Bel Air is more moneyed. More expensive homes. Its a residential neighborhood not a city.

This might sound facile but it's pretty profound as regards where to live or do business - Beverly Hills is an independent municipality. Bel Air is a district in Los Angeles. Everything from school taxes to building codes is different.

... And we're from Beverly Hills

BIG difference

If you have to ask you can't afford to live in either.

^ Most people can't even afford Watts, much less BH and BA

I don't understand the question and I won't respond to it.

Beverly Hills was idyllic place to live in 60’s and 70’s

Some of us loved Beverly Hills so much that we refuse to leave...

R4 Of course the house used in The Beverly Hillbillies is in Bel Air.

The primary difference is that all of Bel-Air is considered “good” because the neighborhood begins north of Sunset; while Beverly Hills is half north of Sunset and half south of Sunset, so one can claim to live in Beverly Hills while living in the “undesirable” flats. Note that there is nothing terribly undesirable about the flats, those are the parts of Beverly Hills we see on TV with the rows of giant palms and the Beverly Hills shield signs, but snobs will make anything into elitist nonsense. The parts of “desirable” Beverly Hills and Bel Air are basically identical, with mansions hidden behind giant hedges clinging to the hills.

Actually will correct my post to say only a third of Beverly Hills proper is above Sunset; the other third between Sunset and Santa Monica is the parts we see in the tv shows with the palm trees and mansions exposed to the street; and the parts below Santa Monica include downtown and some fairly mundane residential streets with smaller but generally nice homes.

I was gonna say Persians.

Bel-Air’s east and west gates are along Sunset Boulevard, and the elevation increases as you drive further into Bel-Air. Most homes are behind tall hedges, walls, and gates and cannot be seen from the road. Lots of winding and very tight roads as you drive further north into the hills. Feels very serene and there’s not a ton of traffic and little retail and restaurants, outside of the Bel-Air hotel.

The area of Beverly Hills near the Beverly Hills hotel is stunning. Huge houses sit back along winding, wide thoroughfares. Further north, in the hills Bel-Air and Beverly Hills are indistinguishable. Downtown Beverly Hills’ retail district, including Rodeo Drive, is exactly how it looks on tv. Beverly Hills feels very historical and old, but not in an unkempt way, but driving through you’re instantly aware that there’s a lot of history there.

Beverly Hills has homeless encampments. Bel-Air does not (though the rest of Los Angeles does).

Beverly Hills = Persians Persians Persians

Bel Air - Wealthy, but not all that showy

Do the rich LA gay boys live in Bel Air or Beverly Hills?

Bel Air is way better, less tacky

"Do the rich LA gay boys live in Bel Air or Beverly Hills? "

Wherever their sugar daddies live

First of all, it’s properly written Bel-Air. I grew up there, and my brother and I still own our family home. We’ve been leasing it to the same Iranian-Jewish family for the past 22 years. So all the “Persians” don’t live in Beverly Hills. Bel-Air wasn’t as nearly as fenced and gated when I was a boy as it is now. Although all the original homes there were quite large, the trend has been for the older homes to be demolished and replaced with gigantic monstrosities. The “flash” associated with Beverly Hills is now creeping into Bel-Air. Really regrettable!

Schools, schools, schools!

Are you and your brother also lovers R23?

R25. We think not, but we do love each other.

Bel-Air is pretty much all residential. Beverly Hills has quite a large commercial/retail area.

People with taste live in Brentwood.

People with real money live in Pacific Palisades.

R24. It’s true that Beverly Hills schools are extremely good. Young people who live in Bel-Air attend Los Angeles city schools. The high school for Bel-Air kids is University High, which is supposed to be pretty good. However, most kids in Bel-Air probably go to private schools. We did.

R27. I think the only truly commercial development in Bel-Air is the Bel-Air Hotel. Other than that, there’s the Bel-Air Country Club and Harvard-Westlake School, which is private.

Holmby Hills stretches along the southern portion of Sunset Boulevard that delineates Bel-Air, and is a very tiny community of huge, very expensive estates starting in the $20MM+ range.

There are currently only three homes for sale in Holmby Hills and they’re all north of $65MM. Out of the three Platinum Triangle cities, Holmby Hills has the most cachet in my opinion.

Holmby Hills is where the Playboy and former Spelling mansions are located and countless celebrities live including Kylie Jenner, P-Diddy, and Jaclyn Smith.

Although it has the most cachet, Holmby Hills is flat and less interesting than hilltop properties in Bel-Air and Beverly Hills.

Most school age kids in Beverly Hills or Bel-Air go to private school. Beverly Hills High is good by California standards, but not exceptional. It pulls in a lot of students from poorer and economically disadvantaged areas, unlike Chicago’s New Trier or Dallas’ Highland Park High School.

There’s also tons of foreign money in the Platinum Triangle, from Russian oligarchs to Chinese tech millionaires and Middle Eastern oil heirs. These people buy homes as a safe investment vehicle to park their cash.

Despite this, Beverly Hills, Bel-Air and Holmby Hills are 80%+ white.

Where is Lisa Vanderpump’s Villa Rosa?

Cologny, Genève and Mayfair, London say pfff!

"There are currently only three homes for sale in Holmby Hills and they’re all north of $65MM. Out of the three Platinum Triangle cities, Holmby Hills has the most cachet in my opinion.

Holmby Hills is where the Playboy and former Spelling mansions are located and countless celebrities live including Kylie Jenner, P-Diddy, and Jaclyn Smith."

Your first sentence is disproved by your second sentence.

Speaking strictly from an architectural standpoint, Beverly Hills is superior to Bel-Air; but Pacific Palisades leaves them both in the dust.

[quote] Most school age kids in Beverly Hills or Bel-Air go to private school. Beverly Hills High is good by California standards, but not exceptional. It pulls in a lot of students from poorer and economically disadvantaged areas,

This is patently false except the part about BHHS not being exceptional.

It is very Persian because that is who lives in Beverly Hills. (See link below and the "word that best describes students in your school" (which is also 70% white, not 80%)

The only kids who can attend BHHS live in Beverly Hills which, as others have noted, is a separate city and not part of Los Angeles and thus not part of the LA Unified School District.

There are no doubt many kids in Beverly Hills who go to private school because rich people often send their kids to private school, regardless of the quality of the public schools. And because they don't want their kids going to a school that is mostly Persian, Persian Jews to be exact--it's a very insular community.

Given the nature of LA and show business, the connections that can be made at Harvard-Westlake, Brentwood or Windward are reason enough for families to avoid BHHS

^^Kids in Bel Air go to private school because LA public schools are not very good, hence the large number of private schools in the city,. But so do kids in Brentwood and Los Feliz and Pacific Palisades, etc.

R37. Very true about the importance of connections made at school. My father and grandfather worked in the film business. Although my brother and I went to Harvard School (before it merged with Westlake School for Girls), I don’t remember it as being very showbizzy when we were there. A lot of the movie brats went to Chadwick, as I recall. Like Liza Minnelli and Christina Crawford.

[quote]People with real money live in Pacific Palisades.

People with real money who don't want to live in one of these high-profile, too "LA" places, live in San Marino, Bradbury, Rolling Hills, Manhattan Beach, or La Canada Flintridge.

Jonathan and Jennifer Hart chose to live in Bel-Air. He was a self-made millionaire, and quite a guy. She was gorgeous, a terrific lady who knows how to take care of herself. So, suck it Beverly Hills.

Isn’t Harvard Westlake in Studio City?

We are better than all of you and prefer to be left out of this discussion.

R11 made me think of that line from Clueless when Josh tells off Cher for acting like there is no difference between her housekeeper being from Mexico or Guatemala, when Cher herself would have been appalled if anyone thought she lived below Sunset!

R42. Some time after the merger of Harvard and Westlake schools, they established a campus in Studio City as the upper school. The campus in Bel-Air is now the middle school.

Did you live next door to Elizabeth? (Please say yes)

R46. Who, me? No. Taylor lived on Nimes Road. We were on Bellagio. Also, our time frames didn’t overlap.

My understanding R45 is that private school in LA wasn't much of a thing until busing, that a number of now top schools, like Brentwood School only date back as far as that era.

R39, Dominique Dunne, Jami Lee Curtis and possibly Carrie fisher went to Westlake .

How about Pasadena? Do a lot of rich people live there?

Always think it’s weird there isn’t a bigger distinction between areas of LA that are separate towns - like WeHo and Beverly Hills - and just general parts of LA like Bel Air or Brentwood. Seems like taxes, police, services should be very different - as the towns can just fund their own rich selves,

Those private school girls always know where to find the booze and the boys!

R39 Chadwick, in Palos Verdes where the real Old Money (like parts of Pasadena) lives. Beverly Hills. Bel Air... the westside etc are just a little nouveau... déclassé. Wor

Manhattan Beach is not "LA glitzy"??? Are you nuts? Have you ever been there?

This thread should come with this disclaimer:

*Most opinions are from circa 1992.

I think I’m going to lunch at Spago tomorrow!

r54 Where was the word "glitzy" mentioned? I meant that Manhattan Beach is somewhat removed from LA proper (BH, the west side, etc.) The South Bay is like a completely different place.

1992 is being rather generous R55

It's one of the odder things about DL--the Eldergays I know IRL are not frozen in amber decades in the past.

Neither of them is Santa Barbara.

R57 confuses the DL with "IRL," an anonymous site with "IRL," and sardonic humor with her humorlessness and that of her bar partners in "IRL."

But then she's just a tyke at 57.

The really cool rich celebs live in Malibu Colony.

No one "lives" in Malibu you dumb fuck. They spend weekends at their houses in the colony.

LOL R61, you must live in flyover country.

A friend of mine, who is a well known pop star, used to live in Malibu, full time, unless she was touring.

The first time I saw Malibu I was really disappointed. Multi-million dollar beach houses right on PCH, but the hills above are beautiful

[quote] Chadwick, in Palos Verdes where the real Old Money (like parts of Pasadena) lives. Beverly Hills. Bel Air... the westside etc are just a little nouveau... déclassé. Wor

ROFL “Old LA Money” is like people who moved over from Indiana and Ohio in the 1890. I forget the name of the old movie but one character boasts about her family’s roots in Los Angeles and another character quips, “So you’re from Iowa?”

And the reason why the Westside communities and UCLA exist at all is because those Midwestern pricks in Pasadena, Hancock Park and USC wanted nothing to do with the movie industry and the people who founded it - rhymes with PEWS.

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