Sunset Along the Strip

Mention Sunset Strip to anybody over 30, and he will recall the twelve-block stretch between Beverly Hills and Hollywood as the playground of the stars, the place where the Gables and Grables, the Harlows and Hayworths came in their long black limousines and super-convertibles to gambol at Giro's, Mocambo and the Trocadero.

Not any longer, not in the psychedelic '60s. Today, Sunset Strip is a new kind of playground: a wild weekend happening for youth from all over the Los Angeles area. It is a sight to behold.

Teeny hoppers and overaged juveniles, surfers and Hell's Angels, high school dropouts and stay-ins alike, pile in by the thousands to writhe to the electronic thunder of the Byrds, the Jefferson Airplane and the New Generation in such clubs as It's Boss (formerly Giro's), The Trip (once the Crescendo) and Pandora's Box. Teen Idols Sonny & Cher invented folk rock there and, at the same time, set off the craze for ruffled bellbottoms. The Strip became the perfect place for flaunting rebellion, for catching the latest underground movie at the Cinematheque and for trying on the newest fads, from pressed-straight blond hair and granny glasses to surfers' crosses, military coats and giant gilt earrings.

The Squares & the Fuzz. The youthful takeover of the Strip began four years ago, after TV had caused the Hollywood movie industry to slump and Las Vegas had wooed away the big-name entertainers. This left a vacuum that high school teen-agers rushed in to fill. Soon a dozen more `a Go-Go clubs sprouted along the length of the Strip itself. Since the Strip was an unincorporated free zone loosely administered by Los Angeles County, club owners last year succeeded in gaining "youth permits" to admit minors under 21, provided that they were not served liquor. The stampede was on.

Now it may be coming to a sudden halt--not so much because some of the kids were experimenting with pot and acid and free sex in nearby bachelor pads as because the scene makers are clogging the sidewalks and snarling traffic along the 1.8-mile stretch. Even that might have been overlooked had the Strip been tucked out of the way. But it is a main thoroughfare between Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, heavily traveled by both the local citizenry and tourists from afar. The politicians, the property owners and the police--the squares and the fuzz, as the "Strippies" call them--decided that the Strip's image badly needed reburnishing.

Death Throes. First, Los Angeles County police went after the "juvies" (minors under 18), began carting them off by the busload last summer for violating a 10 p.m. curfew dating back to 1939. As arrests increased 300%, grumbles soon grew to rumbles. Charging police brutality, the Strippies last month protested with two consecutive weekends of wild rioting; mobs of youths, at times numbering as many as 2,000, smashed store windows, tried to burn buses, and pelted police with rocks and bottles, bringing on 200 arrests. The Los Angeles County board of supervisors decided to get tougher, last week unanimously rescinded the "youth permits" of twelve of the Strip's clubs, thus stamping them off-limits to anybody under 21.

The Strip's grapevine has already sent out the call for more weekend protests, and Coffeehouse Owner Albert Mitchell, 41, says defiantly: "We will never give up; we will not be steamrollered out of town." But the police figure that without the teen clubs to fuel the action, the excitement will cool and that the current riots are simply the death throes. Said one habitue: "As they say of good young bullfighters, 'If you want to see it, you'd better see it quick,' because the Strip, at least as it now is, may not be around much longer."

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