Hollywood Walk of Fame

The Walk of Fame is in Hollywood, a part of Los Angeles in the United States.

The sidewalk is dark gray. Pink stars are set into it, one after another. Many stars have a person's name in shiny metal letters.

The Hollywood Walk of Fame runs along the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard, from Gower Street to La Brea Avenue, and along Vine Street, from Sunset Boulevard to Yucca Street. Hollywood is a neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Set into the dark sidewalk are more than 2,800 coral-pink stars. Each named star honors a person who worked in entertainment, with the name written in brass, a shiny yellow metal. Some stars face one way and some the other, so people walking in either direction can read them.

The Walk of Fame covers Hollywood Boulevard between Gower Street and La Brea Avenue and Vine Street between Sunset Boulevard and Yucca Street; Wikidata describes it as about 15 blocks of the boulevard and three of Vine Street. Its organizers, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, count more than 2,800 stars, made of terrazzo and brass.

The Chamber runs the Walk for the City of Los Angeles: it advises the city on new names under a 1962 city ordinance. It calls the Walk one of the most successful marketing ideas ever produced, a claim worth reading as the organizer's own. In 1978 the city's Cultural Heritage Board designated it Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 194.

Each star is pink with a gold-colored edge.

In the middle of a star is a little round sign. The person's name is written in metal letters above it.

The stars are made of terrazzo, a smooth, hard floor made of chips of stone set in cement and polished, with brass for the edges, letters and the round sign in the middle. The coral-pink stars sit in a black sidewalk, the colors chosen in the 1950s.

At first there were four groups of honorees: movies, television, recording and radio. In 1984, live theater was added, and the walk's organizers now list six categories. Each year about 30 new stars are chosen, from 200 to 300 nominations.

The stars are terrazzo and brass, coral set into a black field, following the colors chosen in the 1950s. The first honorees came from four fields: motion pictures, television, recording and radio. Under Johnny Grant, chair of the Walk of Fame committee from the 1980s until 2008, a fifth category, live theatre, was added in 1984; the Chamber's FAQ now names six categories.

The committee receives 200 to 300 applications a year and selects an average of 30 each June; the honoree has two years to hold the ceremony. Anyone may nominate a person, with that person's written permission, and the committee does not accept petitions. On average two stars are added each month, and the ceremonies are free and open to the public.

People come from all over to see the stars.

They look for names they know and take photos. Sometimes a new star is shown, and anyone can come and watch!

The Walk of Fame is about 12 miles from Los Angeles International Airport. Visitors walk along the sidewalks looking for names they know and taking photos with the stars.

The organizers report about 24 star ceremonies a year, about two a month. The ceremonies are free and open to everyone, with a public viewing area. In the photo, one star in a long row reads STAN FREBERG.

The Chamber reports about 24 induction ceremonies a year, broadcast widely, and lists the Walk among the area's top visitor attractions; it is 12 miles from LAX, half an hour to an hour by car. Ceremonies are free, with a public viewing area subject to city restrictions.

The photo looks along one sidewalk: a row of coral stars leads into the distance beside a road with a bus and cars, and the nearer named star reads STAN FREBERG. The Walk's stars face in alternating directions so they can be read by people walking either way.