Trifter

Thousands of celebrities and wealthy people call it their home – Beverly Hills. It is one of the most beautiful and expensive parts of the western Greater Los Angeles area with highly exclusive, wealthy neighborhoods such as Bel Air and Holmby Hills.

 The Santa Monica Mountains, West Hollywood, the Fairfax District and Beverlywood surround the city. The area contains some of the largest and most expensive pieces of real estate in the US.

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 Home to Hollywood Celebrities

 Beverly Hills became famous decades ago when movie stars started moving out of the somehow deteriorating Hollywood where they worked. It became fashionable, and thousands of wealthy people from all-over the world followed. Even foreign royalties, among them the former Shah of Persia, built their US residences here.

 Of course, this pushed the image and price of the local real estate even further up. In the sixties and seventies, the smallest house in Beverly Hills had a price tag over one million dollars.

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 Place of the 90210 Series

 Despite the usual ups and downs, Beverly Hills mostly maintained the image and the price tag for the real estate. Additional worldwide publicity reached the city of the rich and famous through the TV series 90210. This show gained such enormous popularity that it is nowadays some kind of synonym for Beverly Hills.

 However, 90210 is just one of the three Beverly Hills zip codes. Any of Beverly Hills addresses are high in demand – even post office boxes. Many people from surrounding communities rent a box in Beverly Hills in order to have a “famous Beverly Hills address”.

The trick is not to go to a US Post Office where you just get a post office box, which is visible as such to others. People in the know go to UPS and other mail box companies where they can too have just a cheap “mail box”, but still can advertise their full Beverly Hills address (of the mail box company). They just have to add the unit (or “suite” number, which actually is their mail box number.

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 Famous Hotels, Restaurants and Clubs

 Naturally, Beverly Hills has a long line of famous hotels, restaurants and clubs. They are not cheap by any stretch of imagination, but they are an absolute “must” for many people who insist of being “in”. Do not be surprised to bump here into a big celebrity in the middle of a hotel, bar or shopping mall. Just don’t make any big event out of it.  The celebrities don’t like that. They just love to be admired from a sidewalk…

Most of the places – such as the Beverly Hills Country Club – are very exclusive, and they want to keep it that way. They mostly do it just with their price tag. Most of the people can’t afford their prices, and that’s how the rich and famous usually stay among themselves. They call it the selection of the “green”…

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A Shopping Bonanza

The application fee or the annual membership bill for some of the exclusive clubs is much higher than the annual gross income of many regular folks. There are some exceptions though. You must search for them.

Naturally, Beverly Hills offers a wide variety of shopping opportunities. Streets such as Rodeo Drive and Rodeo Drive are filled with most famous and expensive shops the most spoiled rich kids and their moms and dads can find.

If you go beyond the top-brand names of the fashion world, you can find many places with acceptable prices – and sometimes even sales you can’t refuse. Especially many of the side streets of the Rodeo Drive house reasonable shops with prices regular working folks can afford. Still, it’s Beverly Hills.

Sunset Strip and the Business

Main boulevards through the city are Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica Boulevard and – the most famous one – Sunset Boulevard, which is usually called just the “Sunset Strip”. Decades ago, a TV series called “77, Sunset Strip” used to be as famous as the much later successor 90210.

However, Beverly Hills also is a place of business. For some people, it seems to be very desirable and advantageous to have a Beverly Hills business address. Most of the businesses are located in the business district on or around the Wilshire Boulevard.

Beverly Hills is for many people a ”dream town” – virtually equal with expensive lifestyle. Gorgeous mansions, exclusive clubs, extravagant cars and wild parties. This all still is true and is supposedly going to remain this way. Beverly Hills is going to cash in on that image for many years to come.

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