Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Fawn's Swan Song

SELLER: Fawn Hall
LOCATION: Bird Streets, Hollywood Hills, CA
PRICE: $2,470,000
SIZE: 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Wonderous View in fabulous Bird Streets. 4 Bed plus 4 Baths – Glamor in the Hills

YOUR MAMAS UPDATE: 03.25.07 / Price reduced to $2,100,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama really prefers not to go after real estate agents, but the property "description" provided by the Coldwell Banker listing agents is one we can not let slide without comment. 1.) Not only is the word wondrous spelled incorrectly, we hate that spelling of glamour. Technically, it's correct. There is, however, something stingy about leaving out the "u." 2.) Everyone knows Your Mama loathes extraneous capitalization in real estate descriptions. 3.) This really is just a sad excuse for a description and doesn't describe much at all unfortunately.

Now that we've tackled that issue we can move on to Ms. Fawn Hall and the Hollywood Hills home she shared with her now deceased huzband Danny Sugerman. Y'all remember who Fawn Hall is, right? In case you don't recall, here's a clue: Iran-Contra. That's right puppies, this home belongs to the former secretary of that half-wit Ollie North. When asked under oath at Mister North's 1988 trial about stealing and shredding sensitive documents related to illegal arms trading, Ms. Hall famously declared that, "Sometimes you have to go above the law." Oh dear gurl. Your Mama does not actually disagree with her statement, but hunny, you don't say that shit under oath.

Hall took the fame baton she was handed as a result of the Iran-Contra scandal and ran and ran and ran stretching her Warholian fifteen minutes to about 17 or 18. She moved to Los Angeles, nabbed an agent at William Morris, and briefly dated Hollywood Lothario Rob Lowe. And although she did not pose nekkid for Playboy like some of the other political scandal hussies of the 1980s, she was indeed named as one of Playboy's "Sex Stars of 1987."

Eventually this gal settled down with Danny Sugerman who was best known as the (second) manager of The Doors. He later also managed Iggy Pop and authored several books about The Doors and also a tome about Guns and Roses. Sadly Mr. Sugerman passed in 2005 after a long battle with lung cancer.

Ms. Hall and Mr. Sugerman were married in 1995 and it appears they purchased this home up in the Bird Streets in 2002. The Bird Streets, located in the hills about Sunset Boulevard and called the Bird Streets because all the streets are named after birds such as Flicker, Swallow, and Warbler, is known for it's heavy concentration of celebrity home owners such as Keanu Reeves, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey McGuire and Debra Messing.

Like most houses up in these parts, the Hall/Sugerman house climbs the side of a steep lot and offers stupendous views of downtown Los Angeles. As you can see from the floor plan below, this house doubles as both a residence and a StairMaster. While this is not a bad combination for all your skinny-minny work out queens, just getting the groceries to the kitchen would probably give Your Mama a heart attack.
When Your Mama first came across this property, the pictures stunned and stupefied us. All that black leather had us running for cover and feeling like we were back in the 1980s. As we scanned the photos we fully expected to see a few Nagel prints up in here. Or maybe something colorful from that horrible Mark Kostabi.

After a second pass through the photos, we realized the individual furniture pieces were not all so bad and the silhouettes actually had more to do with the 1990s than the 1980s. We know it's difficult to spot in there, but do the children see the Barcelona chair in the living room? And the trestle table being used as a desk in Mister Sugerman's office is really quite nice.

What Your Mama would recommend is having one of Los Angeles' many gay decorators come over, thin out some of that black furniture, and throw some accent colors around. Ms. Hall might even consider having one of those stager queens come over to work some temporary decorating magic. Usually we're not too keen on the too often banal and beige stager designs, but this house is really in desperate need.

What all the children can not tell from the floor plan is how much outdoor space this property actually offers. In addition to the large, big view terrace off the living room, there are two additional areas that give the property a fairly good indoor/outdoor flow. The area off the back end of the third floor also allows for some nice views and the side patio, off the dining room, has a romantic tunnel like area (photo at bottom right) that is a great spot for all those folks not interesting in frying their skin in the hot sun.

The last issue we would like to discuss is a sensitive one. Yes children, we're talking about the unfortunate location of the walk in closet in the master. As y'all can see, the door to the closet is located di-rectly across from the pooper. It should be obvious why this set up concerns and agitates Your Mama. But in the event any of the children out there are a little dense and not understanding what we're getting at, just imagine how your clothes are going to smell after an Indian food feast. Oh Lawhd. On that note, Your Mama has got to be going now to wash our hands, burn some incense, and forget about this unsettling odor issue.

Sources: Coldwell Banker, Wikipedia, Time Magazine, whosdatedwho, Fact Monster

2 comments:

NatD said...

I'm surprised you didn't say anything about how the master bath needs a remodel. That black marble? The wall color? The tacky silver-y framed shower? Shudder.

Love the outdoor spaces, though.

design snitch said...

O, I C the Coldwell Banker Realtors Attended the Gr8 Prince Rogers Nelson School of Real Est8 Blurbing!