I began to read the Los Angeles Times in the 60’s , because my father took that William Randolph Hearst rag Los Angeles Examiner!
Jun 07, 2026
Reader: With all its faults Los Angeles Times on its editorial pages provinded space to Robert Scheer, Walter Lippmann and Arianna Huffington, Erwin Chemerinsky!
Hollywood Boulevard’s glory days bullshit rules the political present!
Nicky Hilton, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Nick Cannon during the “Young Hollywood” heyday. (Michael Caulfield Archive)
After months of AI-generated disaster porn on the sad state of Los Angeles, something decidedly more gentile took over my feed this week as the city waited for all the ballots to be counted.
It was a simple, strangely calming 2-minute, 48-second video showing Hollywood Boulevard on a clear morning 20 years ago, cars and buses passing, shots of tourists milling around landmarks like the Chinese Theater, Capitol Records tower and Hollywood & Highland complex. No explosions. No SWAT situations. No overt political perspectives.
But this was L.A. on election week, and the video quickly became just one more vessel for that eternal question: Is the city doomed? Some commenters cited it as an example of L.A.’s long-lost golden days, before the hellscape. Their message: Hollywood Boulevard in 2006 was a lot better than Hollywood Boulevard in 2026.
Is it true?
A double-decker sight-seeing bus in Hollywood in 2025 (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
‘Young Hollywood’ rises from the ashes
There is no doubt that 2006 was a pivotal year for Hollywood. It was the beginning of a building boom that altered the district’s skyline with new luxury condos, luring some entertainment types back from the Valley and Westside.
The previous decade had been marked by heartache, its peak “Hollyweird” era.
Buildings were set on fire during the L.A. riots. Movie palaces closed. The construction of the Red Line subway caused portions of the Hollywood Walk of Fame to collapse. Crime was such a hot topic that Paramount Pictures released “Jimmy Hollywood,” in which Joe Pesci plays a down-on-his-luck actor turned attention-starved vigilante who takes on the bad guys after his car radio is stolen. “This place used to sparkle. [You] could rub shoulders with movie stars walking along the Boulevard,” Jimmy laments. “Look at Hollywood now.”
But by 2006, Hollywood was roaring back, and yes, that included celebrities. A new generation of stars dubbed “Young Hollywood” rediscovered the Boulevard, and a crop of nightclubs and restaurants became destinations for them and the paparazzi. It was a golden age for celebrity tabloids: Editors awoke each morning to pore over the overnight photos and write about what trouble Paris, Nicole and Britney got into the night before.
View of Hollywood Boulevard (f11photo – stock.adobe.com)
“If you said five years ago that Paris Hilton was going to get into a car accident in Hollywood, no one would have believed you, because Paris Hilton wouldn’t have been in Hollywood,” then-Councilman Eric Garcetti told the paper in 2006.
My former colleague David Pierson embarked on a series of stories that year to capture the transformation. One it-club of that era was cycling through so many models, actors, musicians and sports figures each night, it needed a sophisticated logistics system to make it work.
In another story, he chronicled the legions of young people from around the country who rode the “Holly Trolley” all night and morning, hitting various clubs and hoping to share some shots with Leo.
“Coming from Oregon, Hollywood had a reputation for being ghetto,” said one young woman on the circuit. “It actually has a different persona. I love it.”
Hollywood Boulevard was so ascendant during that period that it was stealing thunder from the granddaddy of L.A. nightlife, the Sunset Strip, which suddenly felt so old. Pierson went to the Strip’s most famous hotel and found signs of Hollywood envy, writing “the girl in the glass tank at the Standard lobby is looking needy.”
Losing the cool factor
There have been many stories written about the decline of the “Young Hollywood” scene, with the rise of the iPhone, social media and annoying influencers often cited as among the culprits.
By 2017, E! News concluded, “A-listers no longer have to rely on a [Hollywood club] sighting to stay in the news cycle; they can give us pre-selected tidbits on Instagram whenever they want.”
On top of that, the district began struggling with the same issues challenging so much of L.A.: Homelessness, gentrification and the affordability crisis. 2020 was a grim year. The tourist economy dried up. Many businesses shuttered, including some icons like the ArcLight theater. Things have gotten better in recent years, but most people say Hollywood still has a long way to go.
The international tourist trade — a key source of Hollywood foot traffic — had a tough 2025 amid the fires and Trump’s foreign and trade policy gambits. “It used to be shoulder to shoulder out here,” one merchant told Cerys Davies.
The L.A. Times broadcasts a livestream of Hollywood Boulevard on our website. I checked it out on a split screen with that 2006 video. The current boulevard didn’t look terrible. Some of the big landmarks, like the Virgin Records Megastore, were gone. There were more big new buildings.
Editor: I recall the times I got lost in Pickwick Book Shop!
Pickwick Book Shop was an independent bookstore located at 6741-6745 W. Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. The store was popular with many film and literary figures, and was known as the “supermarket of books.”
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