All about the city, they feel at home

A weekend when the Blackberry doesn’t beep? That’d be a fantasy for William J. Bratton and Rikki Klieman. Bratton became chief of the Los Angeles Police Department in 2002, after holding top policing jobs in Boston and New York City. Klieman, a former trial lawyer, is a legal analyst for E! and Court TV. She’s also rekindled her early acting ambitions, playing -- what else? -- a lawyer for TV and film.

To keep up with these two, who wed in 1999, you have to get up pretty early in the morning. And like a lot of breakfasts.

She runs, he rides

William J. Bratton: Breakfast is the best time at the Pantry. They have a great staff there. It’s really the heart of Los Angeles. Sunday is even better there, because you have whole families coming in. You really have in that one place the melting pot that the city is.

Rikki Klieman: Or, since we live in Los Feliz, up in the hills, we’ll hike up and down the hill to Hillhurst Avenue and a little cafe called La Belle Epoque.

I’m a jogger. Bill likes to ride a bicycle. We’ll drive to Griffith Park to where the bridle trail is, by the golf course. So I’ll jog, Bill will bike, and if we do that early in the day, we’ll still go to Belle Epoque. We also have a thing about carousels. Bill proposed to me on the Central Park Carousel, and I collect carousel memorabilia. So we love to ride the carousel at Griffith Park....

Also, Larchmont Village for us is fairly close, and we love it because we get to walk.

WB: It reminds us very much of Southampton Village on Long Island in New York. It has a very similar neighborhood feel to it, very good restaurants and shops. On Sunday morning, we go to the farmers market there. And Larchmont has more dogs per square block than anywhere.

Feet in the sand

RK: Because we can get to Venice Beach in about 20 minutes at 7 a.m. on a Saturday or Sunday, we’ll drive down and walk or jog or bike the path from Venice to Santa Monica. And then we’ll go up in the direction of Malibu and stop at Back on the Beach, where you can get food and sit right with your feet on the sand.

WB: And on the way back, we’ll stop into that great Italian market, Bay Cities Italian Deli & Bakery, there on Lincoln Boulevard. They have the best bread and meatballs ....

RK: On any weekend, unless there’s a police emergency, we see a movie or two. We love the ArcLight and sit in the same reserved seats all the time. We go to the Grove, obviously. And the Laemmle Sunset 5 for all the foreign movies.

WB: Often if we’re downtown, we’ll swing into Chinatown for the Plum Tree. Or Yang Chow.

RK: Sometimes we’ll go with Lt. Fred Booker, who’s in community relations, to Tolliver’s Barber Shop and get the pulse of the city. Those guys will tell the truth about what’s going on.

WB: Sundays we might also go back to Larchmont Village. There’s a Greek restaurant

RK: ... the Petite Greek ...

WB: ... where you can sit out on the sidewalk. The wait staff are great. And it’s a great people-watching place. The food’s just wonderful. Particularly on a summer evening, when the day’s been hot and it’s getting cool. And we watch everybody walk by with their dogs again.