Golden Sunset : Glittering Boulevard L.A.’s Unique Blend of Glamour and Panache

Sunset Strip rolls on, gaudy and vibrant: a cradle of American rock ‘n’ roll, a gathering place of stars, groupies and paparazzi, and the home of a tiny, neon-lined parlor known as Tattoo Mania.

At work inside is Gill (The Drill) Montie--one of the top 10 tattoo artists in America, according to the voting readers of Outlaw Biker Tattoo magazine. At 36, Montie has devoted half his life to becoming the Rembrandt of his field. He sports six earrings in his left ear and a veritable sample case of designs on his burly frame, from abstract swirls and copulating lions to a hooded executioner.

“I’m known for doing skulls,” Montie is saying just before a young woman customer walks in. With a sheepish smile, she asks for a tattoo, a teeny red heart. She wants it put near her tailbone. At once, the scene becomes surreal. The woman, Jennifer Young, 21, who has driven all the way from Irvine, is perched on an inclined bench, baring the target area. “I’m going to have to expose one cheek,” artist Dan Paolucci tells her.

“Don’t look,” she says, but far too late.

Montie is several feet behind her, raising a miniature pair of binoculars.

“Don’t worry,” he deadpans.

It is one of those vivid, irresistible moments that seem to flow naturally on the Sunset Strip, a 1.7-mile stretch of limelight and panache bridging Beverly Hills with Hollywood. Contained now almost entirely within the young city of West Hollywood, Sunset Strip circa 1991 is both historic and timeless, a playground of shimmering richness. It was the original commuter route of the stars, bursting into prominence with bars and dance clubs in the 1920s and 1930s.

Clark Gable hung out on the Strip. At a place called Villanova, now the Rainbow Room, Marilyn Monroe met Joe DiMaggio. The 1960s television drama, “77 Sunset Strip,” glamorized Sunset Boulevard even as the street was hearing the strident muses of rock music. A handful of clubs such as the Roxy, the Whisky and Gazzarri’s became the springboard for stars from Jimi Hendrix to Neil Young.

Luxury hotels sprang up; one, the Chateau Marmont, gained later notoriety as the place where comic John Belushi was found dead of a drug overdose. Trendy outdoor cafes and pricey restaurants now cater to celebrities and the power brokers of the film and music industries. Every night, Rolls-Royces and limousines come and go from Spago, Le Dome, Nicky Blair’s and other well-known restaurants.

“It’s been the definitive nightspot for the past 50 years,” Catherine Stribling, executive director of the nonprofit West Hollywood Marketing Corp., said of the Strip. “It’s a world-class boulevard . . . one of the few places in L.A. that’s truly pedestrian-oriented.

“For my mother’s generation, it was where the stars dined,” she added. “For my generation, it was the birth of rock ‘n’ roll in Southern California, the birth of the Doors, all the groups of the ‘60s. The first place I came when I moved to California from New York was the Sunset Strip.”

Today, the Strip is as busy as ever, if not more so. About 60,000 cars travel the street each 24 hours, most of them, it seems, on Friday and Saturday nights when cruisers clog up traffic. On such nights, West Hollywood’s population more than doubles, reaching 70,000 or 80,000, if one counts the Strip crowds.

“At night, a lot of the freaks come out,” said Jason Ebsworth, 24, who wears dreadlocks as he works the counter at Gil Turner’s liquor store on the Strip’s western end. “You see people in mohawks, colored hair, weird clothes, guys who look like girls, girls who look like guys. It looks like Halloween.”

Two patrons come in for beer, holding $16.50 tickets for the night’s show at the Roxy, where Buddy Guy is headlining. They have exciting news.

“Eric Clapton just walked in down there,” announces Charlie Norrie, 24, of Northridge. “We were standing there, getting tickets, and he just walked in.”

Clapton turns out to be the Roxy’s surprise guest this night. Word spreads quickly, especially in the line out front, where 50 people are gathered early for the 11 o’clock show.

Russell Dowdy, 39, a former employee at Sequoia National Park who is passing through town on his way to a new job in Costa Rica, doesn’t know whether to believe the rumor. “I’d love to see Clapton,” he admits. “But if he doesn’t show up--I actually came to see Buddy Guy. But it would be nice.”

Booming guitar rhythms already are filtering into the street. Down the block, the Whisky is filling up to see Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians.

At Tattoo Mania, a cluster of bikers and teen-agers, one with half of his head shaved, mill about as work continues on the young woman from Irvine. “Oh God, it stings!” she says, turning the other cheek to allow the artist to complete his delicate task.

The job done, she is told to keep the fresh tattoo out of direct sunlight. “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Paolucci assures her.

At Spago, which occupies an embankment high above the boulevard, a TV fan with a video camera is filming from the steep sidewalk outside the door. From an impossible angle, he is trying to capture the mastications of “Hunter” star Fred Dryer.

“He’s eating. He’s right up against the wall,” says the fan, James Flores, 32, a visitor from San Antonio. “He just bit the spoon.”

Inside, attorney Joel Kleinberg, 48, of Pasadena sits at the green marble bar, nursing a drink while his 16-year-old daughter boogies at the Whisky. He gives a thumbs-up to the duck-sausage appetizer, but has harsh words for Spago’s salmon with Maui onions.

At any rate, don’t count Kleinberg among those who are overly impressed with the Strip. “For kids my daughter’s age, it’s the place to be,” he says with a tolerant smile. “For the mature Pasadenian, it’s irrelevant.”

Even at midnight on a weeknight, the restaurants are crowded. The paparazzi are stationed outside Le Dome, where two stretch limousines fill the curb.

“We’re waiting for Elton John,” says one of them, Bob Watson, who commutes between Los Angeles and New York, shooting for tabloids and magazines. “We don’t know if he’ll be back. He was here for lunch.”

Watson sounds jaded as he talks about the stars and the miles he has chased them for profit. Sleeping on airplanes, racing to meet deadlines--he is weary of it. But the Strip is his gold mine.

“At these outdoor cafes,” he says, glancing up the street, “you’ll see people from Faye Dunaway . . . to Elizabeth Taylor. We just saw Billy Idol go by tonight on a bike, a little while ago.”

At 1 a.m., thunderous music fills the upstairs disco at the Rainbow Room, making it too loud to talk. The dark dining room downstairs twinkles with tiny multicolored lights and framed gold albums. At almost every table are men in open-neck shirts, women in tights and plunging necklines, and beer bottles. Forests of beer bottles.

White-haired proprietor Mario Maglieri, 68, has been a part of this scene for three decades. “Right here, John Lennon, the Beatles! How much bigger can you get?” he demands, remembering some of the stars. “Janis Joplin. I remember buying her a bottle of Southern Comfort three days before she OD’d.”