Lifestyle
A Bastion of Los Angeles Hippie Culture Survived the Flames
In Topanga Canyon on Saturday morning, suspended midair from an electricity line, hung the smoldering top of a utility pole. The pole itself had burned away. Its remaining crosspieces resembled a crucifix on fire. By the time Bob Melet videotaped this eerie scene, firefighters had managed to halt the advance of flaring patches that elsewhere had been whipped into infernos.
Barely 100 yards from the front door of Mr. Melet’s store, Melet Mercantile — a destination for fashion and interior designers who for decades have tracked Mr. Melet’s idiosyncratic tastes — lay the fire line at Camp Wildwood, a disused summer camp established in the 1920s and later turned into a resort and community center by two locals, Julia and Oka Stewart. To its west and along the Pacific Coast Highway, almost everything was torched.
“The canyon is a funnel that comes right past my doorstep,” Mr. Melet said by phone from a friend’s apartment in Corona del Mar, his evacuation point. “If it had reached me, it would have wiped out the entire town.”
The fact that it had not represented the miraculous survival of an ecosystem as fragile and anomalous as it is naturally untamed. An eccentric holdout of a countercultural ethos that once went a long way toward defining the Southern California lifestyle, Topanga lies at the western limit of an extensive system of canyons resembling a series of Cyclopean knife cuts slashed into the Santa Monica mountains.
Others among the 28 canyons — Laurel, Beachwood, Runyon — may be better known beyond the Los Angeles basin, largely for their place in rock ’n’ roll history and lore. While gradually over the decades those places succumbed to the irresistible forces of gentrification, Topanga Canyon has clung to its wildness, its renegade spirit and the durable aura it retains of a one-time redoubt of bootleggers and drug runners. Bisected by a single winding mountain road, Topanga straddles the mountains and links the sprawling suburbs of the San Fernando Valley with the blue vastness of the ocean.
“One of the things we’re proudest of in Topanga is the strength of the community,” said Stefan Ashkenazy, a long time resident of the canyon. By some standards, Mr. Ashkenazy’s exclusive hotel complex, Elsewhere — built on 39 hilltop acres of what was once a vacation ranch for the Howard Johnson family — could be seen as a harbinger of gentrifying forces. That it is not owes to his efforts to keep the hotel’s vibe communitarian and local (he has offered free lodging to the area’s ad hoc firefighting teams that call themselves Heat Hawks), and its imprint light upon the land.
“Believe me, I know how lucky we are to have this holdout,” said Mr. Ashkenazy, who also owns the four-star Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood.
For Emmeline Summerton, a self-taught social historian whose Instagram account, Lost Canyons LA, has become an addictive source of Los Angeles history and lore, the story of Topanga Canyon is one of improbable survival — a thoroughly wild place less than an hour’s drive from the city’s business center.
“I’m not sure how much people outside Los Angeles know about it,” she said, referring both to the canyon itself — populated by coyotes, rattlesnakes, and mountain lions — as well as a community that has long worn its ornery countercultural reputation as a badge of pride.
“There is the local, small community and a very rural feeling,” Ms. Summerton said, one still largely under the influence of the first wave of New Age pioneers. There were free-love naturist hide-outs like Elysium Fields and Sandstone Retreat, she explained, along with Moonfire Ranch, a 60-acre sanctuary established in the late 1950s by Lewis Beach Marvin III, an animal-rights activist and heir to S & H Green Stamps, a once popular grocery store reward system.
“It was very much about people living off the grid, with solar and rainwater collection,” Ms. Summerton said, and about a tolerance for oddballs and eccentrics that hung on long after a succession of real estate booms permanently altered the character of other, less remote canyons. “A lot has changed and there’s a new breed of hippie-type people out there, influencers and wellness entrepreneurs, so, yes, it’s more exclusive and expensive than in the past,” she added. “But it’s still the one canyon where you get a sense of what it has always been.”
By this she meant a refuge for renegades and outsiders, for artists like Neil Young, who wrote his landmark solo album “After the Gold Rush” at his house there; for storied ’60s groups like Canned Heat, whose members once worked as the house band at the Topanga Corral club (which burned down not once but twice); for Linda Ronstadt in the days after she quit Stone Poneys, the folk rock trio, to go solo and make music with musicians who would later form the Eagles; for the American actor Will Geer to create an open air amphitheater set in a hillside and call it the Theatricum Botanicum, a name derived from a 17th century English botanical text.
To this day in Topanga Canyon there remains an itinerant community informally known as the “Creekers,” whose members live off the grid in encampments set along creeks in the hills behind the disused Topanga Ranch Motel; residents who ride horses to do their marketing at the Topanga Creek General Store; and naturists hiking canyon roads clad in little besides sun hats and sneakers.
This, of course, was before the wildfires.
Gone on the first day of the Palisades fire was the Reel Inn, a beloved Malibu fish joint opened in 1986 by Teddy and Andy Leonard at the base of Topanga Canyon. Also gone was Cholada, a bustling Thai restaurant whose takeout was both a staple of coastal dining and the source of catered meals for the art world honchos that regularly decamp to Los Angeles for the annual Frieze art fair. Gone, too, were the Topanga Ranch Motel, a bungalow style motel complex built in 1929 by William Randolph Hearst to house railroad workers, and the Malibu Feed Bin, a holdout from an era when this stretch of the California coast was still largely agrarian.
Entire hillsides and washes were reduced to ashes and, later that same afternoon so, too, was an entire stretch of multimillion dollar homes improbably perched oceanside where the canyons meet the water along Pacific Coast Highway.
“If you’re ever going to use the word surreal,” Mr. Melet said of the devastation, “it was surreal.”
What seemed almost miraculous, given the surrounding destruction, was that the fires failed to reach the Theatricum Botanicum, and left unscathed the Inn of the Seventh Ray, whose dining tables are set on stone terraces by a creek side and whose gift shop is filled with crystals and mystical arcana.
“So far Topanga has mainly been spared,” the actress Wendie Malick said by phone from her ranch set on a ridge above Topanga.
“The winds were in our favor,” she added. “Though we’re not out of the woods yet. Things can change on a dime.”
And, indeed, the cyclonic winds — biblical, raging, like nothing in memory — started up again on Monday.
“The fires didn’t get to us last week,” said Nick Fouquet, a French American designer whose Western-style hats are favored by celebrities including Tom Brady, Rihanna, J. Balvin and LeBron James. When the first alert came last week, Mr. Fouquet raced up the coast from his business’s headquarters in Venice to the geodesic dome in Topanga that he calls home and, aided by a band of locals pumped out his swimming pool to soak his house and its surroundings.
It was a scene being repeated throughout the canyon, Mr. Fouquet said, neighbors on a mission of “house triage,’’ putting out small burns before they could grow. Videos Mr. Fouquet sent this reporter from the early days of the fire showed crimson flames crowning a ridge less than a quarter-mile from his property line. “The wind, the firefighters, a myriad of factors have been on our side,” said Mr. Fouquet.
Among those factors were the triage efforts of a tight knit community that stayed put despite evacuation orders and that banded together — as it has consistently across the decades when the canyon was visited by the wildfires, earthquakes, mudslides and rockfalls that are a fact of life in a seismically unstable coastal desert perched at a continent’s edge.
“Topanga always felt like the ugly stepchild no one cares about,” Mr. Fouquet said, while acknowledging the role in his current reprieve of both firefighters and fate. “We’re used to doing things for ourselves.”
The waitress was pouring tap water. But Natalie Winters was quick to ask for bottled.
“No fluoride for our dear dinner guest!” she said, gesturing to me. “Only filtered water and pesticide-free limes.”
We were sitting in the back corner of Butterworth’s, a Capitol Hill bistro that has become a destination for friends and supporters of President Trump. Stephen K. Bannon, Ms. Winters’s current boss, has hosted private events there. Her former boss, Raheem Kassam, the editor in chief of The National Pulse, is an investor. The menu that night featured lamb tartare, oysters brûlée and pork cheeks.
Ms. Winters and I had met for dinner, or so I had thought. “Honestly,” she said, “I’m probably not going to eat because that’s my brand. I don’t eat at restaurants because I don’t like the seed oils that they use.”
At 24, Ms. Winters has been a White House correspondent since Jan. 28. She reports for Mr. Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, whose audience includes large swaths of the Republican base, high-level officials and the president himself.
She belongs to a group of journalists from conservative outlets who have taken on a new national prominence in recent months as they jostle for positions in the cramped James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has described long-established news media organizations as increasingly irrelevant while accusing them of spreading “lies.”
The White House Correspondents’ Association, which includes journalists from dozens of outlets, has criticized the new administration’s handling of the press, saying it discourages independent reporting and gives priority to those who favor President Trump’s agenda. But the elevation of nontraditional outlets has been a good thing for Ms. Winters and some other journalists in the West Wing, including those representing Breitbart News and Lindell TV, the platform founded by the conspiratorial MyPillow salesman Mike Lindell.
When Ms. Winters is not seated beside Mr. Bannon in the basement studio of his townhouse near the Capitol, she is often reporting to the loyal “War Room” audience from outside the White House, delivering off-the-cuff monologues that pillory Democrats and, sometimes, her fellow reporters.
“It’s very gonzo, which I like,” she said. “I think of it as an I.Q. test every day.”
Ms. Winters describes herself as a “populist nationalist,” like Mr. Bannon. She says she “detests” more Republicans than she admires. She frequently attacks party leaders like Speaker Mike Johnson and usually supports Mr. Trump.
“Even though I agree with most of what Trump does,” Ms. Winters said, “it’s because I ideologically agree with him. Not because I am a cultist.”
She counts Mr. Bannon not only as her co-host and boss, but also as her mentor. When he went to federal prison last year for defying a subpoena from a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, he entrusted her to host “War Room” in his absence.
Since Mr. Trump’s reascension, her profile has skyrocketed to the point where she says she is recognized in restaurants and airports. She says her parents have been surprised by her often combative onscreen persona.
“It’s such a different version of myself than I am in my day-to-day life,” she said, adding, “I don’t even recognize myself.”
Ms. Winters grew up in Santa Monica, Calif., the daughter of a physician father and a stay-at-home mother. She attended Harvard-Westlake, an elite prep school in Los Angeles, and was relatively apolitical until the 2016 campaign was underway.
Various school activities struck her as liberal-coded and performative. First it was a bake sale intended to raise awareness of the gender pay gap. “Just straight-up bogus,” Ms. Winters said. Then came the student walkout in protest of gun violence after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. “A school-sanctioned walkout,” she said. “What are you doing?”
Her only published piece in the high school paper was a letter to the editor in which she made the case for the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. It was not well received on the mostly liberal campus. Because of her conservative views in general and her support of Mr. Trump in particular, she was ostracized by her peers, she said.
“Maybe the trope that everything goes back to high school trauma is true,” she added.
During her senior year, after she learned she had gotten into the University of Chicago, she more or less stopped going to class. She skipped her high school graduation day because she was flying to Washington to start working as an intern for Mr. Kassam, who was then a “War Room” co-host. She also missed out on prom. “It was the best thing I ever did,” she said.
During her first year of college, Ms. Winters became a “War Room” staff writer. She frequently commuted to Washington instead of attending class. “My best friend from college is, like, Steve,” she said, referring to Mr. Bannon. As Covid spread across the globe, she made her first on-camera appearance.
“The pandemic’s really where she got her sea legs,” Mr. Bannon said in a phone interview. He used some baseball-scout lingo to describe Ms. Winters, calling her “a five-tool player.”
She has raised her visibility with her appearances on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” a YouTube talk show hosted by the former CNN personality. “She is always a lively and provocative contributor, even if I don’t agree with many of her views,” Mr. Morgan said by text. But Ms. Winters insists she’d be happy spending her days sifting through federal databases.
“She’s essentially a nerd at heart,” Mr. Bannon said.
One of the biggest feuds on the right has been between Ms. Winters’s boss and Elon Musk, who, with the president’s blessing, has embedded himself within the federal government. At the height of the rift, Mr. Bannon called Mr. Musk a “truly evil person.” In response, Mr. Musk wrote on X: “Bannon is a great talker but not a great doer.”
The spat has put Ms. Winters in a unique position. Mr. Musk is one of her 630,000 followers on X, and he frequently reposts her. She has lauded him and his leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency.
“I think I’m the only person who could bring them together and get peace,” she said, laughing.
Ms. Winters may be a White House correspondent, but her job is not so much to cover Mr. Trump’s avalanche of executive actions as it is to report and comment on what she labels “opposition forces,” whether they be Democratic politicians, liberal organizations or major news outlets.
Hugo Lowell, a White House correspondent for The Guardian, said that Ms. Winters differs from other reporters on the beat because she is “vocal about her own political views and clearly infuses them into her coverage.”
“But she’s good on TV,” Mr. Lowell added, “and she has built up an audience with Trump’s base that translates to a degree of influence in a fragmented media ecosystem.”
Ms. Winters compared the White House briefing room to high school. “This is my first time in a professional setting where my MAGA royalty clout means nothing,” she said.
Her outsider status was confirmed when the National Press Club rejected her bid to become a member. Asked about the denial of Ms. Winters’s application, a spokesperson for the organization, which was founded in 1908 and has roughly 2,500 members, said: “Decisions are made in alignment with the standards of journalism we uphold. We do not publicly comment on individual applications out of respect for all involved.”
Many White House reporters affiliated with large news organizations do not talk to her, Ms. Winters said, and several of them contacted for this article declined to comment. But, ultimately, someone who has blasted much of the news media as “ground zero of left-wing opposition to Trump” was always going to be in for a chilly reception.
At Butterworth’s, true to her word, Ms. Winters had only bottled water during our three-hour talk.
She said she has had two drinks in her life and has never done drugs. She also has a budding lifestyle brand. Items for sale include a tank top with “More insecure than the border” plastered across the front and a tote that reads “A little conspiratorial.”
Her cable news network of choice is MSNBC, which she watches partly to generate material. She said that in another world she might have been a poetry professor. “I always joke — in my day-to-day life, I really am a lib at heart,” she said.
She also loved “Barbie” and agreed with the monologue delivered by America Ferrera, in which her character says, “It is literally impossible to be a woman.” But, Ms. Winters caveats, “It’s also really hard to be a man.” She added that scores of women younger than she had asked her not only for career advice but also for tips on how to be like her.
Like a growing Gen-Z contingent, she is “anti-app,” meaning dating apps. One day, she would like to settle down with a man she can be “submissive” to, she said. She added that she had been wronged in past relationships, which only stoked her ambitions.
“I was like, ‘I’m going to get revenge,” she said. “You can watch me on TV being the next big deal.’”
Growing up in Westchester, Amanda Gorman’s Sundays were dedicated to one thing: church.
“I went to a historically Black church and I feel like it’s always an occasion to go to church as an African American,” says 27-year-old Gorman, who became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history in 2021. “You’re dressing up in your Sunday best and you’re going to be there for several hours.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
These days, her Sundays are not entirely devoted to church, but the poet, activist and author says that those early years taught her the importance of intentionally carving out time to spend with loved ones and be in community.
“It can be getting together with some gal pals that you haven’t convened with in a while,” says Gorman, who became the youth poet laureate of Los Angeles at age 16 in 2014 and the first national youth poet laureate three years later. “It can be spending time with your pets. It can be going to the book club that you love, but finding something where you can ground yourself in what it is to be a human being. I think I still try to translate that into my Sundays.”
Gorman is set to make her second appearance at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival on April 26, where she’ll be talking about her third book, “Girls on the Rise,” released this year. The Harvard graduate began writing the children’s book in 2018 after she watched Christine Blasey Ford — who accused Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers — testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“I just remember being so struck by her courage, bravery and truth,” says Gorman. “It made me think about the next generation of young women, girls and nonbinary children, who also would be speaking their truth in a patriarchal society. So I wanted to write a book that created a safe space for young girls and their allies to feel a sense of kinship.”
On her ideal Sunday in L.A., Gorman would hang out with her dog, Kenny (named after Kendrick Lamar), visit her favorite bookstores, enjoy afternoon tea like a “Bridgerton” character and hit up a rooftop.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
10 a.m.: Embrace brunch vibes at home
If I can sleep in until 10 a.m., that’s like a miracle, magical day for me. I love just taking the extra time on a Sunday. Breakfast is my favorite and maybe my main meal of the day if I’m being honest. So I will carve out Sunday as my day to really splurge on my breakfast. I’ll maybe make some french toast. I have been dallying and making a gluten-free french toast with some nice seeds, vanilla, cinnamon and berries. Then I’ll make some veggie patties and have some other fruit. I’ll also make some hot chocolate and then I’ll put on “The Great British Bake Off” show while I’m cooking, so I can really luxuriate in the Sunday chill vibes. I pretty much start the day with as much brunch energy as I can.
12:30 p.m.: Get some sunshine
I’d love to get some sunshine, so I’d go to the beach. I love taking a stroll with my friends along the Santa Monica Pier, kind of on the northern side because it’s a bit less crowded.
3 p.m.: Live out my ‘Bridgerton’ fantasy
By this time, I’d be hungry and ready for lunch. If I was down by the beach, there’s a restaurant I like called Ivy at the Shore, kind of close to the Third Street Promenade. You can eat and watch the sunset. They have a good salad. I’ve also gotten really good enchiladas there, and fish and chips.
Or I’d go to the Peninsula. For my birthday, I just did an afternoon high tea at the Peninsula. It was so nice and so worth it. I feel like if someone wants to splurge on a Sunday, go. They have a harpist, tea, sandwiches and scones, so I’d probably spend the rest of my afternoon there on my dream, ideal day. You can sit in their parlor lounge, which has these nice, colorful couch sofas or these elegant corner chairs. They have music playing and very snazzily dressed butlers. One of my friends wore a fascinator. I wore lace gloves. I said, “Come in your ‘Bridgerton’ aura.” It really feels like “Bridgerton” because on the show, they have the instrumentalists playing modern songs and they were playing like “Diamonds” by Rihanna on the harp, so I love that mix of the contemporary with the classic and bougie.
5:30 p.m.: Get lost in a bookstore
Next, I’d go to the Last Bookstore in DTLA or Chevalier’s Books in Larchmont. The Last Bookstore has an enthralling, picturesque maze of used and new books, and Chevalier’s is a cozy, intimate bookshop with stores and cafes nearby.
7 p.m.: Catch a second wind at a rooftop restaurant
I’d probably go home, but if I got a second wind of energy, there are some really nice restaurants that I like in West Hollywood. There’s Catch L.A. and Perch. Both are really cute, glitzy rooftop places to go after the sun has set. Catch L.A. has a “Hit Me” chocolate cake, where they pour melted chocolate over it and crack it open in front of you, so that’s really nice. Tons of people love to take videos of that and post it because it’s a real moment.
10 p.m.: ‘Great British Bake Off’ and tea
I’m probably home, watching some more “British Bake Off,” “The Office” or something cozy, making myself some chamomile tea and reading. That’s also the thing I love to do on Sundays because I feel like it’s so hard to find time nowadays, in the modern age, to step away from the screen and engage stories and text. I was reading this book that’s really funny to me called “How to Kill Your Family.” [Laughs] I was like, I feel like my family is going to see me reading this at like Thanksgiving and think I’ve gone unhinged, but it’s this dark thriller comedy that was published in the U.K. I just finished it and I thought it was hilarious. It’s not a step-by-step guide, by the way. It’s more a narrative of a character’s journey [laughs].
11 p.m.: Wind down
I discourage the elaborate nighttime routines because I think they’re hard to maintain and sustain. I try to make it as straightforward as possible, which gives a good routine for me as well as my dog. So my nighttime routine would be giving my dog a walk and making sure he has time to pee and do all the nature stuff. Reading, having chamomile tea and maybe doing some slow restorative yoga for 10 minutes or a meditation. I get the humidifier all set with essential oils, turn the lights down and try to have the last hour with no blue light, sugar, food, and keep it really quiet and soft. I also like to listen to lullaby music, which makes me sound like a fetus, but it helps me get over my insomniac tendencies. I like this artist, Priscilla Ahn, who has really soothing albums that are good for all ages. Then honestly, I’ll listen to the Disney princess playlists with songs like “So This is Love” [by Ilene Woods and Mike Douglas], all that soft, cozy stuff. I try to be in bed by 11:30 p.m.
Bravo is making a big bet on the Gen Z offspring of some of the most famous stars from its “Real Housewives” franchise. The network released a trailer this week for “Next Gen NYC,” a show that will follow the lives of four young reality scions and their influencer peers as they navigate work, life and love in Manhattan.
For the reality connoisseurs among us, try to imagine “Rich Kids of Beverly Hills” meets “NYC Prep.”
For everyone else, here’s a primer.
Who’s on the show?
The cast features the offspring of four “Real Housewives”: Ariana Biermann and Riley Burruss, the daughters of the former “Real Housewives of Atlanta” stars Kim Zolciak-Biermann and Kandi Burruss; Brooks Marks, the son of the “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” favorite Meredith Marks; and Gia Giudice, the daughter of the “Real Housewives of New Jersey” legend Teresa Giudice.
The rest of the cast is made up of a handful of influencers and so-called nepo babies, including Ava Dash, a daughter of the record executive Damon Dash and the fashion designer Rachel Roy; Emira D’Spain, a model and influencer who will be Bravo’s first full-time trans cast member; Georgia McCann, a creative strategist Bravo describes as “New York’s ultimate Gen Z It girl”; Charlie Zakkour, a crypto trader and club kid; Hudson McLeroy, Ms. Biermann’s on-again, off-again boyfriend and the heir to the fast-food chain Zaxby’s; and Shai Fruchter, an assistant at the Wall Group.
What kind of drama can be expected?
“Next Gen NYC” looks relatively restrained compared with the high-stakes drama on some of the editions of “Real Housewives.” (Legal battles! Shocking divorces! Physical altercations!) But the show has teased Ms. Dash and Ms. Biermann feuding over fashion, and Ms. Biermann cursing out Mr. Marks as Ms. Giudice deadpans, “This is so stupid.”
There’s also the drama inherent to being a young New York transplant, such as Ms. Biermann declaring she’s “absolutely petrified” riding the subway, or Ms. Burruss accidentally tossing her phone into the Hudson River.
Will there be any ‘Real Housewives’ cameos?
According to Bravo, there will be plenty — and that’s probably what they’re counting on to boost audience numbers. All of the Housewives whose children appear on the show are slated to make appearances. In the trailer, which was released this week, viewers get a glimpse into Mr. Marks’s “tumultuous work relationship” with his mother and at Ms. Zolciak-Biermann balking at a $14,000 night out. Seth Marks, the husband of Ms. Marks and father of Brooks, also factors heavily into the trailer, asking his son awkward questions about his sex life and saying he’s attached to his mother “like a little baby kangaroo.”
Will it be worth watching?
Honestly, this series feels like a deep cut. People who are not Bravo obsessives should approach with caution. But for those who can rattle off every Housewife by memory, the show premieres June 3 at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Bravo and will be available on Peacock the following day.
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