Why Is Calabasas America’s Most Notorious Suburb?
In the reality-television era, when the rock that boasts the entryway to the city is a regular feature on the E! Network, hoards of young people in Middle America are likely growing up with Calabasas envy. According to a piece in The Week this Wednesday, the reformation of Calabasas into a reality show Mecca is a bit of a puzzle for those who actually grew up there.
Elissa Strauss, who says Calabasas is her hometown and who has pangs of nostalgia when recalling the “Yogurt and Video” shop where one could get a frozen yogurt and a VHS movie, wrote some reflections on the evolution of her home. Strauss wrote that she, “like every bookish teenager raised in such a [bourgeois] place,” hated it. She says the town is much like any other suburb, despite its celebrity trappings:
“[Calabasas is] a luxurious version of an otherwise predictable — some might call it banal — lifestyle. You can see Kim Kardashian filling up her Range Rover at the gas station. Or Drake grabbing some lunch at Marmalade. Even Justin Bieber’s crime here (egging his neighbor’s house) is the most Leave It to Beaver of his young career.”
Indeed, despite its substantial population of celebrity neighbors — The Inquisitr recently reported that Katie Holmes and her daughter have just purchased a home there — not all Calabasas residents live in a mansion and have their every movement tracked by paparazzi or television cameras. A Grantland report in July said 6.2 percent of Calabasas residents live below the federal poverty line. In addition to the lavish homes used as backdrops for media shoots, the town also has many more modest areas that get far less attention.
It is the appeal of normality which Strauss believes has drawn the rich and notorious to relocate there in recent years. It is far from the full glitz and glamor of celebrity life. Strauss even suggests the underlying normalcy of Calabasas is one reason for the Kardashians’ enduring popularity. The family’s reality empire has long had Calabasas as its backdrop. Says Strauss:
“Even with all the fancy cars, the high-end boutiques, and the cameras capturing the Kardashian family’s every move, Calabasas is still no Hollywood, or even a Beverly Hills. There are no exclusive spots — be they restaurants, nightclubs, or country clubs — and the majority of kids go to public school, albeit a local district that regularly outperforms Los Angeles Unified.”
Grantland further emphasizes that the gated community of Hidden Hills, nestled inside Calabasas, is what television viewers believe Calabasas actually is. This community is the second wealthiest Los Angeles neighborhood, just behind Bel Air. It’s homes from areas like these that are rented out for reality television.
[Image: Google]
