This season's ... Hollywood

It's

Face it, anywhere you can sunbathe on Christmas Day can't be all bad. More sprawl than city, Hollywood encompasses most of what lies between the ocean at Venice and the Canyons above.

Populated by wannabes, nearlyweres, has-beens and heavyhitters, it is slavish to its trends, so don't expect today's in-bar to have more than a season's shelf life. In this town, you're only as good as your last Appletini. True, Hollywood is false, shallow, pretentious and laughably transparent. Get used to it and you'll have a ball. Hollywood is:

Catching a Lakers game with Jack Nicholson at the Staples Center Downtown. Later, join Jack and friends for all-day breakfast (it takes all day to eat it) at The Pantry, a 24-hour grease-andcoleslaw emporium on Figueroa saved from closure by LA's then-Mayor Richard Riordan, who bought it himself. For tickets, call 213 480 3232.

Lounging by the pool at Evening Standard Hotel. Pad through the shag-pile lobby, past the naked girl in the aquarium, to join rock stars and groupies on the blue Astroturf pool-lawn. Sunny days melt away into mint juleps and poker. Loser takes on the bucking bronco at the Saddle Bar across the Strip (just like Sex and the City's Miranda).

Monday nights at Les Deux on Las Palmas. For dedicated stargazers, this is the People Magazine of clubs. Inside, Minnie Driver attempts to rub exfoliated shoulders with Owen Wilson in a 21st-century update of Greek opulence. The doorman looks down his perfectly re-done nose at hopefuls: "If I don't know who you are, you aren't getting in.? For best results BYOC (Bring Your Own Celeb).

Tea at the Hustler Cafe on Sunset Boulevard. The Nordstrom's of sex shops, bright and spangly. Peruse the latest, from bondage to boob tubes, the hyperpopular I-Rabbit vibrator ($100/£70) to Hollywood's latest blockbuster Missionary Position Impossible II ($34.99/£24.50).

Cabaret cocktails. The fickle have abandoned the Dresden for current fave, the more R&B Four Seasons cabaret, in the hotel of the same name on S Doheny. This is where Hugh Grant pulled down his baseball cap and went to cruise the Strip. He needn't have bothered. Soak up the music and watch the hookers being sucked up the elevator shafts.

The Movie business. It's where you latte that counts. Wannabe writers tap laptops at the Coffee Bean on Fairfax (opposite Directors Guild); Middle Eastern types pose as Italian producers at the branch on Sunset Plaza. Real players are down the road, working the News Room and the Ivy on Robinson.

Not smoking. Not in the lobby, not in your room, not in the restaurant or the mall, not in the bar or the club. Soon not even in the cigar clubs if Sacramento (California's state capital) has its way. No smoking anywhere. Ever.

Alfalfa shakes and wheatgrass enemas ("I asked for a vodka tonic, she gave me a colonic.") Daunted? Consider a martini with free manicure ($10/£7) at the Beauty Bar on Cahuenga, a cocktail lounge with an uncanny resemblance to a Blackpool hairdresser's circa 1963.

Nuptials at Guadalupe Wedding Chapel on Broadway, deep in Hispanic LA: five prefab chapels garlanded and chandeliered. Grab a partner from the Viper Room and treat yourselves to the $140 (£98) special with surprise bridal gift - wedding gowns extra. Services are any denomination you like so long as its Spanish. Any regrets? Guadalupe also offers an attractive divorce package.

Best served grungy - from Johnny Depp's Viper Room (where River Phoenix bought it) to the progressively underlit bars on Cahuenga and Hollywood. Best is The Burgundy Room, rocking out under the paternalistic eye of Torrence, a seven-foot fortysummat soulman in Aran sweater and milkbottle specs. He'll wanna dance with your girlfriend. Let him.

Hollywood and Highland - three-week-old addition to Hollywood's revamp. This Disneyland of retail, replete with 20ft rampant plaster elephants, shares the Walk of Fame (complete with newly polished stars) with Mann's Chinese Cinema and Kodak Theatre (home of the Oscars). Ignore Vuitton and Versace, best buy is Auntie Anne's liquid gold Pretzels at $1.99 (£1.39).

Getting intellectual. If the tanktopped Scientologists don't appeal, try Roseanne Barr's Kabbala classes (the Kabbala Centre on S Robertson Boulevard). Alternatively, any fool in Venice will tell you the colour of your aura. Even the LA Times is dumbing up: "John Steinbeck: How good was he?" Whatever your metaphysics, brush up on your babble ... Overheard at the Mondrian Sky Bar: "If you are what you eat then you eat what you are and you become what you buy."

In bed by 2am. Drink up, please.

Way to go

Dudi Appleton flew to Los Angeles with Air New Zealand (020 8741 2299; www.airnewzealand.co.uk), which flies daily from Heathrow, current returns from £295. "Sunset rooms" at Evening Standard Hotel (8300 W Sunset Boulevard; 001 323 650 9090) are £116 a night, doubles at the historic Regal Biltmore (506 South Grand Avenue, Downtown; 001 213 624 1011) cost from £140 room only. For further information, contact the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau on 020 7318 9555 or visit www.lacvb.com

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