Monday, April 8, 2013

Hop On Over to the Playboy Bunny Hutch

SELLER: Hugh Hefner/Playboy Enterprises
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $11,000,000
SIZE: 6,690 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama is nine kinds of terrified of the dentist. We really are. In fact, we are so freaked out by the idea of having our teeth touched that we have to load up on prescription medication just to get through the office's 1970s modern front door. Just ask our bossy but beloved Sister Woman who—bless her heart—will actually sit in the exam room as Your Mama's eyes, ears and insurance that our dentist—deftly skilled and rakishly handsome but still a dentist—will not purposely inflict harm on our ever-so-tender chompers. Unfortunately for the children, an early a.m. visit to said handsome dentist has left Your Mama at the woozy mercy of a heavy duty Valley Girl* and the pesky residue of laughing gas so we have to ask that y'all try to forgive us our celebrity real estate transgressions and digressive story telling tangents today, such as the one some of you just suffered through reading this paragraph...

Anyhoo, even before we left for the dentist at the crack of dawn this morning Your Mama had already received several missives and communiques from a handful of informants who let us know about the newly listed Bunny Hutch in Los Angeles's high fallutin' Holmby Hills area that just hopped on the market with an $11,000,000 price tag.

We call it the "Bunny Hutch" because the South Mapleton Drive mini-mansion, located a short hop down and across the the street from the back door service entrance to the illustrious Playboy Mansion, is where, for more than a decade, octogenarian playboy Hugh Hefner has housed dozens of bouncy and unnaturally busty young women who put on their pouty and/or sultry faces and pose butt-ass naked for the racy men's magazine and its various other digital soft-core porn products.

As best as Your Mama can tell the Bunny Hutch was picked up by a corporate entity in June 2001 for $4,500,000. If Your Mama is being totally honest—and we always are—we'd confess that we're not sure if the property is owned directly by Mister Hefner or—more likely—if it's an asset of Playboy Enterprises, much or all of which has been owned by a private investment outfit (Icon Acquisition Group) since 2011. We're sure there are about 49,000 people out there who could more accurately articulate the ownership nuances of this property and perhaps one of them will be so kind to send Your Mama and email to let us know.

Listing details show the 6,690 square foot two level 1950s ranch-style residence sits on 1.3 acres and, in addition to all the usually living and dining rooms, has five bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms. The bed/bath count definitely includes the two master suites and may or may not include the staff bedroom and bathroom that—natch—adjoins the laundry room.

Regardless of the number of bedrooms Your Mama imagines they are all done up dormitory style with stuffed animal and hair extension strewn bunk beds and twice-patched air mattresses in the bedrooms and a couple of uncomfortable camping cots pushed up against the wall in a dark hallway where the naughty or less favored hares are made to sleep by the house's big bunny who sets and upholds the house rules. Gawd, children, can y'all imagine if it really was that political up in the Bunny Hutch? The potential for on-going, daily drama would be thick and damp like a steamy, late summer afternoon in Okalona, Mississippi. (No thank you but thank you, Bobbie Gentry.)

An upper level living room/lounge has wall-to-wall carpeting—ew!—plus a red and white abstract pattern rug that looks like it could be from Ikea and is grossly under-scaled for the room. There's a built-in bar with two styles of bar stools including four with Playboy logo bunny head backs and, in front of a wide, slightly bowed window, a silver leather polka-dot sofa that might possibly be a super-sized George Nelson Marshmallow Sofa although never in all Your Mama's many days have we ever seen one that long.

On the lower level, a second living room/lounge opens directly to the backyard entertainment areas and has more wall-to-wall carpeting—and more ew!—a wide banks of nearly floor-to-ceiling windows and at least one, arcade grade video game machine and at least one pinball machine because, let's be honest children, is there anything hotter than a bikini clad bunny working the paddles of a pinball machine? Is there? And, although it's way, way, way under proportioned for what appears to be a fairly large space, the one saving decorative grace, based on all that's shown in the single listing photograph of the room, is the Space Age-y sputnik light fixture.

The lagoon-like swimming pool and spa has trendy beach entry and a man-made rock waterfall situation that's clearly second fiddle to the major pile of (faux) boulders that form the (in)famous grotto at the Playboy Mansion. We're not saying every single one of those bunnies and their house guests aren't squeaky clean top to bottom and front to back but let's just say Your Mama wouldn't dream of swimming in that pool or even walking barefooted around the damn thing. It may be unnecessarily crude to mention this but, children, pleeze, imagine the fluid swapping that has gone on in and around that pool and spa the last dozen years that house has been Playboy's bunny hutch.**

In addition to the large, double-gated motor court at the front, the 1.29 acre estate also has a second motor court—a parking lot, really, to accommodate all the bunny's automobiles—that's also accessible from an electronic gate at the rear of the estate. Presumably the next owner will convert the parking lot to a tennis court and additional gardens. That is, unless the next owner also plans to use the house as a dormitory for under-employed hot babes with glitter for dreams and.... Well, y'all get where that's going, right? Chill out, bunnies, we tease. Imagine, children, stepping off the bus from Kansas or R-Kansas (or wherever it is all these corn fed exhibitionists come from) with deep dreams of Playboy super stardom only to realize you'll be shacked in a house where pinball machines and logo-fied bar stools make a sorry, frat-house like substitute for proper day-core.

To be honest with y'all the property looks a bit on the scungy side for a house in this particular neck of hoity toity L.A. The neighbors probably hate it. The privacy hedge at the front looks a little unkempt—and not in the good way; The driveway gates looks like they would benefit from a coat of paint; the black top driveway and motor court appears to be in need of some attention and the landscaping at the front (and back) the house has neither pizazz nor even any real aesthetic value. Did y'all take note the broken down vertical blinds in the upper level windows at the rear of the residence? Do we even need to say they're utterly and unspeakably tawdry? No, we didn't, did we? Who puts vertical blinds in a house in Holmby Hills? Seriously? That is just wrong on every level. Never-the-less,  lackluster landscaping and vertical blinds aside, Holmby Hills is still one of the most expensive and prestigious nooks in all the upper end crannies of Los Angeles and Your Mama would guess the land alone is worth a substantial portion of the current asking price but we'll let the local real estate experts duke out the value of the land in the comments. One, two, three...go!


*That's old-school street talk for Valium, children.
**In all truth Your Mama has no idea if there have ever been any body fluids swapped in or around this swimming pool. For all we know the Bunny Hutch By-Laws forbid any interaction between any two people that would involve the exchange of bodily fluids.


listing photos: Shirley Lovitt

41 comments:

joeinTO said...

If ever there was a tear-down, this is it. That begs the question is 1.39 acres in Holmby Hills worth $11m?

Anonymous said...

Wondrous! Another tear-down! Yippie-yaaay!!! However, only if no Landry or Manion / Hablinski touches the lot.

Petra's said...

Even Hef knows it's a teardown, he's not even trying with those listing photos!

The price seems realistic for the area.

Anonymous said...

The lot down the street on the corner sold not too long ago for $8.25m. Similar sized.

Overpriced but not insanely. It will probably sell for $9. something and be leveled for a new home.

Anonymous said...

Where is that $8.25m lot? Is there a new house built on it? Oh, Mapleton... I cannot wait for Sandy Gallin to finish Jimmy Iovine's house and for the photos to pop up somewhere.

Anonymous said...

Oh, Mama... many thanks for the Bobbie Gentry line and link. Your musings about a handsome dentist, valley girls, homeless bunnies, and a steamy Mississippi afternoon are just the kick-in-the-ass I needed to pour myself a whiskey. Mahalo for the respite.

Desert Donna said...

Mama do you get your chomper work done by Dr. Sam..Josh Flags dentist/client on Million Dollar Listing??? He sure fits the description..

Anonymous said...

Strange to think of this dumpy little place nestled in amongst the mega-mansions.

I'm surprised that it didn't end up in a tawdry reality TV show produced by Ms. Seacrest. Oops I meant "Mr."

Doug-G said...

I did the dental thing last Wednesday and, to top it off, it was the first time I'd gone to the dentist in 40 years without pacing and smoking half-a-pack of cigarettes beforehand. When I got through that ordeal I proudly proclaimed myself an ex-smoker with confidence.

While I now feel that cigarettes should never be lit up, that does not apply to this house. I've still got a little gas left in my last lighter should the new owner need any help.

Anonymous said...

Is 550 Mapleton the Sandy Gallin house you guys were talking about?

Sandpiper said...


Mama, were you holding onto that mailbox in your valium- and gas-infused stupor while trying to focus on the front gate problem? Hef's expecting your check for damages. Just blame it on Charlie Sheen.

Bunny barstools? Err, five? That's worse than four.



Carla Ridge said...

Clearly this is a HARE-down.

Anonymous said...

It looks like a classy "Ho" house in Northridge! It's the bunny big time if you landed your little cotton tail here! You made it sweety!

Wow. 11 million dollars. Got's to do a lot of tearin' back to get to them mid century bones.

Mama's black sheep in Weho,

Still working it out.

Anonymous said...

They featured this abode in one of the episodes on that E! series (whatever that show was called). Holly supervised the renovation which looked ... um ... amateur (at best!) once finished. It looks like it needs a darned good clean for a start! But ... where will the bunnies live now? Guess Hef is cutting all that nonsense out, now he's married?

Rosco Mare said...

Great house! Love it!

Actually, it's not, and I don't! The time is nearly midnight and I just returned home from work and I'm tired and delirious from having worked since 8:45 this morning. I do love Mama Dearest's post which is a great way to end this damn long day. XO


Rosco Mare said...

One more thing....someone mentioned 550 S. Mapleton. The demolished large, single story Hawaiian-modern-style ranch house had beautiful stone work and an impressive Japanese-style garden with a gate shaped like a circle..really unique. Great house for entertaining, though it needed updating. Was sad to see it destroyed. It was the home of Dr and Mrs Sprague who were big deal republicans and members of the Reagan's close circle of friends.

Anonymous said...

Jimmy Iovine's house is 515 S Mapleton Drive.

Anonymous said...

It's not 555, it's 550 S Mapleton. Someone is building something there. I don't know who and what.

sapna said...
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Unknown said...
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Anonymous said...

Does the agent think that being able to almost drive in your front door is a selling point?? It looks like some sort of medical office. Move the cars before photos! And I dont know if just draining that pool would be sufficient..one can only imagine what has gone on in there. Reminds me of Wanda Sykes Gay Cruise hilarious comedy routine. Probably doesnt matter anyway, as it is WAY over priced.

lil' gay boy said...

Looks as sad and used as some of its inhabitants...

Sandpiper said...

Yuk. That fifth bunny barstool by window has a broken back. Can't stand to even thinking about how that happened.

The place needs a bleach down, I agree.

Babe Parish said...

This looks like Roman Polanski's Finishing School for Wayward Runaways.

Anonymous said...

550 S Mapleton is being built (actually done now) by Alexandra Von Furstenberg. It's a massive traditional-style pile.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

It's like a Frankenstein house! All traditional in shape but modern in finish. Big glass panes all over, solid white exterior, no detailing. The renders make it look really cool actually. I just wish they'd have kept the pretty traditional moldings, that could probably look really neat with all the other modern stuff.
Either way it's really cool.

Anonymous said...

@10:43
If you freeze the slideshow at certain parts you can vaguely see the interior floorplan. Kinda confusing to explain, but it's like a 3D graphic of the rooms, but it only shows up when the picture fades from one elevation to the next.

Anonymous said...

550 S Mapleton is being built (actually done now) by Alexandra Von Furstenberg. It's a massive traditional-style pile.

Wow, thank you so much! Do you know who the architect is? I would really like to see the pictures.

Anonymous said...

Straight up teardown. One hour after closing I would have the demo crew there working on it.

Candy Spelling said...

Darlings, this house, incredibly modest though it may be, is an icon of the neighborhood. Hugh is a very good friend and despite his unconventional lifestyle, was a wonderful neighbor. Will be sad to see this demolished, just one more reminder that the glory days of Mapleton are fading fast as new money flocks to the fabled "street of gold"...

xx

Marks said...
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Anonymous said...

Hey Anon 1227, how did you quote a comment without first seeing that someone had already mentioned the website with pictures?

Anonymous said...

Hey Anon 1227, how did you quote a comment without first seeing that someone had already mentioned the website with pictures?

I don't see the link.

Anonymous said...

@751
My bad, sorry. That comment appears to have been removed. It's Dax Developments Mapleton project.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry: apparently, it was built by Dugally Oberfeld Inc., which has a pile of projects on its website, three from Beverly Park, but not the Mapleton house. I will now check it out, thank you so much.

Anonymous said...

If I saw only the pictures, I could've ventured to say that it was a Jennifer Post project. Some parts remind me of her Simon Cowell house.

Anonymous said...

Its impossible be an octogenarian for over a decade, but hey, on a site with a writing style as dumb as this one, why would I expect anything more?

Anonymous said...

3:01 writes for TMZ.

turesta, said...
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sapna said...
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