One hundred and eleven years as an incorporated community and still strutting her stuff. Being perfectly inappropriate about it, Beverly Hills is the sassiest broad boulevard on the walk. In the place that virtually invented glamour, nothing less than being at your best is appropriate. Fresh from the 110th-year celebrations, the city is eager to greet you with a firm handshake and an air kiss on both cheeks. Simon Walton has the air-lipstick marks to prove it.
This is Beverly Hills. Let’s just understand one thing. We’re not in Los Angeles. West LA is miles down West Sunset, all the way to Los Angeles City Hall. So, if you’re going to do eleven miles, turn around and head west, along Santa Monica Boulevard, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Everyone needs a day trip, and it’s the first time you’ll have seen the ocean since landing at LAX, when your driver toured you around the west side of the airport, along Vista Del Mar (“Vision of the Sea, appropriately) and on to Culver to join the freeway. The cool dude behind the hood avoids airport traffic, and a few minutes later, you're turning onto - is that really Santa Monica Boulevard? Yes, it is! Has someone put Sheryl Crow on the radio, or is it Tom Petty, rest his soul?
Smooth buses and smoother streets with a sunny outlook. Definitely not back in bumpy Blighty. One could easily get used to this. Like a conveyor belt, 90210 glides by. You’re in your own opening titles. A regeneration of some glamorous nineties soap or your contemporary reality take: The Real Visitors of Beverly Hills. Rhinestone cellphone and shades the size of dinner plates, optional extras.
Fantasies come true
And there’s Julie Wagner, looking like she just filmed her latest scene and wrapped from the set of Melrose Place. In fact, she just stepped around the block from Melrose Place. Yes, it exists, and so do plenty of other movie locations too. How is our guide and very own star attraction today? Julie takes it all in good heart and in her confident stride. Just like every other one of Beverly Hills 33,000 inhabitants.
“It’s good to have fantasies,” she laughs the friendly, self-deprecating laugh that brightens up the day as surely as the west Californian sun, streaming down the palm-lined medians of a dozen wide boulevards. “I don’t think that everyone knows there’s an organisation that helps find the best for your group here in Beverly Hills,” says Julie. “Some people organise independent visits, but we are happy to help for free.”
Julie’s level of helpfulness is far from uncommon in the “Hills”, but she has a professional interest in making your stay as friendly and frictionless as possible. Her business card explains her happy obligation as Chief Executive Officer at the Beverly Hills Conference and Visitors Bureau. It’s good to be with such a “well-kent” face. A little Scottish vernacular goes a long way - and she loves the accent. Every boutique door down each tree-lined boulevard is thrown open to her with a knowing welcome.
“It’s much more than shopping and eating,” Julie says. “Come and enjoy the VIP shopping trips for sure, but enjoy the greenery, the history of this one hundred and eleven-years young city,” Julie emphasises that heritage is very important to UK visitors. Beverly Hills has that in abundance. It sits well, alongside the modernity and everyday chic. Face it, if you can’t flaunt it here, where can
you? Beverly Hills does a fine job of living up to expectations and then surprising you again. “Shopping trips, beautiful mansions, tours with the friends of Greystone [a city owned mansion, gardens, theatre, and estate that the National Trust would salivate over], and much more. All we ask is that you base yourself in BH.”
Timeless landmarks
Staying in Beverly Hills is never a hardship, of course, but doing so has gotten much easier since the borough turned into the big “111”. Last year saw the sort of festivities that most American cities will still have to wait decades to experience. In direct celebration of that five score and ten years, Beverly Hills welcomed more than 30 new shopping, dining and cultural experiences. However,
there was no “out with the old”. Beverly Hills has a reputation for its immaculately built heritage. It was earned with a keen and sympathetic regard for detail. While global hospitality icons eye Beverly Hills for a new site to put down roots, the timeless hotel landmarks have been vying for the crown of most authentic revamp. True to their past, yet ready to welcome any modern-day Pretty Woman (and handsome man) through the front door. Just for the record, you don’t have to be Roberts or Gere to make a reservation.
Delve a little deeper into the grid of proudly primped boulevards and leisurely strollable side streets that make up the central district. You find that Beverly Hills really does have a long-established cultural and culinary heart, that’s beating as strong as ever. Embrace the retail therapy like it should be done.
“Beverly Hills is the premier luxury destination in the greater LA region,” says Julie, with that curious modesty that tempers her evident delight at representing the place she calls home. “We’re looking forward to rolling out a huge welcome for the 2026 World Cup semi-finals, 2027 Super Bowl LXI and the 2028 Summer Olympics,” she says, beaming with anticipation.
We’re exploring the restaurants of Beverly Hills, where alfresco dining means the pergolas are as prolific as the people. All the restaurant covers are uncovered, except in the hottest part of the day. This is certainly where comfortable walking shoes have four-inch heels. Walking from the valet to the maitre’d is just one of the possible routes you might take in this world-class walkable village.
“Table for two, Sir. Oh, it’s you, Ms Wagner. Right this way.”
It’s where you want to be
We all think we know where Beverly Hills might be. It’s right here in our living rooms. A fantasy place in our heads, but just where on the map is nowhere most British people could get within a hundred miles. “No,” says Julie. “That’s where I go back to saying something for every lifestyle. Come on, let’s check out Cannon Drive “little restaurant row” (missed that on the way in, gawping the other way at the Beverly Hills sign on Santa Monica Boulevard).
The climate is generally very pleasant. Julie says it can get “spicy” in summer. It’s a chaparral climate, what we Brits call “hot”. Then again, the snow of Arrowhead is only two hours distant. At the risk of letting a sumptuously healthy lunch get cold, Julie explains. “We are our own city, with local government, funding, resources, right in the middle of Los Angeles County. We’re next door to West Hollywood, just minutes from LA International Airport, Universal Studios, and downtown LA,” she says. She lays to rest the sobriquet of “hip suburban cousin to Los Angeles. “We’re like Mayfair, I think,” she says - and that doesn’t mean an oligarch on every corner.” All the buildings are height limited. We’re only 5.7 square miles, and the central business district is just 1.2 miles. It’s a walkable village. City services are all our own. The streets feel different. It’s lovely to walk the park and get your obligatory picture at the famous Beverly Hills sign. Then you’ll probably just want to step into The Beverly Hills Hotel, and why not?”
Julie underestimates the appeal of BH to the UK. We Brits will be stopping every five paces for a quick selfie next to anything chicer than a 7-Eleven convenience store. Have a bit of respect, people. This is home to 33,000 people and, contrary to popular belief, the demonym for someone from Beverly Hills is not “star”. So don’t tread on the lawns, there’s a good fellow. Be a proper tourist - like Julie. “I have been coming here since I was five years old. My first trip was, no surprise, shopping. It was a day out with ‘mom’. We were thrilled to be visiting Saks Fifth Avenue, and we were not disappointed. I guess I was hooked from then on in. So much so that I ended up working here. I used to work for Hilton HQ in Beverly Hills. The rest isn’t exactly history, but it’s in my resumé. I think it is a beautiful place. It feels lovely to be here. It is not unusual to go to an organic grocery store and pick up a healthy lunch and enjoy it in the park. Beverly Hills is a one-
stop shop. It has accessibility around every corner. All those famous hotels have their own personalities, and that goes for Beverly Hills at large. There isn’t anywhere really like it.”
It’s a short trip to the famous Griffith Observatory, for that even more famous view of all the vast conurbation to the south. For all that, it’s still obvious that Beverly Hills is a step aside, a place apart from all the fictional noir of Sam Spade, Philip Marlow, John McClane and Rick Deckard. “It’s a safe neighbourhood with a three-minute response time,” reassures Julie, and we’re left wishing for something as rapid back home. “Our community is very tight here. It’s like an enclave, and within that, there’s remarkable variety here. I think of it as customisable luxury.”
Secrets shared
True enough, hardly any time passes and getting around on foot is no problem. Well, if not for stopping at every boutique shop, more fabulous than the last, delaying progress to a delightful crawl. Rodeo Drive is a movie set all in itself. So much has been committed to celluloid over the years. “There’s no getting away from it,” says Julie. “There’s the Rainbow Fountains, featured in Clueless, and there’s the Avalon Hotel - you’ll feel like you know it already. James Corden did Carpool Karaoke around the streets here, and of course, the “Housewives” have been all over. There are plenty of walking tours of sets and locations, and you can end up at the Beverly Hilton, where it all comes together for the Golden Globes awards presentation. You’ll be tripping over the glitterati on that night. No matter when you want to tour, we can host groups with anything from a Rolls Royce to a commuter van to a coach.”
With that, it’s to an almost as luxurious blacked out limousine that Julie would take us to her personal hideaway. A place that’s not on Wilshire Boulevard, not on the corner of Beverly and La Cienega, nor with a film crew preparing for another take. “There are different places for different people, of course. You’ve asked me for a little peace and quiet. I’d say Beverly Hills has its own sort of peace and quiet. It’s a friendly, busy place, so you don’t feel quite the same pressure here, despite the fact that almost a quarter of a million people come for work and leisure every day. Few of them, though, find their way to the serenity that Julie has in mind. Then again, we all need a little privacy for a while. I’m sworn to secrecy.