Pasadena
By Ray Chatelin

PASADENA, CA - This was a more exciting town when Heidi was still around tending to her sweatshirt and boxer-shorts store.

You might remember Heidi Fleiss from the news stories that labeled her the madam-to-the-Hollywood stars.

Alas, her store on Colorado Street, the prime route for the Tournament of Roses Parade, closed some time ago, just before she was sent to prison to serve time for her time-honored business.

But, for almost a year, HeidiWear was a major attraction, a must-stop place for tourists looking for autographed conversation items to be exhibited during Rose Bowl games.

Somehow, Pasadena seems, well, relieved now that the stately brunette no longer draws attention to the area. For Pasadena is a moneyed place, where residents quietly enjoy their wealth - out of the spotlight, away from celebrity.

Its history is born from money, its raison d'être originally to be a vacation enclave for the rich and powerful from the east. And that environment lingers.

A teacher-turned journalist from Indianapolis, Daniel Berry and a small group of his friends escaping the Midwest winters in 1874, took a train to California, found palm trees and what seemed a perfect climate.

Wealthy easterners came, and built grand mansions and hotels in which to vacation during the winter months. Many, like Castle Green, the former great hotel now converted into condo units, are still there standing in tribute to the elegance and fashion of those times.

But the place also attracted the new rich of Los Angeles, many of whom wanted to establish a cultural and intellectual climate.

Henry E. Huntington was one of those wealthy patrons who had made his money from railroads and real estate investments. Today, his former residence is the Huntington Art Gallery and Library, and his Versailles-like grounds is now a botanical gardens covering 130 acres with more than 14,000 different kinds of plants.

Walk through the portion devoted to a Japanese garden with its drum bridge, a Japanese house, stone ornaments, a walled Zen garden, and bonsai court, and your mind battles with concepts of time and place.

The Huntington complex is a major cultural focus of the city. In it, you'll find a Gutenberg Bible, a manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Benjamin Franklin's hand-written autobiography, first edition folios by Shakespeare, Gainsborough's Blue Boy, and Lawrence's Pinkie.

But, the property doesn't stand alone as a cultural icon. Nearby are the Norton Simon and Pacific Asia Museums. And the city is home to Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, all legacies from those early fortunes.

Yet, Pasadena has the look and feel of a small town. Nestled in the sometimes valley of smog, just 25 minutes by freeway from downtown LA, the city is perfectly suited for those who want to live the California of their dreams.

It's a safe enclave of civilization where stores and shopping centers feature the music of Mozart and Chopin. Gucci shoe-clad women carrying Hermes hand-bags look for rumored bargains along boutique-lined Lake Avenue, a Rodeo Drive for the middle-rich.

Because of the snobbery of the time, Beverly Hills owes its existence to Pasadena. When Hollywood was in its infancy in the late '20s and early '30s the locals in Pasadena made it known they didn't want those immoral actors who were trying to buy in.

So, instead, the actors moved to the hills to the west, thus establishing their own place, their own identity, their world in the Los Angeles basin.

Things are far different now, of course. Pasadena, with a population of 134,824, embraces a broader spectrum of economic and social life. They feed themselves in 530 restaurants, shop in some 300 stores, and revel in the fact the community has eight theaters, six auditoriums for the performing arts, and eight major museums.

No longer is show biz something to be looked at down the length of the city's collective nose. Old time Pasadena may have been happy in its isolation, but time, circumstance, and trends have changed all that.

Not only do the life styles of Hollywood celebrities now occupy an important place in the lexicon of local jargon, the city is the home of director Peter Sellers, actresses Jessica Lange, Barbie Benton, and Delta Burke along with a long list of Nobel Prize winners, past and present. Television's EMMY Awards ceremonies are held there.

The stadium was completed in 1922 in an area designated as Brookside Park - Pasadena's largest - and where, next to the stadium, two championship golf courses are available for public play.

The major route for the parade is along Colorado Ave., where between Arroyo Parkway and Pasadena Avenue you find Pasadena's Old Town.

The city's oldest commercial buildings have been preserved as restaurants, boutiques, bookstores, and public squares and walking areas; buskers perform, and people watch one another hoping to find a famous face in the crowded streets and restaurants.

Old Town is the home to the domed Pasadena City Hall, built in 1927 to reflect the grace and style of the church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, Italy. The Pasadena Playhouse, constructed in 1917, recently reopened after an extensive renovation to its Spanish architecture.

Most of all, though, Old Town is where Pasadena gathers for fun - to eat at the boisterous Mi Piace, at 25 E. Colorado, kitty-corner from Dodsworth's Bar & Grill where old time blues and jazz draws locals and tourists alike.

Q's Billiard Club, 99 E. Colorado, is a funky combination of pool hall, restaurant, and lounge; and at Mijares Mexican Restaurant at 145 Palmetta Dr., you can pig-out on the appropriately named, Garbage Burrito, washed down by the barkeep's deadly Margaritas.

Still, nothing so immediately defines the stately elegance and wealth of Pasadena's past and present glories quite like The Ritz Carlton Huntington Hotel (RCH).

If you visit there in the first three weeks of January, you'll find Hollywood's most glamorous stars being paraded daily by television networks previewing their spring and summer season for writers and critics.

Catering to the rich and famous is nothing new for the RCH, with its history of always being at the center of Pasadena's high-rent activity. President Bill Clinton heads a who's-who list of guests who have stayed there, a roster that includes Albert Einstein, Prince Philip, Vladimir Horowitz, and presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan.

Located on South Oak Knoll Avenue, in the middle of Pasadena's most exclusive residential area, it's on 23 acres of landscaped and sculpted gardens. The hotel first opened in 1907 as the Hotel Wentworth, then a refuge for those eastern sun seekers.

Unfortunately, a horrid rainy season that first year drove guests to alternate resort areas, forcing the hotel to close its doors. Railroad tycoon and art collector Henry Huntington bought it in 1911, had it redesigned, reconstructed, and renamed as the Huntington Hotel.

It became the meeting place of the rich and the famous during the 1920s and onwards, being forced to close in 1985 when it couldn't meet earthquake structural standards.

A major renovation intricately restored the property to its former glory, and it reopened in March, 1991 complete with its historic Picture Bridge with 40 original murals along the walls depicting California's history.

And today you can still leisurely stroll through the gardens designed in 1911 by William Hetrich, the landscape architect of the Huntington Library and Gardens.

For a taste of what once was - and a reflection of the way it still is - walk into the Ritz Carlton Huntington about 4 p.m. There, you'll sit with local residents who regard afternoon tea in the Lobby lounge, with its overpowering view of the entire San Marino Valley, as a way of life.

It's a daily ceremony that reaffirms the continuance of a local lifestyle that's as much a part of southern California as the Rose Bowl game that has given Pasadena its modern image.