Notes from a haunted LA
Why Erewhon now tops the tourist trail, how to feel like a celeb for just 10 dollars, and who's the new crown princess of La-la land
Hello! I wrote this (not so) fresh from a work trip to LA, which was more gothic than I remembered as we approached Halloween. Once-dingy motels turned into boujie hotels, stringy palm trees black against the sunsets, 10ft skeletons propped outside 1930s mansions, and these sinister crows I spotted on a hike up to the Observatory on the slope of Mount Hollywood (I discovered afterwards) in Griffith Park:
I have been for many a walk but never a hike back home in London. And this was a hike I can assure you - I know we tend to snicker at our American friends’ tendency to don athleisure and call a stroll a hike, but as I trekked up to dusty trails, throat bone-dry after 10 minutes in the desert air, passing a (British) couple who had attempted to bring a baby in a buggy up there with them and were mid-rescue by one of those wiry, old and deeply tanned men who live for such moments… I had to admit: this is hiking.
The whole city felt older, quieter and bigger than I remembered from a visit post-uni, a vast sprawl of streets built on cinematic scale. I love a city that feels like it’s just managing to keep itself apart from the wilderness, and standing at the top of the hills you could see the tidy grid of roads slipping back in the scrubby woodland they came from - and perhaps closer than can be fully comfortable; the fires are still top of mind.
But beautiful nonetheless - I caught a deer wide-eyed in the brush close by James Dean’s statue, a humming bird fluttering between the hikers.
Can the PSL save Starbucks?
Go west to find the wild and weird, a preview of what’s to come our way from the place where lifestyle trends are born and die. So what’s happening there right now? Autumn, rolled out like a branding exercise.
I enjoyed this Starbucks ad I taxied past seemingly paying homage to YSL branding as it flags the return of its pumpkin spice latte, so big you don’t even need to spell it out:
In the land of eternal sunshine, you can mark the passing of the year by the flavours in your coffee: the seasonal traditions now include what we buy, like it or not. We’re following suit in the UK, if social media is anything to go by - and as our seasons all get a little more indistinguishable too, if muggy and grey rather than forever sunny.
Funnily enough, this is Starbucks’ first ever ad campaign dedicated to the PSL, ever since it launched in 2003 and became a cliche of the season. But Starbucks has just seen six consecutive quarters of decline, and the CEO is on a turnaround mission which includes closing hundreds of stores and - listen to the people! - bringing back er chairs. So a lot is hanging on that PSL pulling power…
Judging by the menus I saw, it seems to all be about matcha now anyway.
Super Uber
In London you can be waiting for 15 minutes for an Uber these days, but at least we have the Tube; in LA, I dodged the subway - being a pedestrian there can be intense enough - but luckily an Uber seemed to be only a couple of minutes away every time. Also, for some reason - weirdness around demand, perhaps - it was the same price to get Uber Black, which in LA is a vast celebrity-worth 4x4 where you’d hum around in style, as the regular version. So I’d pull up in an glossy black Escalade for a trip round the block with my too-heavy-to-walk suitcase.
Except when I went to Malibu - fewer Ubers there - and the driver spent the hour-long trip to LAX both listening to an AI-voiced book Creativity Inc., by the founder of the Pixar studio, while simultaneously advising his pal / gf / client via speakerphone on what to post to her socials / how own manifestation plans. La-la land lives on.
More useful perhaps with Ubers, if you identify yourself as female, you can request a female driver (LA is one of the cities they’ve been piloting this in since July) and again not have to wait an age. Perfect for late-night trips - you could feel both sides’ relief.
Where the stars buy their pills
Never mind the Hollywood sign - top of the new tourist trail for LA arrivals has to be Erewhon, the super-ritzy grocers that is home to Hailey Bieber’s famous pink smoothie and $18.50 sandwiches packed with organic turkey (they do at least stuff sandwiches with fillings in a way we never manage at home, and every ingredient was organic. You have to pay to avoid the additives over there.)
So, a lot like the vast WholeFoods in Kensington if you’re looking for a homegrown equivalent, but still pricier. The big difference? Even more supplements. Collagen and therapeutic mushrooms seem to be the ingredients in right now, leaking into the much less glam supermarket half the price near my hotel. So, surely flooding our way soon.
The queen of the city
Talking of Hailey B - her presence was everywhere, from the Erewhon smoothie bar to looming over the city in billboard ads (for a credit card, natch, among other campaigns). Emma Chamberlain, the creator-turned-coffee entrepreneur, boasted her own glossy billboards too. If celebrities once dislodged models from the cover shots and ad campaigns, now the influencers are dislodging the traditional celebs. But then the biggest influencers are celebs now anyway, and often vice versa.
The billboards told another story of a cultural shift, too - the prime spots now held not by movies but the streamers’ spooky new offerings: the new season of Netflix’s Wednesday, another round of its serial killer show Monster, neo-noir The Lowdown starring Ethan Hawke, to be found on FX/ Hulu / Disney depending on the day.
Scary time to be a film exec.
Return of the mall rats
Post-Erewhon: off to the triumvirate of teen-friendly shops that this millennial can’t kick: Glossier with its claw prize machine (won an eyeshadow), Kim’s Skims HQ on Sunset with a vast headless body statue (hers?), and, best of all, Aritzia - like a simpler, better quality (ish) Zara, which I hope lands from Canada in the UK too.
I remembered what I’d heard about the Aritzia changing rooms just as I handed my stuff to the assistant leading me in - no mirrors in the cubicles, forcing you to step out into the fray - but to anyone raised on high street horrors it was a breeze (didn’t TopShop do the same or is that an AI-style hallucination?). Plus, everything was cheaper than you can buy it for in the UK, even with the strong dollar / weak pound.
Or perhaps the magic was just the fun of IRL shopping, too. The Grove captured everything I love about malls: walkable, outside, decorated a bit like a Disney village, excellent snacks. The tedious to-do list of online shopping packages to return could never - but our shops are so bare of merch and sizes now that we’re forced into it.
Maybe like prestige print magazines and vinyl, the best malls will survive the digital shopping revolution in some form - if they remember to keep it fun.
Perfectly deep pan
The best thing I ate was pizza, of all things, booked by a colleague with connections - the queue was down the street. Apparently LA has Italian spots but not a lot of great pizza places, and this one, Quarter Sheets, was out of this world: offering a soft fluffy foccacia-like base - deep pan but somehow light - with fresh toppings, that we followed up with old-school puddings: a whisper-light Princess cake, an iced sponge that was pretty as its namesake; and a thick chocolate pie with a hint of salt.
A Halloween horror show for the waistline, maybe, but worth every bite.