A sharply dressed crowd assembled in the La Playa Hotel‘s Pacific Ballroom in Carmel chanted this refrain in unison, led by an ensemble of actors from the IAMA Theatre Company this past winter. Among the more than 250 attendees gathered for the celebratory weekend to mark the grand reopening of the historic venue were Lewis Pullman, Patrick J. Adams, actor Guillermo Diaz and writer/podcaster Evan Ross Katz. Scandal‘s Katie Lowes and The Bear and Never Have I Ever‘s Adam Shapiro beamed from the audience as they watched fellow thespians from the Atwater Village-based theater they co-founded perform the prologue of The Last Bohemian, a one-night, site-specific immersive play directed by Eli Gonda and commissioned for the occasion by hotelier John Grossman of Marc & Rose Hospitality
Playwright Christian Durso’s story — set in 1907 and inspired by Carmel’s unorthodox creative legacy — proceeded to unfold throughout the property. Chef and food writer Andy Baraghani was there, too, having prepared a locally sourced dinner the previous night for this high-spirited convergence of guests representing many disciplines and fields.
Clint Eastwood is often associated with the hamlet located at the southern end of the Monterey Peninsula. But it’s also where over a century ago, figures such as Robinson Jeffers, Jack London, Edward Weston, Sinclair Lewis and painter Chris Jorgensen, found refuge and community. It was Jorgensen who in 1905 built the winter home that would become La Playa Hotel for his wife, San Francisco chocolate heiress Angela Ghirardelli.
Elements of this early bohemian culture are still felt around the gridded streets of the one-mile-square village of Carmel-by-the-Sea. There, storybook-style buildings and the conspicuous absence of numeric street addresses bolster its quirky charm. Homes are identified by descriptive names and geographic positions instead of conventional addresses, so residents collect their mail at the downtown post office (and deliveries can be challenging).
Standout Carmel real estate transactions indicate renewed attention. In 2022, Brad Pitt added a $40 million investment to his portfolio in the form of Seward, the 1918 stone-clad D.L. James House designed by architect Charles Sumner Greene, one of the architects responsible for the Gamble House in Pasadena. The 1951 Butterfly House outfitted with chic interiors by Jamie Bush sold in 2023 for $29 million; and Monaco businessman Patrice Pastor scooped up the compact yet dramatic Mrs. Clinton Walker house by Frank Lloyd Wright for $22 million, adding an especially rare jewel to his expanding crown of Carmel property holdings (an overall development that generates local concern).
