I am not a celebrity.  My dad is not a rock star.  My mom is not an actress or a supermodel, and nobody has any idea what I do.  And yet I have gone out and "gotten in" in this town since I was 17.  Before that, my older sister used to sneak out to such clubs as Roxbury and Saturday Night Fever every Thursday and Saturday and come home with all sorts of tales about this club and that actor and "the retarded kid from What's Eating Gilbert Grape with all his cute friends." I was sure the golden days would be over by the time I was old enough to go out and wondered if I was missing out on everything.  Flash forward a few years later, and the people throwing the clubs my sister went to, Brent Bolthouse and his co-horts Jen "Bolthouse" Rosero and "Pantera" Sera, are the same people who are throwing the clubs I was now going to.  The crowd hasn't changed much either.

When the Bolthouses started their first club, Papa:Willy, I was only ten (for those of you keeping score, the year was 1989).
Back then anyone could get in as long as they paid a whopping dollar at the door.  The scene was inherently cooler, more laid back, and populated mostly with kids who had grown up in Hollywood and were fairly unimpressed.  In the mid-90's, as clubs such as Miyagi's and Dublin's sprang up on the Sunset Strip (bringing with them the "Euro-trash" crowd), the scene found itself bombarded by a legion of shiny shirts and platform shoes.  As a result, any Hollywood club worth its weight in WB alumni could no longer get away with letting just anybody in.  Hence the guest list, the opulent door fees, the exclusivity.  The Bolthouses went on to grow and rule the scene with such clubs as Bar One, The Gate, and the aforementioned Roxbury and Saturday Night Fever.  The guest-list-enabled celebrities and socialites like to come out and engage in debauchery without being ogled by the Valley kids and out-of-towners.  Press ensued.  Everyone knew the clubs where you wanted to be.

Around 1996...
Just about your only chance of getting in would be to get there on a Monday night and hide out in one of the stalls, feet up, till the wee hours of the next day.