Hollywood, CA June 2006

I'd made a couple of visits to Hollywood a long time ago. In the summer of 1984 my family went on a driving vacation through California, with one of the stops being Hollywood Blvd. I remember it as being a somewhat seedy area clearly past its glory days, but we were there only during the daytime so I didn't get to see the area at night. Maybe that's a good thing.

In the late 1980's and early 1990's some friends and I made a couple of driving trips through California; Hollywood Blvd was one of the stops each time. These visits were also during the daytime, and I remember the area as being a tourist trap.

Sometime during the summer of 1984 — I believe it was after that year's driving trip — I watched the movie Angel (1984) on a free pay-TV weekend. It's a serial killer thriller with wonderfully wacky characters that takes place mostly on Hollywood Blvd. I'd recently been feeling nostalgic about revisiting places I'd seen on previous trips but just nostalgia isn't enough to make me go ahead and do something; I need more incentive. Then coincidently I watched Angel again and when I saw places I recognized from previous visits I knew what I could do to make a trip to Hollywood that was both nostalgic and would keep me from getting bored: Check out the street and track down Angel's filming locations to photograph what they look like 23 years later.

• Hollywood photos

• Angel filming locations

Image Notes

All photos shot between 2006-06-19 and 2006-06-21. Some photos reproduced here have been corrected for wide-angle perspective distortion. The camera used is the Panasonic FZ-30 with its absolutely wonderful and sharp as a tack 12X optical zoom.