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Sunset Boulevard Index © 2006 by John Varley; all rights reserved |
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April 25, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 1 - "There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb ............. babe!" Well, actually there are a lot of hills and pretty much all the mountains that are way beyond me now. I was never much of a mountain climber even in my youth, but I used to be an enthusiastic walker. |
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April 27, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 2 - In which we decide that a road by any other name is still Sunset Boulevard No disrespect to Mr. Chavez, but I don't think they should have changed the name of part of Sunset Boulevard to Cesar E. Chavez Avenue. |
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April 28, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 3 - Echo Park..cho Park...cho Park...cho Park In the ‘60s, one of the reasons Chris and I did so much walking on Sunset was that it was the most direct way from Hollywood to Echo Park. |
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April 29, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 4 - Echo Park to Silver Lake Not all of Sunset Boulevard is chockfull of interesting stuff, nor does it all jog memories from my checkered past. |
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April 29, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 5 - The Music Box Though colorful, this stretch of Sunset is barely more exciting than yesterday's, in terms of something to write about. With one exception ... |
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April 30, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 6 - Hooray! Hollywood! The day started well. As we got out of the car we were greeted by the song of a mockingbird in the tree overhead. |
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April 30, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 7 - "Poverty Row" In most LA neighborhoods there's alternate side of the street cleaning, twice a week. You'd better move your car before 10 AM or you can get towed. |
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May 2, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 8 - Out of the closet and deep into Hollywood We didn't cover any more ground than usual today, but some ground is a lot more interesting than others ... |
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May 4, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 9 - La Brea to Fairfax OhThis is another stretch that I don't have a lot to say about. Not that it's not interesting to look at (which is why I'll ask Lee to put in a larger number of pictures than she did in her previous photo essays), but I there's nothing really spectacular. |
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May 5, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 10 - The Strip Today we plunge into West Hollywood. Which is just like Hollywood, only gay. |
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May 7, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 11 - Whiskey Parking on Sunset in West Hollywood is ... not necessarily impossible, but very, very expensive. WH is probably not the only community in America that has installed computerized, solar-powered parking meters that accept Visa and MasterCard, but I'll bet it was one of the first. |
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May 8, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 12 - Garbage cans of Beverly Hills Alerted to its existence by a friend, last night we watched a video from a series called "Great Streets," from PBS. This one was Randy Newman doing Sunset Boulevard. |
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May 10, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 12.5 - Rodeo Drive We've already driven the next mile of Sunset, and we know that, except for the Beverly Hills Hotel, it's more of the same: endless hedges and fences with the super-rich slumbering peacefully in their mansions. Boring. |
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May 12, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 13 - Where the Sidewalk Ends It was bad—we knew it was going to be—but there was the Beverly Hills Hotel to mitigate some of the boredom, at least at first. |
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May 15, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard - Dead: Hollywood Forever Lee is very much into cemeteries, and I like them, too. Los Angeles has one of the most fascinating collections of famous stiffs anywhere in the world, in about a dozen major graveyards, from the San Fernando Mission (which has Bob Hope) to Westwood (which has Marilyn Monroe). |
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May 19, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 14 - Bel-Air |
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May 19, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 15 - UCLA, and an apology First, I'm sorry for my outburst in #14 of these accounts. I was feeling so frustrated that we'd have to skip all of the Bel-Air parts of Sunset Boulevard, because to do so would put us at risk of life and limb. |
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May 25, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 16 - Brentwood ... and the OJ Murder Walk! How would that guy on "City Confidential" put it? Paul Winfield, that's his name. Sneering, insinuating ... |
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May 26, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 17 - Pacific Palisades Oh, my, how we long for the days of Echo Park, of Silverlake, of brightly-colored murals and bodegas and people walking the streets. How we pine for the weird streets of Hollywood, the trendy folk thronging the sidewalks of the Strip. |
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June 5, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard - Part 17.5 The Ranch That Jokes Built Just a short, winding drive up the hill from Sunset is the Will Rogers State Historic Park. Since it's a part of Sunset that is unwalkable, we decided to visit it and include it here as the penultimate installment of our hejira from Olvera Street to the sea. |
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May 26, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard - Dead - Part 2: Westwood Village Memorial Park As Sunset gets harder and harder to walk on, and less and less interesting, we've taken to doing more side trips. Westwood Village is no more than a mile from the Boulevard, and hidden away where I guarantee you'd never find it unless you were walking, and probably not even then, is a place with more stars per square foot than anywhere in Hollywood, maybe anywhere in the world. |
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May 30, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Part 18 - We end with self realization I'd like to say we came down the hill, around a corner ... and there it was! The blue Pacific Ocean, looking much the same as when Balboa was the first white man to lay eyes on it. |
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June 7, 2006 - Sunset Boulevard: Coda - The Getty Mansion In 1945 J. Paul Getty bought 64 acres of hillside overlooking Malibu. He built a house and filled it with his stuff. When he had too much stuff for the house, he built a museum down the hill in 1954 and opened it to the public. When that filled up with more stuff, he re-created the Villa dei Papiri, in Herculaneum, which was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, and opened that in 1974. Then he died. |