Would we have Paris Hilton without the the club? Would the 2000s still have that breathless, near-death atmosphere if it wasn’t for Hyde, Teddy’s or Les Deux? No, no we wouldn’t. The club is an essential part of the y2k cultural organism: it’s where you would go if you were a celeb and had a dispute to settle; it’s where you would go if you were an upstart in LA and were trying to climb the sticky social ladder of the city of angels; it’s where you would go when you wanted to let your head go, feel the moment and get your picture taken. As Nicole Richie described it in her 2005 book The Truth About Diamonds, "The nightclubs of LA are like soap operas. There's always some bizarre drama that plays out every single night, and everyone in the cast-I mean, everyone-is great looking.”
Whether you were an actor looking for something a little intimate or a celebutante looking to flash your intimates, West Hollywood was guaranteed to have something for you as long as you guaranteed to have something for them: a club is only as popular as it’s guests. Drama almost always went down on weeknights, which were considered "celebrity nights" at the hottest locales. That's because most working people can’t afford or manage to go out drinking and dancing until 4 a.m. on what would normally be a work night…better for the celebs, as they had to deal with less random and had more time to pick fights and write dirty words on the bathroom wall.
In the club scene’s heyday, there was a group of major players who, give or take a few here and there, were guaranteed to be out craving to taste the ecstasy of the bright lights. There was the major league players like Lindsay, Paris, Nicole & Kim but the Young Hollywood scene was made up of so many more characters than just those 4 and the personalities that came together during that time really created a magical world that existed just on the brink of internet, giving us enough that we felt satisfied and craved more but not too much so we got bored.
Whether they were captured getting burned at the door or laughing manically to a sad, drugged up monologue, the stars always knew how to make a scene at the club and the club returned the favour by providing handfuls of paparazzi ready to take your photo at a moment’s notice.
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0:00 Intro
2:25 The Hotspots
2:27 Les Deux
3:25 Teddy’s
4:23 Mood
5:08 LAX
5:56 Guy’s Bar
6:33 Hyde
10:49 Less remembered but still important
12:29 So what happened to the party?
#popicana #popculture #2000s