Take me back to 70s Los Angeles

The whole world was magical in the 70s.

I remember dancing with Wayland and Madame at Studio One.

I fantasize being a funky artist living in Laurel Canyon, but having rich movie star pals to hang with elsewhere.

It wasn't OP but dare to dream.

Shit, yeah. I had never lived in a true World City before, and L.A. felt like a Mediterranean/South American city to me--the architecture, the Spanish names on every street, etc., plus seeing people from all over the world was great. Great looking guys. I got an offer to be a personal assistant to this handsome 'producer,' but I was too shy and thought it might be a hassle. I'd never met so many interesting people, in the film industry and out. Most of the parties I went to were film underlings and they were miserable in their jobs. I could write forever on this topic but I'm interested in what others have to say.

The 70s in general were pretty amazing.

R5 Please write more, anything. I'm writing something about LA in the mid-70s and I'm researching it so anything you got is interesting.

I’m writing a book on 70s stars and he’s included. Don’t be so harsh and judgmental. Just looking for different opinions.

all the homes were so modern , too

R8 ?

The beginning of the end for LA---people started whining about the immigrants while also talking about how cheap it was to find a gardener. Migration by Anglos to there began to slow. The traffic wasn't yet sclerotic. It probably helped that enough people had been there and discovered that the weather isn't always "perfect", the Pacific is cold, the friendliness is mostly for show, and the people weren't that pretty.

Wasn't there still a lot of smog in the 70s? And weren't the beaches still free then?

Los Angeles in the 70s was beautiful. The smog had been very much reduced, it was before the top of the wave of influx from the northeast, and many of the iconic spots still existed--The Brown Derby, Marineland, Santa Monica Pier (not Disney-fied), etc. The beaches were not that clean, but they were okay. Housing was pretty affordable, lots of cool restaurants. I loved it. MANY good looking people.

Tell us about the nightclub scene. Was PROBE open then?

The migration from the Midwest and NE was taliling off duringthe 70s. Rising housing costs and white flight from the Valleys to deadly places like Inland Empire and Simi Valley started to make it less attractive in the 80s.

Was traffic any different than it is now?

R14, it made it more attractive to me when the white element moved to the valleys. L.A. proper became cooler and edgier, which is why I loved it. Viva la vida loca, man!

Someone direct me to the local gloryholes, ya dig?

Far out, man.

By the end of the 70s, San Diego was the more favored destination to move. Real estate was still affordable there.

We bought a starter house in the valley for $35K. Honest! And then we moved on to a house nearby with a pool for only $55K. I got to indulge my love of cars. Top down, dog in the back, ears flapping in the breeze. Breakfasts at the French Market, drinks at the Blue Parrot and dancing at Studio One and the Circus Disco. . Did a lot of trips to Big Bear for skiing (lol) and fresh air. I never really got used to L.A. though. Esp. around the holidays. Maybe if I'd lived up in the Hills I'd appreciate it more. Moved up to SF after 6 years.

Great details, R20. Were you "in the industry" back then?

How much did "civilians" mix with people in movies/TV/music back then?

S M O G

When did all the noo yawk jews take over the city?

R16 - I was in LA from 86 to 92 and the traffic now is horrific compared to the late 80s; much less the 70s.

In all of the LA based hair metal books they all mention the Motley Crue apartment and more intriguing an old abandoned mansion where teens would party every weekend. I'd love to find out more about the mansion and its history.

Yeah, the traffic got progressively worse over the years and by the late nineties was really bad. The 405 was a nightmare almost all the time. I was on it at 3 am one morning and there was STILL traffic, plus they do maintenance work on the freeways at that hour. I never experienced having any money in L.A. until 2000 to when I left in 2009. Before that I lived a kind of semi-boho lifestyle, knew people in mt. washington, silverlake, echo park, east l.a. and finally marina del rey. Even without money there was a lot to do and enjoy and cheap, good ethnic food all over. We used to like going to Venice Beach and just walking the esplanade, then eating somewhere. Keanu Reeves used to play roller hockey in Santa Monica. The Rose was a cool cafe. I can't stop--I was really in love with Los Angeles.--not to mention 4 guys there over the years.

Not in the industry R21. I worked for an outfit called Club Universe that sold 7-day tours to Hawaii (Oahu) for $375, including air, transfers and 7 nights in a hotel! I made $500 a month doing that. I did have some friends/acquaintances in the industry (movies and music) and did PR for a few celebrities on a group project but quit to move to SF and become a free-lance writer with a buddy of mine up there. Nothing big. We wrote features for papers like the Bay Area Reporter on gay celebrities like Sylvester. I don't miss L.A. and haven't been back.

There were a lot of big uncut cocks

But there was a lot of body odor too

Any stats you knew uncut?

Stars?

[quote]an old abandoned mansion where teens would party every weekend.

I don’t understand abandoned mansions. Who the hell has a mansion and just goes, “nah”?

[quote] We wrote features for papers like the Bay Area Reporter on gay celebrities like Sylvester.

I never knew he was gay. But now that I look at some pictures, he could be smelling cookies and not Tweety.

Was it true that everyone was gay in L.A.?

Nobody walks in L.A.

She had to leave Los Angeles.

My parents worked their way across the country to move to LA from Boston in the 70s. My dad had lived there earlier and loved it. My mom said she had a different feeling there than in New England, it was more uninhibited to her and wilder, but nothing obvious. They moved back eventually because they missed people, but they had a good time there, lived in Venice, San Pedro, and the Valley.

[quote]The whole world was magical in the 70s.

Probably because everyone was high as fuck and parents didn't hover over their children.

[quote]And weren't the beaches still free then?

I've lived here for 30+ years and have never paid to go to any beach. Are you referring to the state park beaches that charge fan admission fee for parking and upkeep?

*an admission fee

R37 I'm referring to this.

Lived in Ocean Park/Venice in the 70s. It was shabby chic... and sometimes not so chic. Lots of fun crime and drugs and boho vibe. Lived in a run down shack a couple blocks from the beach near Jane Fonda and the landlord offered me a chance to buy it .... for.... wait for it..... $17,000. Seventeen thousand. I turned it down.

Pacific Ocean Park pier would burn every couple months. Apocalyptic fire out in the ocean.

It was paradise.

Woulda been perfect if only you'd joined Charlie in his race war, ya little PIGGIES!

[quote] Lived in a run down shack

Were you my neighbor?

R41 That was 1969, not the 70s hon.

My mother took me to LA in '78 (I was a lad) and we took a tour of Universal Studios, saw an episode of "Alice" being recorded, a "Tonight Show" recorded, and we also went to Disneyland.

We went to Beverly Hills, ate at The Gingerman (owned by Carroll O'Connor), went to Rodeo Drive (Gucci). In '79, there was a Gucci Cadillac Seville. There was one outside the Gucci store, parked right in front, and it had multiple parking tickets stuck under the windshield wiper.

I don't remember too much about anything but the spectacle of it, though. I was too young to pay attention to details.

I always wanted to go to L'Orangerie and stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel. L'Orangerie doesn't exist anymore, although I think the building is still a restaurant. and the BVH seems too overpriced to make sense. Why piss away $$$ on the hotel when you can use the money for the experience part of the trip.

Great post, r44. Seriously, I enjoyed it.

Oh. I woulda sworn the trials and the rest of the Manson circus occurred in the early/mid-Seventies, R43. Hon.

R25 ah, yes, the Motley house. Deepest lore.

Nikki Sixx & Vince Neil used to have three-ways with girls in there, which with one girl between them was not as hetero as they thought it was.

[quote]I don’t understand abandoned mansions. Who the hell has a mansion and just goes, “nah”?

R31:

My grandparents lived in Palos Verdes in The seventies. It was beautiful and smelled like eucalyptus. Wild peacocks roamed the streets and it still had a rural feel. At night we would walk down to the end of the road to see the lights laid out up to the edge of the Pacific. We went to the Hollywood Bowl, out to eat Mexican food, to the beach, La Brea Tar Pits, Marine land, Disneyland. Olivera Street was kitschy but fun. It was a dream that ended abruptly when my grandpa died of heart disease at age 58. That was it for my childhood and wonderful LA in the seventies....I did watch Once Upon a Time in Hollywood over and over to get the memories of how it looked. Nothing is like it was, anywhere.

There was a songwriter in L.A. called Allee Willis (RIP) who had a fabulous house out in the Valley with all this cool 50-60s memorabilia. She also had a fantastic 50s car collection. She would sometimes show up at my parties and tip her hat when I played one of her hits ("Neutron Dance" was a fave at the time). She was a real character and kind of took me under her wing. This was late 70s early 80s. Through Allee I met her friends and became involved in doing PR for a really awful "movie" she concocted with celebrities like Bette Midler, Toni Basil, Linda Rondstat, etc. The movie was dedicated to her hot girlfriend (singer Lauren Wood aka Chunky) and revolved around a song she sang which kept being stolen by her fellow stars -- "The Most Beautiful Car in the World." Yeah, it was that bad. Never released. At the time, L.A. was kind of the place to be with Valley Girl and all these other LA-centric movies being released. Last time I saw them all was at a party at a mansion in Pasadena when AIDS was just about to hit. Close for a time, we all went out separate ways. The party was definitely over but it sure was fun while it lasted.

For a while I lived in an area above the Hollywood Bowl off Highland Ave called Alta Loma Terrace. There were no cars, just sidewalks and an outdoor elevator that took you up to the houses and apts. A bunch of us shared a home that once belonged to the lady who played Snow White. It was on a double lot and had a wishing well in the backyard. Bette Davis lived across the way at one time. The most infamous/notorious resident when I lived there was Joey Heatherton's ex Lance Rentzel a very cute perverted football player who had been kicked off the Dallas Cowboys for exposing himself to a child. He was still an exhibitionist (old habits, etc.) and was told by neighbors to keep his window shades down. If you met him, he wouldn't look up, knowing his own reputation. But he still would expose himself to men and women who were waiting for the elevator which was just outside his front door.

R51 There are still places in LA where there are no streets, just "walks"... Echo Park, Venice.

R51 There are still places in LA where there are no streets, just "walks"... Echo Park, Venice.

The iconic elevator from Alta Loma Terrace. If you've ever seen the Kenneth Branagh/Emma Thompson movie "Dead Again," the final scene takes place on in Lance Rentzel's old place (top right in photo).

Here's the photo...

I moved out to LA from NYC in '75 (the Great Migration). My first place was up on Gower in the hills by Beechwood Canyon. Down the hill were all the old studios (Columbia, Paramount, RKO, etc.) lined up in "Gower Gulch." My first impression of Hollywood was how sleazy Hollywood Boulevard was. There was Hollywood glamour at all. I had this image in my mind of something completely different. Eventually I got an apartment on Camino Palmero. At the top of the street was the Nelson house from Ozzy and Harriet. I was always hoping I'd see my childhood idol - Ricky Nelson. Never did. He was doing massive amounts of coke up in Errol Flynn's old place on Mulholland by then. On Santa Monica between Highland and LaBrea the hustlers spread out waiting for cars to stop for a quick blow job on a side street. The LA cops were brutal. They hated the gays but seemed to leave the rent boys alone.

R39, that list is for parking, which of course is not free. I've gone to several of those beaches for free because I found somewhere else to park and walked over.

About the abandoned mansions, one of the houses Joan Didion lived in at the end of the 60s into the 1970s on Franklin Ave. in Hollywood was a particular neighborhood where many of these houses were and she describes them in some of her essays. They left that house and moved to Malibu and expected it would have been torn down, but it ended up surviving. Here’s an article about the house now as a religious center.

[quote] that list is for parking, which of course is not free. I've gone to several of those beaches for free because I found somewhere else to park and walked over.

R57I was always referring to parking fees, not admission fees. Most beaches don't charge admission for walk-ins. I assumed it was obvious what I meant. But you're arguing over a technicality.

Native Angeleno born in 1980. I was going to ask to tell me about Studio One, but realized it is (or was) the Factory. It was called Axis when I was a gayling in the late 90's when they used to have 18 & over nights called "Campus" on Thursdays. It was fun, but nothing extraordinary. They had just banned smoking indoors during that time. Was this the West Coast answer to Studio 54 in the 70's?

I have a love/hate relationship with LA. I love it because it is a special place, it's cool to have been born here, the weather (which is not as good as it used to be), the landscape, the proximity to some cool destinations, and I know the rules of the game here. I've lived in other places for short amounts of time, but I always come back to LA. So many of the things I like about LA seem to be disappearing. My friends are considering other options or have moved. I just don't know where there is a better place to live.

That whole Foxes- Fast Times at Ridgemont High era seemed so magical.

I lived in SF for a short period of time and one thing that was really cool was this little cafe on Castro Street called The Cove. It probably hasn't changed since the 70's and to reinforce that, they play videos on a constant loop from that late 1970's - 1980's. It's pretty cool to get to experience the period, even if it's virtually. Though the AIDS crisis was looming or had arrived. Everyone seemed so free and wild. All of LA's old school bars are going under.

This is a great thread.

As a kid in the early 70's in LA, it was amazing! We all had ranch houses with ivy in front and Brady Bunch interiors. We'd ride our bikes around and the older kids would skateboard. We all watched the same TV shows; cartoons on Saturday and old movies on Sunday. We had a tennis court and the kids would all come over and rollerskate on it. I really do remember it all very fondly.

I'm such an ancientgay, I remember when they didn't charge for parking.

[quote]the weather (which is not as good as it used to be)

R60 What do you mean?

It was a helluva lot better than it is now. But San Francisco was where it was at. Vastly superior to LA in every way.

A friend of mine once said, in 1975, "LA is a city without parents."

And that was why it felt like. So many of us came from NY, Chicago, and other places where we felt restricted by rules and conventions, most of which were handed down to us by our parents. In LA, we were free of all that. We could wear whatever we wanted -- tight, tight clothes and weird hair styles. We could stay up all night because no one cared if we did or didn't. We could do all kinds of drugs, and we all did. We could pretend we were anyone we wanted to be, and that seldom meant who we had been. Several of my friends changed their names to something more exotic, something that could go on a marquis, or just something completely different (like, my favorite, Frodo Godot). We felt, for the first time in our lives, totally free. We lived in places like Topanga Canyon and felt we were in the country and yet only a half an hour from a major city. It was all both liberating and scary. A number of people I knew lost it. Too many drugs. Too much sex. Too much trying to pretend that you were happy when you were suicidally depressed -- the one thing in LA in the 70s that was tough to do -- admit you were unhappy.

We were the advanced edge of the baby boomers, and we felt as though we were taking over Los Angeles, and with it, the world.

It was the most exhilarating time of my life. I miss it. In the 80s, Reaganism took over, then cocaine and money and big cars and too much money and LA turned into another big city like other big cities. But the 70s were a special time.

James Taylor and Carly Simon moved to LA to sometime after their marriage in late 1972 to live in the 360 N. Rockingham Ave house in Brentwood (sadly what would later become known as the OJ Simpson house, where Simpson lived at the time of Nicole Brown Simpson's death).

Having arrived in LA with far too much success from their respective careers to be able to move into the shabbiness of Laurel Canyon.

Taylor and Simon maintained their Martha's Vineyard home on the East Coast. But their different backgrounds and attitudes toward money and success were already forming the fissures that would ultimately cause the collapse of their marriage.

While Taylor fully embraced the hippie "money and possession are evil" ethos, Carly had grown up in NY townhouse and a country estate in Connecticut. Taylor liked to burnish his simple man hippie image by going barefoot and driving used cars.

But according to Simon's autobiography "Boys In the Trees", Taylor complained about Carly to one of his girlfriends, saying how Carly embarrassed him, looking like just another Jew driving around L.A. in a leased Mercedes.

[quote]Taylor and Simon maintained their Martha's Vineyard home on the East Coast. But their different backgrounds and attitudes toward money and success were already forming the fissures that would ultimately cause the collapse of their marriage.

Bumping a really cool thread to note that Taylor & Simon didn't have radically different backgrounds, at least not socio-economically (both were East Coast upper middle class, JT was WASP and Carly Jewish). The 'fissures' in their marriage were mostly caused by Taylor's huge and galloping heroin addiction.

I don't believe they stayed long in LA, they spent most of their time at their place in the Langham on the UWS and the aforementioned house on the Vineyard.

I love this thread and have enjoyed reading everything from those of you who were there. If you have more stories to share, I'd love to read them and I bet others would too. I like reading about the dreaminess of other eras these days.

I moved there in 84. Smog, smog, smog. So tell me elder gays what was West Hollywood and Silverlake like back 10 years before that? Was it even gay? Was it just a bunch of decorators living there? What was the Blue Perot like? I know about Studio One, but wasn't there another big dance club there? What was it like before the Beverly Center was built?

Please tell me what Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica was like. Looks like an aquatic Emerald City.

[quote]I always wanted to go to L'Orangerie and stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

I went to L'Orangerie, took my partner there for his birthday and was making good money at the time. It was SOOOO expensive. I think the bill was around $600 for just the two of us. And that was with one bottle of cheap wine. Honesty, you didn't miss anything. The food was really good, French style not the best in the world but up there 4 stars maybe. The decor was like a cheesy traditional french chateau, nothing really special. The waiters were plentiful. They worked in teams of 3 or 4 if I recall. That's very old school for a lot of formal dining restaurants. I felt like there was a lot of fakeness among them acting like they knew me as if I went there every week. Really the only thing that was special is the place smelled like fresh oranges because they had real trees in there.

[quote]On Santa Monica between Highland and LaBrea the hustlers spread out waiting for cars to stop for a quick blow job on a side street. The LA cops were brutal. They hated the gays but seemed to leave the rent boys alone.

Ah, yes the make hustlers on SM. They were still there in the 80 's when I lived there. Gone now since the birth of the internet and hookup apps.

Faye was everywhere. As was her cocaine.

Fuck you R 23 and your anti semite crap. Go fuck a trumpster and I hope he kills you after

I was a friend to Vincent Minnelli when he owned that house now abandoned. He gave wonderful dinner parties there. Many extraordinary guests. We sang songs from his films for hours. I always took his film scores to play.

Oh, the 70’s in LA.

Vincent gave me pastel portraits of friends. He felt he owed me for helping me set up a new studio. I said I would love to have some of his artwork. The drawings all resemble Judy. I always ask visitors if the recognize the women he drew. Their response has been remarkably consistent that they see Judy w/o knowing the artist.

Great talent yet tortured by his orientation.

Fred Astaire (most elegantly kind man) once told me “Vinnie never seemed happy even after a great take. Too bad. Too sad.”

R50. I will always love you for this most rare tribute to Allee Willis. I'm digging everywhere to learn more about her. Seems like she was always my kind of impresario. I would die happy simply knowing I was a part of those wonderfully eclectic tunes...and just being near Maurice White would be a most special day.

May Allee rest in fabulous peace forever.

[quote]Faye was everywhere. As was her cocaine.

Mostly I remember Faye was pulled up to the curb (or onto the curb) in her big ol' car at the Blockbuster video honking her horn furiously, because she mistakenly believed they provided curbside service in her cocaine fog...

Eventually she would fling her used videos out the window of her car, in the generally direction of the store, with a profanity-laced tirade (that while impressive, would fail to earn her an Academy award nomination)...

As she reversed her car and squealed away in a righteous fury...

I certainly don't remember it as "magical". Huge sections of LA (and environs) were simply downtrodden, trashy, industrial looking wastelands. Oh wait, it's 2021 and nothing's changed.

[quote]Take me back to 70s Los Angeles

Ireland was nicer.

R68- Cars got SMALLER in the 1980's NOT bigger. Cars were BIG in the 1970's.

If I were a young gay male in the 1970's the San Francisco Bay Area sounds FAR more appealing than Los Angeles and FAR prettier. Less SPRAWL and less SMOG .

"For a while I lived in an area above the Hollywood Bowl off Highland Ave called Alta Loma Terrace. "

Oh my best friend lived there. At the time, that area still had a misty, post-boho vibe for sure.

I was too young to have experienced LA in the 70s (I was born in 76) but I was there in the 90s, and there were still a lot of interesting, damaged people floating around from that era and before, who would tell the wildest stories. I had a great apartment on Sierra Bonita and my next door neighbor was this kook named Joyce, a 50-something yellow-blonde who moved to LA in the late 60s. "I was going to be the next Susan Anspach!" she'd always tell me.

Joyce actually was gorgeous when she was younger - I saw her headshots. But when I met her, she was haggard, driving an old postal jeep filled with garbage, and no license plates. She was always out front drinking a suspicious-looking brown liquid from a measuring cup. "It's my tonic! Hahaha!"

She had this old hippie boyfriend who would just grunt at me from inside their doorway.

One morning after a jog, I saw all of these cop cars in front of their apartment. In the back of one of them was the boyfriend. Joyce was crying to one of the cops, pleading with him. A few neighbors had collected out front, watching , and I asked one of them - a gorgeous escort named John David who always watered his garden in a speedo - what was going on. "Oh, that's Joyce's boyfriend. Apparently he showed his dick to a couple of kids down the street."

He waited a moment then said "you do know who he is right?" I shrugged my shoulders. He chuckled and said "That's Punky Brewster's dad. Ya know, Soleil Moon Frye?"

That to me was LA in a nutshell. You just never knew who you were adjacent to.

If you want to know about the Valley and the LA area in the 1970s, check out valleyrelicsmuseum on Instagram. There’s a lot of posts in the comments about people’s memories of the era, and a lot of great pictures of the era.

Here’s the website. Check out the Instagram.

R73 Well, Pacific Ocean Park (POP as it was called) was magical place when it was in operation. It was always a pier with "seaside attractions" - dancehall, carnival games and rides, ne'er-do-wells. In the mid-50s it was rebuilt as a true amusement park out over the ocean. However, by the 70s it was closed.

I lived in Ocean Park (where Santa Monica meets Venice) for the whole 70s. It was a lovely area of beach bums, real bums, druggies, outcasts, beatniks, artists and criminals. POP would burn every couple of months. People would go down to the beach and see these huge fires light up the structures - apocalyptically falling into the sea. Acid and other hallucinogens enhanced the experience. Year by year there'd be less of the pier left. by the mid to late seventies there were gaps in the pier that surfers would wend their way through, shooting the gap. These surfers were part of the Dogtown skateborder clan.

Ocean Park in the 70s - walk into a bar and see Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Baez, Divine, winos, and barely legal skateboard punks sharing life together.

Stop living in the past.

[quote]I lived in Ocean Park (where Santa Monica meets Venice) for the whole 70s.

Did you cruise on the beach at Ocean Park Blvd. after dark? Maybe we've had sex.

^^^Roll and scroll, rude dog^^^r89.

r1 I think you mean the 90's!

[quote]Take me back to 70s Los Angeles

All the gay sex you could ever dream of!

Was Echo Park a bad neighborhood?

'Remember when' is the lowest form of conversation.

Never look back.

Soleil Moon Frye's dad was Virgil Frye, an actor and boxer.

Virgil Frye

[quote]'Remember when' is the lowest form of conversation..

R95 Why? I always read things like this on here, and it's like people learned it from a mother out who spoke like a Tennessee Williams character.

* a mother who spoke like a Tennessee Williams character.

I lived in LA in the 1970s and had a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom + a den apartment for $350 per month!

The "mighty MET" -- KMET!

What area was it in, r101?