Beverly Hills

This is the city that most everyone asks about. Everyone wants to know if movie stars are abundant, the streets filled with luxury cars and chauffeured limos and the homes magnificent and opulent. With the exception of seeing actors roaming the streets (though keep your eyes open, you never know) the answer to these questions is usually yes.

This very affluent city is located just north of Hollywood and surrounded by Bel-Air and Westwood (from the west) Santa Monica Mountains and West Hollywood (from the north) and West L.A. and Century City (from the south). It boasts some of the best shopping, dining and entertainment in the county. Of course, Rodeo Road is here and is probably one of the best known and wealthiest shopping street in the world. Also located nearby are two famous hotels: The Beverly Hills Hotel (which features the well known Polo Lounge where Hollywood elite often dine) and the Beverly Wilshire (where Pretty Woman was filmed).

Homes in Beverly Hills are, you guessed it, expensive and beautiful yet you will find modest homes as well. The tree-lined streets have a very traditional feel to them and homes sit back from the roads on well maintained landscaping yet surprisingly most homes are very approachable. But don’t dare. If you don’t look familiar, you will be viewed suspiciously.

Most movie stars don’t live in these neighborhoods today, but years ago, this is where most of the big names in Hollywood lived, particularly on Roxbury Drive. Here, all at one time, lived James Stewart, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny and Rosemary Clooney. Stewart and Ball’s home have since been raised and rebuilt (and they look horrible by the way, so out of character with this charming neighborhood), but this was the place to live many years ago.

Some of the best restaurants are all here as well, including Spago, Crustacean and the already mentioned Polo Lounge. Restaurants from long ago such as Chasen’s and Trader Vic’s were located at one time here.

Beverly Hills is home to excellent schools, but also to many private schools as well. Beverly Hills High School is the only major public high school here and its famous alumni include Angelina Jolie, Rob Reiner, Betty White and Nora Ephron. The school’s one of a kind “swim-gym” where the gymnasium opens up to a swimming pool, was featured in the movie, “Its A Wonderful Life.”

Needless to say, Beverly Hills is an amazing place to call home if you can afford it. It truly is unlike any other community in LA. Gorgeous but not over the top residential areas, magnificent, mature trees, landscaping like no other, beautiful people everywhere, zero crime, it is perfect if this sort of lifestyle is important to you.

Beverly Hills is an affluent city in Los Angeles. It is world-famous for its luxurious culture and famous residents. The city is home to renowned shopping district, Rodeo Drive. Many years ago, I lived in Beverly Hills and the city seemed more elegant and exclusive then as it does now. I can’t see many Rolls Royce anymore, and celebrities have moved to Bel Air, Brentwood, and Calabasas. The median home price on the Palos Verdes Peninsula (South Bay) is now higher than it is in Beverly Hills.

Beverly Hills is overseen by Beverly Hills Unified School District, which includes four K-8 schools (Hawthorne, El Rodeo, Beverly Vista, and Horace Mann), Moreno High School, and the Beverly Hills High School. The schools rank high in the state and the nation.
Roxbury Park is still a beautiful park with a very classy crowd. The park is safe and people play volleyball, walk their dogs, climb on the play structure, have picnics and BBQs.

Beverly Hills Farmer’s Market is a great place to stroll through on a Sunday morning. Parking is free on Sunday in the huge parking structure. Their produce is good, but pricey. They have nice music, petting zoo, pony rides, and great kettle corn for a reasonable price. Occasionally, you can spot a few celebrities. From my experience, people in general are very nice in Beverly Hills.
Traffic can be pretty bad and parking is even worse during the week. Bring lots of coins for a metered parking space, if you are lucky enough to get one.

If you are used to the ocean breezes, Beverly Hills is probably not the place for you. It can get quite hot in the summer, followed by the even hotter Santa Ana winds in the fall. The central location of Beverly Hills is great, though. You can be all over LA within minutes.

Few neighborhoods denote the kind of wealth and elegance that Beverly Hills does. Even now that other neighborhoods have staked their claims to being even more affluent than Beverly Hills, it is still Beverly Hills that gets mentioned when people are reaching for a city that denotes elegance—as in a recent review I read where someone wrote, “the Beverly Hill of San Francisco.” You know you have mastered a particular category when you are being used to symbolize that abstract notion.

These days, Beverly Hills has fallen slightly behind Bel-Air and Brentwood in terms of total wealth. The fabulously wealthy now seem to prefer hillside mansions to the flat, leafy streets and smaller manors that make up much of Beverly Hills. This does not, of course, mean that Beverly Hills is slum; it is hardly that. Home prices are still astronomical and there is still a very palpable cache to living in this historic neighborhood. The homes are pristine and well-kept and the tour buses are only slightly annoying.

Beverly Hills is also a very safe place to live. There is virtually no gang activity and though there have been four murders in the area in the past four years, a closer look at the details makes you realize that all of these were more the result of domestic entanglements than gang violence or property crime gone wrong. The victims also give you a sense of the current residents of the area. One was the brother of a famous actor, one the son of not so well known-director and a third had investments in the adult entertainment industry. Put another way, many of the residents of Beverly Hills are not the top flight actors that once populated the area, but those close to or involved with aspects of the entertainment industry.

A further look at demographics also shows that though 4 out of 5 residents are white, 2 out of 5 are foreign born, with Iranians and Russians being the major countries of origin. Although the population is not as wealthy as that found in Brentwood and Bel-Air, the average household still makes $90K which is nothing to sneeze at.

Furthermore, the Beverly Hills area has excellent private and public schools. Beverly Hills High is top notch and the area is also home to Harvard-Westlake, perhaps LA’s best known and most well-regarded prep school. I had friends who attended Harvard-Westlake and they all went on to prestigious colleges and successful careers.

There are sections of Beverly Hills that have apartments (right off of Santa Monica Boulevard, for example) and that are somewhat affordable, and it is possible for upper-middle class families to live in the area. With Rodeo Drive nearby and the Wilshire Mall, there is certainly no lack of places for someone to spend their money and starlets and trophy wives abound in the area.

Put simply, Beverly Hills is still a place where people go to see and be seen, even if it is now far more accessible to the middle class than it once was.