Save The Viper Room!

And yet another Hollywood/Los Angeles landmark appears to be poised to bite the dust. The infamous Viper Room on Sunset Boulevard has apparently been slated for the wrecking ball. I learned about this from the IG account of CC Devere. From her Save the Viper Room webpage:

The 101-year-old building started as a grocery store, then began to feature live music in the 1940s. It has been the Cotton Club, the Greenwich Village Inn, the Rue Angel, the Melody Room, Filthy McNasty’s (the façade was recently recreated at the Viper Room for filming of “Daisy Jones and the Six”), the Central, and, since 1993, the Viper Room. 

The club has appeared in music videos (Go-Go’s, “Our Lips Are Sealed”) and on film (“The Doors”, “Valley Girl”). Some of the world’s greatest musicians have played at the Viper Room: Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, Courtney Love, Lenny Kravitz, Sheryl Crow, Bruce Springsteen, Natalie Cole, Weezer, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, and the list goes on…

And yes, it is notorious for Molly Bloom’s poker game (“Molly’s Game”) and for the tragic death of River Phoenix.



The Viper Room is an irreplaceable part of West Hollywood’s history. A reconfigured club in a new building is just not going to be the same - part of the Viper Room experience is in navigating the club’s labyrinthine, two-level layout. The plan for 8850 Sunset has also been linked to possible corruption.

We are asking the property owners and the City of West Hollywood to treat the Viper Room with the respect it has earned - ideally by leaving it alone (the proposed 15-story development will dwarf everything in West Hollywood), or, failing that, by incorporating the existing building into the new one (the Coca-Cola bottling plant was created by combining four older buildings).

The Viper Room is simply too important to lose.

Here’s a short list of some of the other Sunset Boulevard landmarks that have met the wrecking ball. The Mocambo Club:



The Garden of Allah Hotel complex:



Schwab’s Pharmacy and Googies Diner:



And while it wasn’t on Sunset Boulevard, this L.A. landmark was just as important:



Let’s get real; re-created history is not the same is REAL history! Please be sure to sign the petition to help save the Viper Room!

See more Sunset Boulevard photos at my main website.