I Stalked Justin Bieber to Find Out if He’s Terrorizing the Elite Rich People Town He Lives In

Justin Bieber is already having a bad year. On Thursday, January 9, he allegedly egged his neighbor's house in their gated Calabasas community, The Oaks. The police were called. The neighbor claims his house suffered $20,000 worth of damage, which classifies the egging as felony vandalism. So last Wednesday, investigators came to Bieber's house with a search warrant. They seized hard drives from his security video and also arrested his crew member Lil Za for Molly and Xanax. And last night, Biebs was charged with drunken driving, resisting arrest, and driving without a valid license after police stopped him street racing through Miami.

Judging by media reports, lately the 19-year-old Biebz has been or a dulcet-voiced Pied Piper dead set on leading the teens of America to utter moral ruin on a good day, or a bin Laden-level threat determined to shred the moral fiber of America on a bad one. Last March he got into a screaming match with a paparazzo in London. He said some stupid shit about hoping Anne Frank would have been a Belieber. He pissed in a janitor's bucket and said, "Fuck Bill Clinton." He supposedly went to a brothel in Brazil.

And then there are the numerous stories about his ruining Calabasas, a mellow, peaceful-seeming town of less than 25,000 people that's chockfull of celebrities who flock there for both its privacy and proximity to Los Angeles . "Calabasas neighbors hate Justin Bieber." "Calabasas a quiet celebrity haven, then Justin Bieber moved to town." While both charges were dismissed by the DA, he was accused of speeding through his neighborhood and spitting at a neighbor last year. After the egg incident, I decided to drive the 30 minutes from L.A. to Calabasas and see if he's really turned into the spawn of Satan with the voice of an angel, or if someone at TMZ just hates him.

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First stop, The Oaks, an exclusive "suburban enclave of beautiful homes" near the Santa Monica Mountains. Bieber's mansion is inside there, in the Estates of the Oaks of Calabasas, an even more exclusive community. Still, I drive right up to the gate and talk to the security guard. He won't give me any information or let me come in, but he gives me a card for Laura Thaller, the property manager. I park and call her while a preteen girl and her mom pull over, get out and take a picture in front of The Oaks sign.

Another dead end, as I expected—"Unfortunately, I can't talk to you about that"—so I drive around looking for joggers who might give me some information. Maybe because it's a weekday, but even with the reports of a dozen detectives descending on the hood a day earlier, all I can find is a couple dudes doing construction. They don't know anything about the incident, but do say people keep stopping and asking when they will be done working (uh, they'd only started that day). At a bus stop, I spot a kid in baggy jeans, a hoodie and sunglasses wearing headphones. He shuts me down pretty fast. "Yeah, I'm not the guy to talk to about that." I decide I need to venture into town.

Calabasas seems to be split into three sections, business-wise—The Commons, Old Town and regular stuff. Old Town Calabasas is like a rich-people Gatlinburg, a desert Park City. It's a village clustered with little stores that sell things like fat bars of French-milled soap that barely smell like anything and cost seven bucks apiece. The Commons is a rich-people strip mall, and it's here where the paparazzi try to catch the Kardashians getting froyo and stuff. (Tito Jackson was outside the Corner Bakery one morning I was there, so.)

If I were 19, I'd go to a dispensary, but since there aren't any in the town, I head to McDonald's. Patrick, the guy working the cash register, is super chatty. "Go to The Commons. That's where you'll get gossip. Barnes & Nobles especially. Talk to high schoolers," he tells me.

I double back to The Commons and go in the nicest B&N in the history of B&Ns, a grand, airy two-story building stocked with merchandise like $25 Kate Spade notecards and a bustling café filled with kids being tutored and ladies who wear yoga pants at 3 p.m on weekdays. A barista tells me Bieber came in once, but he left because he hates his music. Catching three high school guys walking out with coffee milkshakes, I ask if they live here and know about the Bieber stuff. "Yeah," one says (a note about Calabasas residents: most did not want to give me their names). "Him and his neighbors always get into it."

"[We see him] driving his car around. He drives really fast," another says. I ask if they think the media attention is warranted or too much. "Too much. But he kinda deserves it. With all the pissing on Bill Clinton and stuff," the first answers.

Two girls who say they're in college (again, they decline to give me their names) live in the same maze of expensive Calabasas' houses, too, but not behind the same gate as Bieber. "I've seen his car before, but only a couple times. It seems like [the media attention] might be too much, but I really don't know," one says.

Finally I find a couple men who will give me their names. Jose and Armando work near The Commons, and say they saw the police congregating Wednesday before they went to search Bieber's house. "I saw [Bieber] eating once," Armando says.

"I've never seen him," Jose says. "It seems like he does most of the stuff other places." In other words, Bieber doesn't shit where he eats.

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It's a sparkling, unseasonably-warm-even-for-Southern-California Saturday morning when I head back out to Calabasas. Before I leave, I check to see where Bieber has been spotted around town. Menchi's Frozen Yogurt and The Corner Bakery both pop up.

The Commons is way busier than it was two days earlier. I talk to Justine Arisue, who's working at Menchi's. "I've never seen him," she says. "People come in asking about the Kardashians, and they've been in here a couple of times, but not him. He's not really around."

Roxanna, a cashier at the Corner Bakery, tells me Bieber has been in "maybe once. We see the paparazzi here a lot, but for the most part, not him. Or just see him driving." I ask her if she hears of his being wild. "No … you know, the only thing I've heard is the recent thing. I think he just goes into L.A. There's not much to do around here."

An older man from nearby Woodland Hills, Eric, comes to The Commons four or fives times a week. He brings Bieber up to me out of the blue. "The [neighbor] is gonna have to spend $25,000 to repair the damage—it was from Italy."

I walk over to the Edwards Cinema. It's not open yet but a girl named Kourtnee is setting up and talks to me. "I've worked here six months and he's been here once. Maybe he's a clean freak, I don't know, but he has his own section. And bodyguards. The only thing he did was take up a few rows."

The media has to cover Justin Bieber. He's one of the biggest stars in the world. Justin Bieber, because he's a teenage boy who acts pretty much exactly like a teenage boy acts, probably is a shit to them. Some celebrities bring the paparazzi donuts while they're hunting them. Some (ahem, Kanye) get up in their faces.

TMZ doesn't know what goes down between Justin Bieber and his neighbor any more than I do. Most likely, the root of any animosity is that a 19-year-old who's been rich and famous since before he had hair on his chest lives next door to a family with at least one young child. They probably moved to The Oaks because they wanted a peaceful, quiet neighborhood near but also away from Los Angeles. Bieber moved there because he is a massive celebrity who needs to be somewhere his stalkers can't easily access.

I went out to Calabasas with the impression the media imparts: Bieber terrorizing the town, whipping through the streets with his crew like maniacal cartoon characters and leaving everybody shaking and cowering in their wake. After poking around and almost always getting either vague answers or vacant stares, it started to feel like the joke was on me, on the media machine churning out pretty much straight bullshit. Bottom line? Maybe there's some truth to the "there goes the neighborhood" story. But Bieber is keeping it behind closed gates. And maybe Calabasas' residents, long used to outsiders prying, want to keep it there, too.

Rebecca Haitcoat is a writer based in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter — @rhaithcoat