These photos of the bonkers Sunset Strip are a content kaleidoscope of the last 50 years
And the Marlboro man watched over them them all…
In the pantheon of American roadside messaging, billboards are perhaps the most reviled. But in Los Angeles, where high and low culture are often one and the same, what elsewhere may be derided as “sky trash” can just as easily rise to the level of art. Since at least the late 1960s, a half-mile section of Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard known as “Sunset Strip” has hosted a menagerie of custom-built billboards designed for gawking, turning the winding east-west corridor into a testing ground for pop records and blockbuster movies. As the home town of most major record companies and film studios, Hollywood got special attention when it came to publicly marketing new media products. And in a time before music videos and MP3s, when album art was still a thing, the look presented by hand-painted billboards were a complement to many a rock star’s cultivated image.
The splash of color and concept above the strip eventually forced other would-be advertisers to step up their game. In the early 1980s, a 70-foot Marlboro Man was erected at the corner of Sunset and Marmont Lane. The billboard towered over nearby buildings, eventually transcending its role as advertising to become, according to architecture critic Aaron Betsky, “one of the most effective landmarks in the confusing landscape of our city.” Later, as tobacco marketing was curtailed in the late 1990s, the stoic cowboy was dismantled and trucked away in pieces. Today, the space is held by rotating ads for new Apple cell phones and tablets. No doubt successful in moving their addictive products to customers, iconic they are not.
