Here on the Sunset Strip, you are on the most famous mile in the history of American popular music. The Sunset Strip is the section of Sunset Boulevard that runs through the independent city of West Hollywood, outside Los Angeles city jurisdiction, a fact that gave it a lawlessness that made it the incubator of American nightlife for most of the twentieth century. In the 1930s, gambling clubs and roadhouses operated here beyond the reach of the LAPD.
In the 40s and 50s it was the strip of jazz clubs and restaurants where Frank Sinatra, Humphrey Bogart, and Lauren Bacall held court. In the 1960s it became the center of the Los Angeles counterculture: the Troubadour, the Whisky a Go Go, and the Roxy launched the careers of the Doors, Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills and Nash, and Joni Mitchell. Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth was written about a 1966 riot on this street when police enforced a curfew on young people gathered outside Pandora's Box.
In the 1980s it became the home of Mötley Crüe, Guns N' Roses, and a decade of hair metal. Look at the billboards; they have announced new albums and films here for eighty years.