Matt Paolini is an economics writer for CityBook, the family-safe Los Angeles Yellow Pages, which carries an extensive directory on Los Angeles online and catalog shopping.
Oct
29
Shopping and Services in Los Angeles, Ca
By
The Beverly Center is a shopping center in Los Angeles, CA. It is housed in a decorated eight-story building situated in the city of Beverly Hills, near West Hollywood. The Center draws customers from the entire Los Angeles area. The stores include Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and a multi-screen theater. Also present are retailers like Banana Republic, Victoria’s Secret, Dolce and Gabbana, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dior and Hugo Boss. The terrace atop the mall offers a panoramic view of downtown Los Angeles.
The mall attracts upscale customers and the existent stores and boutiques that are more expensive than those in the usual shopping center. The innovative escalators, which are now being renovated, previously resembled escalators at Paris’ elaborate Pompidou Center.
The Beverly Center opened for business in 1982, and housed the nation’s first Hard Rock Cafe, the second in existence after the London original. The Center was originally anchored by Bullock’s and The Broadway department stores, however both were absorbed into Macy’s in the late 1990’s.
Some interesting insights into the Center’s history include the fact that the site was once utilized for a small amusement park with a Ferris wheel and pony rides, called Kiddyland. In the mid-1980’s a number of scenes from the film Chopping Mall were shot at the Beverly Center. The 1985 work of fiction Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis contained a chapter set in the shopping center.
The Center was the principal setting for the early ’90s movie Scenes from a Mall, which featured Bette Midler and Woody Allen. While being constructed, the mall was used as the backdrop for the film Lipstick in 1976.
The shopping center also played a part of the storyline near the finish of the 1997 disaster film Volcano, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche. A triage area and childcare center for Cedars-Sinai Hospital was set up in the mall’s Hard Rock Cafe. In the movie, this area was deserted when lava erupted nearby, threatening the structure and occupants. Lastly, singer Crispin Hellion Glover references the Beverly Center in his song, Auto-Manipulator.
