THE SIMPSON MURDER CASE : Brentwood No Longer a 'Nice Little Secret' : Community: The once sleepy enclave squirms under the glare of the sudden media spotlight. Spectators are drawn to the now infamous landmarks.

THE SIMPSON MURDER CASE : Brentwood No Longer a ‘Nice Little Secret’ : Community: The once sleepy enclave squirms under the glare of the sudden media spotlight. Spectators are drawn to the now infamous landmarks.

By CARLA HALL

June 19, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Never before has there been a week quite like the past one in the Westside neighborhood of Brentwood.

In the space of five days, a quiet, sleepy enclave of gated homes, fashionable boutiques and a main boulevard dotted with sweeping coral trees, has been the scene of a double murder, a constant media vigil and the grand finale of a spectacular car chase.

Suddenly, a community where the biggest street disruption is the annual spring Art Festival on San Vicente Boulevard found itself the site of a tense standoff between O.J. Simpson and the police, as hordes of onlookers cheered and waited.

In the resulting limelight, a community squirms. “It has focused a spotlight on a neighborhood that really doesn’t want a spotlight on it,” said David Horowitz, who understands both sides: He’s a Channel 2 consumer reporter and the honorary mayor of Brentwood. He’s also a neighbor of O.J. Simpson on North Rockingham Avenue.

Nestled between Santa Monica and Westwood, Brentwood basks in its low profile. Property values are high and shops are expensive, though it’s a community with hundreds of apartments (the slain waiter, Ronald Lyle Goldman, lived in one just around the corner from the local Starbucks) and it’s hardly off the beaten track. (As the nationally televised chase showed, it’s just off the 405 at Sunset.)

But Brentwood residents Saturday spoke repeatedly and affectionately of their community as secluded, close-knit and very safe, a place where you can stroll at all hours. “I see people running and walking their dogs at 1 in the morning,” said one resident.

Celebrities such as Roseanne Arnold and James Garner, politicians such as the district attorney and the mayor are part of the terrain; they pass unbothered through grocery stores and restaurants.

“Brentwood used to be a nice little secret,” said screenwriter Myles Berkowitz, who lives in a Montana Avenue apartment south of Sunset Boulevard. “Beverly Hills got all the publicity for this kind of stuff. Santa Monica had its politics.”

“I kind of feel the community is like a small town,” Horowitz said. “It has the little country mart. It has its own newspaper.” (This month, the Brentwood News features a story on its cover about the new library and another about a young girl bitten in a back yard by a rattlesnake.)

Brentwood, with its sprinkling of restaurants, was rarely a destination for anyone other than a resident or their friends. Now, there are maps of the place in national newspapers.

“One thing you don’t have to do now is explain where Brentwood is,” said Ron Prather, a computer company executive sipping coffee Saturday morning outside Starbucks.

In fact, Brentwood has become, at least for the moment, an infamous landmark.

“You find people who come in because they want to be photographed in front of O.J.’s house,” said Horowitz. “They want to say they ate at Mezzaluna, the restaurant where the dead waiter worked. They want to walk the streets O.J. walked.”

The closer people lived to Simpson, the more violated they feel by the invasion. Horowitz said one neighbor affixed a sign to her bushes with a big arrow pointing in the direction of Simpson’s house under the words “media circus.”

For other residents, though, there is just the eerie feeling that they now live in a place that has been plastered over television screens coast to coast.

“The weirdest part is you know all the places,” said attorney Lexie Sims, who lived in Brentwood until recently. “You’ve been to Mezzaluna, you’ve seen the condo complex and thought about renting there. Some of my friends say you can still see the blood on the walkway.”

On Saturday, it seemed as if everyone who lives in Brentwood had seen the Simpsons or knew them a little or knows someone who knows them. “The first day (after the murders) when I went to the gym, the guy on the bike behind me was talking about how his friend built the condo,” said Sims.

In fact, people interviewed Saturday struggled to reconcile the horror of the charges against Simpson with the fact that he was so popular.

“O.J. was really well-liked,” said Horowitz. “He would say hi to the neighbors. He and Nicole would walk around with their babies and talk to people.”

Like the rest of the city, Brentwood residents stayed glued to their television sets and spent the morning poring over newspaper accounts and talking with friends about the events.

Few took advantage of their proximity to watch in person the final harrowing moments of the Simpson chase. Most of his immediate neighbors were appalled at the crowds and worried for their safety, according to Horowitz, who said his teen-age daughter asked if she could go down the street to the Simpson house as the police closed in on him. “I said, ‘Absolutely not. There’s a crowd down there. There are armed police officers. You have the makings of a riot.’ ”

But for a few, the epic event simply had to be seen firsthand. “It was like ‘Dog Day Afternoon,’ ” said screenwriter Berkowitz, who dashed up Barrington Avenue to witness for himself Simpson’s turn onto Sunset from the freeway. “By the time I got back home, I had 13 phone messages.”