Sideshow Los Angeles (2025)

There’s more to do in Los Angeles than get jostled at tourist traps like the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Universal Studios. On your next trip to the showbiz capital, visit the overlooked, less-stomped sights, which include a hip-swiveling “Thai Elvis,” scandal-shrouded palatial mansions and a plucky Rocket J. Squirrel.

Here’s an itinerary for hidden L.A.:

1| Museum of Jurassic Technology

Nothing to do with dinosaurs. This befuddling, relic-stuffed storefront is like a weirdo’s attic, chopped into cubbyholes and so dark you’ll jump when you bump into wonders like two dead mice on toast (supposedly a bed-wetting cure). You can’t tell if this so-called “educational institution” with its highbrow commentary is one huge put-on, but where else can you behold a microminiature “Pope John Paul II in The Eye of a Needle,” letters that kooks wrote to the Mount Wilson Observatory from 1915 to 1935, and a trailer park exhibition with dusty dioramas and piped-in violin music.

After pondering painted portraits of Dogs of the Soviet Space Program, you can try to debrief in the mystically odd Tula Tea Room with complimentary tea and cookies and a live canine, a silken windhound, sprawled out on the floor.

9341 Venice Blvd., Culver City, 90232, (310) 836-6131, mtj.org. Open 2 to 8 p.m. Thursdays and noon to 6 p.m. Fridays-Sundays. Suggested donation, $5; unemployed, $3.

2| Michael Jackson’s last home

The draw here is the crazy fans paying homage to the King of Pop, who spent his last waking moments in this château-style mansion lying in bed next to a porcelain boy doll. You can’t go inside MJ’s infamous $100,000-a-month rental, so devotees leave tributes curbside — one recent day, offerings included a plush pony pogo stick and a kid-sized fireman’s hat plastered with Mickey Mouse stickers and a note that proclaimed, “Neverland — A place where all children are safe!” The driveway’s iron gates had been theatrically festooned with dozens of long-stem yellow, pink and red roses.

Peek through that gate and you’ll see the front door where paramedics wheeled the propofol-intoxicated Jackson out on a gurney.

While you’re on his street, check out happier homesteads where Beatle George Harrison, Walt Disney and Rod Stewart bunked down.

Jackson’s house, 100 N. Carolwood Drive; Los Angeles, 90077. Harrison was 245; Disney, 355; and Stewart, 391.

3| Greystone Mansion

Stroll through the formal gardens, watch turtles sunbathe in a koi pond, and imagine what it’s like to be filthy rich as you gaze up at the 55-room Greystone Mansion, the largest estate ever erected in Beverly Hills. Dozens of movies, including “There Will Be Blood,” “Spider-Man” and “The Big Lebowski” have filmed at the 1928 Tudor-style behemoth.

But ghosts linger. In 1929, six months after oil heir Ned Doheny moved into the stone megamanse with his wife and children, he and his male secretary, Hugh Plunkett, were found shot to death in a first-floor guest bedroom. Police blamed Plunkett for the murder-suicide, but whodunit doubts remain.

Although you can only enter the Beverly Hills city-owned manor during special events, you can glimpse its ornate interior through the windows. Besides, from the lush grounds, the panoramic view below is to die for.

905 Loma Vista Drive, Beverly Hills, 90210, (310) 550-4654, beverlyhills.org. Open daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Free.

4| Rocky and Bullwinkle

Nearly a half-century ago, sex goddess Jayne Mansfield yanked a ribbon to unveil a gigantic plaster statue of one of TV’s most iconic couples — Bullwinkle J. Moose holding Rocky the Flying Squirrel — in front of their creator’s studio, Jay Ward Productions. And hokey smoke, the hapless heroes are still there, colorfully decked out for Bullwinkle’s alma mater, Wossamotta U. (“What’s-a-matter-you”).

But what’s super cool is that Ward, in a spoof of the celebrity hand-and-footprints of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, had animators and other VIPs put their elbows in wet cement in a courtyard around the statue.

Ward’s former studio is now a doggy day care called Hollywood Hounds, which explains why that Chihuahua is sniffing around Walt Disney’s elbow print.

8200 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, 90046.

5| The RockWalk

Where dead and alive rock stars are immortalized. Here, you can touch the über-talented hands that plucked guitar strings, grasped drumsticks and banged keyboards. Or at least you can put your sweaty palms in cement imprints left by Johnny Cash, Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton, Aerosmith, and scores of other rock, jazz and blues biggies.

The RockWalk is just outside the front door of the Guitar Center. So while you’re kneeling down to worship your idol’s pinkie and autograph, ignore the customers dragging newly purchased amps over Jerry Lee Lewis and Mötley Crüe.

7425 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, 90046, (323) 874-1060, rockwalk.com.

6| Reality TV tattoo parlor

Quite the scene. Even if you’ve never heard of The Learning Channel’s “L.A. Ink,” which features Goth tattooed-up-the-wazoo Kat Von D strutting about on stripper platform shoes, etching flesh and bickering with freaky employees, drop by her eye-popping “church,” High Voltage Tattoo.

High Voltage is open whether or not cameras roll, and if Kat isn’t there, you’ll still be amused watching way-too-hip reality TV stars/tattoo artists hover over prone bodies on padded tables behind red velvet ropes. Nervous first-timers (including grandmas!) wait on a couch crafted from a hot-pink coffin near a pirate ship-like reception desk. A massive crystal chandelier hangs overhead dripping with red glass Jesuses that look like chili peppers. If you’re feeling faint, don’t look at the bubble-gum pink walls awash with skateboard art, black velvet paintings and Virgin Mary vestibules.

1259 N. La Brea Ave., West Hollywood, 90038, (323) 969-9820, highvoltagetattoo.com. Open daily noon to midnight.

7| Kermit the Frog as Charlie Chaplin

A Tinseltown two-for-one. A statue of green Kermit dressed as the “Little Tramp” perches atop the front gate tower of The Jim Henson Co., whose Muppet-making empire now occupies the historic Charlie Chaplin Studios built in 1917. A life-size painting of the real “Little Tramp,” Chaplin, makes it look as if the comic great is opening a door of the English-style brick cottage below.

Chaplin shot his silent classics, including “City Lights” and “Modern Times,” here. And as a tribute, Kermit tips his derby hat — or maybe he’s nodding to those images of nearly nude buxom babes across the street at the cocktail joint that beckons, “Live, Girls, Girls, Girls.”

1416 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, 90028.

8| Silver Four Ladies of Hollywood

Bite me, there’s a “Twilight” connection. In 1993, before Catherine Hardwicke directed the first lovesick vampire blockbuster (and “Lords of Dogtown” and “Thirteen”), she designed this only-in-La-La-Land art deco stainless-steel sculpture of four begowned, blank-eyed long-dead ethnically diverse screen legends — Mae West, Dolores Del Rio, Anna May Wong and Dorothy Dandridge — holding up with their heads an Eiffel Tower-like gazebo emblazoned “Hollywood.”

It’s a wonder there aren’t more accidents at this busy corner.

The intersection of La Brea Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard.

9| Thai Elvis

Shake, rattle and roll and pass the wild boar with curry sauce. At the cavernous, no-frills Palms Thai restaurant, diners chow at long cafeteria-style tables while the sequin-jumpsuited “Thai Elvis,” who sounds remarkably like The King, croons onstage near a towering handmade Elvis sculpture created from old auto parts in Thailand. The breathing faux Elvis, senior citizen Kavee Thongprecha, is pure kitsch. And even in Vegas you’d be hard-pressed to find a place that serves up frog with chili and holy basil along with “Don’t Be Cruel.”

5900 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles 90028, (323) 462-5073, palmsthai.com. “Elvis” performs 7:30-10:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Sundays.

10| Watts Towers

The ultimate DIY project. From 1921 to 1954, when Italian immigrant Simon Rodia wasn’t toiling as a tile-setter at his day job, he used simple tools to single-handedly build 17 inter-tangled steel-and-mortar towers, two that soar nearly 100 feet. A pioneer recycler, he encrusted the scrap-metal skyscrapers with sparkly shards of pottery, broken soda bottles, seashells and other castoffs.

Rodia got lots of flak during his lifetime so he’s likely laughing from the grave now that his once-condemned unsafe eyesores are considered masterpieces of folk art and a National Historic Landmark. The fantastical spires, which today are surrounded by a security fence in the ZIP code of the notorious ’65 riots, have also had close-ups in movies and TV shows.

1765 E. 107th St., Los Angeles, 90002, (213) 847-4646, wattstowers.us. Call for opening hours. Entry $7, seniors and 13-17 $3, 12 and under free.

Originally Published:

Sideshow Los Angeles (2025)
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