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Eat Shop Play business owners come from every corner of Los Angeles. Here’s what they have to say.
Broxton Plaza in Westwood lined with palm trees.

Looking Back While Moving Forward: Inside Westwood Village

A single antique streetlight on a Westwood sidewalk — cast iron, blue-and-gold UCLA tile at the base — sums up everything this neighborhood is about: old and new, layered instead of replaced. There’s a tennis shop that once sold hunting gear (Arthur Ashe used to dust the moose head over the register), a tailor who’s altered the same families’ clothes for 35 years, and an Art Deco movie palace reopening in 2027. Westwood Village has kept its character even as the D Line’s final stretch prepares to change how people reach it.

Owner of Country General Store wearing a cowboy hat, denim, amongst other western treasures.

Country General Store

Rick Stanoff was just 18 when his father died, leaving him in charge of a downtown Los Angeles military surplus shop — one he steered, bit by bit, into one of L.A.’s premier western wear destinations. Today, one wall is lined floor to ceiling with Lucchese boots in full-quill ostrich and Cayman crocodile, and the clientele reads like a country music lineup: Shaboozey, Orville Peck, Dwight Yoakam. “I love western values,” Rick says. “When you meet someone, you shake their hand — and that’s your contract.” When Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour hit L.A. last year, he says, the store saw a flood of first-time buyers. “It was phenomenal.”