The view from the 11th floor.
Photo: BizBash
With a throng of athlete-types and hangers-on in town for ESPN's Espy awards at the Kodak Theatre (which the cable network will televise July 15), Los Angeles is buzzing with a host of related events. We stopped by the 11th floor of the Mondrian hotel for ESPN the Magazine's gift suite running from Monday through today, and found a cool touch amid the sea of product giveaways: Signage in the form of big round dots on the walls led guests down the otherwise-blah hallway and announced what was inside the rooms, which were grouped according to genre—Ed Hardy with Retribution and Denim Design Lab in the fashion suite, for example. (We spotted Ian Ziering taking advantage of the barber services in the Shave of Beverly Hills' and Graycliff Cigars' guy-style room.)The same crowd of taller- and broader-than-ordinary human specimens who crowded the Mondrian's cramped elevators will hit the Kodak this evening for the taping of the show (cohosted by LeBron James and Jimmy Kimmel) and swarm the Hollywood & Highland complex for the after-party.
![For the after-party, Event Eleven built three 30-foot pagodas and hung 300 lanterns from the ceiling. They also brought in a 20-foot-tall bonsai tree and a variety of 30-foot red maples, along with other greenery and foliage. '[It all] helped create the organic atmosphere and helped transport guests into a gardenlike room,' said Schubert.](https://img.bizbash.com/files/base/bizbash/bzb/image/2024/02/Shogun.41_f.65dba8f23433b.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
