Tourists flock to Hollywood to walk where the stars are
by Holly Villamagna
The enterainment industry - celebrity sightings, the Hollywood sign, the Walk of Fame - are quintessentially Los Angeles. Tourists pour into Hollywood each year, hoping to get a taste of a world far removed from their daily lives. On this sunny Saturday morning, the sidewalks are packed with visitors.
Tours
The employees of Starline Tours are waiting for the tourists milling around the Chinese Theatre, and its buses are parked out front. The company offers 40 narrated tours around the area, bringing tourists to the filming locations of films, popular landmarks, and major studios. According to the company, its most popular tour is its Movie Star's Homes Tour, a two-hour bus ride up into the hills around Hollywood that allows passengers to catch a glimpse of the gates, trees, and roofs of the current and former homes of stars like Madonna, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe, and David Spade. In spite of the history here, the tour is constantly changing -- one of the most recent additions is home Michael Jackson was renting when he died.
The bus tour also takes passengers to famous landmarks like the Sunset Strip and Rodeo Drive.
"People not only want to see the stars," said Gary Wayne, who runs the Hollywood tourism site seeing-stars.com. "They want to see the places they see on TV or in movies."
The fictional places people visit when they watch TV or movies - or the landmarks that people see on the news each year - begin to feel familiar to them, Wayne said.
"We subconciously create little maps in our heads of the fictional places we visit, we imagine in at a consistent whole, and eventually many yearn to visit those places they've seen so often," he said.
Cemeteries
Hollywood is a town with a rich history. Tourists seeking this history often find themselves at the many graveyards around the city, where stars are buried. Before the dawn of the internet, it was difficult for tourists to stop and pay tribute to those they admired. Sites like Wayne's have changed that.
"It seemed a bit sad that these people, who had spent their entire lives seeking fame, who were beloved by millions in life, could be essentially forgotten in death."
Now that people know where to look, that isn't the case anymore.
"People wrote in droves to thank me for providing them the opportunity to pay their final respects to the people who had provided them with so much pleasure when they were alive," Wayne said.
"Members of the public sometimes feel like they know [celebrities], and in a way, they do," Wayne said. "Yet the celebrity doesn't know them. So actual meetings can be awkward."
Milkshakes
One place that offers actual meetings - on occasion - and ways to feel closer to favorite celebrities the rest of the time - is Millions of Milkshakes.
But why would people want to drink a milkshake that Vivica A. Fox made? Why do they care? The explanation may, in some ways, be simple.
"If you put a beautiful, charming, wealthy, powerful person in the spotlight, is it surprising that people will be attracted to them?" Wayne said.
Los Angeles is built on the movie industry, and the tourism it generates may be just as significant as the industry itself. Hollywood attracts people of all interests and backgrounds from across the world and unites them under a common umbrella - the pursuit of celebrity.
"One thing celebrities provide is a common interest to share with others," Wayne said. "And people like common ground. They like closing the spaces that exist between us in our modern society, if only for a moment."
December 10, 2009
Contact: villamag@usc.edu