I was on Melrose Ave in Hollywood eating dinner and noticed %90 of the stores there are either vacant or going out of business. Not that I shop there--but I hope the plague doesn't spread to a few of the restaurants I like in the area!
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Los Angeles
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Mon, January 14, 2008 - 11:19 AMMany stores on Melrose seem to have a high turnover rate. I mean how many overpriced clothing boutiques can one area support? Plus I'm sure renting those spaces is anything but cheap. Long gone is the heyday of the 80s when Melrose had some of the cooler stores in LA who either moved to another area or simply went out of business. Now it's mainly indistinguishable clothing/shoes stores (with a few exceptions) and some decent restaurants (Lala's being my favorite). Probably my least favorite in the area is a "vintage" T-shirt store in the space where the defunct Aron's Records used to be, which charges exorbitant prices for shirts that are barely a step above Goodwill castoffs. -
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Mon, January 14, 2008 - 11:39 AMMelrose was a great shopping district that had the misfortune to get trendy at the start of the real estate boom. Tourists showed up, rents skyrocketed, and the cluster of counter-culture shops and niche boutiques shattered and either vanished or were driven to other locations where most of them slowly died.
It's symbolic of the greater decay - and the replacement of distinct shopping districts with "flavor of the month" redevelopment bids. Where once we would have seen strip malls or a larger indoor mall, mixed-use condo/commercial redevs spring forth.
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Mon, January 14, 2008 - 12:12 PMMany of the stores are owned by one extended family with no discernable style other than generic trendy, and they all carry the exact same merchandise for the same price. On some blocks, there are two or three of the same shop under different names. There are almost no interesting or unusual places left- Maya, Fluevog (which is a chain, but has its own look), Necromance, Shrine if you're into Mall Goth, some of the used clothing joints... I'm racking by brain to think of any others but can't come up with any. The rest are interchangeable- one closes and another identical store takes its place.
Restaurants are a tricky business with a ridiculously high failure rate. If a place has been around a few years and has a steady clientele, it's probably fairly safe unless the rent gets jacked up unreasonably or the quality goes downhill. -
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Wed, January 23, 2008 - 12:52 AMIn one word ,Chianti !
The part of Melrose you're talking about has been de-funked for 20 years.Fortunately it's still a attraction.I remember the good old plumbers and electric stores days. -
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Wed, January 23, 2008 - 11:42 AMYeah... the last time I went there was a couple years ago for a friend's birthday, and her party was the only action in the place- maybe two other tables had customers.
I just saw Drake's is gone! In 1975, I had a gay boytoy friend I used to go discoing with, who naked-go-go boyed at Drake's, in front of the screen between films. And also had to sweep the floors. I picked him up at work once, and he asked if I'd like to come in- my first time in a porn theater. There were about six customers, and they kept wandering off into the bathrooms. They yelled at Gary when he was sweeping. The movie was about a bunch of guys on a camping trip- I didn't get to watch long enough to see if there was a ranger. Yay 70s! -
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Wed, January 30, 2008 - 3:32 PMI thought that Drake's had been gone for at least 15 years!(remember the shocking re-model with the neon thunderflash across the whole front of the building and those "industrial" chain-link fences inside?)There's a name sake on Santa Monica Blvd in We-Ho now..I never remember the customers being that frisky as it was pretty much AIDS-time and the sex-police aka employees would holler and controlled the place like it6 was a Tiffany store.They even had Kleenex -boxes installed.
Ah, progress in the 1980's!
Another few shops and restaurantsi remember,'Wanna buy a watch'(i just saw that name somewere else)The Disney-Store(i never understood how the guy could possibly have a shop with that name.Buddy's (fantastic pottery and 1910 furniture)
A tiny hole in the wall patio restaurant Italian place East of La Brea(and large dump with terrace i think Fellini's on the West side of that same street) .kaya korean antiques and the at least 3 record shops besides Aaron's. -
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Wed, January 30, 2008 - 5:42 PMI like Angeli Cafe, Evan Klineman's place. Good simple Italian style. I like Chianti's (sorry Spelling) too. I followed Billy Squire (Soap Plant, De La Luz..) there and he went back, sorta, to E. Hollywood, he's still OK in my book. Melrose got tired pretty fast in my opinion. -
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Wed, January 30, 2008 - 7:41 PMHey Ron- Billy Shire! Billy Shire!!! Billy Squire was an awful MTV arena-rock guy. By the way, B. Shire has a great gallery in Culver City now, in addition to his Silverlake empire. -
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Fri, February 1, 2008 - 5:58 PMI'm not sure if it's the same guy. The name is really familiar as far as bad rock is concerned. The Soap Plant dude had a shop in the late 70"s on Sunset near Maltman then went down to Melrose in the 80's, now he's on Hollywood Blvd near Vermont. We were there yestiday, yep! -
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Fri, February 1, 2008 - 8:33 PMThe demise of the niche shops is a phenemenon happening everywhere. I go into different shopping malls here in the Bay Area and they pretty much look all the same. The same shops (or same type of shops with different names), a lot of shoe places and maybe some restaurants. Really depressing.
And speaking of restaurants, the reason they have a high failure rate is because their profit margin is so thin. Factor in items like energy costs (for refrigeration and cooking), labor costs, rent and so on and you have to do a pretty good business or you'll close quickly. -
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Fri, February 1, 2008 - 10:41 PMHm.....San Francisco....another example and i guess it's really not a sign of the times....Polk Street,Chicken Little and all the other places that are gone since the early 1980's.besides the L.A. mall that spread across the world the other factors have always been there,better enjoy it when it's available.
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Fri, April 18, 2008 - 10:19 PMI remember the Soap Plant back in 72ish in Silver Lake~~~
They had these hand painted silk quilted comforters that were padded with layers of silk stuffing Light as feathers & so comfortable.
I never saw anything like them until 2yrs ago at a county fair where a woman was selling them not painted but the price was above my ability -
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Sat, April 19, 2008 - 11:48 AMThat was/is a great place, and probably one of the first groovy stores in Silver Lake. I bought the dishes for my first apartment there, Chinese enameled metal with a big airbrushed rose, very kitschy, but probably full of lead, and a bunch of Communist Chinese baby art. And rubber fish pens. I was happy to see them move back to the old neighborhood when they defected from Melrose.
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 5:40 PMSquire- bad, Shire-good, now I get it. Hafta check the Culver City joint. -
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Tue, April 15, 2008 - 3:11 PMBilly Shire Fine Arts- on Washington Blvd. just West of Fairfax. A lot of his artists were getting too hifalutin' to keep exhibiting at La Luz de Jesus, so he got himself a fancier gallery , and now they show there.
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Re: Defunct - Melrose Ave
Fri, April 4, 2008 - 9:31 PMBack in 1992, about a week or so before the riot, I walked much of Melrose, from Western all the way to Fairfax.
Mostly trendy clothing stores, but there were a few other shops. I remember a record store that
also sold used amps, reel-to-reel recorders and other audio gear.
There was a record store with a t-shirt shop in the back called "Sin City", with provocative
t-shirts (mostly political slogans)
And there was a store called "Condomania", which sold, you guessed it....
