About

Velvet Ropes is a map of who lived where and what happened here. The story, the photos and the property details are free. You pay to see the exact address. This page says who makes it, how a page gets made, and how to reach me when something is wrong.

Who I am

I'm Aleks Drogobetski, I live in Nashville, and I build Velvet Ropes by myself. It started in Los Angeles, where Tucker co-founded it with me, and I run it now. I lean on AI as a working tool every day.

When friends come to visit, I'm always getting the same questions: What is that building? Who lives up that hill? Where did that thing happen? So the register this site is written in, the local who happens to know the address, is not a positioning exercise.

Why it exists

Years ago my folks came out to Los Angeles and wanted to see Ronald Reagan's house. We bought a paper map off a table on Sunset Blvd for $25, the way people have bought them there for decades, and drove out to find it. We reached the right block and stopped in front of 2 mansions. The map did not say which one was his. Neither did anything I could pull up on my phone.

That afternoon is the reason this site exists. The address was public. The story was public. Nobody had built an app that put them on the same map. The name comes from a line in Lady Gaga's Paparazzi.

How a page gets made

Here's how a page gets made. Photos come last, and not every page needs them.

Research, and where AI fits. I draft with AI assistance. It is fast at assembling a first pass on a person or a property, and it is wrong often enough that nothing it writes ships as written. Every claim that is not common knowledge gets checked against a source before it publishes, and if I cannot point at a source the claim comes off the page. Which sources count, which ones never do, and how corrections work are all on the editorial standards page.

Addresses. Every new address is checked against county property records before it publishes, and pages from the site's early years are being re-checked the same way. I also look for the connection between a person and a house in a public property record and in at least 1 other reputable source before a new page here carries it. The rest of the address policy is on the editorial standards page.

Photography. Photos credited to Velvet Ropes were shot on location by me or by a friend helping out, from the public street or sidewalk. Where a photo came from somewhere else, it is used with the credit its source requires.

Photos and reuse

Photographs credited to Velvet Ropes were taken for this site and are not licensed for reuse. If you want to use one, email me and ask. Photographs from other sources are used with the credit their source requires, and their rights stay with the rights holder. If you hold rights to an image on this site and believe it should not be here, email me and it comes down while I check.

Support

Support runs through one mailbox: Velvet Ropes support address: Email us. It reaches me, not a queue, and I answer within 6 to 7 business days. If you paid for something and it did not work, put that in the first line. Refunds are covered by the return policy. Credits you buy never expire.

Mentions

Velvet Ropes was a 2016 Startup Grind nominee in Southern California. Work from the site has been cited or referenced by the New York Times (on the Hype House and the Los Angeles TikTok mansion), Forbes, Wikipedia, Business Insider, the Daily Mail, the Los Angeles Times, Mashable, the New York Post, and Fandom.