Your gurl Yolanda Yakketyyak freely admits she ain’t too up on much of anything in the highly-lucrative world of professional sports. She normally relies on the LA Times’ sports section and Hot Property column to tell her what’s what with who in that shit. Oh sure, Yolanda and Your Mama broke the news about LeBron James’s record-breaking $21 million Brentwood home purchase recently. And there are a few basketball stars that Yolanda personally would climb like a tree if given the opportunity. But apart from that, nada.
Somehow a couple big stories about two big sports stars buying multi-million cribs fell into our lap at the exact same time. Since Yolanda doesn’t know much about either one of these fellas apart from them both being rich and successful, we’re just going to throw both into the same post pot. We know we’ve got some lurkers on this site so take a guess and see if you can correctly match up the baller with their new crib. And no cheatin’ or Yolanda will whoop yo ass so hard you ain’t even gon’ feel it.
CANDIDATES:
Over here on the left we’ve got Roy Jones Jr. Our Mr. Jones, according to our homegurl Wikipedia, is a professional boxer. Eek! Call your gurl a sissy, but Yolanda can’t stomach watching a boxing match for more than about 8.5 seconds in one sitting. We honestly don’t know whether we’re more disturbed or bored by that particular “sport”. It just seems so inhumane and ridiculously pointless, like dogfighting or some bullshit like that. Don’t get us wrong, we love a good knock-down, drag-out smackdown of a fight. But do it with some flair, some pizazz, some panache. Anything! For tips, nobody has yet outdone how Peter Sellers did it in the The Return of the Pink Panther.
But we digress. And obviously a whole lot of people disagree with Yolanda because Mr. Jones has not only made a mountain of moolah through boxing, he’s also ridden the fame train to Hollywood, where he’s released at least a couple rap albums and played supporting roles in a hefty number of films. But what shocks Yolanda is how long the dual American & Russian citizen Mr. Jones has been in the game. As far as we can tell, the now-pushing-50-years-old Olympic-medal-winning Jones has been boxing since the mid-1980s and has only had 9 career defeats. Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia says he’s known as one of the greatest boxers of all time. Well, duh.
Up there on the right is Tony Gonzalez. We also ain’t never heard of Mr. Gonzalez, but turns out he’s a very famous, highly-decorated, successful, and recently-retired NFL (American football) player who currently holds a bunch of NFL records that y’all can read more up on if you so desire. Turns out that Mr. Gonzalez, unlike the Florida-bred Mr. Jones, is an LA native, hailing from our beachy suburb of Torrance. Side note: have you beotches ever visited the Mitsuwa Japanese marketplace in Torrance? You just must. We don’t get out there much because Torrance is just so far south and that 405 is just so damn tedious but if you ever find yourself in the LAX area with a couple hours to kill, scoot thy boots up in there. To die for. Trust us. But enough of our babbling – let’s meet the cribs.
Up there on the left is a stately mid-century mansion in the always-pricey Beverly Hills flats. The property sold in January (2015) for a baller-style $7,100,000.
The rooms are generously proportioned in the 4,000 square feet ofspace. Check out that feisty fireplace!
The landscaping has been painstakingly maintained and is lush and elegant in a not-intimidating way.
All of that might not matter much, however, because the property was marketed as “a rare opportunity to build your dream estate residence…” What that means is that in addition to the $7.1 million sale price, either Mr. Jones or Mr. Gonzalez will likely spend millions more razing the entire 0.7-acre property and constructing a more contemporary and far larger mansion on the site.
Frankly, Yolanda isn’t sure if this property is such a great deal. Though properties in the Beverly Hills flats have always been desirable, this isn’t exactly in the “best” area of the flats. It’s a bit too far east to be fashionable, you know? Fer crying out loud, it practically borders the often loud and trafficky lower Doheny Drive. Seriously not ideal, y’all.
But really, what do we know? There’s another slightly-larger house on a smaller lot almost directly across the street that’s currently in escrow with an asking price of $8.5 million. So the correct answer is that we know nothing, obviously.
The second property, up top on the right, is a far more modest 1,326 square foot bungalow with just 2 bedrooms and 2 baths situated on a positively-puny 2,850 square foot lot. However, the canal-front home is situated in the trendy trendy trendy Venice area ans thus the property sold for its full asking price of $2,650,000, also in January (2016).
The petite pad doesn’t have a garage but there is a covered carport with room to fit two vehicles at the entrance of the property. There’s also no traditional yard, but the front courtyard has some welcome greenery and seating (unfortunately) overlooked by the next-door neighbors. The kitchen is positively petite but does have a very cute refurbished O’Keefe and Merritt stove to distract from the lack of space.
The master bedroom has termite-friendly hardwood walls and a lovable Malm fireplace. Swoon. Yolanda’s parents Mr. & Mrs. Yakketyyak had a fireplace just like that while Yolanda was growing up in their charming little old house, before they upgraded to the big ass mansion they still own. But we digress yet again.
Out back there’s a generous first and second-floor patio areas for outdoor living and entertaining. The 1910 home also have sports water views and a place for Jones or Gonzalez to dock his kayak.
So who bought which house? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?!
