“This town was fake tits and fake faces. But 10 years ago, new people started to move here.” The art world, he says, was the catalyst. “When New York got too expensive for artists, the interesting people moved here. But how do we not become a city only for rich people?”
It’s a fair question. At the Frieze Los Angeles art fair last year, held at the Santa Monica Airport, I whizzed toward a hangar on the back of a Deutsche Bank–provided golf cart, passing Heidi Klum; Tyler, the Creator; and Larry David. Inside, it was a fizzy concentration of celebrity, influencers, and tote bags with messages. At the end of the day, I stood in front of a piece by Tacita Dean, a British-born artist who now lives in Los Angeles and Berlin. I listened as two men with waxed mustaches and sequined sailor hats discussed the mounted installation, which consisted of souvenir beach postcards and a ball of salt.
“It’s an ode to California, the salt air, the end of the continent,” said one, with a tote bag that heralded “Sad Gay Bar.” “Mmm-hmmmm,” said the other, whose tote bag read “Assholes Live Forever,” turning his head to clock Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber. “I just see a ball of white stuff.”
Right off Sycamore is the just-opened Marian Goodman Gallery, which represents Dean. PhilippeVergne was previously the chief curator at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art. He agrees with Klein on the recent East Coast–West Coast exchange of energy. “In the ’70s, for example, when everybody went to CalArts, John Baldessari, who taught there, would tell them, ‘Go to New York to start a career.’ ” The art world was very New York–centric, he explains. “No longer.” The vastness, the sprawl, and even the loneliness that’s baked into the city’s ethos, he muses, is good for art.
In 1933, Mrs. Rosamond Borde opened The Georgian in Santa Monica, just across from the iconic pier. The swanky Tiffany-blue property had 84 rooms and stiff (and discreet) drinks. It hosted the biggest stars at the time, including Fatty Arbuckle and Carole Lombard. By the ’50s the Kennedys were VIPs. By the ’70s it had lost its luster.
But today in LA, old is new and nostalgia is fresh capital. With old-timey bikes and older-timey bellhops out front in natty uniforms, a sparkling coat of paint, and a new owner, the Georgian is the buzziest property in town. Checking into the hotel’s restaurant requires getting past a bouncer, ringing a bell, and allowing the maître d’ to put a sticker on your phone’s camera lens to prevent photos.
“I like to think we’re the Sunset Tower of Santa Monica,” says Jon Blanchard, founder and CEO of BLVD Hospitality, the company that owns The Georgian, as we enter the lobby and walk past an abstract painting by Sharon Stone, up a set of marble stairs and into the tucked-in reception desk. Indeed, from the dark and private nooks and crannies to the chic, carefully worn-in finery of it all—and the vaguely famous vibe of the guests—it does resemble Sunset Tower. The Georgian is, it should be noted, reportedly haunted. Guests tell of closed curtains opening overnight and calls placed from unoccupied rooms. I ask Blanchard, and he says, “Maybe? It’s LA.”
I make it to my ocean-facing suite in time to watch the sunset. There are four buttons in my room: “champagne,” “dessert,” “book club,” and, seemingly prearranged for regulars, “the usual.” I press “book club,” and shortly an LA classic, Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, is delivered to my room. I crack the book and I see some of my favorite lines: I am what I am. To look for reasons is beside the point.
That night, with my phone’s camera blinded by stickers, I dine at the Georgian Room. It feels dark and private, and the menu is, as Curtis would agree, basic. Which is to say it is a classic steak joint, in the same spot where Judy Garland dined some 60 years ago. As a singer sits down at the piano and begins to sing, and I tuck into a whole branzino and an indulgent doppio ravioli, I realize exactly what Jamie Lee Curtis meant. Blanchard is honoring the fundamentals of LA—from cinema to architecture to cuisine.
Upstairs I open the windows and invite in the salt air from across the street. I watch the lit-up Ferris wheel on the pier slowly spin. I remember that the curtains were definitely closed when I left for dinner.
This article appeared in the March 2024 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
