Melrose Avenue

There's Balenciaga, with its space-age interior and minimalist cactus garden out front. Down the road at Alexander McQueen, a larger-than-life metal nude is suspended in the skylight. Martin Margiela's exterior shimmers like a disco ball in the sun, while Comme des Garcons' outpost hides behind an unmarked doorway on a gritty alley. Nevermind all the remarkable clothes -- L.A.

AT All' Angelo, a new Italian restaurant on Melrose Avenue just west of La Brea, the room is filled with so many familiar faces, it seems more like a reunion than a night out at a new \o7ristorante\f7. Center front is owner Stefano Ongaro, the energetic former maitre d' for Valentino, Enoteca Drago and, most recently, Il Grano. His partner and chef is Mirko Paderno, who cooked at Valentino, Dolce and Bridge.

Los Angeles, and the country at large, have been losing bookstores lately to forces that have become familiar in the trade: rising rents, competition from national retail chains and the discounts offered by online booksellers. Yet the latest casualty has come not from financial failure but from a combination of success and a stroke of luck -- for the owners of Heritage Book Shop, at least.

"He died in real life? I just saw him in a commercial." One girl to another standing in line at a store on Melrose Avenue * "Can I ask you a personal question? Who did your nose?" A customer to a waitress at a restaurant in Santa Monica * "Good luck with your prenup!" A woman waving goodbye to a friend in an L.A. parking lot

Night Lines: The Night Lines column in Thursday's edition of The Guide said that Ron Marino, co-owner of the Bar and Magnolia, had taken over the Forty Deuce space on Melrose Avenue and planned to open a bar there later this year. Marino has no part in the forthcoming, yet-to-be-named lounge on Melrose Avenue.

It's become, for some, a symbol of the era and an embodiment of the region's excesses. "It represents everything I loathe about Los Angeles," says Daniel Schwartz, a longtime television producer who left town a few years ago but still vividly recalls 8500 Melrose Ave. "It's sort of a cross between Leni Riefenstahl and 'La Cage Aux Folles.' Clearly a lot of money was spent erecting it, but I used to study it and ask, 'What was the concept here?'

Opened in 1991, when its style and moniker presumably made more sense, the Snake Pit now sits on a stretch of Melrose Avenue in which each block, each denizen, pledges its allegiance to one pop icon or another: Von Dutch, retro-'80s or Asian glam, and other flavors of the month. But with its pool-hall ambience, exposed brick, food that tastes great after two beers and nondescript mix of collegiate types, western shirts and metalheads, this place is ... what?

A chic oasis on Melrose Avenue, just west of La Brea, M Cafe de Chaya is the latest restaurant from Shigefumi Tachibe, the genie behind Chaya Brasserie and Chaya Venice. Sunny yellow awnings mark the spot. Beside the door is a silvery olive tree in a square concrete container. Diminutive pots of thyme sit on the cafe tables out front.