When friends visit Los Angeles and ask where they should go, I often recommend the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel. If you go, you’re likely to see an A-list celebrity. The reason for this is that you can’t just walk in off the street. The lounge is tucked behind the lobby of the hotel. Most of the restaurant is located on a leafy patio with white tablecloths and formal dinner service. The bar is oak, and you get the feeling that you should be wearing a jacket before you sit down.
Reaching the hotel requires an awkward turn off Sunset Boulevard and a drive up a long, winding driveway. At the top, young valets in white polo shirts and trousers with the Beverly Hills Hotel logo greet you, looking like extras from a 1960s beach comedy. It isn’t cheap, and for the faint of heart, it can feel a little intimidating. “What did I do to deserve a 22-year-old blonde parking my car with a smile?”
Lately, I’ve been telling people that Pacific Palisades is the Polo Lounge of Los Angeles. There are no freeways nearby, and the only way in or out is Sunset Boulevard. Locals might navigate the winding eucalyptus-lined streets from Santa Monica Canyon, but outsiders need to know where they’re going and plan to go there.
Physically, Pacific Palisades resembles a high-end Mayberry, with a hint of salt water in the air. Nestled between Malibu and Santa Monica, it is name-checked in “Surfin’ USA.” Growing up in Santa Monica, I always found the Palisades a bit intimidating, too—richer, less urban, out of reach. I had a feeling the girls who lived there were out of my league, though I’m married to one now.
If Pacific Palisades is the place in Los Angeles that people want to wind up today, Altadena is where you might have wanted to be 100 years ago. Altadena sits in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, once covered in dusty orange groves and olive orchards. Zane Grey made his home there, as did Richard Feynman. Their prewar homes burned to the ground a few weeks ago, in the wee hours of the morning, in a stiff Santa Ana wind.
Throughout the first quarter of the twentieth century, architects built small developments on Altadena’s wide slopes and in the little dells formed by creeks running out of the mountains—classic craftsman homes painted brown and green, but also Spanish haciendas, Mediterranean villas, and Tudor cottages. After the war, black Angelenos moved into the postwar ranch houses, drawn to the unincorporated county where they could open businesses and live middle-class lives.
Towering over Altadena, the San Gabriel Mountains are covered in chaparral in the front country. They rise to unexpected heights, far above the San Fernando Valley. Up there, you will find alpine forests and even a ski resort.
Altadena and Pacific Palisades are the California that Walt Disney tried to introduce to kids living east of the Pecos River. Old California. Mythical Old California. In both places, you wouldn’t be surprised to see someone riding a horse. In fact, Steven Spielberg’s family owns an equestrian center in Pacific Palisades. When I was a kid, I would see girls riding their horses in English saddles on Sunset Boulevard below Kenter Canyon, returning to some stable that I would never be invited to.
We discovered Altadena by accident. Growing up on the west side, I never knew it existed. My kids attended school in Crescenta Valley, so we moved closer, finding a beautiful Monterey colonial on Hill Avenue across from the Altadena golf course. The golf course acted as a windbreak and spared the home, though we moved out six years ago.
In those early days, my wife and I would take walks through Altadena’s magical old neighborhoods. I would stare at one home in particular, with its steep roof and massive chimney. I often told my wife that, one day, I would own that house. On the ground floor stood a solarium with leaded glass walls. I could see the oak paneling inside and see the whole interior in my mind’s eye.
After the fire, I slipped past the police lines. I took pictures of other homes that we admired and looked at the photographs online to remind myself what these piles of ash had once been. When I reached my favorite house, only the chimney remained. That and a small USC flag near the garden gate.
I imagine that my old neighbors in the Pacific Palisades will be making the same walks in the days to come. They’ll recall white stucco walls adorned with neon bougainvillea or ficus hedges shielding some fading star’s privacy.
But the rest of the country must understand: this world of The Beach Boys, The Parent Trap, avant-garde architects, physicists, novelists, of soft Southern California light was once here. Now it’s gone, and it will never come back. The imagination that made Old California come to life was snuffed out long ago. It won’t be remade by tech bros, influencers, or anyone else. Here, in this pretty world, Old California took its last bow.
Photo by Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images