Sunset Blvd: One Famous Road

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too.

Jerry's being quiet and this is Stuff You Should Know, the

hair metal-ish

edition.

Yeah, I mean, you know, we've done a lot of New York-centric episodes over the years, and

I feel like we haven't given LA their due, a city that I know you love dearly.

Yeah, the one other city in the world, New York and L.A.

No, I just LA, and especially this episode, Sunset Boulevard, the street,

there aren't many, you know

I mean, there's a handful of iconic streets in the world, and Sunset Boulevard is one of them because it's just been historically packed with

I mean, it's not just like film stuff, it's music stuff, it's uh literary stuff, it's comedy stuff.

All sorts of like iconic cultural staples on Sunset Boulevard.

Right.

And it was obviously very well known inside of L.A.

for years, but it wasn't until the early 2010s before the rest of the world heard about it, thanks to the Aaron Sorkin show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Oh, yeah.

I actually watched that for a little while.

It was unwatchable.

Yeah, it wasn't very good.

Somebody just breaking out into a moving soliloquy every seven minutes is the most unrealistic writing anybody could ever possibly do.

That's Aaron Sorkin, baby.

I know, but it only worked for West Wing.

I didn't watch West Wing at all, so I haven't seen a lot of Sorkin stuff.

It really worked for West Wing, but it did not work for Studio 60.

I do love Sarah Paulson, though, and she was in that.

Sure.

Yeah, I felt bad for her.

Yeah,

I did do a little bit.

What was great is 30 Rock came out at the exact same time, and they would make fun of some of Studio 60's

plot lines in real time.

Yeah, the whole,

what was the Janice Joplin story?

They had to like rename her

because they didn't have rights to her life story.

Or that was something that Sarah Paulson like got a gig do playing Janice Joplin on Studio 60.

Yeah.

So that's our Studio 60 episode, everybody.

That's right.

Back to Sunset Boulevard.

Yeah.

So

yes, we should probably just say, all jokes aside, it's a very long street.

It's a very historic street.

And it actually dates back to the 18th century before the city of Los Angeles, as we understand it, was around.

Instead, it originated in the Pueblo de Los Angeles,

which

was the little colony, I guess, or settlement of just 11 families

that was the seed that germinated into Los Angeles, home of Joe Friday.

That's right.

And Sunset Boulevard, before it became Sunset Boulevard, like many famous streets, was originally used as something else.

And in this case, it was a cattle trail

from that downtown Pueblo of Los Angeles all the way to the Pacific.

So it runs for 23 miles.

You hear about Sunset Boulevard.

You probably think of the Sunset Strip, which is a less than two-mile area.

But Sunset Boulevard,

I used to live on the east side in Silver Lake, and Sunset Boulevard over there is great in a whole other way than the Sunset Strip.

How so?

Well, I mean, it's just a cultural seed of, you know, great restaurants and cafes and music venues.

And, you know, it was sort of the hipster thing back in the day when the hipsters were still a thing.

Yeah, Silver Lake,

there's that shaggy dog mystery with Andrew Garfield beneath the Silver Lake, right?

Oh.

That was pretty hipster.

I think I saw that, maybe.

Yeah, it's worth watching, especially if you know it's a shaggy dog mystery going into it.

Yeah, but long way of saying that it was a cattle cattle trail to begin with, and then like a lot of things like that would eventually become a real street.

It became Sunset Boulevard about 100 years after that, I believe.

Yeah, so there's a couple of

origin stories for where the name came from.

I couldn't see what they called it, like the westward side of Sunset Boulevard before it was Sunset Boulevard.

But I think in 1887, there was a developer.

There was a lot of land development going on in the late 19th century that built up Los Angeles.

It was was a bunch of different little towns and communities that were independent, and then Los Angeles kept growing and growing and growing, and it would absorb them and they became neighborhoods instead.

Yeah, well, there was one planned town called Sunset, and they planned for Sunset Boulevard, a different stretch of road to go right through the town.

And so they apparently came up with the name Sunset Boulevard, but it was another developer who appropriated it and used it for the Sunset Boulevard after that town of Sunset never actually happened.

It died on the drafting table, I guess is what you'd say.

Is that an industry jargon?

It is now.

Yeah, and you know, surely you can see some great sunsets because Sunset, you know, if you're not familiar with sort of the Hollywood Basin, there's a it's very grid-like, and there's a series of east-west streets, Hollywood, Sunset, Santa Monica, or some of the more famous ones.

And it's it goes downhill, you know, from the mountains, the Hollywood Hills, you know, there's the literal mountains and hills.

But then it's still up kind of high and LA kind of goes down, down, down into the basin.

And Sunset is pretty high on that side.

So yeah, you can see some great sunsets, I'm sure.

Yeah, and I think originally it terminated on the east end in Chinatown or what's now Chinatown.

And like you said, it goes through Silver Lake.

It goes through a bunch of different neighborhoods.

Echo Park, Pacific Palisades, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, West Hollywood,

like all these great neighborhoods, I think, are in part great neighborhoods because it's a chicken or the egg thing.

Is Sunset Boulevard great because these neighborhoods around it are great, or are the neighborhoods great because Sunset Boulevard ran through them?

I think it's a chicken meat to egg, and they just shake hands and agree not to discuss it.

Let's never speak of this again.

Some film stuff, and we're kind of jumping around between things that made it famous, but generally in a timeline.

But early on, it was obviously

Hollywood was the birthplace of the film industry.

And, you know, we've said it before.

If you've never been there, you might think Hollywood is just a euphemism for the film industry.

It is that, but it is also a real neighborhood right in the center of the L.A.

basin there.

And, you know, it was originally just like all the other suburbs like you were talking about.

They were dividing it up into lots.

And I believe in the early 1900s, it was a guy named

very...

1900s name, H.J.

Whitney, who kind of, I don't know if he wasn't officially incorporated, but he made Hollywood like a proper town and a place to live.

Yeah, I think Hollywood or West Hollywood wasn't incorporated until like the 1980s.

Is that right?

I think that was probably West Hollywood.

Okay.

Weho, as they say.

Yeah, everybody knows that thanks to Studio 60.

So, yeah, so Hollywood, it was almost out of the gate.

This was the early 1900s, 1910, when it merged with Los Angeles.

The next year, film studios started popping up and they started popping up in a very specific area the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street and even still today there's an original studio from that area called Sunset Gower Studios and they're still making shows that's where Dexter was filmed that's where saved by the bell the college years was filmed six feet under

that's where yeah six feet under uh Dexter the college years

heroes um a lot of really good shows have shot there and it's an old old timey original Hollywood studio from like the 19 teens.

Yeah, I never shot there, but I got to, as a PA, got to run an errand there once during, while Six Feet Under was being shot, so I got to see those sets, and it was

pretty cool as a Six Feet Under fan.

What, did you take something to Diddy?

Is that what it was?

No, no, no, that was to his actual house.

Gotcha.

Yeah, I disavow that entire

delivery, though.

Poverty Row is what they called Sunset Gower at first because it was pretty low budget at the time, the things they shot there.

But in the 1930s, they started shooting some like really kind of high-quality things there, notably the movies It Happened One Night and You Can't Take It With You.

Yeah.

And then Gower Gulch, I'm glad I never knew the history, but there's still a

strip mall right there called Gower Gulch, and it has a little old West theme.

And that's where I saw Sherry O'Terry at a Starbucks.

Oh, yeah.

And where there was a, hopefully it's still a print shop there where, you know, you could get scripts printed off and bound.

Oh, yeah.

But now I know that Gower Gulch is so

named because it was where all of the westerns were being filmed and a lot of dudes in like cowboy hats and cowboy boots would kind of hang around waiting to be cast there at that, I guess, whatever the stores were at the time.

Yeah, because Hollywood, especially this area where all the studios were churning out westerns left and right through the 20s and 30s.

So, I mean, I'm sure there were other extras hanging around, but the 10-gallon hat really makes you stand out.

And if you put a bunch of them together, it's going to get a reputation for being a cowboy hangout.

And they would hang out around the Columbia Drugstore.

Is that still there?

I don't know.

I mean, I feel like there was a Rite Aid, and that's probably what that was, but I may be wrong.

But, you know, Gower Gilch lives on.

Did you ever go into that Rite Aid in Greenpoint?

Yeah, in Greenpoint in New York, in Brooklyn.

I don't know.

That has like a disco ball still from whatever it was before.

Oh, cool.

No, definitely not.

It is kind of cool.

But anyway, this Columbia drugstore, they would hang out there because the owners of Columbia Drugstore had a telephone and they would let the extras use it to call Central Casting to see if there were any parts available for them.

And there was a high-profile murder there, too, right?

Between a couple of cowboys?

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know if it was quite a, you know, take 10 steps and draw kind of thing.

Yeah.

But there was a shooter over, I think they were both seeing the same Philly.

Yeah, and apparently one of them, Blackjack Ward, killed Johnny Tyke.

He shot him down once, and then he told them each reason he was shooting him.

And every time he did, he shot him again until his whole sixth shooter was empty.

Like he murdered that guy in broad daylight in front of a bunch of people, and he still got off.

And someone said, boy, cast that dude.

That's incredible.

Yeah, I know.

That should be out of a movie.

Yeah, they should make a movie about him for sure.

Prohibition was when the party scene kind of moved in.

It was called the County Strip at the time, and it was unincorporated still at this point, but it was a stretch kind of between where Hollywood was, you know, a dry place because of Prohibition and Beverly Hills is kind of where the Sunset Strip ends.

Yeah, well,

but it keeps going to the Pacific, right?

Like, doesn't it basically just run out into the ocean?

Or I guess the Pacific Highway?

But that's not the Sunset Strip.

Oh, the Strip, Strip.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sorry about that.

But yeah, I guess from the outset, the Sunset Strip was like mobsters, brothels, gambling rackets, nightclubs.

It was huge during Prohibition.

And I guess the reason why is because it was unincorporated.

So the LA County Sheriff was in charge of overseeing or enforcing laws.

And I guess they weren't particularly inclined to enforce laws in the area.

So that's where you went.

And that in and of itself is like

worth mentioning.

It's historic.

But one of the reasons it's so famous or the strip became the strip is because on the other side, like you said, there's Beverly Hills.

And that's where the stars had moved around the same time.

So they would come into the county strip and party and then go back to Beverly Hills.

And the fact that there were all these world-famous movie stars partying there kind of really put a stamp on Sunset Strip that stayed forever.

Yeah, that was 84-77.

Sunset had four different mobster clubs, basically, where the mob owned and backed them.

It was at first the Sphinx, then the Han Club, then club,

what would that be?

Sokolov?

Yeah, I think so.

Sokolof?

Sokolof?

Yeah.

S-O-K-O-L-O-E-F-F.

And then the Clover Club.

And if you're wondering what 8477 is now, it's a weed dispensary.

Oh, that's appropriate.

Yeah, it kind of feels right, doesn't it?

Yeah.

Because I'll bet it was a weed dispensary back in the 30s, too.

Yeah, probably so.

But I'll bet it was some crap weed.

Yeah.

So,

yeah, no crap, like the kids say today.

Right.

I think it's no cap, isn't it?

I think they just don't know what they're saying.

Okay.

So I mentioned brothels.

That apparently was a huge foundation of Hollywood.

So there's Hollywood that people think about as Hollywood, and then there was like real Hollywood, that the actual stars, how they actually live their lives.

And it was depraved and decadent, as you can imagine, during the golden era.

It might have been the most depraved and decadent during the golden era, depending on what your moral views are.

And people just went buck wild.

The brothels were a huge part of that.

They were everywhere along Sunset Boulevard.

They were in private homes.

They were in apartment buildings.

They were sometimes in commercial spaces.

And

they even had some that imitated or there were look-alikes of stars of the day, too.

Yeah, that was one of the plot lines of LA Confidential, if you remember.

Oh, yeah.

It was a brothel where, except in that movie, they were, I think the line was like, they're cut to look like celebrities.

So, I think they had actual like plastic surgery.

Oh, gotcha, yeah.

To look like Hollywood stars, and you know, the rumors were that the studios were kind of funding these to take investors, like foreign investors, there, and they could sleep with a sex worker that looks like Vivian Lee.

That seems to be a really well-founded rumor.

Like, I don't know that there's any actual documentation of it, but it seems to be pretty much accepted as fact from what I saw.

Yeah, I believe it.

So, and actually, because this is Hollywood and celebrity,

I guess celebrity worship is just part of it and always has been.

Whenever some of the Madams would get busted, they would become internationally famous as well.

There were two that stick out.

One's name was Lee Francis.

I think she might have originally worked under the other very famous one, the Black Widow Ann Forrester.

And by this time, the Hollywood movie studios were so powerful that both Lee Francis and Forrester were busted with client information.

One of them had essentially like an index card system, the other one had a black book.

And both of those things disappeared before they could ever make it into the evidence locker.

And no one was arrested in any of the cases,

even the guys who were caught in the act, because

you just kept people's names out of the paper.

It just didn't happen in Hollywood.

And I think that level of protection by the studios just fueled the lifestyle that the stars were living because they couldn't get in trouble.

They could not, there were no consequences for what they were doing.

So people just did anything and everything there during that golden age, I guess of the 20s and 30s and 40s, maybe.

Yeah, and, you know, because of that, it was sort of a, you know, as Dave called it, kind of a blessing in disguise for the LGTBQ community.

And, you know, that's the West Hollywood or Weho, again, is sort of the heart of the LGTB community in central Los Angeles.

But way before that,

it was was where a lot of gay bars were,

gay clubs, drag clubs.

I think the first drag shows in the city and probably some of the first in the United States were at a Speakeasy in 1927 called Cafe La Boheme.

But there were also all kinds of clubs there.

It was a very famous one called the Trocadero that opened in 1934 where Cafe La Bohem was.

And it was opened by a guy named Billy Wilkerson, who was a publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, which I guess used to be news and like gossip and stuff.

Now it's like a you know fully sort of stand-up legitimate industry rag.

I know they write about us pretty much constantly.

I think we were in it once actually.

We were selected for some honor of like I think powerful podcasters or something crazy like that.

Yeah, we made that list a time or two and we were in variety once too.

A couple of you know feathers in our caps.

Yeah.

So nice.

I love to stroke those feathers sometimes.

Well, it's easy to forget when they don't come calling, you know?

It's true.

But he owned, Billy Wilkerson owned the Trocadero, and it was another one of those things where he was like, hey, you come by the Trocadero, and we're going to make sure that you get in the gossip column, you know, because at the time, you know, that was kind of good press.

Yeah.

At the same time, the Trocadero was set up to cater to stars and celebrities because autograph hounds and people who looked a little too hungry or thirsty to get in there were shut out of that to protect people inside, the celebrities inside, so they could relax and not have to worry about, I guess, being asked for their autograph, the worst thing that can possibly happen to you.

And then the final one we'll mention here before the break is a nightclub called Cero's.

It opened in 1940, and I believe it was also Wilkerson who owned that one.

And it was notable.

It was just a very famous and popular nightclub, but it was...

It made its name because Bugsy Siegel would go there a lot, the infamous mobster.

And when he was in jail on murder trial, he got food from Ciros delivered right there to a cell because you could do that at the time.

Yep.

Takeout food.

Can you believe it?

So we'll take a break now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's a good idea.

Great.

And we'll come back and talk about the legendary Chateau Marmont right after this.

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All right, we're back.

We promised to talk of the Chateau Marmont.

That is a very famous hotel built in 1929.

It's the one that sits right in the hills and kind of looks like a castle, a very European-inspired luxury hotel.

And its motto is still, if you go to their website, says, always a safe haven, always open.

And from the start, it was kind of like what you've been describing.

It was a place where you could go and

party hardy and ensure that your name wouldn't be in the news because of it.

Yeah, like they had, and I believe still have a strict policy among their staff.

Like, you do not talk about what you see at the hotel.

And the reason why is they figured out very early on that if you can provide like that level of discretion or privacy,

you're going to be, you're in good.

Like the word of mouth alone is going to keep you in business for decades.

And clearly that worked out for more than a century or almost a century.

And then conversely, if the staff started gossiping or talking about what they saw or started selling their stories to papers or tabloids, like the Chateau Marmont would have gone out of business in six months, essentially.

So they, I don't know how they managed to do it to keep people from, you know, rumor-mongering or anything like that, but they seem to have quite successfully over the years yeah and i was delighted to see today and for a while kind of during the early covet years i remember it was closed down and it was supposedly going to reopen as a sort of like a members only uh you could buy places or maybe live in them long term or something i can't remember what the plan was and it bummed me out because i'd never had a chance to stay there but i went today and apparently it's a hotel again and i don't know if those plans are completely off or what or what happened but looks like you can stay there I have never stayed there, but I have mentioned before, I have partied in the John Belushi Bungalow like six or seven times.

And it's just a pretty awesome special place.

The restaurant there and the bar,

you just sort of feel, and it's not like I go there to, you know, get away with doing bad stuff, but it feels insulated when you're in there, like this little weird haven.

Yeah, I mean, like I said, apparently it's still very much like that and it's very tight-lipped.

Yeah, it's just, I mean, that's just such an iconic place that it almost to me stands apart from Sunset Boulevard.

It's about as iconic as Sunset Boulevard itself, in my opinion.

Yeah, agreed.

And it was right there at sort of that junction where very famously had the big Marlboro Man poster ad for

forever.

That thing was up.

There was one other thing.

Dave helped us with this, and he turned up a quote from the guy who used to run Columbia Pictures, I think in the 30s.

His name was Harry Cohn.

And he used to tell his actors, if you must get in trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont.

Yeah.

Because nobody's going to find out about it.

Like that hotel could even keep people's names out of the paper when someone died in their hotel.

The death would get reported, but the papers would not report the person's name in a lot of cases.

It's got to be NDAs.

I guess, but I mean, this is long before there were NDAs, you know?

I don't know when those came along.

I mean, certainly they weren't around in the 1930s, I wouldn't think.

I think just the studio heads would send goofy.

And break your legs, yeah.

Down the street from the chateau was another very famous,

well, eventually a hotel was called the Garden of Allah.

And you should look this place up if you're, you know, someplace where you're not driving and look at pictures of it.

It was pretty wondrous.

I think it was a few acres named for its original owner.

It was a silent film star named Allah Nazimova.

Allah had a lot of money and bought a mansion there in 1918.

And then when things, it was sort of like, hey, come and party.

It was sort of like the New York salons at the time, like the elite would party there.

And I think Nazimova was coined the phrase sewing circles as code for lesbian and bisexual actresses at the time.

Yeah, I saw her described as the sapphic mother of Hollywood.

Like she is a LGBTQ icon.

from still today, but from this era.

And she was really famous and made a lot of money.

Apparently, at one point, she was making $13,000 a week, which is $276,000 a week today.

And so, according to the moral codes of the time, this was decadent and depraved, but it was a safe place for the stars who were closeted lesbians or closeted bisexual to like come and like have affairs or make relationships or whatever.

It was just a really safe space.

And Nazimova was the reason why.

Like she managed to keep a lid on that as well while still like everybody went and had fun.

Yeah, totally.

And you know, it went from a private house where she hosted these salons to after the silent film era, she didn't make the transition to the talkies so well and so was a little down on her luck financially and remodeled it as a hotel in 1927 and it became sort of the same version of the same thing, but as a hotel.

Yeah.

For sure.

And I think as a hotel, it might have been less of a

safe space, but probably still carried it on some.

Like from what I understand, when it was her house, like it was lesbian central, essentially.

And then once it became a hotel, it was much more open to, I think, everybody.

Yeah, for sure.

It's now a strip mall.

It was demolished fully, unfortunately, but you can go look at great pictures of it.

It was across from the very famous Schwab's Pharmacy,

which was a lot of things.

There was, I think, from the movie 1951 Sunset Boulevard, the great Billy Wilder movie.

That is such a good movie, man.

Oh, it's unbelievable.

William Holden, as a washed-up screenwriter, says, after that, I drove down to headquarters.

That's the way a lot of us think about Schwab's.

Kind of a combination office, coffee clutch, and waiting room, waiting, waiting for the gravy train.

And that's what it was.

It was this weird combo where you could go seen and be seen and also sit around and wait for the phone to ring.

Yeah, they had this lunch counter that apparently was pretty good because a lot of stars went there, but they didn't discriminate.

It wasn't like you could be an aspiring actor who's getting nowhere and you're sitting there almost literally rubbing elbows at this lunch counter with Marlon Brando or something like that.

Like it was just people coming together from all walks of life.

And I thought that was pretty cool, but it made it legendary.

I mean, just basically anywhere that stars went on Sunset Boulevard automatically became legendary.

And now they're all right-aids or Chase Banks.

And Schwab's Pharmacy is where the famous story about Lana Turner being discovered there while skipping school.

Before her name was Lana Turner, but I think, I feel like we talked about this, that that wasn't true.

Yeah, it turns out, I mean, she was discovered skipping typing class at Hollywood High School, but she was discovered at the Top Hat Malt Shop, not at Schwab's.

Right.

And I guess Schwab's just filled in for Top Hat because it was much more famous, maybe.

I don't know.

Yeah, probably.

But that same Billy Wilkerson who founded C-Rose and the Hollywood Reporter, he's apparently the one who discovered her.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

It's all true, except for the Schwab's part.

As we move into the 60s is when

the Sunset Strip, you know, particularly became part of the kind of the seated counterculture of Los Angeles.

In the 1950s, a lot of money went to Vegas when Vegas was first opening up.

Yeah.

And so rents fell lower on the strip.

So like some grittier nightclubs moved in.

And I think you found too where

Vegas, if you played in Vegas, you needed to at least like have a reputation in LA.

So that's why a lot of bands played there.

Yeah, well, no, the mob had enough money that they could pay you just such a fat contract that part of the contract was you can't go play LA because we want people to come to Vegas.

Right.

So all of the entertainers and performers left the Sunset Strip and went to Vegas.

So the club started having trouble.

And then they started bringing in black acts, Motown, RB.

Otis Redding very famously played at, I can't remember what club, with Bob Dylan watching him, just a gog.

And sadly,

the sudden appearance of black performers on the Sunset Strip actually depressed real estate values even further.

And so, as rock and roll kind of came along, young entrepreneurs who wanted to open rock clubs were able to afford these spaces along the Sunset Strip.

And that's how it went from, you know, glamorous Frank Sinatra to grungy rock clubs.

There was a transition, a swing from the RB artists of the time playing the Sunset Strip for a little while in between those things.

Oh, okay, that makes sense.

So then it became more rock and roll because that's when the Whiskey a Go-Go opened in 64, a venue I've still not been to.

They just don't have a lot of stuff that I'm into anymore.

It's a lot of, still a lot of like metal

and like metal tribute bands and stuff like that.

But I'm going to make it a point just to go at some point just so I can be in that that room uh but that became sort of the epicenter of the counter culture and youth culture right and uh whiskey a go-go if you've heard of go-go dancing it comes from the whiskey a go-go like literally yeah there was a a dj at the whiskey named joni lebine and um the dj booth was in a a glass case i'm not sure if it's still there or not but it was several tens of feet off of the the dance floor just over it and when she was spinning records she would just kind of dance and she had a certain way of dancing and she would wear very short skirts and long white boots.

And

she started the go-go dancing trend of the 60s single-handedly, essentially.

Everybody started kind of mimicking her, and it was all at the Whiskey Go-Go.

Yeah.

If you've heard of the rock band The Doors,

the rock band without a bass player featuring Jim Morrison

and others, Ray Manzerik.

I remember how excited I was in eighth grade when that movie came out.

Oh, I was

from college.

Yeah, I was too.

That's cool that you were psyched at that age because it felt like college is when everyone got into the doors for a couple of years.

And that was definitely me.

And the whiskey certainly featured heavily because they were the house band for basically a summer in 1966.

And, you know, everyone of the day played there.

It's not a very big venue either.

I don't know what the capacity is, but it feels like just by looking at it, it's probably under a thousand.

Oh, yeah, I would definitely say that.

I mean, imagine seeing Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix like in a small room like that.

Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine seeing them, period, much less in a small room.

And then one other thing about the Whiskey Go-Go, I think it's probably the greatest club name of all time.

And I looked up why or where Go-Go came from, and apparently Go for a little while was slang for fashionable, and it just kind of morphed into Go-Go.

That makes it kind of fashionable or cool.

Right.

Doubly fashionable.

So the Whiskey at Go-Go was very fashionable, I guess.

A rare in-show lookup.

It's a capacity of 500.

So yeah, that's amazing.

Wow, yeah.

That's like a Stuff You Should Know show in our hometown of Atlanta.

Wow.

In the mid-60s is when cruising the strips became like a real thing with, you know, basically people just would get in their cars, get in their convertibles, get on their motorcycles.

and just drive up and down the Sunset Strip.

If you've ever seen the movie American Graffiti,

even though that drive-in was filmed

on Van Ness because Mel's Drive-In is a small chain, I think it was supposed to be the one on the Sunset Strip, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, definitely.

That whole LA youth culture and car culture that produced the Beach Boys and all that, that's when it was set, right?

And I think it actually, Happy Days was essentially spun off of American Graffiti.

What's his name?

Richie Cunningham.

Richie Cunningham.

Ron Howard, baby.

Yes, he was in American Graffiti, essentially playing Richie Cunningham.

Yeah.

Right before Happy Days started.

I never thought about that.

Yeah.

One little thing about that.

I was looking up Mel's Drive and an American Graffiti and I ran across, there was a list of suggested names from the studio instead of American Graffiti.

And it's even on like Lucasfilm Stationery or something like that.

And one of them was Burger City.

They considered naming that movie Burger City.

Wow.

We should write a script called Burger City and see if we can get it developed.

Yeah, I think that'd be great.

Or Good Burger.

That'd be an equally weird name.

Isn't that Keenan and Kell?

Yeah, I was just kidding.

Have you ever seen that movie?

I never saw it.

Was it a movie or a show?

It was a movie.

It was like the Keenan and Kel movie.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's the best.

Well, I don't know much about Kel, but Keenan's awesome.

I love that guy.

Yeah, I agree.

66 was when a club called Pandora's Box famously became the sort of heart of what was known as the riot on Sunset Strip.

The L.A.

Sheriff's Department had forced a 10 o'clock curfew for teenagers, basically, anyone under 18.

And on November 12th of 66 is when thousands of young teenage hippies protested.

They sat down in the street in front of Pandora's Box, blocked traffic, and

it ended pretty violently.

Cops came in, and Stephen Stills wrote the famous protest song for what it's worth because he witnessed that event.

Yeah, they just came in with police batons a flying, cracking heads.

It's like, LAPD, will you ever change?

Maybe, maybe not.

The signs are not pointing to a definite yes at this point yet.

And if you're thinking, I don't know the song for what it's worth, it's the song, you better stop.

Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look what's going down.

You just probably don't remember it as having the name for what it's worth.

No, because it's one of those

songs that just, the title just doesn't fit the other part, I think.

Buffalo Springfield.

Yeah, it's a good song.

Love it.

Stephen Sills.

Did you see that?

Thanks, Dave.

Oh, did he not put the T in there?

No.

Stephen Sills.

I loved it.

Crosby Sills.

NAS and Yaon.

Oh, man, we love Dave here.

We love him.

So we should talk a little bit about the Black Cat Tavern because

Black Cat Tavern was home of one of the first major LGBTQ protests

in the United States, certainly, a couple of years before Stonewall even.

Yeah, two years before Stonewall, you said, right?

Yeah.

And I think on New Year's Eve, the cops came in, the LAPD again, or the sheriff's office, I'm not sure which one.

They started cracking heads.

They started just beating up the gay patrons there for being gay.

They accused them of lewd conduct or whatever.

I think you turned up that two men were caught kissing, and that's essentially what started the beatings.

Is that correct?

Yeah, I mean, they ended up arresting 14 people, but those two men ended up getting convicted and had to register as sex offenders for kissing each other.

The Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear their appeal, and so they took away their liquor license in May, I believe, of 67, shortly after the protest on February 11th because of the raid on New Year's Eve, and they had to to shut down.

And I think it reopened as several other gay bars over the years until 2011 when it reopened in 2012.

As a Rite Aid.

As the Black Cat.

It was a restaurant this time.

They paid honor to its roots, A, by naming it that and having kind of the same logo, but just the historical significance is on display there with photographs and a plaque.

And this is in the Silver Lake side.

This is not on the strip.

And in 2022, It was a duplex in a very small sort of two-sided building.

Shake Shack opened up on the other side in the adjacent space and apparently dominated with their signage.

And everyone got really, really mad at that.

And it didn't last long.

Shake Shack there is now closed.

You know, one of the most interesting things I've ever seen is a story about Shake Shack, the original one in whatever park it's in in New York.

Okay.

You, me, and I were there.

We were in line, very long line, and the line goes through the park.

So there's a lot of trees overhead.

Oh, yeah, I know that one.

This guy, I'm not sure what park it is, I guess it doesn't matter, but this guy who was either one or two behind us in line

suddenly was surrounded by bird poop.

It just formed like a halo around his body.

And everyone like turned around looking for the poop that had surely gotten on the guy.

And he had nothing on him.

Somehow, the poop had all magically fallen within inches of his body, all around him without actually getting on him.

And everyone in the line who knew what happened was just like, that is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

That guy was so happy.

He was not.

Yeah, go buy a lottery ticket.

Yeah, exactly.

That's amazing.

That's my shit check story.

I don't think I've ever heard that.

I didn't know that was the first one either.

Yeah, I think it's the first one.

It was just in the park.

Yeah, it's over, it's like, it's near Union Square.

I don't know what the park is either, though.

And then one other thing about the Black Cat Tavern, it's, you know, obviously like people are like, this happened, you know, before the Stonewall raid.

It might have even happened before the Comptons cafeteria riot.

And the fact that it's compared to Stonewall, it makes you think that

there was a riot riot involved.

It wasn't.

It was a dignified, organized protest, but it's the first recorded LGBTQ protest in American history.

That's what that's its big claim to fame.

Amazing.

I feel like that's a great time for a break.

Totally.

And we'll segue into the 70s right after this.

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Okay, so the 70s, which we just segued into, this was where the rock clubs like kind of transitioned from hippie rock to all sorts of different stuff.

Proto-punk, glam rock, eventually hair metal, as we'll see.

And there were three big clubs, rock clubs that were around at the time.

There was the Roxy Theater, Rodney's English Disco,

and Gazaris.

Those were the three that were like

the three big rock clubs in the 70s that kind of kicked off that transition, from what I understand.

Yeah, and Gazaris is best known for

Van Halen, baby.

Van Halen was known for two things in their early days before they put a record out.

It was playing backyard parties in Pasadena, where they lived, and being the houseband at Gazaris for like years.

Did you know that Van Halen was from California?

Yeah.

I did.

I always thought they were a Dutch band.

No, I mean, Eddie and Alex were Dutch by heritage, and I think they were even born there, maybe.

David Lee Roth isn't Dutch?

No.

Have you ever heard him talk?

Sure.

Right.

That's Dutch.

I think you're right.

I mean, I'm a big Van Halen guy, so I've studied and read all the books, but there's one in particular.

Oh, God, is it called Becoming Van Halen?

It's the most intense, like, I don't know how this guy got this information, but it's the most intense detailing of pre-record contract Van Halen that I've ever heard of in my life.

It was incredible how much this guy knew about their Pasadena backyard party days.

Well, since you know so much about Van Halen, answer this for me.

It's a question I actually carry around with me.

What was the deal with Eddie Van Halen slamming Michael Anthony as a bad bass player?

Like, I think about upon Michael Anthony's death.

Oh, well, you mean Eddie Van Halen's death?

Michael Anthony?

No, No, Michael Anthony.

Okay, well, for some reason, Eddie Van Halen came out and said that he thought Michael Anthony was a terrible bass player.

Oh, Eddie, you know, he's one of the greatest in R.I.P.

for sure, but he could be unkind at times to people.

I think Michael Anthony is one of the greatest, and he had the voice that kind of helped to make Van Halen with those backing vocals, and he's still crushing it.

Because I went and saw Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony in Vegas play not too long ago for the second time in a year.

Were you the guest of our good friend Aaron Hagar who listened to this?

No, I wasn't a a guest this time.

Aaron, I was hoping he could meet there and I could finally have a chance to meet his pops, but Aaron showed up the week after I was there.

But Adam Pranica, friend of the show of the Greatest Generation podcast, met me from L.A.

and we played a little golf and saw Sammy and just had a great time.

It's a really good show.

Those guys are still killing it.

And Michael Anthony is, besides his talents, is known as one of the nicest guys in rock and roll.

Nice.

Which really stinks if Eddie said that, because Michael Anthony has always taken the high road.

Oh, he did.

He did say it.

It was a big deal.

And Sammy Hagar came out and said, I don't know what Eddie's talking about.

He's basically being an idiot.

Michael Anthony's the best bass player I ever worked with.

So he swooped in.

All that band stuff just makes me sad fighting like that.

Yeah.

I'd like to circle back to Adam Pranica.

Okay.

For people who aren't familiar with him, I would say go listen to the Greatest Generation podcasts.

But if you ever get a chance to meet Adam Pranica, you should consider yourself hashtag blessed because he is one of the greatest human beings you will ever meet in your life.

Like legitimately, through and through, just a great dude.

Yeah, agreed.

He's the Michael Anthony of podcasting.

He definitely is, man.

Along with his co-host, Ben Harrison.

No, Ben's great, too.

He's no Adam Pranica, though.

Ben's going to like that burn.

The Roxy opened in 73.

David Geffen, very famous

sort of record label owner and early on music producer, and Lou Adler, legendary producer, opened The Roxy.

And

it was legendary for a lot of reasons.

I mean, the biggest of the big played there in this, again, a small club.

But the very first staging in the U.S.

of the Rocky Horror Picture Show,

this is when it was just a stage musical,

played at the Roxy.

Yeah, and Pee-Wee Herman debuted his show, what became the Pee-Wee Herman TV Show, his live stage version of it that came out first in 1981 at The Roxy.

Have you seen that documentary yet?

Still haven't seen it because we're on vacation, but it's on the list.

And then Rodney's English disco.

I don't know why those three words together are hard for me to pronounce, but that was Rodney Bingenheimer's club that opened in 1972.

So think about how ahead of the curve he was by naming it a disco.

There was no disco around yet.

Yeah, that's a good point.

He was a legendary DJ at K-Rock in LA from 76 to 2017.

I'm sorry, Chuck, it's K-R-O-Q.

And was very famous for breaking, like, the list of bands that he broke on air is incredible.

Like

just look it over sometime.

I don't have time to go over all of it here because we're running long, but it's just really impressive.

And he was a, there was a great documentary about him called The Mayor of Sunset Strip.

He has a star on Hollywood Boulevard, and it's just like, wow, what a guy.

And then very disappointingly, a couple of years ago,

Carrie Crome of The Runaways filed a lawsuit and said he sexually assaulted me when I was 13 years old.

Man, those poor runaways, they got

just totally exploited and just used up.

It's sad.

Just young teenage girls and Kim Falley, their manager, seems like a horrible human,

took part in that assault.

And then five more women came forward after that, including Jane Whedlin of the Go-Go's, and said, yeah, Rodney sexually assaulted me too.

And there hasn't been a result of that lawsuit yet, but it turns out not a good guy.

Well, good for them for standing up to that dude.

Totally.

We couldn't mention the sunset strip without mentioning especially during the era of the 70s the continental hyatt house which has stayed there by the way i have

i'm almost positive that we both stayed as now the andas

uh in one of our la podcast uh festival appearances i do not recall that i remember seeing at the sls is that what you're talking about No, this is Andaz.

I mean, I definitely stay there.

I thought you did, but it was the Continental Riot House.

It was the Hyatt House officially.

If you've ever read the Led Zeppelin book, and there's that picture of Robert Plant standing on the balcony saying, I'm a golden god, that was the Riot House.

Yeah.

And the Continental, just as a little aside, that's from the original name of the hotel, The Continental, which was owned by Gene Autry.

Oh, wow.

Didn't know that.

Yeah, it's kind of a weird transition, right?

Yeah, totally.

All right, as the tour goes forward, we're going to take a little stop here at the Rainbow Bar and Grill on Sunset.

Opened in 72, and it was the the people who owned the Whiskey Ago Go that opened the Rainbow.

And the Rainbow was just a den of debauchery, disguised as a not-too-great Italian restaurant.

But that was where the Hollywood Vampires hung out, the

kind of silly looking at it now, drinking club, founded by Alice Cooper, as members of which were Keith Moon, Ringo Starr, Mickey Dolans, and the debaucherist and great Harry Nilson.

Yeah, and they're now kind of a band with Alice Cooper and Aerosmith guitarist.

Oh, Jove.

Oh, geez, what's his name?

Steven Tyler and the other guy.

I'm just blanking.

Well, anyway, Johnny Depp is in it.

There's like a couple other people, too.

I think one of the dudes from Guns N' Roses might be in it, too.

Maybe.

I don't know if they're any good, are they?

I don't know.

I think they're more a novelty act.

Maybe.

I mean, you know, it's got Johnny Depp in it.

Right.

Right.

I think that kind of makes it a novelty act as far as musical acts are concerned.

Joe Perry.

Joe Perry.

I could want to say Joe Elliott, but that's Def Leppard.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

That's the lead singer.

Yeah.

One other thing about the Rainbow Bar and Grill, that's where John Belushi ate his last meal

in 1982 before he died of a drug overdose at the Chateau Marmont.

And had he gotten the speedball from Schwabs, it would have been a Sunset Boulevard trifecta.

Oh, yeah, I guess you're right.

And then I guess moving on, Chuck, we can't talk about Sunset Boulevard without talking about comedy clubs because it was essentially the place where the whole concept of a comedy club was born.

Yeah, thanks to Polly Shore's mom, Mitzi Shore.

Is it his mom?

Because I looked it up and I couldn't find that.

Was it his mom?

Really?

Oh, yeah, that's funny because he was like a kid roaming around those parts.

That's awesome.

Yeah, Mitzi Shore opened the comedy store in 72, where Tiros used to be.

And it was, like you said, it was the very first stand-up-only nightclub in the world.

Which is crazy to think about.

For sure.

And so Mitzi Shore became very famous for considering the comedy store as a comedy workshop where up-and-comers could work on their material, work on their acts.

And because it was a comedy workshop and not a comedy club, she didn't pay them, especially the up-and-comers.

There are very few big-name acts that would come through and she would pay them.

But if you were working on your stuff, and we're talking like legendary people here, we're talking like Jim Carrey, Howie Mandel, Gary Shandling, Andy Kaufman, Robin Williams, Michael Keaton, for some reason, apparently was a stand-up.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I did not know that.

He's just so serious now, you know?

Yeah, but I mean, he started in comedy movies, and you can get his early stand-up.

It's kind of fun.

Yeah, no, I know his comedy movies.

I've seen

the stand-up.

Oh, gotcha.

So,

like, these were people who all had their careers launched thanks to the comedy store, but they were paid an exposure, and eventually they were like, this is not worth it.

We're going on strike.

Yeah, they went on strike in 79, which opened a door for another club.

Yeah.

The world famous laugh factory opened in 79, just a few blocks away by a 16-year-old, which is amazing, Iranian immigrant, also amazing, named Jamie Masada.

And he ended up opening laugh factories all over the country.

Yeah, and he was like, how about this?

You guys come play here, and I'll share some of the cover charge with you.

Like, I'll actually pay you.

And apparently, the original name of the laugh factory was Joke on Yolk, like egg yolk.

Really?

Yeah.

Joke on Yolk.

I don't get it.

Was there a Yolk Street?

I think he thought that was funny.

Oh, okay.

It rhymes, so it's funny.

Well, I guess he was a better business owner than comedian.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, he was an aspiring comedian.

That's why he opened that club.

Yeah, Joke on Yolk, get it?

Right.

So one other thing, circling back, Mitzi Shore finally resolved the strike after a few weeks by agreeing to pay the comedians $25 a set, which is a whopping $110 today.

That's not too bad.

If you're getting up there and doing seven minutes.

They don't know.

You can buy like a pack of cigarettes with $110 today.

All right, we're going to move into the 80s, and you got to talk about the 80s because you got to talk about hair metal.

And if you're going to talk about hair metal in the Sunset Strip, you got to start with Motley Crew.

Yeah, I guess they were the ones who like started the whole thing on the sunset strip i'm sure you knew that because you probably read 10 books about motley crew uh no just two okay yeah i mean they lived right above it uh they could walk down there and uh you know have big parties at their uh disgusting place that they shared above the sunset strip but yeah they were if not the first one of the first to kind of bring that scene there and you know poison la guns faster pussycat eventually guns n'roses would start out there in the mid 80s but um yeah the whiskey kind of had a bunch of different lives from

hippie stuff to sort of what we would view as classic rock to eventually hair metal and now, I guess, hair metal cover bands.

Right.

And in between then and now, Grunge came along and killed hair metal, which was a sad day, I think.

You can still go see those bands.

They're around.

You can see the tribute versions of them.

And other ones.

I'm going to see Judas Priest a little bit.

Oh, nice.

I've never seen them, and I got tickets on a whim to go see them this fall.

Speaking of Judas Priest, I just have one more place I want to mention, but Judas Priest has one of the cooler documentaries around it.

It's called Parking Lot or something like that.

Have you met a parking lot?

Yes.

Have you seen it?

Yeah, I mean, it's not just about Judas Priest.

It's just about Penelope Severus

directed that kind of a legendary documentary.

Right.

Okay.

Well, I guess I'm the only one who saw it, but I love that documentary.

It just takes place at the parking lot before the Judas Priest show.

Oh, I i don't think i even remembered it was judas priest i'm almost positive it is judas priest it probably is but yeah it really encapsulates that culture at the time totally does yeah uh the last place i wanted to mention was the beverly hills hotel um apparently it was around before there was even a beverly hills yeah and old hollywood used to hang out there blah blah blah the thing that makes it noteworthy to me is you know that iconic banana leaf wallpaper that you kind of see it's like kind of old that's where it debuted or that's where it became big.

That pattern is called Martinique.

And I think it was in the mid-late 40s that this decorator papered the Beverly Hills Hotel with that, and it just took off from there.

Wow.

I've never been there, but that's one of those places I want to go, like, have dinner just to, you know, kind of like Tavern on the Green style.

Yeah, it looks amazing, actually.

Their bar looks amazing, too.

Yeah, it's still got that kind of mid-century charm, doesn't it?

LA style.

Yeah.

I guess that's it for Sunset Boulevard.

Yeah, I mean, there are so many things we couldn't get to because we didn't want to do a two-parter.

But if you want to look up stuff on Hollywood High School and the weird Crossroads of the World shopping center

or the Hollywood Palladium, certainly do that because there's still a lot more about the Sunset Strip.

And it's, you know, you go to LA and you're into touristy stuff, you should go check it out.

Yeah, for sure.

And there's a lot of good writing out there.

People love writing about the Sunset Strip for sure.

Yeah.

And thanks again to Dave for helping us out with this one.

Good job, Dave.

And since I said good job, Dave, that means it's time for listener mail.

And this one actually is a listener suggestion.

So we wanted to shout out Sayer Delk for Sunset Boulevard.

Man, it's a great name.

Yeah.

I mean, not for making the road, but, you know, for giving this suggestion.

Nice.

Hey, guys, long-term listener who wants to thank you for keeping me entertained during work, school, travel, and pretty much any excuse to have a podcast on for the past few years.

The reason I write is in 2022 you talked about rock, paper, scissors and you didn't think it was possible to play with more than two people.

You may be interested to know that my friends and I used to play three to four person games at work as landscapers.

In the mornings we were weed eating on the property and we'd come across items that only required the work of one person and we would play rock paper scissors and this is how you do it.

We would simply all throw at once like a normal game in a three-person game.

If anyone beat all the other players,

then they would step out and the other two would play again.

So it's sort sort of like a knockout tournament.

If two players beat the others on the first game, then the loser lost immediately.

After many games over the weeks and months, the strategies, alliances, and yes, some game theory all made the work quite fun and competitive.

Love the show.

All the best to you and your families.

Respectfully, that is Austin from St.

Louis, Missouri.

Nice work, Austin.

You cracked the code finally.

Thank you for that.

Thanks for letting us know too.

And if you want to be like Austin, right?

That's right.

If you want to be like Austin, then send us an email and you can be like Austin.

Send it off to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com.

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