A Real Life Celebrity

I have lived just north of Hollywood my whole life. Movie and TV studios are close by in fact I drive by a film set at least once a month while out running errands. Even though the "biz" is just about on my doorstep, I can count on one hand the number of famous people I have spotted. I won't say it's because I don't really care about famous people - I check out my share of gossip magazines while standing in line at the grocery store. But I think since their world is not the same kind of world I live in, I never really think about it while I'm out.

That was until this past Thursday. My mom is in town and she and I headed to the Farmer's Market for the afternoon. My mom grew up in Burbank and North Hollywood so the Farmer's Market was a place she frequented growing up. We started off at the Grove (a newer shopping area at one end of the Farmer's Market) for some lunch and shopping. While at lunch I told her I was going to keep my eyes open because celebrities are always photographed at the Grove and I knew that if we tried hard enough we'd find one. We did not spot anyone famous while shopping, but that was probably because we were very focused on the Nordstrom's shoe sale.

After our shopping we walked to the Farmer's Market. We wandered around a bit and then decided to stop for a glass of wine at Monsieur Marcel, a cute gourmet shop and restaurant. We sat at the bar, which actually faces out towards the market. While we were sitting there a few guys ran past us, being stopped by some security guards. At first I thought they were being arrested or something, but then all of a sudden a lot more ran by all carrying cameras. "Oh, oh," I said, "That's the paparazzi." As they ran by I asked, "Who is it? Who is it?" Really more to my mom than to anyone else, but one of the paparazzi stopped and said, "David Beckham", and continued on. He's gotten some bad press lately, but he sure is cute. It was kind of exciting, but not exciting enough for me to get up and leave my glass of sangria.

After a little while longer the commotion came the other way. Within seconds, walking right by us was David Beckham, his kids, and some other people including about 20 paparazzis. It was crazy. I found this video online. Don't watch too long because it's 5 minutes of him walking around The Grove trying hard to ignore the annoying paparazzis- boring. However at the very beginning, they walk past the bar we were sitting at. We are off camera, thank goodness, but if they were to have filmed further to the right my mom and I and our delicious sangria would have been famous too!