Today I drove my mom to LA so she could coach her University of Michigan EMBA students. She’s still healing from her surgery, so she isn’t suppose to drive. But she can coach. Clearly workaholism is in our genes.

Driving her meant I could spend the day working from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Yes, the same Beverly Wilshire that Pretty Woman was filmed at.

L.A. is a funny place. (This is a topic I could create an entire blog for, but I’ll try to keep it simple here.) With all of its ambition, New York still has a warmth about it even in the ritziest places. This is not the case in L.A. 

One example: The concierge refused to check my bag for me because we weren’t “guests” of the hotel (we were actually, we just didn’t have our room yet). Then she proceeded to give me attitude about where I would be working from. Only in L.A. would someone working for you treat you with more condescension than someone you work for.

I suppose I shouldn’t generalize to all of L.A., though. There are definitely things that I love. It feels like a fairytale land for starters: the streets of Beverly Hills are immaculate and whimsical, and two, there’s some amazing people watching. Nowhere else in the world will you see an 85-year old woman wearing 8″ YSL stilettos, carrying a teacup pomeranian in an $19,000 Hermes Berkin bag. My green suede Louboutin’s paled in comparison.