Only a free-range celebrity will do

IT’S ALWAYS a challenge, when entertaining out-oftown guests, to come up with that holy grail of tourist Los Angeles: the celebrity sighting.

Sure, there are ways to engineer it -- attending a taping of Jay Leno, joining a paparazzi stake-out, checking into rehab -- but that strategy has always seemed inauthentic to me. Seeing celebrities in the wild may not be a regular part of “So-Cal life” for many of us, but it’s a must for a tourist’s So-Cal visit.

Recently I hosted a friend on her first visit to L.A. As a born-and-raised Brooklynite, she was not exactly a novice at celebrity sighting. But she still wanted to see a famous person here, in the city that makes and breaks them, where they barricade themselves from scrutiny in heavily fortressed hilltop homes or fall into obscurity in nondescript Valley apartments.

This particular celebrity sighting was even harder to arrange than dinner at Mozza. The main problem was that, quite unlike the Getty or Disneyland, celebrities are not immobile. Then I had to contend with the sad, perennial truth that I have absolutely no access to any famous people. Celebrities are not my friends or neighbors, and I have neither the cash nor the connections to circumvent velvet ropes at a Sam Nazarian nightclub.

Finally, no matter how much US Weekly tries to convince everyone that the ideal celebrity sighting is the one that proves “they’re just like us,” I wanted us to encounter one doing something that proves the exact opposite. I would have to position myself in places where -- whether because they’re assured privacy or they’re assured paparazzi -- celebrities feel free to behave outrageously, as they should and as we expect.

Exclusive restaurants, high-end boutiques, new nightclubs with entrances marked by beefy bouncers in a back alley -- these were the places, I guessed, where celebs would be. Where they would be found wearing things I would never wear, saying things I would never say and spending like I can’t imagine.

My friend and I walked with watchful eyes around ritzy portions of Hollywood, West Hollywood, West L.A. and beachside towns. But my preparations were mostly in vain -- the only celebrity my friend spotted (other than a CW starlet at the airport) was near a tourist trap rather than at a secret VIP spot, and she was behaving “just like us.”

And who was this lucky star, you ask? It was none other than Hillary Swank, strolling with her boyfriend near Third Street Promenade.

As fate would have it, I missed seeing her. I was too busy looking at those other tall, thin, precariously beautiful Southern California creatures, far easier to spot: palm trees.

Swati Pandey