Shopping Slam at A+R

While the holiday rush started before Thanksgiving this year, it's only escalated as fans and friends of A+R have kept us busy from morning to night wrapping gifts. We love it!

Something we didn't dig this weekend: The arrival of paparrazi on Abbott Kinney. Since as long as we've been there, our better-known customers have always enjoyed the anonymity of lingering on the street. On Sunday, I had to body block a couple of sharpshooting monkeys who kept trying to focus their peeping lenses into the store.

Not all photographers are bad, and not all lensmen who shoot famous faces for a living are gnats. Alex Berliner, pictured above during a mini spree at A+R Sunday, is a second generation photographer who is actually invited by the social and star set to shoot their parties, openings and whatever excuse requiring photographs.(His wife is designer Magda Berliner.) He cuts a mean look in his tux, and is a modern throwback to the insiders who documented a beau monde of glitterati and glamour. He recently sold BEI, the company his father founded once upon a time, and launched a new era with ABImages. Hurrah.