali vibe. This pizza is essentially a Brentwood gal who went to NYU. 11918 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, fullproofpizza.com.

4. U ST R E E T PI Z Z A

» This crispy-crust newcomer, which debuted last spring, liberally interprets the idea of New York style. Chef Chris Keyser finishes pies with shredded Fiscalini cheddar from California, and the menu’s standout is an unconventional-but-amazing pizza topped with pepperoni and a splatter of creamy vodka sauce. 33 E. Union St., Pasadena, ustreetpizza.com.

L A M AG . C O M 25

Incoming

W H E R E T O E AT N O W

New & Notable Stone Street L.A. FA I R FA X D I S T R I C T O This all-day cafe,

Instant Gratification PASTA! POL AROIDS! MARGARITAS! TEQUILA SHOTS WITH SPRINKLES! ETTA , CULVER CIT Y’S NEWEST HOT SPOT, IS HOPING TO BE THE LIFE OF EVERY PART Y. BY HAILEY EBER

T E T TA , the new restaurant in the grilled lobster stuffed with shrimp, king crab, “& Shay, a soon-to-open hotel, there’s love” for the table, making wraps with a tower of a $65 menu item named “Porrón flatbread, lettuce cups, and sauces. For dessert, & a Polaroid.” It involves an entire there are shots of tequila and coffee topped with bottle of wine (or the equivalent in rainbow-sprinkled shortbread cookies. margaritas) poured into a thin-spouted pitcher “If we want to get wild, we can,” Grant says. known as a porrón, plus a fully loaded Polaroid But if you want to pop in alone for just a bowl camera. Guests can pour the wine from the of pasta at the bar ($22 to $50) or come with pitcher directly into one another’s mouths a friend on a Tuesday and split a pizza ($21 to while documenting the hilarity. $27), Etta also fits the bill. On a recent Friday night, not one but two This is the third location for the restautables ordered the experience. As the booze rant; Grant and his partner have two phenomflowed, the separate groups merged their parenally popular outposts in Chicago, and a West ties. “All of a sudden, there Holly wood location is was, like, a whole section planned for 2023. of everybody celebrating Grant says Angelenos some kind of celebration,” are surprising him with recalls chef Danny Grant. their appetites. L.A cusWith a sprawling patio, tomers order twice as lengthy menu, and various many of the hearty $120 party tricks (the restaurant short-rib dishes each night calls them “moments”), as they do in the Midwest. Etta is primed for good “I love L.A.,” he says. times in rapidly develop“I love the people.” 8801 ing Culver City. You can go Washington Blvd., Culver G O OD P O U R The pork chop is served with mustard-miso jus. big and order a $155 whole City, ettarestaurant.com. 26 L A M AG . C O M

Chef Tony ARCADIA

O Tony He opened an

exciting dim sum parlor in Pasadena in February 2020 that had to close just as it was getting going. Now the acclaimed chef—known for Sea Harbour—and his dumplings are back in a new location. Luxurious ﬂourishes abound: egg-yolk buns are brushed with gold foil; black truffles pop up in shumai. 1108 S. Baldwin Ave.

Great White LARCH MON T

O The popular Venice

spot has brought its beachy vibes east. Sit outside at a white picnic table, sip an Arnold Palmer, and debate whether to order something wholesome— perhaps a harvest bowl with veggies, a grain medley, and gingerturmeric dressing—or go for something more indulgent, like a smoked salmon and crème fraîche-topped pizza. Either way, it’s a good time. 244 N. Larchmont Blvd., greatwhitevenice.com. —H.E.

G U T T E R C R E D I T T KT KT KT K

I N S E A S ON

Etta’s lumache pasta with Sun Gold pomodoro is prepared simply, to let the fresh, local tomatoes shine.

which hails from Brooklyn, has been opening in phases for several months. Now it’s ﬁring on all cylinders. By day, there’s coffee, avocado toast, and sandwiches. By night, there’s reasonably priced bistro fare and cocktails. On various days throughout the week, there are comedy shows and live music. 7141 Melrose Ave., stonestreetla.com.

ROASTED IN

Los Angeles

FAMILY CRAFTED COFFEE®. SINCE 1870.

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THANKSGIVING

FLIPPING THE BIRD FORGET ROASTING YOUR OWN—TAKE OUT YOUR TURKEY INSTEAD

Little Dom’s The neighborhood hot spot is once again serving up 12-pound deep-fried turkeys with gravy. For an additional cost, round out your feast with elevated sides and desserts. $87, 2128 Hillhurst Ave., Los Feliz, littledoms.com.

Bludso’s Bar & Que Barbecue master Kevin Bludso doles out two styles of whole turkeys for the holidays: a smoked one that’s cooked low and slow for six hours over hardwood and charcoal, and a Cajun deep-fried version. Don’t forget to add on some mac and cheese. $95-$125; 609 N. La Brea Ave., Fairfax District, barandque.com.

EASY DOES IT

RiceBox’s centerpiece Thanksgiving dish comes with everything you need to cook it to perfection: a basting brush, thermometer, and sauces.

Wexler’s Deli

Full of Gratitude

RICEBOX IS GOING ALL IN ON THEIR HOLIDAY FEAST, WITH A CHICKEN STUFFED WITH EVERY THING FROM ABALONE AND SCALLOPS TO STICK Y RICE AND MUSHROOMS BY JEAN TRINH

A S T T H A N K S GI V I NG ,

RiceBox chef and owner Leo Lee created a special comfort dish for his customers to thank them for supporting his family’s restaurant during the pandemic.

“I wanted to give quality ingredients, the best of everything—at least, in our culture,” Lee said. The Holiday Baked Chicken Feast—a lavish riff on the traditional Chinese dish beggar’s chicken—is back this year. Lee’s rendition fea28 L A M AG . C O M

tures a whole bird stuffed with braised abalone, dried scallops, salted egg, roasted chestnuts, wood-ear and shiitake mushrooms, and sticky rice. The chicken is then wrapped in lotus leaves and encased in bao dough (a departure from the traditional clay). It comes with a thermometer, pastry brush, egg, and jars of ginger and soy-reduction sauces. “I wanted to make it as simple as possible for everyone,” Lee said. $108, 541 S. Spring St., Suite 131, downtown, ricebox.net. Order ahead.

The Jewish deli is offering up a whole smoked turkey Thanksgiving dinner that serves four to six and comes with all the ﬁxin’s, like mashed potatoes and challah stuffing. Add caviar for an additional fee. $295, 616 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica, wexlersdeli.com.

Hop Woo Chef and owner Lupe Liang brines turkeys in Chinese ﬁve-spice powder and bastes them in vinegar. Before roasting, the birds are fan-dried for 12 hours, making for crispy skin. $60-$70, 845 N. Broadway, Chinatown, hopwoo.com. P H O T O BY A R I E L I P

Incoming

LO C A L L E G E N DS

H E ’S G O T T H E B E E F

Romeo Cervantes has been working behind the counter at Hardy’s Meats for more than three decades.

A Cut Above

WHEN IT COMES TO GREAT GRILLED MEATS, THERE’S A SECRET WEAPON HIDDEN IN A STUDIO CITY BODEGA: ROMEO CERVANTES’S BUTCHER COUNTER AND HIS WIFE’S SPECIAL SPICE BLEND BY ALEX SCORDELIS

I K E OPE R AT I V E S I N possession of the

nuclear codes in Mission: Impossible, barbecue obsessives tend to be highly secretive— they will sooner offer up their Social Security number than reveal their hickory-sauce recipe. But some classified information is too good not to share. In Studio City, butcher Romeo Cervantes, 68, has had barbecue fiends whispering in hushed tones about his secret seasoning and succulent cuts for years. Every day, a steady flow of regulars line up at his Hardy’s Meat Market, tucked into the corner of the bodega-like M&M Market. They greet Cervantes like a favorite uncle. “We’re so spoiled to have Romeo in our neighborhood,” says Sambie Mwafulirwa, 31, a restaurant manager who lives near Hardy’s and was recently there to grab lunch. “It’s very home-cooked-style. You feel like you’re eating at Romeo’s house.” Hardy’s offers precooked fare—from hot brisket sandwiches to baby-back ribs to rotisserie chicken—but the main attraction is the meat and poultry from the butcher 30 L A M AG . C O M

counter. “I make my Italian sausages fresh with my own recipe,” Cervantes says. “I’ve never had a customer say they didn’t like them. People grill my sausages, share them with their friends, and then my business grows.” In-the-know carnivores request the special seasoning, which Cervantes will generously sprinkle on any cut. It’s perfectly ﬂavorful but not overpowering, adding just the right amount of kick to the tri-tip and ribs. “The ingredients are simple,” Cervantes says. “Garlic, rosemary, pepper, parsley, and salt.” He’s not quite sure himself what makes it so good. “You’d have to ask my wife,” he says. “She makes the seasoning at home.” Hardy’s Meats ﬁrst opened in 1951. Cervantes took it over in the 1980s, after more than a decade working under John Tusquellas, the legendary butcher who ran the meat counter at the Original Farmers Market on Fairfax and passed away 18 years ago. Cervantes credits his mentor with his business philosophy. “I treat my customers like my family,” he says. “It’s why they keep coming back.” 12903 Moorpark St., Studio City. P H O T O G R A P H E D BY SA M C O M E N

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MUSIC

Who’s That Girl? THE 20-SOMETHING POP STAR FROM PALO ALTO HATES TO BE PINNED DOWN, BUT THIS MUCH IS CLEAR: REMI WOLF IS WAY COOLER THAN YOU ARE B Y PA U L S C H R O D T

I K E A N Y YOU NG millenial hovering

on the border of Generation Z (and much to the chagrin of older folks, who may or may not just be jealous), Remi Wolf doesn’t believe in labels. “I just have a very specific taste, and I kind of go with what my heart tells me to do,” she says while lounging on her couch in Echo Park. The 25-year-old pop singer appeared on American Idol, was later signed to a major label (the Universal imprint Island), and has worked with legends like Beck and Nile Rodgers. John Mayer is an outspoken fan. But her music—a genreless mishmash that she has reluctantly termed “funky soul pop”—is hardly what most would consider mainstream. She barks improvised half-rapped lyrics rhyming “Los Feliz” with “Chuck E. Cheese” while also excelling at throaty R & B-inspired vocals that recall Amy Winehouse. She fills her songs with live instrumentation and leans on comic sound effects. Sometimes, she bares her ass on Instagram; other times, she dresses in multicolored outfits that conjure Björk, Lil’ Kim, and/or a 1970s Harlem pimp. She has a collection of roughly 50 hats, many of them brighly colored and feathery. “My entire wardrobe is pretty much from a thrift store. And I’m a bit of a hoarder. I don’t like throwing away clothes, so I just have a lot of shit,” she says. “I really draw from everything. A lot of it is subconscious. I’m not trying to go for anything specific.” That whatever-goes ethos extends to Wolf’s music. When asked about the mission statement of her debut album, Juno, out October 15, she says, “I don’t really work like that. I don’t have a strong thesis or whatever.”

3 2 L A M AG . C O M

I NS I D E O U T

Wolf says her new album is characterized by “introspective mania.”

“I really draw from everything. A lot of it is subconscious. I’m not trying to go for anything specific.” P H O T O B Y A L M A R O SA Z

N OW P L AY I N G

MUSIC

The Best of Billie

In November 2016, Billie Eilish officially released her first singles “Six Feet Under” and “Ocean Eyes.” Five years, two albums, and seven Grammys later, the Highland Park native (and her songwriter brother, Finneas) have forever changed pop music. To mark the big anniversary, here are our Top 10 Eilish songs.

“Ocean Eyes” Eilish and Finneas have made magic countless times since, but this song feels even more powerful now because the lineage of so much modern music—from Khalid to Olivia Rodrigo—can be traced back to these three minutes. “NDA” Eilish tears up her “sad girl” image in real time with this second album standout, which roars to a deafening and furious conclusion. “You Should See Me in a Crown” “I’m gonna run this nothing town/Watch me make ’em bow, one by one by one,” she sings. Talk about speaking it into existence. “Everything I Wanted” The “fame sucks” song is a hard one to pull off, but the way Eilish frames it as an ode to Finneas makes this Grammy winner uniquely affecting. “Your Power” A subject matter as dark as sexual abuse is something that most pop stars would never touch. Eilish did it at the height of her fame when another version of “Bad Guy” would have been just ﬁne. “When the Party’s Over” If “bedroom pop” is Eilish’s overall milieu, then this is the “sobbing into the pillow” moment. “Bad Guy” Let’s be honest: we all got a little sick of this song in 2019. But after you leave it on the shelf for a moment, it still comes back as hard as you ﬁrst remember it. “Bury a Friend” Creepy lyrical imagery over Kanye-inspired beats makes “Bury a Friend” the choice song of formerly goth parents who came of age listening to the Cure and the Sisters of Mercy. “Bellyache” The Eilish back-catalog isn’t exactly awash with bops, but this 2017 track will make you move just enough to not notice the murderous lyrics. P L AY L I ST: G E T T Y I M AG E S

Instead, Juno is named for the French bulldog she adopted in the early days of the pandemic because, well, he was around. Despite her allergies (she has an EP called I’m Allergic to Dogs!), Juno hasn’t left her side since. “He went through everything with me. He was in every single writing session. He’s been my partner and literally my emotional support dog. He’s my best friend.” (She’s gotten used to the sneezing, too.) As off-the-cuff as Wolf’s work might appear, she’s been rigorously training for this moment. She started singing at ten and writing songs at 15. While in high school (and juggling Youth Olympic ski racing), she formed a duo with a friend called Remi and Chloe, and showed promise as a vocal powerhouse. At 17, hoping to study music in college, she trained with a vocal coach who “had a friend who I guess worked somewhere in the American Idol, uh, corporation,” Wolf says and laughs. So she skipped the lines and made it onto the show, advancing to Hollywood Week and placing among the top 150 contestants. She now considers it a “blip in my story” that was nevertheless instructive. “I didn’t love the whole production of it,” she says. “It just really pulled the curtain back on what was actually going on.” Wolf went on to study music at the University of Southern California, but she wasn’t much happier with the structure there. “There’s a lot of aspects of school I actively try to forget about,” she says, citing music theory class. But, she says, the language she acquired still helps her “get my point across” in the studio, “so that’s cool.” But her true, “colossal” education came in the form of living in a house with ten other musicians. “We would jam all day and write music and hang out. We saw shows and threw parties, and I think that’s where my spirit is. That’s where I learned how to collaborate.” That’s also where her alcohol abuse began. In the summer of 2020, she did a stint in rehab and has been sober since. She says the new album “wouldn’t exist had I not gotten sober during quarantine. I don’t think I would’ve had the selfreflection. That was something I felt like I had to address, or else I would be . . . lying.” Wolf says this as if honesty, not artifice, were quintessential to being a pop star. In her unflinching openness about her pains and joys, along with her agnostic sonic mixing, Wolf gets lumped in with musicians like Halsey, Brockhampton, and Dominic Fike. She doesn’t think she sounds like these other artists but concedes that they’re all roughly the same age and grew up listening to, and being influenced by, the same eclectic music. “We’re all pretty free,” she says.

“Lo Vas a Olvidar” Almost no one heard this smoldering duet with ROSALÍA (written for the Euphoria soundtrack) when it dropped. A shame, because it’s a stunner.

L A M AG . C O M 33

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TELEVISION

Back to Reality THE REAL WORLD: LOS ANGELES CAST RETURNS TO VENICE BEACH AND SHOWS HOW FAR WE HAVE—AND HAVEN’T—ALL COME BY TRACY MOORE

JON BRENNAN

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H E N T A M I RO M A N , the breakout star of The Real World: Los Angeles, was asked to reunite with her roommates in the same Venice Beach house where, in 1993, she decided to terminate a pregnancy, she said no. Then she said no again. “I said no so many times,” Roman says. “I just felt like I had done my time in reality TV.” The 51-year-old holdout who went on to appear on Celebrity Wife Swap, Marriage Boot Camp, and Basketball Wives, adds, “I hadn’t spoken to these people in 27 years.” But the more she thought it over, the

more she realized that she and her Real World castmates “were really the pioneers of the genre,” she says. “So I felt there was no harm, no foul in going back to finish what I helped start.” Exactly what The Real World started, particularly the first three seasons in New York, L.A., and San Francisco, is now canon. The groundbreaking MTV series launched the modern-day docuseries soap opera. Its goal was to mine the lives of seven strangers from different walks of life and reflect it back at us with rawness and honesty. The show’s method was tossing

P OI N T S OF NO R E T U R N Original castmembers Dominic Griffin (above, in black dotted shirt)

and Aaron Behle (in plaid) opted not to be part of the reunion. 3 4 L A M AG . C O M

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telegenic aspiring models, singers, and actors into a big loft with a giant aquarium, then miking everyone up to the gills to—say it with me—find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. Now the season 2 cast—minus conservative surfer/econ major Aaron and Irish music critic Dominic, who are not returning—will gather around the old Venice fish tank for The Real the angry Black man or woman; the World Homecoming: Los Angeles, aircountry yokel; the gay or bisexual ing on Paramount+ on November 24. character meant to incite homophoIn 1992, there was nothing else bia or at least discomfort. But they like The Real World. Critics called the were, at first, truly diverse casts, franchise “painfully bogus.” Viewers including Black, Latino, and queer were enthralled. Tami, a Black Muslim roommates from different socioecowoman, worked at an HIV health nomic backgrounds, who argued clinic in the city and, in a shocking TV bitterly over issues of race, gender, milestone, let viewers see her aborclass, and same-sex marriage. The tion. David, a Black standup comic, debates the show sparked are Gen got kicked out of the house (a Real X’s official televised contribution, World first) for ripping the covers off imperfect as it is, to what we’d now a barely clothed Tami, in spite of her call “doing the work” of hashing out and Beth S.’s screamdifferences and injusing protests. He also tice through dialogue exposed himself. Beth for the lowercase real The debates the S. called him a rapist, world of 1993. and uncomfortable The frenzy of show sparked discussions ensued reality shows that folare Gen X’s between the roomlowed—from Survivor official televised mates, who debated to The Bachelor to whether this was Jersey Shore to The contribution, really assault or a bad Housewives— imperfect as it is, Real joke turned tragic. The focused on far less to what we’d reunion revisits many noble spectacles. of these moments. Rather than bringing now call “doing “We did delve together diverse casts the work.” back into race,” Roman to see what unites says. “We did delve and divides, they tend back into the abortion to focus on subculsituation. We did delve back into the tures fueled by petty gripes. Viewers issues with #MeToo and that parhave been left to gawk at horny ticular incident with David. A lot of housewives and basic husband-huntpeople saw me get my mouth wired ers who pass out drunk in hot tubs. and deal with bulimia, body dysmorTami and David’s drama seems phia, and eating disorders. We talked somewhat highbrow and well-intenabout all that this time around. But tioned by comparison. with a more respectful eye.” In 1993, when Real World: Los As Real World seasons dragged Angeles first aired, the city was still on, they departed further and furreeling from the Rodney King riots. ther from reality. Critics lamented This magazine’s July cover story that both the producer-meddling to gin year asked Angelenos if they could up drama and the typecasting that even afford to still live in their own felt tailor-made for scapegoating: city. Venice was still a cheap boho 3 6 L A M AG . C O M

enclave for bodybuilders, skaters, artists, and weirdos—the average home price was $251,000—facing increasing gang violence and homelessness. Today, Venice is a gentriﬁed playground for tech bros in $400 joggers shooting B12 algae, where home prices hover around $1.8 million and where the same beach house on 30th Avenue still stands, worth over $3 million. And where, until very recently, the beach a block away showcased an ongoing humanitarian crisis for the unhoused. The cast members have also, of course, grown up. Tami is an actor and producer. Jon Brennan, the country singer from Kentucky, is a youth pastor. Joining them are Beth Stolarczyk, who runs her own production company here; former sheriff ’s deputy Irene Berrera-Kearns, who now has a wellness business; Beth Anthony, a production coordinator in town; Glen Naessens, a coffee shop owner; and David Edwards, a local comedian and writer. In a brief preview clip of the reunion provided by MTV, we see little of the house or neighborhood, except for a cab arriving in the back alley waiting to deliver David. There, Tami, Irene, Jon, and Beth S. munch on chips in the kitchen, debating nervously how things will play out. Jon asks the women how they think it’s going to feel. “I think it’s going to be a little awkward,” Tami says. Beth S. notes that while she has no relationship with David whatsoever, “We all get a redo now.” For Jon, whose rural Christian roots delivered on the culture shock, (CONTINUED ON PAGE 115)

A DA M R OS E /CO U RT E S Y M T V

Clockwise from left: Glen Naessens, Beth Stolarczyk, Irene Berrera-Kearns, and Beth Anthony talk it out on The Real World Homecoming: Los Angeles, airing on Paramount+ on November 24.

Incoming

ALL THE FEELS

Best known for her comedy, Rothwell shows a serious side on The White Lotus.

TALK OF THE TOWN

NATASHA ROTHWELL ON LIVING IN L.A.

What’s a place in the city that most people hate but you secretly love? > The Grove. It’s so touristy, and most people hate it, but coming to L.A. from New York City, it scratches the itch to have an outdoor shopping experience.

Secure in Herself WITH A HUGE NEW PRODUCTION DEAL, INSECURE’S NATASHA ROTHWELL IS WRITING HER OWN HAPPILY EVER AFTER BY HAILEY EBER

N ATA S H A RO T H W E L L may be

hotel-spa worker in Mike White’s much a writer, producer, and key cast talked about The White Lotus. And there’s member on HBO’s Insecure—a more to come. She recently inked a threesuperbly crafted love letter to Los year, reportedly eight-figure deal with ABC Angeles—but she admits that she’s had a Signature. While she can’t reveal specifics complicated relationship with the city since about the upcoming projects, she says, “I’m moving from New York in 2015 to work on definitely focusing on finding stories where the Emmy-winning series. we can shift the perspec“The first couple of years tive and allow marginalized I lived here, I was resisting it voices to have center frame “As magical as quite a bit because I’m so and elevate the ordinary.” L.A. can be, it can She’s inspired, in part, by the deeply from the East Coast,” says Rothwell, 41. But as fact that Insecure’s central be super regular the years passed, it became character, played by Issa Rae, and pedestrian, apparent that her rising is just a regular gal. and that’s career would keep her in the “She’s not the embodiment also beautiful.” West. Insecure, whose fifth of Black girl magic. She’s just and final season premieres on trying to make it,” Rothwell October 24, has earned critical says. “There’s something raves and a fervent fan base, and Rothwell really beautiful about that.” often steals scenes with her character’s The same could be said for the city she bawdy one-liners. now loves, thanks in part to her dog, goldenThis summer, the former Saturday Night doodle Lloyd Dobler. “As magical as L.A. can Live writer showed she’s also a low-key be,” Rothwell says, “it can be super regular dramatic talent, starring as a mistreated and pedestrian, and that’s also beautiful.” 38 L A M AG . C O M

How do you deal when you’re stuck in traffic? > Music. I basically feel that James Corden stole “Carpool Karaoke” from me because, when I’m in the car, it’s like a pop stage. So I deﬁnitely crank up the music. I used to do competitive karaoke in New York, and I work across genres. I love all of the songs on Jagged Little Pill and Pink’s “Raise Your Glass” is a fun one. I love ’80s R & B and SWV. Sometimes, I’ll do Boyz II Men and sing all the parts. I’ll duet with myself. I love Broadway, so I’ll do, like, “Suddenly Seymour” from Little Shop of Horrors, but I’ll sing both parts. It’s a car crash inside of my car. What has closed that you desperately miss? > The ArcLight. I really enjoy an afternoon at the movies by myself, and that was one of my favorite places to go. The last movie I saw there was Little Women. I was the only person in the theater, so it was just me, my popcorn, and Timothée. What a freakin’ delight! — H.E. P H O T O BY R O Z E T T E R AG O

V I S I T U S AT S O U T H C O A S T P L A Z A

CA N A DAG O O S E .C O M

Incoming

OFF THE CHARTS

Life of Di

A SLEW OF BUZZY HOLLYWOOD PROJECTS ARE BRINGING THE PEOPLE’S PRINCESS BACK TO LIFE. BUT NOT ALL DIANAS ARE CREATED EQUAL B Y S A R A H F O N E S

ing for the spotlight, but it’s the late Princess Diana who’s getting the royal treatment in Hollywood. On November 5, Spencer hits theaters. Set over three days in 1992, the dark, expressionistic ﬁlm stars Kristen Stewart, with Pablo Larraín (Jackie) directing. It comes on the heels of Diana: The

LEAD ACTRESS GUSHING ABOUT PLAYING DIANA

THE CHIEF ANTAGONIST

THE TOOHANDSOME GUY PLAYING PRINCE CHARLES

THE C-WORD (CAMILLA!)

KEY FASHION MOMENT

THE DEFINITIVE POP MOMENT

40 L A M AG . C O M

Musical, released on Netflix on October 1, a Broadway show that had the misfortune of first opening in March of 2020. And, of course, there’s Netflix’s Emmy-winning The Crown, which featured Diana in its fourth season, released in 2020, and will continue to portray her tragic life in its fifth season, due in 2022. How do they compare? Have a look.

SPENCER

DIANA: THE MUSICAL

THE CROWN

>“She was the most famous woman in the world. I have tasted a high level of that, but nowhere near that monumental, symbolic representation of an entire group of people.” —Kristen Stewart

> “It’s helpful to be older

> “I ended up having this

than her when all this happened, so I could reflect on how complicated and challenging that must have been, considering how badly I handled my twenties with far fewer challenging moments.” —Jeanna de Waal

overwhelming appreciation for her complexity. I’m fascinated by the young Diana . . . She was plucked from this lovely, warm situation with her friends in her flat in Earl’s Court into this very austere world.” —Emma Corrin

> Hawkish Scottish army

vet Major Alistair Gregory, played by Timothy Spall, who is tasked with ensuring that Diana falls in line at Balmoral and everything goes according to the Queen’s wishes. > Jack Farthing, who stars

as a brooding Charles, wouldn’t look out of place on a Burberry runway. The role demands a harsh hair part and stodgy tweeds, but he’s still quite easy on the eyes.

> The press—clad in

throwback trenchcoats and fedoras —roaming in an ever-present pack, turning their harsh flashbulbs directly onto the audience. > Seriously smokin’ television actor

Roe Hartrampf makes his Broadway debut with the royal role. If he looks familiar, it’s time to admit to the world that you watched Emily in Paris.

> Insecure, approvalseeking Charles and the whole royal family—all lacking in empathy—who inflict irrevocable harm on Di’s fragile sense of self. > Newly minted Emmy winner

Josh O’Connor was the spitting image of the real Charles in seasons 3 and 4, and always-sexy Dominic West from The Affair is set to take the throne (well, not quite) in season 5.

> The now-Duchess of Cornwall

> She’s treated more sym-

> Equal parts mummy, lover, and con-

doesn’t make an appearance, but her presence is acutely felt, particularly when the audience learns she and Diana received the same Christmas gift from Charles.

pathetically than she was by the media back in the day. As played by Erin Davie, Camilla is less clear villain, more other woman pining for years on end for her one true love.

fidante, Camilla, as portrayed by Emmy nominee Emerald Fennell, shares Charles’s yen for country living, constant phone calls, and humiliating Diana.

> Vibrant Chanel and au courant mom jeans abound, but it’s a gaudy pearl necklace from Charles that features heavily in a few key scenes.

> Tony Award-winning costume

> Diana’s “black sheep”

designer William Ivey Long re-created Di’s beaded, high-collared bolero and gown, aka the “Elvis dress,” a Catherine Walker frock she wore to the 1989 British Fashion Awards.

sweater—lent to production by the original designers—has a big montage moment in episode 3 of season 4.

> Finally free and en route to London

> Forget one song or scene—the

> In perhaps her happiest moment in

in a Porsche convertible, Diana, with Princes William and Harry in tow, belts out Mike & the Mechanics’ 1985 hit, “All I Need Is a Miracle.”

musical was cowritten by Tony Award winner (and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member) David Bryan, keyboardist for the ’80s megaband Bon Jovi.

all of season 4, Diana, flush with the excitement of her engagement to Charles, goes out on the town with her flatmates and dances to Stevie Nicks’s “Edge of Seventeen.”

A L L P H OTO G R A P H S : G E T T Y I M AG E S ; E XC E P T FO R K R I ST E N ST E WA RT: PA B LO L A R R A I N ; E M M A CO R R I N : O L L I E U P TO N / N E T F L I X ; D I A N A A N D C H A R L E S ( B R O K E N H E A RT ) : D E S W I L L I E / N E T F L I X ; J O S H O ’CO N N O R : A L E X B A I L E Y/ N E T F L I X ; D O M I N I C W E ST: K E I T H B E R N ST E I N / N E T F L I X ; G I F T: E N VATO E L E M E N TS ; E M E R A L D F E N N E L L : CO L I N H U T TO N/ N E T F L I X ; SW E AT E R : R OW I N G B L A Z E R S .CO M ; P O R S C H E : B A R R E T T-JAC KS O N .CO M

M E G H A N A N D H A R RY may be forever jockey-

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T H E AT E R

P L AY T I M E

New productions opening in L.A. include The Band’s Visit (left), Cinderella (right), and Jesus Christ Superstar (inset).

Comeback

THE CURTAIN IS FINALLY RISING AGAIN ON L.A.’S THEATER SCENE AS LOCAL VENUES DEBUT POIGNANT NEW DRAMAS ALONG WITH CAMPY MUSICAL REVIVALS. A NINETEENTH-CENTURY ROMANCE SET TO THE GO-GO’S? WE’VE GOT YOUR TICKET B Y J O R D A N R I E F E

Paradise Blue

> Dominique Morisseau, Tony nominee for the Temptations musical Ain’t Too Proud, is a playwright to watch. Her noir tale of a 1940s Detroit nightclub struggling with the city’s gentriﬁcation is making its West Coast debut, and it squares neatly with the issues confronting L.A. today. November 9 to December 12, Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood, geffenplayhouse.org.

Jesus Christ Superstar

> It’s been 50 years since Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber reimagined Jesus as 4 2 L A M AG . C O M

a hippie peacenik. This critically acclaimed production from London refreshes the sometimes campy material,

straddling the arenarock and musical-theater worlds. November 9 to 14, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa, scfta.org.

role originated by Latifah. November 19 and 20, Orpheum Theatre, 842 S. Broadway, downtown, laorpheum.com.

The Band’s Visit Head Over Heels

> This jukebox musical may be inspired by the Broadway production, but its score is pure L.A., courtesy of our own ’80s pop quintet, the Go-Gos. Hits like “We Got the Beat” and “Our Lips are Sealed” spice up a plot based on the sixteenth-century pastoral romance The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. November 9 to December 12, Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena, pasadenaplayhouse.org.

Set It Off

> This national touring production is an adaptation of the 1996 heist ﬁlm starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Queen Latifah. Platinumselling, Grammy-nominated rapper Da Brat stars in the

> An itinerant Egyptian band shakes the dust off an isolated Israeli desert town, and an unexpected love blossoms between a local café owner and one of the musicians. The original Broadway production won ten Tony Awards and a Grammy. November 30 to December 19, Dolby Theatre, 6801 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, dolbytheatre.com.

Cinderella

> Two of opera’s emerging stars, Serena Malﬁ and Levy Sekgapane, star In this iteration of Rossini’s adaptation of the classic fairy tale, which features a fantastical bright-pink palace and costumes to match. November 20 to December 12, L.A. Opera, 135 N. Grand Ave., laopera.org.

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR AND THE BAND’S VISIT : MATTHEW MURPHY; CINDERELLA : COURTESY DUTCH NATIONAL OPERA

L.A .’s Dramatic

HAVE A BALL THIS HOLIDAY SEASON! FAMILY-FRIENDLY SUNDAY MATINEES NOV 28 & DEC 12 EVENINGS: NOV 20, DEC 1, 4, 8

1úRæâO L A CENERENTOL A

PHOTOS COURTESY DUTCH NATIONAL OPERA

Tickets for AL Budgets: LAOPERA.ORG 213.972.8001

Incoming

Q U I C K TA K E S

THE TO-DO LIST

YO U R N OV E M B E R C U LT U R A L AG E N DA SEE

› History was made when Barack

READ

› National Book Award ﬁnalist Gary Shteyngart enters into the burgeoning pandemic-ﬁction genre with Our Country Friends. The novel chronicles a group of buddies who leave the city to ride out the pandemic. Romance, betrayal, and hilarity ensue. November 2. 4 4 L A M AG . C O M

LISTEN

› Last year’s Eurovision Song Contest movie was a silly bright spot in a difficult time. So it’s fitting that the campy competition’s most famous winner, ABBA, has a new album out for the first time in four decades. Voyage finds the Swedish super-group in rousing form. November 5.

B A R AC K O B A M A BY K E H I N D E W I L E Y; A B B A : M I K E P R I O R / R E D F E R N S ; PASS I N G : N E T F L I X

and Michelle Obama became our nation’s 44th president and first lady, and history was made again when two African American artists, Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, were named to paint their official portraits. You can see the impressive works in person at LACMA November 7 through January 2 as part of a five-city tour. The local stop is a home game for Wiley, who grew up in South L.A. and attended the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. He’s best known for reimagining Old Master works with African American faces, like his current project, A Portrait of a Young Gentleman, a reaction to Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy, now up at the Huntington. Wiley took art classes there as a kid, and the collection inspired him from a young age. “Since I felt somewhat removed from the imagery, personally and culturally, I took a scientific approach and had an aesthetic fascination with these paintings,” he says. — J O R DA N R I E F E

STREAM

› Rebecca Hall’s surefooted directorial debut, Passing, adapts Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel. Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga (right) star as lightskinned Black women, negotiating the color line. On Netﬂix November 10.

› Even if you don’t want to go see Descanso Gardens’ annual, interactive holiday spectacular, Enchanted: Forest of Light, until December, you’d be wise to purchase tickets now. Think about buying a membership, too. November 21 to January 9.

WATCH

› Paul Thomas Anderson gets back in his ’70s groove with Licorice Pizza, a retro coming-of-age ﬂick set in the San Fernando Valley and named after an old L.A. record store. The late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son, stars. In theaters November 26. — HAILEY EBER

2021/22 SEASON

A November to Remember Join the Los Angeles Philharmonic and brilliant guest artists for a month of incredible live music.

SUSANNA MÄLKKI, PRINCIPAL GUEST CONDUCTOR

SIMONE YOUNG, CONDUCTOR

NICHOLAS BRITELL, COMPOSER & CURATOR

HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR, COMPOSER & CURATOR

NICOLA BENEDETTI, VIOLIN

LEILA JOSEFOWICZ, VIOLIN

LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC

KRIS BOWERS, COMPOSER & CURATOR

SAT NOV 6 8PM SUN NOV 7 2PM Reich, Adams, and Rachmaninoff

FRI NOV 12 11AM SAT NOV 13 2PM SUN NOV 14 2PM Mozart and Ravel

Susanna Mälkki, conductor Leila Josefowicz, violin

Nathalie Stutzmann, conductor Sunwook Kim, piano

Steve REICH Runner John ADAMS Violin Concerto RACHMANINOFF Symphonic Dances

MOZART Piano Concerto No. 21 RAVEL Menuet antique, Bolero, Le tombeau de Couperin

FRI NOV 19 8PM SAT NOV 20 8PM SUN NOV 21 2PM Reel Change

SUNWOOK KIM, PIANO

FRI NOV 26 8PM SUN NOV 28 2PM Brahms and Korngold

The LA Phil embarks on an exploration of the next generation of ﬁlm composers with three programs curated by Kris Bowers, Nicholas Britell, and Hildur Guðnadóttir.

Simone Young, conductor Nicola Benedetti, violin Connor D’NETTO Uncertain Planning (U.S. premiere) KORNGOLD Violin Concerto BRAHMS Symphony No. 4

Get Your Tickets Today! laphil.com/nov | 323 850 2000 Groups (10+) 323 850 2050 Programs, artists, prices, and dates subject to change.

Incoming

MIXED MEDIA

LET IT BE

The Beatles in Peter Jackson’s Get Back.

The Way They Were

is a supreme control freak desperately trying to hold together a band that’s grown exhausted. Lead guitarist George Harrison, coming into his own as a songwriter, seethes that McCartney and Lennon don’t take him seriously. Drummer Ringo Starr is fed up with all of them. Some of this was captured half a century ago in Let It Be, the first movie about these recording sessions. At six hours NEW DOCUMENTARIES CELEBR ATE TWO OF broadcast over three nights on Disney+, culminating with ROCK AND ROLL’S MOST INFLUENTIAL BANDS the entirety of a now-legendary show performed on a rooftop BY STEVE ERICKSON in wintry London, Get Back presents a bigger picture, with moments of camaraderie amid the discord. An astoundH E I M PAC T OF T H E BE AT L E S was such that, ing technical achievement—the restored footage looks and if somehow you’ve never heard anything they did, sounds as if it were shot yesterday—the new film doesn’t you’d know who they were anyway. Along with change the plot so much as fill in subplots and nuances. Louis Armstrong, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, If the Beatles’ music was populist with touches of the and Charlie Chaplin, the Beatles shaped not just a medium experimental, charting love, loneliness, and existential wonbut a century; in the way that presidents and tyrants embodder in “Hey Jude,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and “A Day ied the ’30s (Roosevelt), ’40s (Hitler), and ’80s (Reagan and in the Life,” the Velvets’ music was experimental with touchGorbachev), the Beatles embodied the 1960s. The stealth es of pop, exploring alienation, transgression, and sensual impact of the Velvet Underground, matched in American rock derangement in “Heroin,” “Sweet Jane,” and “I’m Waiting only by the Beach Boys and maybe the Doors, was such that for the Man.” The Beatles reflected an exuberant, Day-Glo they may still be something of a secret. The cliLondon; the Velvets emerged from the blackché that only a few thousand people ever heard and-white, subterranean New York art scene the Velvets yet every one of them started a band of Andy Warhol, who took the band under applies to U2, Nirvana, David Bowie, R.E.M., The Beatles were his wing and, for a while, provided an impripopulist with Talking Heads, Joy Division, Patti Smith, and matur. Always a canny ten minutes ahead scores of others. Out this month, Todd Haynes’s of everyone else, the Beatles composed the touches of the The Velvet Underground catches its subjects soundtrack of their moment. A bewildering experimental; mostly at their beginning; Peter Jackson’s The ten years ahead of everyone else, the Velvets the Velvets were created the racket that would consume them Beatles: Get Back, out this month, catches its subjects near their end. and from which the future was born. experimental The Beatles have been so chronicled as As with his movies about glam rock (Velvet with touches a phenomenon that one of the revelations of Goldmine) and Bob Dylan (I’m Not There), of pop. Jackson’s documentary is that there are any Haynes is more interested in the personalities revelations left. The movie picks up the story of the Velvets than the music itself. With the in early 1969, when pop culture has exploded departure from the film of Warhol, ice-queen into a massive social force, of which the Beatles are uncontestfront woman Nico, and Welsh avant-gardist John Cale, the doced kings, their every musical moment instantly a touchstone. umentary loses interest in its subject even as the band’s sole The band has recently released the so-called White Album writer, Lou Reed, is just hitting his stride, plumbing themes that needs neither a title nor image on the jacket to know that constitute a dark rebuttal to an ethos of peace and love. who made it. Yet their kingdom is in disarray: Former leader Streaming on Apple TV+, The Velvet Underground is an invaluJohn Lennon, one of the band’s two primary songwriters, is able document anyway. Between it and Get Back is a portrait in the thrall of new love Yoko Ono and mind-blowing drugs. of an era when its most extravagant and idealistic possibilities Emergent leader Paul McCartney, the other major songwriter, finally came apart.

4 6 L A M AG . C O M

L I N DA M CC A R T N E Y/CO U R T E SY WA LT D I S N E Y P I C T U R E S

PROMOTION

MEET

ACME REAL ESTATE T H E T R E N DSE T T E RS O F R E N OVAT I O N R ESA L E I N LOS A NG ELES

emember the moment in 2011 when you started to look at real estate again? Foreclosures and short sales were driving prices down, your friends had horror stories about buying high and selling low, real estate agents across the city were declaring their new career choice. But you started to see some really cute properties at an affordable price in LA neighborhoods you never knew existed. There was a clearing in the market. From that clearing, ACME Real Estate emerged. Driven by a love of affordable design and a deeply-rooted belief in the transformational power of accessible housing, ACME opened its eastside headquarters and began the task of inventing how to reshape the way buyers could see properties again--it was a reimagining of trust in a market that had publicly failed. Buyers wanted security. ACME delivered on that dream. Lead by tattooed and outspoken powerhouse broker/owner, Courtney Poulos, a 16-year-veteran of the real estate business, author of “Break Up! With Your Rental!”, Poulos and her hand-selected team set out to up the marketing stakes.

photography, representing the essence of the holistic lifestyle quality of a home. No home is just “a listing.” ACME offerings have come to symbolize how buyers want to live. “We hunted for undiscovered photographers and coached them how to shoot in a way that delivers an experience. When we started, no one was doing ‘vignette’ shots for properties under a million dollars! Sellers weren’t staging and when they did, it was out of touch with the vibe of the buying public. I’m humbled to see many of the photographers and stagers we discovered early on exploding throughout the city! It’s wild.”

Silke Fernald and Dominique Madden, Broker Associates now managing the office at West Adams, are leading the charge. Remarks Madden, “From day one, ACME and its agents strive to set the highest standard in regards to market approach and client representation. Every agent receives one-on-one training and mentorship from industry vets with three decades of experience collectively to arm them with the tools to navigate the hottest housing market in the world with grace and consciousness.” “The ACME experience is like high-end boutique shopping! Our clients get an enthusiastic and attentive agent who genuinely cares. It’s that first-class attitude to representation that makes all the difference. Our buyers have lovingly coined the term ‘ACME house’ The word on the street is ‘I want to buy an ACME house!’ That tells you a lot about the impact we make and continue making on the real estate market. High-level service, integrity, and ethics are mandates,” asserts Fernald.

“THE ACME EXPERIENCE IS LIKE HIGH-END BOUTIQUE SHOPPING! OUR CLIENTS GET AN ENTHUSIASTIC AND ATTENTIVE AGENT WHO GENUINELY CARES.”

“I saw our industry giving up. MLS printouts at the open houses, agents disinterested in the clientele. The houses were either cheaply remodeled or not even shot professionally. It wasn’t good enough,” explains Poulos. Poulos and her small team, now a 46-agent brokerage with two offices and an expansion brokerage in Central Florida, hired best-in-class graphic designers, generating magazine-quality brochures with emotive architectural

As prices have gone up, competitors and imitators have picked up on the magic sauce that make ACME houses so distinctive in the market. ACME continues to innovate, bringing respectful design to every neighborhood it touches, focusing on inclusion in leadership and recruitment, intensifying the training, investing more energy and effort in the quality of ACME agents and delivering a superior client experience, paying close attention to that “IT” factor that is not replicable.

Concludes Poulos, “There is no better home for invention in real estate marketing and sales than ACME. We know the value we bring to the table -- over a decade of marketing for sellers the exact homes that buyers are buying right now. It’s no accident that our listings are the most popular in the market. It’s a methodology, and we see only growth on the horizon.” ACME can be found online at www.acme-re.com, on Instagram at @acmerealestate. Offices are located in Eagle Rock and West Adams. Break Up! With Your Rental is available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Incoming

M O S T WA N T E D

THE MODERN FR ENCHIE Nova Arts, Downtown The salon’s hipster clientele wants fashion without lots of fuss. Says stylist Brent Daniel Basore, “This haircut allows them to feel classy, with a slight edge.” 777 S. Alameda St., novaartssalon.com

T H E C U R LY H A L O Spoke & Weal, Beverly Grove People want a more rounded look now,” says stylist Lindsay Victoria, who tends to the heads of some of the city’s top stylists and designers. The cascading curls add an angelic aspect—“It’s like a halo effect around the face.” 8211 W. 3rd St., spokeandweal.com

HAIR APPARENT FROM BOBS TO LAYERED LOBS TO A CORNUCOPIA OF SHAGS, HERE ARE THE MOST POPULAR LOOKS AT L. A .’S HOTTEST SALONS

THE COLE SPROUSE Matthew Preece Salon, Santa Monica Sean James styles a lot of young actors and entertainment types. But his most popular cut is one he designed for Cole Sprouse. “The sides are cut close; the top is long and can be slicked back,” James says. “But Cole plays with his hair until it flops over to the sides in his eyes. It’s the look all the guys are asking for now.” 1112 Wilshire Blvd., matthewpreece.com

BY MERLE GINSBERG

THE SHULLET Edo, San Francisco San Francisco-based stylist Jayne Matthews says that many of her L.A. clients are going for a more rock-star vibe, “It’s more of a daring shag instead of the pretty shag we were seeing before. It’s a little edgier and messier. It looks more like a mullet.” jaynematthews.com, or email her salon in San Francisco at edosalon.com

4 8 L A M AG . C O M

THE WOLF CUT Benjamin Salon, West Hollywood and DTLA Benjamin Mohapi, the salon’s founder, styles a long list of top Hollywood clients including Billie Eilish, Carey Mulligan, Harry Styles, and Pink. “The big new cut is the wolf cut, in all shapes and sizes,” he says. “Some styles are subtle, and others are more extreme. But the general feeling of a shag is very present.” 8910 Melrose Blvd. and 300 S. Santa Fe Ave., benjaminsalon.com

THE LEO D I C A P R I O/ R I V E R PHOENIX LOOK The Hive, Highland Park Lissa Renn says Highland Park locals are going through a decidedly retro phase. “The ’70s and ’90s are back, so we’re doing this ’90s short skater bob on both on guys and girls,“ Renn says. “It can look feminine or masculine, but it’s really chic and effortless.” 5670 York Blvd., thehive.la

BA R DOT BA NGS Adam Campbell, Beverly Hills “This fall is about bangs!“ proclaims Adam Campbell, who services celebs like Natalie Portman, Eiza González, Liv Tyler, and Isla Fisher. “Everything from fresh, soft, eye-sweeping Brigitte Bardot bangs to grown-out, cheekbonelength curtain bangs with highlights at the fringe tips.” Private address, 424-245-9702

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L A M AG . C O M 5 1

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HO S E W HO utter the words “I don’t camp”

might at least consider AutoCamp. Launched in Santa Barbara in 2013, the luxury glamping company offers four-star amenities—Carrara marble bathrooms, walnut ﬂoors, Ursa Major toiletries, Tempur-Pedic mattresses, and, yes, nice sheets— within the conﬁnes of custom-made, 31-foot-long Airstream trailers.

“It’s all about making the outdoors easy,” says cofounder Ryan Miller.

5 2 L A M AG . C O M

All trailers have a private patio with a dining area and a ﬁrepit with a grill. Inside, kitchenettes are stocked with essentials and feature a microwave and mini-refrigerator. J O S H UA T R E E A I R ST R E A M : J O S H F R A N E R ; R E N D E R I N G S : H KS A R C H I T E C TS A N D N A R R AT I V E D E S I G N ST U D I O

The company has grown rapidly and now has locations in and around Sonoma, Yosemite, Cape Cod, and, starting this month, Joshua Tree. Properties in the Catskills and Zion are set to open in 2022. Because of the remote, uniquely private nature of its lodgings, the company was able to stay open throughout the summer of 2020 and saw record demand amid a surge in interest in alternative lodgings and road trips. The new 25-acre desert property, situated six miles from the national park entrance, will feature 47 Airstream trailers, plus eight larger suites. All AutoCamp locations feature midcentury modern design and that special mix of rustic (a ﬁrepit for cooking!) and luxe (nice toiletries!) that seems to appeal to Generation Xers and millenials, but the Joshua Tree property is unique. The main building—called the Clubhouse—is modeled after a Quonset hut, the prefab, semicylindrical military structure used for temporary housing in Southern California in the postwar era. “We wanted to do a modern take,” says Miller. The Clubhouse is decorated with work from local artists and leads out onto a pool area with a central ﬁrepit. Yoga classes will be on offer, but mostly it’s just about enjoying the outdoors and understated luxuries. “We’re going to give people a unique taste of the high desert,” says Miller. Rooms from $129 a night, 62209 Verbena Rd., Joshua Tree, autocamp.com

D I N E I N OR O U T

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After checking in at the openair Clubhouse, guests make their way to a large central area with a ﬁrepit that leads to their lodgings. A plunge pool to the side will cool in the summer, then become a hot tub in the winter months.

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Customized Airstreams have a queen bed and a skylight in the main sleeping area. “You can actually lie in bed and stargaze,” says Miller. There’s a second, smaller bed that can accommodate two kids or an adult. OP E N S U N D R I E S

The General Store within the Clubhouse offers everything from Canyon Coffee and Wylde One adaptogenics to El Oro Madre aromatherapy products and Parks Project apparel. The circular painting over the store is by local artist Ana Digiallonardo, whose abstract works are inspired by the high-desert landscape. BUS I N E SS C A S UA L

Private meeting spaces feature desert views. “We offer a unique experience for groups,” says Miller.

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L.A. Stories

B Y C L AY T O N F O X

Smoking:

A Love Story ONE MAN’S HARROWING, HACKING ODYSSEY THROUGH LOS ANGELES—AND HOW THIS CIT Y OF LIGHTS FINALLY HELPED HIM CONQUER HIS ADDICTION

56 L A M AG . C O M

I H AV E SMOK E D all over Los Angeles, left trails in the sky and ash across the pavement. But when I ﬁrst moved to L.A., I was on a temporary break from cigarettes. In Chicago, where I’d lived for a brutal year and a half, I’d been smoking and drinking and eating myself into an early grave. Moving out West, I was determined to change my life. And for the ﬁrst two hopeful months in the spring of 2016, I almost did. I practiced yoga every day and ran to the top of Griffith Observatory before work and tried to tan shirtless on my building’s roof, staring out over my new, endless city with bright ambitions. I thought I was going to be a poster boy for the rejuvenating power of a place famous for its green juice and Ayurvedic harmony. It was trite, but I loved every minute of it. Until one day, I L LU S T R AT E D BY M A R I O G R AC I O T T I

The author picked up cigarettes at 25, after a difficult, inevitable breakup.

I woke up and found a small black a friend at a production company bug crawling on my sheets. that we later learned was actually Bed bugs are all too common some sort of scam. We probably in New York City and Chicago, should have known something was but I hadn’t anticipated that they up because we were being asked to would follow me all the way across produce entire episodes of television America. I bagged the little bastard, biweekly, mostly puerile clip shows sent a photo to an exterminator, that were being sold to Polish TV and awaited the results. When my for the 3 a.m. slot. We worked in fears were conﬁrmed, an airless basement I went straight to the in Burbank, and the 7-Eleven for a pack pressure was intense. of American Spirits, We spent 12-hour days “There is and with a certain making content, scana vastness of derelict, apocalyptic ning endless videos glee, I lit up: Fuck of children throwing good, pure yoga. Puff. Fuck green up; of people getting things that juice. Puff. Fuck L.A. sucker punched; of don’t make Puff. Fucking dumb, people pissing their shiny place. Puff, puff. pants; of people’s wedus hurt, don’t I was a depressive ding days ruined. make us ill, East Coast Ukrainian I started going out Hungarian Jew in my every hour for smoke and don’t give late twenties with breaks in the courtus excuses for big, dark, Ukrainian yard. I would pace our misery Hungarian bags back and forth, talking under my eyes. What and our rage.” to myself, sucking was I thinking, comdown Spirits with ing here to this fuckHoover-like force. face Candy Land of a After a while, I city? I walked in circles, dragging couldn’t take the madness of that on one cigarette after another and Burbank basement anymore, so I muttering, “Fuck me, fuck me, fuckstarted a restaurant job in West ing nightmare.” Hollywood at a “sexy” new place. Of At the time, I was working with course, everyone there smoked. For 5 8 L A M AG . C O M

CO U R T E SY O F C L AY TO N FOX

G O OD T I M E S, B A D T I M E S, YO U K NOW I’ V E H A D M Y S H A R E

the first few months, I really tried not to. Then election night arrived. I watched the results come in at my local watering hole, Ye Rustic Inn, affectionately called the Ye. When it became clear there was no path for Hillary Clinton, I went outside and bummed a cigarette—my first in months. I also decided to get a burrito because I wanted to feel like shit. I wanted to fall into a sewer and let the rats do their thing. I couldn’t kick it. I needed to fill the empty space with toxic, black, carcinogenic, glorious, delicious, absurdly sexy smoke. At my lowest point, I was volunteering at a yoga studio in northern Glendale in order to get free classes, thinking that, if they were free, I might will myself to get back into something resembling health. What I actually did was show up once or twice a week early in the morning to clean the studio before classes began and then proceed to stand outside sucking my sticks down with a croissant and a macchiato while the middle-aged women opened their hip flexors. I never once used the free classes; I just liked having somewhere to go. I would stand outside the studio puffing and staring at the ground, making sure to be back at the desk to say goodbye as the class got out. I always wondered if they could smell it on me. I met a lot of women smoking in Los Angeles. Like the (now) ex I met that New Year’s Eve, waiting in line to get into the oasis that is Jumbo’s Clown Room. She radiated sex and the worldly knowledge of someone who truly doesn’t give a fuck, and she was striking in a dark, indie-film-actress way. Luckily for me, she wasn’t an indie film actress but, rather, a flight attendant. She saw me smoking and came over to ask for a cigarette. I don’t remember if we really talked much or just stared at each other while ignoring the buddy I came with. He’s a mensch; he didn’t care. After we smoked, she went in to rejoin her friends. I saw her again at that table in the far corner—you know the one, where groups of young women congregate to celebrate a birthday at a comfortable distance from the bar. Eventually, I worked up the cour-

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6 0 L A M AG . C O M

age to go talk to her and argued my way around her objections to going out with me. She was living in San Francisco at the time and didn’t see the point. We went skating in Pershing Square a couple of days later, had dinner at Little Dom’s, and it went from there. It was long-distance, but it was a blast. We were hedonists of the ﬁrst order and both depressed and both totally willing to disappear for days at a time, drinking wine, eating Korean barbecue, fucking and smoking. For a smoker, the taste of another smoker’s mouth is heaven. Perhaps it’s the way you’re both dried out, and somehow that binds you even tighter, lip on lip, tongue on tongue, tiny beads of sandpaper intertwined. Maybe it’s textural, sensory, the musk of tobacco working some extra magic. Maybe it’s just a bourgeois fantasy for middle-class Americans who associate romance with Europe and Europeans with smoke. So when I was with smokers, it was always a gorgeous ritual to have one before and another after—and sometimes even during. The air in Los Angeles, come to think of it, is like a smoker’s mouth; it wraps you up. It doesn’t want to let you go. The following year, by the end of summer, I was working at the restaurant part time, selling wine full time, and partying with my restaurant friends every other time. Sometimes, but not often, I slept. One night, a comrade and I were at Good Times at Davey Wayne’s, a retro ’70s bar/dance hall/glory hole in the middle of Hollywood. As was often the case, we closed the place down. L.A. is not New York or Buenos Aires or Barcelona, so at 2 a.m. we were kicked to the curb. Around that time, some random Shia LaBeouf-type in a sweatsuit asked us to bum a smoke. I pouted reluctantly and gave him one. By that hour, the denizens of Davey Wayne’s are like family whether you know them or not. I don’t remember his name, but he asked us if we wanted to come to a house party. I asked him where. He said Laurel Canyon. A wry grin formed at the corners of my mouth. When we arrived, the stereotype bore fruit. The house, literally on

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Laurel Canyon Drive, was very old Hollywood. It had the feel of the house in Tower of Terror, that Disney movie or ride or whatever. When we entered, the house was dark, and the host had to come ﬁnd us and bring us upstairs. Everyone was gathered in one small room that had an extremely high ceiling so that the effect was of a tiny cathedral. There were probably ten people total. I didn’t know anyone besides the friend I had come with, a line cook from my restaurant ten years my junior and probably ten years my senior in hard living. He called a friend, so I knew her eventually. But it wasn’t difficult to make friends fast that night. There was beaucoup booze and cigarettes and, once the line cook’s friend arrived, cocaine. My friend’s friend was a no-nonsense actress channeling Wednesday Addams vis-à-vis an angry Irishwoman, which was irresistible. She knew all my favorite playwrights, and we argued about them, which was even more irresistible. She ultimately wanted nothing to do with me. There was lots of laughter and laser beams of wild sexual energy ﬂying in all directions, though. The beams were illuminated in the clouds of smoke surrounding us. In retrospect, I don’t know how we were able to breathe, but I suppose we were all professionals. By sunrise, we’d done every last drop of everything. No cigarettes remained. We said our goodbyes and

I L LU ST R AT I O N BY M A R I O G R AC I OT T I

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walked out into the dawn. I’d like to tell you that, in the light of day, I felt disgusting after the debauchery, but that would be a lie; it was pure joy sharing some strange portion of the night with those strangers, drinking and smoking and snorting away our sadness. Los Angeles is a really good place to be sad because there are a lot of other sad people here, and they aren’t afraid to help you help them cope. Still, I kept trying to quit. I found reasons to drop cigarettes and reasons to take them back. I smoked for joy and for sadness. I smoked with women who loved me and whom I loved, and women who didn’t love me and whom I couldn’t love. My smokes and I learned Los Angeles together. For three wild years, we licked and danced and screamed our way across that endless, gorgeous canvas. Finally, a couple of years ago, after consecutive weekends flying around the country celebrating friends’ achievements and engagements—one of the more melancholic interludes of my life—I returned to Los Angeles, cigarettes in hand, and had an epiphany: It occurred to me that I had been trying to kill myself all these years—that I didn’t want to live but was too cowardly to get it over with. I was relying on British American Tobacco to do it. And if, in the interim, swagger, pleasure, and release came with the death sentence, I was happy to go out in style. But the truth was, I didn’t want to die. I wish I could tell you there was one thunderbolt moment of realization—an inspirational flash of sanity. But, really, it was an accumulation of hacking coughs, crushing fatigue, and years of living drag to drag. After that, it began to occur to me that there was so much more to see and do—other things beyond the mirrored rooms full of funny, sexy, morose fellow death cultists. I love them all, but I love other things, too. There is a vastness of good, pure things that don’t make us hurt, that don’t make us ill, that don’t make our sheets smell like moonshine and forest fires, that don’t give us excuses for our misery and our rage.

Somehow, slowly, I began wanting those things more than the rage and the misery. L.A. has those things—reasons to live, I mean. It’s a huge city of diverse terrain, so I’m not going to presume to list what those things are for you. You know what they are. Most of them have to do with love. All the feel-good, new-agey, health-mantra, ﬁnd-yourself agitprop in L.A. can be cloying; that is true. But it reﬂects something much deeper in the soul of the city that

isn’t always articulated very well. It’s an excellent city to get lost in, to be sad in. It’s a good place to cover sadness with all manner of worldclass, fabulous, deadly chiffon. But it is also a deeply good place to be forgiven. A place that actually oozes with compassion and moves gracefully beyond failures. A place that really does want you to get back up if that’s what you want. To leave if that’s what you need. In short, Los Angeles is a good place to quit.

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EXPERT

ANDREW T. COHEN, MD, FACS BOARD CERTIFIED PLASTIC SURGEON

Dr. Andrew Cohen is a native of Southern California ZLWK DQ RĴ FH DQG DQ DFFUHGLWHG VWDWH RI WKH DUW operating room in the heart RI (QFLQR &DOLIRUQLD Since moving his practice from Beverly Hills, +Y *VOLU PZ WSLHZLK [V Vќ LY JVTWYLOLUZP]L WSHZ[PJ Z\YNLY` JHYL H[ OPZ UL^ ,UJPUV Vѝ JL ^OPJO PZ JVU]LUPLU[S` SVJH[LK Vќ [OL freeway and Balboa Boulevard. Dr. Cohen PZ IVHYK JLY[PÄ LK I` [OL (TLYPJHU )VHYK VM Plastic Surgery and is currently serving his second term as the Clinical Chief of Plastic Surgery at Cedars Sinai. He completed both his general surgery training and plastic surgery residency at Loma Linda University. He holds an Aesthetic and Oculoplastic Fellowship at Paces Plastic Surgery, Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. Cohen holds memberships in the following associations: American Board of Plastic Surgeons American Society of Plastic Surgeons American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery California Society of Plastic Surgeons Los Angeles Society of Plastic Surgeons

Q: Does liposuction help you lose weight?

Q: How can I improve my face/facial features?

A: It’s not a weight-loss procedure. Liposuction is for patients who are looking for body contouring. We don’t recommend doing liposuction on those who are obese or overweight, because removing too much fatty tissue could lead to complications. Liposuction, diet, and exercise is the mantra— you have to do all three. I use a very advanced liposculpture machine called the MicroAire Power Assisted Liposuction machine, that allows me to remove the fat in a gentle way, which causes less bruising and swelling.

A: With a variety of facial rejuvenation procedures, we can take years off your face and give you a more youthful aesthetic look and feel. Our options include a facelift, brow lift, a blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery), rhinoplasty (nose surgery), and fractional CO2 laser. The fractional CO2 laser can dramatically reduce wrinkles and fine and can be performed in my in-suite AAAASFcertified operating room. We also offer a number of injectable options for less invasive skin renewal.

Q: Does plastic surgery help with sagging breasts? A: Breast lift surgery is a rejuvenating procedure designed to reshape the breasts while tightening stretched skin or tissue. For those with mild sagging who want to restore lost volume, breast augmentation with implants may provide a mild lifting effect to address sagging while adding fullness. In some cases, patients may benefit from a breast lift with the addition of saline or silicone implants, as this may provide the most dramatic transformation. This combination procedure lifts sagging tissue while increasing the size of the breasts. For patients that do not prefer the use of an PTWSHU[ ^L JHU HSZV KV MH[ [YHUZMLY [V Ä SS V\[ the breasts in a natural way.

Andrew T. Cohen, M.D. and Cohen Outpatient Surgery Center )HSIVH )V\SL]HYK :\P[L ,UJPUV *( c c HUKYL^JVOLUTK JVT

Q: What kind of skincare services do you provide? A: Excellent care of your skin helps to complement every procedure we do, as well as increase healing ability. We offer top-of-the line skin care products designed to replenish your skin and give you a healthy sheen. I am an education consultant for iS Clinical®, which is an excellent skincare line we carry. We also feature AQ Skin Solutions ®, EltaMD®, Olga Lorencin® Skin Care, and peels from iS Clinical® and The Perfect Peel. Our CO2 Laser Smart Peel does a fantastic job resurfacing skin. We are also working with CBD as a healing and pain relief property, both for post-surgical and combined in skincare products.

Beverlyhillssurgeon L A M AG . C O M 65

HELPS KEEP YOU SAFE FROM EVERY ANGLE.

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For more information see www.iihs.org

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THE 2021 LA AUTO SHOW CHARGES BACK AT ONE OF THE MOST TRANFORMATIVE MOMENTS IN AUTOMOTIVE HISTORY. COME SEE WHAT’S DRIVING THE FUTURE.

L.A. CONVENTION CENTER

NOV. 19-28 LAAUTOSHOW.COM

Q&A

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LISA KAZ OWNER AND CEO, ANSA PRODUCTIONS

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7KH ð UVW /RV $QJHOHV $XWR 6KRZ ZDV KHOG LQ :KDW ZDV WKH LPSHWXV IRU WKH VKRZ DQG WKH RWKHUV WKDW IROORZHG" The reason for it coming into existence was to stimulate car sales. It was the place car makers could market to consumers all under one roof and see everything at the same time. And today— after a hundred-something years—the show still brings value to automakers and to consumers because there’s no other place you can do that.

7KRVH YHU\ HDUO\ DXWR VKRZV ZHUH DOVR KHOG WR JHW SHRSOH FRPIRUWDEOH ZLWK WKH LGHD RI DXWRPRELOHV *LYHQ WKH VWDWH DQG IHGHUDO ODZV PDQGDWLQJ LQFUHDVLQJ TXRWDV IRU ]HUR HPLVVLRQV YHKLFOHV LQ WKH QH[W GHFDGH GR \RX VHH WRGD\âV DXWR VKRZ IXOð OOLQJ D VLPLODU IXQFWLRQ DV WKH LQGXVWU\ VKLIWV IURP LQWHUQDO FRPEXVWLRQ HQJLQHV WR HOHFWULF SRZHU" The vast majority of people are still in the market for gas-powered cars. But the transition to electric is mandated— Mayor Garretti came up with the goal of 25 percent by 2025—and L.A. really is the epicenter for this change. The majority of vehicles that are electric are in California and so L.A. is really the hub for that transition, at least in the U.S. But it’s one thing to mandate electric vehicles; it’s altogether different for the consumer to embrace it. So there’s a big education process now, and I think it will be a slow process. But it’s accelerating. I mean, automakers are pumping billions of dollars into R&D so that they can make this transition and create fantastic products. I think we’re going to see a ton this year, and I’ve read that 100 new electric vehicles will debut before 2024. That is a lot.

:LOO WKHUH EH UHVRXUFHV DW WKH /$ $XWR 6KRZ ZKHUH SHRSOH FDQ OHDUQ PRUH" We did a survey a couple months ago, and 79 percent of people responded that they are interested in learning more about electric vehicles. So the public’s interest is certainly there. This year, the LA Auto Show will have exhibit areas where the consumer can get educated and test drive these vehicles. Most people have never driven one or even been in one. And I think it is fair to say that once people get in, they are impressed. At the show, we have an indoor, 55,000-square-foot test track sponsored by Electrify America, one of the big charging station companies, where people can experience the vehicles, ask questions—cost, range and infrastructure are the big ones—and learn what’s available. Because it is all new.

,Q DGGLWLRQ WR WKH WR VKLIW WR (9V WKH RWKHU PDMRU LQGXVWU\ WUHQGċDQG RQH WKDW LV D ORW PRUH DPELJXRXV DQG FRQWURYHUVLDOċLV DXWRQRPRXV YHKLFOHV -XPS DKHDG WR WKH /$ $XWR 6KRZ :LOO WKH &RQYHQWLRQ &HQWHU EH ð OOHG ZLWK VHOI GULYLQJ FDUV" Will we have fully autonomous vehicles en masse by 2031? I would think so, given that some of the automakers are saying we’ll have autonomy by 2020-something. So the ambitions are there, the R&D is there, the intention is there. And I think P[»SS NL[ [OLYL 0[»SS IL H ]LY` KPќ LYLU[ ^VYSK obviously, than today in terms of what the use case is for the autonomous vehicle. We will see that expand in ways that we can’t even contemplate now. It’s sort of like when the iPhone came out in 2007, you couldn’t imagine that an app store would provide you with so many new ways to make your life easier. So, I do think the

use cases for autonomous vehicles will explode. We know some of the obvious ones: that the elderly or children will be able to use [autonomous vehicles] without a driver’s license. There will be less need for so much parking infrastructure, so it will change the infrastructure of the city. And, of course, the safety component will be a game changer. I don’t know how fast that will happen because it’s one thing to have autonomous vehicles available, it’s H KPќ LYLU[ X\LZ[PVU NL[[PUN O\THU KYP]LYZ Vќ [OL YVHK ;OH[»Z UV[ NVPUN [V OHWWLU by 2031. So if people are still driving their vehicles there will be a need for parking and advanced safety features for sure.

'HVSLWH FRQVXPHU DPELYDOHQFH DERXW VHOI GULYLQJ FDUV DXWRPDNHUV KDYH EHHQ LQFUHPHQWDOO\ PRYLQJ WRZDUG DXWRQRP\ IRU GHFDGHV IURP FUXLVH FRQWURO WR PRUH UHFHQWO\ VHOI SDUNLQJ ODQH NHHSLQJ DQG FROOLVLRQ DYRLGDQFH RIWHQ LQ WKH LQWHUHVW RI VDIHW\ I think it will continue to be incremental. These things start out on the fringe—I remember when anti-lock brakes were like an extra, and now I imagine they’re standard on every car. One of the other things that we are seeing now and will see more of is the ability for automakers to do over-the-air updates and to continually improve on some of these safety features.

2QH WKLQJ WKDW GRHVQâW VHHP WR FKDQJH LQ FXVWRPHU VDWLVIDFWLRQ VXUYH\V LV WKH H[SHULHQFH RI EX\LQJ D FDU LQ D WUDGLWLRQDO VKRZURRP VHWWLQJ 0DQ\ SHRSOH VWLOO ð QG LW LQFUHGLEO\ VWUHVVIXO I think that is changing; I think that it has to change. There are so many more resources for the consumer today. And VUL [OPUN [OH[ PZ YLHSS` ZPNUPÄ JHU[ HUK

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speaks to the car buying process—both in terms of where you’re going to buy a vehicle and which vehicle, that today’s generation is so used to—is referrals and recommendations, the Yelps and social media. You’re seeing more and more vehicles you can pre-order online, so that’s a new trend; there are hundreds of thousands of pre-orders now. Automakers are getting psychological commitments from people, whether it’s putting $100 on a pre-order or zero. It has created far better customer service and a better user experience. So, by 2031, I think it will be a very different buying experience. Automakers are beginning to directly target women in advertising and marketing. Apparently with good reason. Cars.com did a study that said 85 percent of women influence the new car purchase and 62 percent of them actually purchased the car. That was shocking to me. I don’t think automakers are really embracing the relevance of those numbers yet—they aren’t putting 85 percent or 62 percent of their marketing budgets toward women, I can tell you that. But they are increasing them.

How will this year’s LA Auto Show address the needs of that demographic? If you look historically at auto shows, the exhibits were mostly static. The biggest thing was the turntable—a car spinning around. Well fast forward to today and it’s all about engagement with the consumer. It’s activation, it’s the experiences that the manufacturers are creating, the outdoor test drives but also special indoor tracks. They are almost like rides. Last year Subaru—and they are doing it again even more at this year’s show—have dog adoptions promoting their love of animals and nature. And Ford has had a climbing wall at their exhibit. So it’s a far more festival-like experience than in the past. And that is because that’s what young people want, they want engagement. They don’t want to go to a static display. The 2020 LA Auto Show was postponed twice because of concerns about Covid-19. +RZ GLG WKH KLDWXV Dσ HFW the show in the industry and among consumers?

The LA Auto Show, because it’s held in the number-one car market in the U.S., has always been a place where new brands are launched because What about Millennials they need to be in this market. and Gen Z? Their diffident If they want to sell new cars relationship with driving Today’s LA Auto Show gives attendees hands-on experience with rugged vehicles (top) in this country, then it makes and demonstrations of emerging technologies, like fully electric vehicles. and car-ownership—at sense for them to be in the least for now—isn’t exactly LA Auto Show or to launch at reassuring automakers [OL 3( (\[V :OV^ ;OL ZOV^ ^PSS IL KPќ LYLU[ [OPZ `LHY PU [OL ZLUZL trying to parse the future. that Covid has changed a lot of things, but I think it will be special because we didn’t have a show last year because people were not When I was growing up, you got your license on your 16th able to go to live events. Most of the people who attend our show birthday. It was a big deal. Kids today do not do that. They attend at least every other year. It really is a tradition. I meet people just don’t care and it’s not their identity. They have so many all the time who went to the show as a kid every year with their more options to project their identify. They’re taking selfies family. So I think it will be a meaningful year and there will be a ton constantly; my generation didn’t have selfies to post. But for kids today, that is them projecting themselves out into world. of fun things happening and a very exciting show. Q

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INTRODUCING

THE ZEVAS Acknowledging the central role electric vehicles will play in future of mobility, the LA Auto Show is proud to premiere the Zero-Emission Vehicle Awards, or THE ZEVAS, a new, signature awards program, at this November’s auto show. Instead of consulting industry experts, ;/, A,=(: YLÅ LJ[ [OL YLHS JHY I\`PUN L_WLYPLUJL VM HJ[\HS ]LOPJSL ZOVWWLYZ ^OLYL [OL WHULS VM Q\KNPUN PZ `V\ [OL consumer. THE ZEVAS voting community includes moms, dads, students, LU[YLWYLUL\YZ LK\JH[VYZ I\ZPULZZ professionals, content creators and TVYL·PU V[OLY ^VYKZ [OL WLVWSL ^OV I\` HUK SLHZL UL^ ]LOPJSLZ

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;/, A,=(: OVUVYZ A,=Z H]HPSHISL MVY W\YJOHZL VY MVY WYL VYKLY PU H ]HYPL[` VM categories including: Compact, Coupe, *YVZZV]LY HIV]L ILSV^ R /H[JOIHJR =HU >HNVU :LKHU HIV]L ILSV^ R :WVY[ <[PSP[` =LOPJSL HUK ;Y\JR

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KPZJV]LY [LZ[ HUK KL[LYTPUL [OLPY UL_[ YPKL P[»Z UV Z\YWYPZL [OH[ [OL 3( (\[V :OV^ H[[LUKLLZ» PU[LYLZ[ PU A,=»Z OHZ PUJYLHZLK KYHTH[PJHSS` K\YPUN [OL WHZ[ TVU[OZ ¸,SLJ[YPÄ JH[PVU PZ [OL IPNNLZ[ [YHUZMVYTH[PVU [OL H\[V PUK\Z[Y` OHZ L_WLYPLUJLK PU `LHYZ ¹ ZHPK 3PZH 2Ha *,6 HUK V^ULY VM [OL 3( (\[V :OV^ ¸>P[O HJJLSLYH[PUN JVUZ\TLY PU[LYLZ[ PU LSLJ[YPJ ]LOPJSLZ [OLYL PZ UV IL[[LY WSHJL MVY [OL UL^ JHY HUK [Y\JR I\`LY [V SLHYU HIV\[ L_WLYPLUJL HUK JVTWHYL [OL SH[LZ[ HUK NYLH[LZ[ LSLJ[YPJ ]LOPJSLZ HUK NHZ WV^LYLK TVKLSZ HSS PU VUL JVU]LUPLU[ WSHJL ¹ Q

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Throughout the one million square feet that makes up the LA Auto Show, automakers showcase the latest and greatest models, often within jaw-dropping exhibition spaces that include VR simulators, celebrity signings, interactive touch screens and immersive experiences the whole family can enjoy. 2021’s event includes a diverse mix of legacy exhibitors and some very exciting newcomers to the show.

PARTICIPATING AUTOMAKERS*

Alfa Romeo, Audi, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Cobera, Dodge, EdisonFuture, Electra Meccanica, Fiat, Fisker, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Imperium, Jaguar, Jeep, Kia, Land Rover, Lexus, Lincoln, Mazda, Mullen, Nissan, Porsche, RAM, Sonders, Subaru, Toyota, VinFast, Volvo, VW Reflecting the LA Auto Show’s commitment to bring the most dynamic interactive experiences to consumers, an array of special activities sponsored by automakers are available inside and outside the Convention Center.

OUTDOORS CAMP JEEP

A 25,000-square-foot interactive adventure zone, Camp Jeep will allow attendees [V L_WLYPLUJL [OL SLNLUKHY` VU HUK Vќ road capabilities of Jeep-brand vehicles. Professional 4X4 drivers will drive participants in the 2021 Wrangler Rubicon, Wrangler 4xe, Grand Cherokee, Gladiator Rubicon, Grand Cherokee Trailhawk and Cherokee Trailhawk.

72 L A M AG . C O M

FUN, FUN, FUN FORD BRONCO BUILT WILD

At Built Wild guests will experience the Bronco family full throttle on a specially KLZPNULK Vќ YVHK JV\YZL HUK W\[ [OLPY courage to the test with a ride over Bronco Mountain, a 38 degree hill. Guests will be able to learn about the Bronco brand’s beloved legacy, get acquainted with the all-new Bronco family—from Bronco Sport to the 2-door and 4-door Broncos—and learn about modularity and accessories to suit their lifestyles. VW ROADSHOW

;OL =VSRZ^HNLU :<=Z KVU»[ ZHJYPÄ JL MVYT for function. But don’t take our word for it. You can experience these SUVs for yourself on a closed course test track showcasing the latest vehicle capabilities. Stop by the VW Roadshow and reserve your personal spot for an experience like no other. WEEKENDS-ONLY Stop by the Food Truck Breezeway and enjoy items from some of LA’s best food

trucks on Saturdays and Sundays. After, head over to DoVE Project Dog Adoptions and fall in love with your next best friend while supporting a great cause. OUTDOOR TEST DRIVES

Get behind the wheel with Subaru, Toyota, Nissan, Electra Mecchanica, Stellantis, Grand Wagoneer, Audi e-tron, Ford and Honda for city test-driving experiences.

INDOORS

EV TEST TRACK PRESENTED BY ELECTRIFY AMERICA Drivers wishing to test out their EV driving skills will enjoy over 55,000 square feet on the new indoor EV test track, featuring EVs from various automakers. As part of [OL L_WLYPLUJL Vѝ JPHS JOHYNPUN ZWVUZVY Electrify America will educate consumers and showcase its range of charging solutions including DC Fast chargers for test track vehicles.

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RAM TRUCK TERRITORY RAM Truck Territory is the ultimate in-truck adventure demonstrating the power and capabilities of the Ram Truck vehicle lineup. Professional drivers will navigate attendees through the interactive course in the 2021 Ram 1500, the Most Awarded Light Duty Truck in America. Ram Rebel, Limited, Laramie and Longhorn models will also be available for consumers to enjoy a ride. RAM Heavy Duty trucks will include RAM Power Wagon, RAM 2500 and 3500 Limited Models. SUBARU NATIONAL PARKS EXPERIENCE An all-new auto show experience showcasing core Subaru models and the brand’s dedication to preserving our National Parks, with immersive 180-degree LED wall HUK 3,+ Å VVY ^PSKLYULZZ PUZWPYLK ZPNO[Z ZV\UKZ ZTLSSZ and two levels of viewing. Explore the interactive cave experience spotlighting “no-touch” technology and visit the Subaru Loves Pets daily adoption event. The all new performance area will feature the 2022 WRX and more. FORD BUILT TO ELECTRIFY At Ford’s Built to Electrify experience inside the LA Auto :OV^ N\LZ[Z ^PSS SLHYU [OL ILULÄ [Z VM LSLJ[YPJ ]LOPJSL ownership and see Ford’s full lineup of electric vehicles. Guests will get an exclusive look at the all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning and take an adrenaline-pumping Mustang Mach-E ride that will get their hearts racing. PORSCHE HALL Porsche Hall (aka Petree Hall) is a dedicated space exclusively showcasing an amazing array of models stocked with the latest functionality and signature Porsche innovation for performance. Southern California is the hot bed for Porsche owners and enthusiasts eager to discover how Porsche continues to shape the future of the sports car.

FINAL EIGHT ‘LOST CORVETTES’ TO BE SHOWCASED AT LA AUTO SHOW :V JHSSLK IHYU Ä UKZ VM ]PU[HNL JHYZ Z[VYLK PU VISP]PVU MVY KLJHKLZ HYL [OL OVS` NYHPS VM JHY JVSSLJ[VYZ 5V^ LPNO[ ]PU[HNL *VY]L[[LZ HɈ LJ[PVUH[LS` JHSSLK ¸;OL .YLH[ ,PNO[¹ · [OL SHZ[ VM H [YHUJOL VM W\YJOHZLK I` WVW HY[PZ[ 7L[LY 4H_ PU · ^PSS IL VU KPZWSH` VUL SHZ[ [PTL [V [PJRL[ OVSKLYZ HZ WHY[ VM ;OL 3VZ[ *VY]L[[LZ :^LLWZ[HRLZ K\YPUN [OL 3( (\[V :OV^

GALPIN HALL OF CUSTOMS

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Galpin’s Hall of Customs is home to breathtaking customized rides, classics and exotic vehicles presented by one of the largest dealership groups in America. From speciality customizing, mind-blowing gadgets and dazzling color creations, Galpin is the place to go to turn your car dreams into reality.

0UZ[LHK 4H_ LUKLK \W Z[VYPUN [OL º=L[[LZ PU H Z\JJLZZPVU VM 5L^ @VYR *P[` WHYRPUN NHYHNLZ THUHNLK I` [OL /LSSLY HUK :WPUKSLY MHTPSLZ ^OV IV\NO[ [OL JHYZ MYVT [OL HY[PZ[ PU YLZ[VYLK [OLT ^P[O *VY]L[[L L_WLY[ *OYPZ 4HaaPSSP HUK OH]L VɈ LYLK [OLT HZ WYPaLZ PU H T\S[P `LHY Z^LLWZ[HRLZ [V OLSW M\UK JOHYP[PLZ [OH[ Z\WWVY[ < : TPSP[HY` ]L[LYHUZ

THE AFTERMARKET GARAGE

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Always a crowd favorite “The Garage” is the LA Auto Show aftermarket showcase where car culture lives. The Garage curates one of the world’s largest and most eclectic collections of aftermarket goods and services, customizers, and renowned tuners. Situated beneath the South Hall, The Garage takes over Kentia Hall annually to provide a home for culturally in tune exhibitors. Q

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*attractions and exhibitors subject to change

L A M AG . C O M 73

H O P E F L OAT S

Ayahuasca evangelists Damien and Brandee Sabella chill out at their Malibu home.

e h c y Ps BY P E T E R K I E F E R

P H OTO G R A P H E D BY E L I SA B E T H C A R E N P H OTO I L LU ST R AT I O N BY L I Z B R E TZ 7 6 L A M AG . C O M

c i l e d e Housewives in the Hills are doing it. Hipsters in Los Feliz, too. L.A. has became ground zero for a new hallucinogen boom, with ayahuasca ceremonies now as common as barbecues. But is microdosing shrooms really the answer to what ails Angelenos?

e r u picture t c i p T U R N O N, T U N E I N

Clockwise from bottom left: Rymia, a “medically licensed” wellness center in Costa Rica; for a 2010 study on the effects of hallucinogenic drugs, cancer patients were given either psilocybin or a placebo; Brandee and Damien Sabella, 2021; Timothy Leary and his wife, Rosemary, 1969; a poster of Leary that includes his well-known mantra, “Turn on, tune In, drop out.”

that unusual. Because, as it happens, Los Angeles is currently in the grip of a psychedelics fervor not seen since Jim Morrison ambled his way down the Venice Beach boardwalk in the 1960s. Every weekend, dozens, possibly hundreds, of ayahuasca ceremonies take place in the hills, valleys, and strip malls of Southern California. So many people are now experimenting with ayahuasca (a

Los Angeles is in the grip of a psychedelics fervor not seen since Jim Morrison ambled his way down the Venice Beach boardwalk in the 1960s. these two spheres. “All this indigenous wisdom is within us, but it’s just been hidden.” Moments later, Brandee is expounding on her theory that music recorded in a particular frequency can trigger internal human receptors, inducing a hallucinogenic-like state in listeners. It sounds ridiculous, but her delivery is so sincere and polished that I almost start to believe her. The Sabellas may be exceptional, but they’re not all 78 L A M AG . C O M

psychoactive brew long used by South American indigenous tribes as part of ceremonial spiritual healing) that there’s concern the ingredients required to create the potion are being overharvested. But it’s not just ayahuasca—there are events for psilocybin, DMT, ibogaine, LSD, and MDMA. Soccer moms in Malibu now swap notes over microdosing (taking tiny amounts of psychedelics to boost

LO C AT I O N : RY T H M I A .CO M ; P I L L : A P P H OTO/S E T H W E N I G ; BRANDEE AND SABELLA: ELISABETH CAREN

YOURSELF NOT in a boat on a river but instead on a sectional sofa in a sunken living room in a majestic $9-million-dollar Point Dume mansion overlooking the Pacific. Here, the tangerine trees are actually whispering eucalypti, and the marmalade skies are a deep and comforting blue. Still, it’s pretty trippy. This is the home of Brandee and Damien Sabella—the unofficial first couple of Southern California psychedelia—a sprawling compound that feels like a five-star commune. Two sentinel-like guard dogs patrol the property as a couple of the Sabella’s older children (they have five, ranging from 19 months to 14) load surfboards into a souped-up Sprinter van. There’s a small fleet of luxury SUVs in front and a professional-grade skate park in back with a massive half-pipe, several crescent-shaped ramps, and grind rails. Inside the house, nannies and assistants putter about. Damien, 36, is the scion of a powerful Hong Kong real estate dynasty who now works in the music industry. His hair is pulled back in a man bun, and he has dark, piercing eyes and a coiled, muscular frame, possibly explained by his hobbies: hunting elk with a bow and arrow, surfing giant waves in Tahiti, and competing in ultramarathon races. Brandee, 41, is tall and lithe, with warm, inviting brown eyes. Patchouli-soaked hippies they are not. They’re articulate, attractive, and artfully tatted out. And they do lots and lots of drugs. “There are metrics for what we can do in this spiritual world,” Damien says while sipping a cup of chai. He is explaining the intersection of the physical and the spiritual worlds and how mundane issues of health and quality of life can be impacted by the tension between

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moods and enhance creativity) as they recap the latest episode of Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers, a show in which characters engage in . . . microdosing. Shamans are being ﬂown in from Brazil and Peru to conduct ceremonies in Topanga Canyon, some charging thousands of dollars a session. L.A.-based companies like My Ketamine Home, Field Trip, and Akasa Journeys now provide guided therapy sessions, including ketamine and psilocybin treatments (licensed doctors can prescribe ketamine, and while imbibing hallucinogens like psilocybin and ayahuasca is still technically illegal, their ingredients are easily imported—or can be found just by taking a stroll in a forest). You can buy psychedelic-infused bottled water online (not hallucinogenic) and magic-mushroom starter kits (legitimately hallucinogenic). New religions with mush-

rooms, peyote, and ayahuasca as their central sacraments are already here, and more are on the way. There’s even a 24-hour hotline you can call while tripping. Indeed, psychedelics are becoming so mainstream, at least on this coast, that a few California cities, like Oakland and Santa Cruz, have already decriminalized some of them, while legislators in Sacramento are on the verge of introducing a bill that would decrimiL A M AG . C O M 79

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Clockwise from top left: In 2009, the Obama Administration eased up on medical marijuana prosecutions. At P.O.T., a nonproﬁt dispensary in L.A.; the Grateful Dead in San Francisco, 1965; vials of fentanyl, ketamine, and morphine, 2021; mushrooms for sale at a “smart shop” in Amsterdam, 2007; the image of Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann on LSD blotting paper; at a Hamburg zoo, a Colorado River toad, whose venom makes the hallucinogen Bufo.

the horizon. Over the next few years, this generation of Californians, mired in an era of political cynicism, environmental degradation, and an out-of-control mental health crisis, might just accomplish what the free-spirited ﬂower children of the 1960s never imagined. Soon, anyone over the age of 21 in California will be able to get mind-bendingly fucked up. Legally. What could possibly go wrong?

IT ALL STARTED, as so many things in America do, with a boneheaded secret plot hatched by the CIA. Although the Central Intelligence Agency didn’t actually invent LSD—that honor belongs to Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann who, in 1938 invented the drug and then accidentally dosed himself—the spy agency certainly helped slip it into the American bloodstream. When the Cold War kicked off after World War II, the CIA created a secret pro-

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T H E T RU T H, NO T H I NG M O R E

nalize a whole slew of forbidden substances across the entire state. Leading this acid redux revolution is an alliance of strange bedfellows. On one end of the movement, you’ve got scientists in white lab coats—like Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine and the author of one of the earliest studies on the therapeutic effects of MDMA—who brandish research-based evidence that psychedelics have underexplored and potentially groundbreaking beneﬁts for treating depression, anxiety, and a range of other debilitating conditions. On the other end, there are shamans in ﬂowing robes (including at least one former reality-television star) who believe the drugs will lead humanity to a great spiritual awakening. There’s also a smattering of Silicon Valley suits who are simply following the scent of money. Each constituency obviously has its own motivations, several of which seem impossible to square with one another. “People who had not given psychedelics a second thought have gotten interested in it in recent years,” says Grob. “It’s a net positive, but we have to be careful. We can’t start celebrating that we won the war. We could be in for a rude awakening down the line if things go off the rails.” Still, the once unthinkable now seems on

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gram called MK-ULTRA, which was tasked with ﬁnding a mind-control drug before the Soviets did—call it the headspace race. The agency set its sights on Hofmann’s creation and attempted to buy the world’s entire supply (to no avail—the Soviets had already stockpiled their own). The LSD that the CIA managed to get its hands on was given to prisoners, soldiers, and other unsuspecting guinea pigs in secret experiments that ended up not controlling a single mind. Meanwhile, professionals in the psychiatric ﬁeld not affiliated with the CIA were also researching psychedelics through the 1950s and ’60s, although with very different purposes in mind. Indeed, remarkable progress was being made in understanding how these compounds helped combat depression and alcoholism as tens of thousands of people volunteered to participate in psychedelics-assisted experiments, including Ethel Kennedy, wife of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who reportedly underwent LSD treatment for her alcoholism.

Starting in the early 1960s, these powerful drugs began leaking out of the conﬁnes of clinical labs and therapists’ offices and onto the streets and college campuses, with early adopters like writer Ken Kesey, poet Allen Ginsberg, and novelist Aldous Huxley leading the way. In a 1960 interview with The Paris Review, Huxley (whose work includes the seminal tripper handbook The Doors of Perception) described the LSD experience as providing “penetrating insights” and “tremendous recalls of buried material,” going on to add that it “shows that the world one habitually lives in is merely a creation of this conventional, closely conditioned being which one is, and that there are quite other kinds of worlds outside.” Even some famous rabbis started turning on (“Better than schnapps,” is how Zalman Schachter-Shalomi once described LSD to Leary), debating whether or not the drug could be considered kosher.

Nixon launched the “war on drugs,” which reclassiﬁed LSD as a narcotic that had no medical value.

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Just this past August, a gunman allegedly high on mushrooms shot and killed a tourist in Miami Beach.

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This page: L.A. police officers display LSD-laced chips, 1970. Opposite page, from top: Senator Robert Kennedy’s wife, Ethel Kennedy, reportedly underwent LSD therapy for alcoholism; author Ken Kesey with a facsimile of the bus that carried him and the Merry Pranksters on the 1964 trip immortalized in the Tom Wolfe’s, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

edly high on mushrooms shot and killed a tourist in Miami Beach. Earlier this year, a man was hospitalized with organ failure after he injected himself with a tea made from mushrooms (the shrooms started growing in his veins, for real). And then there was the case of Catalonian porn star Nacho Vidal, who was arrested in Spain last year and charged with manslaughter after allegedly holding a mystical ceremony at which toad venom vapers ended up killing a participant. Of course, these types of extreme incidents are rare, but the fact that these stories garnered so much media attention shows the psychedelics movement still has an image problem to deal with. “Eight hundred people a year die from liver failure caused by Tylenol,” says Aubrey Marcus, host of a popular biohacking podcast that focuses on psychedelics. Although his numbers may be a tad off (other sources put the ﬁgure closer to 400), he has a point. “We don’t hear anything about that. But one person dying on psilocybin becomes a national story. That’s a concern because people legislate against things they’re afraid of.” Besides bad trips and occasional murderous rages, there are other dangers lurking behind psychedelics’ new popularity. Like corporate invaders trying to co-opt the movement for their own greedy purposes. And Hollywood

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By the end of the decade, psychedelics became inextricably linked—at least in the public imagination—with the 1960s counterculture. Enter Richard Nixon, who saw psychedelics as a political gift and an opportunity to further his own agenda by demonizing acid-dropping hippies. In 1971, Nixon launched the “war on drugs.” which, among other things, reclassified LSD as a Schedule I narcotic that had no medical value. By the mid-1970s, the legal exploration of the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs, which had proved so fruitful in the preceding decades, was over. This zero-tolerance approach would hold all the way through the Reagan era of the 1980s. But in the early 1990s, psychedelic research was rekindled, picking up more steam in the early aughts when Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University released a series of groundbreaking studies. Griffiths and his team of researchers were able to show that participants who used psilocybin could quit smoking after years of failed attempts, control persistent depression, and, in the case of people with terminally ill diseases, transcend their fear of death. More recent research has bolstered the medical case for psychedelics, with no less an authority than Dr. Drew Pinsky reportedly jumping aboard; the former Loveline and Celebrity Rehab host (and sometime COVID denier) is said to be planning a series of TV shows examining how psychedelics can aid in addiction treatment. “It’s been a gradual change in perception in the public’s mind about psychedelics,” says author and ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna, whose last name all but inspires genuflecting in the psychedelic community. (His late brother, Terence, was a titan in the field as well). McKenna is part of the white-coat contingency—academics and clinicians who have been advocating for the decriminalization and adoption of psychedelics by the medical establishment that’s long shunned it. These are mostly serious and thoughtful activists who cluster in organizations like the Heff ter Research Institute and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which have been quietly shepherding the psychedelic psychotherapy revolution for the past 30 years. “The dangers were exaggerated,” McKenna says. “Psychedelics were ridiculed and weren’t taken seriously. But that’s changed now.” The dangers may indeed have been exaggerated, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any, as anyone who has ever been swarmed by imaginary bats during a bad trip through Barstow can testify. Even more alarming, the drugs have sometimes been associated with actual violence and tragedy. Just this past August, a gunman alleg-

hipsters turning what to some is a sacred ritual shrouded in cosmic mystery into yet another trendy shopping spree. Before long, it’s entirely possible that Erewhon will start selling the stuff and piping sitar music into its aisles.

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“MOST OF THE CROWD IN L.A. is just too much for me to handle,” says Brandee Sabella. “People are posting stuff on social media.” She shakes her head in disgust at how psychedelics are becoming a fashion statement in Los Angeles. “It just . . . defeats the purpose.” The Sabellas have recently returned from Costa Rica, where they participated in an ayahuasca ceremony at Rythmia, a retreat frequented by surﬁng legend Kelly Slater and a handful of Hollywood A-listers who fork over thousands of dollars for an all-inclusive mystical experience. Brandee, in fact, helped found the place back in 2017, after she left a job in marketing to focus more on her true passion, hallucinogens. Although she’s reluctant to discuss it in detail, it seems she and Damien are quietly working on something similar here in California—a project they are not yet ready to reveal. For the time being, however, they aren’t doing a lot of ayahuasca in their home state—at least not at group ceremonies. The whole purpose of psychedelics, they say, is to have an authentic transcendent experience—to allow one’s ego to dissolve and to open one’s mind to the vast and divine. In Hollywood, land of posers, pickup artists, and internet inﬂuencers, that’s not so easy, especially since

all of the above have begun infiltrating the psychedelics scene. As microdosing and other psychedelic pastimes have become more and more trendy, it’s brought out an element whose seriousness and commitment to the true essence of the movement isn’t always terribly obvious. It’s also brought out some well-intentioned himbos. Before he became a guru, Eric Nies was one of the first reality-television stars of the modern era. He was on season 1 of MTV’s The Real World, the 20-year-old male model from New Jersey who shared a Soho loft with Julie, Andre, Norman, Becky, Kevin, and Heather. After his time on the show ended, he spent about five years as fodder for the New York tabloids, but ultimately disappeared from public view. Turns out he spent the next 25 years teaching himself to become a shaman. “If it wasn’t for reality television putting a microscope on my life, I can’t say that I would’ve gone down this path,” Nies, now 50, says on the phone from Peru, where he’s been spending several months leading ayahuasca ceremonies. Then he launches into a series of exegeses—referencing obscure prophecies, ruminating on head-scratching theories of purification, and sharing his hypothesis that mankind is on the brink of extinction and that only psychedelics can save us—that would have even diehards rolling their wildly dilated eyes. “I believe the human race is waking up to the truth,” Nies says. “I believe that, intuitively, the human race is feeling in their body that something is off—that it doesn’t add up and it doesn’t feel right.” At least Nies genuinely seems to believe his own jangly rhetoric. But what beliefs have led right-wing internet billionaire Peter Thiel to invest in Compass Pathways, a publicly traded psychedelic-medicine company, is a little less clear. Except that maybe he’s got a hunch psychedelics could turn out to be the next marijuana. Since recreational cannabis became legal in California in 2016, it’s grown into a multibillion-dollar a year industry. If the California legislature does the same thing with LSD and the other drugs, the windfall could be as big. (“We have a realistic chance of passing it next year,” promises state senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco, who is sponsoring a bill to do just that.) And Thiel isn’t the only corporate raider who senses an opportunity. Along with Compass Pathways, a slew of other companies, like MindMed and Numinus, have been springing up in anticipation of legalization. Some contend that the corporatization of these drugs may be a necessary step—a Trojan horse of sorts—to widespread usage and acceptance. But for purists like Jacques Mabit, it’s a troubling development. Mabit is a French physician and an early pioneer in the psychedelics field who, in 1992, founded the Takiwasi clinic in Peru, where hundreds of former addicts have been treated with ritual fasting, psychotherapy, and hallucinogenic-drug trips. Divorcing psychedelic experiences from the ethos of the indigenous tribes that first discovered them thousands of years ago—in organic compounds found in fungi and other natural elements—and putting them in the hands L A M AG . C O M 83

of businessman will, he believes, unleash all sorts of unforeseen consequences. “These practices are very far from the lifestyle and the social perceptions and needs of politicians and big business,” he notes. “I would say that they’re almost incompatible.”

IT’S NOT AT ALL

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This page, clockwise from top left: Shaman Enrique Marthen Bedron performs a ritual in Catemaco, Mexico; a chiropractic office and vegetarian cafe in Detroit, Michigan; a “meditation pod” at Field Trip in Santa Monica ; from the Instagram account of Eric Nies, once a cast member on The Real World, and now a shaman. Opposite page: Author Heston Blumenthal and artist David McKean’s reimagining of the Mad Hatter’s tea party at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, 2021.

Last year, a former Utah state legislator named Steve Urquhart founded the Divine Assembly. The sacrament of his church are magic mushrooms, which members believe bring them closer to God. Urquhart, a former member of the Mormon Church, was able to use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 to start his church, and it’s a foregone conclusion that similar churches will be established in Southern California in the coming years. And that worries folks like Brian Muraresku, author of The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion With No Name. “The idea of brand-new churches and pop-up shamans creating religion out of thin air is much more concerning to me than the therapeutic application,” he says, pointing out that the prospect of vast swaths of the population feeling spiritually unmoored and turning to psychedelics could easily lead to the creation of cults, something L.A. knows quite a bit about.

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surprising that Los Angeles is ground zero for this latest psychedelics revolution. After all, since the city’s founding, it’s been a hub for kooks, visionaries, dreamers, and dropouts. But as goes L.A., so goes the nation—and this town’s new obsession with perceptionaltering drugs points to a bigger issue not just here but all across America. In short, the United States is in the midst of a spiritual reboot. Just look at the stats: Four in ten millennials no longer identify with any religion, according to the Pew Research Center. And unlike previous generations that left the church only to later return, today’s deserters appear to be abandoning it for good. But while people are leaving organized religion in droves, Americans are still hungry for spiritual nourishment. Almost a third of U.S. adults now say they think of themselves as spiritual but not religious. Astrology and other psychic services are booming, and the pandemic has only accelerated the trend of consumers seeking out mysticism. Psychedelics fit perfectly into this new framework. Johns Hopkins researchers found that 78 percent of psilocybin participants said their session was among the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives. “Our religious and spiritual institutions have become hollowed-out shells. They’re bereft, in a way, and a lot of people want something more than that—an affirmation to their intuition that there’s something beyond ordinary day-to-day life,” says McKenna. “There’s a disillusionment, and people are looking beyond religion because it’s not giving them what they need. I’ve organized and been on many ayahuasca retreats. These are not thrill-seekers who are out for kicks. These are people who have some specific problem that they want to address. In a wider sense, they’re looking for meaning and not finding it in our culture. So they look for it in other cultures.”

then people turning away from organized religion may actually be a return to something foundational. Maybe it really is another renaissance—the rebirth of a mystical tradition that built the world as we know it.”

BACK AT THE Point

But there’s a rich irony here: the same religions that people are today abandoning were themselves, Muraresku believes, built on the foundation of psychedelic mysticism. In his book, he advances a renegade academic theory that claims the original sacraments of Western civilization, born in ancient Greece, were spiked with primitive, mind-altering drugs. Annual pilgrimages were made to an ancient city called Eleusia to participate in secret ceremonies where adherents consumed a potion, kykeon, that contained ergot, the same fungus that Albert Hofmann used to synthesize LSD. Similar rituals and sacraments were then adopted by the earliest Christians sects, which suggests that Christianity itself was potentially founded on a psychedelic sacrament.

Dume compound, I’m pressing Damien and Brandee about their plans, but their reticence to talk about them—and the imposing glare of one their German shepherds—tells me I’m treading on delicate territory. The couple are clearly eager to share their knowledge and spread the word about the healing power of psychedelics. After all, they’re the ones who helped guide former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson on his inward journey. (Damien consulted with Tyson during his training leading up to his recent ﬁght against Roy Jones Jr., while Brandee is now working with the boxer on a TV project that centers on ayahuasca). In the end, all they’ll say is that they’re working on the creation of their very own ayahuasca church here in the United States. Plans are still in the nascent phase, and the location is still up in the air, but they’re conﬁdent it’ll be up and running sometime in the next couple of years. Then they quickly change the subject. “Everything in nature is synchronized so it sounds like all this magical stuff, but, really, magic is always happening,” Brandee offers, her kaleidoscope eyes opening wide. “We are miracles when you really think

The same religions that people are abandoning were themselves built on the foundation of psychedelic mysticism. “There‘s the rub,” says Muraresku, chuckling at the absurdity of it all. “Maybe we’re just coming back to our roots. The war on drugs made all of this problematic. But if the psychedelics hypothesis continues to get tested and if it turns out that these drugs are implicated in the rise of Western civilization—perhaps even Christianity—

about it. Like what is happening in our body to really be alive—it’s miraculous. And the more you are in alignment with your soul, the more things start to be become synchronized.” I can almost see cellophane ﬂowers of yellow and green towering over her head. L A M AG . C O M 85

An Affair to Dismember Lisa DePaulo spent two decades hot on the trail of Robert Durst, the eccentric, cross-dressing real-estate heir accused of murdering three people, including his wife. His last victim, his lifelong friend Susan Berman, was shot dead inside her Benedict Canyon home. The journalist’s obsessive quest ended this summer óåðä äáî ðáïðåéëêõ åê ðäá ðîåÝè ðäÝð ğ êÝèèõ brought the wily millionaire to justice ¶¶¶ I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y R O B E R T C A R T E R

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COURTROOM: AL SEIB-POOL/GETTY IMAGES; FLYER, BERMAN AND DURST: COURTESY HBO; MORRIS BLACK: GALVESTON COUNTY COURT

For the

husband (though he wasn’t as creepy back then) was never charged with anything. The case went cold for nearly 20 years, until 2000, when a young state trooper in Westchester County, New York, Joe Becerra, dusted off the file and got the case reopened. This spooked the hell out of Bob. That’s when he flew to L.A. and killed Susan—his best friend!—at her Benedict Canyon home because he thought she might talk. Then he fled to Galveston, Texas, where he rented a $300 a month flophouse apartment, dressed as a woman, and pretended to be mute. Are you following? The real-estate heir was transformed into a mute named Dorothy Ciner (the name of someone he went to high school with in tony Scarsdale, New York) hiding in Texas so that the Westchester County district attorney couldn’t find him. But his neighbor, a drifter named Morris Black, got wise to Bob—and ended up shot and dismembered. I got involved in this crazy chronicle in January 2001, when my editors at New York last few years, I couldn’t write about the case I covered relentcalled to ask if I could get on the next flight to lessly for two decades because, in the midst of covering it, I L.A. because Berman, who had also written for became a witness, and the last thing lawyers want is for a the magazine, was found with a bullet in the witness in a homicide trial to talk to the press, let alone be back of her head. Researching the resulting the press. It was torture for me to stop writing about Robert story, “Who Killed the Gangster’s Daughter?” Durst. But now here we are. And there he is: on September 17, got me hooked. Later that year, when Morris 2021, after a trial delayed more than a year after it started washed up in pieces in Galveston Bay, I headed because of COVID-19, a Los Angeles jury found Durst, 78, to Texas to chase the story for Talk magazine. guilty of first-degree murder in the killing, 20 years ago, of So when the jury’s guilty verdict was read in September his best friend, Susan Berman. at the courthouse in Inglewood, there were three people I What took so long? How did this serial killer worth $100 couldn’t wait to talk to. The first was Kathie Durst’s brother, million, give or take what he’d shelled out to defense attorneys Jim McCormack. Jim and I had gotten tight over the years all these years—his share of a vast real estate fortune inherited I’d covered the story. It seemed like everyone involved in from a family to whom he longer speaks—skate for so many the decades-long Bob Durst melodrama—friends of Susan’s, years? It’s a long story. friends of Kathie’s, reporters, even judges—were like family. Durst’s saga began in 1982 when his pretty wife, Kathie (But not like the Durst family—no one had committed suicide McCormack Durst, who was about to graduate from medical by jumping off a roof in Scarsdale, as some say Bob’s mother school, went missing in New had. Nor was anyone killing York. All signs suggested that family pets, as Bob allegedly Bobby had a hand in her dishad, knocking off several Everyone involved in the appearance, but Berman, dogs all named Igor; in mona wildly provocative writer itored jailhouse phone condrawn-out Durst saga came and mob daughter, may well versations, he would often to seem like family. have helped him cover it up. talk about “Igoring” people.) She and Bob had first met As we waited for the verdict, I said that if the jury came as students at UCLA and I said that if the jury came back without a guilty verdict, soon became good friends, back without a guilty verdict, to the point that Berman I would—to borrow one of I would—to borrow one of provided an alibi for him in Susan’s great lines—get in my Susan Berman’s great 1982 after Kathie Durst disbathtub with my hairdryer. appeared. Impersonating Over the years, Jim and lines—get in my bathtub Kathie, Berman called the I came to love each other. I with my hair dryer. dean of her medical school to loved him even when he fell say she was sick and couldn’t into his anti-Biden schtick, attend classes. (And, you and eventually he learned not know, no med student calls the dean when they’re sick—but to bring it up. But Kathie? We could talk endlessly about her. that was classic Susan: she always went to the top.) Jim was relentless in seeking justice for his baby sister, who But thanks to a combination of incompetence by investigahad been emotionally and physically abused by Bob before her tors and the intimidation of his money, Kathie Durst’s creepy disappearance. If anything ever happened to me, I would hope

PLAYING DEFENSE Clockwise from left: Durst’s defense attorney, DeGuerin, questions his client on the stand during his trial in Inglewood in May 2021. Durst pled not guilty to the murder of his friend Susan Berman; a ﬂyer posted after the disappearance of Durst’s wife Kathie McCormack Durst in 1982; Durst shot and dismembered drifter Morris Black in 2020 but was aquitted; best friends Berman and Durst, whom she called “Bobby, Bobby, wonderful Bobby.”

to have a big brother like Jim. Though he will never move on from Kathie’s death, I hope the verdict has brought him a little peace. When I reached Jim after the verdict was announced, he said, “I’m ecstatic! It’s been a long, long journey.” He added, “You know what I want from Bob? To answer my late mother’s question, ‘What did you do with her?’ ” Jim knew that a guilty verdict in the Susan Berman case would essentially mean a guilty verdict for Kathie’s death, thanks to the deft skills of L.A. County prosecutor John Lewin, who managed to deliver on his promise in opening arguments that the cases were interrelated. Like this exchange with Bob: “But if you had killed Kathie, would you tell us?” “No.” “If you had killed Susan, would you tell us?” “No.” The second person I wanted to talk to was Stephen M. Silverman, a close friend of Susan’s. I met him doing my first piece for New York after Susan was found dead. Stephen, who also testified in the case, left me with an indelible image of Susan, who was his next-door neighbor back when they both lived on Beekman Place in Manhattan. Susan’s apartment had only a shower. “Susan would put on this Madame Butterfly Cio-Cio-San bathrobe,” Stephen once told me, “and walk out on the sidewalk, come into my apartment, and go right into my bathtub. I could be screwing my brains out, and Susan would just barge in.” He loved her so. On the stand, he talked about her personality. Loyal? Check. Manipulative? Check. High maintenance? “A perfect 100.” “It’s a tremendous relief,” Stephen told me when the verdict came in. “We won’t have to keep looking over our shoulder to see if Bob is coming.”

The third person was Susan Criss, the judge in Galveston who presided over the trial where Bob, after admitting to killing his neighbor Morris Black (in self-defense, he said) and then chopping up his body and dumping the trash bags in the bay (also in self-defense), was acquitted. Acquitted! He admitted he chopped someone up and got acquitted! Criss has gotten a bad rap. She was a ﬁne jurist. The problem in Galveston wasn’t the judge—the prosecutor was, shall we say, no John Lewin. And the jury seemed nuttier than a fruitcake. Also, Bob’s famed defense attorney, Dick DeGuerin, was at the top of his game—more aggressive and energetic than he now seems. But what happened in Galveston ended up helping convict Bob in his recent trial. There were lawyers who thought that allowing the Morris Black stuff into the Inglewood proceedings was a gift to the defense—after all, Bob had been acquitted of killing Black. But Lewin knew better; it proved that Bob knew how to dismember someone—which became the theory after Kathie’s disappearance way back in 1982. He also got Bob to admit, over and over and over, that he had lied to the jury in Galveston. If he would lie to that jury, he would lie to you, was the message. L A M AG . C O M 89

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MURDER, SHE WROTE Clockwise from left: DePaulo offered pre-trial evidence in 2018. Her taped interviews with two of Berman’s friends helped convict Durst of Berman’s murder; an image of Berman in the courtroom; L.A. County prosecuter John Lewin in 2020; DePaulo on CNN after The Jinx was released in 2015.

was executor of Susan’s estate. One of Susan’s instructions was to deliver to Bob one of Davie Berman’s most treasured artifacts. Davie was Susan’s father and Bugsy Siegel’s partner in Vegas, known as Davie the Jew, who took over when Siegel was assassinated. Susan worshipped her father—she carried his mug shot in her wallet. It pained Julie to have to give Davie’s Star of David to Bobby Durst, the man who ended up killing her. “Why are you here early?” I asked Julie. “Age. You?” “Cancer.” We knew we shouldn’t talk about the case but, really, there wasn’t much left to talk about; we’d already talked about it for years. And now, here we were, ﬁnally, at the trial for Susan’s murder. Testifying in the courtroom, even without a jury, was weird. Bob was seated less than 20 feet from me. I wanted to jump out of the witness chair and beg him, “Bob, please. Just tell us what you did with Kathie’s remains.” I always felt that if Bob had an ounce of decency, he would give that information to her family. But Bob had no incentive to tell. As he said to Lewin after he was arrested in New Orleans, “What’s in it for me?” Bob did incredibly stupid things over the years, and many of them had to do with being cheap. Back in Galveston, one of the trash bags with Morris’s limbs that ﬂoated up in the

TOP: YOUTUBE.COM; BOTTOM: CNN

As for DeGuerin, he was always a gentleman and a pro when I had to call him for comments. Even when I had to call him about the Cadaver Note, a story I first broke in New York magazine. The Cadaver Note would become one of the great moments in the case’s history—a real “Bobism,” as Lewin would say. It was scribbled in green ink (Bob loved green ink) and addressed to the “Beverley [sic] Hills” police. Inside the envelope was a single word, “CADAVER,” and Susan’s address. For decades, Bob denied writing the Cadaver Note and told the producers of The Jinx, the blockbuster HBO documentary series that made him a household name and led directly to his arrest, that whoever wrote the note was Susan’s killer. The producers then showed him a note he’d sent to Berman the year before, misspelling Beverly in exactly the same way. Still, Bob said it wasn’t him. So it came as a bit of a surprise when Bob’s lawyers stipulated, at the start of the L.A. trial, that he was the author of the note. In his testimony, Bob explained that he knew no one would believe that he stumbled upon Susan’s dead body but wasn’t her murderer, so he sent the note to the police so her body wouldn’t rot. Bob was always a nice guy like that. So what did Susan Criss think after Bob was finally found guilty? “I was telling myself, ‘Stop crying,’ ” Criss told me. “But those tears were over two decades coming.” Sometime in 2016, Lewin called me and asked me to identify some off-the-record sources in my New York and Talk stories. He knew damned well I wasn’t going to give up my sources—people who told me how Susan told them she knew Bobby killed Kathie. But Lewin was nothing if not persistent. So I told him this: I would reach out to those people and ask if they would want to go on the record now. I felt they should have that choice. (A lot of them felt differently about Bob after he admitted he’d chopped up Morris.) The first source I called, Nick Chavin, said yes without hesitation. In fact, Nick, who considered both Bob and Susan his best friends, ended up being the prosecution’s star witness, testifying that Bob told him one night after dinner that he had to kill Susan because it was “her or me.” (Bob would always choose “me.”) Another source I simply couldn’t find; none of the numbers or emails I had for this person worked anymore. “You mean Bede Roberts?” asked Lewin. “I can’t answer that,” I replied. “Well, if it is Bede, she’s dead.” That was news to me. My taped transcripts made clear that Bede very much wanted to talk on the record but was terrified of Bob. But she obviously no longer had anything to fear. With assurances from one of Bede’s friends (“It’s what she’d want”), I forked over my tapes of our conversations, as well as my conversations with Chavin, to Lewin. Which is how I ended up as a witness. I flew to L.A. to deliver my testimony a few years prior to the start of the trial because I was on a special list of witnesses who might not be alive when it finally started. (At the time, I was ill with cancer; other witnesses got summoned due to advancing age.) I remember how thrilled I was when I checked into the hotel the L.A. DA’s office put us up in and spotted Julie Smith in the coffee shop. We both screamed at the same time. Julie, a mystery writer who lives in New Orleans, was one of Susan’s best friends; in fact, she

ROBYN BECK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Astute Sopranos watchers know that the Pine Barrens are where bodies get dumped. The ground is sand, so even in winter, it’s easy to bury a body if you are so inclined. On cross-examination, Lewin asked Bob why he made those collect calls from Ship Bottom. “Let Seymour pay,” he replied, referring to his father, the head of the family empire. Why should Bob pay? Even in the ’70s, when Kathie’s brother Jim met his baby sister’s millionaire boyfriend for the first time at a bar on the Upper West Side, Jim paid. “I paid for the first round, then the second round,” he told me. When Bobby and Kathie got married, there were only two guests—her working-class mother and Bob’s billionaire father. Her mother picked up the tab. Susan was another person who always picked up the tab. She had inherited some mob money after Davie the Jew died during surgery at 54 when Susie was 12. She never recovered from losing her father—who commissioned an enormous oil painting of her that hung in the lobby of the Flamingo Hotel, who hired Liberace to sing at her 12th birthday party, and into whose casket Susan tried to throw herself when he died. Susan’s mother, Gladys, a tap dancer, died the following year, by suicide, in a mental hospital. At his trial, Bob testified about watching his mother jump off the rooftop of their Scarsdale home when he was a little boy. Whether he actually witnessed her death is debatable; he lied about so much. But having mothers who both took their lives was one of the reasons that he and Susan bonded. Bob’s lawyers emphatically did not want him to testify— no defense attorney wants an admitted-murderer client on the stand. But Bob wanted to, and Bob was paying. (Besides, it had worked in Galveston.) His behavior in the courtroom certainly was memorable: he constantly muttered to himself while scribbling notes on a legal pad and spun in his wheelchair to stare at people in the gallery. During his testimony, Bob told so many lies that, at one point, Lewin told bay included a receipt for eyeglasses that Bob had ordered the judge, out of the jury’s earshot, that he had never seen the week before. Bob wasn’t going to let a couple of hundred someone commit perjury so many times. The judge, Mark dollars go to waste, so he showed up at the eye doctor’s office Windham, agreed—also out of earshot of the jury—that to retrieve his new frames, and the Galveston police were Durst’s testimony was simwaiting for him with handply “not credible.” cuffs. Then he got out on bail When I testified, I thought (because no one in Galveston Morris’s head was never Judge Windham was remarkknew who Bobby Durst was) able. He was steady and wise. and went on the lam for 45 found. But Bob brought When I left the stand, I said days. He finally got caught a bloody comforter to a dry to him, “Good luck with this at a Wegmans in Bethlehem, cleaner, who said there shitshow,” and he laughed. Pennsylvania, where he One of the biggest whopshoplifted a chicken sandwas this big round pink stain pers was Bob’s explanation wich, even though he had a that was hard to get out. of why he was in Los Angeles trunk full of cash in his car. on December 23, 2000. For Why should he have to pay? Classic Bob. Why throw out decades, he swore he was Morris’s head was never a good comforter? never in Los Angeles around found. But Bob, then a fugithe time that Susan was killed. tive escaping to New Orleans, Then, shortly before trial, his brought a bloody comforter lawyers stipulated that he had, in fact, been in L.A. He testified to a dry cleaner there. The dry cleaner said there was this big that he entered her home with a spare key and “did a double round pink stain that was hard to get out. Classic Bob. Why take. I saw Susan lying on the floor. I shouted, ‘Susan!’ a couple throw out a good comforter? of times. Then I quickly ran to the bedroom where she was. But my favorite cheap Bobism came when, a couple of Her eyes were closed.” Under cross-examination by Lewin, the days after Kathie disappeared, he made collect calls from (CONTINUED ON PAGE 115) Ship Bottom, New Jersey. Which was near the Pine Barrens. L A M AG . C O M 91

Wednesda FOR ONE NIGHT A WEEK IN THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY, TEENAGERS RULED THE ROAD P H OTO S BY R I C K M CC L O S K E Y T E X T BY C H R I S N I C H O L S

Lig

Night

ghts

93 L A M AG . C O M

From

the end of World War II until police put a stop to it in 1980, generations of Valley teenagers enjoyed the ritual of cruising through Van Nuys every Wednesday night. “I spent one summer there shooting about 4,000 pictures,” says Rick McCloskey, whose book Van Nuys Blvd 1972 captures the scene. “I talked to everybody. I cruised in their cars with them and they’d tell me their names and I’d remember for a while, but by the time I was home developing pictures it was lost.” The whole era would have faded away if McCloskey hadn’t rolled up in his Camaro and captured the everyday dramas playing out across six lanes. Kids wandering amidst the bikers and the barmaids circling from burger joint to burger joint ﬂirting and ﬁghting and having the time of their lives zooming through the darkness in those last moments before adulthood. 1

94 L A M AG . C O M

1 ) F I R E S T O N E FA M I LY Street rodders who were down on their luck often brought sports cars or performance parts to the boulevard, hoping to trade their treasures for some quick cash. Young parents with a brood in tow were a common sight. “Suddenly, you’ve got a baby,” McCloskey says, “and everything has changed.” 2) SMOKIN ’ HOT The parking lot at Hughes Market became a hub for bikers, who were generally a little older than the rest of the crowd. One of the biker chicks hanging out there is seen rewinding an eight-track tape that had been played a few too many times. 3) HOSTESS WITH THE MOSTESS The late-night doughnut clerk at June Ellen’s served a customer who had a bit more ﬂair. “She was all dressed up because she was getting off work as a hostess at Corky’s,” McCloskey remembers. “She looks like she pulled up in a Peugeot, but she was driving a Chevy.” 4) S I D E H U S T L E Every hot rodder inspired by George Barris or Von Dutch wanted to pinstripe and customize his ride. Some found work painting signs for speed shops and auto-related businesses in the Valley. The funds helped subsidize their car habit.

L A M AG . C O M 95

1) A GOOD YEAR “It just looks like he’s racing,” McCloskey says of this Corvette poised to take off. The street was so congested on cruise night that there wasn’t enough pavement to hit 30 mph. Speed demons would meet up and make plans to street race on wide, quiet roads in more rural parts of the Valley. 2) HAMBURGER HELPER Indie hamburger joints were abundant before fastfood chains became more common. We might be lucky this one didn’t survive. “Steak Burger was a real sweatshop operation—a sleazy little greaseball shop,” says McCloskey. “The burgers were cheap, and potato salad was ten cents.”

3) THE PICKUP Gas was still cheap the year before the OPEC oil embargo put a damper on car culture, but splitting gas eight ways was even cheaper. It was a good way for high school kids to stretch a dollar. Riding in the back of a pickup wouldn’t be outlawed for another couple of decades.

L A M AG . C O M 97

1) HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW A few women tinkered with cars, but there were plenty of girlfriends who were left alone in vehicles while their boyfriends talked shop. “This was a hot-rod girl named Alicia,” McCloskey says. “She recently passed away. Friends told me she had posted this picture as her Facebook cover.”

3) THE LAST PICTURE SHOW The Godfather was one of the last ﬁlms to play at the Capri Theatre before it was demolished and replaced by a parking lot. “There was a Fox Theater a couple of blocks away,” McCloskey says. “But the Capri was kind of the small-town theater. The Fox was higher- dollar and part of a chain.”

2) BIRDS These blocks on Van Nuys Boulevard are still known as Auto Row, but the dealerships are a lot larger—and swankier. These feisty characters were glad to pose. “This is one of my favorite pictures out of the whole series,” McCloskey says. “Two guys looking so cool. They loved the attention.”

L A M AG . C O M 9 9

Vistas del Puerto Long Beach c *V\Y[LZ` VM *SPɈVYK )LLYZ /V\ZPUN 7OV[V I` 1PT :PTTVUZ 7OV[VNYHWO`

10 0 L A M AG . C O M

SUPPORTING HOUSING AND RESIDENTS AT RISK -69 469, ;/(5 @,(9: ,5;,9790:, *644<50;@ 7(9;5,9: /(: >692,+ *36:,3@ >0;/ 3 ( »: (--69+()3, /6<:05. 796=0+,9: ;6 ;9(5:-694 ;/, 30=,: 6- (5.,3,56: (5+ 6<9 *644<50;0,: -69 :6 4(5@ 7,673, >/6 (9, :;9<..305. ;6 4(2, ,5+: 4,,; ;/,:, 69.(50A(;065: :,9=, (: 30-,305,: *9,(;05. (--69+()3, (5+ :<7769;0=, /64,: ;/(; 796=0+, *90;0*(3 :;()030;@ -69 -(4030,: ;6.,;/,9 >,»=, ),,5 /(9+ (; >692 ;6 :,*<9, -<5+05. (5+ :/(7, 7630*0,: ;/(; 04796=, 5,0./)69/66+: )<; ;/,9,»: :;033 4<*/ ;6 ), +65, ;6 /,37 (33 ;/(; 5,,+ ( :(-, (5+ (--69+()3, 73(*, ;6 *(33 /64,

ven before the fallout from the pandemic, tens of thousands of Angelenos were a paycheck away from losing their homes and joining the 66,000-plus men, women and children who experience homelessness in L.A. on a daily basis. The onset of Covid-19 brought additional challenges, especially for communities of color. As the economy began shedding jobs, residents became unable to pay rent, and new health protocols created added expenses. Our housing partners were increasingly concerned about their ability to meet those needs, as well as how they and their residents would be impacted in the long term.

developing several permanent supportive housing projects at risk of delay – housing that provides residents with services such as mental health care,” said Cristian Ahumada, executive director, *SPќVYK )LLYZ /V\ZPUN HU ,(97: NYHU[LL ¸>L»YL UV^ PUZWPYLK [V KV L]LU TVYL [V IYPUN YHJPHS equity, economic growth and healthy housing to our tenants and the surrounding community.” /\UKYLKZ VM [OV\ZHUKZ VM KVSSHYZ OH]L ILLU WYV]PKLK [V HќVYKHISL OV\ZPUN WHY[ULYZ HJYVZZ Los Angeles through EARPS – all to help residents and preserve the critical housing supply. Fortunately, our program partners were able to survive the initial shock of the pandemic. (Z [OL YLJV]LY` JVU[PU\LZ ^L»YL Z[PSS WYV\KS` ^VYRPUN ^P[O [OLT [V ZVS]L LTLYNPUN PZZ\LZ HUK I\PSK Z[YVUNLY HUK TVYL YLZPSPLU[ M\[\YLZ >P[O H ZOVY[MHSS VM ULHYS` HќVYKHISL YLU[HS OVTLZ PU 3VZ (UNLSLZ *V\U[` P[»Z JYP[PJHS [OH[ [OLZL JVTT\UP[` VYNHUPaH[PVUZ LUK\YL HUK OH]L even greater capacity to create homes and serve families. Thanks to Wells Fargo and all of our partners for their unwavering support from the beginning and their continuing commitment to create a more equitable Los Angeles for all. :\WWVY[ ,U[LYWYPZL»Z ^VYR PU 3VZ (UNLSLZ +VUH[L H[ EnterpriseCommunity.org/GiveLA.

With the swift help of generous supporters like Wells Fargo, we mobilized resources to launch the Emergency Action for Resident and Partner Stability (EARPS) program. ;OL LќVY[ WYV]PKLK YLU[ YLSPLM WYV[LJ[P]L equipment and other essentials so residents could remain safely and healthy in their homes. Enterprise also began working with partners on long-term concerns such as emergency preparedness, operations and fundraising – all to help these pivotal organizations sustain themselves into the future so they can continue being of service to our community. We intentionally targeted this support to address the needs of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC), the communities most impacted by the health and economic fallout from Covid-19. “Support from Enterprise during the pandemic helped increase our capacity amid the challenges. We were able to continue

Photo courtesy of Enterprise Community Partners

L A M AG . C O M 10 1

THE HOT LIST L.A. MAGAZINE

Cheese board at Agnes Restaurant & Cheesery PAGE 105

OUR MONTHLY LIST OF L.A.’S MOST ESSENTIAL RESTAURANTS E D I T E D

H A I L E Y

E B E R

WEST Birdie G’s SANTA MONICA » American $$

James Beard Award–nominated chef Jeremy Fox gets personal with a sunny spot dedicated to comfort food and named after his young daughter. The high-low menu is full of playful riffs on comfort food, from a decadent stufffed latke called the Goldbar to a matzo ball soup with carrot miso to a next-level relish tray. Don’t miss the jiggly Rose Petal pie for dessert. 2421 Michigan Ave., 310-310-3616, or birdiegsla.com. Full bar.

Broad Street Oyster Co. MALIBU » Seafood $$

If ever there was a car picnic scene, it’s at this open-air spot overlooking Malibu Lagoon State Beach (and across from a SoulCycle, if we’re being honest). You can grab a great lobster roll (topped with uni or caviar if you’re feeling extra fancy), towers of raw seafood, great clam chowder, and a burger sprinkled with shio kombu (dried kelp) that shouldn’t be overlooked. 23359 Paciﬁc Coast Hwy., 424-644-0131, or broadstreetoyster.com. Beer and wine.

Cassia SANTA MONICA » Southeast Asian $$$

Bryant Ng mines his Chinese Singaporean heritage, honors wife Kim’s Vietnamese background, and works in the wood-grilling technique he honed at Mozza at this grand Southeast Asian brasserie. Hunker down at a table on the patio—or treat yourself to some great takeout—to devour turmeric-marinated ocean trout or chickpea curry with scallion clay-oven bread. Wherever and however you enjoy Ng’s cooking, you won’t be disappointed. 1314 7th St., 310-393-6699, or cassiala.com. Full bar.

Colapasta

Crudo e Nudo

T H E B R E A K D OW N W EST

EAST

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

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

T H E VALLEY DOWN TOWN DOWNTOWN Includes Arts District, Bunker Hill, Chinatown, Historic Core, Little Tokyo, South Park

Includes Agoura Hills, Burbank, Calabasas, Encino, North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Toluca Lake, Van Nuys

CEN TRAL CENTRAL

SOUT H

Includes Beverly Grove, East Hollywood, Fairfax District, Hancock Park, Hollywood, Koreatown, West Hollywood

Includes Bell, Compton, Gardena, Hermosa Beach, Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Torrance, Watts

Denotes restaurants with 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.

SANTA MONICA » Italian $

It’s equally pleasant to grab and go or eat at this quiet, affordable spot that features fresh pastas topped with farmers’ market fare. The colorful, poppy-seed-sprinkled beet ravioli is delicate and delicious, while the gramigna with pesto and ricotta is hearty and satisfying. 1241 5th St., 310-310-8336, or colapasta.com. Beer and wine. 102 L A M AG . C O M

2021

SANTA MONICA » Seafood $$

Brian Bornemann, the 31-year-old former executive chef at Michael’s Santa Monica, has gone his own way. He and his girlfriend, Leena Culhane, have launched a sustainable neighborhood joint that’s by turns a coffee shop, a seafood market, and a casual restaurant where you can nibble impeccably prepared crudo, tuna tartare toasts, and vegan Caesar salads on the patio while sipping a thoughtfully selected natural wine. Though the project began as a pandemic pop-up, it’s now an exciting brick-and-mortar spot from one of the city’s most promising young toques. 2724 Main St., crudoenudo.com, or @crudo_e_ nudo. Beer and wine.

Dear John’s CULVER CITY » Steak House $$$

There’s still good times and great food to be had at this former Sinatra hang stylishly revamped by Josiah Citrin and Hans Röckenwagner. Steak-house classics— crab Louie, oysters Rockefeller, thick prime steaks— pay homage to the lounge’s Rat Pack past and can be enjoyed on a sunny new patio or to go. 11208 Culver Blvd., 310-881-9288, or dearjohnsbar.com. Full bar.

Felix VENICE » Italian $$$

At Evan Funke’s clubby, ﬂoral-patterned trattoria, the rigorous dedication to tradition makes for superb focaccia and pastas. The rigatoni cacio e pepe—tubes of pasta adorned only with Pecorino Romano cheese and black pepper—nods to Roman shepherds who used the spice to keep warm, while the rigatoni all’Amatriciana with cured pork cheek sings brilliantly alongside Italian country wines. 1023 Abbot Kinney Blvd., 424-387-8622, or felixla.com. Full bar.

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

SAWTELLE » Cal-Asian $$$

Jon Yao is now serving his acclaimed Taiwanese tasting menu outdoors. Dishes like 3 Cup Abalone and Dungeness crab soup are just as revelatory alfresco. At $118 for more than a dozen courses, Yao’s prix ﬁxe menu is one of the best deals in town. 11925 Santa Monica Blvd., 424-535-3041, or katorestaurant.com.

CO U RTE SY AG N E S

NOV

Mírame BEVERLY HILLS » Mexican $$$

Joshua Gil is cooking exciting, contemporary Mexican fare with market-driven ingredients and serving them on a stunning patio. Dishes are imaginative but not overly contrived—salmon-skin chicharrón with fermented garlic aioli; a divine slow-cooked Heritage Farms pork shoulder served with a black-lime gastrique, celtuce, and hearty, richly ﬂavorful frijoles charros cooked with a pig’s head. The latter is available as part of Mírame’s to-go family meal, which includes house-made tortillas; a memorable riff on Caesar salad with pork chicharrón, roasted vegetables and goat cheese; chocolate ﬂan; and an adorable little bottle of margaritas. At just $105 for two people, it’s an amazingly affordable way to sample Gil’s cooking. 419 N. Canon Dr. , 310-230-5035, mirame.la, or @mirame.la. Full bar.

Ospi VENICE » Italian $$$

Jackson Kalb’s sprawling new Italian joint brings bustle and outdoor tables to a corner on an otherwise quiet stretch. Pastas, including a spicy rigatoni alla vodka and raschiatelli with a pork rib ragù, are sublime, and most travel remarkably well if you’re looking to takeout, which is the only option for lunch. Roman-style pizzas boast a uniquely crispy, crackerthin crust; to get the full crunch, have a slice as you drive your takeout home. 2025 Paciﬁc Ave., 424-4435007, ospivenice.com, or @ospiveni. Full bar.

Pasjoli SANTA MONICA » French $$$$

Dave Beran’s à la carte spot bucks the trends and eschews bistro clichés in favor of old-fashioned thrills— an elaborate pressed duck prepared just as Escoffier would have and served with potatoes au gratin dauphinois—and modern French fare. The showy duck must be reserved in advance as only a limited number of birds are available each night. But there are plenty of other exciting dishes on the menu, such as the chicken liver in brioche and a complex lobster, mussel, and clam bisque with shaved fennel and tarragon. 2732 Main St., 424-330-0020, or pasjoli.com. Full bar.

Sant’olina BEVERLY HILLS » Mediterranean $$S

The buzzy h.wood Group has taken over the rooftop at the Beverly Hilton Hotel to launch this breezy pop-up that’s likely to become a permanent ﬁxture. Tables with views are topped with blue-and-white linens, and the menu is full of crowd-pleasing dishes: babka french toast for brunch, harissa-cured salmon, a lamb burger for dinner, or various Middle Eastern dips for any time of day. The culinary team includes h.wood’s Michael Teich and David Johns, along with Burt Bakman of the beloved barbecue joint Slab. 9876 Wilshire Blvd., 310285-1260, santolinabh.com, or@santolinabh. Full bar.

DOWNTOWN Angry Egret Dinette CHINATOWN » Sandwiches $$

Wes Avila has left Guerrilla Tacos and is focusing on torta-esque sandwiches at this heartfelt new venture. Standouts include the Whittier Blvd: beef belly braised in star anise-laced lard for eight hours, then stuffed in a roll with horseradish cream, avocado, queso fresco, serrano chile, and red pepper escabeche. It’s hearty and decadent—especially if you opt to add a duck egg, which you should— but also wonderfully nuanced. There’s ample outdoor seating, but sandwiches with fried ingredients, like a veggie number, with squash blossom tempura, miraculously manage to remain crispy and travel well. 970 N. Broadway, Ste. 114, 213-278-0987, aedinette.com, or @angryegretdinette.

Badmaash HISTORIC CORE » Indian $$

This Indian gastropub concept comes from the father-and-sons team of Pawan, Nakul, and Arjun Mahendro, who are all well versed in the culinary techniques of East and West. The menu features

contemporary mash-ups, like a version of poutine smothered in chicken tikka, tandoori chicken wings, and a spicy lamb burger. If tradition’s your thing, you’ll be comforted by spice-stewed chickpeas, potato and pea samosas, and what they call Good Ol’ Saag Paneer. Wash it all down with carefully curated, reasonably priced natural wines. 108 W. 2nd St., 213-221-7466, badmaashla.com, or @badmaashla. Beer and wine to go. Also at 418 N. Fairfax Ave., 213-281-5185, Fairfax District.

NATALE E T H A I

C U I S I N E

Cha Cha Chá ARTS DISTRICT » Mexican $$ The huge, lively, plant-ﬁlled rooftop and some mezcal would be enough for a good night out at this Mexico City import, but chef Alejandro Guzmán, an alum of Le Comptoir, has packed his menu with quiet thrills. Carnitas get taken up a level by an orange reduction that comes at the end of the long cooking process. Beets make a surprise appearance in a shrimp ceviche. For dessert, the carrot ﬂan is a small revelation, a suprising, exciting riff on a carrot cake. 812 E. 3rd St., 213-548-8487, or chachacha.la. Full bar.

Gamboge LINCOLN HEIGHTS

» Cambodian $

The Cambodian sandwiches known as numpang, which are somewhat similar to Vietnamese banh mi, are the speciality at this charming new deli. Crusty bolillo bread is a vessel for proteins like lemongrassmarinated pork shoulder or grilled trumpet mushrooms, along with condiments like Maggi mayo, chili jam, and carrot-and-papaya slaw. The menu is full of delights beyond sandwiches, including rice bowls; a great shredded chicken salad with cabbage, peanuts, and a citrus-and-ﬁsh-sauce dressing; and a memorable braised-sardines-and-tomato dish. Order food to go, or enjoy it on the sunny, succulent-dotted back patio. 1822 N. Broadway, 323-576-2073, gambogela.com, or @gambogela. Beer and wine.

“The Best of Culver City” 9 Years in a Row - Culver City News

“Readers Choice Award”

“Best of The West Side”

- LA Times

- The Argonaut

Venice: 10101 Venice Blvd. | (310) 202-7003 Full Bar | Sushi Bar Beverly Hills: 998 S. Robertson Blvd. | (310) 855-9380 Full Bar | Valet Parking

Dine In | Delivery | Take Out | Order Online

nataleethai.com

Girl & the Goat ARTS DISTRICT » Eclectic $$$

At long last, Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard has brought her hit Chicago restaurant to a light, airy space and pretty patio in downtown L.A. with seating for 200. The lengthy menu is full of international intrigue and the unexpected ﬂavor combinations Izard is known for. Roasted beets mingle with blackberries and a yuzukosho vinaigrette. A salmon poke features chili crunch, avocado, and strawberry. Goat makes an appearance in both a liver mousse starter and a hearty curry main. 555-3 Mateo St., 213-799-4628, girlandthegoat.com, or @ girlandthegoatla. Full bar.

H A L L O F FA M E 1 9 9 6 - 2 0 2 1

Pearl River Deli CHINATOWN » Chinese $

Chef Johnny Lee has gained a reputation as a poultry wizard, and his succulent Hainan chicken is a highly sought-after dish. Sadly, he’s serving it only as an occasional weekend special at his tiny Far East Plaza takeout spot. But don’t despair: the ever-changing menu is full of winners, from a pork chop sandwich on a pineapple bun to a beefy, memorable rendition of mapo tofu. Keep an eye on Instagram for information about Friday dinners and other specials. 727 N. Broadway, Ste. 130, 626-688-9507, pearlriverdeli.com, or @prd_la.

HISTORIC CORE

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ANDREW I. CASTER, MD

Redbird » New American $$$$

Neal Fraser has deﬁned his own kind of L.A. elegance over the 20 years he’s been cooking in his native city. Setting up shop in the deconsecrated St. Vibiana Cathedral offered an opportunity to add theatrics to a space that’s contemporary and classically plush and now boasts three distinct outdoor dining areas. A delicate curried carrot broth and beluga lentils transform slices of smoked tofu from wholesome to haute, while lamb belly spins on a spit in the former rectory. 114 E. 2nd St., 213-788-1191, or redbird.la. Full bar.

Sonoratown FASHION DISTRICT » Mexican $

At this downtown spot known for its ﬂour tortillas, you can order à la carte or opt for affordable family-style

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takeout options to make your own tacos, burritos, or chimichangas ﬁlled with chorizo, carne asada, or mesquite-grilled chicken. Wash it all down with a sixpack of Tecate or seasonal aguas frescas. Look our for a new location in Mid-City, on San Vincente Boulevard, opening this fall. 208 E. 8th St., 213-6283710, sonoratown.com, or @sonoratownla Beer.

Superfine Pizza FASHION DISTRICT » Pizza $

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Get a quick taste of Rossoblu chef Steve Samson’s Italian-food mastery at his casual pizzeria, which serves both thin-crust slices and whole pies. The pepperoni always pleases, but the honey—with spicy salami, provolone, and Grana Padano—really thrills. 1101 S. San Pedro St., Ste. F, 323-698-5677, superﬁnepizza.com, or @superﬁnepizza.

CENTRAL Alta Adams WEST ADAMS » California Soul Food $$

Riffing on his grandmother’s recipes, Watts native Keith Corbin loads up his gumbo with market veggies and enlivens his collard greens with a smoked oil. Soul food in this city is too often associated with Styrofoam containers, but this verdant patio, is a lovely place to linger. Hot sauce splashed onto skilletfried chicken is pure pleasure, enhanced by a bourbon drink the bar tints with roasted peanuts and huckleberries. Finish the night by taking on a heroic wedge of coconut cake. 5359 W. Adams Blvd., 323-571-4999, or altaadams.com. Full bar.

A.O.C. BEVERLY GROVE » California $$$

Unforced and driven by culinary excellence, A.O.C. is anchored by a courtyard with soft sunlight and laurel trees. Caroline Styne’s wine list doesn’t shy away from the ecology of vineyards, while Suzanne Goin’s cooking has become indispensable. Carefully constructed salads showcase vegetables at their best, and the roasted chicken with panzanella is both an homage to San Francisco’s Zuni Café and a classic in and of itself. 8700 W. 3rd St., 310-859-9859, or aocwinebar.com. Full bar. Also at 11648 San Vincente Blvd.,310-806-6464, Brentwood.

Brandoni Pepperoni WEST HOLLYWOOD » Pizza $$ Six nights a week, Brandon Gray turns out some of L.A.’s most exciting pizzas. Gray, a veteran of Navy kitchens and top local restaurants like Providence, brings boundless imagination to his pies. They’re topped with premium ingredients—Jidori chicken, Sungold tomatoes, Spanish octopus—in exciting combinations. A curry-Dijonnaise dressing renders a side salad surprisingly memorable. 5881 Saturn St., Faircrest Heights, 323-306-4968, or brandoni-pepperoni.com. Wine to go.

Gigi’s HOLLYWOOD MEDIA DISTRICT » French $$$

With its sceney Sycamore Avenue location and gorgeous, illustration-lined interiors, Gigi’s could easily succeed with subpar fare. But chef Matt Bollinger’s bistro classics—like curry mussels, steak tartare, and roasted chicken—are done quite well, if priced rather high. The wine list from beverage director Kristin Olszewski, an Osteria Mozza alum, is surprisingly interesting, with various natural and biodynamic options on offer. 904. N. Sycamore Ave., gigis.la, or @gigis_la. Full bar.

Harold & Belle’s JEFFERSON PARK » Southern Creole $$ For Creole-style food—a mélange of French, African, and Native American ﬂavors—Harold & Belle’s is as close to the Dirty Coast as you’ll come on the West Coast. The crawﬁsh étouffée in spicy gravy will have you humming zydeco, while the bourbon bread pudding will leave you with a Sazerac-worthy buzz. 2920 W. Jefferson Blvd., 323-735-9023, or haroldandbelles.com. Full bar.

Lalibela FAIRFAX DISTRICT » Ethiopian $-$$

The strip of Fairfax known as Little Ethiopia has long been dominated by the same handful of restaurants. Chef-owner Tenagne Belachew worked in a few of them before opening her own sophisticated haven, which invites with the swirling aromas of berbere and burning sage. Stretchy disks of injera—the sour, teff-ﬂour pancake that doubles as a utensil for scooping up food by hand—arrive piled with uniquely pungent delights. There are wots, or stews, made with chicken or spiced legumes or lamb sautéed in a creamy sauce. 1025 S. Fairfax Ave., 323-965-1025, or lalibelala.com. Beer and wine.

Luv2Eat Thai Bistro HOLLYWOOD » Thai $$ Vibrant ﬂavors and spices abound at this strip-mall favorite from two Phuket natives. The crab curry,

C H E F FAVO R I T E S I S A I A S P E ÑA QUÉ PADRE

SPAGHETTI CON POLPETTE MI PIACE The handmade meatballs are ﬂavorful without being dense; the tomato sauce is made with San Marzano tomatoes (the only way to go); and there’s just the right amount of good, aged Parmigiano. Perfect comfort food. $24, 25 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, mipiace.com. CORNFLAKE CHOCOLATE CHIP MARSHMALLOW COOKIES MILK BAR This cookie has awesome levels of ﬂavors and textures. I love everything from the crunch of the

cornflakes to the chewiness of the marshmallow. Six for $22, 7150 Melrose Ave., Fairfax District, milkbarstore.com. CHIFFONADE SALAD THE MUSSO & FRANK GRILL Lobster, crab, shrimp, lettuce, and what seems to be an incomplete Thousand Island dressing—this is the perfect salad combination. The individual shellfish each have their own tastes and textures; they all play off each other in a fantastic manner. You can’t find this salad anywhere else other than in Hollywood. $14, 6667 Hollywood Blvd., mussoandfrank.com.

Hanchic

VENUES Saddlerock Ranch saddlerock-ranch.com 818.923.6985

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This new K-town spot infuses Korean dishes with Italian elements to create uniquely craveable dishes. Tagliatelle is tossed with kimchi and pork. A decadent spin on mac ’n’ cheese features both Korean rice cakes and elbow pasta coated in tangy Mornay sauce that’s been infused with fermented soybean paste. 2500 W. 8th St., Ste. 103, hanchic.com, or @hanchic.la.

AVA B LU

KOREATOWN » Korean $$

with a whole crustacean swimming in a creamy pool of deliciousness, is not to be missed (it travels surprisingly well), but the expansive menu is full of winners, from the massaman curry to the Thai fried chicken with sticky rice and sweet pepper sauce. 6660 W. Sunset Blvd., 323-498-5835, luv2eatthai .com, or @luv2eat.thaibistro.

n/soto WEST ADAMS » Japanese $$$$

N/naka chefs Niki Nakayama and Carol IidaNakayama have expanded. To start, n/soto was focused on offering elaborate bento boxes from a to-go window, but the duo have plans to turn it into a bustling izakaya with indoor and outdoor seating as the city opens up. For now, the bento boxes make for takeout that is both delicious and high-minded. The ﬁrst box on offer was called A Taste of Home and told the story of Japanese immigrants coming to America via nearly two dozen dishes, from beef sukiyaki to pressed-mackerel sushi. It makes for a special evening in, if you’re lucky enough to score one. Preorders go live on Tock every Friday at noon and tend to sell out quickly. 4566 W. Washington Blvd., 323-879-9455, n-soto.com.

Osteria Mozza/Mozza2Go HANCOCK PARK » Italian $$$ Nancy Silverton aims for end-times elegance with a parking lot that’s been transformed into a piazza where you can spend an evening nibbling on pastas, pizzas, and thoughtful salads from Mozza, Chi Spacca, and Pizzeria Mozza. Mozza2Go’s expansive menu is heavy on the pizzas, with an $85 ﬁve-pizza package that’s a steal. Don’t miss the Spacca burgers, offered only on the weekends, for takeout and delivery only. Osteria: 6602 Melrose Ave., 323-297-0100, or osteriamozza.com. Full bar. Pizzeria: 641 N. Highland Ave., 323-297-0101, or pizzeriamozza.com. Beer and wine. Mozza2Go: 6610 Melrose Ave., 323-297-0101 or mozza2go.com.

République HANCOCK PARK » Cal-French $$$

République may be devoted to French food, but its soul is firmly rooted in Californian cuisine. Walter Manzke is as skilled at making potato and leek beignets as he is at roasting cauliflower and local dates. Meanwhile, Margarita Manzke’s breads and pastries are always spot-on. Like a fine wine, this classic L.A. restaurant just gets better and better. 624 S. La Brea Ave., 310-362-6115, or republiquela.com. Full bar.

Ronan FAIRFAX DISTRICT » Cal-Italian $$

At Daniel and Caitlin Cutler’s chic pizzeria, the pies— especially the How ‘Nduja Like It? with spicy sausage, gorgonzola crema, green onion, and celery— are the clear stars, but it’s a big mistake not to explore the entire menu. It’s ﬁlled with delicious delights, from cacio e pepe risotto to a sea bass served with an ever-changing assortment of banchan. 7315 Melrose Ave., 323-9175100, ronanla.com, or @ronan_la. Full bar.

Slab

feels as effortless as dipping your toes in the sand. There are buttery lobster rolls and fried-chicken sandwiches alongside artfully plated crudos. 8370 W. 3rd St., 323-782-9033, or sonofagunrestaurant.com. Full bar.

Soulmate WEST HOLLYWOOD » Mediterranean $$$

It’s lovely outside, and there’s a stunning new WeHo spot with a patio that can hold 75 attractive people, plus hours that go to midnight on Friday and Saturdays. Starters include various jamones and spicy paella bites. Further down the menu, there’s lot of seafood options, from wood-ﬁred octopus with charred romesco to salmon crudo. 631 N. Robertson Blvd., soulmateweho.com.. 631 N. Robertson Blvd., 310-734-7764, soulmateweho.com.com, or @soulmate weho. Full bar.

EAST Agnes Restaurant & Cheesery » Eclectic $$

BEVERLY GROVE » Barbecue $$

PASADENA

Hungry diners used to line up in the driveway of Burt Bakman’s home, desperate for a taste of his famous smoked barbecue meats. In 2018, Bakman came up from the underground, opening a sleek storefront that’s now ﬁlling to-go orders for hearty fare, from perfectly marbled brisket to pulled-pork sandwiches and collard greens. You can even get a six-pack of Bud Light. 8136 W. 3rd. St., 310-855-7184, slabbarbecue. com, or @slab. Beer and wine.

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. 340 W. Green St., 626-389-3839, agnesla.com, or @agnes_pasadena. Full bar.

Son of a Gun BEVERLY GROVE » Seafood $$

Florida-raised chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo deliver a certain brand of sun-drenched seashore nostalgia. Dropping into the nautically themed dining room for chilled peel-and-eat shrimp and a hurricane

Jonathan Whitener’s Here’s Looking At You is, sadly, closed, but his thrilling cooking continues on a bustling Eastside corner. Whether you opt for smoked

PROMOTION

Ph ot o c re d it : J im Do n n elly

Photo credit: Los Angeles Philharmonic

LIST

All Day Baby » Eclectic $$

SILVER LAKE

New Year’s Eve with Pink Martini

SPARKLE DTLA Grand Debut

Friday, December 31, 7 p.m. & 10:30 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, Downtown L.A.

Thursday, November 11, 6 p.m.

Count down to 2022 in style with Portland’s celebrated “little orchestra.” laphil.com

Experience a magical holiday show as 18 million hues of lights illuminate the night and synchronize to festive tunes. SPARKLE DTLA at The Bloc will take you through an unforgettable nighttime journey that includes the one of LA’s largest multicolored interactive holiday displays. Capture your perfect photo-op moments at this ultimate holiday experience. theblocla.com/event/sparkle-dtla

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spare ribs, a hot catﬁsh sandwich, or a breakfast sandwich on pastry chef Thessa Diadem’s sublime biscuits, it’s all great. 3200 W. Sunset Blvd., 323-741-0082, alldaybabyla.com, or @alldaybabyla.

Bar Restaurant

Saso

SILVER LAKE » French $$$

PASADENA

Chef Douglas Rankin, who worked under Ludo Lefebvre for years, struck out on his own with this charming “neo bistro” in the old Malo space in Sunset Junction. The menu features playful Gallic-ish fare, like curly fries and plump mussels Dijon atop milk toast; classic cocktails; and plenty of funky wines available by the glass. A large parking-lot seating area has huge plants, twinkling lights, and good vibes. Somehow it manages to feel both festive and safe. 4326 W. Sunset Blvd., 323-347-5557. Full bar.

The arrival of this splashy new spot suggests that the good times might soon be here again. It shares a charming, sprawling courtyard with the Pasadena Playhouse, and the seafood-heavy menu from chef Dominique Crisp, who previously worked at L&E Oyster Bar, begs for reuniting with friends on nice summer nights. Orange zest enlivens jamon iberico crudite, while miso butter takes grilled oysters to new heights. 37 S. El Molino Ave., 626-808-4976, sasobistro.com, or @sasobistro. Full bar.

Daybird WESTLAKE » Fried Chicken $

This long-anticipated casual chicken concept from Top Chef winner and Nightshade toque Mei Lin is ﬁnally open, and it was worth the wait. Lin separates her hot poultry sandwich from the ﬂock of others in the city, thanks to uniquely crispy fried chicken that’s dusted with a memorable, Sichuan-peppercornheavy spice blend. A spicy slaw and habanero ranch dipping sauce add to the fun. 240 N. Virgil Ave., Ste. 5, daybirdla.com, or @daybirdla.

Eszett SILVER LAKE » Eclectic $$

This stylish, cozy wine bar brings warm hospitality to the strip-mall space formerly occupied by Trois Familia. Chef Spencer Bezaire’s menu deftly brings in ﬂavors from around the globe without feeling overly contrived. Chicken wings are accompanied by salsa macha, grilled Broccolini is dusted with furikake. Don’t miss the big fries. 3510 W. Sunset Blvd., 323522-6323, or eszettla.com. Wine and beer.

Found Oyster EAST HOLLYWOOD » Seafood $$$

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10 6 L A M AG . C O M

with the region’s distinct cuisine, the illustrious sticky rice is still a reliable bet. Need incentive? Everything on the menu is less than $10. 5301 W. Sunset Blvd., 323474-7212, or amphainorthernthaifood.com.

This tiny oyster bar was a pre-pandemic favorite, and chef Ari Kolender’s seafood dishes still thrill when taken to go or enjoyed on the restaurant’s “boat deck.” The scallop tostada with yuzu kosho and basil is a must-order, and a bisque sauce takes the basic lobster roll to new heights. Interesting, affordable wines add to the fun. 4880 Fountain Ave., 323-486-7920, found oyster.com, or @foundoyster. Wine and beer.

Hippo HIGHLAND PARK » Cal-Italian $$

Hidden in a wood-trussed dining room behind Triple Beam Pizza, this Cal-Ital restaurant from Mozza vet Matt Molina balances casual and reﬁned. Snappy wax beans are sluiced with vinaigrette for a picnic-worthy salad. Great pastas and juicy grilled chicken thighs deliver the unfussy pleasure found at the best neighborhood spots. Eclectic regular specials like haute corn dogs add to the fun. 5916 ½ N. Figueroa St., 323545-3536, or hipporestaurant.com. Full bar.

Maury’s Bagels SILVER LAKE » Bagels $ East Coast transplant Jason Kaplan spent a decade in L.A. before deciding he had to take matters into his own hands if he wanted a great bagel in this town. He started out as a pop-up at farmers’ markets and coffee shops, but his appropriately modestly sized, delightfully chewy bagels and quality smoked ﬁsh now have a brick-and-mortar location. On a quiet Eastside corner next door to Psychic Wines, it’s quite charming. 2829 Bellevue Ave., 323-380-9380, maurysbagels.com, or @maurys_losangeles.

» Spanish $$$

Sōgo Roll Bar » Sushi $$

LOS FELIZ

So- go is hardly the only concept in town devoted to rolls, but it has mastered the form. Rice is cooked with the same careful consideration and seasoning that sushi master Kiminobu Saito uses at the highend Sushi Note, and it manages to maintain a great temperature and texture, even when being delivered. Fish is not just fresh but also ﬂavorful, each type thoughtfully paired with ideal accompaniments, from a tangy yuzu-pepper sauce that makes salmon sing to brandy-soaked albacore with garlic-ginger ponzu and crispy onions. 4634 Hollywood Blvd., 323-741-0088, sogorollbar.com, or @sogorollbar. Beer and sake.

Spoon & Pork SILVER LAKE » Filipino $$

The go-to for Filipino comfort food offers a variety of dishes, all featuring one shared ingredient: deliciousness. Spoon & Pork puts an innovative spin on some Filipino favorites—just try its adobo pork belly, pork belly banh mi, or lechón kawali. The dishes, which can be ordered at the counter to enjoy on the patio or for takeout and delivery, elegantly mix decadence with some authentic soul. 3131 W. Sunset Blvd., 323922-6061, spoonandpork.com, or @spoonandporkla. Beer and wine.

Sunset Sushi SILVER LAKE » Japanese $$$ With omakase boxes priced from $30 to $85, this new sushi place in the old Ma’am Sir space strikes the sweet spot between affordable and indulgent and is another exciting addition to the Eastside’s growing number of quality sushi options. It’s a sister spot to Highland Park’s Ichijiku, but with a more luxe vibe and a larger menu, tailor-made for takeout. 4330 W. Sunset Blvd., 323-741-8371, sunsetsushila.com, or @sunsetsushi. Beer and sake to go.

U Street Pizza » Pizza $$

PASADENA

There was a moment in the spring when U Street’s vodka pepperoni pie was a shining star of Instagram, and rightfully so. The why-haven’t-I-had-this-before combination of pepperoni and creamy vodka sauce is an easy win. Vegetable dishes, notably a Japanese eggplant with Calabrian chili agrodolce, are more than afterthoughts. Note that while the vodka pepperoni pie travels well, the clam pie is best enjoyed in-house. 33 E. Union St., 626-605-0430, ustreetpizza .com, or @ustreetpizza.

THE VALLEY Black Market Liquor Bar » New American $$

STUDIO CITY

Northern Thai Food Club EAST HOLLYWOOD » Thai $ Offering specialty dishes unique to northern Thailand, this family-run favorite doesn’t skimp on ﬂavor, spice, or authenticity. Tasty takeout meals include the khao soi gai (curry egg noodle with chicken), laab moo kua (minced pork), tam kha noon (jackfruit salad), and pla salid tod (fried gourami ﬁsh). For those unfamiliar

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 » Sushi $$$

This hidden gem, reinvigorated when chef Mark Okuda took the helm in 2018, is worth traveling for. Keep spirits up with the Hand-Roll Party home kits (there’s even one for kids), or splurge on an omakase that can be enjoyed 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, thebrotherssushi.com, or @thebrotherssushila. Beer, wine, and sake.

Casa Vega SHERMAN OAKS

» Mexican $

The Vega family’s 64-year-old institution has put up a massive tent in its parking lot to keep the margaritas ﬂowing amidst COVID-19 restrictions. And if you prefer takeout, there’s a drive-through setup that makes it easy to pick up a plate of enchiladas or a hulking “oven-style” burrito topped with enchilada sauce and melted cheese. The expansive menu has a great selection of hearty crowd-pleasers, cocktails, and tequilas. You might leave tipsy, but you’ll never go hungry. 13301 Ventura Blvd., 818-788-4868, or casavega.com. Full bar.

Hank’s BURBANK

Little Coyote LONG BEACH » Pizza $

SOUTH

WOODLAND HILLS

Ali’i Fish Company EL SEGUNDO » Seafood $$ This small, unassuming spot shames all of the glossy poke purveyors popping up around town to 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. Perfect for picking up a beach picnic. 409 E. Grand Ave., 310-616-3484, or aliiﬁshco.com.

Fishing With Dynamite » Seafood $$$

Little Sister

MANHATTAN BEACH

REDONDO BEACH » Asian Fusion $$

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. On the menu, you’ll ﬁnd several kinds of oysters from across the country, Peruvian scallops, and Alaskan king crab legs. 1148 Manhattan Ave., 310-893-6299, or eatfwd.com. Full bar.

Chef and co-owner Tin Vuong deftly translates the ﬂavors of Vietnam for a casual drinking scene. Nibble on fresh spring rolls with shrimp, pork, and a peanut dipping sauce, then wash it all down with a craft beer. 247 Avenida del Norte, 424-398-0237, or dinelittlesister.com. Beer, wine, and sake.

Hotville

» Bagels $

The L.A. bagel revolution continues at this stylish spot in the Valley that serves up carefully constructed sandwiches. Tomato, aioli, and maple-glazed bacon elevate a simple bacon, egg, and cheese, while a classic salmon-and-lox construction has thoughtful touches like salted cucumbers and pickled onions. Sammies shine with plain cream cheese, but it’s worth grabbing a tub of Hank’s “angry” spread—a spicy, slightly sweet concoction—to have in your fridge. And no cream cheese is needed for Hank’s everything jalapeno-cheddar bagel, a stunning gut bomb. 4315 Riverside Dr., 818-588-3693, hanksbagels.com, or @hanksbagels. Also at 13545 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks.

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, made with dough cold-fermented for 48 to 72 hours, 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, from a generous pepperoni number to a veggie supreme that deﬁes the form’s usual mediocrity. 2118 E. 4th St., 562-434-2009; 3500 Los Coyotes Diagonal, 562-352-1555; littlecoyotelbc.com or @littlecoyotelbc.

BALDWIN HILLS CRENSHAW

» Fried chicken $

After three years of running a pop-up, Kim Prince has opened a brick-and-mortar that does her family’s legacy justice—she’s the niece of André Prince Jeffries, owner of Nashville legend Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, where hot fried chicken is said to have originated. Prince adds spice at every step in the cooking process to produce a complex, layered ﬂavor. The sides ($5 and up), like spicy mac and cheese and kale coleslaw, are also winners. 4070 Marlton Ave., 323-792-4835,or hotvillechicken.com. No alcohol.

Tamales Elena Y Antojitos BELL GARDENS

» Afro-Mexican $

This small spot, with counter service, a drivethrough window, and a patio purports to be the only Afro-Mexican restaurant in the area. It focuses on a distinct cuisine from a part of Guerrero to which former slaves fled. Pozoles are rich and slightly thick, and the memorable pork tamales with red sauce are wrapped in fire-tinged banana leaves that impart a hint of smoke. 81801 Garfield Ave., 562-0674-3043, ordertamaleselenayantojitos.com, or @tamaleselenayantojitos. » WE WELCOME YOUR COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS. PLEASE EMAIL US AT LETTERS@LAMAG.COM

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REALITY

THE REAL WORLD: LOS ANGELES CAST RETURNS TO VENICE BEACH AND SHOWS HOW FAR WE HAVE—AND HAVEN’T—ALL COME BY TRACY MOORE

Back to Reality C O N T I N U E D F R O M PAG E 3 6

An Affair to Dismember C O N T I N U E D F R O M PAG E 9 1

but whose season-long growth upended the stereotype, returning was about closure. “What I tried to do then, and what I try to do today, and what I tried to do at the homecoming, and what I try to do as a human being on this planet, is say, ‘You know what? I disagree with you,’” he says, “wholeheartedly and passionately. But I love you, and I can respect that we’re different.’ And that’s what The Real World is as a show, especially the early years.” The reunions certainly capitalize on Gen X nostalgia, but they’re also proof of that generation’s early clumsy efforts to grapple with the issues of the day. Those conversations have grown so sophisticated now that early seasons almost look like Degrassi Junior High. Still, there’s often a lack of credit given for the effort to confront the issues at all. “I wasn’t trying to be the Roe v. Wade spokesperson,” Roman says of her decision to allow her abortion to be ﬁlmed. “But it was just showing, in real time, real life, what this really looks like and feels like from an emotional and physical standpoint.” In the past three decades of reality TV, we’ve gone, it seems, full circle, from booze and earnest dialogue to booze and shallow exploits to booze and racial reckoning (and hot tubs). The Real Housewives franchise recently added Black actress Garcelle Beauvais to Beverly Hills, and Asian actress Tiffany Moon to Dallas. Southern Charm added Persian entrepreneur Leva Bonaparte. Such casting has, at least on some level, echoed the genre’s origins for generating modern-day discussions of many of the same issues The Real World tackled 30 years ago. Is that superﬁcial change or enough to call it progress?

story got better. Durst said he thought maybe the killer was still in the house and that Susan’s breath was warm but her body was cold. “Her breath was warm? She was dead,” said Lewin. Bob also testified that he and Susan were going to spend Christmas at the Chateau Marmont (where there was no record of a reservation) then travel to Northern California. This was the first mention—ever—of a vacation, never mind that Susan had plans with relatives and friends carefully annotated in her diaries. When challenged about Susan’s supposed use of “staycation,” which wasn’t widely used in the early aughts, Bob blithely explained, “Susan was ahead of her time.” But the big question still loomed: The theory was that, as a witness to what Bob did or said he did to Kathie, Susan knew enough to rat him out. But would Susan have ratted him out? I think not, with a few caveats. Raised by a mobster father whom she adored, Susan had long ago internalized mob mentality; loyalty was everything to her. And she was fiercely loyal to her best pal “Bobby, Bobby, wonderful Bobby” as she referred to him to friends. Bob may have thought she’d rat him out, paranoid as he was, but I don’t believe she would have. I do, however, believe that, as she got more and more destitute—Susan’s once-promising career was by then in retreat, and she was selling her mother’s jewelry to survive—she may have seen the reopening of the case as an opportunity to squeeze some cash out of her wealthy friend. Susan was nothing if not manipulative; maybe she dropped some hints. In fact, toward the end of her life, she was irked that Bob changed his numbers, forcing her to write to him in care of the Durst Organization. He ended up sending her two $25,000

checks. Not a lot for a millionaire heir, but a lot for a cheap bastard. But here’s one thing that would have enraged Susan enough to maybe make a real threat or two. A few weeks before Susan’s murder, Bob married Debrah Lee Charatan, a real estate agent whom Susan loathed. This worked out well for Debrah Lee, who is the heiress to his estate; as his wife, she didn’t have to testify. Susan had so many phobias, she’d never have let someone she was angry at into her home. Even Bobby, Bobby, wonderful Bobby. This is why I bought the prosecution’s theory that Durst lay in wait for her and then shot her, ambush-style. The only saving grace is she probably never knew what hit her. As the trial wound down, and Bob took the stand, many worried that his decrepit condition—he had bladder cancer and looked like, well, a cadaver—would inspire pity. I worried, too, until he opened his mouth, proving that even someone frail and dying can come off as an arrogant jerk. Then came the closing arguments. I actually felt sorry for DeGuerin. He’d got lucky in Galveston, but this time, he had nothing to work with. Even the court reporter was rolling her eyes. He said it was “an honor to represent Bob”—an honor to represent Bob? At one point, the gist of his argument seemed to be, “Look at all the people Bob didn’t kill when he had the chance”—like his brother, Douglas, who still so feared Bob that he came to court with security guards. DeGuerin also said in his closing argument that Lewin was a bully who “demonized a sick old man.” Oh, really? Here’s the kind of guy John Lewin was: he emptied Durst’s catheter bag when it was precariously close to overﬂowing in the courtroom. Durst’s own lawyers did not offer to do that. Now we’ll have to wait for the appeals. And there will undoubtedly be appeals as long as Bob has the money to fund them. Many have speculated that he’ll die before any appeal comes to fruition. Oh, please—he’ll outlive us all. In the hours after Bob’s guilty verdict, Susan’s friends played “On the Sunny Side of the Street” over and over. It was her favorite song because it was her father’s favorite song. Her friends sang it at her funeral that her best friend, Bobby, Bobby, wonderful Bobby, never showed up for. L A M AG . C O M 1 15

EMAIL YOUR BURNING QUESTIONS ABOUT L.A. TO ASKCHRIS@LAMAG.COM

Los Angeles is a doughnut town. So why is Dunkin’ so late to the game?

Mad magazine artist Don Martin spoofed The Blue Boy in a 1974 issue.

SW E E T S H OP

John Spartos at his Inglewood Dunkin’ Donuts in 1959.

The East Coast favorite tried several times to break into the California market, but its major invasion efforts here flopped. Dunkin’s first L.A. outpost was opened on La Brea Avenue in 1959. The chain’s founder, William Rosenberg, had been inspired by his visits to California shops, including Winchell’s, and tapped his friend John Spartos to help open the first Dunkin’ Donuts near Boston in 1950. Spartos moved west and spent decades making the doughnuts at his Torrance and Inglewood franchises. Over time, another dozen shops sprung up around L.A., but Dunkin’ left by 2002—until recently. There are now about 40 Munchkinsmakers in L.A., despite competition from hundreds of indies cooking up Winchell’s old recipes. Q: Why is that restaurant at the airport called the Theme Building? A: Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 570, the swirly landmark at the heart of LAX, was at the center of 1 16 L A M AG . C O M

a vast airport modernization in 1961 that transformed the landing strip for propeller planes into America’s ﬁrst airport designed for modern jets. The Jet Age theme of the airport was distilled

into that one building. Experts tell me that theme buildings have long been part of classical design, with whole cities built around major monuments. “Beaux Arts planning,” says architect Alan Hess,

Hey, Hey, We’re in L.A.

“uses a center of power—a capitol or cathedral—as a focal point.” Victor Cusack, an architect with Pereira & Luckman, who crafted the complex with Welton Becket and Paul R.Williams, claimed in his book A Symbol of Los Angeles that LAX’s theme building also had “metaphysical qualities” that were loved by LAX brass (and me). Q: Did the 99 Cents Only store change its name because prices rose? A: When 99 Cents Only founder Dave Gold was running his family’s shop in downtown’s Grand Central Market, he experimented with prices like 98 cents and $1.02 before hitting on his magic number. His successors continued the 99-cent practice until 2008, when hiking prices a penny added $12 million to their coffers. The store has been relaunched as “The 99 Store” with an “elevated” style, says spokesman Jim Porterﬁeld, who notes that the renamed outlets stock higherpriced items. “Some are over a dollar,” he says. “You don’t go to Old Navy and expect to ﬁnd seamen working there.”

MONKEES AT THE GREEK THEATRE O The Monkees

S PA RTOS : CO U RT E SY S PA RTOS FA M I LY; T H E M O N K E E S : M I C H A E L O C H S A R C H I V E S /G E T T Y I M AG E S

W H AT, M OI WOR RY ?

CHRIS’S PICK

were famously created for TV, but once Davy, Micky, Mike, and Peter met, “they became a group organically,” says Andrew Sandoval, the band’s producer and author of The Monkees: The Day-By-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation. “They outsold the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, then bucked the system and made an avant-garde movie with Jack Nicholson.” More than a half-century later, surviving members Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith will reunite for The Monkees Farewell Tour on November 14 at the Greek Theatre. It’s a shame they can’t end at the venue where they debuted, but the Hollywood Bowl banned the group after Dolenz leaped into the pool during their 1967 performance. The pool was replaced by the most-exclusive box seats.

VOLUME 66, NUMBER 11. LOS ANGELES (ISSN 1522-9149) is published monthly by Los Angeles Magazine, LLC. Principal office: 10100 Venice Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232. 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 © 2021 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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