A guided walk through Los Angeles history
Walk the boulevard where Hollywood glamour, rock ’n’ roll, architecture, scandal and rebellion all shared the same mile.
01 — THE STORY
The Sunset Strip has reinvented itself for nearly a century. It was a glamorous escape beyond the reach of Los Angeles law, a playground for movie stars and gangsters, the birthplace of new music, and the stage for a youth rebellion.
This walk connects the famous landmarks to the people, architecture and strange decisions that made this mile unlike anywhere else in America.
02 — THROUGH THE YEARS
From Hollywood’s after-hours playground to a street that helped shape popular culture. Follow the eras behind the places we talk about on the walk—not the order of the walking route.
Outside Los Angeles city limits, nightclubs and Prohibition-era drinking help give the Strip its unruly reputation.
A French-inspired castle opens as an apartment building. Its next chapter will make it one of Hollywood’s most storied retreats.
Art Deco reaches for the sky. Sunset Tower brings a striking new silhouette to the boulevard and becomes part of Hollywood’s architectural identity.
Billy Wilkerson opens Café Trocadero. A night out on Sunset becomes an occasion to see—and be seen by—Hollywood.
Ciro’s and the Mocambo make the Strip a destination for movie stars, dinner, dancing and live entertainment.
The television detective series 77 Sunset Strip premieres, carrying the boulevard’s name into homes across America.
Pierre Koenig’s Stahl House is completed above the Strip—a modernist vision in steel and glass. It opens a bigger story on our walk: from the invention of the gasoline-powered automobile in the 1880s to the car culture that reshaped Los Angeles. We explore sleek hillside homes, space-age Googie coffee shops and the city’s delightfully eccentric roadside architecture—buildings shaped like hot dogs and giant tamales, designed to make passing drivers look twice.
The Whisky a Go Go opens. Go-go dancing and live rock help signal a new generation’s arrival on Sunset.
Curfew protests erupt around Pandora’s Box. The confrontation inspires Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.”
The Comedy Store opens in the former Ciro’s building. The old Hollywood supper club begins a second life as a landmark of stand-up comedy—a proving ground where generations of comics will find their voices.
The Roxy opens, adding another intimate stage to a boulevard already synonymous with live music.
Mötley Crüe, Poison and Guns N’ Roses help make the Strip synonymous with the hard-rock boom.
Johnny Depp and Sal Jenco open the Viper Room, bringing another chapter of music and celebrity to Sunset.
Walk the street where these eras overlap: landmark façades, club doorways and the sites of places that survive only in photographs and stories.
I’ve always been drawn to people who see the world differently—and have the talent, imagination or nerve to leave their mark on it.
I studied history, art and archaeology, and I’m a rock ’n’ roll guitarist. My curiosity moves easily between an Art Deco façade, a guitar riff and the story of someone who changed the culture. Architecture, music and pop culture might occupy different shelves in a library, but on the Sunset Strip, they’ve always lived next door to each other.
That’s what makes this street endlessly fascinating to me. My walks bring together the things I love: compelling stories, remarkable creativity, and the very human lives behind the legends.
Ready to see the street differently?