An Insider’s Guide to Pasadena
Make no mistake: Pasadena is decidedly uncool. Instead, the L.A. suburb trades in a certain well-mannered unpretentiousness, despite its picturesque lantern-lit streets filled with National Register homes and listed architecture that you might also recognize from all-American movies such as Father of the Bride, The Parent Trap, and Back To The Future. These days, it stands in stark contrast to the grim and glam of greater Los Angeles. Indeed, this tony eastern enclave could be considered the city’s proper, well-traveled, and bookish big sister who married into Old Money.
She’s Classy Not Flashy—which also happens to be the name of her filly, who gallops away at the storied Santa Anita horse race track (more on that below), with the San Gabriel mountains as a backdrop. She’ll splash out at the farmer’s market (where local Phoebe Bridgers performed as a teenager) on persimmons and delicata squash. She prefers high tea at The Huntington (where Ralph Lauren and Rodarte have held shows) or boba at OinkMoo in the Burlington Arcade (Pasadena has one of the most dynamic Asian food scenes in the country) versus the influencer-in-Alo-ridden cafe hotspots of West Hollywood, of which she is blissfully unaware.