THE LATE 1990S were a time of great optimism in America. The stock market was booming. We had a surplus in the federal budget. The Soviet Union had fallen, liberal democracy looked to be the new global norm, and here in Los Angeles, celebrities were operating lavish themed restaurants, the likes of which no one had seen since Clifton’s.
You could eat subs inside a giant submarine at Dive, Steven Spielberg’s restaurant in the Century City Mall. Or pretend you’re at a Jim Crow-era juke joint at Dan Aykroyd’s House of Blues. Nearby, you could buy a burger or even a motorcycle at Peter Fonda’s Thunder Roadhouse, which claimed to be “America’s First Motorcycle Theme Restaurant.”
A frontal view of Dive!, a Los Angeles theme restaurant co-owned by film director Steven Spielberg. It closed in January 1999. (Photo by Jason Kirk/Online USA via Getty Images)
But there was one celebrity restaurant that defied such tidy description. It was called O2. The brainchild of Woody Harrelson, it opened on the Sunset Strip in fall 1998 and shut down just a year later.
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