The Crime Stories Behind Sunset Strip’s Famous Addresses
Hear the true-crime and ghost stories tied to landmark addresses on a two-hour guided walk along Los Angeles’s Sunset Strip, from the Chateau Marmont to the Viper Room.
Sunset Boulevard reads differently once somebody tells you what happened at each address. The stretch between Crescent Heights and Doheny holds a hotel where a comedian died in a bungalow, a comedy club built inside a 1940s nightclub, and a doorway where a young actor collapsed in 1993. Every departure is at 7:00 PM, seven days a week.
You stand in front of the buildings while the stories get told. Nothing is reenacted and nothing is staged. The route runs one direction along the boulevard. You finish about twenty minutes' walk from where you started.
See LA in a Day runs the walk in English with a live guide. Booking confirms instantly and the ticket stays on your phone. There is one departure a day, at 7:00 PM; pick the date on the booking page.
Sunset Strip True Crime and Ghost Stories TourSee LA in a Day · 2 hours · 7:00 PM daily · English guide · from 8000 Sunset Boulevardwww.viator.comThe Chateau, and the Bungalow Set Back Behind It
The Chateau Marmont opened on February 1, 1929 and became a hotel two years later. Arnold A. Weitzman and William Douglas Lee designed it to read as a private chateau above the boulevard, which is still how it looks from the sidewalk. John Belushi died of a drug overdose in Bungalow 3 on March 5, 1982. The bungalows sit back behind the main building, and the walk stops out on Sunset: the property is private and the tour does not go inside.
Two Doors That Opened Onto Something Else First
The Comedy Store took over 8433 Sunset in April 1972, when Sammy Shore and Rudy De Luca moved in. The address carried other names first. Club Seville had it in 1935. William Wilkerson opened Ciro's there in 1940, Herman Hover ran it from 1942, and it closed in 1957. The room came back in the 1960s as Ciro's Le Disc, where the Byrds drew crowds in 1965, and later as It's Boss and the Kaleidoscope. The guide goes into who controlled the room during the Ciro's years. That thread comes from the operator's own stop list; the building's public record does not carry it.
The walk ends further west at 8852 Sunset. The Viper Room opened there on August 14, 1993, in a building that started as a grocery store in 1924, spent 1951 to 1969 as the Melody Room, and was The Central through the 1980s. River Phoenix collapsed on the sidewalk outside it on October 31 that year and was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai that morning.
The Art Deco Tower and the 1944 Betting Raid
Leland A. Bryant finished Sunset Tower at 8358 Sunset in 1931, and the building went onto the National Register of Historic Places on May 30, 1980. From the small park below it you get the whole vertical run of the facade in one view, which is the angle the walk uses.
In 1944 Benjamin Siegel was charged with placing bets by long distance from an apartment in that tower, one rented by his associate Allen Smiley. The Los Angeles Times covered the raid and described him as a Hollywood sportsman. The apartment was not his, and that is the detail most retellings drop.
What the Two Hours Ask of You
This is a walking tour and the listing flags it in its own note. Seven stops account for about sixty-five minutes of the two hours, and the rest goes to walking between them. The operator lists the route as wheelchair accessible, with strollers and service animals allowed, and rates it suitable for all fitness levels.
Guiding is in English only. Nothing comes with the ticket except the guide. Carry water and buy anything you want to eat along the way. One booking takes up to fifteen travelers, ages thirteen and up, and an adult has to be on the reservation.
Meet at the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights, 8000 Sunset Boulevard, by the stairs on the corner. There is a parking lot at the mall on that corner and more in the blocks around it, and buses run along Sunset. Cancellation is free up to twenty four hours before the departure time you booked.
The walk does not loop back. It ends at the Viper Room, 8852 Sunset, about twenty minutes on foot from the start. A rideshare or a bus along Sunset covers that stretch faster.
The Whisky a Go Go and the Roxy stand within a couple of blocks west of that last stop, so the walk leaves you at the top of the Strip's music row.