Weekend Wrap Up

1.
It seems that Democratic movers and shakers Bill and Hilary Clinton can't make up their damn real estate minds. For the last six or so months the couple have been traipsing through some the finest homes in the best zip codes in Westchester County (NY) looking to upgrade from their already quite luxurious residence in Chappaqua, NY.

According to a recent report, Bill and Hil have toured 20-acre Clover Hill Farm in Bedford, NY no less than nine times and yet they can't seem to pull the trigger and make a stoopid offer. One local broker snitched to The Post that some other real estate people in the area have grown sick and tired of the Clinton's tire kicking and if they weren't Bill the former president of the United States and Hil the current Secretary of State "no one would show them anything anymore." Ouch.

Over the course of the 9 times they've (allegedly) toured Clover Hill Farm the price has sank from $10,900,000 to $8,900,000. Maybe they're just a couple of Bargain Betties and they're waiting for the price to drop another two million?

2.
Oscar winning romantic comedy queen Julia Roberts (Eat, Pray, Love, Erin Brockovich, Pretty Woman) picked up a penthouse pad in a post-war building on lower Fifth Avenue in New York City. The Greenwich Village aerie, with its roof top terrace, according to The Post, cost the toothy west coast based superstar $3,895,000. They also reported that Miz Roberts will hang on to her long time Gramercy Park pied a terre.

Miz Roberts lives primarily at a big ranch in New Mexico and a quite large, recently completed cliff top estate in Malibu, CA.

3.
Writer Michael Gross, who literally wrote the book on the famed 740 Park Avenue building in New York and is working on a similar book about the lives of Los Angeles' richest and biggest living residents revealed that philanthropic entrepreneurs Lynda and Stewart Resnick–they own Teleflora, POM Wonderful, Fiji Water and a number of other things–have added a fourth contiguous property their their already massive three parcel spread in Beverly Hills.

Mister and Missus Resnick own Sunset House, a a famous and famously astonishing 1929 Beaux-Arts mansion on Sunset Boulevard. Over the years the mad-rich couple purchased the estates on either side of their palatial pad and razed the residences and in their places added citrus and pomegranate groves, formal gardens, a football field sized lawn large enough to pitch the largest party tent money will rent, and a vast parking area.

According to listing information, Mister and Missus Resnick paid $7,935,110 for the 8,287 square foot house that sits on a 1.05 acre corner lot and includes 2 bedrooms (plus 2 staff rooms) and a total of 8 poopers. The private and gated estate has a circular drive, massive service court, 3 car garage, large lawns and a swimming pool but that's probably of little import because Your Mama expects they'll knock the house down.

According to Mister Gross, the house the Resnicks bought was owned in the mid-1970s by actor James Caan.

4.
Now that he's purchased Diane Keaton's Ralph Flewelling designed Colonial Rivival residence in Beverly Hills, über successful Tinseltown scribe Ryan Murphy (Popular, Running With Scissors, Nip/Tuck, Glee) has re-listed his Los Angeles home in the hills above the star studded Chateau Marmont hotel.

Mister Murphy unsuccessfully attempted to sell his sleek but warm concrete, wood and glass Carl Maston designed digs in May of 2008 when it was listed for $4,195,000. This week it was hauled back on the market with a much lower asking price of $3,250,000.

5.
After a big ol' dust up with their neighbors who installed scaffolding to the exterior of their building in preparation for an extensive renovation, art Collector Charles Saatchi and his celebrity chef wife Nigella Lawson have, according to the Daily Mail, opted to cash out of their large London crib rather than suffer through a long and loud renovation next door. They are said to have heaved their sprawling apartment on swank Eaton Square in Belgravia on the market with an asking price of £36,000,000–a skin blistering $56,433,600 according to Your Mama's currency conversion contraption–which is a seriously higher price than the £3,800,000–that's just under six million American clams–that Mister Saatchi paid for the place just nine years ago.

We're not sure what he did over the last 9 years to justify a ten fold increase in value but for those numbers it better have some solid gold Jeff Koons designed terlits.

6.
Daphne Guinness, fashion daredevil, international gadabout, and heiress to the Guinness beer fortune, has also got trouble with her New York City neighbors who, according to The Post have filed suit against the sassy sartorial icon for repeatedly flooding their multi-million dollar apartment no fewer than four times due to an over-flowing bathtub.

The quartet of floods have not only inconvenienced the downstairs neighbors–hedge hog Karim Samii and his wife Tina–but caused extensive damage to the sheet rock, moldings and a vanity table. The Samiis say they've become afraid to leave their apartment lest Miz Guinness once again turn the water on to fill her tub and then just forget about it. They've asked for more than a million bucks to pay for damages and compensate for their emotional distress. They have also asked the court to bar Miz Guinness from taking or filling her bathtub until something is done that will keep her bathtub from over flowing.

According to StreetEasy, Miz Guinness purchased her 4,118 square foot spread in April of 2008 for $11,734,719 and the Samiis theirs a month earlier for $12,852,946.

Miz Guinness did not, surprisingly, have any comment for The Post.

It's Official!

Hang on to your britches beehawtchas...

Back in late February (2010) our trusted informant Buhneeda Beansouttathebag snitched to Your Mama that maximalist decorator ju jour Kelly Wearstler and her hotelier/property developer huzband Brad Korzen quietly slipped their palatial Beverly Hills, CA estate on to the market with an ear piercing price tag of fifty million clams. We quickly corroborated Buhneeda's gossip with another well informed tattle-tale we know named Candy Canconfirmit, then Your Mama went on and on and on about it.

Well puppies, eight months later Mister Korzen and Miz Wearstler have made it official. Although the preening pair's posh pad with its dizzying and dy-no-mite 1970s inspired day-core has yet to pop up on the Multiple Listing Service, the storied and fabled spread now appears on the website of the Westside Estate Agency with an official price tag of $46,000,000.

Listing information shows this walled and gated "Opportunity of a Lifetime," originally designed by little lauded but soo-blime architect James Dolena, spans 3.2 manicured acres with a sweeping celebrity style driveway and includes 5 family bedrooms, 2 staff rooms, and a total of 10 poopers in the main house plus a gorgeous guest house down by the cee-ment pond with another three bedrooms and, we presume, at least a couple more poopers.

For Your Mama's previous discussion/diatribe go on and get yourself a snack and a cocktail and click here.

listing photo: Everett Fenton Gidley for Westside Estate Agency

Anjelica Huston Wants Out of Venice Beach Complex

SELLER: Anjelica Huston
LOCATION: Venice, CA
SIZE: 13,796 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 full and 3 half bathrooms
PRICE: $18,000,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We're joining this party a little late but Your Mama loves us an artist space so we're going to re-hash a Venice, CA live-work property owned by movie star and Hollywood icon Anjelica Huston that's already been well hashed in Curbed LA and the Huffington Post.

Anjelica Huston is dee-vine, hunnies. As far as we're concerned beehawtcha can just stand there looking into the camera not saying a damn word and we'd happily hand over 13 or 15 bucks to watch that movie, you know? She was flaw-less in Prizzi's Honor–for which she was awarded an Oscar–she was insanely good in The Grifters–which earned her an Oscar nomination–she was dead on target in the The Addams Family film franchise, she was delicious in The Royal Tenenbaums and even tastier in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

More recently Miz Huston, the widow of famed and acclaimed sculptor Robert Graham, has turned in smashing performances in lesser known films such as the black comedy Choke and a cinematic adaption of Leo Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata. The movie star has also taken on couple of boob-toob roles on Huff and Medium.

Mister Graham, most known for his obsession with the human form, particularly that of a nekkid ladee. Some of the children may have seen one of his famous female torsos in Beverly Hills, CA where a 14-foot solid aluminum hottie that stands on a chunky bronze pedestal at the intersection of Rodeo Drive and Dayton Way. Others may recall the headless and feetless über athletic male and female torsos standing atop a post and lintel structure commissioned by the Los Angles Olympic Organizing Committee and installed at the main entrance to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to commemorate the 23rd Olympiad held in Los Angeles. New Yorkers who deign to go above East 90th Street will recognize Mister Graham's 30-foot tall cast bronze and gold leaf Duke Ellington Memorial installed in the center Duke Ellington Circle–that's Fifth Avenue and East 110th Street–at the northeast corner of Central Park.

Miz Huston and Mister Graham's contemporary complex sits on three contiguous parcels just 200 feet from the wild, wacky and high-lariously entertaining hot mess that is the Venice Beach Boardwalk and the often thickly populated sugary sand that stretches out towards the surf. The residential quarters occupy the center parcel, the massive art studio sits on the eastern parcel and the smallest third parcel on the western side is a narrow, ficus tree shaded garden with a patch of grass, a lot of potted plants, and a tiny brick terrace with a carved Balinese sofa, plant laden coffee table and one of those fire chimney things that can be purchased from any Home Despot around the country.

The entire compound is walled, gated and presumably very well secured. The blocky residential side, which presents and all but windowless fortress-like face to the street, spans 4,063 square feet over two floors and according to listing information combines French, Mediterranean and Bauhaus architectural styles. The interior spaces of the residence include 3 bedrooms and 2 full and 3 half poopers. The main living areas include a combination living and dining room with hardwood floors, fireplace and a soaring barrel vaulted ceiling , a game room down in the basement–a basement is surely a very rare thing in Venice–and a narrow book shelf lined library/den. Several balconies and French doors open the house to the side yard or the quite and exquisitely private central courtyard that separates the two buildings.

In addition tot the living quarters, the Graham-Huston's corrugated metal and glass warehouse-style complex includes a gigantic studio with 9,733 square feet of airiness designed by Robert Graham's son Steven with the assistance of avant-garde Venice, CA architecture firm Studio Vass. The studio space towers three stories tall with 2 mezzanine and offers a series of interconnected and voluminous flexible use spaces flooded with light and ocean views from the higher levels. The studio is currently configured, according to listing information and previous reports, as a gallery, offices, dance/exercise room, communal kitchen, large workshop, and top floor sitting room with vaulted ceiling, poured concrete floors, and a view of the Pacific Ocean past the palm trees and over the surrounding roof tops.

Shaded by a lovely coral tree, the quiet courtyard that separates the living quarters from the studio building including coral colored concrete hardscaping, dining terrace, a couple nooks and crannies for contemplative moments, and a raised black bottomed lap pool and party-sized spa.

Listen puppies, Your Mama can hardly tell a dog from a cat but we can easily recognize that Miz Huston and Mister Graham's leviathan live-work space this is a massive complex that sprawls across 3 contiguous lots with astronomical square footage. But we also know that it's located Venice or, as Curbed LA succinctly called it, "the corner of tourist and crazy." Don't none of your Venice Beachers misunderstand Your Mama. We loves us the nitty-gritty architecturally forward thinking city of Venice–well, not those RV people who dump there terlit waste right into the street gutters–but let's be honest, $18,000,000 is a lot of damn clams for a house in a plush zip code like 90077, 90210 or 90024 so a price that stratospheric in the 90291 makes it seem like someone got hit hard over the head a serious case of Real Estate Insanity. But then again, because of it's proximity to the beach, this property might very well be a goldmine if it can be further developed and converted to an arty-farty but freakishly expensive boho-chic condominium complex.

Your Mama doesn't know where Miz Huston plans on moving or where Mister Graham's archives will be kept if not in this building. Although it seems unlikely she'd move there full time we do know from property records and previous reports–including this one in Architectural Digest–that Miz Huston owns a 120+ acre ranch spread up in the bee-yoo-tee-ful and rugged foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Three Rivers, CA, near where the north, south and middle forks of the Kaweah River merge. As it turns out Your Mama knows a little summin-summin about that particular neck of the California citrus groves. As a child, our tough talkin' Granny and sweet talkin' Grandpappy used to toss Your Mama and Sister Woman into the back of their Datsun pee-cup truck and take us on up to the Kaweah Chuckwagon Cafe, a smorgasbord style restaurant where we feasted on soggy chicken, dried out ham, and red Jell-O with that horrible hard skin it sometimes gets. The Chuckwagon has done went out of business but perhaps Miz Huston had the distinct if dubious pleasure of eating at the Chuckwagon before it shut its doors because we'd like to think we've had at least that one shared experience with such a creature as Miz Huston.

listing photos: Engel & Voelkers

Winona Ryder Does Not Live Here Anymore

SELLER: Winona Ryder
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
SIZE: 3,765 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
PRICE: $4,095,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to the eagle eyes of our trusted snitch The Rolling Stone, Your Mama learned that actress Winona Ryder put her long time home in Los Angeles, CA on the market with an asking price of $4,095,000.

Arguably, Miss Ryder's professional salad days as an in-demand a-list actress who could pull in the sort of box office receipts that make executive producers swoon with delight were in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then she worked her somewhat ethereal and gauzy stuff in seriously successful films such as Beetlejuice, Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, Mermaids, The Age of Innocence, and Little Woman, the latter two earning her Academy Award nominations. Since those heady Hollywood days and except for those few years right after she was picked up for shoplifting $5,500 worth of merchandise at Saks in Beverly Hills, Miss Ryder's worked steadily even though her star status was unquestionably dimmed. Recently, the spritely and quirky actress has experienced an upsurge in her career. In 2009 she starred in 3 feature films including The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, and in 2010 she appeared in two more including Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and she has at least two more films in the hopper including Tim Burton's next cinematic extravaganza Frankenweenie.

Records show that Miss Ryder picked up her soon to be former Spanish casa in Tinseltown in March of 1998. She paid $2,600,000 for the 1936 abode that was formerly owned (or occupied), according to the mens at Movieland Directory, by one time model and ack-turuss Angie Everhart and, before her, Bernie Taupin, otherwise known and Elton John's songwriting collaborator.

Listing information shows the two story house, wrapped in towering privacy hedges and dripping in wisteria vines and prickly but pretty bougainvillea, measures 3,765 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms and 4 poopers, three of which feature finely maintained vintage tile work. Although powdery pink and baby blue are hardly the colors we'd pick and choose our private master pooper, it's damn refreshing to see these old relics of pooper days gone by preserved rather than ripped out and replaced with some tumbled stone this and black granite shit that.

One need only get their eyeballs on the fake the tee-vees mounted on the walls and the reedonkulous chenille blanket tossed and draped "perfectly" across the bed in the master bedroom to know that that Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota has been up in here and removed every trace of Miss Ryder's day-core and replaced it with a bunch of bland beige crap and neutral knick-knacks that won't give any potential buyer a reason to think a person with style or taste may have actually occupied the home. Your Mama is certain that if we look hard enough we'll find an orchid or two but, seriously people, we can't stomach another orchid making a show of itself in a staged home.

Although Your Mama is not sure if he did up the now removed day-core in this house, we understand from our reading around the interweb that Miss Ryder had nice, gay decorator Kevin Haley do over at least one of her homes. Coincidentally, Mister Haley, who has worked on homes for other famous folks like Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz, has put his casually decadent house low in the Hollywood Hills on the market too. More on that at a later date.

Anyhoo, the front door opens into a wide entry hall with stained glass windows, Spanish tile floors, dark murals that look to Your Mama like they depict the Garden of Eden or some other sordid story, and a loopy scrolled wrought iron banister that swoops down the sweeping staircase that Norma Desmond, and any other queen who likes to make an entrance, would love. Also very glam, is the downstairs powder pooper complete with burgundy colored vintage tile and an antechamber blessed built in vanity table where guests can conveniently reapply lipstick, do a few lines, and/or check to make sure their chi-chis aren't coming up out of their strapless dinner dress.

Miss Ryder's soon to be former home also has a long formal living room with picture window, hardwood floors, French doors that open to the backyard area, and corner fireplace with carved wood mantel and surround, a dining room, and a narrow paneled pub room with some built in shelves, a couple of emaciated "beams" running across the ceiling that are probably just decorative, and a built in wet bar for getting one's booze on. Somewhere in there, according to listing information is a staff room and a body torture chamber more commonly known as a home gym.

The cook friendly kitchen has an oddly rustic feeling–some might call it charm, but it is decidedly not Your Mama's brand of charming–with hardwood floors, exposed antique brick walls, white cabinetry, beige counter tops, and a venting hood over the range top so big it looks like it could hoover up anyone who might dare to turn it on and stand under it. An adjacent breakfast room opens up into the quiet courtyard that separates the main house from the garage.

The well preserved house and garage wing wrap themselves around a cozy courtyard paved with bricks laid in a herringbone pattern and warmed by an a raised outdoor fire place that could probably double as a barbecue. The courtyard opens up to a classic California kidney shaped swimming pool separated from a small flat patch of grass just large enough to exercise a couple of long bodied bitches like our Linda and Beverly.

Your Mama can't be knowing if Miss Ryder's real estate plans include a downsize, an upgrade or if she's packing up and leaving Los Angeles altogether. Property records–and the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial–show that Miss Ryder continues to own a home in her home town of San Francisco, CA. All signs and signals indicate Miss Ryder paid $1,300,000 for her 3,436 square foot single family residence in the Cow Hollow neighborhood in April of 1995.

Until June of 2008, Miss Ryder owned a New York City pied a terre in the lovely Gramercy Park neighborhood at 1 Lexington Avenue that she sold for $2,200,000. As far as we know, which is next to nothing, she hasn't purchased a new pad in Manhattan or anywhere else on the east coast.

listing photos: Westside Estate Agency