tootoo

04:00 PDT Los Angeles -- Four postcards from Los Angeles - where the roadside attractionsinclude oil derricks, office towers, ocean views and a Rodeo DrivePlastic Surgery billboard that promises "We treat everybody like acelebrity." For those of you who find San Jose's Santana Row too gritty, Irecommend a visit to Americana at Brand in downtown Glendale. Or sosay the street signs. From where I sit - outside the CheesecakeFactory, across from a vast kidney-shaped lake amid stores on theground and apartments in the air - all I see is a stage-managedworld unto itself. Four-to-six-story buildings curve around the lake, blocking anyhint of the low-slung sprawl usually associated with Los Angelesand its suburbs. The storefronts are ornate, architecturally themedfor such tenants as Tiffany and Armani A/X; the residential floorsabove are purposefully bland, paper-thin hints of some vaguehistoric epoch. They're designed to be a backdrop, not adistraction. The Bay Area has pods of instant urbanity as well: Santana Row forthe South Bay social scene, Bay Street in Emeryville for East Bayteens deprived of enclosed malls. But the Americana's voluptuousattention to detail would make Walt Disney smile. Gas flamesflicker from stained-glass streetlamps. The entrance to the parkinggarage resembles the library of a private club, complete with achandelier. At 10:30 in the morning, jets of water in the lakespout in time to Dean Martin's "Ain't That a Kick in the Head." The May 1 opening bash featured Jay Leno as emcee and Gov.Schwarzenegger as a guest. Next to the Cheesecake Factory stands a curvy diner with a 1950slook - the one nod to Southern California's long love affair withautomobiles. Except, of course, for the 3,500-car parking garage. Lest you think big-name architects are infallible, gaze upon theelevator inside the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, Renzo Piano'stravertine-clad addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Piano's big move harks back to his Pompidou Center in Paris: at theBroad he moved nearly all the circulation systems outside thethree-story box, which contains 60,000 square feet of exhibitspace. You enter via an open-air escalator that takes a full minuteto transport you to the third floor. Inside, you're supposed tovisit lower-floor galleries via a glass elevator that holds 30people and is likened by Piano to a "moving room." "It's the materialization of the idea of levitation," theever-quotable Piano purred in a pre-opening interview about theelevator. "You just push a button." But when the museum opened in February, the lift would stall ifpassengers weren't distributed evenly inside. After tinkering andtests, it was shut down in April while a new piston was ordered.Levitation 2.0 should be ready to go this week, but when I visitedit was taped off like a crime scene - forcing museumgoers into asmall service elevator. For the record, Piano also designed the California Academy ofScience's new home in Golden Gate Park, which opens in September.Yes, it has stairs. Like many Bay Area cities, Los Angeles and its constellation ofsmaller communities are adding dense new housing to existingneighborhoods. The difference is that down here, the new stuffoften is the best thing around. Certainly that's the case on Gardner Street off Santa MonicaBoulevard in West Hollywood, where architect Lorcan O'Herlihyshowed me a 10-unit condominium complex he designed. The next-doorneighbor is a beige apartment block topped with Garage Floor Tiles in acrude stab at Santa Barbara lite. Across the alley is theconcrete-block backside of a retail building. And O'Herlihy's 1050 Gardner St.? Shaped like a sleek U, it snapsaround a courtyard that's visible from the sidewalk and is as lushas a jungle. Gauzy glass veils the main staircase. Aluminum windowframes painted blue and red knife out along the alley. Cedar slatssoften the modern lines. We also visited a building where workers are installing an outerskin of corrugated steel. It serves as a rain screen, shieldswest-facing units from the afternoon sun - and takes its vivid redhue from a Chinese restaurant at the end of the block. "This is a fascinating city. You discover incredibly interestingpieces when you least expect it," said O'Herlihy, whose 16-personfirm resides in an industrial patch of Culver City shadowed byInterstate 405. "In Los Angeles you can experiment. ... The contextis, there's no context." I feel very far from home. A final vignette from Topanga Canyon, a rugged remnant of thegeography that existed before Los Angeles transformed itself from ahamlet into the nation's second-largest city. Tucked between Malibu and I-405, this respite from sprawl is hometo 11,000 residents and a 13,000-acre state park. The commercial"district" is larger than our Inverness or Pescadero, but not bymuch. The new Sunset magazine hails it as a tie-dyed oasis from theworld outside. But at the Topanga Canyon Market, which shares a parking lot withZenbunni Gallery and Topanga Psychic, I find something Sunsetdidn't mention: a stack of Daily Varietys, the bible of theentertainment industry. Los Angeles is anything you want it to be. But it's still a companytown.