Despite what you’ve been led to believe in recent days, the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles is not the exclusive domain of the rich and famous. Yes, the Palisades has (or had) a healthy share of celebrities, and there are (or were) wide swaths of multi-million-dollar homes, but in truth, there are plenty of what we might call regular folks living there as well, even a police officer here and there. It is a community in the best sense of the word, where the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy go to the same churches, shop in the same stores, eat in the same restaurants, and line Sunset Boulevard every Fourth of July for the annual parade.
I spent my last years as a bachelor living in Pacific Palisades, which is not just one neighborhood but a network of contiguous ones sharing the 90272 zip code: Castellammare, the Highlands, Marquez Knolls, the Bluffs, Huntington, the Alphabet Streets, the Riviera, and Rustic Canyon. Of these, only the Riviera and Rustic Canyon have thus far escaped widespread destruction. Last Tuesday morning about 1,200 homes stood in the Alphabet Streets neighborhood; perhaps a half dozen of them remain.
The apartment building…
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