Urban Outfitters in Disguise, aka Kitson

Robertson is where Urban Outfitters - home to piles of t-shirts, fine literature (e.g. The Pop-Up Kama Sutra, You Are SO Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah) and pure kitsch - masquerades as an upscale boutique, under the alias "Kitson."

Like Urban Outfitters, Kitson markets up-to-the minute pop culture with an impressive mark up. The difference, however, is the number of zeros in the price. My Paris sighting took place at the store, confirming not only the very rich and spoiled shop here, but also the arithmetically impaired.

Compare for yourself:
Kitson / Urban Outfitters
Team Jolie T, $48 / Avoid Temptation Mae West T, $28
Anchor pendant necklace, $165 / Anchor pendant necklace, $18
Men's "Wiener" brief, $27 / "Butt Hugger" 3-pack, $26


Imagine my horror when, left to her own devices during a visit, the woman who weaned me on red tag specials took a walk around the block. "I went into that Kitman," my mother informed me. "Hmph!" she sniffed. "Those prices! In a store with concrete floors!"

Home Base: The Ivy

Which monument symbolizes America more than any other? The Statue of Liberty, of course. Which symbolizes Robertson? The Ivy restaurant.

The Ivy is an elegant proof of the US Weekly Restaurant Theorem, which states,

If US Weekly photo op = a,
Mediocre food = b, fab cocktails = c, star sighting = d
Then a = b + c + d = $71/person (lunch)

Understand that Nicole and Jessica don't patronize The Ivy every day - your star sighting may be more along the lines of a working actor. And while Leelee Sobieski was, in fact, seated within view of our table, you must be prepared to sit next to not a starlet, but a foursome of teen females.

Above-mentioned teen females will enviously eye your [legally] alcoholic beverage, while you covet their [real] LV bags. They invariably will mistake your mint julep for a mojito - but really, can you fault the nouveau riche?

I shop at Marshall's. What am I doing here?

After living in such plebian locales as Palms, West LA, and Hollywood (the "real" Hollywood, complete with dour Russians and transvestite prostitutes), I moved to a small one-bedroom just a block away from paparazzi central: Robertson Boulevard, between Beverly Boulevard and West 3rd Street in Los Angeles.

This LA hotspot is at the crossroads between Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, and is suitably expensive and trendy. Originally from Long Island, I went to Brown and then lived on the Upper East Side and worked for an art museum before migrating to the city New Yorkers love to hate. So while I'm familiar with the moneyed class, glitz is new to me. Too-perfect noses are not, but injected lips are. Star sightings no, flash bulbs and yelling, yes. What's a nice WASP like me doing here, anyway?

Well, I'll tell you: I wanted to walk to work. That's an anomaly out here, but 5 years of driving everywhere had shown up on my hips. And to quote my friend Mark, "I belong to a gym just so I can pay for it. Not so I can actually go."

My office was located exactly 13 minutes away by foot, and as luck would have it, I was laid off 5 months after having moved. So since February 2006, I've had heaps of time to develop my ethnographic study of this magical block known simply as "Robertson."