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In 1998, a casual, gray-haired actor named Guillermo Zapata opened the SUR restaurant in a quiet community on Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood. Serving dishes from Zapata’s homeland of Argentina, it began as a modest place: an empty room with fewer than a dozen tables. But in 2005, looking to expand the place to eat, Zapata teamed up with restaurateurs Lisa Vanderpump and Ken Todd, a married couple who had moved from London to Los Angeles. Todd, a self-made businessman with a stiff crown of beige curls, and Vanderpump, an old-fashioned appearance with high cheekbones and a former actress who, in the mid-’80s, starred in two music videos for the pop organization New Romantic ABC. The couple owned more than twenty places to eat. bars and nightclubs over the years. But SUR, which they remodeled into a cavernous living room with a vaguely Moorish theme, is their gem. People came to Los Angeles just for dinner.
As is often the case in those days, the company owes its good fortune to truth television. In 2010, Vanderpump appeared on Bravo’s truth show “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” where her British attitude and sharp humor made her quite a character. queen bee. (SUR, in addition to Villa Blanca, a “Mediterranean-inspired” dining spot in Beverly Hills that Vanderpump opened with Todd in 2009, appeared on occasion in the exhibit. )Fortunately for the spectators, Vanderpump’s height did not stop him from fighting with his comrades. Female co-stars who, in the style of the popular Bravo franchise, were wealthy middle-aged women with a strong taste for drama. It was all a bit undignified, however, in 2013, Vanderpump had the possibility to provide for itself. in a more respectable light, when he turned his fame in “Housewives” into a demonstration of derivative truth, “Vanderpump Rules. “
The great opportunity of this SOUTH. Although Vanderpump appeared on the show and served as an executive producer, the main focus of the series is the restaurant and its employees: an organization of vigorous, party-loving young protagonists that Vanderpump, as a corporate boss but guy, is willing to reprimand and guidance. At the beginning of the series, Vanderpump liked to say, “Villa Blanca is where you take your wife, SOUTH is where you take your lover. ” SUR, an acronym whose letters, in a twist, stood for Sexy Unique Restaurant, was intended to be a little shady. With its crystal chandeliers, mirrored tile bar and pink lighting, the dining venue is a scene ready for laughter. and pamper. The waiters and bartenders, at most all the other young twenty-somethings moonlighting while looking to make it in Hollywood, were also, and most importantly, more than willing to live and love, fuck and fight, while the cameras rolled. .
There was Jax Taylor, a handsome hunk turned bartender, who was dating waitress Stassi Schroeder. He secretly cheated on Schroeder with her chaotic and more productive friend, Kristen Doute, an actress and waitress, who was also dating her best friend. , shifty-eyed bartender Tom Sandoval. There was Sandoval and Jax’s other, more productive friend, Tom Schwartz, a people-pleaser with commitment issues who was dating Katie Maloney, a waitress with a taste for tequila who was also close friends with Schroeder and Doute. The three women were enemies of Scheana Shay, a waitress with pop star dreams, whose best friend, Ariana Madix, a waitress and aspiring artist, began dating Sandoval after her separation from Doute, who, upon her departure, began to go out with him. James Kennedy, a cheeky British waiter-DJ, who had also met Lala Kent, a diva hostess who had had an affair with Jax in the past. (More than anyone else on the show, Jax followed a mononymous identity. ) Meanwhile, Jax, after splitting from Schroeder, ended up dating Brittany Cartwright, a Kentucky-born waitress, before cheating on her with Faith Stowers, another waitress.
What the fuck! These actors (conventionally attractive, occasionally) seemed to have been created in a laboratory with the explicit goal of appearing on truth television. And yet there was something vivid and genuine about all of this. The casting dynamic wasn’t formed in a producer’s brain, but rather over years of incestuous, pre-notoriety kissing at SUR, a eating place that at best felt like a school campus, though without the books. It was a closed universe that you could avidly follow, choose from your favorites, solve puzzles, and, perhaps most importantly, believe. I started watching during the first season and I may not have enough; Apparently, many others may not either. In its third season, an average of 1. 5 to 2 million people watched it each week and it was consistently among Bravo’s most productive shows. The occasions that unfolded on the screen remained etched in my memory, as different and surprising as if they had happened in my own life: Schroeder slapping Doute after discovering, on camera, that Doute had slept with Jax; or Cartwright telling Jax, in his thick Southern drawl, to “throw himself in hell,” after discovering his indiscretion with Stowers; or Jax taking off his chunky cable-knit cardigan to fight, shirtless, with a waiter named Frank in a Las Vegas parking lot.
Although the other people featured on “Vanderpump Rules” claimed to have entertainment-oriented career aspirations, they seemed quite content to be locked into some kind of eternal present: waiting tables, mixing drinks, partying, fighting and copulating with the same thing. small circle of other people in and around SUR. The exhibition was a soap opera full of ups and downs, but it also seemed like a television edition of an office sitcom, much like, for example, “Cheers,” although with a much more potent dose of sex and drunkenness. I found it strangely reassuring: an antidote to the rebellious culture and growth-oriented gospel of twentysomething America. The cast of “Vanderpump” enjoyed a quasi-communal, “Groundhog Day”-style life that may only be maintained by the abandonment of worldly ambition. It was perhaps the closest West Hollywood could come to the spirit of kibyetz. “I need to grow old with the Vanderpump gang,” I tweeted in 2017, imagining myself in a retirement home, still watching the SUR team wander around the restaurant with drinks in hand, perhaps with the help of walkers. (Sunrise. )
As the years go by, the “Vanderpump” universe will shrink and expand. During the national racial reckoning of the summer of 2020, Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Doute were fired after Faith Stowers, who is Black, revealed that they had been racist towards her. Jax Taylor and Brittany Cartwright, who married on-screen in 2019, were also fired amid the shakeup. Earlier this year, Doute, Cartwright and Jax returned to the Bravo fold as part of a “Vanderpump” spinoff called “The Valley,” which documents their still-drama-filled lives near the streets of West Hollywood. Located in the San Fernando Valley, more suburban and family-friendly. Many current and former “Vanderpump” cast members are real TV celebrities in their own right, with social media endorsements and the side careers that come with them: Scheana Shay, who married and had a son with a burly coach from New Zealand named Brock Davies. . Array bought Hydroxycut, a weight loss aid, and released some dance singles. Lala Kent, who also had a son, introduced a cruelty-free good-looking line called Give Them Lala and attended the 2023 White House Correspondents’ Dinner with Vanderpump and Ariana MadixArray that James Kennedy has run in clubs from Las Vegas to Miami Beach and, like many of his bandmates, makes his facilities on the celebrity video messaging site Cameo.
The expansion of the “Vanderpump” universe necessarily included the release of a greater number of dining venues adjacent to “Vanderpump”. In 2014, following SUR’s newfound relevance, Vanderpump and Todd opened Pump, a gay-frifinish eat-in and bar. (“Where You Take Your Boyfriend”) at the corner of Robertson and Santa Monica boulevards. In 2018, they followed up with Tom Tom, a restaurant and lounge named after Schwartz and Sandoval and a few Pump stores. At the end of 2022, the two Toms ventured out on their own and opened Schwartz.
The development of plans and the opening of those spaces provided tension-filled stories for the exhibition. (In 2016, Schwartz married Katie Maloney. Would Schwartz and Sandy’s complicated construction procedure hasten the end of their marriage?Yes. ) But restaurants were also a way to expand the universe of the series towards oneself. -called genuine world. Of course, it made sense commercially (a captive TV audience translated into paying diners), but it also allowed fans of the show to revel in real life with what they followed season after season. “The Kardashians,” another long-running series, had managed to keep the audience trapped in a biological macrocosm depending on the ultimate biological and enduring design of all: the family. The “Vanderpump Rules” did not have such a durable design and that is why they created them. Ingeniously, the audience can access it.
At the end of May, I jumped off the plane at LAX with a dream and my iPhone dying. After renting a Hyundai Sonata, I headed straight to Something About Her in West Hollywood, the latest dining status quo in the “Vanderpump” universe. SAH, as it is called, perhaps in a nod to SUR, was the brainchild of Madix and Maloney. In the 10th season of “Vanderpump,” Madix and Sandoval, who had dated and cohabitated for nearly a decade, acrimoniously split after he cheated on her with her friend, a tawny new actress named Rachel (Raquel). Levis. This scandal, known as Scandoval, gave the series its highest ratings to date: 5. 9 million viewers watched the first reunion part of the season, making it the highest-rated Bravo episode in the series. history of the channel. Scandoval also advanced the fortunes of the scorned Madix, who, in the wake of her anguish, has become America’s ultimate sweetheart as temporarily as Sandoval’s public reputation collapsed. (In the months since the scandal broke, Madix starred on “Dancing with the Stars,” played Roxie Hart in “Chicago” on Broadway and created sponsored content for a dozen brands. ) Madix and Maloney had envisioned Something About Her, a pocket sandwich shop with a yellow-and-white striped awning, as a “decidedly feminine” rom-com-themed space even before Sandoval’s betrayal. But in the wake of the scandal, the ad’s identity as an avatar of girl power was sealed, long before it served a chive-infused goat cheese sammie named after Drew Barrymore.
SAH was supposed to have its grand opening the next day, but I had noticed TikTok and Instagram posts that Bravo personalities were already avoiding. Andy Cohen, executive producer of “The Real Housewives” and host of the media show “Watch What Happens Live,” had bought a poultry salad sandwich; Lindsay Hubbard, a cast member of “Summer House,” a reality series about New Yorkers partying at a Hamptons estate, stopped by to show her support. But when I arrived in the early afternoon, the store was closed, so I wandered around and then up the street, which was home to a slew of other “Vanderpump” restaurants. SUR and Tom Tom, two nightclubs, were still closed. (Pump, which had let its lease expire in 2023, after ten years in business, was now a closed-structure site. ) The weather was favorable and on Santa Monica Boulevard a strong smell of beer wafted over a network of non-gay bars. still open (two of which, I’m told, belong to Lance Bass, a former member of the ‘NSync organization; a friend of Vanderpump, Bass had officiated Jax and Cartwright’s wedding rites at the exhibit). A food delivery robot with round eyes, a tail and orange ears passed silently by, a promotional tie-in for the new movie “Garfield,” opening this weekend. I headed towards my car, a little disappointed, when out of the corner of my eye, across the street, I suddenly saw Maloney, who had just left the sandwich shop, also heading towards his car, dressing in a dress. with summer flowers and carrying a small silver bag, her short brown hair elegantly gathered over her ears. Delighted, I grabbed my phone and took a blurry photo. My adventure had begun.
That night I headed to Schwartz & Sandy’s. I had heard that since “Vanderpump” season 11 began airing, the concession stand had been hosting live screening parties. When I arrived, the booth was full for the weekly event. Schwartz & Sandy’s is in a nondescript strip mall next to a puppy store, across from the Scientology Celebrity Center. Inside, its decor suggests a mix of some seventeen different design jargons: Tropicália, cozy tchotchke chalet, neon carhop. Schwartz, dressed in George McFly-style glasses and a T-shirt with the word “pasta” in the style of the Prada logo, covered shots at the bar and took friendly photos with fans. (“It’s so cool. We’re talking about the homeless!” a Buffalo judge told me about someone visiting Los Angeles for a drug court convention. )
At 8 o’clock, Schwartz turned off the music and turned up the volume on an edited screen showing the second component of the show’s Season 11 reunion. (A hallmark of almost every single Bravo show, the reunion is made up of (at least two episodes in which cast members discuss the events of last season with the help of Cohen. ) Tailor-made that the on-screen conversation intensified, the crowd shouted and then continued shouting, especially when the action being talked about among the cast members had ended something to do with Schwartz, who, after all, was there, smiling and. blushing behind the bar Shay mentions that she and Schwartz kissed in Las Vegas several seasons ago? Maloney talks about dating Schwartz’s curly-haired bartender Max Boyens!
During commercial breaks, a friend of the Toms named Kyle Chan, a jeweler who appeared in the exhibit (he designed Maloney and Cartwright’s engagement rings), took a microphone, warming up the crowd and handing out small gifts: Array earrings. and bracelets to consumers who came from outside the country to be there. The last and only time I was at Schwartz & Sandy’s was a year ago, just days after Scandoval’s breakup, when the stand was buzzing with a growing energy of revenge. (The night I dined there, a visitor had scrawled the words “Fuck Tom, Team Ariana” on a mirror in lipstick, an incident that was later commented on on screen. ) Now, however, a gentle, kind spirit, camaraderie seemed to pervade the position. (Perhaps this was because Sandoval, the more troublesome Tom, was not in the house. ) In the bathroom, while I was waiting to enter a stall, a woman who came out greeted me. I stuffed a bunch of paper towels into my hand, without asking: after being informed that they were out of toilet paper. She was absolutely unknown and yet he felt like he had known her all his life. After all, we either enjoyed “Vanderpump Rules. ” We were one.
Early the next afternoon, I arrived at Something About Her once again. It was opening day and I was hoping to try a sandwich or two. But now a line, made up of dozens of people, was leaving the store, and you may only see Madix and Maloney inside, serving customers. Some visitors at the front of the line said they had been waiting for 3 hours. Surprisingly, the crowd (mostly young women, with only a handful of men) seemed to be in good spirits, though that clever will didn’t seem to get any bigger for either Tom Sandoval or Tom Schwartz or their establishment, where, I felt a little shy to admit it. to potential SAH customers, he had shouted it the night before. While chatting with customers, Schwartz’s department
A few other people waiting in line had come from far away to see Something about her. Within minutes, I met Laura from Scotland, Gee from New York, and Micaela from Atlanta, who were waiting with a rolling suitcase, on their way to LAX. Most didn’t seem to have read the menu ahead of time. The truth is that the food was a little off topic, as is the case in the “Vanderpump” establishments. An hour after I saw Laura for the first time in line, I saw her as she left the store. He carried some sandwiches in a paper bag, but what he triumphantly presented was his phone. “I did a FaceTime with my daughter in Scotland with Katie and Ariana,” she said as she showed me a selfie. where she was standing, smiling, cheek to cheek with Maloney and Madix smiling. “They were adorable. It was exciting! I couldn’t believe it!
Without a sandwich, I made the decision to go with a friend to Third Street near Beverly Grove. This was another domain coded “Vanderpump”: Vanderpump’s house and Todd’s puppy shop and dog rescue, Vanderpump Dogs, right across from Kyle Chan’s jewelry store. While we were driving, my friend, a “Vanderpump” fan, showed me a bridal boutique where Cartwright had tried on wedding dresses from season 8. At Vanderpump Dogs, I looked at the products, which included not only puppy pieces (collars with studs, stuffed animals shaped like Vanderpump vodka bottles) but also gifts for their owners (T-shirts adorned with messages like “I’m crazy about dogs, but not bitches”). The walls were decorated with photos of Vanderpump and Todd with their dogs, plus Giggy, their beloved Pomeranian with alopecia who died in 2020. (I remembered how, while dining at Pump in the middle of the month, there was (I saw a suit dressed in Ken Todd (dressing Giggy, who was wearing a small suit. ) Among the puppies awaiting adoption was one named Jax Vanderpump, a sandy-coated Maltese harvester rescued from a killer who, according to his biography, is a reading bug and a lover of other people. and dogs.
It caught my attention that there was something obsolete in those “Vanderpump” enclaves. Walking down Third Street or Robertson, I felt like I was in a themed town, or maybe one of those blocks where only cobblers set up, the kind of places where everyone knows your name or, if not exactly your name, then, at least, the names of the little players you’ve seen parasocially on TV. I was reminded of this the next night when I went to SUR to see James Kennedy, the DJ, manning the decks. Kennedy, who has been part of the cast of “Vanderpump” since he was a bus attendant at age twenty-one (he’s now thirty-two), had struggled with anger management and alcohol addiction issues on the show, bursting into tears or on-screen tirades. He is also, perhaps, the fastest and funniest of the “Vanderpump” group, and while he played Top Forty hits in front of a crowd of fans, he kept joking around referencing familiar characters from “Vanderpump”.
After leading the crowd in singing the theme song “Vanderpump Rules,” he revealed that his girlfriend, a new actress named Ally Lewber, was in the house, and with his fist pumped in the air, he led the revelers inside. ! Ally!”) She then pestered them for Pumptinis, Vanderpump’s signature drink, made with vodka, orange liqueur, and grapefruit juice. (Her fist was still raised: “Pumptini! Pumptini!”) While A “Vanderpump” reunion episode of the last two seasons aired on a TV above the bar, Kennedy continued to improvise, “A scrub is a computer virus with a mustache when you rub it!” he said into the handset while. played “No Scrubs” via TLC (citing his own portrayal of Sandoval, who, at the height of the cheating scandal, sported steampunk facial hair. ) Guillermo Zapata, the founder of the establishment, who is still at SUR after. all those years ago, he made his way through the crowd with his phone in his hand, live streaming the occasion on Instagram.
After drinking two glasses of Vanderpump logo rosé (acceptable, though, again, irrelevant), it was time to triumph at my next destination: Jax’s Studio City. ” “The Valley,” the new “Vanderpump” spin-off, starring Jax, Cartwright and Doubt was a ruinous success for Bravo. Centered on an organization of conventionally attractive, drunken couples in their thirties and forties, the series is understandably a hotbed of pettiness, but it’s also a strangely exhilarating watch. which describes, like a fashionable novel by Richard Yates, emptiness, depression and self-deception at the center of a new marriage. (Two couples from “Valley,” plus Jax and Cartwright, have split since the series’ premiere. )
In its first season, “The Valley” followed Taylor and Cartwright as they worked their butts off opening Jax’s, located on Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley, on the supposedly wrong side of the Hollywood Hills. The slightly downgraded implications of this geographical move were reflected in an exchange between the pair during the show’s finale, which marked the launch of the bar. Jax: “We have a bar in Hollywood!” Cartwright: “We have a bar in the valley. ” Many of the menu items, no matter how mundane, seemed to be Jax’s trademark (the Jax cocktail: a Tito’s on the rocks; the Jax burger: a burger). I took a threat and ordered Mamaw’s Beer Cheese, which, like Vanderpump lore, is a recipe from Kentucky local Cartwright’s grandmother. (The Taylor-Cartwrights discussed their plans to create a logo and market this similar delicacy. chili and cheese in the seventh season, although it did not come to fruition)
Jax’s was a cross between a “Vanderpump”-style status quo (tacky wallpaper, pink neon signs representing some of the show’s best-known phrases, including “crut in hell”) and a sports bar (spiked tables). . (I’m having sex under a huge outdoor tent that, as a rather uncharitable friend told me, looks like the plant segment at Home Depot. ) Huge flat screens split the difference, showing ESPN and Bravo side by side, with football tackles and catfights vying for diners’ attention. As a group of people at a trivia evening crowded into the bar’s small interior space, its giant outer segment was resoundingly empty. Also curiously, the sound formula was to bet on The Smiths, which gave the tent an atmospheric, although somewhat dark, atmosphere. It didn’t bother me. As I dipped a hot, crunchy pretzel into Mamaw’s tangy orange concoction (not bad, really), I swayed to the music. “Take me into the night / Take me anywhere / I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care,” Morrissey sang. “Dying through your appearance is such a heavenly way to die. » One Thursday at the end of May at 10 p. m. , in an absolutely abandoned bar in the valley, this feeling seemed to be the cornerstone of my tour. There I was, doing it: growing old with the “Vanderpump” gang. ♦
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How Steve Martin learned what’s funny.
Growing up as a son of the Cowardly Lion.
Amelia Earhart’s last flight.
Fiction through Milan Kundera: “The insufferable lightness of being”.
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