If recently I wrote of Sanur as being dull but with a certain charm, the same could certainly be said of Beverly Hills. I mean the non-gated oh-so manicured and slumbering residential areas, not the appended commercial section. The archetypal expression of this would be the area bounded by Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards to the North and South, and Doheny Avenue and the uniquely politically incorrect LA Country Club to the East and West respectively.
You’ve seen it in countless movies. Blue skies, tall palm trees, oaks and pines with squirrels abounding, lining stately drives with lawns on either side and noble vistas right up into the Hollywood Hills. Of course it isn’t quite what it seems, more a trompe l’oeil. What you don’t see is that there’s really almost as much concrete as there is greenery (Singapore manages the same trick a thousand times over with astute government decreed street landscaping). Like most of LA this part of Beverly Hills is a grid, only you don’t see it and every 200 yards or so the North/South drives are intersected by the East/West avenues.
The houses themselves sit on identical 1/4 acre plots with pool and come in three flavours, mock colonial, ranchero and neo-classical. Each dwelling appears to be set back a regulation distance from the sidewalk with a mandated front lawn.
In the whole area absolutely nothing appears to happen, which gives it a weird unreal feeling. Whatever life there may be goes on inside the houses. The only activity outside is in the morning when the Mexicans come in to look after the gardens and the pools. It is all obviously extremely well regulated and exactly how the residents want it.
You soon notice the well-financed Beverly Hills Security Patrols in their prowl cars nosing up and down the streets. On-street parking is forbidden between the hours of 8.00 pm and 2.00 am. Apart from joggers, dog and power walkers of a certain age, any other form of pedestrian movement would be deeply suspicious if not an un-American activity. I’m a bit curious though, why it’s OK to park at 3 o’clock in the morning? Could it be that burglars have a 4-hour commute to whatever mean streets they come from, if they’re to make it back for a home-cooked breakfast? Hardly.
Oh, and coincidentally, I don’t see many black people in the area either. Thus, of a night, the Beverly Hills security folk do not have a hard job spotting anything untoward.
If it moves or breathes, go check it out!
During the day anything remotely different would stick out like a sore thumb, mainly because any activity at all would be strange.
Such order has certain charms it has to be said, if you are 60 plus. It is very quiet and nice to look at, if a tad anodyne. The good people of Beverly Hills also enjoy a fine Town Hall, an excellent Public Library and probably the world’s prettiest cop shop. Come to think of it the cops themselves in this precinct are all a prettyglossy latte lot too. Your classic potbellied, pasty-faced, overweight junk food-scoffing filth don’t go down very well here. One thing is for sure though, every and any self-respecting kid over the age of eight must find it a living death. No wonder Beverly High is the last place on earth where any savvy Angeleno would want to educate their children. It is a vipers nest of problems. By 12 all the kids want is out and by 16 they are gone, gone, gone.
And you don’t have to go far. It all changes character very quickly and this why Beverly Hills is so well situated. Everything is so handy. Across Santa Monica and as far as Wilshire you’ve got the Rodeo Drive shopping area, all your medical stuff handled at Cedars Sinai a little to the East; add in all the arts, crafts and New Age stuff you could possible want down Melrose and sprinkle with all sorts of eating places plus the odd shopping mall and you’ve got most of what you need.
Over Doheny you’re instantly into the People’s Republic of Gay, a little to the North of that and you’re on Sunset Plaza with its street cafes and louche Levantine porno directors eyeing up the girls. Follow on down Sunset heading East a mile or three until you get to downtown Hollywood, which is really where the action is and where all the kids really really want to be.
That’s where the music is, the media, the movies, street fashion and any other activity remotely alive and of interest to anyone under 22. The only thing better than this for them, is Manhattan.
As an Englishman and Sanurite, if I was condemned to live in LA proper, I’d probably end up in Santa Monica-by-the-Sea, it reminds of nothing so much as Bournemouth-on-Steroids, but on consideration I’d probably slide off into Pacific Palisades.
Only in America....
Any junk food junkie wanting to add more fresh vegetables to their diet without the unbearable pain of actually having to do so, just got a big assist from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), who in their supreme wisdom have just decreed that frozen French fries coated in batter can now be defined as fresh food.
In a little-noticed change of federal rules the USDA gave in to the Frozen Potato Products Institute, who have been lobbying for years to change the rules arguing that rolling potato slices in a starch coating of batter, deep frying them and then feezing them is equivalent to say, waxing an apple or cucumber, and can therefore be defined and sold as fresh, perishable food.
The USDA are not famous for much, other than cosying up to Big Biz whenever they can. For example, they don’t find it at all strange that America’s fruit & veg now have up to 40% less of important vitamins and minerals that they had 40 years ago. “They may have less nurtrients but they look better and that’s what the public really wants”, claimed a remarkably stupid spokeslady for the FDA at the time.
This latest health and logic-defying decision on what costitutes a fresh spud was recently upheld by a district court judge in Texas (where else?) when challenged by Chicago lawyer, Tim Elliott, who said the new revision defied “common sense”.
Mr Elliott argued that the Batter-Coating Rule, as it is now known, is so vague that a box of cholcolate covered cherries could now qualify as fresh fruit. “This is something only lawyers could do” Mr Elliott said pointing at a stack of legal documents debating the French fry change. “It can be summed up in one
sentence, batter-coated French fries are not fresh vegetables”, he said.
Harvard professor of nutrition, Meir Stampfer, agrees. It “boggles the mind that the USDA would label French fries as a fresh vegetable”, he said, “since almost all commercial fries are prepared in oils, which if not rancid, are laden with heart-clogging trans-fat.”
Too bad! The folks at Spud Institute don’t agree or care. They can already hear the cash registers ringing. These fries have not been processed to the point where they are no longer “fresh”, they say, and a Texas judge says thats the truth of it. So now you know.....
God help all long suffering mums trying to get their kids to eat right. I can hear it now, can’t you?
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Ma-umm.....I AM eating my veggies, they’ll whine and the US governnment says they’re right.
