Hollywood And Vine

Think of the new W Hollywood Hotel & Residences complex as equal parts Chateau Marmont, L.A. Live and Pershing Square. The 15-story, $600-million development, designed by Dallas-based architecture firm HKS, combines on a single L-shaped site the W's hotel and condominium towers with a 375-unit apartment block called 1600 Vine. The whole ensemble is draped in gigantic billboards, wrapped around a sizable public plaza leading to a Metro Red Line subway stop and squeezed in next to the landmark 1924 Taft Building at Hollywood and Vine.

Angelyne can barely squeeze into the 8-foot-wide storage room. And not just because she's the buxom, bigger-than-life billboard queen of Los Angeles. Boxes of printed posters and placards depicting her in glamorous poses fill the Hollywood self-storage space she is renting while she feuds with city redevelopment leaders and developers of a planned $500-million luxury project near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.

Hollywood and Vine has long been one of the most famous intersections in the world, but until the last few years visitors to the area were greeted by a few bodegas, Avalon nightclub, a burrito stand and the Pantages Theatre. Sure, there was a lingering sense of history from its heyday in the '30s, and the Capitol Records building is awe-inspiring, but after throwing back a few sorrowful martinis at the Frolic Room it was time to move west — to where the real action was. This week, the opening of a new bar, restaurant and nightclub called Lexington Social House crowns several years of rapid growth along the axis once frequently name-checked by gossip columnist Hedda Hopper and now emerging as a lively alternative to the tourist-heavy bustle at Hollywood and Highland.

Re: "Pinching pennies in Hollywood," June 4: There's no doubt that people are spending less on essentials and incidentals. However, some attractions for tourists and locals alike are free and fun. Case in point: Los Angeles' Metro system, which has glamorous stations at Hollywood and Vine, and Hollywood and Highland. At the latter, in front of the sidewalk entry, free Metro Art Tours start at 10 a.m. every first Saturday of the month. Morley J. Helfand, Metro Art Council Docent Arcadia

Mabel Eby, 78, who oversaw the always sensitive ticket distributions and seating arrangements for 44 annual Academy Award presentations and the longest-serving employee at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She came to the academy in 1945, when it was at Hollywood and Vine before moving to Beverly Hills. She retired in 1988 and was credited with knowing more film stars and executives than most of the industry members she served. In Beverly Hills on Thursday after a long illness.