Hollywood sign

My Great Great Grandparents in late 1800’s settled here. The even started the Hollywood Memorial Gardens..I think now it is called Hollywood Forever. That was back when there was nothing. Got to see the traffic, TV stations, Farmers Market, and walk of the stars etc.

Me and a friend hiked up here a few years ago to check out the sign up close. We parked in the lot for the Griffith Observatory (back when you could still park up there and didn’t have to take a shuttle) and hiked around a ravine and up some hills to the sign. But, you must be careful, because it is illegal! Helicopters kept buzzing the hill, and we would hide behind some bushes. The sign looks as you’d expect from the front, but it turns out that it’s made from corrugated metal, you know that wavy metal that they make lawnmower sheds out of? The backside is covered with years and years worth of graffitti, and you can climb up and poke your head thru one of the holes in the O’s. BUT I must stress that if you do decide to be naughty and climb up there you do so at your own risk! The hills are a mite steep, there are rattlers at certain times of the year, and you may have a run-in with any number of botox-faced Hollywood has-been actors who live up there. Frankly I’ll take the rattlers any day over that! All in all it’s a beautiful view of the city, made even moreso when you know how forbidden it is. As you gaze out at the smoggy town from between the Y and the W, think of Peg Entwhistle, the unemployed actress who committed suicide by jumping from the letter H in 1932, back when the sign still read “Hollywoodland”.

i like acting – new life – the home of act – i wanna be there

I jogged around the lake up near the sign. It’s a really pretty area. I’m told they have coyotees there sometimes, but I didn’t see any. I saw a squirrel though.

I didn’t go right up to the sign. I heard that it was originally ‘hollywoodland’ which was an advertisement for real estate, but the ‘land’ bit got dropped.