Originally appeared in Vanity Fair April, 2002

BY: Amy Wallace

There are glitzy Los Angeles restaurants – Mortons, Ago, Mr. Chow – where Hollywood’s top stars and reigning moguls go to be seen. Then there are no-nonsense spots where the same A-list crowd goes to simply eat in peace: the Apple Pan in Westwood, Nate ‘n Al’s Deli in Beverly Hills, O’Brien’s Irish Pub & Restaurant in Santa Monica, and Pink’s in the heart of Hollywood.

Brad Pitt has been known to stand in line at Pink’s, the hot-dog shack that’s been putting wieners in buns for 62 years (and where Orson Welles used to regularly down 10 chili dogs in one sitting).

‘Who’s the guy, Opie? He comes in,’ says Martha Gamble, the owner-manager of the 26-seat Apple Pan, which has served the likes of Jimmy Stewart, Warren Beatty, and, yes, Ron Howard from the same menu for 55 years.

‘My grandfather taught me, ‘Don’t make it too schmaltzy. I don’t want a red carpet out front,’’ says David Mendelson, a vice president of the family-run company that has made Nate ‘n Al’s the place for matzo brei since 1945. Al, David’s grandpa, made discretion one of the restaurant’s signatures, which is why on any given day you cant still see Dick Van Dyke stopping by Larry King’s table to say hi.

William O’Sullivan, who owns O’Briens, prides himself on welcoming his twice-a-week regulars from suburban Diamond Bar (they’re hooked on his $10 Irish Breakfast) just as warmly as he does Russell Crowe or Benicio del Toro.

‘This is not really a celebrity hangout,’ he says. ‘It’s their place to hide and blend in. Nicole was in here just after she broke up with Tom. I get a thrill out of it myself, but the people around them are usually oblivious.’

Originally appeared in Vanity Fair May, 1997

BY: Amy Wallace

TODAY’S SPECIAL: TRUST ME! reads the hand-lettered sign on the wall of Sushi Nozawa. And chef Kazunori Nozawa, one of Los Angeles’ most temperamental restaurateurs, isn’t kidding around.

To occupy one of the nine seats at his counter, a waitress explains to newcomers, is to relinquish control. No ordering, please. You eat what he serves – or you’re out the door.

One hapless entertainment executive refused Nozawa’s tuna on the grounds that dolphins might have perished in the catch. ‘‘Out!’’ yelled the irate chef, who is known to ignore diners’ trendy requests (NO CALIFORNIA ROLL! reads another sign) and to bark instructions (‘‘One bite only!’’) at those whose sushi skills don’t measure up.

‘‘Grumpy doesn’t even begin to describe it,’’ says Robert Ward, a writer and TV producer (Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice), who is such a Nozawa devotee that he immortalized the chef in one of his novels. ‘‘He’s an artist. Asking him to make a California roll is like asking Van Gogh to paint a velvet Elvis.’’

Most nights, customers wait in line to be mistreated at the closet-sized restaurant, right next to a nail salon in a San Fernando Valley mini-mall. Nozawa regulars have spotted Jeffrey Katzenberg, not to mention actors Rebecca De Mornay and James Caan, sampling the albacore and risking the chef’s wrath.

But Nozawa – who once refused to serve singer-songwriter Carole King a second order of uni – doesn’t care who you are, as long as you adhere to his program for sushi Zen.

Originally appeared in Vanity Fair April, 1995

BY: Amy Wallace

Down an alley, next to a sheet-metal factory just off the Santa Monica Freeway, is a place so exclusive that some of Hollywood’s most powerful players are turned away at the door. It’s not a nightclub, but a prep school: the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences, a 23-year-old experiment in nontraditional learning that – despite its grungy locale – draws celebrities like moths to a spotlight. 

“We look like an urban-renewal poster child,” admits headmaster Roger Weaver, describing the hodgepodge of renovated factory buildings that house Crossroads’ $12,400-a-year middle and upper schools, grades 6 through 12. Nevertheless, he says, “we have turned down, for basic reasons of admissions standards, some of the biggest names around.”

Dustin Hoffman’s son fared better, as did the children of Goldie Hawn, Maximilian Schell, director Lawrence Kasdan, and Ted Danson. And that’s just for starters. Over the years, Crossroads has taught the progeny of Streep, Streisand, Sheen – even the older children of O.J. Simpson (and, for a time, the son of Simpson’s lawyer Robert Shapiro).

But Crossroads, which also has an elementary school, is known as much for its unusual approach to education as it is for its famous names. Besides being academically rigorous, the school requires its students to participate in community service and the arts. No one graduates without taking kayaking, rock climbing, or two other excursions into the great outdoors.

One day a year, classes are dispensed with to allow students to discuss “global issues” such as racism or nuclear power. Athletic programs include yoga and the martial arts. And to cap it all off, students complete a “Mysteries” class – an exercise in self-expression that culminates in a five-day retreat involving chanting and activities based on Native American sweat-lodge rituals.

“To this day, anytime Crossroads people get together they can say these chants,” says one 26-year-old alumnus. “You did them over and over.”

According to Weaver, it’s all part of the Crossroads ethos: to build self-esteem along with G.P.A.’s. He’s heard the whispers about “fringy, over-the-top” programs, but is unapologetic: “We give kids a lot of permission to be who they are.”

And the kids take advantage of it. During a recent lunch period, the lack of dress code was apparent in the tie-dyed T-shirts, overalls, and fatigues. One pink-haired 12-year-old wore a pair of gossamer wings, “because I’m different,” she explained.

Out in the alley, where kids gathered around a gourmet-lunch truck that serves empanadas and meatless burgers (there is no school cafeteria), one student observed that, for all its downscale fashion, Crossroads is no stranger to conspicuous consumption.

“You can tell the teachers’ cars from the kids’,” he said. “The teachers have beat-up Volvos. The kids have Beemer convertibles.” At other schools, pranksters may put thumbtacks on chairs. At Crossroads, they steal one another’s vanity plates.

You don’t have to be rich and famous to go to Crossroads. The school prides itself on its diversity – roughly a quarter of the students are minorities – and this year’s financial-aid budget is $1.7 million. But the support of wealthy families is essential to its survival, which has at times proved troublesome in this tight-fisted town.

Dr. Jake Jacobusse, a former director of the upper school, explains, “So much of the money in L.A. is new money, there’s no tradition for philanthropy.”

Big names bring other complications as well. Like how do you tell somebody with a shelf full of Oscars that he or she needs to spend more time parenting? “The big-star types are not used to people telling them they’re blowing it,” says Weaver. “But sometimes, that’s what they need to hear.”

The school, lauded as exemplary by the U.S. Department of Education, is not without critics. One parent says that for all its creative programming Crossroads’ so-called student-centered focus fails to teach important lessons.

“The kids lose out on the experience of having to deal with things that don’t always suit them,” worries this mother. “Everyone’s bending over backwards to please them.”

But the school must be doing something right. Its orchestra is nationally recognized and its choir world-class. Nearly 100 percent of the students go to college, many to the Ivy League. And the waiting list for admission is legendary, no matter who you are.

BY: Amy Wallace

Nestled into a steep Santa Monica hillside, 189 concrete steps are giving new meaning to the term ‘social climbing.’ At dawn, at dusk, even in the middle of the night, the fit and would-be fit battle for parking spots near the top of the well-worn stairs, which offer panoramic views of the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Leaving their bottled waters curbside, they move down the narrow zigzag and climb back up again, over and over until delirium sets in.

Desire for a tight derriere lures most people to the tree-lined stairway, where there’s more than one way to escalate. Arms swing or are clasped tightly behind the back. Legs kick forward or out to the side. Some people climb backward. So-called commandos, who do as many as 50 sets (that’s 18,900 stairs) a day, are easy to spot: they run the steps, usually several at a time.

But many who put on spandex and sweatbands to visit this neighborhood of million-dollar homes seek more than mere sinew. They want to be seen.

‘It’s a chic place to break a sweat,’ says Eric Moore, a real-estate broker who avoids the crowds by climbing during the wee hours. Habitues are still chuckling over the novice who used to do a few laps every morning and then jump into his Mercedes and make phone calls, as if on display. Some here have much more than exercise on their mind.

‘The pickup scene is everywhere – and her is no exception,’ says Daniel Paul, a production assistant at Paramount who claims that on his first visit to the steps he was approached by ‘a bunch of older Swedish women.’

Gloria Charles, a screenwriter, adds, ‘After 10 sets, nobody looks good. You’ve got to catch them coming out of their car.’ A regular for four years, Charles is an expert on proper form, both athletic and social. When passing, give a polite warning (she recommends ‘On your left!’). And never, ever wear perfume – it has a way of overpowering the fresh salt air.

Local homeowners, however, feel their neighborhood is overpowered by the climbers. The steps are a nuisance, they say, bringing traffic jams, noise, and loitering.

‘All the traffic – it’s a definite negative,’ says one real-estate agent who is trying to sell a house near the top of the steps. But even she hesitates to condemn the climbers – after all, she’s one of them.

‘Got to keep the butt up,’ she says.