Shopping Mall: Bloomingdales, Macys

Seeing Stars: Where the Stars Shop.. 8500 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA. / (310) 854-0070 Remember the 1991 Woody Allen/Bette Midler movie, "Scenes from a Mall" ? That mall was none other than the giant Beverly Center, where they filmed the exterior shots for that comedy. It may not be the largest enclosed shopping mall in L.A., but it is the mall closest to Hollywood, and quite an impressive one at that. The Beverly Center mall is housed in a mammoth, eight-story behemoth of a building, with wavy, plexiglas tube escalators which snake up its sides. The shopping mall itself occupies only the upper three stories of the structure (levels 6 through 8); the bottom five floors are taken up by parking areas (except for the ground floor, which formerly housed the nation's first Hard Rock Cafe, and which still contains California Pizza Kitchen, PF Chang's, the Grand Luxe Cafe, and other upscale restaurants.) You can also catch a glimpse of the mall in the movies "L.A. Story," "Body Double," "Lipstick " and "Ruthless People". Because of its proximity to Beverly Hills and Hollywood, this mall also gets more than the usual number of celebrity shoppers (along with 13 million regular shoppers each year.) For instance, Nicolas Cage, Drew Barrymore, "The Boss" Bruce Springsteen, Robin Williams and Arsenio Hall have all been spotted shopping here. Courtney Cox (of "Friends") was recently seen buying jewelry at a small shop called "Jennifer Kaufman" (on the seventh level, near Macy's). Calista Flockhart ("Ally McBeal") was also spotted jewelry shopping. Jerry Seinfeld was seen looking at shoes in "Steve Maden." "Late Late Show" host Craig Kilborn reports that the first star he ever saw in Hollywood, was David Bowie, who Craig spotted flipping through magazines at a book store in the Beverly Center. Paul McCartney was seen at Macy's. The L.A. Times reports sightings of Phil Collins, Bernadette Peters, Geena Davis, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Esther Williams at the mall, and supermodel Tyra Banks reports that she loves to pig out on ice cream at the Haagen-Dazs here. Pamela Anderson Lee was seen shopping at Bloomingdales (where a clerk who recognized the actress insisted on ID when Pamela tried to cash a check.) Other reports place John Travolta, Brandy, Mark Wahlberg, Kelly Preston, Belinda Carlisle, Matt Damon, Wynona Ryder, Whoopi Goldberg, Teri Garr, Leslie Anne Warren and Cher at the mall. In their "Out of Town Visitors" section, the Beverly Center's own website lists these other celebrity visitors to the mall: Anna Nicole Smith, The Backstreet Boys, Ben Affleck, Billy Zane, Bo Derek, Bob Barker, Brad Pitt, Britney Spears, Cameron Diaz, Chris Rock, Christina Aguilera,Claudia