The Sunset Strip Diaries: March 2011

"A FASCINATING READ"

"Even if you aren't interested in the hair band scene of the early 90's, this is a really entertaining book. Cat fights, mental hospitals, strippers, heroin, wild parties, blackmail and lots of 80's celebs in the background- all around madness. I had to get the sequel the day after I finished this because I had to find out what happened to her"
-Amazon

"After reading books like Nikki Sixx's "The Heroin Diaries" or Slash's "Slash," I was craving more. It was obvious from the descriptions of packed nightclubs that there were a million more stories to be told of the Sunset Strip. Asbury's book is one of those stories. Not only was she a total scenester at your classic Hollywood haunts like the Roxy and the Whisky, rubbing elbows with some of the great and some of the lesser bands at their own low-key gatherings, but she was also dedicated to her high school newspaper and kept an extremely lucid diary chronicling her exploits. This book makes the perfect companion to all those big rock star autobiographies I had been reading. It's the missing link."
-Barnes & Noble

"This book will not disappoint if you are interested in the sunset strip glam days. If you were a kid growing up in the 80s, you can relate to so many of the pop culture references. You feel like you're talking to a friend as you read it. I've stayed up til 2 a.m. the past two nights because I can't put this book down."
- Amazon

"Amy Asbury is one of the most exciting writers I have had the pleasure to experience. Her life story (so far) was one giant thrill ride set in the 80's/90's on the strip when it was filled with rockers,bimbos,backstage passes and non-stop excitement.Felt like I was there with her!"
- Barnes & Noble

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Gazzarri's! The Rainbow! The Whisky! The Roxy! Let's take a ride back to THE STRIP!

"It was like a huge street party. Eight by ten pieces of neon paper were stapled to every phone pole and littered the ground like huge chunks of confetti in hot pink, acid green, lemon yellow and bright turquoise blue. They were band 'flyers.' Band members passed them out to everyone walking by to try and get them to go to their performances..."

"There I was, breathing in the cigarette smoke, perfume and leather; feeling exhilarated and scared at the same time. The guys who walked around passing out flyers for their bands each had their own little theme. It was like Halloween- I felt like we were all trick or treating. There were guys with a beachy theme, some with a gypsy theme, and others with a kid's cartoon theme. I saw variations of punk and glam, vampire and glam, and plain old beauty school dropout glam. Anyone could go to The Strip. It was public property. But to get in with the in-crowd? You had to have something they wanted..."

"In most crowds, men are chasing after females and the females are picking and choosing who they want. In this crowd, it was a very high ratio of women competing for a tiny ratio of men. I could tell it would be very hard to be a respected woman in the Sunset crowd. It seemed pretty impossible; laughable even..."

"...we went in and out of the Whisky, the Roxy, the Rainbow and Gazzarri's, not to mention the sushi bar across the street from the Rainbow, Ten Masa. Every one of those places was always filled past capacity and we could barely move. We would continue the night getting increasingly drunk and doing reckless things like crawling over fences, getting in fights, or getting thrown out of bars. I felt like I was going to the biggest and best rager of the century every single weekend. It was non-stop. The vibe never died down. Even though there was chaos coming from all sides of me, I felt in my element within all of this craziness..."

"I was a regular high school student by day, trying to lead a normal life of writing commentaries for the school paper, making lopsided pots in ceramics and playing tennis in sweat shorts. I felt like a spy. It was hard to make conversation with girls my age who were going to the movies on Saturday nights in their high-waisted paper bag pants and teased bangs. Funny thing was, I was terrified of the normal kids. I wouldn't have known what to say or do on a date or what to do at a house party or the movies..."

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"Problemed kids in L.A. end up in a myriad of places, depending on their looks and their likes: Mine lead me straight to the Sunset Strip. Read about what it was like to be a hot girl in Hollywood in the early 1990s, as well as the demise (which is always more fun to read about) of not just me, but the hair band scene in general, due to the rise of grunge music.

Some of us were there, in the 'in crowd,' but not all of us can remember it! I wrote down everything in my school notebooks or on scraps of paper: It's all here. It was fun, it was crazy and it was dangerous: Wild parties, fights, drugs, and all around insanity- not for the faint at heart.

What brings a young girl to such a spot? Lots. I take you inside a home with a drug addicted parent; inside my stays in a mental ward; inside my brain during feelings of depression, worthlessness and thoughts of suicide; inside the body of a sexual abuse victim, a bulimic and a cutter.

Read about how someone who was shy and broken turned very brazen, bold, and ruthless.

Once I got to Hollywood, there was a lot to figure out. What were the image guidelines? How did one climb the social ladder without dropping their drawers? How did one stand out in a sea of craziness? What were the big no-no's? How can you date guys wearing more make up than you? How does one handle their friends turning to heroin?"

Want to know about this time in pop culture? Now you can:

Check out The Sunset Strip Diaries by Amy Asbury on Kindle or paperback version!

"A FASCINATING READ"

Preview of the table of contents: