Pandora's Box 1962 - 1966 (Los Angeles, California)

USA / California / West Hollywood / Los Angeles, California
 night club, rock/ pop music venue, historical layer / disappeared object
Before KRLA deejay Jimmy O'Neil bought Pandora's Box on Sunset and turned it into a teen club in 1962, it was a funky little jazz club. It had an interior mural by artist Burt Shomberg (who provided similar, one-of-a-kind wall paintings to the Purple Onion and Café Frankenstein).

John Phillips performed here with a bongo player from the Indies for a month in 1958 and discovered what he wanted to do with his life. Carla Borg (later Carla Bley) led her quartet, with vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson in December of that year. It was one of the many coffee houses that Les McCann played on his way up.

From 1962, O'Neil's trendsetting booking policy made Pandora’s Box the center of the Sunset Strip youth scene. By the summer of 1966 the young scene makers are clogging the sidewalks and snarling traffic along the 1.8-mile stretch, but not spending much money. Even that might have been overlooked had the Strip been tucked out of the way, but it was a main thoroughfare between Hollywood and Beverly Hills. The politicians under pressure from local the property owners and other nearby business decided that the kids would have to go.

Los Angeles County police went after the "juveniles" (minors under 18), carting them off by the busload for violating a 10:00 p.m. curfew dating back to 1939. As weekend arrests mounted the teens and young adults eventually protested with six consecutive weekends of street demonstrations, at times numbering as many as 2,000. The first night's demo (Saturday, 12 November 1966) actually turned into some thing of a riot.
Some rowdies in the crowd smashed store windows, disabled an L.A. city bus, and threw rocks and bottles, bringing on 200 arrests and what the LAPD called a tactical alert.
The demonstration had been called (but scarcely organized) by RAMCON (the Right of Assembly and Movement Committee), headquartered in the Fifth Estate Coffeehouse (8226 Sunset). The coffee houses manager, Al Mitchell, came to be seen as the adult spokesman for the high-school students and teenage runaways who clustered around the Fifth Estate and Pandora's Box, just a block away. This series of weekend demonstrations protested a campaign by sheriffs and police to clear the Strip of "loitering" teenagers, searching for under-18s, targeting primarily the longhaired kids in beads, granny glasses, and tie-dyed shirts.

The Los Angeles County board of supervisors decided to get tough, and unanimously rescinded the "youth permits" of twelve of the Strip's clubs, thus stamping them off-limits to anybody under 21. Sonny Bono came down to Pandora's on Saturday nights in late November / early December, to lend his moral support to the young protesters, bringing Cher with him him on one occasion. Within days, Sonny (without Cher) released a 45 rpm single about the situation, titled "We Have as Much Right to Be Here as Anyone."

The Buffalo Springfield also wrote a song about the Sunset demos called "There's Something Happening Here" which appeared on their next album and became something of an anthem for disaffected youth.

Within weeks of the Pandora's Box disturbances, Hollywood legend Roger Corman (whose claim to screenland fame had been casting Michael Landon as "I Was a Teenage Werewolf") cranked out a low budget exploitation flick (for the drive-in movie audience) entitled "Riot on Sunset Strip."
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Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_On_Sunset_Strip
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   34°5'52"N   118°21'57"W

Comments

  • The song by buffalo springfield is titled "For what it's worth" ...just fyi
  • I remember being outside Pandora's one evening during this period and the crowd began whistling the song "Somethings Happening Here". The crowd was protesing the war and people were handing out the "Free Press". It was a time like no other.
  • I remember my best friend and I ditched school and ran up to Pandoras Box...we were selling Free Press and Oracle to the terrified tourists who'd barely roll their car windows down an inch to slip ya a quarter in exchange for a "Freep". Apparently (unbeknownst to US), ABC local news were somewhere thereabouts and panned a shot of the island. There we were frantically dodging in and out around the bumper-to-bumper cars paused at the traffic light ...on the evening news! Our parents saw it before we got home :( bummer. I had to run away after that...to within a block of Crescent Heights and Pandora's Box. :)
  • I remember in the summer of '67 watching them tear down Pandora's. It had been closed & fenced off for months. When they finally got around to demolishing the club, it was completely gone in about 3 days! Broke our hearts....
  • Love hearing from you all. I ran away from home on June 3, 1967, the day after Sgt. Pepper's was released. I sold the Fifth Estate's L. A. Underground newspaper and the Free Press at the same time while I was living down in the Fifth Estate Coffee House basement. It was a rat hole. LOL But I was free. It became quite a journey. Read about it here along with a recollection I got first hand from musician Scott Thomas Lowe who was photographed on top of that famous bus. Find it here at: http://www.qm21.com/blackboard.html. ~ Derek Lamar
  • I was there also. And, across the street was Harry's open pit, best bar b que in LA, now site of Virgin records.
  • My Grand daughter was quizzing me about jazz the other day, and how I came to like it, and it brought up a mention of Pandora's Box. The first time I visited Pandora's was in 1958; I was junior in high school in Azusa, and my friends and I were trying to emulate the "cool Beat crowd". Over the next few years, I saw some pretty good shows there, hanging out with a coffee or coke, just soaking up some fairly decent jazz, and some cutting edge progressive music and entertainment. But by the time the rock scene came along in '62, I had moved on to more "mature" pursuits. It was a time of naive innocence for most of us, I think: the world was a wondrous place just rife with adventure and promise. Oh, what a few years of "progress" would teach us. It makes me melancholy, looking back, but I don't think I would trade much of what I have now for more of what I had then.
  • I remember the US band, (not U.S. but the word us) playing at Pandora's Box. My girlfriends and I were really young, about 15, and somehow would get in to see them. We danced and had so much fun. They were made up of Vaughn Sanderson, Jack Oldam, Tinker and one other member. They played mostly if not all Beatles and Stones songs and were very cute with a great sound. We went to see them as often as we could and partied with them and their friend Wayne. Those were great times. Does anyone else remember them? Where are they now?
  • Re; US Band see website of Hollywood agogo Lots of Vintage pics see pic of The Us Band Some years ago. You can see a note from his son Derek Sanderson that gives you the history of Us and Where they are now, He is Vaughn Sanderson's son. Vaughn passed away several years ago per Derek. R.I.P Vaughn. There is a great photo of the band taken at the Seawitch, Richard Fehring (Tinker) is on Facebook.
  • Also re The US band the pic on hollywood agogo of the band was posted on 11/8/13.
  • A place my friends and I frequented while at UCLA
  • Stan West was the other member. This is Vaughn Sanderson's daughter. I just saw Stan tonight at the Hip Kitty in Claremont performing with the Stan West Band. Great blues!!!!
  • Oh Man...we missed so MUCH in the midwest--We got the bands.eventually-but, missed all the damn ACTION..Thus--I hope a SHOW starts...so we can ALL see what really went on..ALL the old haunts/pics/stories....
  • The Buffalo Springfield song was actually called "For What It's Worth".
  • I was there the night of the riot it all started one day as school was letting out at Fairfax HS I saw a guy with long hair standing on the corner Melrose & Fairfax he was handing out leaflets my friends & I read'em it said that there would be a protest against the fascist LA County Sheriff at Pandora's Box a place well known to us, so my friends and I made plans to me by the school at 8:00 pm and walk up to the Strip no one had a car yet. When we arrived at the Strip the Shit had already hit the fan what I remember is a crowd around an RTD bus shaking it back and forth the bus driver looking scared shirtless grabing his money and heading for safety the air was filled with anything that wasn't bolted down the bullhorns telling everybody to leave the area and me personally thinking about being busted for curfew a month earlier in front of Canters and my stepfather taking his sweet ass time to pick me up saying to my friend I'm out of here. I night that I will always remember and myself and my friends from that point on always questioning authority.
  • Of course there's the Mothers of Invention song Plastic People on the 1967 Absolutely Free LP which goes "I hear the sound of marching feet...down Sunset Boulevard to Crescent Heights...and there...at Pandora's box...We are confronted with...a vast Quantity of...Plastic people...Take a day and walk around Watch the Nazi's Run your town Then go home and check yourself You think we're singing 'Bout someone else But you're Plastic people Oh, Baby, now You're such a drag..."
  • Hi, I used to go to Pandora's Box when your Dad played with "Us". I had a huge crush on him and hung out with him a few times. My bests friends like Tinker and Jack Oldham. Are they still alive and well? This is the first time I've been able to ask anyone about them. They were a great band and played Stones and Beatles. We loved going there and seeing them. Thanks, Teri
  • i am an old fairfaxer that led me to my first riot ever!!! that protest led me to working with the green power loveins and later becoming the mad yippie pie thrower
  • In memory of Ted Rooney who just passed away. My brothers and I met him at Pandoras Box where he performed with Dave Reilly, Randy Carlisle and their band. I can't remember the band name but they did their version of "Moma" and we thought they were rock stars.
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This article was last modified 12 years ago