Do This: The O.J. Simpson Murder Mystery Tour

Not even a joke—someone stopped me on the street in Santa Monica the other day (maybe it was two weeks ago, before I got the Zombie Death Flu(, specifically to ask me if I could tell them how to get to Brentwood, so they could see “the O.J. Simpson house.”  Maybe there is renewed interest in this because O.J. Simpson's NEW girlfriend (the one who looks creepily like Nicole Brown Simpson) is now in the hospital, after being beaten within an inch of her life (O.J. says she fell, but I'm going to let you draw your own conclusions).  Of course, I'm not even going to comment on the Darwinian aspect of being the girl who looks like the dead wife of a guy who probably killed her, and who goes ahead and moves in with him anyway.  That is another story, and THIS story is about you and your trip to Brentwood.

I don’t know why I have this much information floating around in my head about this subject, but I did make it a point to tell them several interesting trivial things and their locations, which I will share with you now. If you already live in L.A.and/ or you don’t care about this, maybe now is the time to go back and read another in my hilarious collection of blog posts, like this one, about story songs.

I guess if you were going to start a tour called “The O.J. Simpson Murder Tour,” you’d have to start it by flying into LAX, renting a car, and driving on up the 405 freeway going north, where you would turn off on Wilshire going west, then turn right on Barrington, where you might then want to park your car in one of the copious overpriced lots, then have Pinkberry. You might also want to try hanging out at the Starbucks on the corner of Barrington and San Vicente, because this is a good place to see people like Ben Affleck and the guy from Napoleon Dynamite.

Be sure to schedule your flight to get in during the morning or at night, though, or you're going to have to do this first:

 







There’s not really a lot left that was originally there in 1994 when the double-murders occurred, but you can certainly take a couple of hours, drive around up there, and get a sense of the place, and perhaps try to imagine yourself in a white Bronco, running from the law with a knife in your car and a duffel bag full of bloody black clothes (was that out loud?) The original Nicole Brown Simpson condo used to be at 875 S. Bundy, which is around the intersection of Bundy and Dorothy (South of Montana). The address is now 879 S. Bundy, and here is a picture of the gate.

 

 

First, though, you would want to go and have dinner at the Peet’s Coffee, which is what they turned Mezzaluna into. Apparently after the murder and the trial Mezzaluna got LESS popular, so they turned it into a coffee place.

Then you’d walk down the street to Bundy and turn left, where you’d only be able to see the gate of 879 S. Bundy, because I’m sure the people who own that place are used to people coming over all the time to see if there’s still blood in the walkway. Since the place underwent a complete remodel before it was sold, I doubt it, but it’s always fun to visit the scene of something notorious, I suppose. 

Next you’ll need to get into your car so you can take the famous O.J. Simpson drive up San Vicente, right on Gretna Green (ah, you’re remembering the trial transcript now, aren’t you?), on up to Rockingham. The lot is at 360 N. Rockingham, and here is an interesting “before and after” of the house as it was, and what it looks like now (someone tore it down in 1997).

Comments

[Jim Maloy]

I lived two blocks from the former Mrs. Simpson's condo at the time, and the ooky part is that the police were at our building at the same time the murders happened, checking out a domestic disturbance ( the Chinese family in the corner apartment who, from the sound of it, were burning their infant with lit cigarettes ). Who knows...if that hadn't happened, maybe the police would have been on patrol instead. "Hey, isn't that O.J. Simpson? Why is he drenched in blood?"

I saw O.J. a few times at Hana Sushi in the ensuing years and successfully restrained myself from yelling "Hide the knives, Katsu!"