Cool Millions
Now that the Eastside is the font of all things
hip, a new breed of entrepreneur is cashing in on the
buzz. But success is a funny thing in a community that
disdains the sorts of vulgar displays common on the
other side of town.
September, 1999
Chaim Magnum is having a fantastic year. As a partner
in Dragon Talent, a Los Feliz modeling agency
specializing in what he calls "hip alternative talent,"
Magnum has placed more than 250 punks, drag queens and
other denizens of L.A.'s Eastside into television and
prim ads. Suddenly, corporate giants like IBM, Pepsi and
the Gap can't seem to sell anything without the help of
a scruffy Eastsider. Not long ago, Magnum spotted a
willowy young guy pumping cappuccino on La Brea; two
months later, Sam Stefanski had cleared more than
$30,000 appearing in ads for Arco, Lexus and Max Factor.
These days, when Magnum turns on the television, it
seems like his clients are in every other ad.
Magnum has earned enough from the agency to afford
his dream car, a tricked-out green and gold Mercedes.
The car means a lot to him, but he isn't enjoying it,
really. Driving to and from work, Magnum says he can't
help imagining all the kids in their geezer-chic getups
and vintage clunkers glaring at the
sleek-young-agent-type rolling in a Benz, muttering to
themselves the worst insult imaginable: How Westside.
Success is a funny thing on the Eastside of Los
Angeles. And suddenly, a lot of people are laughing.
All around the hood, from the heights of Silver Lake
to the flats of East Hollywood, the spoils of the go-go
'90s are financing the construction of Alternative
Nation's de facto capital. The Los Angeles city clerk's
office reports that the number of new business licenses
issued in the area has doubled in the past four years,
from 405 to 814. On Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake,
long-shuttered shops now sell Heywood-Wakefield school
chairs, vintage clothing and other essential signifiers
of L.A.'s cooler-than-thou crowd, while on Hillhurst
Avenue, no fewer than nine new restaurants have opened
in the past year, offering everything from organic
pappardelle at Purans to--gasp--corporate lattes at the
Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Meanwhile, houses in the
Franklin Hills and Los Feliz are selling as fast as the
signs are posted.
Behind this latter-day gold rush is a new class of
hipster with a head for business. Playing up their
independence and street cred (and playing down their
paydays when their ships come in), these
alterna-entrepreneurs ;are establishing fiefdoms that
put them in league with any pell-mell Westside
capitalist. All the while, their casual-chic
restaurants, po-mo fashions and indie-rock nightclubs
and record labels are profoundly bending the
pop-cultural bandwidth, extending the neighborhood's
cachet far beyond the city limits. Ladies and gentlemen
of greater Los Angeles--and the world--meet the Eastside
moguls.
•••
IT'S LATE THURSDAY NIGHT AND THE BOOTHS ARE PACKED at
Vida, the unmarked Los Feliz restaurant that, more than
any other establishment, has set the tone for the
Eastside's self-conscious commercialism. Cruising club
sharks sip $9.50 margaritas while a Hollywood Hills
crowd in the dining room, their faces dim in the spare
spot lighting, picks over domes of puffed bread and
architectural towers of charred tuna. The menu features
cute little dishes like "Mo Larry Cheese" (smoked pork
loin) and "Suzanne's Goin' on a Picnic" (salad with
Roquefort and French pears). From the drinks to the
decor, everything is drenched in 'tude.
That attitude flows directly from Fred Eric, a
36-year-old former pastry chef who started Vida five
years ago. No one has done more to package and profit
from the Eastside than Eric, an antsy guy whose baggy
Adidas tracksuits and moppish haircut make him look more
like an art school dropout than a ragingly successful
lifestyle entrepreneur. After partnering with Sean
MacPherson and Jon Sidel on the seminal '80s eatery
Olive, Eric opened Vida in an area whose biggest claim
to culinary fame was a taco stand frequented by former
New York Times food critic Ruth Reichl. But with unusual
cuisine and canny promotion--his "Punk Rock Karaoke
Nights" spawned a nightclub act currently touring the
United States--Eric created something every restaurateur
strives for: a destination. On any night, maybe a third
of the patrons are local. The rest journey from far
outside the normal nightlife orbit to immerse themselves
in Eric's fastidiously conjured Eastside cool.
"The people here are mostly 310s and 818s," Eric
says. "They have to drive to get here, but once they do,
there's a completely different vibe."
The same dynamic is in full force at Eric's latest
venture, Fred 62, a tractor-green diner that's been
packing them in for two years with self-consciously
eclectic fare like baked meatloaf and soba noodles. With
its faux '50s leather booths and piercings-intensive
waitstaff, Fred 62 is shunned by most locals. "It's so
goddamned contrived," seethes Jo Michelle, a thrift-shop
wholesaler who supplies vintage-clothing shops in Los
Feliz. "It's for all the kids who saw Swingers and want
to don some hair grease and a clipon nose ring for the
afternoon."
But while locals grouse, Eric says he is averaging
about 3,000 customers a week. He won't talk money--just
about no one in the Eastside entrepreneurial class
deigns to--but even at a modest $15 per head, his weekly
gross at Fred 62 comes to $45,000, or roughly $2 million
annually. With that kind of cash flow, Eric can afford
to indulge fantasies like his two-tone '57 Chevy and
goldflake '69 Buick Electra, each customized to reflect
the themes of his restaurants.
And make no mistake: Not everyone is put off by the
Westside interlopers--or the money--that his restaurants
have drawn into the neighborhood. One morning, Eric was
approached by Lily Tomlin, who lived in nearby Laughlin
Park. "I want to thank you personally," she told him,
"for raising the value of my property." (Indeed, in
July, Tomlin sold her house for nearly $3 million.)
As most Eastside entrepreneurs discovered early on,
coolness is a commodity. And no one understands that
dictum better than Robin Harrington, who runs Dragon
Talent with partner Magnum. "Corporations need coolness
to sell products," declares Harrington. "And we've got
more of it here than anyone else."
Harrington, a severely stylish 31-year-old who favors
chunky oval eyeglasses and leather pants, did this
cultural calculation five years ago while promoting
underground Eastside clubs like Shaft, Glue and
Minitruck. Figuring that the fashion extravagance of
certain clubgoing friends was wasted on fellow
clubgoers, the former Long Beach High cheerleader
cleared out a room in her Los Feliz home and started
working the phones.
What began as a talent agency strictly for drag
queens quickly grew to include a stable of punks with
piercings, photogenic fetishists and the scruffy Gen X
kids too short or big-nosed to get signed by the
agencies in Beverly Hills. Most of Dragon Talent's
clients come right off the street--Harrington and Magnum
keep a close eye out their office window in Los Feliz,
where the foot traffic on Vermont Avenue around the
Dresden cocktail lounge and a vintage shop called
Squaresville is intense. One morning, Harrington spotted
a woman sporting "a cute pink tank top, wild hair, hip
huggers--really exotic, definitely mixed ethnicity."
"`Oh my God, that girl is so fierce,'" Magnum recalls
yelling. "`Whoever's got the lowest platforms has got to
go down and grab her!'"
Harrington says she has no qualms about lending
corporate giants the legitimizing cloak of Eastside
cool. "Advertisers want hipness, and they're going to
get it one way or another," she says. "The kids from
around here are the ones who came up with these great
styles. They deserve the money and recognition."
And Harrington, who is rapidly ditching the
thrift-store rags in her closet in favor of designer
duds, sees no contradiction in living large while
selling street cool to clueless corporations. "If I want
to carry a Gucci bag and drive a new Volvo station
wagon," she says, "people better just get used to it."
It can be argued that the real reason Eastsiders like
Fred Eric and Dragon Talent have done so well has
nothing to do with the Eastside itself. In a good
economy, all boats rise--even a few steered by captains
with white-boy dreadlocks. Just look at Brett Gurewitz.
The former guitarist for Bad Religion established the
wildly successful Silver Lake label Epitaph Records and
signed such indie stalwarts as Rancid, NOFX and Agnostic
Front. After another of his label's bands, the
Offspring, sold 8 million copies of their record Smash,
Gurewitz inked a deal with Sony for the worldwide rights
for the next album for a cool $6 million.
And for every punk tycoon like Gurewitz, there are a
hundred young hopefuls drawn east to start a career and
family while staying true to. fuzzy Gen X ideals of
authenticity. "Houses in the Franklin Hills and north of
Los Feliz are selling very, very quickly," says Arnon
Raphael, a broker for Fred Sands who has watched the
value of most Eastside properties rise by 20 to 30
percent in less than five years. "You're seeing a lot of
younger couples and Industry people moving in, buying
houses that belonged to people who waited years for the
market to get better." At the beginning of July, there
were 14 homes in escrow in Los Feliz alone, ranging from
$450,000 to $950,000, most of them with turnarounds of
less than a week. One rundown Mediterranean in a leafy
Los Feliz culde-sac was put on the market by a widower
in his eighties--the 3,300-square-foot home was quickly
snapped up for $785,000. In the Franklin Hills, a
1,500-square-foot Spanish two-bedroom sold for $479,000
within a week of being listed. Itty-bitty fixer-uppers
north of Hollywood Boulevard are going for more than
$500,000, while prices in the foothills easily surpass
$1 million.
Helping fuel the Eastside real estate boom is the
spiking celebrity quotient. Leonardo DiCaprio, Geena
Davis, Beck and the Red Hot Chili Peppers all own homes
in the area, and the Beastie Boys headquarter their
Grand Royal Records in Atwater Village. Then there's the
residency of a certain Kabbalah-following pop star.
"Madonna moving here validated everything," says Andrew
Dibben, a clothing designer who relocated to Silver Lake
from London six years ago. "Before, nobody in London or
Paris knew that there even was an Eastside of L.A. Now
we're on the map."
The buzz can make an enormous difference in a fickle
business like fashion. Dibben considered setting up shop
on the Westside but decided to open his boutique, where
he manufactures and sells his high-end "postgender"
clothing, in Silver Lake. "There's a lot of money in
these hills," Dibben says. "People just aren't so
conspicuous. The people earning over here might look
like punks, but most of them are computer designers and
music executives and those who can afford to buy nice
things. And they don't like going west to shop."
Scott Mangan proved that principle five years ago
with Rubbish. Starting with $2,000 and a hunch that
midcentury furnishings were about to get hot, the former
wardrobe assistant has since opened a second store in
Pasadena and a decorating service; he did celebrity
photographer Herb Ritts's Santa Monica studio. But
Mangan points out that doing business in Silver Lake
also means doing without basic city services taken for
granted on the Westside, forcing local moguls to
literally get down and dirty. "I clean the street and
trim the trees," he says. "Running a business over here,
you're really on your own."
Nevertheless, for successful Eastside entrepreneurs,
even the appearance of self-sufficiency is coveted.
That's because when they hit pay dirt, they tend to
cover their tracks. No self-respecting Eastsider would
be caught dead bragging about his stock options or even
his bar receipts. While this modesty may be rooted in
basic decency, it also makes a twisted kind of business
sense. "If something grows to the point that business is
big enough, people think it belongs on the Westside,"
says Reno Goodale, co-owner of the Back Door bakery, a
neighborhood hangout that is prospering less than a mile
away from a struggling new Starbucks. "You keep your
success to yourself."
That could explain why truly grand houses tucked away
from view, like the former Chaplin estate in Laughlin
Park or Madonna's Vermont Canyon hacienda, are popular
with Eastside moguls who want to stay in the
neighborhood but not flaunt their fortunes. And why the
busiest restaurants, like Cafe Stella, have remained
wedged behind pet groomers. And why some of the richest
entrepreneurs often look like Cafe Tropical owner Jeff
Bey, a compact and balding Afghan-Sicilian who wouldn't
look out of place cheering his kids at a neighborhood
soccer match. Bey lives in Los Feliz's exclusive Oaks
district and says he doesn't feel tremendous allegiance
with other Eastside entrepreneurs. "Remember, this is
only the Eastside to white people," he points out. "To
Latinos, everything west of downtown is the Westside."
The Eastside boom owes much to Bey, who three years
ago sank $3 million into a fading East Hollywood
establishment. The business was Hollywood Billiards, and
the 30,000-square-foot pool hall and restaurant went on
to revitalize a particularly dodgy patch of Hollywood
Boulevard. The warehouse-size room is a favorite
Industry party spot, hosting an Ally McBeal wrap party
and events for Sony, Disney and EMI. Such glitzy
goings-on would have been unthinkable when Bey decided
10 years ago to ditch his job as a corporate attorney
and seek his fortune instead in a dank basement that
smelled of cigar smoke and cat pee.
"It had everything wrong with it," Bey says. "It was
on the worst corner in Hollywood, in the worst condition
imaginable. The cashier was in a cage, for Christ's
sake. My family thought I was nuts." After closing due
to earthquake damage and being rebuilt a few blocks
east--this time complete with a trattoria and
Mediterranean-style courtyard--Hollywood Billiards began
attracting a finer breed of shark. Bey now owns a second
pool hall in San Francisco, and he says that banks have
estimated the total worth of the businesses to be as
high as $7 million.
Of all the success stories on the Eastside, some of
the biggest belong to the barkeeps. "People like to
drink over here," Eric points out. "And the people who
count the receipts are making a killing." Like Steve
Edelson, a 37-year-old from Chicago who moved here 10
years ago after working in construction. Starting with a
bar in central Hollywood, Edelson built a nightlife
dynasty that now includes the Silver Lake rock dive the
Garage, Home in Los Feliz, Dragonfly and Hells Gate in
Hollywood, the Joint and Martini Lounge on Melrose and a
just-opened Santa Monica club called Lush that "packages
the Eastside environment for a mass audience," as he
puts it. Edelson won't quote specific dollar figures but
says his businesses grossed in the millions last year
alone, allowing him to plop down $700,000 cash for a
12,000-square-foot English Tudor compound north of Los
Feliz Boulevard that used to belong to Basil Rathbone.
Edelson says he owes his success to understanding the
financial peculiarities of the typical Eastside club
rat. "A guy in Santa Monica with $20 in his pocket will
stop at Blockbuster and Koo Koo Roo, and that's his
night," he says. "A guy over here will stop and buy two
99-cent tacos, get heartburn and spend the rest of his
money seeing a band at a bar. That's my kind of guy."
Edelson's eminence notwithstanding, the nightclub
that really put the Eastside on the map is Spaceland.
Founder Mitchell Frank shrewdly booked early gigs by
influential Eastside acts like Beck, the Geraldine
Fibbers and the Negro Problem. Soon mainstream
tastemakers descended, capped by a Los Angeles Times
feature with a photograph of a Spaceland crowd and the
much-chuckled-over headline SILVER LAKE IS ON FIRE!
Frank did just fine during the ensuing feeding frenzy,
establishing a record label, Nickelbag, with hot
Eastside producers the Dust Brothers (Beck, David
Bowie). With Disney-owned Mammoth Records in
negotiations to buy the label, the 38-year-old club
owner has purchased a midcentury modern in the Los Feliz
hills, complete with a Jacuzzi, pool and perfect view of
the Griffith Park Observatory.
Frank, somewhat disingenuously, frets that successes
like his encourage bigger, blander businesses to move
in. "When I started Spaceland, I was wildcatting out
here," he says. "Once you hit money, the corporations
come in and co-opt everything. It's already happening.
It's only a matter of time before the whole area gets
gobbled up." Indeed, the nightmare for self-respecting
Eastsiders--at least when speaking for the record--is an
invasion of TGI Fridays and California Pizza Kitchens.
"Leave us alone!" cries Patti Peck, owner of the Sunset
Boulevard diner Millie's, which serves as a kind of job
placement program for punk rock performers. "Right now,
we're walking a fine line between having a thriving
community and getting taken over by the big boys."
Eventually, the big boys will win. They always do,
says Monah Li, a designer of punk couture who pulled in
$600,000 last year at her shop on Vermont Avenue. "All
of a sudden, it's like the new Beverly Hills," she says.
The influx of capital will undoubtedly alter the
neighborhood--proof is as far away as SoHo or as near as
Melrose Avenue--but Li, candidly enough, says she
doesn't mind. "It'll be a few years before it's ruined,"
she says. "That always happens. But in the meantime,
there's some good money floating around."
And by then, most of those who made it on the
Eastside will have moved on. But where ? Fred Eric
offers a preview. "I'll tell you where the coolest place
is," he declares. "Eagle Rock. If you want to know the
truth, that's the coolest place in the city."
