Confessions on a Dance Floor: An Oral History of LA Nightlife in the Early 2000s

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 ic