Valet Parking

Now that you're practicing all those New Year's resolutions, here's one to add: Book visiting relatives into a hotel. Perhaps you don't need a recent survey to tell you that 61% of Americans get stressed about staying with or hosting family during the holidays. That's the polite, scientific way of saying, "We love you. Now get out." One might gently direct the relations to the Orlando, an overlooked hotel on West 3rd Street, between Beverly Hills and West Hollywood.

Making people laugh is the specialty of the house where French writer-director Francis Veber is concerned, and he is awfully good at it. A complete master of cinematic farce, Veber's latest venture, "The Valet," makes creating deliciously funny comedy look a lot easier than it has any right to. Veber, who remains enormously popular in France though he now lives in Los Angeles, has had more than 30 films produced from his screenplays, including several that were remade in the U.S.

Pity the cyclist with the $4,000 titanium road bike attempting to park at the Sunday farmers market in Santa Monica. After 10:30 a.m., the meters and street signs were already claimed by early rising cyclists who chained their bike frames to the poles, and that hefty, pricey Kryptonite lock simply wouldn't fit around the nearest fence post.

The first car to roam the rutted streets of L.A. was built here in 1897. Because of the paucity of traffic and the lack of hotels and restaurants, there was no need for valet parking. But by 1946, there were many hotels and restaurants in the booming City of Angles, and a man named Herb Citron saw a need to make life a little easier for motorists driving to Lawry's restaurant on La Cienega, so he invented valet parking.

THEY emerge from a white Ford Explorer -- one, two, three, four valets -- looking spiffy and ready for action. Valet party bus? Not quite. As evening descends on Beverly Boulevard, the street lined with tempting boutiques and inviting restaurants quickly turns into an impenetrable parking jungle, with every meter from La Cienega to La Brea \o7occupato\f7. Few dare to venture into the no-man's-land of residential street parking, where every block seems to require a permit.

IF there's anything worse than driving in Los Angeles, it's parking in Los Angeles. Finding a place to curb your wheels in some of the area's hottest shopping districts is as rare as that empty stretch of freeway -- and just as memorable. Discover the ideal spot, and you're talking about it for weeks. The explanation is simple: Parking and shopping are by nature oppositional forces. One is all about free will, autonomy and gratification. The other is about coercion, conformity and discomfort.

After 23 years, the Valet Girls are handing over their keys to a rival company. The all-female, Malibu-based parking service announced Tuesday that it was being bought by California Girls Valet Parking of Beverly Hills in a deal said to be worth about $400,000.

In his 1985 breakout novel, "Less Than Zero," Bret Easton Ellis, then all of 21 years old, created young, jaded Angelenos who just didn't care about anything: They recounted cocaine scores and semi-anonymous sex in the same tone with which they lamented their fading suntans. That ennui became Ellis' literary signature, and as he began to grow up in public, he became known as a photogenic and glamorous figure who liked booze and excess. More than two decades later and almost four years after returning home to L.A., the city in which he grew up as the offspring of affluent Goldwater Republicans, Ellis himself claims to be in a phase in which he just doesn't care about anything -- a middle-aged wrinkle on the old Ellis ennui.

The Greek Theatre and the Gibson Amphitheatre have announced their summer concert series for 2009. Among the notable headliners at the Greek are alt-country siren Neko Case, chamber-folk auteur Andrew Bird and dapper soul man John Legend. The Gibson's lineup includes crooner Frankie Valli and metal stalwarts Judas Priest. The Premiere Marquee Club's broadened perks this year (available to anyone buying advance tickets to a combination of three, five or seven shows) include guaranteed seating, valet parking, special concession lines and advance pre-sales.

Food? Check. Ice? Check. Drinks? Check. Parking valet? Check. Parking valet? For a growing number of hosts and hostesses in car-centric L.A., hiring a parking service is part of the pre-party checklist. And in terms of the holiday crunch, it's not too late to reserve valets for key dates, including New Year's Eve. Valets can add a flash of glamour, not to mention convenience: Who hasn't endured the hassle of parking a mile away on a crowded street?