March 26, 2026, Sixty Hotel, Beverly Hills: I’m in town to take part in an event for Sidekick, an AI platform for real estate brokerages. I’m moderating a panel with the co-founder, Michael Martin, OpenAI’s Ashton Summers and Dan Vasquez of Rocket/Redfin.

I was flattered to be asked to join and I worked hard on the discussion points. I’ll be chatting with some smart folks in front of a sharp audience. The intent is hit on the broader but more meaningful waypoints by which the industry should navigate the onset of artificial intelligence. We want to dig in but not be overly tactical, it’s not an intro class.

It won’t be recorded or shared but I’ll give a general recap of the experience.

I’ve never been to Beverly Hills. Honestly, I’ve never spent that much time in Los Angeles.

A long time ago my wife and I visited some friends who moved here. They came with bonafide Hollywood dreams, the kind of visions that fade and congeal into the very foundation on which this city rests. (No wonder it shakes as often as it does, broken dreams can’t support much.) That was 1998, maybe. I don’t think they made it. They got mad at us for not being able to make their wedding in Hawaii so we kind of lost touch. No one wants to attend your destination wedding.

Everything I know about LA comes from movies. I’d love to spend a week or more here visiting the places where they filmed Michael Douglas’s crosstown rampage in Falling Down and the neighborhoods in Point Break, Swingers, Training Day and Pulp Fiction. Then there’s the epic Heat and it’s noirish, gritty sibling, Collateral. I couldn’t neglect the sights from Chinatown, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, To Live and Die in L.A., or Drive.

I did a big presentation for a comms class in college on Speed. When we visited all those decades ago we did manage to see the Meyers house from Halloween. Somewhere in my house there’s a (physical) picture of me in front of it. I’d have to add a few days to ensure I captured the many places Hank Moody stumbled through on his drunken, eloquent benders.

Troy Palmquist reached out about possibly going to a Dodgers game while I was in town but we couldn’t make it work. Instead I wandered down Beverly Blvd. seeking anything remotely close to a dive bar. All I wanted was a lawnmower beer that didn’t come with a dress code and some TVs hanging over the bar. Basketball is on.

Rodeo Drive sure is something. I’m not sure what I was expecting but it certainly wasn’t to be bored. It’s about as architecturally intriguing as Myrtle Beach, only the handbags don’t come with a matching beer coozie.

I took backpacking a woman who is a direct report to Anna Wintour. She told me to never waste money on fashion. Clearly no one could ever definitively accuse me of ignoring that mantra, but her words floated above me like a bedazzled thought balloon as I gawked at the sterile storefronts. It was all so artificial and clinical. Lots of cold facades and pretentious fonts—like it was built yesterday meant to look like Rodeo Blvd.

I’d much rather remember L.A. by its erratic, historic sprawl and back alleys on a tour narrated by graffiti and screenplays. Show me the bodegas and broken glass, and where Belushi died. I want to see the version of L.A. the movies conjured, like what Tarantino did in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and what I remember from C.H.i.Ps.

Anyway, I don’t know much about Los Angeles. But I know I want to.

Oh, and I ended up ordering a room service Margherita pizza and German lager.

Close enough.