![]() ![]() “There it is,” says Valentine adoringly, as if proffering a school photo of a granddaughter. The Trip was a tiny but chic rock club Valentine opened in 1965 in the space vacated by the Crescendo, a jazz club one of its gimmicks, devised by Valentineʼs music-mogul buddy Lou Adler, was that the names of the current Billboard Top 10 singles were displayed on its façade.īut the highlight of Valentineʼs tour comes a few blocks later, after weʼve passed the spot where the Classic Cat topless club used to be (now the Tower Records classical annex) but before weʼve hit the former sites of Gazzarriʼs (now the Key Club) and the very first Hamburger Hamlet (now Beverly Sunset Motors). “Thatʼs where I had the Trip,” says Valentine. Moving along, Valentine points out an undistinguished building on the plot where Dinoʼs Lodge was, “Dean Martinʼs place, where Kookie worked in 77 Sunset Strip.” The next site of note is an empty lot across the street from the ersatz mid-century greasy spoon Melʼs Diner, formerly the genuine mid-century greasy spoon Ben Frankʼs. Valentine explains that Ciroʼs reconstituted itself as a hip 60s rock club just long enough to launch the Byrds, but, unable to secure a liquor license, morphed into a short-lived teenybop haven with the risible name Itʼs Boss. Up on the right comes the Comedy Store, formerly Ciroʼs, the crown jewel of the Stripʼs glorious 1940s champagne-in-a-bucket epoch. This is a man who first arrived in Los Angeles via freight car and upturned thumb-he was 14, it was the Great Depression, and after the hobo trains got him as far as San Francisco from his hometown of Chicago, he hitchhiked the rest of the way downstate. “ Fuuuck you,” says Valentine, though not with the combustive anger of the salty and aged, more the sighing bemusement of an enlightened old-timer whoʼs thinking, Jeez, loosen up, kids you see more when you take it slow. Someone behind us honks-a disapproving noncruiser. You couldnʼt fucking move! Kids 10-deep on the sidewalk, into the road! Thatʼs where the riots started. The kids used to spill out into the road so you couldnʼt move. ![]() “That island,” he says, motioning to a blank triangle of land marooned in the intersection of Sunset and Crescent Heights, “was where they had a little club called Pandoraʼs Box. He is 77 years old and is driving barefoot. One radical soul, however, defies the cruising ban and rolls westward at lawn-mower speed in his black Lincoln Navigator, pointing at things like a tourist. The Strip in daytime is mostly worker-mobiles shuttling hurriedly between Beverly Hills and Hollywood, which was actually the original purpose of this 1.7-mile stretch of road: to get movie people swiftly from their homes in the palmy west to the studios in the sunbaked east, and back again. But in the glare of business hours, the scourge of “cruising” isnʼt much of an issue. The Sunset Strip is officially a no cruising zone, as cautionary white signs remind you every quarter-mile or so. ![]()
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