A new season of Vanderpump Rules is upon us, with a new twist. The cast members (who make $25K per episode) have decamped from their apartments in West Hollywood and purchased homes near each other in…Valley Village and Sherman Oaks and Valley Glen. Mrs. UpintheValley is in ecstasy. Practically neighbors.
If you’re a reality star in your eighth season, what do you buy? What does $2 million get you? Farmhouse modern, glossy white with black trim, newly constructed. One of the houses, I noticed, actually abuts a major Valley boulevard. Who would pay seven figures to live next to traffic? Bravo stars, that’s who. It’s also possible they chose houses with a generic facade/motif to discourage fans from identifying their location and pestering them with vegan housewarming gifts.
This strikes me as a seachange in how the Valley will be viewed in pop culture terms, going forward. This is not Calabasas. This is the flatlands, north of the 101. Adam Carolla-ville. Almost Van Nuys adjacent. This is us, albeit on a grander scale. It’s the inevitable consequence of too much money chasing too few houses. The little ones go down, and bigger ones take their place, to the limit of the setback.
Then there’s Cleveland, which has been rebranding for two generations in the hope bargain hunters from Californians and New Yorkers will head there in search of a price point too good to refuse.
After my last post, alert reader James noted an earlier Plain Dealer branding campaign from the 80s: New York may be the Big Apple, but Cleveland’s a Plum.
This sort of civic boosterism inevitably gets trumped by crowdsourced public branding. Healthy cynicism, like cream, rises to the top. Shame can be a social glue, if not a left-handed expression of pride. It offers consolation without changing facts on the ground. But in the end, King James will leave you, not once but twice.
In America’s great divergence between the boutique cities on the coasts and Everywhere Else, the New Urbanists keep waiting for people to respond to economic signals. Logic says move to the Rust Belt: big house, tiny price tag, short commute. Be a big fish in a smaller pond. Locate your start-up here, cut your burn rate in half. California responds by saying, meh, I’d rather just move to my own personal Cleveland called the Valley, and turn that into West Hollywood.
Yes, please. Keep pumping.
I moved from a trendy, huge, no-heat loft in DTLA to north of the 210. Amazing. Everyone on my block has horses, and is friendly, and the air is clean and the skies are bright. True, there’s no artisan pizza within walking distance (nothing is within walking distance) but it’s a small inconvenience.
All that, and you’re still in the same city. Los Angeles is an animal like no other.
I think the issue is usually the job market for whole fields is in coastal cities and Cali specifically for a lot of entertainment production.
Also one should note the climate differences between California and Cleveland.