Confessions on a Dance Floor

Once upon a time, going out in Hollywood was actually fun. DEREK C. BLASBERG lifts the velvet rope for an oral history of LA nightlife in the 2000s as told by the insiders who made it happen

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In the early to mid-aughts, Los Angeles nightlife wasn't a marketing strategy—it was a ritual, a religion. This was a sweet spot of Hollywood's (pre-streaming) power, before social media and the World Wide Web broke the spell of secretive hedonism.

Stars and starlets mingled with promoters, stylists, and publicists in dark rooms with strong drinks and weak camera flashes. They flocked to Hyde, Teddy's at the Roosevelt Hotel, the Lounge, Joseph's, Les Deux, the Sunset Room, Area, the Chateau Marmont; places immortalized on The Hills, in the pages of Us Weekly, and on fledgling gossip sites like TMZ and Perez Hilton.

I can still see digital cameras catching the shine of MAC Lipglass, the shimmer of an Hervé Léger bandage dress undulating over a magnum of Grey Goose in a branded ice bucket. These bright young things texted on flip phones, smoked indoors, and the worst that could happen was Page Six mentioning a day later who they sat next to at a club.

Tabloids couldn't get enough of Paris Hilton (now a mother and mogul who politely declined to respond to our questions), Britney Spears (whose reps didn't respond to our inquiries), and Lindsay Lohan, who stumbled through the 2010s but came back looking better than ever in this year's hit film Freakier Friday. (Still, her rep passed on participating in this story and CC'd a lawyer in her response.)

These weren't just clubs—they were stages. And the players who filled them were writing the last chapter of a bygone era: a world where celebrity was witnessed, not posted. Here, the promoters, PR fixers, club owners, and photographers who came alive at 1 a.m. reminisce about the golden age of noughties nightlife.

BRENT BOLTHOUSE, founder, Bolthouse Productions and Bungalow Hospitality Group: I remember moments in Hyde where I was looking at A-list actresses making out with two girls, going, "Well, thank God there's no cameras in here."