If you’re looking for something to do, you’re on the wrong street. You have to go to Sunset.
And it’s been going even further downward ever since talkies.
Even within California most movie production occurs outside of Hollywood. Paramount is the only major studio that remains in the district, any with films and television increasingly preferring to film on location, you’re more likely to see celebrities in Pasadena or Santa Monica than slumming in Hollywood.
And color. Whoever told Billy Wilder to switch from black & white did the world no favors.
Stranger
Well, Hollywood is also a very large residential district, spanning from the lower-rent neighborhoods toward Melrose, to the hills around the Bowl and Beechwood (though some consider those areas a separate district).A lot of people go there to live, because it’s centrally located.
I don’t think anyone today goes to Hollywood anymore hoping to see stars, unless it’s the Kodak theater on Oscar night.
Moreover, in the last 15 or so years there has been constant and extensive non-tourist oriented development in the commercial areas of Hollywood, with expansion and renovation of shopping complexes and new upscale housing. Essentially, Hollywood is starting to become increasingly more like West L.A.
True, but–apart from actual production–a good deal of the ancillary business of film and TV production still remains there: pre- and post-production services, suppliers, etc.
I worked in Hollywood in the late 80s. I just checked a map to see the actual boundaries and I would have been all over the central part and at least driven through other areas from time to time.
There were a lot of those ancillary businesses located there, and a lot of small offices for related business located elsewhere. Everyone in the biz wants a Hollywood address.
I have been all over that town. And it has been all over me.
We went to Hollywood to see Garrison Keillor’s last show as host of APHC last summer, at the Hollywood Bowl. We stayed on Highland Ave, in walking distance.
While were were there, we did a Universal Studios tour, and went to the Magic Castle.
The Hollywood Hills (if that is Hollywood) are still home to some of the most absolutely insane mansions in the world. Not that you would know it driving those streets. They are all pretty well hidden.
Also, I’m finding myself getting weirdly defensive about so many people calling Hollywood seedy. Not that they are wrong, but man, that’s my home town! (frankly it has gotten so plastic that I hardly even recognize it anymore when I go visit. Long gone it seems are the days of youth hostiles, dive bars and tourist traps.)
Relax. Go have a pint at the Cat & Fiddle.
Oh, wait… 
The Frolic room is the perfect touristy-ish dive.
Primetime is…a dive.
I met my wife at Cat and Fiddle (sorta)
It’ll devolve back eventually. It’s just going to take another decade.
Does the Frolic Room still exist? That’s cool.
The Powerhouse was my bar back when, but I think that’s gone too.
Yikes, I Googled the Powerhouse. There is a bar called that in the location of my bar… But it’s a crazy hipster cocktail lounge.
The good old dingy Powerhouse that opened at 6am is gone, sadly. But I think the new place might also be called the Powerhouse? But it is a hipster hell hole. I haven’t been in a few yrs.
Ha! nice ninja
Does GTA V count ?
I used to live two blocks from Hollywood blvd, on Cherokee. There is a place that serves great NY style pizza by the slice.
There is also Musso and Franks Grill, the El Capitan, girls dressed to kill and many many tourists and tourist traps on a Friday or Saturday nite. It’s fun.
The Frolic Room is a tattoo parlor in GTA V.
That’s what I was thinking. I think I’ve got a good grasp of the basic layout of LA from playing too much GTA V
That’s what I thought too.
That’s an understatement. I was feeling deja vu when I visited Los Angeles and we went to Santa Monica Pier. I knew I’d been there before and then it dawned on me it was because of GTA V.
I haven’t been to Hollywood in several years, but the last time I was there it didn’t seem so much seedy as a kind of tourist trap. If you’re interested in old movies – not that they don’t still make a lot of new movies in Hollywood as a metonym, then it’s probably worth checking out for an afternoon or a day. Go to a movie at the Chinese Theater, check out Madame Tussaud’s, and have drinks and dinner at Musso & Frank. Depending on where else you want to go in L.A., and on how much you want to spend on a hotel, the Roosevelt might be a good bet.
Google Maps shows a pinkish-shaded area on what is considered Hollywood proper (the physical part of L.A.). Most films by big companies like the WB or 20th Century Fox that we put under the label of “Hollywood” films are outside that area. Of the Big 6 Amer. movie companies (Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, and Paramount Pictures), only Paramount is actually in Hollywood proper.