Throwback Thursday: A Christian nightclub on the 1970s Sunset Strip
The Sunset Strip isn’t exactly the place where religious values have flourished, but back in the 1970s, it was home to the nation’s first Christian nightclub.
The spot was called Right On, and it was described in an Aug 19, 1971, story in The Times.
It had a neon sign and was “psychedelically decorated,” but beyond that it probably didn’t have much in common with its Strip neighbors.
The clientele were “clean-cut, finely pressed, hair in place, mother’s dream, Orange County safe, and even bushy-tailed,” reporter Alan Cartnal wrote. There were families there -- policemen with their wives -- enjoying “a clean place” to take the kids where they could sit together and listen to “the Lord’s music,” as a West Covina housewife put it.
The club’s star performer was named Laara Lacy (yes, that’s two As, according to the story), a woman who claimed to give herself “totally to Jesus before every performance.”
If the nightclub doesn’t embody the stereotype of that era, her quotes do.
“The church is you, man,” she said. “It isn’t rules. I can live whatever lifestyle I want.”
Read the whole story, which, by the way, is laced with song lyrics, here.
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Twitter: @lauraelizdavis
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