Tatyana and I are north-of-Sunset Beverly Hills hikers. We like to start around dusk and finish up in the dark. Three or four times we’ve humped it up Angelo Drive and then hung a sharp right onto Cielo Drive (which offers access to the private drive where the Sharon Tate murder house once stood) and then back down Benedict Canyon. I’m presuming that a lot of lookie-lous are going to be roaming around this area for the next two or three weeks.
“Red House,” initially posted on 7.8.12: “I was on the scooter yesterday afternoon, buzzing along Mulholland and in and out the canyons and trails and cul de sacs between Beverly Glen to Laurel Canyon. And I found myself hanging a subconscious right onto Cielo Drive off Benedict Canyon south, and up to an area that used to be known as 10050 Cielo Drive.
“This was the site of Robert Byrd‘s now-demolished California ranch-styled home where Polanski’s late ex, Sharon Tate, and four others — Abigail Folger, Steven Parent, Voytek Frykowski and Jay Sebring — were murdered by the Manson family on August 9, 1969.
“I knew that Trent Reznor lived there for two or three years in the early ’90s, and that the place had been torn down in ’94 and that a nouveau-riche Moorish-Mediterranean monstrosity called “Villa Bella” was built in its place by producer Jeff Franklin (Full House). The original street number was also erased — the address is now 10066 Cielo Drive.
“I stood on the other side of the canyon and told myself that anyone who would trash the original single-storied structure, which had a nice homey vibe with a pool and a guest house and was painted red with white trim with huge trees on the grounds, and then cut down the trees and build a ghastly Uday Hussein-style Euro-mansion, must be a real animal.