Inside Los Angeles stan culture, where it isn’t embarrassing to admit you’re a celebrity nerd
Fans behave very differently in Los Angeles than they do in London. Longtime celebrity nerd Adam Bloodworth visited to explore the city’s outward love for celebrity
A sea of aggressive power lunches are taking place on the terrace next to a swimming pool. I’m in the Tower Bar on Sunset Boulevard, which runs along the top of arc of mountains, making it feel like we’re high up on a rooftop when actually we’re on the ground floor.
It’s a perfect vision of Los Angeles, the city often accused of being one big optical illusion. Is anyone actually happy in those big houses? Is it really glamorous to work in the movies? Is it really paradise? Certainly not for everyone: LA has one of the largest homeless populations in America and for the nearly four million Angelinos (that’s what they call the city’s people) life is often tough.
The cost of living is high, with the average apartment rented out for north of two grand a month.
But no one is talking about that at the Tower Bar. I’m having lunch with a very excitable publicist who speaks so fast that his words are like a scarf pulled from a magician’s hat: you never know when it will end.
In his late-thirties, he has the perfect, beaming, day-glo smile you’d expect. Before I’d arrived, he’d noticed a comedian sitting at the table behind us, and had told her he loved her. Soon after she came to our table to tell us that she’d spent her lunch discussing famous people, too. “We’ve just been gossiping about all the celebrities we’ve seen!”
In Los Angeles, it isn’t embarrassing to go up to a celebrity and tell them you admire them
Over the type of Chinese chicken salad that would suck in the UK but features nine or ten different interesting ingredients in the US, he explained his rule about meeting celebrities. He will go over and say hello, tell them he admires their work, but never ask for autographs or selfies. A-List sightings and the commotion they cause are so common around here that it’s appropriate for these rules to be established.
Stan culture, where you openly admit you’re a huge fan of someone, isn’t embarrassing or shameful in Los Angeles. Even those who have ‘made it’ in one way or another still ogle celebrities in restaurants, an activity that in Britain would seem desperately uncool.
This cultural difference makes sense: public declarations of love are very American. One of the biggest differences between Brits and Americans is how Brits suppress themselves in public, whereas Americans express themselves. I’ve always found the US attractive in that way: women shouting about how their booty looks on the sidewalk in broad daylight, people bowling over to you in bars to have a conversation. For an anxious Brit who – shock horror – can find it difficult to connect quickly with strangers, their openness and expression is addictive.
I’d assumed LA would be more snobbish, that those working within the world of entertainment like my lunch companion would be forced to play it cool. I was pleased to be proven wrong.
The overtness of stan culture in Los Angeles has birthed a whole world of experiences. The Ritz-Carlton and The Conrad are very posh LA hotels that both offer ‘A-List facials’ to help their well-heeled but anonymous guests feel famous. “You’ve had a red carpet facial, you’re just like a celebrity,” my beautician at The Ritz-Carlton tells me. These places are not tourist traps. Stars attending the Grammys had been in my chair at The Conrad earlier that same week, although my beautician refused to tell me whose face she’d been pummelling.
Even celebrities themselves identify as stans
At Highly Likely on West Jefferson Blvd, I was lunching with Melissa, tourism representative for Discover Los Angeles. Like my lunch partner at Tower Bar, she moved here and took this job because she is an out-and-out stan who has followed celebrity culture all her life. Over ice tea and colourful brunch plates, we discussed how even celebrities themselves identify as stans: Billie Eilish, an LA local, has spoken about how being in Justin Bieber’s fandom in her teens helped her understand fan culture when it began changing her life.
I’d pilgrimaged to Los Angeles as a celebrity nerd. As a queer kid growing up in suburban Britain, the idea of celebrity felt impossibly glamorous and far removed from my own relatively mundane life. As a teenager I’d leave school and get the train to London to wait for actors at theatre stage doors and at film premieres. I took a photo with Tom Cruise on the Southbank, had a nice chat with Brad Pitt on a Soho backstreet, and got Clint Eastwood to wind down his car window to sign a photo. Getting close to them made me feel like I’d stepped through the bubble of my life into the fabulous world beyond.
I’m not alone. There’s a burgeoning cohort of people who feel great when they get close to celebrities in new and weird ways. Ever since the internet was born, the line between celebrity and ordinary people has blurred. Outlets like TMZ have upped the ante when it comes to getting the story first in a world where anyone can publish from their phones.
The Instagram user joy.of.everything is an example of how online stan culture is intensifying in strange ways. Emmy-nominated producer Joe Andaloro simply bowls over to A-Listers, often at LAX airport, thrusts his phone in their face and starts asking questions. It’s interesting because his videos sit somewhere between journalism and paparazzi work, but most importantly they are pure distilled fandom. Look through his reels and you’ll find Aimee Lou Woods chatting about White Lotus, Ernie Hudson talking Toy Story 5 and William Shatner grudgingly opening up about his music career. A professional journalist, Andaloro is clearly delighted and emotional at the prospect of confronting his favourite stars. Is this unprofessional? Who knows?
Stan culture has certainly developed a habit for occasionally turning toxic. Chappell Roan has spoken out against “abusive” fans and Taylor Swift’s followers have sent bullying emails to writers who gave her music bad reviews. Ultimately, standing around outside LAX with a camera phone and sticking it in the face of 94-year-old William Shatner is just plain weird.
In Los Angeles, where fan culture thrives IRL, the white picket fence ideal had been sidelined for a different type of fulfilment
Talking of blurring the lines, Discover Los Angeles (essentially the LA tourist board) has whole sections of its website dedicated to where to go in the city to spot celebrities, and which Hollywood Hills walks to do to be in with the highest chance of hiking with the high net worth. Would this fan approach fly in the UK? I doubt it: from my experience meeting celebrities in London, it’s rare to meet true fans, or at least people who will admit to being a true fan. Even film premieres in the UK are attended mostly by autograph collectors, some of whom sell the signatures and others who keep them as collectables.
One thing’s for sure: this new online content is making ‘traditional’ celebrity tourism look rather anachronistic. On a Starline celebrity bus tour, a company that has been running celebrity house tours for 90 years, our driver pointed out the spots where 1980s films were shot, but failed to acknowledge Sushi Park, the understated but much-hyped restaurant where Beyonce, Kendall Jenner and Justin Bieber have been dining of late.
You might presume all this pursuit of stardom would make one miserable, that trying to ‘make it’ when you’re surrounded by success is bad for your mental health. But this wasn’t the experience I had. One of my Uber drivers told me about his own music career, yet seemed giddy with excitement over the people he picks up in his car. The maitre’d at the Tower Bar makes introductions between burgeoning actors and major film producers; he enjoys being able to do that as a side hustle within his job. I couldn’t help but think how unlikely such scenarios would be in Britain.
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I’m not trying to bowdlerise the truth – I’m sure for plenty of triers, LA hasn’t spawned the opportunities they hoped. At an Oscars party I attended with Melissa, we had been given the promise of celebrity guest attendees. Hundreds lined up in their furs to get in, expensive tickets in hand, only to be told the party was at capacity and they’d have to wait outside. Rumours from within the building were that producers of one of the nominated short films were inside, but nobody you’d recognise. Perhaps the reality for many is spending a lot of money to get close to stardom, but ending up at the wrong party and queuing out in the street.
For me though, Los Angeles felt like a place where fandom thrives IRL, not just on the internet. Where the white picket fence ideal had been side-lined in favour of a different sort of self-fulfilment. One day, over lunch at the famous Beverly Hills Hotel, Lindsay Lohan walked past me with her dog, and half the restaurant excitedly turned to watch. Are the people in those big houses really happy? Who knows? But in Los Angeles, at least you might get the chance to ask them.
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