Viewpoint : ‘Before long, our kids will be in the Upper Beverly Hills Schools!’ : Moving to Higher Ground

Canoga Park shrank about one-third Friday when City Councilwoman Joy Picus agreed to rename a three-square-mile section of the west San Fernando Valley community West Hills, in response to a four-month campaign by residents.

--The Los Angeles Times, Jan. 17

We got the idea from the folks out in Canoga Park. A few of us were standing around, grilling some swordfish and drinking Chardonnay--nothing special, just some Kendall-Jackson, I think it was--when we started kidding about how the people out West might be onto something.

“I mean, if they can do it in dusty old West Hills, why not Studio City?” my friend Frank wondered aloud, furrowing the guacamole with a celery stalk. “What have they got that we haven’t?”

“Nothing,” Phil shot back. “And I think they were pretty damned clever too. As it stands now, when I get my phone bill it says North Hollywood on it. Can you imagine?”

There was general sympathy--Phil lives north of Ventura Boulevard, but everyone had the decency to let that pass--and pretty soon the idea began to jell.

Thus in my backyard was born the Committee for the Official Designation of Upper Beverly Hills.

At first we treated it pretty lightly. It was just something to do for fun. But pretty soon Phil had cranked up the Macintosh and was putting out some nifty propaganda with his laser printer. Meanwhile, Frank, who is a lawyer, put together some research on the legal considerations for a name change.

Best of all, his wife, Barbara--she’s in real estate--figured out that changing the name of Studio City might be worth an extra 15% or 20% on the value of all our houses.

“You don’t want anything with ‘city’ in it,” she explained. “It’s like naming streets for presidents or secretaries of state. Nobody wants to live on Madison Street. What you want to do is suggest the pastoral. You want Hills, Glades, Arroyos in the name. Estates, even.”

So, all of a sudden, our lark turned serious. We had a formal meeting, again over at my place, and you’d be surprised at the turnout. There were so many people we had to serve jug wine (Corbett Canyon, it was still good), and the chevre ran out right away.

Anyhow, everybody agreed the idea was terrific, but there was some difference of opinion about just what the new name ought to be.

One guy suggested Paris, since Ventura Boulevard in Studio City is kind of the Champs Elysees of the San Fernando Valley. Someone else said, well in that case, why not Athens?

“It’s the Athens of the Valley, after all.”

A couple of cranks from up near North Hollywood insisted we should call it Brooklyn Heights, and we discussed that kind of gingerly and then moved on. We learned later that they were just making fun of us, and I made a mental note to make sure the boundaries of the redesignation district were drawn to exclude their crummy little house.

With the inexorable logic of property values, Barbara finally prevailed.

“Look, what has more cachet than Beverly Hills?” she demanded. “And what could be better than to add the word “upper” in front of it? Higher is always better than lower in our society; it suggests superiority.”

Barbara had studied psychology in college.

“And it works geographically too,” she said excitedly, pointing to a large map I’d set up on an easel in the living room. “See, we’re right up Coldwater Canyon here.”

The next thing you know we were over at Kinko’s, Xeroxing the neat petitions Frank had drafted, and, after a couple of weeks at Gelson’s, Art’s Deli and other such places, we had more than 5,000 signatures to deliver to Councilman Joel Wachs, who had said he might consider our request if we could show that most of the households in Studio City agreed. Studio City: by then it even sounded declasse.

“Just think,” Frank said after a hard night of signature gathering. “Before long, our kids will be in the Upper Beverly Hills Schools!”

We were exultant, certain that Wachs would go along. But then tragedy struck. Some bozos over in Sherman Oaks apparently got to their council representatives first with a whole stack of petitions to change the name of their community, and now there was a backlash developing.

“What in God’s name is wrong with Sherman Oaks?” I asked Barbara. “What do they want to change it to?”

“You’ll never guess. North Bel Air.”

Right then, I knew we were sunk.

Al Martinez is on vacation.