The Clash of Glamour and Grunge

It begins, as these things often do at Hollywood and Vine, with an exotic dancer of indeterminate sex. Looking fetching in a short brown skirt and long, bottle-blond hair, she (he?) is sauntering west on Hollywood Boulevard when a rap trio known as Simpson County Gangsters breaks into an impromptu hip-hop chorus about “peace, politics and prison reform.”

“We’re from Jackson, Mississippi,” says Big Tilla, 26, the group’s leader, “but we really like Hollywood.”

As the afternoon crowd thickens at the fabled intersection, Big Tilla and friends are joined by media hound “Melrose” Larry Green, out hustling votes for an L.A. City Council seat, and his friend Larry “Wild Man” Fischer, whose raving sidewalk singspiels made him a ‘60s cult figure.

Before long, a towering babble of voices is rising from this legendary crossroads. “I’d like to see Hollywood Boulevard restored to the grandeur of the ‘40s,” Green is saying to anyone who will listen, echoing a line that has become a virtual mantra of Hollywood Boulevard’s oft-proclaimed “comeback.”

Strange encounters and would-be visionaries are nothing new at Hollywood and Vine. Yet it’s hard to imagine this motley milieu was exactly what Walt Disney Co. desired when it decided to bring its blockbuster stage musical “The Lion King” to the 2,700-seat Pantages Theatre, which got a $10-million face-lift for the occasion.

So far, “The Lion King” has been a big success, selling out most of its eight weekly performances since opening in October. But Disney’s presence has put Hollywood and Vine at the center of a high-stakes culture clash. Flanked by parking lots, a taco stand, a tattoo parlor, a bar, a planned upmarket office tower, a movie memorabilia shop and the entrance to the MTA’s Red Line subway station, Disney’s G-rated encampment underscores the intersection’s startling contrasts between grandeur and grunge, its abrupt lapses from penthouse to pavement.

And with the anthropomorphic musical (estimated cost: $20 million) parked at the Pantages at least through next fall, and real estate speculators pumping millions of dollars into the surrounding neighborhood, the area soon may be moving to an even faster tango of dueling realities. There is much confident talk of Hollywood Boulevard, between Gower and La Brea as the new Third Street Promenade, the new Old Town Pasadena, the new Times Square or 42nd Street in New York. Indeed, in the mid-’90s, Disney’s purchase of the New Amsterdam Theatre helped spur a rejuvenation of 42nd Street. Some in Hollywood are forecasting similar results from the company’s opening of “The Lion King” here, building on what it has already established with the El Capitan movie house down the street to the west.

“Hollywood has always had a very eclectic mix and--as far as I can tell--it always will,” says David Green (no relation to “Melrose” Larry Green), senior vice president of Nederlander California, which operates the Art Deco Pantages. “When I was growing up in Detroit, Hollywood was magic. I believe we have to ultimately restore the magic, whether it’s new magic or old magic.”

Practically from the moment it was fabricated out of Horace Wilcox’s subdivided ranch, Hollywood and Vine (nee Prospect and Weyse) has been the locus of a million fantasies, a million schemes for hitting the big time. For generations of gawking tourists and misty-eyed locals, it has signified a certain Old Hollywood glamour, preserved in sepia-tinged mind’s-eye snapshots: Gable and Lombard lunching at the old Brown Derby; gossip columnist Hedda Hopper dishing dirt from her office in the Equitable Building; velvet-toned radio announcers “coming to you live from Hollywood and Vine.”

But this is also a hub of opportunity and self-promotion, hustle and seduction, whether the commodity happens to be T-shirts or T-1 wired office suites. Since World War II, as the corner slid into disrepair and disrepute, it has been a place where F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Hollywood of last tycoons and gamy ingenues body-slams into Charles Bukowski’s Hollywood of barflies, lounge poets and unreconstructed crazies. Today, it’s where cocky dot-com entrepreneurs in B-Boy attire cross paths with struggling acting coaches, where Armani-clad couples en route to fashionable Ex Incendo restaurant brush past families bound for evening Bible-study class.

Keeping It on an Upbeat Note

“Hollywood’s problem has never been having people come,” says David Green. “It’s what they do when they get here.”

Marketing slogans set the current upbeat tone at the interchange’s northeast corner. “Awe-inspiring! A gorgeous, gasp-inducing spectacle!” reads one banner strung from the Pantages--a critic’s gushing appraisal of “The Lion King.” “Hollywood Has Waited Long Enough” intones another hanging from 6253 Hollywood at Vine, a.k.a the old Equitable Building.

Twelve stories of Streamline Moderne elegance with neo-Gothic flourishes, the Depression-era tower is being gutted and refurbished by L.A. urban redevelopment prospector Tom Gilmore. Besides 100,000 square feet of office space, it will offer an all-night ‘60s-themed diner, a quality Hollywood collectibles store and an aggressively hip live-music venue, the Ultra Lounge. “It’s where you can go see the Limp Bizkit of tomorrow,” says John Tronson of Ramsey Shilling Co., the building’s leasing agent. All three venues hope to open in March.

While many see change here as inevitable and desirable, some wonder how the corporatized New Hollywood will coexist with what’s left of the Old Hollywood and the funky urban demimonde that might be termed the Other Hollywood.

These three Hollywoods rub shoulders outside the Frolic Room, the well-known landmark bar that occupies one of the Pantages’ ground-floor storefronts.

Book-ended by Ronnie’s Donuts and Collectors Movie Memorabilia, the circa-1930 watering hole is a working-class joint that had a cameo role in Curtis Hanson’s neo-noir flick “L.A. Confidential.” Customers stare into the motionless eyes of Joan Crawford, Groucho Marx and other Hollywood luminaries depicted in a 1963 Al Hirschfeld mural, which the bar recently restored. On any given night, you may spot a gaggle of slumming actors here, or a rock star trying to look inconspicuous.

“On weekends, it’s, like, beautiful people,” says Frolic regular Mike Donahue. “I have to take a shower on weekends. The looky-loos from the Pantages stick their heads in. It’s like women dressed for the opera come in here mingling with scuzz bags in jumpsuits. You can see a little bit of disgust in these people’s faces when they come in.”

He’s right. “I don’t feel safe walking down the streets,” winces Kim, a young woman from San Diego, waiting outside the Pantages before a recent evening performance. “We kind of got down here early. We thought there’d be more to do,” says her brother Scott, who--like his sister--wouldn’t give his last name.

A few months ago, the Frolic Room found itself in a slight dust-up when the Pantages was undergoing its restoration to prepare for “The Lion King’s” opening. Reports surfaced that the Nederlanders had demanded the Frolic take down its famous neon sign. Other rumors suggested the bar might be moving. “That was never part of the plan,” insists the Nederlanders’ Green. “I think they cleaned the sign, and we thought that was good.”

The bar’s owners won’t talk about the incident, other than to confirm they recently signed a three-year lease. But one, who asked not to be named, says he’s doubtful about Hollywood’s reputed resurgence. “This isn’t Rodeo Drive,” he says, somewhat wistfully.

A More Subdued Effect

“Lion King” patrons who park on Vine, south of the Boulevard, won’t see the Derby, Al Levy’s Tavern, Clara Bow’s It Cafe or any of the intersection’s other mythic hot spots that long ago fell to the wrecking ball. Instead, on Vine’s west side, they’ll encounter a medical supply store, an apartment building and several empty storefronts. The James A. Doolittle Theatre, where “CBS Radio Playhouse” once broadcast, sports posters touting a show that closed more than a year ago. “Selena Forever,” a musical about the slain tejano pop star, is supposed to open there in January.

The block’s subdued midafternoon appearance contrasts sharply with the livelier after-hours tempo north of the Boulevard, where the popular Palace nightclub, housed in a former TV studio, has become a showcase for alternative rock bands like Velvet Acid Christ and Slaves on Dope. Across the street, Capitol Records has announced plans to expand its presence in Hollywood, though that news has been marred by allegations that the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency overpaid a landowner for a parcel the city later sold to Capitol for a parking lot.

One business that’s thriving on all sides of the Boulevard--thanks to “The Lion King”--is, in fact, parking lots. Heading north on Vine’s east side, you’ll also pass a juice bar, a psychic reader, a beauty salon and a luggage store before arriving at the venerable Taft Building, which lists a surreal tenant roster: Cult Awareness Network, Fantasy Machine and Movie Co., Electrolysis by Laura, Phatt Phunk Records.

Roaming the antique structure, you’ll find a handful of high-tech start-ups like Fuzzy Logik Media Inc., which distributes electronic dance music, and Open Mic, a quarterly DVD “digizine” devoted to pretty much whatever gets a rise out of Generation Y.

What drew these hipster enterprises to this creaky interchange?

“It’s definitely a nice place to be in, because it’s real centralized,” says Fuzzy Logik’s Dan Glueck, 34, swigging Pepsi and multi-tasking with a cell phone and a laptop in his sparse 10th-floor office.

“I just like the classic feel of the building,” says Selvyn Price, 28, president and CEO of DigiLand Media and Peelhead.com, Open Mic’s parent companies. “You know [the movie] ‘Batman’? It kind of reminds me of that, the mix of the old and the new.”

Hollywood and Vine’s retro-futuristic vibe can be felt on the Taft’s ground floor, too, but in a different way. For the last 16 years, Jeremiah Comey has been teaching what he calls “the 5 Arts of Film Acting” in a 900-square-foot storefront that formerly was part of the Firefly, a trendy Hollywood haunt. These days, its principal contents are a dozen director’s chairs, a pair of video cameras attached to an overhead monitor and a rotating group of acting students for whom the neighborhood retains a certain “Day of the Locust” cachet.

“You think of Hollywood glamour, and this is kind of rundown,” says Ryan McTavish, 26, a Rob Lowe look-alike who recently moved to the Hollywood Hills from Manhattan Beach. But Hollywood and Vine still embodies what McTavish calls “the Hollywood dream--the dream to be a star.”

That particular dream faded some years ago for Comey, 56, after he came west from Philadelphia and was almost cast in the movie version of “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.” Now he’s struggling to keep another dream alive in the face of a possible rent increase. “The sad thing is, if they take it up too much, I’m not going to be able to stay here,” he says.

Way of Life for Squatters

Nothing stands still for long here, not even the runaways slumped outside the tattoo/piercing parlor on the northwest corner, listlessly watching the rush-hour traffic. Sarah, 18, and her friend Melissa, 16, who wears a pacifier around her neck, say that it’s getting harder to find places to squat in Hollywood. Several abandoned buildings formerly used by squatters have been torn down or boarded up, and the Hollywood Entertainment District has been employing private security officers to patrol the streets. Though the area is home to several hostels, shelters and emergency canteens, the girls stick to less regimented living quarters. “You can sleep under the [101] Freeway bridge sometimes,” Sarah says authoritatively.

Across the Boulevard, the crisp snap of a parking attendant’s flag signals the first wave of “Lion King” arrivals. Several dancers, lean and regal as cheetahs, make their way to the stage door off Argyle Street. From the top of the old Equitable, a gigantic luminous lion’s head floats like a golden totem.

Inside the Frolic Room, bartender and in-house maintenance man Mikee Tyler, 40, says he’s glad to have Disney as a next-door neighbor. Born and bred in Hollywood, he has watched over the years as the Boulevard dwindled from a lively esplanade to a scary, dingy thoroughfare where streetwalkers carouse and panhandlers accost.

The Hollywood of cruising, late-night shopping and endless star-studded movie premieres, he knows, is as extinct as the cinematic gods and goddesses in Hirschfeld’s mural. But he hasn’t given up on its replacement. “This isn’t Times Square, this is not New York,” he shouts over the jukebox. “But I think we’ll do fine on our own. Hollywood is rebounding very nicely.”

Old Hollywoods, New Hollywoods, and the chance that a better prospect soon may come strolling down Hollywood and Vine.