Comments (0) BEST FREE DEAD-CELEBRITIES TOUR - 2009
Sunset Strip
When out-of-towners visit, give them a quick, entirely free, tour of the Sunset Strip and surrounding areas in West Hollywood filled with dead celebrity haunts. Peer at the gorgeous, historic Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, where you can startle people with the grand announcement that John Belushi died there from a drug overdose in 1982. Everyone always wants to know what killed him. Correct answer: "a speedball," which is a toxic mix of cocaine and heroin. Things go downhill as you drive west on Sunset to the Viper Room, where, in 1993, young River Phoenix also died from a speedball overdose, on the dirty sidewalk outside the famed club once co-owned by Johnny Depp. Then head east and turn down Holloway Drive. Near leafy Alta Loma Road, at 8569 Holloway, you can announce that Sal Mineo, co-star of Rebel Without a Cause, was murdered outside his apartment there in 1976. A man stabbed the actor to death when Mineo was just 37. End the tour on Santa Monica Boulevard at Barney's Beanery, the friendly, old-time roadhouse where rockers Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin were reportedly regulars. Have a bowl of chili and relax while catching a baseball game on one of the Beanery's decent TVs. Chateau Marmont, 8221 W. Sunset Blvd. L.A.; Viper Room, 8852 W. Sunset Blvd., W.Hlywd; 8569 Holloway Drive, W.Hlywd.; Barney's Beanery, 8447 Santa Monica Blvd., W. Hlywd.
—Patrick Range McDonald
