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The Sunset Strip in West Hollywood

Friday, 1 September 2017 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika
Category/Kategorie: General, Greater Los Angeles Area Reading Time:  6 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post The Sunset Strip is the mile-and-a-half (2.4 km) stretch of Sunset Boulevard that passes through West Hollywood, California. It extends from West Hollywood’s eastern border with Hollywood at Crescent Heights Boulevard, to its western border with Beverly Hills at Sierra Drive. The Strip is probably the best-known portion of Sunset, embracing boutiques, restaurants, rock clubs, and nightclubs that are on the cutting edge of the entertainment industry. It is also known for its trademark array of huge, colorful billboards. As the Strip lies outside of the Los Angeles city limits and was an unincorporated area under the jurisdiction of the County of Los Angeles, the area fell under the less-vigilant jurisdiction of the Sheriff’s Department rather than the heavy hand of the LAPD. It was illegal to gamble in the city, but legal in the county. This fostered the building of a rather wilder concentration of nightlife than Los Angeles would tolerate.

In the 1920s a number of nightclubs and casinos moved in along the Strip, which attracted movie people to this less-restricted area; alcohol was served in back rooms during Prohibition. Glamour and glitz defined the Strip in the 1930s and the 1940s, as its renowned restaurants and nightclubs became a playground for the rich and famous. There were movie legends and power brokers, and everyone of significance danced to stardom at such legendary clubs as Ciro’s, the Mocambo and the Trocadero. Some of its expensive nightclubs and restaurants were said to be owned by gangsters like Mickey Cohen and Bugsy Siegel, earning the Strip a place in Raymond Chandler‘s 1949 Philip Marlowe novel, The Little Sister. Other spots on the strip associated with Hollywood include the Garden of Allah apartments — Hollywood quarters for transplanted writers like Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, and F. Scott Fitzgerald — and Schwab’s Drug Store.

By the early 1960s, the Strip had lost favor with the majority of movie people, but its restaurants, bars and clubs continued to serve as an attraction for locals and tourists. In the mid-1960s it became a major gathering place for the counterculture — and the scene of the Sunset Strip curfew riots in November 1966, involving police and crowds of young club-goers, which inspired the Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth“. The Strip became a haven for rock musicians and their fans. Bands such as Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Byrds, Love, The Seeds, Frank Zappa, and many others played at clubs like the Whisky a Go Go, the Roxy, Pandora’s Box and the London Fog. In July 1965 Go-Go dancers also began performing. The Hyatt West Hollywood (now known as the Andaz West Hollywood) became a notable hotel. In 1972, Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco opened on the Strip, being influenced by the British Glam Rock movement. It became a popular hangout for musicians, including The Stooges and the New York Dolls. The 1979 Donna Summer song “Sunset People” from the album Bad Girls, was about the nightlife on Sunset Boulevard. The Strip continued to be a major focus for punk rock and new wave during the late 1970s, and it became the center of the colorful glam metal and heavy metal scenes throughout the 1980s, hosting groups including Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, Quiet Riot, Ratt, Poison, L.A. Guns, Guns N’ Roses and Whitesnake.

With the increase in rents in the area during the 1980s and the decline of the glam metal scene in the early 1990s, the Sunset Strip ceased to be a major area for up and coming rock bands without industry sponsorship. The adoption of “pay to play” tactics, where bands are charged a fee to play at clubs, diminished its appeal to groups, other than as an industry showcase. Today the music industry establishment continues to dominate the clubs on the Strip. In November 1984, voters in West Hollywood passed a proposal on the ballot to incorporate and the area became an independent city. Increasingly, the western end of the Strip is occupied by office buildings, mostly catering to the entertainment industry, and the hotel industry. During the 1990s, the center of the alternative music activity in Los Angeles shifted further east to areas like Echo Park, Los Feliz and Silver Lake.

Read more on TheSunsetStrip.com, VisitWestHollywood.com – Sunset Strip, VisitCalifornia.com – Sunset Strip and Wikipedia Sunset Strip (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Johns Hopkins University & Medicine - Coronavirus Resource Center - Global Passport Power Rank - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.

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