The End of Southern California

It's impossible to count the number of endless sunny days Rob Lowe and his friends boogie-boarded and bodysurfed and looked at girls and goofed off until the sun went down. He attended Santa Monica High School, ran around on Zuma Beach, and lived the kind of California life that hardly exists anymore. It was an era that has been fading for decades, he said, and that may have been finished off by the Palisades Fire, which started on January 7 and tore through homes and businesses with indiscriminate force. "I mourn everything in Malibu," the actor says. "There's very, very little, if anything, left."

View in Browser  SHOP EXCLUSIVE SUBSCRIBE The End of Southern California as We Know It It's impossible to count the number of endless sunny days Rob Lowe and his friends boogie-boarded and bodysurfed and looked at girls and goofed off until the sun went down. He attended Santa Monica High School, ran around on Zuma Beach, and lived the kind of California life that hardly exists anymore. It was an era that has been fading for decades, he said, and that may have been finished off by the Palisades Fire, which started on January 7 and tore through homes and businesses with indiscriminate force. "I mourn everything in Malibu," the actor says. "There's very, very little, if anything, left." Read More Flaus vs. Slate: Who Makes the Better Electric Flosser? Esquire tested. Dentist approved. Read More How Avengers: Doomsday Could Fix the MCU With a ton of news surrounding the next Marvel team-up flooding the Internet this week, let's run down everything we know about the film so far. Read More Anthony Mackie Is Captain America Now. How About That? If the superhero stratosphere has anything resembling a sole leading actor, it's the one who plays Captain America. That's Anthony Mackie now. The forthcoming Captain America: Brave New World will kick off a critical new chapter of the MCU, which will culminate with two new Avengers films. Meaning: His life, sure as the stars and stripes on his new suit, is about to change. For Mackie, the achievement—top billing in a major studio blockbuster—feels like validation. His superpower is not that he's very good at what he does but that he's very good in anything he does, no matter the size of the role. Throughout his twenty-five-year-long career, he's been so consistent that audiences and awards bodies have taken him for granted. "Captain America is my Oscar," he says. "Because I've been overlooked so many times in my career." Read More The Best Dyson Vacuum on the Market People always ask me which model they should buy, and it's this one. Read More Robert Pattinson Thinks He Has 'Olfactory Dyslexia' The actor and perfumer Francis Kurkdjian discuss the evolution of Dior Homme, the unlikely inspiration behind the new Parfum—and Pattinson's self-diagnosed scent troubles. Read More Severance Episode 3 Just Set Us on a Dangerous Path As much as we enjoyed returning to Lumon in the first two episodes of Severance season 2—Kier knows that it inspired many a fan theory—I'm sure you started to wonder exactly where the plot was heading. Episode 1 caught up with the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) crew in the aftermath of the season 1 finale, while episode 2 told us how the Overtime Contingency affected their Outies. Episode 3? Well, the final moments outright tell us this season's A plot: The Great Reintegration of Mark Scout. Read More Follow Us Unsubscribe | Privacy Notice | CA Notice at Collection Esquire is a publication of Hearst Magazines. ©2025 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This email was sent by Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019-3779