Guestbook 8 - The adventure issue

guestbook The onefinestay journal about making yourself at home in the world’s greatest cities The adventure issue

We’re pioneering handmade hospitality. Because there’s nothing better than a real home to stay in while you’re travelling.

The finest homes are made with love and labour, and we seek them out so you can experience onefinestay.

We’d love to welcome you to London, New York, Paris or Los Angeles, the world’s greatest cities. onefinestay.com reservations@onefinestay.com +44 800 612 4377 +1 917 383 2182 If you’ve made a home with love and labour, find out more about becoming a host. onefinestay.com/hosts Follow us @onefinestay

guestbook

guestbook The adventure issue

Editor Alex Bagner Art Director Thom Bradley Creative Consultant Sonya Dyakova Photography Editor Charlotte Wenman Junior Designer Karine Day Sub Editor Ellen Himelfarb Copy Consultant Sara Norrman Production Manager Liv Stones Director of Brand Marketing Miranda Cresswell onefinestay Co-Founder & CEO Greg Marsh Published by onefinestay onefinestay.com Cover: Daniel Frost

For all advertising enquiries or to order more copies of Guestbook please email: guestbook@onefinestay.com To read a digital version and past issues visit onefinestay.com/guestbook Follow us @onefinestay

Words: Liz Armstrong, Hayley Fairclough, Cliff Flynn, Jeremy Leslie, Alexandra Schwartz, Amy Serafin, Sam Sweet, Amy Verner, Tim Walker Photographers: Steven Brahms, Signe Birck, Erwan Fichou, Lucy Levene, Sacha Maric, Deborah Panes Illustrators: Rebecca Clark, Sari Cohen, Daniel Frost, Kate Copeland

Craftsmanship from the British Isles. t h e n e w c r a f t s m e n 34 North Row, Mayfair L ondon w1 k 6 d g thenewcraftsmen . com +44 (0) 207 148 3190

32 Pride of place We track down the entrepreneurs, artists and artisans who capture the spirit of their city.

Illustration: Rebecca Clark

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Local lowdown A boudoir boutique in Soho, fringe film in Hollywood and life in the Paris fast lane – what’s really happening in our cities.

Words: Alexandra Schwartz, Tim Walker, Amy Serafin Illustration: Sari Cohen

18 Diary A peek at what we’ve been up to behind the scenes at onefinestay.

20 Kitchen sync Two of America’s top chefs have gone bicoastal, but we’ve tempted them back to New York for one last dinner – in a onefinestay townhouse of course.

Words: Hayley Fairclough Photography: Steven Brahms

the salon

40 Lunch with Tom Conran How the pioneering chef and restaurateur has redefined neighbourhood eating for the Notting Hill set.

Words: Cliff Flynn 44

Party of five Bobo pioneers the de Rocquigny family on how they transformed their former chandelier factory into a cabinet of curiosities.

Words: Amy Verner Photography: Erwan Fichou

50 Animal, vegetable, mineral?

A trip to London’s Natural History Museum, through the eyes of four-year-old Eleanor.

Photography: Sacha Maric 58 L.A. Confidential Compelled to depict a truer picture of LA’s character than he was seeing elsewhere, writer Sam Sweet introduces us to his All Night Menu, and takes us on a literary tour of his city.

66 String theory Illustrator, author and columnist for The New York Times, Maira Kalman, picks her favourite objects from New York’s CooperHewitt Museum.

Guestbook Guestbook — In —Conversation contents

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Park life With its gourmand treats, down-to-earth pubs and the odd Beckham sighting, we get comfortable in London’s Holland Park.

Photography: Lucy Levene

86 For the love

of Hollywood Boulevard Rediscover this iconic walkway for its ritzy glamour and retro cool.

Words: Liz Armstrong, Photography: Deborah Panes 92

Address book Find your way in the city thanks to the previous pages’ entrepreneurs, artists, artisans and bon viveurs.

94 Last word Magaholic and creative director Jeremy Leslie on why the spirit of travel is best displayed on page.

Contributors and their best insider tip for visitors to their city

Sacha Maric, photographer Animal, vegetable, mineral?

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Daniel Frost, illustrator The cover Daniel Frost’s sunny, spirited drawings for the likes of The New York Times and Nike belie a childhood in the Midlands and a career in London – not to mention a name that evokes a wintery chill.

From his drawing board in London he conjures up scenes of escape and adventure – swimming pools, surfboards, beach parasols and bicycles – with a mischievousness inspired by the scrappy sketches of Quentin Blake and soulful graphics of Chris Ware. Indeed bicycles are a passion: ‘A bike is the best way to see London,’ he says. ‘You can cycle down small streets, along rivers and through parks. You get a great overview of the city as well as finding hidden gems along the way.’

Frost’s first children’s book, Atop a Hill in Frostville, came out last year.

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Educated in London but based in Brooklyn (after nearly a decade in Copenhagen), photographer Sacha Maric has a gritty NyLon sensibility that endears him to avant-garde magazines like Wallpaper, Dazed & Confused and ArtReview. His 2010 book Thrashers featured screen-grabbed images from 1980s thrash-metal concerts. But since the birth of his daughters Eleanor and Alma, his work has acquired a softer, more earnest touch. In 2012 he published his second book, Good Mother and Father, a meditation on parenthood, death and sex. For this issue he chronicled a recent visit to London’s Natural History Museum, discovering the collection anew from the perspective of four-year-old Eleanor.

Eley Kishimoto, print designers Section openers Pages 10, 30, 76 When Mark Eley and Wakako Kishimoto first arrived on the fashion scene in the 1990s, their inventive display of colour was a revelation. Each brilliant, new fabric came like a thunderbolt, applied in totally unexpected ways.

Married since 1992, with two children, they’re based in Brixton, South London, but still visit their old neighbourhood of Bermondsey, the site of their first store. ‘You can get some fine food and curios at Lassco, the architectural-salvage retailer on Maltby Street,’ says Eley, ‘and lunch at Jose Tapas or Casse Croûte in Bermondsey Street.’

Sonya Dyakova, art director Creative consultant, Guestbook As the art director of Frieze magazine and designer for galleries like the Gagosian, the Hayward and Fondation Cartier in Paris, Sonya Dyakova was our stand-out choice when it came to heading up our Guestbook redesign. In an era of mobile technology she remains fiercely loyal to the printed page – and her commitment to luxurious paper stocks, engaging fonts and colour is palpable. She recently moved into a studio in Shoreditch, London, where her most treasured spot is the tranquil herb garden behind the Geffrye Museum.

Guestbook — Contributors

Jeremy Leslie, writer Last word Page 94 Jeremy Leslie has written three books on magazine design – Issues, MagCulture and The Modern Magazine – and runs the MagCulture blog, in which he champions innovative editorial design. He’s also art-directed glossy travel magazines for Virgin Atlantic. So, naturally, we sought him out to write our back-page feature on the return to glamour of travel publications. Leslie believes we’re living in a ‘golden age of magazine making’ and sees the creative possibilities in everything around us. His top tip for visitors to London? ‘Walk across Waterloo Bridge and admire the skyline, it’s the best view of the best city.’

Editor’s letter

Travel and adventure have always gone hand in hand. But they tend to conjure up images of people in bulky footwear scaling peaks and exploring new territories.

I, however, believe there’s more to these two words. And I’ve decided to dedicate this issue of Guestbook to the notion that adventure doesn’t have to mean treading a perilous path – or even changing your footwear dramatically. I believe travel can be even more poignant, moving and memorable when you make yourself at home.

Let’s be clear: I’m not arguing that climbing Everest or canoeing the Amazon can’t be a life-changing experience. But when it comes to intrepid urban exploration, the key to engaging with a city is, well, a key. Only by getting your own key to your own front

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door – and immersing yourself seamlessly and comfortably into the city, like you would if you really lived there – can you become a true city adventurer. Albeit with the re-assurance that the bed is comfy, the shower hot and the towels fluffy.

Grabbing a coffee, stocking up at a farmers’ market, talking to a neighbour, turning on the hob to cook pasta for the children, opening the fridge and pouring a glass of white wine: these are things we do every day. But do them in a new city, in a new home that you’ve picked yourself, and these routine activities suddenly transform into extraordinary ones.

Transpose ordinary life to a new city and it becomes an adventure.

And it’s not just your routine that gets a new jolt when you try out how your life may have been had it taken a slightly different turn (a turn that saw you marrying that Parisian boyfriend, laying down roots in London, taking that job in New York or being posted to LA). It’s the sense of adventure that goes along with understanding a city from the inside out – hearing the insider tips, uncovering the local truths and plugging into the little things that only come with being a resident. As a recent onefinestay guest in Paris put it, ‘It’s that moment when you’re out in the Marais and

a tourist asks you for directions.

There’s no better compliment to an urban explorer.’

Which brings me neatly to our Adventure Issue. Our editorial team here at onefinestay has been busy hotfooting around our four cities. As well as spending time in the comfort of our characterful homes, we’ve been unlocking the city through our creative community of locals. And each entrepreneur, artist, artisan and bon vivant we’ve spoken to has offered up their own beloved places for visitors to their city, which we’ve diligently scribbled down and added to our Address Book at the end of the issue.

Plus, in the spirit of new undertakings, Guestbook has this issue made itself over with a new bolder, brighter look. Hope you enjoy the ride.

Alex Bagner Editor, Guestbook guestbook@onefinestay.com

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‘Flash’ by Eley Kishimoto

To find out what’s bubbling in a city, head straight to those in the know – the inhabitants.

Here, three writers from New York, Los Angeles and Paris share the latest topics discussed on the street corners and around the dining tables of their neighbourhoods

Local lowdown Illustration: Sari Cohen

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A twist in the retail

by Alexandra Schwartz Part boutique, part theatre set, The Apartment in New York’s Soho offers a gratifying respite from online shopping To get to The Apartment, the brick-and-mortar store run by online boutique The Line, walk down Greene Street in SoHo until you reach number 76. There you’ll find a door that leads not to a shop but to a narrow elevator – if you’re not keeping an eye out, you’ll pass right by it. Press the button for the third floor and step directly into the light-flooded living room of what appears to be the home of a very chic somebody: sleek Fritz Hansen wicker

chairs; a low-slung charcoalcoloured sofa by Hans Wegner; a coffee table with a delicatelooking glass top and sturdy steel legs that evoke the sculptures of Richard Serra; framed Henri Cartier-Bresson prints of women luxuriating in various states of déshabillé.

Move farther into the loft, through a walk-in closet the size of many a New York studio apartment, and you’ll emerge into a bedroom, a claw-foot bathtub draped with soft linen towels in the corner. No one will stop you if you stretch out on the bed – and you should. The experience of browsing around The Apartment is not unlike drifting through a dreamscape, a fully realised space that feels at once familiar and utterly strange.

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Internet shopping is quick and convenient, an efficient way to browse and buy. It can also be an exercise in detachment, guilty-pleasure 2am binges and false advertising: things that seem so perfect on a laptop screen can be a total disappointment when they emerge from the box. The Apartment, created by twin sisters Kate and Morgan Wendelborn along with stylist Vanessa Traina, offers an antidote to all that.

Think of it as a beautifully curated Pinterest board come to life. It’s part store, part installation, a theatre set whose actors have disappeared, leaving you to play the role of resident and guest. Just about everything – from the lusciously thick knit blanket spread out on the bed, made from the wool of Corriedale sheep, to the sepia-tinted Annie Leibovitz photograph hanging above it – is for sale. You could leave with a Bauhaus-inspired cream leather daybed for $20,345, or a heather-grey lambswool Christophe Lemaire kaftan coat for $1,165. You could leave with a soft leather loop that doubles as a curtain sash ($55); a wall-mounted magazine holder ($50); or a pack of gold-tinted playing cards ($15).

Or you could leave with nothing at all, save for a complimentary croissant and an urgent need to return to your own home to rearrange the furniture and objects already in it.

Most things on display at The Apartment are also available on The Line’s website, so shoppers who prefer not to make the trek can browse in the comfort and privacy of their own homes.

But why stay cloistered in your own world when you can slip, for an hour, into someone else’s?

Play it again

by Tim Walker In a neighbourhood synonymous with ‘new release’, a group of cinephiles is earning an excellent rep, dusting off old reels and charming the Netflix generation When the rest of the world thinks of Hollywood, it’s as an abstract term for the mainstream movie industry, churning out summer blockbusters and their sequels.

But to Los Angelenos Hollywood is a neighbourhood, with as much to offer discerning filmgoers as filmmakers – and more than box-office hits. ‘On any given night, LA probably has the best repertory cinema in the world,’ says John Wyatt, founder of the film-event group Cinespia.

In the late 1990s Wyatt, then a set designer, launched a club to screen Italian films. Its remit quickly expanded to other genres, and before long Wyatt was organising his own film nights.

With the help of a friend who worked there, he set up an open-air screening at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where dozens of movie greats are interred. About a hundred people turned out for Hitchcock’s 1951 thriller Strangers on a Train.

That was 13 years ago. Today Cinespia is a fixture on the film calendar, with a programme of al fresco screenings that attracts thousands to celluloid classics like Beetlejuice and Blade Runner.

Wyatt is also on the board of directors for Cinefamily, a repetory cinema based at the

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former Silent Movie Theater. Its commitment to screening strange, obscure and forgotten films has earned it a reputation as perhaps the most adventurous club of its kind.

Cinefamily’s founders met as employees at Cinefile, a video store next to the arthouse Nuart Theatre in west Los Angeles, where they often hosted secret screenings. ‘We showed whatever film we had the least information about,’ says Bret Berg, director of programming. ‘We had access to lots of prints, but the cheapest ones were the weirdest. That ethos has carried over into what we do now.’

While their mission may be to introduce viewers to vintage films, institutions like Cinefamily and Cinespia exist

thanks to modern social media, which serves to rally LA’s movie-loving millennials. ‘If this was the Nineties, we’d have no idea how to do our jobs, because being online is such a crucial part of our research and outreach,’ says Berg.

‘We couldn’t exist in any place but LA, and at any time but now.’

A short drive from Cinefamily, near the corner of Beverly and La Brea, B-movie

lovers can find another sort of old-school screen thrill. Quentin Tarantino has owned the New Beverly Cinema since 2007, but only recently has he begun programming the schedule himself – filling it, for the most part, with films from his own vast collection of rare 35mm prints. ‘These movies deserve a commercial venue, they deserve a night being projected, they deserve time on the silver screen,’ the Pulp Fiction director recently told LA Weekly.

Tarantino’s ownership of the New Beverly highlights another inherent benefit of cinema-going in Hollywood: the people who make and star in movies live on the doorstep, and there’s always a chance they’ll drop by. In December, when Cinefamily featured the films of the irreverent filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr, director Paul Thomas Anderson, comedian Louis CK

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and Downey’s son Robert Jr all came to pay tribute.

Last summer, Cinespia showed Cameron Crowe’s semiautobiographical rock-nostalgia flick Almost Famous. A sceptical Crowe didn’t show up, but one of the film’s producers did. When he saw the size and enthusiasm of the audience, Wyatt recalls, ‘He called Crowe and said, “You have to get down here, right now.”

So Crowe drove over and got up to dedicate the film. People were crying and cheering. He was blown away. It was a remarkable moment – you can’t get that on Netflix.’

Electric avenue

by Amy Serafin If you want to see electric cars in high rotation, rock down to Paris, where a car-sharing giant has charged up the locals – and started rolling out into cities the world over On a French blog from 2012, you can read the story of a young pregnant woman whose water broke one Sunday evening. She and the expectant father lived in eastern Paris, and he called, in vain, for a taxi. Fortunately, she remembered that they had signed up for the three-monthold electric car-sharing service Autolib’. The couple walked to the closest Autolib’ station, helped themselves to a small aluminium-coloured car and drove to the clinic, where their baby girl was born.

In Paris you might spot a UFO before locating an available cab. If you use Uber, you become part of a controversy in which cabbies are conspiring to chase private-hire vehicles out of town.

Meanwhile, French citizens who own their own car reportedly

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spend 70 million hours a year looking for a parking space.

No wonder Autolib’ is picking up speed as a way to get around.

The electric car-sharing service was launched in Paris in December 2011 with 250 cars, 4,600 subscribers and 1,300 charging stations. Three years later it had grown to 2,845 cars, more than 70,000 subscribers and nearly 4,500 charging points throughout the city – plus dozens of points in the suburbs. The service has cropped up in Bord­ eaux, Lyon and across the pond in Indianapolis.

Autolib’s business model is unique. The city pays to install the charging points, which electric-car owners can also use. A private company, Bolloré, manages the service, providing the zippy little ‘Bluecars’ and paying the city a user fee for the charging stations.

An annual subscription runs at €120, plus €5.50 for each half-hour used. With the smartphone app you can reserve a car in advance and also a parking spot at your destination.

Considering the vicissitudes of French customer service, it is amazing that you can push a button for help at a charging point or in the car and a real person answers, day or night.

The personal touch doesn’t end

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there: when you start the car, the radio automatically tunes in to your favourite station.

Studies show the typical Autolib’ user is in his or her thirties, well-educated and politically left-leaning – the sort who go out on so-called ‘Autolib’ soirées’ to discover areas not known for their plentiful parking, like Le Marais or St Germain des Prés.

40 per cent of subscribers already own a car but use the service to get home from a late-night event, pick up furniture at Ikea or even to drive to their own wedding.

In late 2014, Autolib’ held a contest to select artists and designers who would customise nine Bluecars for a limited time.

The idea was that if the vehicles were personalised, people would respect them more. One car had a reflective surface that mirrored everything it passed. Another sprouted a coat of artificial turf.

Yet another changed colour with the temperature outdoors. As it turns out, one of the participants was so impressed with the experience, he sold his own car and signed up for a year’s subscription. And that is exactly what the city wants to see.

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diary

October

November

Cobble Hill bakery walk

Paris partners with Dymant crafts

We invited local hosts and their families on our very own Court Street Cake Walk in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. Behind the scenes at family-owned Caputo Bakery, we watched the bread-making process and sampled an original New York City egg cream at Brooklyn Farmacy.

We teamed up with Dymant, a producer of one-of-a-kind design pieces, to showcase some of its most exclusive collaborations at Rue Cernuschi in the 17th arrondissement. The home – with dramatic windows and three terraces – was a wonderful backdrop to an array of beautiful objects, including a lamp by street artist Le Diamantaire.

Celebrating our first LA birthday One year in on the West Coast, our highlights include an original Buff & Hensman home in the hills, a collaboration with local artist Liz Kuball and a partnership with Soho House West Hollywood. onefinestay New York expands into Harlem Our quest for authentic, inspiring experiences in NYC led us to the vibrant, historic neighbourhood of Harlem. We discovered home­ owners who share our mission and have now made their beautiful homes available to our guests – including a plush five-bedroom, four-storey brownstone.

Glamsquad calls in onefinestay for its LA launch Glamsquad, the New York in-home beauty service, joined forces with onefinestay for its LA launch.

The founding team stayed with us at El Medio, where its team (including Suze Yalof Schwartz, former executive fashion editor at large of Glamour) treated an intimate guest list to a day of beauty, poolside.

A special place on the Seine Autumn saw our first floating Parisian home in Boulogne.

The host fell in love with living on Quai Alphonse le Gallo. We think guests will be equally enthralled by the views from the upper deck.

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Chefs in Residence, in partnership with New York magazine (see page 20) For our Chefs in Residence programme we partnered with best-friend chefs Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson (formerly of New York restaurant Glasserie). The pair travelled from Los Angeles – where they’re launching a new restaurant – to be our guests at a Manhattan townhouse. As part of the resid­­­ en­cy, Kramer and Hymanson hos­ ted a brunch and a dinner, both inspired by local ingredients.

New York adds Stone Street Coffee to guest welcome pack Coffee is a hotly debated topic at onefinestay – which is why our partnership with Brooklyn-based roaster Stone Street Coffee is so momentous. Guests in New York can enjoy this distinctive blend of beans when they arrive.

An evening at London’s private members club Ramusake As long as you avoid the tourist spots around the underground station, South Kensington is a vivid, charming and oh-so-refined quarter of London. We brought the area’s hosts and locals together with one of the city’s most exciting members’ bars and culinary experiences – a Japanese menu and cocktail list by ex-Nobu chef Scott Hallsworth.

Private tastings with gourmet specialists Comtesse du Barry The Paris delicatessen first ope­‑­ ned its doors 100 years ago, and this time did so exclusively for onefinestay guests and hosts. In a series of tasting events throughout the month, France’s finest regional delicacies were served up, includ­ ing foie gras, smoked salmon and Périgord truffles.

December London florist, Grace & Thorn festive floral workshop At Christmas time we filled the kitchen of Charlotte Street, Soho, with festive foliage and invited some of our top bloggers and photographers to make wreaths, workshopped by the founders of florist Grace & Thorn.

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Paris reaches 300 homes Need another reason to discover hidden haunts, pastries and Pastis in Paris? We’ve got 300 of them.

Check onefinestay.com/paris for our collection of hand-picked homes in the City of Light.

LA guests enjoy Compartes chocolate, the latest addition to our welcome pack

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Not that arriving at a glorious home in sunny Los Angeles needs much sweetening – but we still thought it was worth treating guests to this gourmet dark-chocolate bar with crushed sourdough pretzel. It’s named, appropriately, California Love. onefinestay makes Time’s annual 2015 round-up report

Instagram competition, #mywinterhome

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The Court Street Cake Walk in Cobble Hill last October.

Time magazine calls out onefinestay in its top travel trend predictions for 2015, declaring: ‘Your rental will look more like a hotel’. According to Time, other travel trends include: your phone will be your wallet and you’ll be tempted by a new class of seats.

Inspired by the tasteful ways our hosts decorate their homes during the Christmas season, we kicked off a new Instagram competition. Users shared images of their decorated homes for a chance to win a weekend in a onefinestay home.

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Live like a Parisian in one of 300 homes including this one: Rue Réaumur in Le Marais.

Photography: Olivia Rutherford.

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A day of beauty at the LA onefinestay home El Medio, courtesy of Glamsquad.

Photography: Adam Tyler.

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Kitchen sync

Words: Hayley Fairclough Photography: Steven Brahms Food photography: Signe Birck

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Joined at the hip... end of New York, chefs Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson first brought their fresh take on Middle Eastern flavours to the celebrated Glasserie restaurant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. They’ve recently been busy launching a venture in Los Angeles, but we tempted them back to their home city to stay, cook and serve dinner at the onefinestay home East 51st Townhouse.

Here, they share their inspirations, family roots and food-buying tips Guestbook — Chefs in residence

‘In New York we love the Union Square Farmers Market and we buy all our dried foods, spices and oils from Kalustyan’s in Murray Hill’ Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson are good friends.

Their jokes are smart with the natural rhythm that comes with familiarity. And they laugh, a lot. As chef (Kramer) and sous chef (Hymanson) they worked in tandem at Glasserie, where their healthy, vegetarian-based, Middle Eastern-inspired cooking turned an unassuming former glass factory in Greenpoint into an overnight phenomenon.

Praised by critics and adopted by locals as a beloved neighbourhood spot (and

by Manhattanites who made

the pilgrimage for the glorious rabbit feast), Glasserie was, as The New Yorker put it, ‘confidently of its moment’.

After leaving Glasserie last year, they are mere months from launching their next venture: a downtown LA falafel eatery.

They’ve nabbed space in the historic Grand Central Market and talk with a marked LA enthusiasm about the area. ‘Downtown LA is going through an amazing period of revitalisation and it’s a great time for anyone in a creative industry. There’s a great, young conversation going on that’s

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exciting to be a part of.’ They had two motivations for heading west. Kramer’s LA-based boyfriend was the catalyst, but the city’s sunny disposition was the clincher. Hymanson took some persuading before heading to the state she wryly labels ‘the land of sprouted smoothies’. But she’s quick to follow up with: ‘The weather is great. Pomegranates grow here!’ And the climate certainly lends itself to their signature Middle Eastern-inflected cuisine. Kramer’s journey to professional cooking started with a grandma who liked to cook and

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a Peruvian-Israeli mother who was a ‘badass’ in the kitchen.

But it was also her foray into the worlds of acting and singing that made her pay attention to food: her body was her product and she cared about what went into it.

The journey her food made before arriving at her plate became important – where the animal had lived, how it was raised, the freshness of the produce – and it was this interest that led her to seek more formal training as a butcher and pastry chef.

There followed a stint at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, where she learned about fine dining, before working for restaurateur Andrew Tarlow at Diner, Marlow & Sons and, later, Reynard. In her own words, she’s ‘seen the culinary gamut’.

Food was also part of Hymanson’s life from a young age, though not as the craft it is

now: ‘I have this memory of being in the kitchen making tacos with my mom. She asked me to shred lettuce and handed me a box grater. Obviously I cut my fingers on that thing.’ This early trauma may be what kept her love of food at arm’s length until she was older, having first pursued a liberal-arts degree. ‘I think I first used food as a way to explore other cultures and spaces, which led to culinary adventures around Asia. It wasn’t until I was 20 that I launched into it professionally.’

Together they explored the finest sources for raw ingredients. ‘In New York we love the Union Square Farmers Market,’ says Hymanson, ‘and we buy all our dried foods, spices and oils from Kalustyan’s in Murray Hill.’

Both have worked extensively in kitchens, but the art of great cuisine isn’t solely learned through

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practise. It’s clear to both that communication carries as much weight as hands-on experience, and this is how they’re shaping the menu for their falafel restaurant – it’s entirely collaborative, drawing on their diverse roots, travel and culinary pedigree.

‘One of us will say, “I really want to do something with lima beans,” and the other will say, “What about lima beans and… cabbage?”’

They begin to laugh, and Kramer offers: ‘You never know if something will work. It’s a constant conversation about what we want and how to get there.’

In many ways this exchange summarises what each brings to the table and what’s sure to make their business a success – whatever time zone they’re in.

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Browse more New York homes, at onefinestay.com/new-york

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Braised duck legs with orange blossom and chestnuts

Serves 6

Cooking time: 1 hour, 20 mins

4lb duck legs (approx 2 ducks) 1 small head of fennel (thickly sliced) 1 head of garlic (halved, crosswise) 10 shallots (4 minced, 6 quartered) 4 bay leaves 6 slices of dried orange (if unavailable, a few slices of orange peel will do) 8oz beer (something with little bitterness such as a wheat beer) 3 quarts duck or chicken stock 2 cups peeled chestnuts 1 black cardamom pod ½ teaspoon black pepper 1 teaspoon coriander seeds 2 tablespoons orange blossom water Honey vinegar (or other slightly sweet vinegar) Fresh parsley

Season duck legs with salt.

Heat oil in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. In batches, brown meat on all sides and set aside.

Lightly brown fennel, garlic and shallots in olive oil. Add 3 bay leaves, cardamom, black pepper and coriander. Deglaze with beer.

Reduce by half.

Add duck legs and orange slices to pot and cover in stock. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook, covered, until meat is just beginning to fall off the bone.

Meanwhile, sweat the minced shallots in a generous amount of olive oil with one bay leaf.

Add in chestnuts and cover with chicken stock. Braise gently, covered, until chestnuts are tender, allowing the stock to reduce to a glaze.

Transfer duck legs to a serving platter and strain braising liquid.

Combine braising liquid with the chestnuts and reduce slightly, until liquid begins to thicken.

Add orange blossom water.

Season with salt and adjust with vinegar to taste.

To serve, spoon chestnut sauce over duck breasts and garnish with salad leaves.

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Celery, cured olive and parsley salad

Serves 6

Cooking time: 15 mins

Salad:

Bring the water and salt (from the first set of ingredients) to a boil. Very quickly blanch the sliced celery and then transfer immediately to an ice-water bath. The celery should maintain its crunch. Drain well.

1 small head celery, sliced very thinly on a long diagonal (use a mandoline, if you prefer) 1/4 cup salt 6 cups water 1 bunch parsley

Whisk together all the ingredients for the vinaigrette.

Vinaigrette: 1 cup black Moroccan oil-cured olives, pitted and coarsely chopped 1/4 cup sherry vinegar 1/4 cup olive oil 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon sugar Freshly ground black pepper

Combine the celery and vinaigrette. Coat the celery evenly with the vinaigrette.

Crack in as much black pepper as you wish, toss in the parsley leaves and serve immediately.

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Book: £14.95, $24.95, €19.95 App: £10.99, $14.99, €14.99 Available at phaidon.com/wce

Guestbook — Chefs in residence

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‘Sun Loving Bollards’ by Eley Kishimoto

Every neighbourhood has a local hero, someone who so captures the zeitgeist that he or she embodies the character of the place. They’re the entrepreneurs, artists and catalysts for a community of like-minded people, and they could hardly be anywhere else in the world

Pride of place Illustration: Rebecca Clarke Words: Alex Bagner

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Erinn Berkson, Venice, LA

Erinn Berkson opened her Abbot Kinney Boulevard boutique Firefly in 1999 as a treasure trove of stationery, jewellery and décor.

In 2011 she launched Kid Firefly two doors down and last year spun both into Burro, a shop for everything you need to live a well-styled LA life.

Are your customers local?

I’d say there’s a real mix between locals and tourists, as the street is such a destination. But of course we love our locals. We couldn’t thrive without them.

How important are independent shops for the soul of a neighbourhood?

What’s great about Venice?

What are the other locals like?

It draws a certain type of person: artists, musicians, writers, architects and now techies. I could toss a coin and hit a creative soul.

There’s a lot more money here now, but you still don’t have to wear shoes or drive a car.

I know bakers, photographers, real estate mavens, yoga instructors, teachers, architects, surfers... Go to any café and just hang. You’ll notice people of all sorts talking to each other: young, old, purple hair, it doesn’t matter.

How does the neighbourhood inspire you?

Do you promote local makers?

There are artists who have lived and worked here since the 1960s.

The restaurants are great. The streets are charming. To know your neighbours and hear about them thriving is wonderful.

I do. And I’m able to have unique gifts because of it. Some of my favourite things in the shop are from local craftspeople, like yarn-bombed horseshoes, screen prints, jewellery.

Guestbook — the salon

They’re what makes every area unique. I can’t stand it when I travel, only to find stores I can go to back home. I need to see chalkboards with handwritten menus. I want to see different haircuts and eat different food on different plates on a table I haven’t seen before. I want to find treasures that remind me of when I was five. I want to gawk with envy at what people have created.

I want to see the heart and soul.

What are your top tips for a visitor to the area?

Walk Abbot Kinney Boulevard.

Head to Gjusta, a foodie’s dream with an incredible interior space.

Grab a drink and catch the sunset at Hotel Erwin’s rooftop bar. See live music at the Townhouse, with a secret speakeasy downstairs. Go for an old-school dinner at Hal’s. burrostyle.com

Ben Mackinnon, Hackney, London

With a passion for quality bread and the joys of a wood-fired oven, Ben Mackinnon started selling 20 or so homemade loaves a day to the local community. Urged on by feedback, he set up E5 Bakehouse four years ago. Today it’s a thriving bakery serving many of London’s top restaurants, with a much-loved café and a programme of baking classes.

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‘I never set out to be where I am now, I just started to bake bread, and as I got more encouraging feedback from customers, I kept going’

Describe your business in one sentence.

An artisan bakery and coffee shop located under a sprucedup railway arch beneath London Fields Station in East London.

When did your passion for baking begin?

I’d been baking bread as a hobby for a while – I was fascinated by how easy and cheap it was to create something so great. I’d had enough of my corporate career in an office environment and was keen to do something with my hands that also involved interacting with people. I did a one-week course in sourdough baking and it all went from there.

Why did you choose to set up where you did?

It’s called E5 because at first I was borrowing a back-garden wood-fired pizza oven in Clapton, in the E5 postcode. Then as I decided to turn this into a business, I began looking for a space in the area to set up my own oven, but nothing came up. So I went halves on one with a cake-making company and

we sold takeaway, until I made the big, risky decision to rent the whole arch and turn it into a sit-down place.

How does the surrounding community influence you?

I’d go so far as to say the company is created entirely as a response to the local community. I never set out to be where I am now. I just started to bake bread, and as I got more encouraging feedback from customers, I kept going. It still is an ongoing conversation with our community.

Do you stock local goods?

In the past we specialised in just bread, so we’d have various local mums bake cakes for us to sell.

We’ve since learned to make our own cakes, however we do sell local honey and locally made chopping boards, and all the ingredients for our food is sourced from local shops. We’re also looking at putting in our own mill in the next-door arch.

Are your customers mostly neighbours?

Absolutely. We have an incredibly strong and loyal local customer base. They’ve grown up with us.

What’s so unique about the neighbourhood?

It’s a very special area with a community that’s open-hearted and open-minded. And while it is changing – there are perhaps more young families these days than artists – it’s still hugely creative and diverse, with lots of studios and workshops on our doorstep. In fact, at this very moment I have two artists banging away outside, using my backyard to build a towering sculpture out of crates.

What are your top tips for a visitor to the area?

Swim in the Lido at London Fields. Have a drink and listen to music at Off Broadway. Walk the Regents Canal to Victoria Park.

Go for Thai food at Som Saa in Climpson’s Arch behind London Fields. Check out the stalls on Broadway Market on a Saturday. e5bakehouse.com

Guestbook — the salon

Amy Woodside, Soho, New York

Originally from New Zealand, Amy Woodside moved to New York five years ago. An artist and café owner in Soho, she recently launched OKREAL.co, which features thoughtful, smart interviews with inspiring women.

What to you is unique about this part of New York?

Broome Street is significant to me, personally, as it was the first street I lived on when I moved here. It’s a fertile ground for young people doing great things.

The hustle can wear on you, but it’s also the magic that keeps you going. You have to take both.

How did living in Soho inspire you to start OKREAL?

Tell me how you started your café.

How did the idea come about?

Happy Bones started with my husband Jason [a street artist] and I whining about how there was no good coffee in Soho.

He was familiar with the coffee culture in New Zealand and Australia – this was before it had taken off here. We made a pledge that we would open a café. Not too long after that, Jason and a friend who had recently moved here from New Zealand decided to make it happen. The first Happy Bones opened on Bond Street. We outgrew that space, brought on another partner and opened on Broome Street just over a year ago.

I was reading an abundance of stories about people’s lives, but noticing a lack of meaningful information. I couldn’t understand why you could read about what interesting women ate for breakfast, what clothes they wore and what their morning routine was but not what was truly important to them. We’re at the peak of a self-curated era, and the people who have driven that phenomenon are the same people who are now tiring of it. There’s an appetite for transparency, which OKREAL fulfills, providing authentic insight into real lives.

It offers curated wisdom for how to be who you want to be.

How would you describe OKREAL in one sentence?

It’s a network connecting women looking for motivation and guidance in leading a successful, meaningful life.

I’ve always thrived on the energy of the people in this neighbour­ hood, and had a curiosity about the lives of others. This natural interest, coupled with my network and the fast rhythm of Soho, has been the catalyst.

OKREAL may be young still, but there are relationships I made five years ago that have contributed to its development.

The altruistic nature of the people here has been crucial to our growth.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

I see OKREAL with a stronger offline presence, translating our virtual message into the physical.

We’re in the early stages of some exciting collaborations that will help to realise this vision.

What are your top five insider tips for a visitor to Soho?

Have a coffee at Happy Bones, obviously. Have your hair done at Cutler and get a wax at Haven.

Have a wander around the McNally Jackson bookstore.

And check out the New Museum for contemporary art. okreal.co @heyokreal

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‘Soho is fertile ground for young people doing great things. The hustle can wear on you, but it’s also the magic that keeps you going’

Guestbook — the salon

Dustin Yellin, Red Hook, Brooklyn

An artist based in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Dustin Yellin launched Pioneer Works in 2011. The experimental art nonprofit and gallery doubles as a thinktank, where local creatives come to exchange ideas about culture and community.

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How would you describe Pioneer Works?

How important is promoting local community in New York?

It’s a platform for innovation in contemporary art and an incubator for cross-disciplinary collaboration.

It means everything. New York is a series of micro-communities that start, maybe, in the building where people live and keep extending. And Pioneer Works is its own city, its own village.

What’s the philosophy behind the organisation?

It was a reaction to the state of museums and educational institutions, how scientific research is being funded and conducted and the role of the artist in society. Pioneer Works is a destruction of walls. It’s an open box with free-moving particles. I’m imagining the ideal class – science, drawing, philosophy and music are all taught simultaneously.

Tell me about your goal in launching the project?

I’ve always felt that if you can navigate the world and make things happen, it’s your duty to level the field and create free zones – regions where work and ideas can proliferate. I want to see everyone looking through microscopes, writing poetry, painting big canvases, restranding the human genome.

I want the world filled with objects made by people for the pure desire of making objects.

Do you have a background in the arts?

I’m self-taught in just about everything. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a background

What about Red Hook keeps you inspired? in it. I’ve been reading and thinking about the arts, whether I knew it or not, since I was a puppy.

Do local people volunteer at Pioneer Works?

Yes. People come in, they start gardening, they take classes.

They may want to teach a class or put on a show. We try to accommodate the ideas of everyone around us.

What sort of people?

Our ties to the Red Hook community are very tight. We work with different organisations, from Friends of the Firefighters to the Red Hook Initiative to the Community Courts.

Are your visitors local too, or do they travel to reach you?

Visitors travel to us from all over the globe.

What is a uniquely local ingredient of Pioneer Works?

The view looking over the river to the large buildings in the city.

The air. The open space. The sense of belonging to an environment, rather than being in stark opposition to one. I think that is special to Red Hook.

Guestbook — the salon

The people. The artists. That everyone is talented and making things. Also the sense that something is happening here. We’re extending some of the ideas we’ve found interesting in previous art movements and making a real go of them.

Could Pioneer Works have succeeded anywhere else?

To build an artist-run space isn’t a new concept. But what Pioneer Works proves is that these spaces are necessary in every city. Our kind of space can work if communities want to build one.

Can you give us some insider tips for a visitor to Red Hook?

There’s a stray-cat garden next to the funeral home that’s awesomely strange and worth checking out. Get an ice cream at IKEA – for $1. Kennedy’s Chicken is pretty good. Walk to the pier and look out at the Manhattan skyline. Eat dinner at The Good Fork. pioneerworks.org For contact details to these places and more, see the Address Book, page 92

‘I know this area, I’m comfortable here, people know me and I know them’

With three restaurants, a gastropub and a café/deli all within minutes’ walk of one another in London’s Notting Hill, Tom Conran has taken local dining to a remarkable level. Over a long lunch at The Cow, he talks about growing up with food, neighbourhood longevity and his adventures as a chef and restaurateur

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Photography courtesy of Tom Conran, thecowlondon.co.uk

Words: Cliff Flynn

Having trained as a chef, Tom Conran went on to run the oyster bar at Bibendum, his father, Sir Terence Conran’s first restaurant. Going out on his own, he set up Tom’s, a deli and café, now renamed New Tom’s. Then came the gastropub The Cow, followed by diner Lucky Seven and tequila house Crazy Homies. All are located in Notting Hill, where he’s lived since he was 18.

Tell me about your first restaurant experiences.

Eating out was always a big deal to my family. My mother dedicated her career to food. She worked as the cookery correspondent for The Sunday Times and wrote a number of cookbooks.

I always perceived my father’s world as more design, but he was,

of course, also very interested in restaurants. My memories are of going out with my family to Italian places like Meridiana and San Lorenzo. For a special meal it was always French – at the Savoy or the Dorchester.

When did you decide to get into the restaurant business?

I was encouraged not to go to university. My Dad said, ‘choose the ‘university of life’. And, quite frankly, I was champing at the bit.

The restaurant business seemed so exciting. It’s like theatre – every day is a new performance and you’ve got to start fresh.

How else has your father affected your life decisions?

My father is a man with a lot of

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creativity and energy. He brought excitement, colour and vibrancy into people’s lives. And I believe the country needed it back then.

But I also saw how hard he had to work, and how much he had to dedicate himself to his work.

I wanted to have more balance in my life. I like things on a smaller, more human, tangible scale.

I guess that shows in what I’ve dedicated my life to – more intimate, more personal places.

Tell me more about your ‘university of life’ days?

I travelled for three years in my late teens. At that young age you’re like blotting paper taking in all the things you see around you.

When I got back to London, I got serious about cooking. I was working full-time at Langan’s

‘I like things on a smaller, more human, tangible scale. I guess that shows in what I’ve dedicated my life to – more intimate, more personal places’

as a commis, and with [the chef] Alastair Little for three shifts a week. Working at Langan’s was like being in the army. You had to get in early, collect your uniform from a hole in the wall, change in the freezing cold and do one thing. My job was to baton carrots and courgettes.

After service you had to pour vinegar on the cookers, and with emery paper scrub them down with your bare hands.

In 1987 I went to work at my father’s first restaurant, Bibendum, where I ran the oyster bar. Soon after that I was mad keen to open my own restaurant.

Did you know what kind of restaurant it would be?

I was very inspired by Michael Belben and chef David Eyre, who opened The Eagle in 1991. They were true pioneers. London pubs at the time were down in the dumps places with smelly carpets, but they were everywhere.

It was so obvious that they would become the natural place to open restaurants. As for the food – well, it was a real mix.

I’d travelled to Ireland, Belgium, Holland and Northern France.

They all had this great bar culture, so I brought them all together, along with pubs from London that I loved: The French House and the Portobello Star.

I opened this place in 1995.

Tell me about the two restaurants that followed: Lucky Seven and Crazy Homies.

For Lucky Seven, I wanted something where the product was quality but the service was quick. In those days – and I’m talking 2000 – if you wanted something hot and quick, there was McDonalds or one of those Italian sandwich bars. I thought about all the different food possibilities and it came down to the burger. For Crazy Homies, I was inspired by New York, where I’d seen DJs play records in local restaurants and tequila cocktails being served up with your meal.

We needed some of that here.

What makes a neighbourhood restaurant successful?

Somewhere that makes you feel welcome. As a restaurant owner you need to make life effortless for the local. Also, your presence as an owner is so important.

Guestbook — the salon

Your clientele expects to see you.

Your offering needs to be unique, personal and individual. But the most important thing is hospitality. For me, that is the essence of restaurants.

Why have you resisted expansion outside your neighbourhood?

I always saw London as a group of villages, and each village has its own requirements, atmosphere and vibe. I know this area, I’m comfortable here, people know me and I know them. I’ve lived here since I was 18.

Apart from your own places, of course, what should a visitor to your neighbourhood never miss?

Simple British food at Hereford Road. The Spanish restaurant Galicia. Jamaican fast food at Boom Burger. The Spanish food and wine delicatessen R Garcia & Sons. And the Italian restaurant Essenza.

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For contact details to these places and more, see the Address Book, page 92

Rue Godefroy Cavaignac, Bastille, Paris

Party of five The de Rocquigny family were bobo pioneers on their post-industrial street in Paris’ 11th arrondissement. But the process of transforming this former chandelier workshop into a quirky cabinet of curiosities has brought them closer to the changing landscape around them

Words: Amy Verner Photography: Erwan Fichou

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The tropical colour scheme creates a quirky atmosphere entirely unexpected in a Parisian flat.

It could be source material for Wes Anderson

On any given evening, Corinne de Rocquigny will make dinner – a tart containing ham, cheese and tomato, say – without knowing how many people will be eating. If her family is all together, there will be seven of them. But with one daughter studying in Nova Scotia, another at Versailles, three active boys and a husband who works late, the number is always in flux – especially when factoring in the exchange student and various friends.

Regardless of their comings and goings, the family’s home in the 11th arrondissement of Paris remains an abundantly lively place, thanks to its generous size, hodgepodge of furnishings and eclectic charm. Here, model planes of carved wood hang from the ceiling beams and commedia dell’arte masks animate the walls.

Peer into a glass-paned armoire and discover a shelf of toy cars packed in, bumper to bumper.

Tiles with images of salamanders originate in the master bathroom and continue to pop up randomly across the main floor and up the garden wall. The tropical colour scheme, further enhanced by a trompe l’oeil mural of a Cuban-inspired terrace, creates a quirky atmosphere entirely unexpected in a Parisian flat. It could even be considered source material for the whimsical director Wes Anderson.

In fact, the first sign of the home’s originality strikes the moment you pass through the outer courtyard and arrive at a wood-panelled door marked with two portholes. On the other side of that door is an apartment that rejects all Haussmannian formality. For starters, the open

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living and dining area – which benefits from extra-large, double-height skylights – was once an exterior space. This might explain the shutters decorating the windows that offer a view of the kitchen.

As Corinne tells it, the building has had several fu­ncti­ ons, including as a stopover for horses before they heaved their carriages up the hill to Belleville and Père Lachaise Cemetery.

After that, it became a chand­ elier workshop. More recently it house­­d a community of evang­ elical women from Africa. By the time the de Rocquignys arrived in 1999, a lawyer had redone the quarters yet again.

Even with five children ranging in age from 14 to 22, Corinne has managed to create an environment that encourages togetherness but allows everyone

Guestbook — In Conversation

space. One son might be doing his homework in the dining room while another can be found upstairs in the lofted television area. Corinne’s husband, a consultant, often retreats to the reading area just below, where his substantial collection of GeoJournals fills the bookshelf.

Corinne, who grew up near the Trocadéro and has since lived in the 5th and 6th arrondisseme­nts, admits she knew little about the 11th when she first moved in 16 years ago.

Although the neighbourhood, still largely industrial, had started attracting artists, it had not yet evolved into the enclave for bobos (short for bourgeois bohemians) that it is today.

‘When I saw it, it was love at first sight,’ she remembers, adding that she was particular­ ­ly pleased to learn that an

elementary school was located just down the street.

She soon realised, however, that the area lacked a gre­en space, a noticeable abs­ence given the 11th is considered the city’s densest arrondissement. So in 2000 she started a petition to convert a disused space owned

by Paris City into a public garden and eventually accumu­ lated more than 1,000 signatures.

Square Godefroy Cavaignac opened in 2012, and Corinne holds it as a point of pride, explaining that the project not only gave the 11th ‘green lungs’ – it also allowed her to meet her neighbours and understand the transformation of her neighbourhood as well as any of them. ‘It’s like modelling clay,’ she says of the changes happen­ ing all around the family home.

Meanwhile, the kids are all

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now old enough to be taking care of their own breakfasts – the boys prefer les Corn Flakes – and finding their way to and from rugby practice across town.

Weekends, says Corinne, are for late family lunches and attending their sports matches.

And in those rare moments when Corinne, who works in fi­­n­­­­­­a­ n­­­c­­ial administration, finds her­­­­­self with free time, she will typically touch up the stairs with white paint or work outside in the small pebbled garden. ‘You don’t feel like you’re in Paris here because of the contrast between a quiet space and a lively street outside,’ she says. ‘We want to keep it this way because it has a soul.’

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See Corinne’s tips for visitors in the Address Book (page 92).

Browse more characterful homes at onefinestay.com/paris

t

Photographer Sacha Maric thought he knew London’s Natural History Museum – until he saw it through the eyes of his four-year-old daughter, Eleanor. Here he chronicles their adventure proving even familiar places can reveal themselves in a new light – as long as you change the game

Animal, vegetable, mineral?

Photography: Sacha Maric

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LA Confidential

Los Angeles resident Sam Sweet writes about culture for The New Yorker and The Paris Review. His book, All Night Menu, chronicles the natural chaos of LA through a handful of storied locations. ‘Addresses make mythical histories tangible and make invisible characters palpable,’ he says. ‘This book is small and precise.

It is not a visitor’s guidebook. It is an index of lost heroes and miniature histories.’ Here Sweet introduces All Night Menu, explains why he can’t imagine living anywhere else and picks five neighbourhoods in this sprawling city worth a browse

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Can you describe what All Night Menu is about?

It is a series of five 65-page booklets. Each volume contains eight addresses; each address reveals a different strand of Los Angeles culture. The format is consistent: single images paired with succinct paragraphs, printed in black ink on craft stock. The content is drawn from all time periods, subcultures, and sections of the city. Among its pieces, the first volume includes stories about the first surf shop in Venice; the Hollywood boarding house where William Faulkner lived; a former matadora who worked as a secretary in Pasadena; and Clanton, one of the oldest Latino gangs in Los Angeles. The second volume looks at a tattoo studio; the first modern dance theatre in California; the San Fernando Valley suburb where BMX was invented; and the roller rink where Dr. Dre got his first job.

How did it come about?

It came from three intentions: to generate a truer picture of LA’s character than I was seeing elsewhere; to show that shortform storytelling can be more effective than longform; and to do something in print that could not exist in a digital format.

amusement piers; oil drilling and surfing; rollerskating, rap music and gangs. Those are LA stories.

Among your secret-history heroes, who is your favourite?

What is the picture of LA you were seeing elsewhere?

Flat, nondescript, commercial, devoid of culture and populated solely by exponents of the entertainment industry. Most Americans see LA not as a city but as a symbol. People are fascinated by the idea but completely uninterested in it as a real place.

And by Europeans?

To much of the world, Los Angeles is an airport, a beach and Beverly Hills. There it ends.

What does the title All Night Menu mean?

It refers to the all-night menu in American diners – a selection of items available at all hours.

Where do you get the ideas for your secret histories?

By reading about Gardena and Chatsworth and San Pedro and other unnoticed places. By looking at subjects that interest me – whether surfing, radio, gambling or tacos – and trying to pinpoint them with specific characters and settings. To be included in the book, an address must show the intersection of two or more elements distinct to LA culture: tattooing and

Guestbook — the salon

It’s more of a global force than a secret history, but I’d still say that the skateboarder, in all manifestations, is the great, misplaced hero of Los Angeles.

Skateboarding is a means of engagement equally available to every kid, without restriction.

It could only have happened in Southern California but it was entirely unplanned. Like all the best culture, it was birthed by accident and by necessity.

How has the city changed in the past decade or so?

Until recently, I got sour looks when I told people I’d moved to LA not for a job but because I like the place. Now it’s more palatable to people who used to hate it. It’s changed in ways that make it easier for outsiders to love. For better or for worse it’s become more similar to the places those outsiders come from.

Therefore it has become a more popular city, which means less freedom – fewer options – for those who were contented living here when no one else wanted to.

Would you consider taking your book concept into other cities?

I get a better picture of any place through small, specific histories rather than single-themed tomes.

I wish there were histories that better showed the personality of cities like San Antonio and Memphis, because they contain so much that is extraordinary and unseen. Still, the method I use is best matched to LA, because it’s so fruitful and unruly and uniquely misunderstood.

More succinctly: this is where I live. The work is a by-product of me wanting to be here and not elsewhere.

What keeps you in LA? As the guitarist Mark Lightcap once said to me: ‘It’s the way the afternoon light falls on the bottle of Clorox painted on the side of a mercado.’

Can you share your top five places to go and things to see in Los Angeles?

Anzen Hardware Little Tokyo A survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima, Nori Takatani has run Anzen Hardware since immigrating to Los Angeles in 1954. His business is selling knives, garden tools and other esoteric supplies to the local Japanese community. He doesn’t sell anything he wouldn’t use himself, and he can answer any

lawn, marks the finest place to fly a kite in all of California.

Baxter and Lemoyne Streets, Echo Park Four of the 10 steepest residential streets in the world are in Los Angeles. These are the showpieces. Baxter cuts directly across a pair of ridges in rapid succession, plungingunsuspecting drivers straight up and straight down twice. The slower you drive it, the more it feels like a rollercoaster. question about any tool in the store. He is also a part-time boxing manager and knows everything about the fights, past and present.

Maravilla Handball Court East Los Angeles Handball is the unofficial national sport of Los Angeles, and Maravilla is the city’s oldest court. Attached to a Japanese grocery store, Maravilla was for 80 years a meeting place for Japanese- and MexicanAmericans. Though the serious competitions have since moved to Bristow Park in nearby Commerce, a wall of elegant calligraphy records the names of the barrio legends who attained greatness with nothing more than a goal and a ball.

Angels Gate Park San Pedro The vastest of all views of the Pacific Ocean can be had here.

From this height, even the huge container ships moving into the Port of Los Angeles appear miniature and mute. The Korean Friendship Bell, situated at the centre of the park’s undisturbed

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Doughnuts, everywhere The key is not where you go but when you go. Get them warm.

There are options on almost every corner. Don’t pick from the case – ask what’s fresh on the rack. Between 1am and 7am, any place is optimal.

All Night Menu, Volumes 1 and 2, are available locally, in stores like South Willard, Anzen Hardware and the LACMA store, as well as through allnight-menu.com

To further make sense of this sprawling city and its distinct areas, Guestbook asked Sam Sweet to choose five literary classics inextricably linked to their LA setting, and pick an excerpt from each that brings the neighbourhood to life. From Santa Monica to Hollywood, here are five vivid locations worth booking

Santa Monica ‘After a while there was a faint smell of ocean. Not very much, but as if they had kept this much just to remind people this had once been a clean open beach where the waves came in and creamed and the wind blew and you could smell something besides hot fat and cold sweat.

Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely (Knopf, 1940) Raymond Chandler loathed Los Angeles but couldn’t leave it.

Over the course of his life he longed to return to England– his family’s ancestral home – but instead moved continually across the expanse of Los Angeles County, from the PacificPalisades, to Big Bear Lake, to West Hollywood. In each of his novels, he evoked the city with spiteful affection. His enmity enabled him to depict it with absolute clarity. Unlike other writers, he refused to paint Los Angeles in

broad strokes. As private det­ective Philip Marlowe navigated the city, Chandler delivered each street as a particular package of sound, smell, and scenery. He could serve you an entire neighbourhood in a few lines. A recurrent setting was Bay City, Chandler’s pseudonym for Santa Monica.

While his portrayal of a corrupt small town police force is tied to the 1930s, his descriptions of a tidy but suspicious beach town are ageless.

Guestbook — the salon

The little sidewalk car came trundling along the wide concrete walk. I got on it and rode to the end of the line and got off and sat on a bench where it was quiet and cold and there was a big brown heap of kelp almost at my feet.

Out to sea they turned the lights on in the gambling boats. I got back on the sidewalk car the next time it came and rode back almost to where I had left the hotel. If anybody was tailing, he was doing it without moving. I didn’t think there was. In that clean little city there wouldn’t be enough crime for the dicks to be very good shadows.

The black piers glittered their length and then disappeared into the dark background of night and water. You could still smell hot tar, but you could smell the ocean too. The hot dog man droned on: “Get hungry, folks, get hungry.

Nice hot doggies. Get hungry.”’

Malibu

‘January 3, 2002. Out at Malibu.

By the wall. Sun coming up.

DORA LIVES! Has again been spray-painted, in basic flat black, a dripping epitaph done minutes after he passed. The Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Recreation graffiti abatement squad has not arrived to sandblast it off yet.

Spontaneous outbursts like this are still grafted onto lost tribal memories. As a result these statements are dutifully scrubbed from Rhoda Adamson’s Marblehead-tile inlaid wall with the intent of leveling the playing field. The beach belongs to all of us. [Please deposit the appropriate amount in the appropriate slot marked with your parking number.

Failure to do so will result in a citation, and your vehicle may be towed and impounded.]

Steve Pezman and C.R. Stecyk, Dora Lives: The Authorized Story Of Miki Dora (T. Adler Books, 2005) The progenitor and antagonist of Southern California surf style, Miklos Sandor Dora manifested his legend just north of Malibu Pier, where a south-facing cobblestone point set the stage for an immaculately consistent and seemingly infinite series of waves. Dora courted and thwarted the attention of the surf culture he helped to create.

His incongruities mirrored those of Malibu, which was originally the exclusive domain of Chumash

Indian before being cordoned off as a private ranch, and then finally opened to the public as a surf beach. Steve Pezman and C.R. Stecyk tell the intertwined stories of Miki and Malibu with a series of photographic artifacts, impressionistic anecdotes, and personal recollections from Dora, recorded before his death from cancer in 2002. The cover photograph is this story’s ideal emblem: a black-and-white print of Dora atop four-foot surf at Malibu in the mid-1950s, the water calm and somber, his posture beatific. The photograph is singed at the edges, the result of a 1998 house fire that destroyed the rest of the antihero’s last remaining mementos.

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Nearby, a man is sucking on warm stale ale recycled from the dregs of partially empty Newcastle Ale bottles left on the sand by last night’s Pepperdine University revelers. The school team is called the Waves. This man is a local by inclination; he calls home a clump of coast prickly pear cactus around the point.

He dispatches judgment on the sentiment expressed by urinating directly on the historic wall.

Miki would have been partial to this eloquent act more than to any of the multitude of teary testimonials that were to follow.’

West Hollywood

‘11:47 P.M. Selma.

He walks along the street. At the corner, by an old house now apartments, he sees a familiar, lovely figure, a small, thin, blue-haired old woman, about seventy, her frame still youthfully erect, her gait friskily disguising what is probably a hurt knee. As usual, late at night, she’s walking two leashed dogs – mongrels.

“Hi, there,” she calls to Jim. He greets her warmly. “Cops out tonight,” she tells him. “A couple of squad cars just came by. And watch out for a late-model Plymouth, looks like vice to me.”

Jim thanks her for her usual warnings. “Well, you take care of yourself, hear?” she tells him and tugs at the leashes and moves on.’

John Rechy, The Sexual Outlaw: A Documentary (Grove Press, 1977) According to legend, John Rechy was the first man to walk down Santa Monica Boulevard without a shirt on. He chronicled his experience of Los Angeles in several novels over the course of 50 years. Rechy never differentiated between his adventures as a gay street hustler and his maturation as a writer.

He won instant acclaim and notoriety for his first book, 1963’s City of Night, but didn’t complete a true autobiography until 1977, with the publication of The Sexual Outlaw. True to its subtitle, the text is a vigilant documentary. While West Hollywood’s street culture was once relayed with ambiguity and innuendo – if it was relayed at all – Rechy is merciless in his specificity. Set over a weekend, the times and locations are as exacting as the rituals described.

Succinct and ferocious, the writ­er refuses to divorce the action from its environment.

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Venice

‘In May 1980, Robert Irwin returned to Market Street in Venice, to the very block where he’d kept a studio until 1970, the year he abandoned studio work altogether. Melinda Wyatt was opening a gallery in the building next door to his former work space and invited him to create an installation. He cleaned out the large rectangular room, adjusted the skylights, painted the walls and ceiling an even white, and then simply sledge-hammered out the brick wall facing the street, replacing it with a sheer, semitransparent white scrim. The room seemed to change its aspects with the passing day: people came and sat on the opposite curb, watching, sometimes for hours at a time. At night cars would pull up and park perpendicular to the sidewalk, shining their brights past the taut scrim into what suddenly seemed a tightly encased luminous fogbank. The piece was up for two weeks in one of the more derelict beachfront neighborhoods of Los Angeles: no one so much as laid a hand on it.’

Lawrence Weschler Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (University of California Press, 1982; updated 2008) Lawrence Weschler’s biography of Robert Irwin begins with the artist driving the writer through the highways of south Los Angeles in his silver Cadillac Coup de Ville. ‘To ride around in a car in Los Angeles has become like one of my great pleasures,’ said Irwin, who grew up racing hot rods in the 1940s in LA’s Baldwin Hills neighbourhood.

‘I’d almost rather be doing that than anything else I can think of.’

Weschler’s episodic conversations with Irwin became the basis for Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees. The book addresses the questions and processes necessary to advancing a life in the arts. More specifically, it is about the ways that LA guided Irwin’s aesthetic choices.

His fascination with the city’s light would become his primary subject matter. Venice is the location where Irwin befriended Larry Bell, Craig Kauffman, and James Turrell – three fellow artists who would abandon painting to search for new ways to translate the light experienced in their beachside studios.

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Hollywood Hills

‘The road began to mount, vertiginously. The chauffeur pointed across an intervening gulf of shadow at what seemed a Tibetan lamasery on the opposite hill.

“That’s where Ginger Rogers lives.

Yes, sir,” he nodded triumphantly, as he twirled the steering wheel.

Five or six more turns brought the cars to the top of the hill. Below and behind lay the plain, with the city like a map extending indefinitely into a pink haze.

Aldous Huxley After Many a Summer (Chatto & Windus, 1939) Of all the European novelists exiled to Los Angeles in the 1930s and 1940s, Aldous Huxley derived the most pleasure from his experience of the city. He arrived for a visit in 1937 and stayed until his death from cancer in 1963, which occurred under the influence of LSD in his Spanish-style mansion atop Beachwood Canyon, at the foot of the Hollywood sign. After Many a Summer is a celebration and a satire of Los Angeles, with its array of self-help gurus and youth serums and glamorous get-togethers. While in California, Huxley took advantage of the city’s range of religious and intellectual offerings. Among his friends were Swami Prabhavananda, who founded The Vedanta Society of Southern California in Hollywood, and Remsen Bird,

the president of Occidental College, which appears in After Many a Summer as ‘Tarzana College’. Emptiness and enlightenment overlapped in Huxley’s Los Angeles.

As an outsider and participant, he observed the canyon villages with an apt combination of horror and wonder.

Before and to either hand were mountains – ridge after ridge as far as the eye could reach, a desiccated Scotland, empty under the blue desert sky.

The car turned a shoulder of orange rock, and there all at once, on a summit hitherto concealed from view, was a huge sky sign, with the words beverly pantheon, the personality cemetery, in six-foot neon tubes and, above it, on the very crest, a full-scale reproduction of the Leaning Tower of Pisa – only this one didn’t lean.

“See that?” said the negro impressively. “That’s the Tower of Resurrection. Two hundred thousand dollars, that’s what it cost. Yes, sir.” He spoke with an emphatic solemnity. One was made to feel that the money had all come out of his own pocket.’

Guestbook — the salon

When New York’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum asked author-illustrator Maira Kalman to curate a room in its historic mansion, she responded – predictably – unpredictably.

Kalman is a fervent collector of keepsakes, and she used her own collections as a starting point for an installation that, she writes, ‘has something (or everything) to do with Life and Death. And time. Always time.’ In her book My Favorite Things, Kalman places her own illustrated history side by side with her selections from the museum’s archives in a sort of scrapbook, a whimsical world of postcards, trousers and unopened boxes tied with string. By the end, each history is indistinguishable from the other. ‘Everything is part of everything,’ she writes. Here are a few of her favourite things.

This is an edited extract from My Favourite Things, by Maira Kalman, published

by Harper Design, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, harpercollins.com

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String theory Guestbook — the salon

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Interview

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Interview

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Interview

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Interview

backyard the

‘Fishbone Borders’ by Eley Kishimoto

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Delectable patisseries, bookshops to get lost in, surprisingly down-to-earth pubs and the occassional David Beckham sighting.

There’s more to Holland Park than just –

Park life St Anns Villas II, Holland Park, London

Interview: Alex Bagner Photography: Lucy Levene

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‘We’d long lusted over this street, so when a house finally came up we jumped on it’ ‘Sure, you don’t get much more gentrified than Holland Park.

But there’s still something downto-earth here,’ says onefinestay host James Glancy about the neighbourhood he’s called home for the last 12 years. ‘It’s the best of both worlds. Turn one way and you’ve got an unpretentious parade of shops with a friendly newsagent, a Halal butcher and a cheerful dry cleaner. Turn the other way and you’ve got the Avenue, with its cheese counters, upmarket bookshop and numerous flat white options - that and the odd David Beckham sighting.’

James and his wife Ali moved to this intimate street of Grade II-listed, Gothic-style houses from just up the road in Notting Hill. ‘We’d long lusted over this street,’ he says. ‘So when a house here finally came up, we jumped on it.’ If the exterior is impressive, the interior is even more inviting with a large living space on the ground floor, as well as a refined drawing room above.

But, then, design runs deep in this family. James is co-founder of a retail design company that is responsible, among other things, for many

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of London’s Christmas-light displays. Ali, meanwhile, is a furniture restorer and used to have a vintage clothes and furniture stall on Portobello Road. They’ve brought up their three children, Tilly aged 15, Grace aged 12 and Frank aged 9, in the house. And while most summers they embark on adventures overseas, James speaks with as much animation and passion when describing a weekend spent at home. Here, James and his fun-loving family take us on a whistle-stop 48-hour tour of their prized neighbourhood.

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Saturday

9:00am I like to haul the whole family up and head straight out for a family run round Holland Park.

10:00am The park is unique in the amount of activities there is to do here.

We often stop off at the exercise equiment and the playground or stroll round the Japanese garden, or even book in for a game of tennis.

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11:00am Saturday morning is not complete without a visit to the farmers’ market in Notting Hill. It’s a joy to buy vegetables and meat here.

4:00pm I love grabbing the bikes from the shed or just strolling out to Portobello Road to have a wander round the antiques market.

1:00pm Having worked up a mighty appetite, we head back home to feast on some of the cheese, bread and olives purchased from the market.

8:00pm If it’s a special occasion we’d go and eat at Julie’s, otherwise we might go for a pizza with the children at Pizza East on Golbourne Road, or go for a

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drink without them at one of the down-to-earth pubs in Hillgate Village.

Sunday

9:00am This is the day for lazy mornings at home, but I will often leave the family and take a stroll up to Holland Park Avenue.

10:00am I pick up the remaining bits needed for Sunday lunch at greengrocer Michanicou Brothers and deli Jeroboams. And treat myself to a little quiet time at Daunt Books.

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1:00pm The whole family gather round the downstairs dining table for lunch – in summer the doors open right out making the garden into an extra room.

distance, but this is the time the whole family tends to naturally just spread out across the house’s two floors of living space, and just spend time at home.

4:00pm There’s so much one could do round here, with the shopping centre Westfield a short stroll away and even High Street Kensington within walking

7:00pm For cosy Sunday-evening entertainment we’re spoilt for choice. We will either head up to Video City, a local institution and one of the few remaining

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DVD rental shops in the city, or go to one of two wonderful cinemas only minutes apart, the Gate or the Coronet in Notting Hill Gate.

The days when the iconic thoroughfare required elbow-length gloves may be gone, but there’s still a good dose of ritzy glamour and retro cool to be had on the star-studded walkway

For the love of Hollywood Boulevard Words: Liz Armstrong Photography: Deborah Panes

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Hollywood had its first payphone installed in a French-inspired restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard that opened in 1919.

Called Musso & Frank’s Grill, every golden-age film celebrity made his or her way through this mahogany-wood-and-red-leather joint, and purportedly its payphone was installed to seal the deals introduced over chicken à la king and champagne.

Shortly after I moved to Los Angeles, I found myself at Musso & Frank’s with John Gilmore, former actor from the days when the screen was considered silver, dear friend to Marilyn Monroe and, by his account, casual lover to James Dean. Better known for his books than his on-screen roles, Gilmore published a biography on each of his seductive loner compatriots, plus memoirs of his own, an original account of the Black Dahlia murder and more.

A gentleman in a red tuxedo with black satin lapels took our order on an actual pad of paper – if memory serves, Gilmore had the iceberg wedge – and we settled in for a good 90 minutes of old Hollywood gossip.

This was where Gilmore had regularly dined with his mentor, actor John Hodiak. Over brunch, Hodiak charged Gilmore with the task of figuring out what Marilyn Monroe wanted, something that remained out of reach her entire life. This is when Gilmore’s acquaintanceship with the platinum actress became a mission, and ultimately a genuine friendship.

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A viper tattooed on his arm involuntarily wiggled its tail as Gilmore pulled out photos from a manila envelope. They were images from Marilyn’s career, accompanied by stories so detailed they included a description of the buttons on her make-up artist’s sweater.

Gilmore filled our minds with poolside images of muscled, sun-tanned boys receiving neck massages from bloated producers, of champagne deliveries to the palest of girls. Of attending premieres at the opulent Egyptian Theatre, followed by a sundae at Pantages. These were the same stories in his books, and they were even more fantastic first-hand.

Afterward, he took us out the back door, into the blazing light of reality. He popped

the trunk to his pristine black Cadillac and pulled out a few books. He signed them for me, and asked me to stay in touch.

Back on Hollywood Boulevard, I blinked, a little dazed. It was the same place it was when I drove here, yet with Gilmore’s tales, I saw the stretch with its pink Terrazzo pentacles implanted in the sidewalk, like the Stations of the Cross for North America, a holy Walk of Fame, in a whole new light.

Hollywood is an enabler of glamour; it’s embedded in this strange city’s karma. And Hollywood Boulevard is part of that glamour and more. A million different things at once, this street scene forces you to focus and become the director of your environment, lest you become a stooge to its chaos.

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Hollywood has taught Los Angeles that the power of movie magic can extend to real life. How all you have to do is mentally edit together certain scenes, people, places, and wardrobe options to fabricate a version of reality that suits you perfectly. The rest of it – the neon attractions, the tacky ephemera, the less-than-mediocre pizza – you simply leave on the mind’s cutting room floor.

And that’s directing a fabulous life, Hollywood style.

Conc­entrate on the parts that are worth living, then watch them over and over again until the sound warbles, the light fades and the velvet curtains touch.

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Browse homes in LA at onefinestay.com/los-angeles/

Guestbook — the backyard

address book London

Essenza 210 Kensington Park Road Notting Hill, W11 1NR +44 20 7792 1066 essenza.co.uk

Lassco Ropewalk 41 Maltby Street Southwark, SE1 3PA +44 20 7394 8061 lassco.co.uk

Galicia 323 Portobello Road Notting Hill, W10 5SY +44 20 8969 3539 galiciarestaurant.co.uk

Michanicou Bros 2 Clarendon Road Holland Park, W11 3AA +44 20 7727 5191

Hereford Road 3 Hereford Road Notting Hill, W2 4AB +44 20 7727 1144 herefordroad.org

Entertainment Jose Tapas 104 Bermondsey Street Bermondsey, SE1 3UB +44 20 7403 4902 josetapasbar.com Julie’s 135 Portland Road Holland Park, W11 4LW +44 20 7229 8331 juliesrestaurant.com Lucky Seven Diner 127 Westbourne Park Road Westbourne Grove, W2 5QL +44 20 7727 6771 lucky7london.co.uk New Toms Café Bar & Bistro 226 Westbourne Grove Westbourne Grove, W11 2RH +44 20 7243 3341 newtoms.co.uk Off Broadway 63-65 Broadway Market Hackney, E8 4PH +44 20 7241 2786 offbroadway.org.uk Shop

Eat & Drink Boom Burger 272 Portobello Road Notting Hill, W10 5TY +44 20 8960 3533 boomburger.co.uk Casse-Croûte 109 Bermondsey Street Bermondsey, SE1 3XB +44 20 7407 2140 cassecroute.co.uk Crazy Homies 125 Westbourne Park Road Westbourne Grove, W2 5QL +44 20 7727 6771 crazyhomies.com

R Garcia & Sons 248-250 Portobello Road Notting Hill, W11 1LL +44 20 7221 6119 rgarciaandsons.com

Broadway market, on Saturday Hackney, E8 4QJ broadwaymarket.co.uk Daunt Books 112-114 Holland Park Avenue Holland Park, W1U 4UA +44 20 7727 7022 dauntbooks.co.uk

The Gate Cinema 87 Notting Hill Gate Notting Hill, W11 3JZ +44 87 1902 5731 picturehouses.co.uk Video City 117 Notting Hill Gate Notting Hill, W11 3LB +44 20 7221 7029 videocitylondon.com Visit Geffrye Museum 136 Kingsland Road Shoreditch, E2 8EA +44 20 7739 9893 geffrye-museum.org.uk Swim London Fields Lido Hackney, E8 3EU +44 20 8356 3000 Walk Regent’s Canal Islington to Hackney Angel, EC1 to Victoria Park, E3 Waterloo Bridge Westminster SE1

Paris Eat & Drink

Notting Hill Farmers’ Market Watersone’s Car Park Kensington Place Notting Hill, W8 7PP +44 20 7833 0338 lmf.org.uk

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Bones 43 Rue Godefroy Cavaignac Bastille, 75011 +33 9 80 75 32 08 bonesparis.com

Shop

Shop

Visit

Maison Landemaine Voltaire 130 Rue de la Roquette Bastille, 75011 +33 1 43 79 98 03 maisonlandemaine.com

Kalustyan’s 123 Lexington Avenue Murray Hill, 10016 +1 212 685 3451 kalustyans.com

Angels Gate Park 3601 S. Gaffey Street San Pedro, 90731 +1 310 548 7705 laparks.org

Walk

The Apartment 76 Greene Street, Third Floor Soho, 10012 646 678 4908 theline.com/apartment

Maravilla Handball Court 501 N. Mednik Avenue East Los Angeles, 90022

Opéra Bastille Place de la Bastille Bastille, 75012 Rue de Lappe Bastille, 75011

New York

Union Square Farmers’ Market East 17th St & Broadway Union Square, 10003 +1 212 788 7476 Visit

Beauty Cutler 465 West Broadway Soho, 10012 +1 212 308 3838 cutlersalon.com Haven 150 Mercer Street Soho, 10012 +1 212 343 3515 havenspa.nyc Eat & Drink Diner 85 Broadway, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 11249 +1 718 486 3077 dinernyc.com Happy Bones 394 Broome Street Soho, 10013 +1 212 673 3754 happybonesnyc.com Kennedy’s Fried Chicken 783 Mills Street Red Hook, Brooklyn, 11231 Marlow & Sons 81 Broadway Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 11249 +1 718 384 1441 marlowandsons.com Reynard 80 Wythe Avenue Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 11211 +1 718 460 8004 reynardnyc.com The Good Fork 391 Van Brunt Street Red Hook, Brooklyn, 11231 +1 718 643 6636 goodfork.com

McNally Jackson 52 Prince Street Nolita, 10012 +1 212 274 1160 mcnallyjackson.com New Museum 235 Bowery Nolita, 10002 +1 212 219 1222 newmuseum.org Pioneer Works 159 Pioneer Street Red Hook, Brooklyn, 11231 +1 718 596 3001 pioneerworks.org Red Hook Pier 70 Hamilton Avenue Red Hook, Brooklyn, 11231

Townhouse Venice 52 Windward Avenue Venice, 90291 +1 310 392 4040 townhousevenice.com Shop Anzen Hardware 309 East 1st Street Little Tokyo, 90012 +1 213 628 2068 Firefly/Burrostyle 1409 Abbot Kinney Boulevard Venice, 90291 +1 310 450 6288 burrostyle.com Gjusta Bakery 320 Sunset Avenue Venice, 90291 +1 310 314 0320 gjusta.com Walk Baxter and Lemoyne Street Echo Park, 90026 Entertainment

Eat & Drink

Cinefamily 611 N Fairfax Avenue West Hollywood, 90036 +1 323 655 2510 cinefamily.org

Hal’s Bar & Grill 1349 Abbot Kinney Boulevard Venice, 90291 +1 310 396 3105 halsbarandgrill.com

New Beverly Cinema 7165 Beverly Boulevard Hollywood, 90036 +1 323 938 4038 thenewbev.com

Hotel Erwin, rooftop 1697 Pacific Avenue Venice, 90291 +1 310 452 1111 hotelerwin.com

Nuart Theatre 11272 Santa Monica Boulevard Santa Monica, 90067 +1 310 473 8530 landmarktheatres.com

Los Angeles

Townhouse Venice 52 Windward Avenue Venice, 90291 +1 310 392 4040 townhousevenice.com

Guestbook — address book

Last word

Despite living in an era of digital devices and user-generated content, at Guestbook we’re still convinced the spirit of travel is best displayed on the page. Self-confessed magaholic and MagCulture creative director Jeremy Leslie agrees

As long as there’s been a travel industry, there’s been a travelwriting industry. The two have always worked symbiotically, each funnelling business and inspiration to the other. For travellers – even armchair ones – travel magazines have been a vital starting point to every journey, real or imagined.

Originally, they taught an engrossing anthropology lesson, featuring some of the world’s most choice destinations, as told by an elite class of writer.

A forerunner to this crop of intelligent, highly readable travel journals was Holiday, an American monthly that in the early 1960s sold over a million copies. Embodying the new dream of cosmopolitan travel, Holiday employed the best writers, photographers and illustrators to sell the idea that travel bettered you. While Playboy used highbrow essays as a literary fig leaf, writing by Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway and Truman Capote formed the heart of Holiday. The magazine was both highbrow and genuinely popular, qualities that rarely go hand in hand in today’s clickdriven age of travel journalism.

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However, after Holiday ceased printing in the 1970s the genre never fully recovered.

Yet the travel-magazine racket has taken an amazing detour recently. Last autumn, for the first time since 1977, Holiday reappeared. The title, relaunched in Paris, promised to pick up where the original left off; the new issue was even numbered 373, following on from the last issue.

According to Franck Durand, the Paris-based art director who resur­rected the brand, ‘our fascination for the magazine and the frustration we felt from not being able to find a contemporary equivalent drove us to revive it.

If we’d launched a new magazine, maybe we wouldn’t have gone for print, but Holiday is first and foremost an object with a specific format, and with the quality of its contributors it can be seen as a luxury good.’

Nor is Holiday alone in its privileged place on better newsstands. A new generation of independent magazines has slowly been returning to a more subjective depiction of travel.

Reporting with experience and emotional depth, contributors to Cereal, The Travel Almanac and

Image courtesy of oldimprint.com

Unmapped provide historical and cultural context for readers who may or may not ever go there. They can be enjoyed as diversion alone or used as a guide. They represent a return to aspiration and a wider move toward a beautifully made, bespoke read.

It’s unlikely these titles will ever be as influential as Holiday once was – not least Holiday itself. But they provide a healthy addition to the standard media coverage we’ve come to expect.

They take me back to the role I myself played in the golden age of travel magazines.

In the late 1990s I art directed HotAir, the inflight journal for Virgin Atlantic. A free glossy, it had a specific brief to compete with newsstand magazines – a departure from the usual promo piece. The touchstone for every decision made at HotAir was, ‘Would this work on the newsstand?’ It was positioned as part of the inflight experience, working alongside Virgin’s revolutionary seat-back video screens to distinguish them from rival British Airways.

HotAir was sacrificed when the

Holiday magazine. 1958-11 (November)

competition between Virgin and BA heated up. Thereafter, price would become the deciding factor in choosing an airline and Virgin stopped publishing it.

The printed brochure and, later, the internet supplanted the aspirational travel magazine.

Yet with readers nostalgic for that long-lost longform read, it seems aspiration is back. Let’s hope success follows in turn.

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Guestbook — last word