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<\/p>\n\n\tThere was a time when Hollywood Boulevard was a truly glamorous destination.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tDuring the 1920s, the film industry was booming and the municipality of Hollywood was freshly incorporated into the city of Los Angeles. Prospect Avenue was renamed Hollywood Boulevard, and a flurry of tony hotels, palatial theaters and glitzy boutiques opened along the stretch between Vine Street and Highland Avenue. Dreamers from all around the country made their way west to be discovered along the boulevard \u2014 at the soda fountain of Schwab\u2019s Pharmacy (corner of Cosmo) or Caf\u00e9 Montmartre (between Highland and McCadden). Most movie stars of the time lived above the boulevard in the Hollywood Hills, and the first Academy Awards ceremony took place at the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel (a venue that seems inconceivable today).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tBut that is not a Hollywood I have ever experienced. The Hollywood & Highland shopping center \u2014 a failed attempt to revitalize the neighborhood \u00e0\u202fla Times Square during the 1990s \u2014 opened in 2001, when I was 14. The Academy Awards ceremony took up permanent residency at the Kodak (now Dolby) Theatre inside that same shopping center (a forced marriage if ever there was one) in 2002. But even the Oscars couldn\u2019t bring back Hollywood\u2019s lost glory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tFrank Sinatra etched his signature in concrete in 1961.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNextrecord Archives\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\n\tLike most Angelenos, I rarely visit Hollywood today, except for the occasional nostalgic dinner at Musso & Frank or a Sunday morning stroll through the farmers market. Yet I found myself there on a recent weekday afternoon, walking down Vine to Trader Joe\u2019s. As I did, I read the starred names at my feet: Bob Burns, Frank Crumit, Audie Murphy \u2026 I\u2019m ashamed to admit I had no idea who these people were, and the tourists around me seemed no wiser. They, too, struggled to identify figures along the Walk of Fame that spoke to them. Michael Jackson\u2019s star got a photo, as did Jennifer Aniston\u2019s, while Judy Garland\u2019s star only got a finger point and countless others drew nothing more than an oblivious glance. And even with new stars added almost weekly, it\u2019s hard to imagine how relevant the Walk of Fame, or the handprints in front of what was once known as Grauman\u2019s Chinese Theatre, will be in the coming years as film and TV stars increasingly cede the spotlight to a raft of new media celebrities. Will MrBeast and Bella Poarch one day have landmarks dedicated to their legacies? Probably. Will they be in Hollywood? Probably not.<\/p>\n
\n\tThen what are tourists coming here hoping to find? Are they even coming at all?<\/p>\n
\n\tAs the traditional entertainment industry continues to contract, Hollywood\u2019s allure to visitors clearly loses its appeal \u2014 and that has massive implications for L.A., which for decades has counted on Hollywood to bring in billions in tourism dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAccording to the Hollywood Partnership, a nonprofit dedicated to the beautification and economic vitality of the neighborhood, foot traffic around the entertainment district has dropped about 50 percent the past year and has never fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels. And it\u2019s clear why: The area is neglected, dirty, uncomfortable to be in. Plus, what is there really to see or do in Hollywood? Get hustled by a knockoff Spider-Man in front of the Chinese Theatre, then eat at Wetzel\u2019s Pretzels as you wander past the various Scientology centers along the boulevard?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tGone are the days of sitting in the audience for a live taping of a hit show. If, as Eve Babitz wrote, \u201cthere was never any visible Hollywood,\u201d then even the invisible Hollywood is fading. The neighborhood is no longer the center of film and television production. And Los Angeles more broadly is no longer where many of the people who make up the industry live.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tA once-glamorous stretch of the Walk of Fame with Mary Pickford\u2019s star.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRick Loomis\/Los Angeles Times\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\n\tI was beginning to despair about this grim outlook. I called Eric Avila, professor of Chicano studies and urban planning at UCLA and a preeminent historian of Los Angeles. Surely he could give me some perspective. \u201cFor those of us who do not live in Hollywood or the Westside, there\u2019s never been the issue of Hollywood and L.A. being the same thing,\u201d he says. Yet this feeling of the industry crumbling \u201cgoes back decades. It was really in the late \u201960s and \u201970s that Hollywood [the neighborhood] started becoming less \u2018Hollywood\u2019 because production was leaving the L.A. basin.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tFilm production dwindled in Culver City around the same time, Avila explains. Both MGM and Culver Studios changed hands between multiple investors from the late 1950s into the early 1970s. Meanwhile, a string of box office flops led 20th Century Fox to sell off much of its backlot, just north of the 10 Freeway, to real estate developers in 1961, creating what would be Century City. As for the studios in Hollywood proper, \u201cProduction began leaving in the \u201970s, and it was in that decade when you really saw the neighborhood become seedy,\u201d Avila notes. In other words: Los Angeles has been through this before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tStill, I couldn\u2019t shake the feeling that this time is different, that the city is quickly shedding part of its core image as a dream factory, the ultimate destination for fame seekers.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe pandemic showed people that you don\u2019t have to live here to be in Hollywood,\u201d John Terzian tells me when I express my concern about our hometown. As the co-owner of The h.wood Group, Terzian runs such celebrity hotspots as the Bird Streets Club, The Nice Guy and Delilah and has a sense of where the cultural winds are blowing. And he doesn\u2019t seem overly concerned. \u201cMaybe the rich are leaving, sure,\u201d he says, \u201cbut that doesn\u2019t change much. The glitz and glamour of L.A. will always be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAs for that nagging sense that L.A. never fully bounced back from the pandemic, Terzian argues that feeling is widespread. \u201cIt\u2019s Miami, it\u2019s New York, I\u2019m even seeing it in London,\u201d he says. \u201cCities are really going through something right now. But fundamentally, I think this is the greatest city in the world, and I think we\u2019re just going through a rough period.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe impact of COVID and the accompanying lockdowns might have been universal, but Los\u202fAngeles has suffered a series of blows since then that has left the city reeling: a four-month general strike by SAG-AFTRA and the WGA, followed by the Palisades and Eaton fires and now the ICE raids that have dragged on since the summer \u2014 to say nothing of the recent spate of layoffs, studio consolidation and the looming threats of AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe pandemic was rough, but what I think is more impactful right now are immigration policies,\u201d says Avila. Immigration and diversity have long been L.A.\u2019s strength, and it was immigration that has revitalized the city time and again, as it did after production left Hollywood. The neighborhood deteriorated throughout the 1980s and \u201990s, even as newcomers from Central America, Southeast Asia and the Soviet Union poured in. East Hollywood, specifically, \u201cbecame a very ethnically and racially diverse part of the city,\u201d Avila says. During the early \u201990s, Thai Town and Little Armenia were born in conjunction with a redevelopment plan for Hollywood, \u201cbut it was all centered around tourism and making tourism the anchor of new economic activity in the face of film production leaving the area.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIs that what Hollywood needs today, redevelopment?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tThe water tower of Warner Bros., whose impending sale is a reminder of the industry\u2019s contraction. <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAaronP\/Bauer-Griffin\/GC Images\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\n\tNo, says Leo Pustilnikov, one of L.A.\u2019s most prolific real estate developers. \u201cA great example is the Hollywood & Highland center. It was promised to be the rebirth of Hollywood in 2001, and then it didn\u2019t do well. Then it got resold, had new plans approved, and it didn\u2019t do well again. And so it got resold, they were going to redo it again, and it\u2019s still not doing well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tLuckily for Los Angeles, we are not just Hollywood. The city\u2019s self-image may be tied to the entertainment business, but that is not our largest employer (it\u2019s far behind the public sector, education, health care and hospitality). So as the industry changes, and as production jobs leave, holding on to the past will only lead to the city\u2019s stagnation and ultimately its collapse. Just look at Detroit, the quintessential one-industry town, which is only now starting to recover from decades of urban failure. The rows of souvenir shops selling 4-inch-tall plastic Oscar statuettes are not the permanent fate of Hollywood Boulevard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe only constant thing about L.A., especially its identity, is that it\u2019s always been changing,\u201d concludes Avila. \u201cHollywood was a powerful force in defining the identity of L.A., but that wasn\u2019t permanent.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter all, it wasn\u2019t until the 1920s that a loose collection of barley fields and citrus groves on the western edge of the continent reinvented itself almost overnight into the epicenter of global media production. The Hollywood of the past is disappearing fast, but something new will surely emerge, something that will transform it once again. If anyone knows how to do a bigger, more expensive sequel, it\u2019s Hollywood.\u00a0<\/p>\n