By Lindsey Besecker
Assistant Sports Editor
Beverly Hills. Sure, if Malibu is your home, it might not seem so glamorous, but imagine hearing about Beverly Hills while living in Virginia. Seems a little more intriguing, right?
Junior Christina Hinds, libero for the Pepperdine women’s volleyball team, knows firsthand about living in Beverly Hills – she grew up there.
“It’s just another city,” Hinds said. “There’s really no hype about it.”
Hinds transferred to Pepperdine as a sophomore after spending an academic year at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
She said that while she was in Virginia, she would try to avoid telling people she was from Beverly Hills because of the excitement that comes with it.
Hinds joked that her nickname became “90210” after a few months at William & Mary because of the popular 1990s Aaron Spelling hit that featured a group of students HINDS
from West Beverly High — a
high school that Hinds said does not even exist.
“The show’s not like Beverly Hills at all,” Hinds said. “A lot of people can relate to (the issues), not just Beverly Hills.”
Hinds said there is no Peach Pit and no Afterdark. And no, those colleges they went to do not exist either.
“As far as having one hangout for everyone … there’s no one spot, no hip club,” Hinds said, referring to the popular hangouts in the television show.
She did say, however, that there is much nightlife in Beverly Hills.
The city is also famous for Rodeo Drive. However, Hinds said she prefers shopping in other places. To her, the famous street is just somewhere else for people to shop.
“There’s nothing special about it,” Hinds said. “It’s just another street in Beverly Hills with expensive stores.”
Hinds moved to Virginia with these attitudes, but people still asked her if she lived by any celebrities or if she even knows any “stars.”
“In my opinion, there are more stars in Malibu than in Beverly Hills,” Hinds said. “I don’t really think of it as a star place.”
Hinds spent a year at William & Mary to try something different, but she transferred back to Pepperdine for the more competitive volleyball team. As a bonus, she is close to home and to the beach.
“Even walking out of the gym and seeing the ocean … you can’t not be happy,” Hinds said. “(Transferring) was the best choice I could have made.”
Now at home matches, Hinds said her whole family and some of her friends come to cheer on the Waves.
Being somewhat of a “local,” Hinds also knows of the popular places to go outside of Malibu and listed several locations that many Pepperdine students do not discover for years, if at all.
“It’s sort of an advantage because I feel like some people at Pepperdine get stuck in Malibu,” she said. “There’s always something else to do. It makes it such a bigger place.”
No matter what, Hinds said people still stereotype her because she grew up in Beverly Hills.
When she introduces herself, she tells people she is from Los Angeles to avoid the connotations that come with Beverly Hills.
For the time being, Hinds said she does not go home to Beverly Hills very often.
She lives in a guest house on the beach in Malibu, so her family and friends usually take the trip here rather than the opposite.
Her cousins visit from Newport Beach, and Hinds said they always want to drive to Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and pick up a map of the stars’ homes.
Hinds also said that in the mornings, she would drive to her high school on Sunset, and she would take residential roads to avoid traffic.
However, the vans that take people on tours of the stars’ homes would take the back roads to show the tourists the celebrity dwellings.
“It’s funny to me,” Hinds said. “It’s a different perspective, being from there, where the star vans make you late for school.”
October 02, 2003
