I pull up to the Grill's valet parking stand on the alleyway behind
Wilshire Boulevard and step into another stage set: a New York
steak house, transplanted. It's packed and noisy, with precisely
one empty stool at the bar, which holds a woman's purse. She
removes it with a flourish and says, "Sit right down!" without
taking her eyes off the basketball game on the television overhead.
By 7:30, agents, studio heads, lawyers, and their clients are
streaming through the door, taking every available table and
leaving a long waiting list.
Back in the convertible, I toss a five to the valet guys (the fee
is $4.50 everywhere) and pop in the cassette to see where Martin is
sending me next, which I hope is to dinner. But he's still talking
about shopping.
"It's a walking town, too," he says. "You can walk around Beverly
Hills. It is very nice after dinner to just take a walk and
window-shop. You can go down Rodeo, up Beverly, and just look in
the windows. It's very quiet in the evenings."
Rodeo Drive is so quiet at 7:45 that almost every parking spot is
empty, quite the opposite of only a few hours before. Back then,
every spot was perpetually taken, and I was blasted with a dirge of
honking if I dared to even pause a millisecond for a spot to clear.
Strolling up Rodeo, I immediately realize Martin is right: It's
better at night. The air has turned chilly, like a New England
summer, and I have the famous street all to myself. I walk beneath
endless designer logos, window-shopping the bedecked windows. Then
I climb the street called Via Rodeo, the hilly cobblestone shopping
village of high-end boutiques, salons, and bistros, which, a tour
guide proclaimed in Pretty Woman, "is the first new street built in
Beverly Hills in 75 years!" There's a re-creation of the Spanish
Steps, a fountain perfect for tossing coins into, two hours of free
valet parking, and tables full of outdoor diners, which, on the
evening of my visit, included one Via Rodeo tenant, Elizabeth
Taylor's longtime hairdresser, José Eber.
It's nine by the time I get back to the car, and Martin's
dispatching me away from
Beverly Hills Proper and into Beverly
Hills Adjacent.