In front of me was the Sunset Strip. All of the neon lights flashing, people walking along the historic street, it was a place that needed exploring. Beginning this week, if you’re staying at a few of the hotels along Sunset Strip, you can do some of that exploring for free with the Sunset Strip VIP Pass.

The pass will help you get into places like the Viper Room, the Roxy, Whisky A Go-Go and more for free. Leave the cover charges for suckers — and locals.

The pass is sponsored by Jack Daniels and provides free access to a slew of clubs along the strip for people staying at the Andaz, The London West Hollywood, Mondrian, The Standard, Hollywood, Sunset Marquis or Sunset Plaza Best Western.

According to organizers, the pass could save you more than $125 on any given night. For more information on the pass, check it out here.

Participating clubs include:

Cat Club
The Comedy Story

House of Blues Sunset Strip

Key Club

Rainbow

The Roxy Theatre

Viper Room

Whisky A Go-Go

Imagine The Burning Man on stage — in Los Angeles.

Cirque Berzerk, which has received rave reviews (though we have not personally seen it), looks as if it’s part burlesque, part theater and part athletic prowess that makes you sit in your seat and say, “how the hell do they do that?”

A new show begins this Friday and continues through January.

All we can do is tell you that this self described sexy dark circus begins again this Friday at Club Nokia in LA. With two shows a night over the weekends ( 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.) and then a few shows during the week at 8 p.m. (check the troupe’s website to see times and dates).

Honestly, we wish we could tell you more about it — and as soon as we get someone in LA to get over to Club Nokia, we hope we can.

And what better place to watch the sun set on 2010 than along Sunset Strip. (Special thanks to the folks at TheSunsetStrip.com for all of the information.)

Here are a few things to put on your list of things to knock out before the year ends, or the place to be when it does end.

The Raveonettes + Autoluxe at The Standard, Hollywood

Photo credit / TheSunsetStrip.com

KCRW presents Danish duo The Raveonettes and Autoluxe. Doors open at 8 p.m. and pre-sale tickets are $50. http://bit.ly/StandardHollywood_NewYears

The Pharcyde at Key Club

Influential LA rap quartet The Pharcyde takes over the Key Club with the Lowkeys. Tickets are $40-$70. Doors open at 8 p.m. This show is ages 18 and older. For tickets, call 310-274-5800 or visit www.keyclub.com.

Neon New Years at Skybar

Photo credit / TheSunsetStrip.com

Skybar hosts ultimate New Wave ’80s rockers the Spazmatics on New Year’s Eve. Guests can also enjoy an open bar from 8 p.m. – 2 a.m. Entrance is $175 ($125 for Mondrian hotel guests). For reservations, call 323.848.6025. www.mondrianhotel.com

Camp Freddy + Juke Kartel at The Roxy Theatre

Three options and prices for NYE at The Roxy. $50 GA ticket, or upgrade to $100 ticket that includes an open bar with well, wine and beer choices, or splurge on the $200 ticket and enjoy open bar with premium liquor, wine and beer. Tickets that include open bar are only available for purchase at The Roxy box office. www.theroxyonsunset.com

Steel Panther at House of Blues

Break out the spandex and hairspray as Steel Panther prepares to rock you into 2011. General admission tickets are $37 in advance, or upgrade to a VIP ticket for $77 and enjoy Foundation Room access and a bar package. Bottle service is also available.

For tickets or questions, call 323-848-5100 or visit our website www.houseofblues.com.

Ring In 2011 at The Comedy Store

The Comedy Store has created a win/win package that includes a full lineup of comics, champagne toast at midnight and a $40 gift certificate to The Comedy Store. Tickets are $50 for the Main Room and $40 for Original Room shows. Main Room lineup includes Shawn Pelofsky, Charles Fleischer, Nick Youssef, Freddy Lockhart, Dom Irrera, Dov Davidoff, Chris D’Elia, Ian Edwards, Ari Shaffir, Rusty Dooley, Rick Ingrapham and Berry Diamond. Doors open at 9 p.m. www.thecomedystore.com

Want to just go out for a fine dining experience? Here are a few choices along the strip.

New Year’s Eve Dining & Drinks

Photo credit / Bob Friday

Asia de Cuba
Asia de Cuba is offering a multi-course menu on New Year’s Eve. Dinner is $89 per person before 8 p.m. and $109 per person after 8 p.m.  For more information or reservations, please call  323.848.6000. www.mondrianhotel.com

BLT Steak

On New Year’s Eve, BLT Steak will offer diners a special menu in addition to the regular offerings. Open from 6 p.m. – 11:30 p.m., BLT Steak is the perfect stop before an evening on The Sunset Strip. www.boasteak.com

Cabo Cantina

Start the night off right by taking advantage of the best happy hour on The Strip. All drinks are two-for-one prices from 4-8 p.m. Cabo will be open extended hours, from noon – 2 a.m., and offering our NEW late night happy hour from 10 p.m.-close. Stop by for a champagne toast, Cabo style! www.thecabocantina.com

Gordon Ramsay at The London West Hollywood

Celebrate with one of two dining options. The first seating is from 5-8 p.m. and features a three-course menu for $85. The second seating is at 8 p.m. and includes a five-course menu and champagne toast at midnight for $145 per person. www.thelondonwesthollywood.com

Katana

Photo Credit / Bob Friday

Enjoy a DJ, dancing, party favors and views overlooking The Sunset Strip as you ring in 2011. First seating from 6-8:45 p.m. includes regular menu. Second seating from 9-9:30 p.m. includes a prix fixe menu and champagne toast for $125 per person. www.katanarobata.com

Ketchup

Ketchup will offer two menus on NYE, a limited a la carte Menu and a $60 chef’s special menu, which includes starter and chef’s appetizer trio, choice of salad, choice of main course and trio of desserts. Ketchup opens at 5:30 p.m. for dinner. www.dolcegroup.com

Restaurant at Sunset Marquis

Enjoy a four-course dinner and champagne toast. Presented by chef Guillaume Burlion, the menu features Langoustine and white truffle bisque en croute; butter lettuce with candied pecans over a wild leek tart with pomegranate vinaigrette; intermezzo of champagne granite; choice of Kobe beef “Perigourdine” or black truffle crusted Brittany dover sole; and a Godiva chocolate soufflé. Price is $125 per person. www.sunsetmarquis.com

RH at Andaz
RH’s executive chef Sebastien Archambault will serve a special five-course feast that showcases his signature seasonal, market-to-table Southwestern French cuisine. Price for the first seating at 5 p.m. is $65 per person. Second seating at 8 p.m. is $75 per person and includes a champagne toast at midnight.

Reservations required 323.785.6090. www.rhwesthollywood.com

Sunset Trocadero

Join the Trocadero friends & family as we serve our full food and drink menu until 2 a.m. Come in early to take advantage of our happy hour, with all drinks (including champagne) and appetizers priced 50% off from 6-8 p.m.

Special New Year’s Eve Package

Photo credit / MVB

Celebrate New Year’s Eve at The London West Hollywood
Ring in the New Year with style at The London West Hollywood. Our New Year’s Eve Celebration package offers you the ultimate year-end highlight with luxurious suite accommodations and award-winning cuisine from famed Chef Gordon Ramsay.   

• Champagne toast in the privacy of your own suite upon arrival.
• Dinner for two at Gordon Ramsay at The London West Hollywood restaurant.
  • Five-course menu seating between 8 p.m. – midnight
  • Champagne toast at midnight.
• Overnight accommodations in a luxurious suite.
• Breakfast for two the following morning in the privacy of your suite..
• Overnight valet parking for one vehicle.

www.thelondonwesthollywood.com

We also liked that The Sunset Strip included a few places to head to the day after — when your body craves grease and carbs to help stave off too much champaign.

New Year’s Day

Brunch at Gordon Ramsay at The London West Hollywood

Celebrate the first day of 2011 with brunch at Gordon Ramsay at The London West Hollywood. Served from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m., the brunch features an a-la-carte menu. Add on trips to the Recovery Bar for $23. www.thelondonwesthollywood.com

Brunch at RH at Andaz

Brunch highlights include French-style Scrambled Eggs with smoked salmon and dill; breakfast salad; homemade crispy duck confit; and slow braised beef cheek alongside seasonal cocktails. Served 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.  www.rhwesthollywood.com

Nurse Your Hangover at Cabo Cantina

Nurse that NYE hangover with bottomless mimosas and Bloody Marys for only $9.95 from noon until 3 p.m. Also offering a $1.99 “hangover burrito,” in addition to our Mexican brunch menu. All Bowl Games will be shown on our HD Flat Screen TVs. Two-for-one happy hour from 4-8p.m. and again from 10 p.m.-midnight. www.thecabocantina.com

Pink’s hot dogs, which, according to the LA Times Travel Blog, has been steaming up wieners to Hollywood’s finest for seven decades has now opened up a stand at LAX.

Passengers haven’t had this much access to encased meats ever since Larry “I’m not gay” Craig was busted in Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for his own toe tapping bathroom incident. Now footlongs will be in the hands of hungry travelers instead of delusional congressmen — T-shirts are still optional.

The stand opened Thursday with an official ribbon cutting, though owner Gloria Pink — she married into the Pink family hot dog empire — says she’s just estatic to spread the family’s wiener love around.

And that’s certainly the kind of love we can approve. Having another food option at LAX certainly can’t hurt.

Photo credits: LA Times Travel Blog and Pink’s

Zip Lines continue to grow in popularity so it seems like a natural fit for Catalina Island open up a zip line.

It’s a first for the island, according to the LA Times, The Catalina Zip Line Eco Tour is probably the only way to see the island by burning up the least amount of CO2 (though getting to the island is another matter).

The zip line covers nearly 4,000 feet and costs $90 — though there are special packages that can cut that price in half.

If you’ve never tried the self-propelled cable ride, it’s certainly worth it, though tightening up the harness can be a touch uncomfortable. But, if you keep your body tightly together (instead of flailing your arms and legs) you can really build up some speed.

So put your Nike’s on and just do it.

Check out this video from the LA Times.

The cast of “Fly Girls”(from left to right): Tasha, Louise, Mandy, Nikole and Farrah

Friday night, Virgin America offered a 35,000-foot preview to the new reality TV show featuring five flight attendants and their crazy CW life.

The airline showed the first episode aboard a flight from Los Angeles to Vegas with the cast serving up the A-list guests. (Sadly, HTG remains on the Kathy Griffin D-List and didn’t get a chance to preview the show.)

But other much more important writers and members of the media did — and apparently got to attend a red carpet party at Lagasse’s Stadium at The Palazzo in Las Vegas.

The California-based airline even matched up a slaes promotion to celebrate the series called the PrimeTime Fare Sale — meaning you don’t even have to watch “The Hills” of the skies to take advantage of the program.

“The idea behind Virgin America is to reinvent the experience of flying with beautifully designed mood-lit cabins, incredible guest service and a hip, sophisticated vibe that today’s travelers are looking for,” said Porter Gale, Vice President of Marketing at Virgin America, in a way only a marketing VP could say.  “We’re thrilled to work with The CW to show how our in-flight teammates are re-writing the script and bringing the style and fun back to flying.”

In-flight teammates (r to l) Farrah, Nikole, Tasha, Louise and Mandy, prior to the in-flight premiere of "Fly Girls."

Having hot flight attendants helps too.

According to the news release, party goers included 100 Virgin America staff sipped on Belvedere Vodka and Ambhar Tequila while listening to media tell them “you looked great” and “that was so cute when you thought so-and-so was mad at you and really, her mother had just died.”

“This show is about real women who happen to have landed on a very different career path.  It chronicles the places they go, the guests they meet and their lives together,” said Kristen Vadas, Senior Vice President, Alternative Programming, The CW, in a press release. “We’re thrilled to be working with Virgin America to give our viewers a unique peek into their whirlwind life at 35,000 feet.”

Virgin America flight teammates and cast members of 'Fly Girls', Farrah (left) and Louise serve cocktails to passengers after the in-flight premiere of "Fly Girls."

The show is produced by Bridezilla and The Exterminators mastermind Jeff Collins, as well as LarryBond and Porter Gale, the geniuses behind “The Hills” and “The City.”

The show debuts on CW at 9:30 p.m. March 24. Hopefully, it doesn’t end up on “The Soup” too soon.

Naturally, the show wouldn’t be complete without a promotional tie in: So try to Land the Look, which can land you some free clothes from the spring collection from Banana Republic. Passengers can also win Banana Republic aviator sunglasses as well as a few other rewards. Check out the details here.

All photos provided by Virgin America — as we told you, we weren’t on the flight.

She was to become the Black Dahlia after her bisected, vivisected, mutilated and brutalized corpse was discovered in a vacant lot a few miles east of Downtown LA. Despite dozens, if not hundreds of suspects (including Orson Wells), her killer was never found and the case remains open to this day.

This day – January 9th, 2010 — also happens to be the 63rd anniversary of the last time anyone saw Elizabeth “Beth” Short alive. We were invited by Esotouric, a company specializing in “Bus Adventures into the secret heart of LA,” to come along for a ride exploring Beth Short’s life in Los Angeles.

Like Jack the Ripper is to London, the Black Dahlia case is to Los Angeles. Not only were poor Elizabeth Short’s guts ripped out, but the guts of the city, too. The shiny, Hollywood fueled facade so carefully built up around the City of Angels cracked, its dark center exposed. Pretty young women typically portrayed as budding starlets were in fact scraping by as taxi dancers, B-girls and prostitutes.

Psychologically shattered WWII vets wandered the streets searching for a way out of their loneliness and bad memories through drink, cheap sex and/or some form of violence. Organized crime, headed by celebrity like bosses such as Mickey Cohen, Jack Dragna and Bugsy Segal did what they liked and liked what they did.

Meanwhile, the LAPD was at the height of their pre-Rampart corruption and ineptitude, which no doubt played a role as to why the Black Dahlia case – as well as the cases of many other murdered women in 1947 – remains unsolved.

Recently, a lot of attention has been focused on Elizabeth Short’s murder, fueled by the publication of James Ellroy’s book called The Black Dahlia and Brian DePalma’s movie of the same name. But rather than concentrating on the “whodunit” aspect like the book and the movie, Esotouric smartly decides to  focus on who Beth Short was and what she was doing in Los Angeles, as well as what was going on in the city proper.

We say smartly because as even James Ellroy admits, the Black Dahlia case will never be solved. This frees the tour up to concentrate on Beth and her sad, typical though interesting, down and out postwar life.

As mentioned, the tour begins at the luxurious Biltmore Hotel (the presidential suite maintained a well stocked bar, especially during prohibition), the second to last place Elizabeth Short was seen alive. We then followed her footsteps south on Olive Street to a modern day strip club called the Galaxy Ball Room, that back in 1947 was known as the Crown Grille (and known to be a gay bar), the very last place Beth Short was seen alive.

The tour traces not only Elizabeth footsteps around Los Angeles, but also a tough female reporter named Aggie Underwood who became central to the Black Dahlia case.

The tour itself is a blast, as our guides pull no punches. One liners like “That’s where Beth Short got laid” and “Beth didn’t put out very often” are heard, but always balanced by a respectful, almost loving admiration of Elizabeth Short. For instance, Beth Short is often popularly portrayed as not only promiscuous, but often times as a prostitute. These notions are quickly dismissed by the hosts.

In what might have been the most interesting segment of the tour, one of the guides deconstructs Beth’s goth-like make up, contrasting it to the popular style of the time (“Ava Gardner in an apron”) and speculating on what her choice of a nearly white face with dark lips might have meant.

Finally we get to the body dump site in Leimert Park. Talk about the banality of evil. Beth Short’s corpse was found in what in 1947 was a vacant lot but today is a well manicured lawn in a solidly middle class neighborhood. A classic Rolls-Royce and a Delorean were parked across the street. There’s no marker, no sign, no plaque depicting the spot where the crime that in some ways came to define Los Angeles occurred. Just a lawn, like any other lawn.

One that you’ll likely never find, unless you get on the the Esotouric bus.

For more information, go to Esotoric’s website or call 323-223-2767. Tours cost about $60 (some are listed as $58 and others as $63).

Here’s Esotouric’s current schedule

Sat January 16 – Wild Wild West Side crime bus tour
Sat January 23 ­ Weird West Adams crime bus tour
Sat January 30 – East Side Babylon crime bus tour
Sun Feb 7 – Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: South LA
Sat Feb 13 – Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Route 66
Thurs Feb 18 ­ Jeremy Kasten presents “Spider Baby” with director Jack Hill
Sat Feb 20 – Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The New Chinatowns
Sun Feb 21 – Joan Renner lecture “How the ‘Bob’ Changed History” (tentative)
Sat Feb 27 – Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The Lowdown on Downtown-The
Secret History of LA
Sat March 6 –  Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice crime bus tour
Sat March 13 – Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles
Sat March 20 – Maja’s Mysteries: Rapture & Release (debut)
Sat March 27 – Raymond Chandler’s Bay City
Sat April 3 ­ John Buntin’s L.A. Noir
Sat April 10 ­ Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits’ L.A.
Sat April 24 ­ Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski’s L.A.
Sat May 1 – Pasadena Confidential crime bus tour with Crimebo the Clown
Sat May 8 – Blood & Dumplings crime bus tour
Sat May 15 – The Real Black Dahlia crime bus tour
Sat May 22 – The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain’s So. Cal Nightmare