Viral Reel Dubs Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard 'Struggle Street'

The narrator's list of empty storefronts includes Electric Owl, the train-themed bar near Gardner Street that closed after almost 10 years.

A reel from the Instagram account @streetpeopleofhollywood walks Hollywood's stretch of Sunset Boulevard, counts the dark storefronts and gives the street a new name: Struggle Street. It's drawn 29K likes and thousands of comments.

"This is why Sunset looks so foul. It's just destroyed. Never coming back," the narrator says in the reel. It's one stretch of one boulevard, and part of his case holds up. Why it's happening is a harder call.

His roll call runs long. Chibo, Aroma, Sam Ash, the Samuel French bookstore and Electric Owl are gone, he says. Sunset Grill's old space went to a place called Ambrosia that never opened, in his telling, and a former Starbucks sits empty, he says. Between the storefronts he points to trash, empty liquor bottles and a 7-Eleven he calls hectic.

Electric Owl, at least, is real and recent. The train-themed restaurant and cocktail bar on a triangle of land at Gardner Street, just off Sunset, closed after almost 10 years, Hoodline reported Sept. 2. It announced the news on social media and didn't say why.

That triangle has a longer memory than the reel does. Pacific Electric Red Cars ran down Sunset and turned onto Gardner from about 1909 to 1954, Hoodline reported, citing Calisphere. The bar took its name from an old nickname for night train conductors.

The lot has also gone dark before. A restaurant called Gardner Junction opened there and folded within months in 2015, Hoodline reported, citing the Los Angeles Times. Electric Owl moved in in April 2017 and lasted almost a decade. "Never coming back" is a big call for a corner that's already come back once.

Still, the closures aren't only on his block. Hoodline counts Electric Owl among a run of losses around West Hollywood and the Sunset corridor. Connie & Ted's on Santa Monica Boulevard closed in July after 13 years, blaming higher labor and supply costs.

The Belmont on La Cienega Boulevard shut after 26 years. Chin Chin left the Sunset Strip in 2025 after 42 years, pointing to rising overhead and thinner crowds at night.

Hoodline reads the pattern as tight margins, debt carried out of the pandemic and changing nightlife habits. The reel films the sidewalk. The owners who explained themselves pointed at the books.

Even the narrator isn't all eulogy. He says El Compadre is still thriving, and in the same reel that calls Sunset finished, he says a roll house is coming in the fall.

Source: hoodline.com, retrieved October 10, 2026.