Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard, or Sunset Boulevard, is one of the main symbols of Hollywood and hardly its main address. Walking along the most interesting route of the boulevard, the Sunset Strip, is like flipping through the history of American cinema. In the evenings, when the luxury villas of Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, Brentwood and Malibu are shrouded in darkness, the stars flock to the Sunset Strip like butterflies to the light. Restaurants, boutiques, bookstores, music stores, video stores and all kinds of nightclubs are open late.
Video: Sunset Boulevard
Highlights
Sunset Boulevard, which is about 36 kilometers long, begins at Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles, and runs through Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, Bel-Air, Brentwood to its intersection with Pacific Highway.
.Sunset Boulevard is home to the old Warner Brothers Studio, which is on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. This is where the first movie studio called J. Lasky Fisher Playground C°, which became known as Paramount, originated.
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The name Sunset Boulevard has become part of Hollywood legend, serving as inspiration for countless songs, movies, and television shows. But what is the reality of this Los Angeles street?
.Stars may work at movie studios in Hollywood and the valley, but most of them live elsewhere – the posh residential neighborhoods of West Los Angeles: Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood or Malibu. Sunset Boulevard is precisely the path between these two worlds.
.This Los Angeles street is a long, winding road that starts downtown, near Olver Street and runs west for more than 34 kilometers to the blue water of the Pacific Ocean.The most famous part of Sunset Boulevard is probably the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, which is the center of nightlife in the Los Angeles area.
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What to see
.Rainbow Bar & Grill
Restaurant and bar, two in one, the place is classic. Downstairs is the restaurant, upstairs is “Over the Rainbow” – there’s a bar, a place to dance, a DJ booth and a stage for musicians to play, unusually located under the bar, meaning you’re looking down on the musicians.
.Rainbow has a serious history, which flourished in the 70s-80s, when stars like John Lennon, Ringo, Led Zeppelin… and many others came here. and a lot of other people.
Today it smells a bit like an old attic, but it’s a nice place to be.
On Mondays, the bar has an open mic, when you can sing-sing-sing-speak yourself (the latter applies to spoken word artists).
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Whisky A-Go-Go
.The club opened on January 11, 1963, and made history as the first rock club.
The Whisky A-Go-Go Club was the first rock club in the country.
Many now-famous musicians, from The Doors to Metallica to Motley Crue, began their careers on its stage. If you add to the description the entire list of bands that have played there, the guidebook will increase to encyclopedic size. Rock lovers must visit this place, you will surely witness the birth of a new rock star.
.Johnny Depp’s Club Viper Room
One of the most famous hot spots. In the evenings here sips beer or indulges in light drugs with a dozen world celebrities, surrounded by aspiring actors. The club is located at the intersection of Larrabee Street and Sunset blvd. Depp recreated the interior of a small underground club of the twenties in the art deco style. To give the club a Hollywood atmosphere of the early twentieth century, special girls were invited to deliver cigarettes on trays. The club has a capacity of only two hundred people, which is not the size of Hollywood, so there are only five VIP booths. In the corner of the hall next to the dance floor there is a stage where Depp played guitar with his friends at the very beginning of the club life (the place was opened in August, 1993). It was here that River Phoenix (23-year-old rising US rock star) died of a drug overdose on Halloween night 1993, and a month later TV star Nicole Eggert (Baywatch, Charles in Charge) got into a fight in the club with her girlfriends over a mutual boyfriend. In 1996, Tommy Lee received two years’ probation and spent 200 hours in corrective labor after he punched a photographer at a club who tried to take a picture of him with his wife Pamela Anderson. Two years later, Tommy Lee still spent six months in prison for beating his wife. Reservations are difficult, but possible.
.This street crossing Sunset Boulevard and going into the mountains is the most colorful array of boutiques, cafes and restaurants in Los Angeles. At the intersection with Sunset Boulevard, on both sides of the Strip, shoulder to shoulder stand the famous boutiques; Dolce & Gabbana, Hugo Boss, Club Monako, BCBG, Armani A/X, N. Lorenzo, Traffic. Billy Martin’s” boutique stands out among them with a clearly distinguished style of “western”, adherents of which are Bruce Springsteen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Val Kilmer and Billy Bob Thornton. Many celebrities, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Gere, Rosie O’Donnell, Brooke Shields and others, have left their footprints directly on the cement outside the Kenneth Cole Shoes store. It is known that Lisa Kudrow bought boots here, and supermodel Tori Spelling bought her favorite sandals in all available colors.
.Next door to Kenneth Cole Shoes is Le Dome Restaurant (8720 Sunset), a point of pride for Elton John, one of its famous founders and co-owners. This trendy French restaurant is where celebrity agents, producers and members of Hollywood’s musical elite can be caught during lunch. Le Dome’s celebrity clients include Stallone and Gere, Sting and Diana Ross, Julio Iglesias and Don Johnson.
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Some of the restaurants and cafes that dot the pedestrianized area of Sunset Plaza include Cravings, Chin Chin, Le Petit Four, Clafoutis, and Spago Hollywood (the first restaurant of celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, which hosted Oscar parties until its closure in 2001). The quality of food in all restaurants is very high, so if there are no seats in one restaurant, you can safely go to another.
.Sunset Strip Tattoo
Julia Roberts and Nicolas Cage, Ben Affleck and Pamela Anderson are just a few names of celebrities who have gotten their tattoos at this establishment. You can join this stellar company.
>House of Blues
Hut-like thousand-seat restaurant and nightclub House of Blues is located in the heart of the Strip (8430 Sunset). By the way, to make the establishment look like a shack, its owners spent nine million dollars.
.The club is designed in such a way that from any place you can see everything that is happening on stage. The sound here is superb: the sound amplifiers cost half a million dollars. The House of Blues has hosted Bruce Springsteen and Brad Peep, Madonna and Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, Disney head Michael Eisner and former Rolling Stones member Michael Taylor. Dustin Hoffman celebrated his son Jake’s Bar Mitzvah (coming of age) at House of Blues. The club’s owners will gladly tell you that Bill Clinton and his then Vice President Albert Gore once visited here during his presidency. Along with Jim Belushi, they sang the old Elvis song “Viva Las Vegas!”
.On the same side of Sunset (8440 Sunset), between Sunset Plaza and House of Blues is the Mondrian Hotel and Sky Wag nightclub, with a huge symbolic door in front of the entrance. In the hotel lobby, you’ll see a bed with pillows piled on top of it. An even more imposing bed is on the poolside. It offers a luxurious view of Los Angeles. Next to the pool are tables with sofas, also covered with cushions. All of this was brought to life by designer Randy Gerber – husband of supermodel Cindy Crawford..Sunset Tower Hotel
.The thirteen-story Sunset Tower Hotel building is a restored Art Deco hotel, The Argyl, built back in 1929. The hotel was the Strip’s first skyscraper.
.Young actors under contract with MGM and Warner Brothers studios, such as Gene Harlow and Erol Flynn, for example, immediately took a liking to the hotel, along with its restaurant and nightclub. It is said that John Wayne kept a cow on the balcony of his penthouse so he could drink fresh milk every day. Most Hollywood stars have stayed at this hotel at least once.
. Actor Howard Hughes used to rent several rooms at once – for himself and his many girlfriends. When James Ellroy, author of the short story “L.A. Confidantial”, which was the basis for the movie of the same name (“Secrets of L.A.”), came to Los Angeles, he stayed here too. The hotel’s interiors have been used quite often for filming movies such as “The Player”, “Pretty Woman”, “Get Shorty”, “Guilty by Suspicion”, “Wayne’s World 2”, “Strange Days” and the television series “Pros and Cons.”.The Saddle Ranch Chop House
.On the opposite side of Sunset Blvd (8371 W Sunset Blvd) is a “cowboy” restaurant and nightclub called The Saddle Ranch Chop House. This is the former Thunder Roadhouse restaurant opened by screenwriters and characters from the movie “Easy Rider” Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda for motorcycle racers. Next to it was a store selling Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Harrison Ford, Exl Rose and even Bruce Springsteen bought their “iron horses” here. Today the store has moved to Santa Monica Boulevard. And the motorcycles standing in rows in the restaurant’s parking lot belong to its customers.
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Inside The Saddle Ranch, there’s a real mechanical bull riding competition, similar to the ones you saw in the movie “Urban Cowboy” (with Debra Winger and John Travolta). The food at this restaurant is typically American. Two types of meat are considered specialties: “The Wild One”, “1954” (named after the movie of the same name starring Marlon Brando) and “Evel Knievel’s” (named after the famous motorcycle racer played in the movie of the same name by actor George Hamilton).
Schawab’s Pharmacy
building.America’s most famous pharmacy! It’s no different in Hollywood. The hero of the famous movie “Sunset Boulevard” William Holden called this institution “a combination of office, cafeteria and waiting room”. Its owner, pharmacist Leon Schwab, was a popular figure in Hollywood. He did not cost nothing to recommend the owner of the movie studio, who bought him drugs, any young talent – whether it was an actress or a screenwriter. Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd liked to play pinball here. And Scoop Fitzgerald had a heart attack in “Schawab’s Pharmacy”, when in 1940 he bought here … a pack of cigarettes. The pharmacy closed in 1988, and a Virgin Megastore opened a decade later.
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The two-tiered music and video store Virgin Megastore is a trendy competitor to music-commercial giant Tower Record’s (8000 Sunset). Its collection includes one hundred and fifty thousand CDs, as well as DVDs and videotapes. One hundred units are available to listen not only to the CDs on sale, but also to the advertised new releases. However, author’s presentation of new disks and autographs are not as frequent as in Tower Record’s. Among Megastore’s regular customers are Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Henry Winkler, Enrique Iglesias and Winona Ryder.
.“Chateu Marmont”
When celebrities visiting Los Angeles want to be seen, they stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel, or if they want to keep their whereabouts a secret, they stay at the Chateu Marmont at 8221 Sunset Boulevard.
.This hotel opened back in 1929 and is built in the style of a French palace. Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Bob Dylan, Paul Newman, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger, Ringo Starr and Jessica Lange have all stayed here.
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The Chateu Marmont has a reputation as the perfect place for secret romances. James Dean and Natalie Wood first met here while preparing to shoot the movie Rebel Without a Cause. When actor Montgomery Clift was involved in a car accident near Elizabeth Taylor’s home in 1956, she brought him to the Chateu Marmont Hotel and rented a room for him where Clift recovered. But first Taylor saved his life by pulling out of his throat the two knocked-out teeth lodged there. In 1982, John Belushi died from a large dose of heroin in Room 3. In the movie The Doors, Val Kilmer, who played Jim Morrison, jumped outside of the penthouse located on the sixth floor of the Marmont.
.Many stars favor this hotel even today, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Keanu Reeves, Courtney Love, Robert De Niro, and Sting all staying here. Winona Ryder, Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp have all stayed at the Marmont Bar, which is just outside the fortress hotel, which is closed on all sides. Sandra Bullock once said that the spirit of this hotel is so permeated with the flavor of the past that she is not surprised when she meets her secret lovers there. Chateu Marmont gives the impression of a box with a double bottom: it is not easy to find the entrance to the hotel lobby, and its bungalows and cottages are not accessible to outsiders at all..
Hyatt Hotel
Another hotel where rooms are often occupied by star visitors.
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