My work often takes me to the places we all dream about, from cozy villes tucked into France's Mediterranean coastline to the jungles and ruins of Central America. However, as much as I love the road and the cultures and people that fire my imagination, I always look forward to returning home. Maybe it's just that Nuestra Seņora La Reina de Los Angeles Sobre el Rio de Porciuncula (LA's full name) is so deep in my blood. As a third generation Angeleno, I think if you cut me, I would bleed smog and palm trees.

But there comes that time when the road has worn me down and I long for friends, family and my own bed. Returning, especially from the east at twilight as the plane makes its approach to LAX, I never cease to feel a rush, like unexpectedly seeing an old lover, as I look north towards the Hollywood sign and the Griffith Park Observatory. I then allow my gaze to play over the soft brown hills moving east, until they rest on hilly terrain marked by a sudden scarcity of lights and dense foliage.

That's Franklin Hills, my home for the last 12 years. From the air, it's conspicuous by its lack of lights, brooding Mordor-like above a carpet of electric embers that march right to its very base. If I look carefully (and the person sitting in the window seat doesn't mind) I can make out Vermont Blvd. as it traverses a huge swath of the city heading north to its terminus, our more famous and decidedly tony sibling, Los Feliz. You see, part of what I love about this place is its anonymity. Sandwiched between Los Feliz and Silver Lake, two of the hottest divas in the time-honored LA sport of "so, where do you live," (which we all know translates to: "where are you on the food chain"), reclines unpretentious Franklin Hills.

Buffered from scene-seekers by our more visible siblings, Franklin Hills thrives with it's own discreet cachet. No, we don't get the press our neighbors do, and frankly, that's just how we like it here. Publicity is bad for the status quo. And the norm here equals quiet, serpentine streets that climb past a profusion of trees and gardens that never cease to amaze me. Some personal favorites I pause to admire on my walks are the stunning succulent garden bordered with fruit-laden citrus trees on Mayview and the wild flowers that burst forth every spring from an open lot on the same street, framing Hollywood off in the distance.

The Cote d'Azur may have its seaside bistros and Iceland its Blue Lagoon, but defying the observation (usually by outsiders) that Los Angeles is a featureless expanse, Franklin Hills not only has striking landmarks but a colorful history as well. First and foremost, the area is defined by the Shakespeare Bridge, an artful expanse of white spires built in 1926 that was modeled after a bridge in France. Located near where Franklin Blvd. begins before throttling west down into the flats of Hollywood, the bridge is our grande dame.

As befits any leading lady, it has played starring roles in films like "Dead Again" and even has a fan club of area residents who dress her up in lights every Christmas and took the trouble to create a lovely meridian blooming with flowers. No forgotten Norma Desmond, she.

But alas, though another Norma, Norma Talmadge to be exact, might be a forgotten film star from Hollywood's early days, she remains forever a resident of the neighborhood as the namesake of one of our major thoroughfares, Talmadge Avenue. The western border of Franklin Hills, her enduring testament is also the address of the Prospect Studios, another major landmark of our area. With a filmdom pedigree second-to-none, the Prospect Studios were opened in 1915 as the Vitagraph lot when Hollywood was still a semi-rural outpost and wide-eyed starlets and extras dressed as cowboys and gladiators rode the Red Car to work here from all over the city.

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