It’s a particularly L.A. kind of pilgrimage

Kubla Khan might have been deterred by the razor wire, but Angelenos are made of sterner stuff. They might blink a bit at the sun-scorched, unabashed ugliness of Bellaire Avenue in North Hollywood. Good Lord, where are we? They might check the address they scrawled on a bit of paper a few days ago as they leaned against their old, worn, positively ghastly kitchen counters. Is this right? But, reassured by the numbers, they drive gamely on, past the prison-camp fences, past the storage units and warehouses, the parking lots shivering in the sun.

They pull their Expeditions and Escalades, their Jags and BMWs, their Hummers along curbs so dusty it’s impossible to tell if they are red, behind other cars that don’t have windows, that seem held together by duct tape. Honey, stop looking for the valet and just park. The sky is stretched white and the railroad tracks are within spitting distance, but the people get out of their cars and leave them, trailed by the staccato boop-boop of alarm systems being double-, triple-checked. They are far from their homes, they are propelled by need, by desire. They know this is the kind of place you must endure if you want to get the really good stuff.

They are here to choose their granite.

In the past few years, it has become an L.A. pilgrimage -- the trip to the granite yard. Thanks to the can-do mentality of shelter magazines and HGTV, no kitchen is safe from the granite-counter remodel, no bathroom too small for a double-headed shower lined in Vermont verde. In the last five years, granite has become the stone fox of interior designers, contractors and Home Depot.

Xanadu’s sunny dome and caves of ice didn’t choose themselves, you know.

Inside Brazil Granite on Bellaire, customers sit at tables in the showroom, running their fingers over samples, exposing their lust, here where it’s safe, giving it dimension and specifics -- the bathroom, the kitchen countertops, the entire entry way. Others wander into the yard to survey the harvested hearts of the world’s mountains.

The demand for granite has increased so much that quarriers in Italy, Brazil, India and China are constantly digging into new hillsides, hoping to find a different color or pattern. From deepest onyx to garnet-flecked gold, from the black and gray freckles seen in law offices to the swirling lapis of Brazilian Blue Bahia (at more than $110 a square foot, the most expensive granite in the world), the slabs are gorgeous. It is impossible not to touch them, and everywhere hands are stretched out, surfaces stroked; one woman lays her cheek against a deep green. It is cool and mysterious even in this sun-blasted place.

The slabs are not just stone; they are tapestry. Each is unique, and in the world of shelter-chic, it is imperative to be unique. That is why the people are here.

Jeff Joss has been in the granite business for 22 years, seen it increase tenfold. Prices have come down, he says, while desire, and the belief that desire should be satiated, has risen. “It used to be just the high, high-end houses,” he says, “Bel-Air. Beverly Hills. But just the other day, we did a house in Inglewood. We haven’t done one in South-Central yet, but I’m sure we will.”

Joss is a Brit and looks it, with the portly figure and amiable knowing face of a publican. He turns a customer over to his son Lawrence, who owns Brazil Granite. Lawrence Joss is tall and slim. He grew up surrounded by stone. He is 33 and wears glasses with bright green frames and many bracelets. He could easily be a gallery owner in Echo Park or on Melrose Avenue; instead he owns three granite and marble distributorships and several ceramic and tile stores. Instead, he is an avatar of the New Stone Age.

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Getting smarter, pickier

In the old days, contractors were the only ones who walked through these halls of stone. Clients picked from a sample board. But granite is a naturally occurring substance -- the result of magma cooling at great depth. Often, its patterns, and even the shifting hues of the stone, cannot be fairly represented by a coaster-sized sample. And as homeowners became more educated, they became more particular.

Ezra Chowaiki, a local contractor, remembers a man who chose a rose-green granite. When the fabricator cut the granite, the piece for the kitchen island happened to be much more rose than green. “We had to rip it all out,” says Chowaiki, flatly. “Now I send my customers to the yard.”

The quest for granite is usually a two-stop journey. After the slabs have been chosen, most clients make their way to a fabricator-installer like Brewster Marble Co. in San Fernando, where the chosen slabs will be cut and finished before installation.

Brewster Marble is owned by Teo Zeolla, who also grew up in the business. Zeolla’s father and uncle opened one of the first stone yards in L.A. They did much of the stonework in Century City and in Las Vegas; they cut the marble for Caesar’s Palace.

Outside, in the concrete yard, it’s difficult to imagine that these dusty, jagged slabs will become the gleaming counters and foyers of the shelter-obsessed. Some customers will visit their slabs before they are cut, outlining their sinks and sideboards.

Inside the shop, the noise is just bearable, and heady ribbons of acetate lattice the air.

Walking among the polished pieces, it is clear there is no single color of money. Or desire. For all its domestic virtues, granite seems a bit more casino lobby than grandma’s kitchen. This is not about rolling pie crusts or putting up jam. This is about power, about tramping through the chalky dust of the granite yard, choosing stone as one imagines the emperors once did.