Last week I had to drop off some CDs to a friend of mine who lives in Brentwood.  Rush hour traffic on the 405…yeah.  So I took the scenic route home, traveling on Sunset Boulevard through Hollywood.  Traveling east, you pass by two of the three things I’ve already written about in this space: Arclight Hollywood and one of the many In & Out chains.  But that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

Even at night, the palm trees and curvy roads of Bel-Air and the entrance to the UCLA campus stick out.  Being one of many artists here, I have a few friends who have chosen the stand up comedy route.  And on occassion I’ve caught them at the Laugh Factory, or the Comedy Store, or one of several other comedy spots that dot the Strip.  Ahhh yes, the Strip.  It was one of those ‘must be done’ spots when I first came here a decade ago; it was a rite of passage whenever a new bachelor friend came to town that we’d pack in the car, open the sunroof and windows, and ‘enjoy the scenery’ as it were.  And yes, we were doing it way before it became part of the opening credits of Entourage. 

The House of Blues followed by a late night/early morning trip to IHOP would echo a few of the long nights of my own college days; the Sunset Blvd. IHOP is famous/infamous for its own reasons though.  A throwback to the seedier days of Hollywood and Sunset before it became a full blown tourist attraction.  The action doesn’t always go down in the late hours of the night though.  There’s Harmony Gold, where we screened more than a few films during the school days, and still gets a visit every now and again for a screening.  There’s a bar that I don’t think is there anymore (big surprise; on Sunset Blvd. when one bar closes down another opens a few weeks later).  Anyway this bar was the first place I remember going to watch Laker games with the ‘in’ crowd.  I won’t put my friend on blast, but I remember walking in there for the first time just to see him surrounded by girls, looking like the King of the City.  And my thought was, “OK…I’m really not in Kansas anymore.”  (I know, that was a terrible pun but it was my thought.)

The film geek in me won’t let me finish this entry without noting that one of the first (and still the best) movies about ‘Hollywood’ good and bad is named Sunset Boulevard.  Sex, murder, celebrity, desperation, glamour, image…

Some things never change, do they?