Laserium finds a vintage Hollywood home.
Ken Hively,The Laserium show will feature new 3-D effects at the old Vine ST. THEATRE, right down the street from Antebellum gallery.
WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD- The rocking light show is revived at the Vine Theatre after its long Griffith Observatory run ended in 2002.
Marla Maples has what appears to be an extremely bright green mole on her cheek. Actually it's just a benign laser beam, straying onto her features as she stands inside the lobby of Hollywood's venerable Vine Theatre. Technicians are hurriedly turning the 1937 movie house into the new permanent home of Laserium, which is returning to Los Angeles beginning Friday after seven years of being officially unplugged.
Originally hundreds of thousands of people saw the laser light show in during its 1973 to 2002 run at the Griffith Observatory's planetarium. Laserium has a former reputation as L.A.'s most infamous stoner rite of passage.
Laserium founder Ivan Dryer admits there was a tacit understanding in the old days that some patrons might arrive already lit up. "I mean, I used to tag our ads 'Be Prepared,' " he says, quoting a vintage 1970s catchphrase that didn't necessarily refer to Boy Scout-approved prep. "But I think that there's less consciousness now that that's a necessity to be prepared for a Laserium show. We've always had G-rated shows, and we've always had a lot of family attendance, so we intend to push that as part of the nature of our brand." It doesn't hurt that Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Beatles -- the mainstays of the new venue's initial rotating shows -- are now considered family heirloom hand-down material and no longer the stuff of head shop soundtracks.
Originally hundreds of thousands of people saw the laser light show in during its 1973 to 2002 run at the Griffith Observatory's planetarium. Laserium has a former reputation as L.A.'s most infamous stoner rite of passage.
Laserium founder Ivan Dryer admits there was a tacit understanding in the old days that some patrons might arrive already lit up. "I mean, I used to tag our ads 'Be Prepared,' " he says, quoting a vintage 1970s catchphrase that didn't necessarily refer to Boy Scout-approved prep. "But I think that there's less consciousness now that that's a necessity to be prepared for a Laserium show. We've always had G-rated shows, and we've always had a lot of family attendance, so we intend to push that as part of the nature of our brand." It doesn't hurt that Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Beatles -- the mainstays of the new venue's initial rotating shows -- are now considered family heirloom hand-down material and no longer the stuff of head shop soundtracks.
If the wink-wink motto of the old Laserium was "Be Prepared," at the new location they'll be counting on impulse business from a lot of patrons who couldn't come less prepared: the thousands of foot tourists who cross Hollywood & Vine every day, whose eyes may be caught by the beckoning outdoor beams that will soon dance across a curved portion of the old structure's facade. "We'll certainly get a lot of walk-ups here that we couldn't get at the Observatory," Dryer says. "You couldn't walk up the hill in Griffith Park as a casual thing."
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