up along Outpost Drive belonged to people who conceived of themselves as homesteaders who happened to have six-figure incomes. . . . Randall Sullivan, The Price of Experience 10:33 A.M. Just a stone’s throw from the other bastion of southern California preppy WASP elitism, Oxford Academy had hosted the sons of LA’s finest for a century. Sweetheart guided the Mercedes off Mulholland onto Coldwater, and the shape of the landscape shifted markedly, as if the groomed trees, the acres of manicured lawns, the gardens—exotic even by LA’s standards—belonged to another, more civilized stratum of the urban ecosystem. When he turned again onto a long, winding drive shaded by jacaranda, gnarled olive trees, and scarlet flame trees, Sylvia gazed out the open window, absorbing a retinal montage of wild color splashed against turquoise sky. Here, they had risen above the layer of smog blanketing the Valley and nuzzling the flanks of the Santa Monica Mountains. Here (one could easily come to believe) life for the chosen few was elevated to an entirely new and splendid level of entitlement.
