Walking L.A. #12, Sunset Strip, 3 miles.

Barbara and I hiked the Strip, the section of Sunset Blvd. that's had a personality change almost every decade since Victor Ponet bought the farmland in 1890. Everyone who's been to the Strip has their "remember when?" story, but I'm a sucker for origin stories and the Strip has a wowser. In 1924, Ponet's heirs built a string of shops and cafés on the dirt road that was Sunset and created Sunset Plaza. The area was outside L.A. city limits—gambling was legal! Gangsters caught on, built nightclubs and casinos, added booze in the back rooms, attracted movie people, and Sunset Strip was born. My pix below show the development better than I can tell it. Chateau Marmont Hotel (1929); the Art Deco/ZigZag Moderne Sunset Tower Hotel (1929); The Comedy Store (1972) replaced a rock club (The Byrds discovered there in 1964) that replaced Ciro's—a notorious celebrity hangout in the 40s & 50s (think Bogart, Raft, Monroe, Lana Turner).




The Piazza Del Sol (1927)—now home to the "so hip it hurts" Katana Restaurant—housed the "most famous brothel in California" in the 30s (40% of the profits went to the cops.) The salmon 'Cleaners—Wash & Dry' building was crime boss Guy McAfee's Clover Club in the 1920s and 30s. And that ain't even half of the clubs! We made a turnaround at Book Soup (1975) and detoured south of the strip along Holloway for a sidewalk tour of historic apartment buildings built in the 1930s, including the El Palacio on Fountain, and the El Pasadero in the National Register's Harper Avenue Historic District. The morning was California beautiful, so I'm closing with a view from the plaza of the Jeremy, the newest, hippest hotel on the strip.