Defunct Los Angeles's topics - tribe.net

Chase schmais.

ssballs — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:54:14 GMT

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_13934278?source=email

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

The zeppelin returns to L.A. skies,

Archer — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:12:24 GMT

after 80 years:

"The last time something like this was seen in Los Angeles was 1929, when the Graf Zeppelin dropped in on Westchester's Mines Field before starting its nonstop Pacific crossing during its record-setting around-the-world flight."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/11/the-zeppelin-returns-to-skies-of-los-angeles-for-first-time-in-nearly-80-years.html

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

An opera about a freeway? Only in L.A.

Archer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:40:41 GMT

"According to L.A. Opera, "The 110 Project" tells the story of four central characters as it travels through 70 years of L.A. history starting with the birth of the space program in Pasadena's Arroyo Seco in 1939 to downtown Los Angeles at midcentury. It concludes at the port of San Pedro in the present day."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/11/an-opera-about-freeways-only-in-la.html

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 3 replies

Architectural critic Reyner Banham explores LA

Archer — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:09:26 GMT

in this 1972 BBC documentary.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1524953392810656786&ei=ofOpSszfFpOKqQOb07SnAw&q=reyner%20banham%27s%20los%20angeles&hl=en#

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 3 replies

Hollywood Blvd.

ssballs — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:35:19 GMT

1984 w/ The Fibonaccis.I had read about them but never seen them until now.Notice Musso @ the end.
Let's hope that they will never be defunct.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFL1LGMUqu0&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eplanetfabulon%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 4 replies

Hollywood Palladium

haroldfornow — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 19:53:34 GMT

Let's hope it doesn't become defunct.

"Developer Buying Hollywood Palladium
The Hollywood venue is to be sold for an estimated $65 million, but a restoration may not be feasible.
By Roger Vincent, Times Staff Writer
June 30, 2006

The fast-moving makeover of the Hollywood district may soon include a new development on the site of the Hollywood Palladium, the famous concert hall that has hosted such top musical acts as Glenn Miller and the Grateful Dead.

Whether the building itself can survive the transition is unclear.

Combined Properties Inc. is buying the 66-year-old Sunset Boulevard venue with the intention of developing its large parking lot — possibly with residences, stores and a hotel, said Marianne Lowenthal, executive vice president of the Beverly Hills firm.

She declined to say how much the company is paying for the property, but local real estate observers value the deal at about $65 million.

The Palladium has been a shining piece of Hollywood history. It was built by former film producer Maurice M. Cohen on the site of the original Paramount Studio. His ambition was to create a music mecca where ordinary Angelenos could see top celebrities.

After opening night on Halloween 1940, The Times wrote: "The million-dollar ballroom-cafe, which can accommodate comfortably 7,500 persons, was literally packed to the rafters when band leader Tommy Dorsey blew the first blast from his trombone and his orchestra let loose with some jive and swing music."

Dorsey's singers included a skinny young man from New Jersey named Frank Sinatra.

Preservationists have been worried that Hollywood's real estate boom might lead to the razing of the Palladium to make way for shops, restaurants and condominiums, which are enjoying popularity among buyers attracted to the district's surging nightlife and urban vibe.

"We are going to try our hardest to save the Palladium and restore it," Lowenthal said.

Such a project, however, would be "very expensive," she acknowledged. "We are analyzing it right now and working to come up with plans everyone would be excited about."

Combined Properties has the Palladium in escrow and expects to take title by summer's end.

The company has specialized in building neighborhood shopping centers including Foothill Town Center in Foothill Ranch and is moving toward the type of mixed-use developments gaining popularity in urban areas. It has three such projects planned in West Hollywood.

If Combined Properties can keep the Palladium in place, it would have an easier time of getting a development surrounding it approved, said Leron Gubler, president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

"It's an important landmark and a lot of people would be very strongly opposed to losing it," he said. "In the interest of moving forward on a quick timetable, it would be a good idea" to save it.

Among those ready to fight for the Palladium is the Los Angeles Conservancy, Executive Director Linda Dishman said.

The building does not have official landmark status, she said, but it was designed by noted Los Angeles architect Gordon Kaufman, who also designed Santa Anita Park in Arcadia.

"Hollywood is known internationally as an entertainment capital, so it is important to keep venues that continue to serve that use," Dishman said. "The Palladium still has a very active place in entertainment today."

The current owner, Palladium Investors Ltd., didn't respond to requests for comment, but President Alan Shuman acknowledged to the Los Angeles Business Journal last week that a sale was being discussed.

Development on the Palladium block on Sunset between Argyle Avenue and El Centro Avenue has been expected, said real estate broker Steven Tronson of Ramsey-Schilling Co., because the district around nearby Vine Street has seen a recent burst of activity. More than $1.2 billion in development including condos, stores, apartments and a hotel are planned or underway.

In 1942, management at the Palladium bragged that a million people a year were going there to dance and escape the pressures of World War II. Big bands led by Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Les Brown, Harry James and Stan Kenton performed there, and their shows were broadcast to millions of radio listeners nightly.

The venue retained its appeal for top acts through the years and was also the site of graduation parties for generations of high school seniors. In 1961, the Palladium became home to Lawrence Welk's television show and has been the site of many award events, including the Emmys and Grammys.

As musical tastes changed, so did the performers. The Rolling Stones, James Brown, Led Zeppelin, the Who, Bon Jovi and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have all taken the stage at the Palladium.

The current burst of real estate development is "probably the most exciting time for Hollywood since that era when the Palladium was so great," Gubler said. "It would be in everybody's interest to do a project that could clean up the building."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-palladium30jun30,1,3488451.story?coll=la-headlines-business

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 33 replies

25 years ago...

ssballs — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:56:23 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5qBLoegGz4

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 5 replies

Cole's

wandrrr — Fri, 15 May 2009 05:19:51 GMT

... as in Cole's P.E. Buffet (a place worthwhile) -- R.I.P., my old friend.

I visited this once venerable establishment (@6th & Los Angeles Sts, in the Pacific Electric building) tonight, for the 1st time since its reopening last year. I had simultaneously been excited about and dreaded returning, after showing up for lunch over a year ago to find its doors seemingly permanently closed. Lofts were being built in floors above (essentially the building had been derelict above street level for many years), and I feared the worst. After my return tonight, I'm saddened to report my fears were justified. Gone are the buffet itself, the old Tiffany lampshades, the comfy/funky/Very cool ambiance, the fabulous pickle chips, amazing cole slaw, the back rooms, the once paycheck-cashing window/accompanying alcove and Any reason to defend their French dip sandwich against Phillipe's (who didn't appear until about 10 years after Cole's opened).

I suppose its current incarnation is better than none at all, but, if you know/knew/loved it as it was, this ain't any longer it. A sad loss.

http://defunctla.tribe.net/photos/1ea30d28-91d9-4734-a10f-aeabafdb994b

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 5 replies

LA 2/28: Tom Waits bus tour rolls again

editrix — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:51:37 GMT

WHAT: "Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits' Los Angeles" bus tour
WHEN: Saturday February 28, noon-4pm
WHERE: Bus tour departs from The King Edward Saloon, 131 E 5th Street
COST: $62/person
MORE INFO: visit http://www.esotouric.com or call 323-223-2767

LOS ANGELES- Legendary musician Tom Waits toured recently, but fans in his old hometown were out of luck--all the dates were in the South. So Esotouric, the bus adventure company whose offbeat tours expose LA's secret history, launched a new tour just to scratch that gravelly voiced itch.

CRAWLING DOWN CAHUENGA: TOM WAITS' LOS ANGELES debuted in August 2008 with a sold out tour, and repeats on February 28. It is the definitive tour of Tom Waits' formative creative life and the people, places and late night pastries that shaped it.

Calling all rain dogs, gin-soaked boys and Gun Street girls! Climb aboard as your hosts David Smay (author of the new 33 1/3 series book on "Swordfishtrombones") and Esotouric's Kim Cooper (a Zoetrope Studios intern who'll tell how she used teenage subterfuge to arrange a private concert by Tom) lead you on a scrupulously researched ride through Tom's epic misdeeds and shenanigans, from the Trashing of the Troubadour to epic nights at the Tropicana.

And oh, there are such tales to tell, from food fights with L.A. Punks and smackdowns with L.A. Police. We'll crawl through the Sewers of Paris, tattle on the Ivar Theater, and get the lowdown on Tom's legendary performances at the Wiltern and elsewhere. Before departing for points rural, Tom left his mark all over L.A., from Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Studios to Sunset Sound to Skid Row. We'll show you where Tom found his true love and collaborator, Kathleen Brennan, and how all the pieces came together to transform a drunken, desperate singer into the multi-faceted, multi-media artist he'd become.

Raised near San Diego, Tom Waits launched his musical career in L.A., signing with David Geffen's Asylum Records in 1972, living at the raunchy Tropicana Hotel (where he sawed off the kitchen drain board so his piano would fit), and building a reputation as a songwriter willing to risk his own health and sanity to get inside the sad sack characters that peopled songs like "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)," "On The Nickel" and "Pasties And A G-string (At The Two O'clock Club)."

By 1980, Tom was 31 and starting to feel the effects of his hard living. While scoring the music to Francis Ford Coppola's "One From The Heart," he met Kathleen Brennan, whose influence would completely transform his life and his art. After a whirlwind courtship the pair married and began a 28-year creative and personal partnership, beginning with the revolutionary album "Swordfishtrombones," the subject of tour host David Smay's new book.

As a symbolic passage from lonesome bar hopping to family joys and sobriety, the tour starts and ends at two important downtown sites. Passengers gather in the King Edward Saloon, the last surviving Skid Row bar with the Christmas 2007 loss of Craby Joe's, before boarding Esotouric's luxury coach class bus, where the mood is set with vintage photos and live footage. CRAWLING DOWN CAHUENGA spans Tom's personal city, from The Nickel (aka Skid Row) to once-ratty West Hollywood, favorite strip clubs and midnight diners, recording studios, night clubs, record labels and film studios, before rolling back downtown for a communal snack at Clifton's Cafeteria.

ABOUT THE HOSTS: Longtime collaborators David Smay and Kim Cooper co-edited the books "Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth" ("quite simply the most fun music book I have ever read." -Bucketfull of Brains) and "Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed" ("the perfect book for the advanced record collector" -Ear Candy) before penning their solo 33 1/3 series books on Tom Waits and Neutral Milk Hotel. Kim gives Esotouric's rock history and true crime tours. David Smay lives in San Francisco, where he is working on a history of the Beats.

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour schedule
Sun Feb 1 - Reyner Banham Loves LA: South LA architecture tour
Thurs Feb 12 - The Hippodrome & Hazard's Pavilion (Downtown Art Walk Shuttles, free)
Sat Feb 14- Valentine's Day edition of Blood & Dumplings crime bus tour
Sat Feb 21- Raymond Chandler's LA
Sat Feb 28 - Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits' LA
Sat March 7 - The Lowdown on Downtown: The Secret History of LA
Thurs March 12 - The Hippodrome & Hazard's Pavilion (Downtown Art Walk Shuttles, free)
Sat March 14 – Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's LA
Sat March 21 – Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice
Sat March 28 – Pasadena Confidential
Sat April 4 - Wild Wild Westside
Sat April 11 - Raymond Chandler's Bay City
Sat April 18 - The Real Black Dahlia
Sat April 25 - Raymond Chandler's LA

For more info on Esotouric, visit http://www.esotouric.com

For more info on David and Kim's previous books, visit
http://www.bubblegum-music.com
http://www.lostinthegrooves.com

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Westwood arts and craft fair ?

ssballs — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:44:02 GMT

Anyone remembers this?Is it still being held ?
I am talking about the mid 1980's.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 7 replies

Van Dyke Parks/Home in Pasadena

ssballs — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 05:56:07 GMT

Poignant intro from the Maestro.Even if there is a restaurant in the station,it's not for trains anymore.Another architectural screw-up/de-funkt,
L.A. style.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNio-oB4DyU&feature=related

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Kiddieland and Kiddiepark

inga — Wed, 14 Jan 2004 00:59:47 GMT

or was it called Beverlyland?

It was where the Beverly Center is now. Pony rides. Rides.

i loved the sad ponies!

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 26 replies

Weird underground tunnel (Melrose and Formosa)

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 19:18:12 GMT

Hey, has anyone noticed that weird tunnel entrance on Melrose and Formosa? There seems to be a matching entrance/exit on the other side of the street. It's some stairs that descend under the street, as if it's a subway entrance, but it's all fenced off. The stairs have a bunch of junk on them, so I don't think it's been used for awhile--quite defunct.

Does anyone know what these are? Were they just made to cross melrose underground instead of using a crosswalk? Or was it some kind of aborted subway entrance or something? I've never seen one of these anywhere else--so it seems to me to be some kind of relic of pedestrian culture.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 10 replies

RIP Hollywood Ranch Market

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 19:15:29 GMT

Ah, the old Hollywood Ranch Market on Vine. Anyone remember it? It was at the site currently housing a Staples and El Pollo Loco. Really sleazy, dirty old market, with no doors, just metal turnstiles, pinball machines, and a really seedy dirty fruit and vegetable department. I saw a flash of it in an old Cassavettes movie recently.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 18 replies

Sights and sounds from the 1950's.

ssballs — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:47:25 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyVDPo3pMsc&feature=channel

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Ball's gone...

ssballs — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:07:48 GMT

The iconic orange Union 76 ball, located near the corner of Via de la Paz and Sunset, was taken down on Saturday afternoon. Its fate is unknown.

The Orange 76 Ball Is Gone!

December 26, 2008

Sue Pascoe , Staff Writer

One of the distinctive landmarks in Pacific Palisades'the giant orange Union 76 ball, located near the corner of Via de la Paz and Sunset'was taken down on Saturday afternoon and trucked away.

'I was told that the ball was supposed to remain,' ConocoPhillips station owner Robert Munakash told the Palisadian-Post on Monday. 'It wasn't my decision, but rather ConocoPhillips [the company].' The Palisades resident said that although he owns the lease for the station, the corporation owns the land.

Munakash acquired the station's lease last February from Frank Jakel, who recalled that the ball was already in place when he bought the franchise in 1974.

It was Munakash's understanding that the decision to remove the iconic orange ball down was mandated by the Palisades Design Review Board, which designates a square-footage stipulation for business signs. A new sign, in tandem with the orange ball, would have exceeded the square footage allowed and would have required ConocoPhillips to obtain a variance. The new monument sign was installed on the corner last week.

'We got it okayed,' said Jakel, who was visiting the station on Monday. 'It was grandfathered in. The DRB gave its okay for both the monument sign and ball.'

Rick Mills of the Palisades Design Review Board said, 'It was grandfathered in, until Conoco made a change in the signage.'

'The Review Board must follow the requirement of the specific plan that prohibits roof signs, pole signs and projecting signs,' Mills told the Post on Tuesday. He added that the Review Board didn't oppose the sign; they enjoyed it, especially when it was draped to look like a pumpkin in October, and they knew many people in the community liked it.

'If someone wants to vary from the specific plan, that applicant must apply for an exception to the West Area Planning Commission,' Mills said. He didn't think that ConocoPhillips had done that.

When ConocoPhillips bought Union 76 stations three years ago, Jakel was worried that the corporation would eliminate the infamous orange ball, designed by advertising creative director Ray Pedersen for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. Beginning in 1967, tens of millions were made and distributed by Union 76 over the years.

Jakel originally sought a home for the ball at the Flight Path Museum at LAX. He told the Post, 'The museum owns a 1941 model Union Oil tanker truck and the tugboat that filled it.' But, the sign remained in the Palisades.

In January 2006, fans of the orange ball were dismayed to learn that Conoco had plans to 'destroy all balls.' Rock critic and cultural historian Kim Cooper started a nationwide Save the 76 Ball campaign and more than 3,000 people joined her by signing a petition to oppose the balls' destruction.

A year later, ConocoPhillips agreed to donate several dozen orange Union 76 balls to select museums, and maintain a few historic and architecturally significant balls. In addition, the company announced plans to order 100 new 76 balls in CP's signature red and declared that no private individuals would be allowed to purchase a 76 Ball.

The Post called ConocoPhillips headquarters on Monday to find out the ultimate fate of the Palisadian ball, which was like a beacon to people traveling east on Sunset Boulevard that they were entering the tiny Pacific Palisades business area. Tami Walker, manager of ConocoPhillips brand's management, spoke to the Post Tuesday morning, 'We're trying to track down what happened,' she said, 'We're investigating this particular situation.'

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Ambassador Hotel Farewell Party

Robowan — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:33:17 GMT

What?: A Toast to the life and death of the legendary Ambassador Hotel
When?: February 2, 2006 at 7pm
Where?: The Gaylord Apartments and the HMS Bounty 3355 Wilshire Blvd.
Who?: RSVP line > 310 858 2224

I understand you absolutely must RSVP to get in. Unfortunately the mailbox for this number is full and asks that you call back later. I'm going to keep trying.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 6 replies

Bodies needed to help save Griffith Park!

Margrrret — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:36:03 GMT

This just arrived in my Inbox:

From: mtwhomeownersalliance@gmail.com
Subject: ACTION ALERT! Stand Up For Griffith Park And The SW Museum!
Date: October 13, 2008 12:12:07 PM PDT
To: mtwhomeownersalliance@gmail.com

ACTION ALERT! Stand Up For Griffith Park And The SW Museum!

The Saving Los Angeles Project (see http://www.RonKayeLA.com) and some
activists supporting the nomination of Griffith Park for
Cultural-Historical Monument status have called upon people from all
over Los Angeles to STAND UP to protect Griffith Park from
inappropriate commercialization and urban intrusions at the hands of
City Hall politicians.

What: City Council Public Comment Period (Between 9:45 am and 10:45 am)
Place: City Hall Council Chambers, 200 N. Spr ing Street 3rd floor
(Enter on Main Street)
Date: This WEDNESDAY, October 15, 2008
Time: Arrive at City Hall chambers no later than 9:45 a.m.
Who: City Council to Listen to testimony demanding Griffith Park be
designated a Cultural Historical Monument of the City of Los Angeles

BACKGROUND

Why is this important? In 2007, an updated version of the Griffith
Park Master Plan was released by the Recreation and Parks Department.
The last time the Master Plan was revised was in the late 1970s. The
2007 Draft Master Plan for Griffith Park was met with immediate
condemnation from all quarters of the City. In the report, it was
proposed to add Disneyland-like trams over the Santa Monica Mountains,
a culinary school, an amusement park "pleasure pier" over the Los
Angeles River, and parking structures. Also in late 2007, the Autry
Museum, which leases 11 acres of Griffith Park from the City for the
bargain price of $1 per year, announced its intention to expand the
Autry Museum building. This doubling of the Autry is so large that it
would enable the Autry to move the entire Southwest Museum's storage
and exhibition spaces from private land owned by the Autry in the
Arroyo Seco onto public land owned by the taxpayers. The Autry is
proposing a parking structure and supergraphics signs facing the I-5
freeway.

Griffith Park was a gift of Griffith J. Griffith to the City of Los
Angeles. Over the years, additional parcels of land owned b y the
Griffith family or others have been added to the Park. The City
Council holds Griffith Park in trust for the people of the City.
Griffith's gift specifies that no admission fee can be charged for
entry into Griffith Park and it was intended as largely an open space
passive recreation park where people could escape the hustle and
bustle of urbanized Los Angeles to get a little closer to nature and
wildlife.

Mr. Griffith's grandson, Griffith Van Griffith, became alarmed at the
Draft Griffith Park Master Plan issued in 2007 which proposed a
massive increase in commercialization of his grandfather's park given
to the City. The Griffith Family Trust contracted with Jones & Stokes
to prepare a 200 page detailed study and impressive nomination of
Griffith Park as a Cultural-Historical Monument of the City. The
designation of monument status to the Park would help protect it
because any future proposals to commercialize the park would require
cultural resource analysis under the California Environmental Quality
Act.

The City's Cultural Heritage Commission decides whether to approve
nominations for Cultural-Historical Monuments of Los Angeles. The
process has three steps: (1) a determination of the Commission whether
to consider the nomination, (2) a commission tour of the proposed
monument location, and (3) a hearing to determine whether or not to
approve the monument nomination. Early this fall, the Commission
conducted a hearing to determine whether or not to consider the
nomination. More than 100 persons appeared in support of the
nomination because community organizations all over the City are
alarmed that someone at City Hall is trying to sell Griffith Park to
big commercial interests that will invade the Park with expansions of
amusement park type projects, hotels, parking structures, trams, etc.
Only three commissioners attended the meeting and Glenn Dake, a
landscape architect, almost voted down the proposal TO EVEN CONSIDER
THE MONUMENT NOMINATION. In the end, however, he was convinced to at
least consider the monument nomination.

Even more suspicious that some kind of "Chinatown"deal is underway is
the fact that various City Department heads showed up at the
Commission meeting and testified against the monument status based
upon claims that it will be "difficult" to care for and upgrade water,
sewer, power, and other utility infrastructure in the Park if it is
designated as a monument. Latham & Watkins attorney, Bill Delvac,
showed up and argued that only the original grant (and none of the
later land additions to the Park) should be considered for monument
status. Delvac is working with other lobbyists to get the Autry
Museum permits to expand in Griffith Park free and clear of any
condition that Autry must continue to use the Southwest Museum (on
Autry's private land). It is suspected the Delvac and the Autry was
willing to please someone at City Hall by making this argument against
the monument.

The City has numerous parks that have been designated Cul
tural-Historical Monuments. They include Echo Park, Westlake Park,
Silverlake Reservoir, and other parks. Never before have Department
Heads of the City objected to Cultural-Historical Monument status of
any other park. It appears that someone at City Hall wants to inject
such commercialization into Griffith Park that walking in the Park is
at risk of becoming like walking outside the Park. If we allow
urbanization and commercialization of the Park, there will be little
difference to walking inside or outside the Park.

WHY COME TO PUBLIC COMMENT AT CITY COUNCIL NOW?

The Cultural Heritage Commission may be under political pressure by
Council members. It may be that our Commissioners are having their
arms twisted in the hope that the Commission will quietly kill the
Griffith Family Trust's mon ument nomination at the Commission level.
If the nomination is killed at the Commission meeting on October 30,
2008, the proposal will be dead AND CITY COUNCIL WILL NOT EVER HEAR
THE MATTER. Therefore, because Griffith Park is loved by the
thousands of people who regularly visit the Park for hiking and quiet
contemplation, the Saving Los Angeles Project and Griffith Park
activists are calling upon Los Angeles residents to come in force to
the City Council chambers for about an hour on Wednesday, October 15,
2008. IT IS NOT NECESSARY THAT YOU TESTIFY, ONLY THAT YOU STAND WHEN
CALLED UPON. YOU SHOULD ALSO TURN IN A COMMENT CARD TO SHOW YOUR
SUPPORT. ACTIVISTS WILL TESTIFY TO COUNCIL.

The Los Angeles Conservancy is also ringing the alarm regarding the
potential negative impacts on Griffith Park if the monument is turned
down. You can learn more about the history and importance of this
issue by going to the Conservancy's website at:

http://www.laconservancy.org/issues/issues_griffithpark.php4

At the Conservancy's website, you can learn more about writing a
letter to preserve Griffith Park. Because you are a supporter of
continued use of the Southwest Museum at its nationally historic site,
your letter to the City should include opposition to unnecessary
commercialization of Griffith Park by the Autry's massive expansion.
The principle reason for the Autry's desire to expand is to take the
Southwest's $1 billion collection over to the Autry and begin
marketing it as the Autry's own collection. Why should our parkland
be unnecessarily consumed by Autry for this purpose when studies by
experts told the Autry that the Southwest Museum can be rehabilitated
and continue proud service to the people of Los Angeles – on private
land, with its own rail transit station, and without more public
subsidy?

HELP SAVE GRIFFITH PARK FROM COMMERCIALIZATION

To help the cause, please please post this message on local electronic
bulletin boards, email lists, and pass along to persons in your
personal address book. The commitment of time will be small compared
to going to the Commission's final hearing on October 30, 2008.
Public comment this Wednesday at City Hall is not expected to take
much longer than an hour.

SEE YOU AT CITY HALL AT 9:45 A.M. THIS WEDNESDAY! ALLOW TIME TO GO
THROUGH SECURITY. THANKS!

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

Zucky's - Santa Monica

PrplTnla — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:27:15 GMT

Tell me someone....What was Zucky's? What are your memories of the place?
I see the long-standing empty building has been repainted (even the sign!) and has a sign on it announcing a newly opening bank. I have always like the building and thought the location would make for a great club location. But a Bank?!? Hmmmm. I guess anything is better than an empty building. At least they didn't tear it down.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 13 replies

Wally,Wally.....!

ssballs — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:48:56 GMT

What happened to that creature ,very pre-Jerry Springer in the 1980's who had a "talk"show with scary people hollering his name and furniture being tossed through the air?

He was something i hope is defunct now.Anyone?

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 13 replies

Scientology.

CCM — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:44:10 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erbXsAA5Q9o

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

July 11th, Friday: Opening of Kabluey in West Hollywood

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:23:55 GMT

This looks like it's going to be hilarious. Plus, it has Lisa Kudrow. :)

It's opening on July 11th at Laemmle's Sunset 5 in West Hollywood.

Here’s two youtube trailers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q33VGW8Dlw0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o24NNR8o9a0

And great reviews at Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kabluey/

KABLUEY (NR) - http://laemmle.com/viewmovie.php?mid=4036

Laemmle's Sunset 5
8000 Sunset Blvd.
West Hollywood, 90046
323-848-3500

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Kabbalistic Astrologer in Los Angeles

Adam — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:27:56 GMT

Adam Melech – Kabalistic and Visionary Astrologer

“Millionaires don’t consult astrologers, but Billionaires do.” – Charles Schwab

Tremendous amounts of wealth, health, friendships and happiness are lost because of misplaced energy. By working with the Stars we can tap into your natural energies and redirect them to function more harmonious to your benefit. You will see after one session a complete turn around of your life’s perspective and a redirecting and redefining of your life’s goals and ambitions.

Adam Melech is available for life coaching, business consultations, natal and transit readings, solar returns, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily readings.

Call him today and schedule an appointment.

805-304-1201
adammelech26@gmail.com

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Zoetrope's first / L.A. 1982.One from the heart .intro

ssballs — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:20:49 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAiJqFhylDQ&feature=related

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 2 replies

The fortune cookie myth.

CCM — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 17:32:24 GMT

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-then8-2008jun08,0,373535.column
From the Los Angeles Times
Claims to original fortune cookies crumble under weight of research
Los Angeles and San Francisco have long argued over where the Chinese dinner dessert was first served, but a new book comes to a surprising conclusion.
Steve Harvey
Only in L.A.

June 8, 2008

It's too bad you can't just crack open a fortune cookie and find out who invented the fortune cookie. Then there wouldn't be a controversy.

Oddly enough, no Chinese cities claim the honor, but a couple of American burgs do: those feuding cousins, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

L.A. boosters have long held that the folded vanilla wafer was invented in 1918 by an Angeleno named David Jung, founder of Hong Kong Noodle Co.

One version reported by American Heritage magazine in 2005 said Jung handed out "rolled-up pastries containing scriptural passages to unemployed men."

Another version has Jung creating the cookies not as desserts, but as appetizers for restaurateurs to serve customers impatiently waiting for their orders.

San Franciscans, on the other hand, argue that the distinction belongs to a gardener named Makota Hagiwara, who was the long-ago superintendent of the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.

"Around 1907, the story goes, Hagiwara was fired by an anti-Japanese mayor and then rehired after a public outcry," American Heritage said. "In gratitude he gave his supporters cookies with thank-you messages inside." The messages were in Japanese.

So stubborn are the two sides that the matter has gone to court -- well, sort of.

In 1983, the Court of Historical Review in San Francisco agreed to attempt to look into the past and settle the dispute.

A tribunal presided over by an actual judge, the court occasionally tackles issues relating to the proud -- perhaps too proud -- history of the City by the Bay.

Lest you think the fortune cookie fracas too trivial for such a body, keep in mind that the court has also deliberated on whether San Francisco bagels are as good as New York bagels: Absolutely, it said. It ruled on whether Mark Twain was correct in saying that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco: Absolutely not, it said. And it decided whether San Francisco -- not the nearby city of Martinez -- invented the martini: We'll drink to San Francisco, the court said.

During the fortune cookie trial, a sort of "Perry Mason" moment occurred when a local city employee pulled out a set of round black iron grills and declared that "they were originally used by the Hagiwara family to cook the fortune cookies," wrote Jennifer 8. Lee (yes, the lucky "8." is her middle-name symbol) in her irreverent new book, "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles -- Adventures in the World of Chinese Food."

There was further drama when a fortune cookie was introduced as evidence -- a fortune cookie with a message reading, "S.F. judge who rules for L.A. not very smart cookie."

Grounds for a mistrial? Not in the Court of Historical Review.

The judge decided in favor of San Francisco.

But the matter didn't end there, as any fortune-cookie writer could have predicted.

"Los Angeles boosters ignored his decision, considering it as legitimate as a Dodgers-Giants game officiated by San Francisco sandlot umpires," American Heritage said.

Some years later, the Otis College of Art and Design, for instance, presented a list of 50 "interesting" things born in the L.A. area. It named fortune cookies along with the strapless bra, valet parking and tooth-whitening toothpaste. Of course, Otis is in the L.A. area.

More recently, the controversy took a surprising turn toward the Far East.

Lee discovered that, a few years ago, Yasuko Nakamachi, a researcher at a Japanese university, visited Kyoto and found "a number of small family-run Japanese bakeries selling cookies with a familiar shape."

The treats "were exactly like fortune cookies," though they were called "fortune crackers" or "bells with fortunes," the latter term perhaps dating to when the cookies were shaped like bells.

The researcher also uncovered references to brittle cookies that contained a fortune in the fictional work of a 19th century Japanese humorist. And she chanced upon an 1878 print of a Japanese man making the cookies and using the same type of grill she had seen in Kyoto's bakeries.

So it appears that Kyoto, not L.A. or San Francisco, deserves to be known as the birthplace of the fortune cookie, at least pending future archaeological findings in the Egyptian pyramids or elsewhere.

In a sense, Lee, a Chinese American, was not surprised that such a popular dessert originated in a country other than China: "Traditional Chinese desserts, any Chinese American child will tell you, are pretty bad. There is a reason Chinese cuisine has a worldwide reputation for won tons, and not for pastries."

But for her, there was still "one final mystery."

The messages in the original San Francisco fortune cookies were in Japanese.

How, she wondered, had "the Chinese managed to take over the fortune cookie business" in America?

In San Francisco, Japanese bakers had dominated the industry.

The turning point, her research revealed, was linked to the sad chapter of World War II involving the internment of Japanese Americans. Those who were fortune-cookie makers "had to leave all their equipment behind," Lee wrote.

After the war's end, a sign of the industry's change of direction came when the federal government announced it was lifting price controls on "Chinese" fortune cookies.

The messages inside have also undergone changes with fortune cookies becoming "more like food-for-thought cookies or wisdom cookies," Lee observed. One industry executive told her that predicting people's futures was too limiting and cited the case of one old-fashioned fortune-cookie soothsayer who contracted writer's block and got out of the business.

Then, too, personal predictions can backfire, as in the case of the woman who complained that her husband died soon after getting a message that said, "You'll be going on a long voyage."

The upshot, Lee noted, is that "fortune cookies hardly contain fortunes anymore" -- unless you win the Lotto with the numbers at the bottom of a message.

For all their popularity in the U.S. and Europe, there is one market the cookies haven't penetrated: China.

The Wonton Food company tried in the mid-1990s, but the project failed. As one executive told Lee, fortune cookies were simply "too American a concept."

Which may be of some consolation to L.A. and San Francisco.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 6 replies

Somewhere in LA years back

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:57:44 GMT

Keenan Wynn on a MC, there's three or four, check them out, great scenery & old trucks & cars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ7mhHMJgT0&feature=related

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Defunct - Melrose Ave

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 05:17:44 GMT

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!

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 16 replies

3D- DJ Fashen & Ooah of The Glitch Mob May 10th

Legacy Ent. (May 10th Cinepsace) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:46:43 GMT

Hi, We've got an event called "3D" featuring DJ Fashen and Ooah of The Glitch Mob- saturday May 10th @ Cinepsace in Hollywood.

DJ Fashen's set will feature Digital 3D visuals created by our team of dope animators who've worked on projects like Star Wars!

Ooah's set will be LIVE!

For more Tribe info-

http://losangeles.tribe.net/event/3D-w-DJ-Fashen-Ooah-from-The-Glitch-Mob-May10th-2008/6356-hollywood-blvd/b749c005-ecf4-4ced-81f4-f73de980b109

Peace
Scott

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

Virgin Megastore West Hollywood RIP

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:11:19 GMT

It was only a matter of time after they opened one up on Hollywood Blvd. Does anyone know if they plan on putting something else in that space already?

They've got a %40 off clearance sale--I found some good deals, but Virgin's prices are so ridiculously marked up most of them aren't much better than what you can get off of Amazon.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 13 replies

Bud Ekins passed

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 05:53:24 GMT

this past Saturday. Even for you non MC lovers, he was LA history. Steve McQueens Stunt man. Brought Motocross to the States (partly responsible). Owned the SFV Triumph Dealership in the 60's. Supplied studios with antique MC's.
A typical MC maniac of his day.
Thanks Bud!

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Pee Wee Herman

ssballs — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 20:48:30 GMT

Paul Ruebens,today's his brirthday!Happy 55!
We'll always love ya as a pt. of L.A. Pee Wee!The world hasn't been the same since you were here.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Like movies till Dawn another Los Angeles TV standby has passed

DavidBrowne — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:29:45 GMT

Hal Fishman passed on this morning..

http://cbs2.com/local/local_story_219102520.html

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 6 replies

Vine St.Bar & Grill

ssballs — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 05:14:28 GMT

Anyone aware of the old Vine St.Bar & Grill?What's there now and how is it?
I saw Yma Sumac and Nina Simone there about 25 years ago and it was a tiny little place.

Hopefully there's something interesting at it's spot.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 10 replies

The Old Spaghetti Factory in Hollywood

zenzen — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 06:30:24 GMT

When I was a little kid in the late 70s, it was the place we went for fun on super special occasions. Even then I remember thinking the spaghetti sauce was really watery, but the decor was quite fun. I didn't know it was closing down until I drove by a couple days ago and saw two guys carrying the velvet-covered seat of booth out the front door and saw "AUCTION" signs all around the building.

Looks like it's going to become another mixed-use development (condos over retail space). Hollywood is becoming more vertical.

http://blogging.la/archives/2007/05/the_old_spaghetti_factory_clos.phtml

http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2006_02_16.html

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

Wed and Thur wkly free meditation gathering,also this wk free movie,robin williams.

davidgabriel — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 06:19:51 GMT

rsvp
bestmedium@yahoo.com
xo

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Note to self - Do NOT burry the car!

AArtVark — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 09:04:50 GMT

Time is kinder to Tulsa than to buried auto
Rusted metal and fond memories are what's left from '57 publicity stunt.
By Miguel Bustillo, Times Staff Writer
June 16, 2007

TULSA, OKLA. — Wide-eyed dreamers from throughout the world came here Friday to see the gleaming gold-and-white Plymouth Belvedere — buried decades ago in a time capsule as a publicity stunt.

What they saw was a waterlogged mass of metal with tailfins, shrouded in a patina of rust.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-plymouth16jun16,0,3969328.story?coll=la-tot-national&track=ntothtml

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

LA Observed - Trader Vic's fate sealed

AArtVark — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 21:52:13 GMT

Trader Vic's fate sealed
Forget the condo towers. A 120-room Waldorf-Astoria hotel now is planned for the high-profile crossing of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards in Beverly Hills. In the project, the adjacent Beverly Hilton will lose its Oasis Court and Lanai rooms. The offices along Wilshire and the famed Trader Vic's also have to go. Wilshire will get two new lanes and Santa Monica will pick up a westbound lane along the hotel. More at LA Biz Observed.

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2007/01/trader_vics_fate_sealed.php

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 14 replies

Supply Sargent.

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:10:37 GMT

Supply Sargent in santa monica is no more.. =/

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 6 replies

Chianti and neighbour on Melrose?

ssballs — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 05:41:45 GMT

When did they close,and are they someplace else?

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

Advice please; Sat (4/14) to do in LA?

Bryce — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 17:25:02 GMT

Advice please; good, odd, interesting things to do THIS Saturday night in LA? (April 14th).

Born in Orange County, but have been living in the North State (SF) for 18 years.
Short visit this weekend and hoping to find something odd/different/interesting Saturday evening...

We're a mid-30's married creative couple; any good advice as to what to see/do, places to go Saturday night? Much appreciated.

-Bryce

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 2 replies

place energy

Gi Gi — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 22:13:22 GMT

Bouncing off off of Margo's comment on Grandview Gardens & the remodeling means closed til something else mix - I' sure we all have noticed how when something doesn't last long in business, & then sells, & another same but different business opens in the same building, assuming the new owners Know* how to do it right, goes under, & then another ___, & maybe another _____

What is with that?
To me I have come to believe, without fou founess attached, that the Earth does have energy vortex's & some corners or places are cursed <<+>> to be a failed business...... or at least a failed restaraunt or failed goldfish store until it becomes a successful vacant lot (love it Margo)

Give some examples of failed place vortex's

Do you think that 'places' can be excorcised & saved?
Do they just need to put a goldfish store there & not a restaruant?
Does a place collect too many ghosts from the past that disrupt new business?
Does the public come to associate ^failure^ with a spot; condemning any business at that spot to death ??
Do people like us resent say the defaulting of a Palladium so cursing the new business? & resent unknowers that do attend to the new business??
If the Palladium (or like) became a superstore discount shop would you or not shop there? Would you go to check out what they did with the ______

Would you participate as a Redefuncter Monk in order to excorsize business addresses?

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 10 replies

Sunspot Motel?

Neon Serpent — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 15:32:49 GMT

I have dim memories of this place on PCH around Chataqua, but searches on the internet turn up virtually nil. Anyone have any memories of this place or, even better, pics or resources?

Thanks!

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 2 replies

L'Orangerie est morte

ssballs — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 03:57:19 GMT

Well,she ain't no more,defunct after 36 years on La Cienega.The owners retired and Nobu(group)is taking it over as a new place sometime early this year.

Sad.Even if it had been 20 years since i ate there,just read it.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

nazi art commune

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 19:01:32 GMT

highly recommended...

maps.google.com/maps

Park on umeo or capri, and walk down the dead end that turns into sullivan fire road. You will come to a yellow gate, there are wood stairs leading down to the canyon, or continue until the stone gate and simply walk around it. there is a waterfall from an old dam, a generator station, horse stables, fireplace ruins, and a workshop area. There are two avocado trees with excellent fruit that will ripen in the spring, oranges, lemons, carob, olive and other trees. It covers 50 acres so it's a long hike to see it all.

Here are some photos and history...

jenniferljohnson.blogs.friendster.com/photos/nazi_commune_ruins/index.html

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

Human Be In & Pandora's

Gi Gi — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 22:40:24 GMT

SF Gate has an article on this being the aniversary of the 1st Be In in Golden Gate. I was in the Haight at the time but decided to go south with friends (Bernardo, [Miss] Mercy, Tommy & Jack [of Hearts] I think) cz it was my birthday (silly me) & was thinking of home (No idea why as I hate my ____) .

Anyway we only made it to Hollywood & to a huge gathering at Pandora' Box which was Sunset & Cahuenga (?). Anyone else remember Pandora's?? A lil box of a club on a triangular section of Sunset ( my memories are vague) that a million billion hippies showed up at the night of the Be In in SF as an adjunct celebration.
I have no idea of who the act was; we were just brought along on the energy & word of mouth on the streets. Buffalo Springfield or some Byrd's ???? Anyone know? So it turned into one of the 1st street riots with the LAPD swarming in to blockade & disperse us dirty hippies & rockers.
The Buffalo Springfield quickly wrote & put out the song "Something's Happening Here" (right title?? Ya know that 60's fog......)

We went back up to SF after that but quickly moved down south as LA seemed to be much more happening; more rocker revolutionary energy as opposed to the intellectualised one in SF. Also you could already see the riptide of the Haight with tourist buses of gawkers coming through to stare at the hedonists. If you were lucky you could spread out up into Marin which I think was my 1st choice but even then you needed a way of support & certainly Hollywood had a 1000% more ways of $upporting hedonistic creative youthes ;;}

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 7 replies

Portofino Italian near Vermont (3rd St ?)

ssballs — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 00:43:21 GMT

Did anyone ver eat here and have great memories too or was it all just "Imagination"?
The right room as you enetered is where the regulars ate in a fluorescent lit room full of suits ,the "chique" and quiet place on the left.
The food i remember was outstanding.
Was it and maybe more important did they reopen under another name somewere else?I am talking about 20 some years ago.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 7 replies

Retro Diner Torn Apart In Downey

AArtVark — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 19:44:11 GMT

Not Los Angeles proper, but it's the same thing that happens here... Bastards should be made to rebuild the place as it was... someone that stands to gain millions from an empty lot is not going to give a rats ass about paying a $100K fine for not having a permit to destroy a historic structure....

Jan 8, 2007 12:33 am US/Pacific
Retro Diner Torn Apart In Downey
(CBS) DOWNEY, Calif. A 1950s-style diner in Downey was partially knocked down Sunday before authorities stopped the destruction, claiming the demolition was illegal.

A crew started tearing down Johnie's Broiler, located at 7447 Firestone Blvd., around 5 p.m. The rubble spilled onto the street.

The restaurant, originally called Harvey's Diner, later became a car dealership, according to KCAL.

"This is an example of true Googie architecture from 1958 and it's something that you can't replace," Adriene Biondo of the Los Angeles Conservancy told the KCAL 9.

The restaurant’s owner did not speak to Channel 9.

According to reports, a private security firm was watching the location overnight.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 6 replies

new website for gay & lesbian bikers

chip — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 04:29:25 GMT

just found this new site - check it out.
http://www.rainbowriders.net
and
http://www.cafepress.com/rainbowriders

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

DUTTON’S BEVERLY HILLS BOOKS’ THANKS THE CITIZENS OF BEVERLY HILLS

AArtVark — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 06:31:12 GMT

It's not Los Angeles technically, but close enough...

DUTTON’S BEVERLY HILLS BOOKS’ THANKS THE CITIZENS OF BEVERLY HILLS
http://www.duttonsbeverlyhills.com/

Beverly Hills, December 20, 2006 - The booksellers of Dutton’s Beverly Hills sincerely thank the community of Beverly Hills for welcoming us and supporting our efforts for over two years. We regret that we have been forced to close the store on December 31st, and, contrary to the city issued press release, “the community” not purchasing “enough books” was not the reason. The community provided overwhelming support.

Regent Properties, the property management firm that sought tenants for the Beverly Canon Project, approached Doug Dutton over four years ago about opening a version of Dutton’s Brentwood in the city of Beverly Hills. There was much apprehension and reluctance but Regent Properties doggedly pursued the store, and lease negotiations were entered in 2003, and a partnership with the city of Beverly Hills was proposed. We were assured that, due to the unique challenges of retail bookselling, the city would consider the bookstore a civic benefit, and help to insure its success in every reasonable way.

Dutton’s regrets that the prolonged efforts to reach a mutually agreeable solution were not successful, and that the proposed partnership never developed, and take great exception to the suggestion in a City press release, that the lack of support by the community is the reason for the store’s closure. We hope the community will continue to support Dutton’s Brentwood, as we strive to provide a first-rate bookstore to the Los Angeles community.

###

Letter from Doug Dutton to follow soon.........Happy Holidays from all of the booksellers at Dutton's..........

Short list of authors that we have hosted in Beverly Hills: Cynthia Ozick, Umberto Eco, Caroline Kennedy, Amy Sedaris, Zadie Smith, Gore Vidal, Al Gore, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (customer), and many more

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 3 replies

Dukes for breakfast and glamour.

ssballs — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:50:08 GMT

Pictures of Dukes and the motel above and around it?

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 7 replies

Scandia on Sunset and other closed defunkt places on The Strip

ssballs — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 06:31:45 GMT

Anyone has memories of the places on the Sunset Strip before it turned hip?
My memory of a vealchop in a crust @ Scandia's is still giving me a mouthwatering 25 years later.

To be standing against a wall in the Viper-room watching a bad group...is not.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 6 replies

Defunct LA commercials

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 19:33:25 GMT

Of course Cal Worthington's around still, but what happened to his dog Spot?

And what about those commercials for an insurance company or something with the really skinny guy who was always finding himself and his pet chicken in a precarious predicament? Anyone remember that?

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 24 replies

LA Palm Trees - Defunct?

AArtVark — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 09:31:08 GMT

Fan palms no longer hold sway
The City Council wants leafier trees planted on L.A. streets. That means more shade and oxygen.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-palms18nov18,0,1590128.story?track=tothtml

By Bob Pool - Times Staff Writer

November 18, 2006

For more than a hundred years, the graceful, bushy-topped fan palm has been an iconic symbol of L.A.'s balmy, postcard lifestyle.

But city leaders now want to put an end to the tree's reign on the grounds it is bad for the environment.

City Council members voted this week to halt the placement of fan palms on parkways, median strips and other city-owned property where nearly 75,000 of them now grow.

Instead, the city will plant only sycamores, oaks and other leafy native species that will contribute shade, collect rainwater and release oxygen across the Los Angeles Basin.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-palms18nov18,0,1590128.story?track=tothtml

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 4 replies

1947project Pasadena Confidential Crime Bus Tour, Thanksgiving Saturday

editrix — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 18:09:25 GMT

Spend Thanksgiving weekend steeped in crime with this repeat of the
our popular Pasadena Confidential tour. The Crown City masquerades as
a calm and refined retreat, where well-bred ladies glide around their
perfect bungalows and everyone knows what fork to use first. But don't
be fooled by appearances. Dip into the confidential files of old
Pasadena with the 1947project and meet assassins and lepers,
kidnappers and slashers, Satanists and all manner of maniac in a
delightful little crime bus tour you WON'T find recommended by the
better class of people!

For more info, or to reserve seats, please visit http://www.1947project.com

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Dude, No Way! Laser Shows Go Dark at Griffith

AArtVark — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 02:15:05 GMT

Caught this on the radio today...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6480607
Dude, No Way! Laser Shows Go Dark at Griffith
by Jennifer Sharpe
Day to Day, November 13, 2006 · The Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles re-opened this month after several years of refurbishing. And to the dismay of some, its fabled laser light show -- the first-ever regular laser show in the world -- is no longer part of the schedule. Day to Day contributor Jennifer Sharpe reports on the history and the future of laser light entertainment.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 2 replies

Defunct Ferrari Enzo Saga

AArtVark — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 03:34:29 GMT

The new issue of Wired has an article on the fellow who smashed the Ferrari on PCH and all the dirt the crash stirred up.

Gizmondo's Spectacular Crack-up
http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/gizmondo.html
Directors of the game device company went on living large long after their handheld flopped. Then a high-speed Ferrari crash blew their world to bits.
By Randall Sullivan

THE BUMP IN THE ROAD that ended Bo Stefan Eriksson's fantastic ride is practically invisible. From 10 feet away, all you can see is the ragged edge of a tar-seamed crack in an otherwise smooth sheet of pavement. Only the location is impressive - a sweet stretch of straightaway on California's Pacific Coast Highway near El Pescador state beach, just past the eucalyptus-shaded mansions of the Malibu hills. On that patch of broken asphalt, there's barely enough lip to stub a toe. Of course, when you hit it at close to 200 miles per hour, as police say Eriksson did in the predawn light last February 21, while behind the wheel of a 660-horsepower Ferrari Enzo, consequences magnify.
http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/gizmondo.html

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Hollywood Luggage Shop Won't Have to Pack Its Bags

AArtVark — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 10:10:43 GMT

Hollywood Luggage Shop Won't Have to Pack Its Bags
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hollywood28sep28,0,7540213.story?track=tothtml
Owner wins his fight against the plan to raze his luggage store, so a massive development at Hollywood and Vine will be built around the 1928 landmark.
By Bob Pool
Times Staff Writer

September 28, 2006

Hollywood's luggage king refused to pack his bags and go when Los Angeles officials tried to seize his 60-year-old family business to make room for a high-end hotel development.

Shopkeeper Robert Blue fought back by blasting the city's use of eminent domain with a mocking billboard atop his Bernard Luggage store on Vine Street just south of Hollywood Boulevard.

Then he filed a lawsuit alleging a violation of his right to due process, and in the process became a symbol of what some residents considered Hollywood redevelopment run amok.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hollywood28sep28,0,7540213.story?track=tothtml

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 3 replies

Lest we forget,defunkt New Orleans

ssballs — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:52:29 GMT

a wail/hail for the folks who didn't lose a sight ,a landmark but their all.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

Angelyne still kicking her pedals!

ssballs — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 01:54:17 GMT

How defunked are her billboards though?

I haven't seen one since a REALLY bad one(maybe it was supposed to look punk?) in Thai town across from the Singing Elvis restaurant on Hollywood Blvd. about 3 years ago.
I did spot her car AND hair yesterday so i wonder.....Can we start a defunkt Angelyne billboard series?
And are they still spotted?

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 14 replies

OUT with a BOOM!

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:26:23 GMT

Last Call Nears at the Boom Boom Room
The landmark gay bar's potential closing symbolizes the gradual shrinking of Laguna Beach's gay community. The property's owner has upscale plans.
By David Kelly
Times Staff Writer

August 12, 2006

By midnight the drag queens were at it full throttle, strutting about in billowy blond wigs, faces caked with rouge and offering up ample "cleavage" for those generous or inebriated enough to slip in a few bucks.

Women yelped joyfully as taut, leggy guys dressed like Celine Dion and Cher belted out anthems on stage.

Elsewhere in the bar, dozens of men huddled close while others slung an arm around their partner. Women preened, and buff men exchanged smoldering stares. FOR THE RECORD:
Boom Boom Room: A story in Saturday's California section about the closure of the Boom Boom Room in Laguna Beach identified one of the former bar owners as Steve Marchese. His name is James Marchese. —

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are swankier bars in Laguna Beach, maybe more glamorous people, but where else in Orange County can gays, lesbians, housewives, Democrats, Republicans and drag queens drink and dance under four disco balls in the middle of the week?

"This is the heart of the gay community," said Richard Barry, struggling to be heard over the din. "The other gay bars are starting points, but this is where we end up."

Not for long.

The fabled Boom Boom Room is slated to close early next month to make way for an upscale hotel and restaurant on the South Coast Highway property.

The aging building with the enormous bar, the place where Rock Hudson and Paul Lynde once partied, where a guy could inhale a martini beside a big fish tank and check out the bronzed surfers coming off the beach, seems headed for extinction.

The news has been met with anger and despair by those who see more than just a bar closing. For them, it symbolizes the gradual shrinking of Laguna Beach's gay community thanks largely to skyrocketing housing prices.

And they say that as their lifestyles have become more mainstream, gays and lesbians no longer need the protection of their own enclaves and are moving to less expensive suburbs like everyone else.

"Laguna, like West Hollywood, is becoming de-ghettoized," said Kirk Luetkehans, a doctor from Los Angeles, sitting at the bar of the Boom Boom. "It's a double-edged sword. You don't have to look over your shoulder as much, but part of me misses the community the way it was."

Some are trying to save the bar. Fred Karger, a retired Republican political consultant and former actor, is gathering signatures to persuade the city and new owner to keep it open. "It's a symbol for us…. This is history, and you don't erase history without a fight," he said. "This is a battle for the heart and soul of gay life here."

Patrick O'Loughlin and Steve Marchese bought the 24-room Coast Inn and the adjoining Boom Boom Room property for $2 million in 2000 but struggled to make it work as the town's gay population dwindled.

"At the time, the demographics were there to support the place, but our experience shows that the demographics have shifted," said O'Loughlin. "I saw a huge decline in the gay population — maybe 50% — and you didn't get more gays in to replenish it. This has become a place where the super-rich live."

The number of gays residing in Laguna Beach is not easy to estimate. The 2000 census of Laguna Beach lists 310 same-sex couples among the city's 23,727 residents. But gay residents deem this figure too low because it doesn't take into account those not in relationships.

O'Loughlin and Marchese sold the property last year for about $10 million to a group of investors who resold it a few months later for nearly $13 million to Steven Udvar-Hazy, a Beverly Hills airplane-leasing mogul.

O'Loughlin and Marchese are negotiating to extend the bar's lease nine or 10 months after the current one expires Sept. 4.

Asked if there were any way he would keep the bar open after that, Udvar-Hazy seemed doubtful. "That's a hard question," he said. "A new hotel would be quite upscale, and I'm not sure from a development point of view that it is compatible with the Boom Boom Room."

Udvar-Hazy said high commercial rents in Laguna Beach require owners to operate pricy businesses or fail. "We will go upscale, whatever we do, and, whoever can afford it, we welcome them, gay and non-gay," he said.

Gays began arriving in Laguna Beach during the early 1900s when there was an influx of artists drawn to its white beaches, picturesque coves, eucalyptus groves and azure waters. A few lived in seaside cottages built in the 1880s, some of which still stand.

The Coast Inn was built in 1927 by John "Pappy" Smith. His granddaughter, Carolyn Burris, said he got the idea for a restaurant and bar — which is now the Boom Boom Room — from a tropical island-themed eatery in Long Beach.

"He built it and named it the Seven Seas," she said. "He had fish tanks so you could drink and watch the fish."

The Seven Seas was frequented by families and the military. The name Boom Boom Room, Burris said, came from sailors and Marines who used the term as slang for sex. Another patron said it was from the sound of jungle drums, an idea in keeping with the island genre.

After the Smith family sold the bar to Sidney Bryant in the mid-1970s, the new atmosphere quickly attracted large gay crowds from around Southern California. Lines formed down the street. Celebrities such as Hudson, Lynde, Bette Midler and Martha Raye dropped in.

Then came AIDS, which thinned the ranks of the regulars.

"There was a freeness and lack of inhibition there," recalled Jeannie Mallarian, a former Boom Boom waitress. "I quit counting the AIDS victims after 192. I went to a lot of funerals. I quit crying after a while."

The community carried on. Robert Gentry became the nation's first openly gay mayor, eventually serving three terms between 1982 and 1994. Now splitting his time between Hawaii and Rancho Mirage, Gentry, 67, sees a far more affluent city where gay influence is waning.

"We have seen a change, one that started with the AIDS pandemic," he said. "There are people who want to see less gay people here. I haven't seen the city take a stand on domestic partnerships. Ten years ago we would have been the first to stand up for it. We would have sent representatives to Sacramento."

The potential demise of the Boom Boom Room, he said, is another step in the decline of gay life in the city.

"The Boom is a taproot to the gay community in Southern California," Gentry said. "It has a great deal of symbolism, a great deal of history and is an icon for the city because Laguna Beach would not be where it is today if it weren't for the gay community."

Gentry said he expected the exodus of gays to Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Cathedral City and the suburbs to continue.

"These other cities will reach out and pick up the slack," he said. "There are tons of people from Laguna in Palm Springs now. I am saddened by the change, but I understand it."

Joel Herzel, owner of Woody's at the Beach, a smaller, more upscale gay bar and restaurant in town, said the city would regret losing the Boom Boom Room.

"I don't want Laguna to become like Newport. I don't want it to lose its charm," he said. "People look at the bar and say, 'It's only a bar,' but it's a place that people want; it is part of their lives. It's our past and our future. Assimilation is a great thing, but there is something to be said about knowing who you are."

Fred Karger, 56, who has lived in the city for 10 years, has assembled volunteers, collected more than 4,000 signatures on a petition, talked to the new owner and put together a website (www.savetheboom.com) dedicated to keeping the bar open.

"This is the gayest place in Orange County," he said. "I remember the first time I came here. I fell in love with the place. The Boom Boom Room was in this magical town full of upbeat, attractive, interesting people."

Karger said city officials should help save the Boom Boom Room. "They could use their bully pulpit," he said.

Mayor Steve Dicterow said he would be happy to speak to the new owner, but that's about it. "I do see the Boom Boom Room as important, but I'm fearful of city involvement because I believe in property rights," he said.

Regulars at the bar disagree about what it all means. Some see the scheduled closure as the end of an era; others view it as another storm to weather.

"Laguna Beach doesn't need another bed-and-breakfast or magnificent restaurant," said Bob Wilson, 69, an ex-merchant marine officer who has been a patron since 1978. "I have traveled the world, and you hear about this place in Amsterdam, Hong Kong — wherever you go. For me, after so many years, it's home. And now, something you could count on is gone."

Al Roberts disagreed. "I don't think gays need the protection Laguna offered years ago," he said. "I think it would be great if it stayed, but I wouldn't pressure the property owner. For some people the bar is their life, but it's not mine."

Late into the night, as sea breezes bathed the sweaty club, the drag queens began wrapping up their act. "We only have six more shows left and then we are done here!" one shouted.

The exuberant women with their dollar bills, the bare-chested barmen, the vamping transvestites, the occasional straight guy trolling for the occasional straight girl — they all quieted a bit as the reality sank in.

Happy Laguna, it seemed, would soon be less gay.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Trader Vic's - To come down?

dianakaufmann — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:01:47 GMT

I just heard about a plan to tear down Trader Vic's in Beverley Hills, to make way for condos. All my searches point to an Los Angeles Business Journal article from this past March, but nothing makes mention of it since.
http://slick.org/pipermail/tikievents/2006-March/000569.html
Anyone have any leads on if this is really going to happen?

I swear, if this city was a person, it'd sell it's own mother into prostitution just to turn a buck.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 4 replies

Defunct LA Art in Paris

AArtVark — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 02:08:31 GMT

The Times August 04, 2006

Pompidou Centre falls from grace with an off-the-wall exhibition of borrowed art
From Charles Bremner in Paris

AN AMERICAN art exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris proved to be a smash hit — literally. Two valuable works were destroyed when they fell off the walls and the American owners and artists are not happy.

"It's extremely upsetting," said Michael Goven, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which owned one of the works. Craig Kauffman's Untitled Wall Relief was a 4ft by 6ft piece of Plexiglas painted with acrylic lacquer.

The other work was Untitled, by Peter Alexander, an 8ft black polyester bar that fell during the night before the show opened in March.

As US art experts sounded off in the Los Angeles Times, the Pompidou Centre expressed deep regret for the two incidents in its epic and widely praised exhibition, Los Angeles 1955-1985 — Birth of an Artistic Capital , which has just closed. "We take utmost care in hanging works of art and we don't have this sort of thing happen. We are extremely sorry," said Nasser Roya, a spokeswoman for the centre.

She said that the cause appeared to be the fragile nature of the materials used by the artists. "Both works were in experimental materials at the time that they were made (1967 and 1971). Obviously some time has passed since then." The works had been exhibited according to instructions from the US artists and owners, who had supervised the hanging.

The Los Angeles museum pointed out that Kauffman's work had survived several earthquakes over three decades in its care. The work was "a terribly important piece, for the artist, the institution and the community", said Lynn Zelevansky, who heads the contemporary art department.

Lyn Kienholz, a California art official who helped to organise the Paris show, said: "It's tragic. It never should have happened. There is no excuse."

Alexander, whose work was lent by the Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York, said that he had been deeply attached to it. "I don't know whether it's arrogance or passivity, but I've never dealt with anybody or any institution that works this way."

Alexander was paid £10,500 in compensation and insurance companies are to reimburse the Los Angeles museum for the Kauffman. The Pompidou Centre is investigating the two accidents, as well as minor damage, since repaired, to a work by Robert Irwin on loan from the Eli Broad Foundation of Los Angeles. The exhibition won critical acclaim as the largest exhibition of works by Los Angeles contemporary artists ever assembled.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

Defunct Weather?

AArtVark — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 08:29:24 GMT

Anyone remember having such unpleasant weather in Los Angeles in the past? I grew up in the Valley and we had some hot ones, but I don't remember 119's... Now I live on the "cool" side of the hill, but the humidity makes up in misery for the lower temperature.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 18 replies

Death of Clifton's Co-Owner Is Investigated

AArtVark — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 23:15:03 GMT

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-clifton5aug05,1,3764694.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

From the Los Angeles Times
Death of Clifton's Co-Owner Is Investigated
Body of Jean Clinton Roeschlaub, whose parents began cafeteria chain, is found in her condo. Police have few leads in the case.
By Ashley Surdin
Times Staff Writer

August 5, 2006

The turkey was carved, the mashed potatoes were awash in gravy and the penny-filled water fountain flowed Friday as it always has inside Clifton's Cafeteria.

But the suspicious death two days before of the woman who was part owner of the Los Angeles restaurant cast a pall over the regulars and 60-member staff.

"We're all sad," Nestor Armendariz, a 15-year restaurant employee, said as she greeted customers with "How are you?" and handed them their change.

Jean Clinton Roeschlaub, 83, was found about 3:15 p.m. Wednesday in her unit at Monterey Island Condominiums, near downtown Glendale, Glendale Police Officer John Balian said.

Police have no leads in the case and minimal information to work with, but her death is not random, Balian said.

"You can't get in [to her building] unless you have a key or unless a guard lets you in," he said.

The Los Angeles County coroner's office said Friday that the case was on security hold and would not release any information.

Condominium staff said they visited Roeschlaub's penthouse on the 16th floor at the request of her son.

Donald Clinton, Roeschlaub's 79-year-old brother, who is co-owner of the cafeteria, confirmed Friday that Roeschlaub's 53-year-old son, Bruce C. Davis, asked the condominium management to check on his mother because she had missed several appointments.

The door handle on Roeschlaub's condo was not tampered with, condominium staff said, and nothing appeared out of place in the 16th-floor hallway, which serves a handful of other residences.

"We didn't get past the threshold," said the woman who found Roeschlaub; she declined to give her name. "I knew it was serious."

Donald Clinton said that his sister had a pacemaker and that family members thought her death was from natural causes.

He said police asked him if his sister had any enemies, but he could not think of any.

Roeschlaub's parents, Clifford and Nelda Clinton, founded Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles in 1931 during the Depression.

Customers became "guests," the company website said, and none were turned away hungry, even if they had no money.

During one 90-day period, 10,000 people ate free before Clifford Clinton could open an emergency "Penny Cafeteria" a few blocks away to feed, for pennies, the 2 million who came during the next two years.

At its height, there were seven Clifton's Cafeterias, with restaurants in Century City, Whittier, Lakewood, West Covina, Laguna Hills and downtown Los Angeles.

But Donald Clinton said increasing rent and expiring leases closed all but the one at 648 S. Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.

Roeschlaub was a weekly fixture in the family restaurant, where customers came Friday for dishes concocted from the hundreds of recipes collected in every corner of the kitchen.

"It's a really clean place, a nice environment, and the food is good — not greasy like other places," said Laura Rodriguez, 41, a 25-year patron of the restaurant who sat with her 19-year-old daughter, also named Laura.

Associate Manager Alfred Garcia, 60, who worked with Roeschlaub for 40 years, said she came by once a week to scour menus and plates like a hawk, ready to pounce on anything that was less than perfect.

But, he quickly added, the sharp woman always treated her employees like family.

"She always used to say hi to everyone — to the dishwasher, the cook. Everybody," he said. "She wasn't feeling good, but she looked good — always well-dressed and elegant," he said.

People described Roeschlaub as pretty and beautiful and said she wore tweed skirts and had her hair styled weekly.

"She was very respected," said Monterey Island Condominium maintenance worker Marcio Carvalho. "Who is not surprised?

"She was such a nice lady."

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Crimebo and 1947project Crime Bus Pals in the Pasadena Weekly

editrix — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 19:40:55 GMT

Just in time for Sunday's Pasadena Confidential tour, we have the cover story on the Pasadena Weekly, with some suitably spooky pix of Crime Clown Crimebo menacing tour hosts Kim and Nathan. Please check it out online, and email to reserve if you want a spot on the bus!

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com

More 1947project Crime Bus info is at
http://www.1947project.com

-Kim

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

ROOTED NOW @ SPACE ISLAND

PoM — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 17:23:12 GMT

Due to High Fire Danger Rooted has been Moved to Space Island... Go to Rootabreaka.com for all info.. Sat Aug 5...

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Send your LA Pic to upcoming Major Exhibit.

ibexbox — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 21:04:30 GMT

Open Call for Photo Submission: My L.A. Pic

This call goes out to everybody in Los Angeles. We want your digital photographs of Los Angeles for My L.A. Pic project to be included in the upcoming exhibit L.A. 225 which will be held at the Pico House Gallery to commemorate the 225th birthday of Los Angeles in September of 2006.

The objective of My L.A. Pic is to create a digital photographic presentation of Los Angeles’ neighborhoods as seen through the eyes of the people who live there. Show your side of L.A. that people wouldn’t normally see. You do not have to be an artist or photographer to participate.

There is NO entry fee and the youth are encouraged to participate. We also encourage Los Angeles organizations to share this information with their members. Photographs selected to be included in the exhibit are the sole discretion of the project’s organizers.
Photo Submission Guidelines

Number of Submissions Accepted: Each person may submit one digital photograph which must have been taken within the city of Los Angeles.

The following information must be included in the submission:

1-Where was the photo shot? Use nearest intersection. Example: Wilshire & Western.

2-When was the photo taken? Example: Aug.1.2006

3-What is the photographer’s first and last name?

4- What is the photographer’s age? Example: Age: 22

All photos must be:

Original: Photos submitted must have been taken by the person submitting, and may not be a reproduction of another image. Images that might infringe on copyright, trademark or that promote a commercial product will not be selected.
Family friendly: All photos must be suitable for viewing by general public, this includes children. Any photo deemed inappropriate will not be selected.

Size: All photos must be in JPEG (.jpg) format at 72 dpi. The dimensions may not be larger than 720 and smaller than 160 pixels. If this all sounds too complicated, don’t despair. It’s actually quite simple. You can even do it online for free. Just use your favorite browser and search for keywords like “resize photo”. We found the following website by doing the same: http://www.resize2mail.com/ Please note that we are in no way affiliated with this website and found them by doing a search on the internet. They are a free service and resizing your photo will take only a minute or two. It’s really important to send us the right size no matter how you resize the photos. We simply do not have the resources to do it for you. If you do use the said website (or any other) please choose the [720 x 540] dimension specification. Other sizes will not be considered.

Deadline for the first stage is Friday, Aug. 19, 2006 at 5pm.

Email your image along with the requested information to: myLApic@yahoo.com and type "My LA Pic" in the subject line

You may only submit your picture once; multiple submissions will be disqualified. IMPORTANT: By sending your image to myLApic@yahoo.com you agree to allow the organizers to use your image in the L.A. 225 exhibition and its associated publicity. Please contact project coordinator at myLApic@yahoo.com with all inquires.

This information and updates will be available on: http://www.geocities.com/mylapic

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Tex & The Horseheads

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 02:42:08 GMT

At Safari Sam's Opening Night
Thursday - April 13th
$10.00

www.safari-sams.com/mambo/index.php

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 10 replies

Marineland to Become a Resort

dianakaufmann — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 19:08:51 GMT

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-marine21jul21,0,388567.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Marineland Makes Way for Resort
Almost 20 years after the park closed, workers are tearing down the remaining buildings.
By Deborah Schoch, Times Staff Writer
July 21, 2006

The familiar whale spout sign is missing its whale. Behind scraggly Italian cypress, the five entrance flagpoles are barely visible.

The sweeping 170-degree ocean view from the once-gracious Catalina Room is blocked by a tangle of weeds encircling the patio where wedding couples waltzed.

And inside the big round building that was the backdrop for MTV television shows such as "Beach House," ragged black graffiti covers the walls.

Demolition started Thursday in Rancho Palos Verdes on the last remaining buildings of what was once Marineland of the Pacific, a mecca for Los Angeles-area families for more than three decades. One year older than Disneyland, Marineland, which opened in 1954, was one of Southern California's first theme parks. It once billed itself as "the world's largest oceanarium" and featured such baby boom icons as the 320-foot-high Skytower and Bubbles, billed as the world's first trained and performing whale.

Now, 19 years after Marineland closed its doors, workers have begun transforming the site on a spectacular oceanfront bluff at the south face of the Palos Verdes Peninsula into the posh 102-acre Terranea resort, due to open in 2008.

Today, the vacant site is distinguished by weeds, graffiti, broken glass and discarded empty bottles of cheap wine.

It has become a popular playground for young people who cut through the wire-mesh fences and hold late-night parties, say city officials and representatives of developer Lowe Enterprises Inc.

They call the buildings a safety hazard, and say they're concerned about liability.

Vandals repeatedly tear down the plywood nailed over the windows of about 20 remaining buildings, mostly decrepit one-story wood structures from the 1950s, hidden behind overgrown ficus and 5-foot-high fennel.

"Literally every week, we board these buildings up again," said landscape architect Todd Majcher, a Lowe assistant vice president and project manager, as he pointed to a section of the wire-mesh fence that had been cut and then mended with wire.

The Skytower and aquariums were torn down long ago. Still standing are the 12-room motel, a restaurant and the Catalina Room, which thrived as a wedding and banquet venue long after the park closed. Catered by New York Food Co. of El Segundo, it shut down less than two years ago.

The Catalina Room remains virtually intact, with a wooden dance floor, a pastel mural of Catalina Island and a bar and fireplace decorated with teal and terracotta tile.

But the bar is bare, the air smells musty, and the room is now used to store boxes of literature and water bottles bearing the Terranea logo.

No one has stepped forward to protest the demolition or claim the buildings have historic significance, city officials said.

Marineland opened at the start of the baby boom era, before Disneyland and Sea World overshadowed it.

It drew schoolchildren from throughout the region, oohing and aahing at the cavorting killer whales Orky and Corky, and crowding into the Sea Arena and the Big Reef.

The entrance near the southernmost tip of Hawthorne Boulevard was marked by a tall concrete pillar with two curls — a whale's spout, some say, or perhaps a stylized whale's tail — with a whale and a couple of frolicking dolphins attached.

As Sea World boomed in San Diego, Marineland fell out of fashion. After it closed, the federal government deemed the Skytower an aviation problem, and it was demolished.

Marines from Camp Pendleton used the land for exercises, and it became a site for such films as "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Fun with Dick & Jane," "The Aviator," "Patriot Games," "Pearl Harbor," "Charlie's Angels," "Spiderman," "Con Air" and "G.I. Jane," along with television shows such as "Lost," "Baywatch" and "The O.C."

Over the years since the closing, plans to redevelop the land emerged and fell apart. Owners also came and went.

One owner defaulted on its loans and filed for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, all plans drew close scrutiny from environmentalists, residents and Coastal Commission experts because of the bluffs and fragile vegetation.

Terranea Resort, the latest project, is the work of Lowe's destination and hotel division, which is also developing the Grizzly Ranch in Portola and the Stone Eagle Golf Club in Palm Desert. Lowe's original project drew public opposition because of its size. The City Council rejected it, but approved the current smaller plan.The resort will feature a luxury hotel, 32 villas, casitas, a spa, restaurants and a golf academy. It will have little in common with the old theme park, judging from a Terranea brochure: "This captivating retreat gives one a sense of being enshrouded in a world of tranquillity. Set upon graceful terraces staircasing down to the Pacific, it is a classic American playground destined to rival the world's most legendary seaside escapes."

Terranea's developers promise that they will maintain public access and will restore two acres of oceanfront land with native plants, including habitat for the rare El Segundo blue butterfly, which lives on the western edge of the site.

The demolition project will continue into August, and groundbreaking for Terranea is set for October.

Soon all of Marineland will be gone from the site, even the entrance sign's concrete pillar, which Majcher said is structurally unsound.

The concrete whale that once hung from the sign still lives on, however. It was donated to the city of Ranchos Palos Verdes and is stored in the city yard.

The whale may go on display again at the newly expanded Point Vicente Interpretive Center nearby, said city planner Ara Mihranian.

"We're very into preserving history."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times researchers Vicki Gallay and John Tyrrell contributed to this report.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 2 replies

the stripmall world in front of the Hollywood Cemetary.

ssballs — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:19:13 GMT

Will it ever be torn down?Anyone remember the grassy lawn that was there.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 7 replies

Favorite defunct coffee shop

madmoisellekat — Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:11:21 GMT

We all have our favorite one, especially when you were a jaded high school student and the coffee shop was your home away from home. Those years when you were too young to go to bars. Or even as an adult just the coffee shop where you would spend those introspective moments of savored solitude.

Mine of course was that one I posted before called Van Gogh's Ear in Venice. However, my first true love of coffee shops was a place in my hometown in Redondo Beach called Yesterday's. It was probably one of the few hip indie coffee shops in the very saturated franchise South Bay of LA. This was where us freaks from all the neighboring other South Bay high schools would come to meet other freaks. It was a great place that was gay friendly, had open-mike nights, smoking patio, open til midnight which is late for tgheused bookstore, chess table. But the clientale was more than just high school kids, I met a few older 20's and 30's people there who would kinda watch over us youngens.

Of course like many independent coffee shops, I guess Yesterday's couldn't compete with the likes of Starbuck's and with a lot of the clientale being young they didn't have the disposable income. So fate made it closed down. I guess it's there is still a boring coffee shop along with dry cleaners in its place. Go figure. But all the indie charm is gone.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 30 replies

Amusement park near Westwood

Margrrret — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 05:41:27 GMT

Does anyone remenber the rinky-dink amusement park that was previously on the site of the Westside
Pavillion? I don't, but was just talking with a friend about Beverly Playland, which used to be where the Beverly Center (is there a pattern here?) Can anyone fill me in?

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 7 replies

Dutton's Books - final days

Conrail — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 21:52:37 GMT

Go say goodbye! Go buy a book!

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 6 replies

Vitello's former owner Restivo dies

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 00:44:12 GMT

Posted on Sun, Jun. 11, 2006

Vitello's former owner Restivo dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Joe Restivo, a former comedian and co-owner of the Vitello's restaurant in Studio City where Robert Blake and his wife dined before she was fatally shot, has died. He was 54.

Restivo died Tuesday, according to the Forest Lawn mortuary in Hollywood Hills. It did not release the cause of death.

Restivo began doing standup in Chicago in 1976 and performed in the Los Angeles area until the early 1990s. He also worked as a character actor.

In 1977, he and his brother, Steve, bought Vitello's, a celebrity hangout. Its menu included a spinach and pasta dish bearing the name of Blake, the former ''Baretta'' star. The Restivos sold the business last year.

The restaurant was thrust into the spotlight on May 4, 2001, when Blake's wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, was found shot to death in Blake's car on a nearby street. Blake was acquitted of murdering her.

The restaurant's business increased after the slaying and it became a stop on tour-bus itineraries. It was frequently mentioned on television news shows, entertainment gossip programs and ''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.''

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Nightmares of Bunker Hill tour, Saturday June 10

editrix — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 05:38:27 GMT

Nightmares of Bunker Hill Crime Bus Tour, noon-5pm. $47 includes snacks, beverages and five-hour luxury coach tour.

The 1947 project presents its newest historic L.A. Crime Bus Tour, the downtown-themed Nightmares of Bunker Hill.

Featuring lively tales from the 1880s to the 1970s, Nightmares of Bunker Hill reveals the weird, old L.A. that's not there anymore and the badly-behaved people who didn't make the city great, but sure made it more interesting.

Crime Bus passengers will tour the old Italian/Mexican district (near modern day Chinatown) and visit the scenes of grisly bar fights, tragic suicides, opium dens and rumored hordes of buried treasure, and discover a mysterious local ghost story that's as elegantly spooky as any in England.

Then it's into the heart of the historic business district, where early Angelenoes go toppling into open sewers, toss bottles of acid at former lovers, torment their dentists, attempt to speak to the dead, find severed limbs in their backyards and spit tobacco juice on the backs of ladies' ball gowns.

For more info, to purchase your ticket via paypal or make other arrangements, please visit http://www.1947project.com

Mark your calendars too for the debut of the Pasadena Confidential tour, July 22.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

Union 76 ball

haroldfornow — Fri, 19 May 2006 00:25:09 GMT

I don't know if this counts exactly for this tribe, but it is a part of Southern California architectural history.

"Gas Station Icons Being 86ed
After 45 years of guiding drivers to their next fill-up, 'meatball' 76 signs are becoming casualties of corporate consistency.
By Scott Gold, Times Staff Writer
May 14, 2006

In January, an earnest woman named Kim Cooper was driving through Lincoln Heights when her neighborhood gas station caught her eye. The station's familiar 76 insignia, its stocky blue numbers splashed against a sea of orange, had been supplanted with a sign that looked like, well, everywhere else. The new 76 was set against a backdrop of red, and a boring red at that — "a queasy color," she recalled with a grimace, "like liver."

Cooper, the publisher of a magazine called Scram — a "journal of unpopular culture" — does not typically concern herself with the goings-on of megacorporations like ConocoPhillips, owner of the 76 brand.

ADVERTISEMENT
But the 76 logo, she decided, isn't just an ad. Not anymore. The orange balls that have rotated above gas stations for 45 years are a piece of roadside Americana, and in Southern California they are an iconic part of the sightline, not much different than palm trees or the Hollywood sign. They no longer belong to a boardroom, Cooper decided, but to the public.

"I felt," she said, "that this shouldn't pass unnoticed."

Later that day, Cooper launched an Internet blog — http://www.savethe76ball.com — dedicated to the balls' preservation.

At first glance, it seemed a little frivolous. In a city of transit and transients, is this what preservationists are left with — fighting to save relics of urban design known in the subculture of petroliana as "meatballs"?

It hasn't taken long, however, for the campaign to catch on. Heartfelt response has poured in, not just from random drivers, but from prominent voices in architecture and design, a board member of the Los Angeles Conservancy, even the 79-year-old man who designed the balls in the first place to mark the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle.

Houston-based ConocoPhillips, which has been quietly replacing the balls with more modern-looking signs for at least six months, declined to respond to detailed questions about its decision. In a written statement, a spokeswoman said the balls were being replaced — and the logo's color changed to red — to give a "common image" to the company's 76, Phillips 66 and Conoco gas stations.

"We appreciate motorists' loyalty," the statement said. "Though our look is a little different, the quality of our products and our commitment to our customers remains the same."

To Cooper, 39, who has also worked on an online crime diary of the year 1947 in Los Angeles and provides guided tours based in part on that work, it sounds like a bunch of corporate hooey, "the complete rejection of the goodwill that this brand has built."

"You can look at them as some ugly thing that should be thrown away," she said. "Or you can see them as the best expression of America — a gleeful, bright California image, a masterpiece of salesmanship and graphic design."

Many of the 1,600 postings to Cooper's online petition suggest that she is not alone. "Please don't destroy my childhood memories," one reads. Another asks: "Why does everything we love in life go away?"

While the testimonials trickle in, the balls continue to fall each week. In Echo Park, at Alvarado and Sunset. Below Griffith Park, at Franklin and Beechwood. And at Dodger Stadium, where Union Oil had a fruitful sponsorship from the start of construction, where Vin Scully once responded to home runs by announcing that Union 76 would be making a donation in a player's name, and where, during some evening games, the orange ball beyond centerfield sometimes made it seem as if there were two suns setting over the city.

In 1961, Ray Pedersen was a hard-charging, 34-year-old art director for the advertising firm of Young & Rubicam, working out of its downtown Los Angeles office. Union Oil Co., the venerable California firm founded in 1890, asked Y&R to design a sign that would rise next to a cable-supported "sky train" at the World's Fair.

Pedersen began fiddling with the advertising schematic Union Oil was already using — the blocky numbers, the orange-and-blue motif that seemed radical at a time when most of the competition had settled on tamer reds, whites and blues.

"I thought: 'We've got to do something really hot — a big ball, lit from the inside,' " he said.

By the time he had found someone who could mold plastic into two halves of a ball that would reach 12 feet in diameter, he had spent an estimated $50,000, he said. A Y&R manager called in a rage.

"He said: 'What are you doing up there?' " Pedersen recalled. "I said: 'I'm hanging a sign, man!"

Pedersen said he was nearly fired — but Union Oil loved it. Company executives declared that they would erect as many balls as they could. The first went up in Redondo Beach. By the end of the decade, there were thousands, mostly in the West.

They became an oddball expression of unity. Union Oil eventually created tiny versions that could be affixed to car antennas, and distributed millions of them. Nowhere, it seemed, did they have as much resonance as they did in Southern California.

Preservationists attribute that to two things.

First, Los Angeles, largely because its economy catered to so many car travelers, was essential in the development of creative advertising and roadside signs. In 1923, for instance, an L.A. Packard dealership is believed to have become the first U.S. business to use a neon sign. That same year, a sign reading "HOLLYWOODLAND" — later shortened — was erected to advertise a new development in the hills above downtown.

"The 76 sign is part of a tremendous history," said Alan Hess, an Irvine architect and author of 10 books on 20th century architectural history. "The 76 sign was colorful, it was shapely, and it was delightful. It was also functional; your tank is getting low, you see it far down the street and you knew exactly where you were going to get gas."

Second, unlike some European cities or more mature U.S. cities, Los Angeles has few significant public buildings beyond City Hall, the Department of Water and Power building and a handful of others.

Commercial structures are the foundation of the sightline. Right or wrong, those structures are an important part of the region's history, said John English, a board member of the Los Angeles Conservancy and an architectural historian.

"You could look at this and say that it's the most ridiculous thing in the world," English said. "But our relationship to commercial iconography, that really is our heritage."

When the subject is a hunk of plastic, that's heady talk. And it has been drowned out in recent years by another trend: the effort to protect communities' identities by cleaning up their sightlines — starting by targeting tall "lollipop" signs that many planners and corporate executives have come to see as clutter.

It was true across the region, but pronounced in places like Orange County, where civic leaders decided, in the name of maturity, to do away with structures and signs that were built to invoke images of postwar prosperity and imagination — space exploration, for instance, or the solar system. Visiting business executives, those leaders decided, no longer wanted to call their offices to explain that messages could be left for them at the Cosmic Inn or the Inn of Tomorrow.

Tall, flashy signs began to come down at a rapid pace, replaced, with the financial assistance of taxpayers, with lowerlying, more stoic "monument" signs. It was a controversial movement; monument signs are often derided as "tombstones" among those who yearn for more roadside diversity, and English said the loss of commercial art risked "turning everything into oatmeal." But the trend toward uniformity was strong.

"The effort was noble," said Wally Linn, a former mayor in La Palma, one of the cities where the effort was widespread. "We were trying to maintain an image."

The 76 balls, which in most cases are being replaced with either ground-level signs or taller signs in the shape of discs, are merely the latest structures sacrificed to that image campaign.

But Pedersen, among others, can't figure why ConocoPhillips would want to abandon such a powerful image.

"It's their nickel," he said. "But this was a franchise. It just doesn't make any sense."

While the website encourages a boycott of ConocoPhillips, conservationists aren't expecting to save many balls. Many would be content to preserve a few samples as reminders of a different era in urban design.

"It simply improves people's lives to be surrounded by things that somebody cared about," Cooper said. "Yeah, it was an ad. But it was really cool." "

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-unocal14may14,0,6417885.story?coll=la-home-local

http://www.savethe76ball.com/

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

The Valley at 60

Todd — Mon, 08 May 2006 18:43:43 GMT

Today's LA Daliy News has several feature stories about the Valley turning 60. Hmm, it's only a decade or so older than me. :p

http://dailynews.com/valleyat60

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 3 replies

At Wax Museum, the Ending Is Bidder-Sweet

AArtVark — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 10:22:33 GMT

At Wax Museum, the Ending Is Bidder-Sweet
About 400 fans turn out to make offers as the defunct Movieland in O.C. holds an auction featuring star figures, props and memorabilia.
By David Haldane - Times Staff Writer

March 12, 2006

Daniel Roebuck showed up at Buena Park's Movieland Wax Museum on Saturday with one major goal.

"I want their Frankenstein to live in my house," said the 43-year-old Los Angeles actor, writer and monster collector.

Roebuck was one of about 400 movie fans who came to bid in the daylong "Everything Must Go" auction at the museum, which closed last Halloween after a 43-year run. Owners attributed declining attendance to rising competition from nearby amusement parks.

The auction, which featured about 500 items, happened simultaneously over the Internet.

Items included movie characters with their sets, props and a collection of cinema memorabilia dating to 1963.

"This is a piece of Southern California history," said Edward D. Testo Jr., president of auction company Asset Reliance Inc. "It's a little bit of Hollywood. People have a chance to own a celebrity."

Well, not exactly, but the likeness in wax anyway, including icons such as Bette Davis, George Burns, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and Andy Griffith.

Roebuck said he also had his sights on Griffith because he was a friend.

"It would be neat to have the figure of a friend," said Roebuck, who played legal assistant Clifford Lewis for three seasons on "Matlock," which starred Griffith.

While Roebuck's tastes tended more toward the nostalgic, aficionados of more contemporary figures could admire the likes of Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Jackson.

Some bidders were interested in more than just celebrities. Hollywood screenwriter Scott Alexander, 42, said he was hoping to acquire various gargoyle-like "horror figures" to use as Halloween decorations for his house.

"I love this stuff," Alexander said. "I had all my birthdays here as a kid."

Chris Doohan, 46, whose father, James Doohan, played Scotty in "Star Trek," had hoped to buy the figure of his dad, who died last year at 85.

But the bidding was a little high for the medical technician — the wax figure fetched $4,200.

"I had a feeling it would go for a high number," said Doohan, who downplayed his disappointment by saying the piece was not in pristine condition.

Nearby, Roy Aletti, 47, owner of a hardware store in Harrison, N.Y., was anxiously awaiting a crack at Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

"I heard about [the auction] and booked my flight right away," said Aletti, who added that he has a large collection of wax figures at his home. "It sure scares the heck out of burglars," he joked.

The auction was expected to last into the evening. By midmorning, two of the biggest bids belonged to Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, which fetched $25,000, and a "Wizard of Oz" scene featuring Judy Garland, which sold for $33,000.

Garland's Oz scene went to George Krikorian, owner of the Southern California theater chain bearing his name.

Krikorian also bought figures of Marilyn Monroe, George Burns, Mary Pickford, W.C. Fields and Jean Harlow.

"We want to put them in our theaters," he explained.

How much had he spent so far?

"I don't know yet, I don't want to look," he said. "The biggest thing I'm worried about is how I'm going to move them."

From the Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-movie12mar12,0,6640973.story?track=tothtml

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Original Packard Dealership downtown revived as lofts.

haroldfornow — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 00:01:01 GMT

At least some historical buildings survive and are put to good use with a big nod to it's past. Thank goodness the owner of the project was sympathetic to it's past and was into acknowleding it.

One thing that's cool to point out is that this dealership had the first neon sign in the United States. Too many things to touch on, so read the story.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-packard3feb03,1,1654513.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Punk Clubs and Gutter Dives

frankenspock — Mon, 12 Jan 2004 11:30:32 GMT

Wowee wow wow. Flyers from punk shows from the 80s. So many places (and people) that aren't around anymore:

http://members.tripod.com/weirdotronix/woflyer.htm

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 100 replies

NEWS - Music Lovers Take a Final Spin at Indie Record Store

AArtVark — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 19:05:40 GMT

From the Los Angeles Times

Music Lovers Take a Final Spin at Indie Record Store
Rhino Westwood is packed as it holds a going-out-of-business sale after more than three decades. It is lamented as the end of an era.
By Jessica Garrison
Times Staff Writer

January 23, 2006

David Gilmore stepped up to the cash register at Rhino Westwood on Sunday, bought a stack of CDs for a song and then broke into a lament.

The 37-year-old gave a blunt description of his mood to the cashier at the store he has patronized since he was 12.

"Don't get me wrong, I love technology," he added. But the closing of the independent outlet Sunday after more than 30 years is "a travesty," Gilmore said.

Rhino, like other independent record stores in Los Angeles and around the country, succumbed to a host of ailments, from the explosion in music downloading and CD burning to the drop in album sales and the rise of big chain stores.

The founders of the store launched their own record label, also called Rhino, which eventually was sold to Warner Music Group.

As a goodbye gesture, Rhino held a giant sell-off of its inventory Saturday and Sunday. Vinyl LPs were going for as little as 10 cents. Many CDs were 50 cents.

And for once, the store was so crowded that the air inside grew hot and moist with the crush of shoppers, while outside the parking lot was filled to beyond capacity, creating at times a cacophony of honking on Westwood Boulevard.

With bands such as the Flaming Lips and Pavement providing the soundtrack, hipsters in jeans and older gentlemen in shorts and knee-high socks stood side by side, pawing through stacks of albums looking for bargains and bidding farewell to a place and an experience many said was an integral part of their youth.

"I used to shop here in the 1970s," said Mary McFarland, 54, who drove from Covina, bringing her daughter Erin Enmark, 15, to show her the place.

"It was a great selection," she said. "If you wanted it, they had it — the Beatles, the Moody Blues, all that stuff."

Beside her, Erin flipped through stacks of 20-year-old records. "I never really went to a record store," she said.

"She's just now discovering vinyl," her mother added. "She just discovered my vinyl about two months ago."

Other customers confessed that they felt responsible for the demise of places such as Rhino.

"I help put 'em out of business," said Mike Goldstein, a 42-year-old librarian from San Francisco who was buying hundreds of CDs that he planned to resell on the Internet. The sale of music online is part of what has doomed stores such as Rhino. "It's too bad," Goldstein added. "You lose the personal touch."

The staff watched the crush of customers with a mixture of sadness and joy at seeing the place full again, if only for a day.

"It hasn't been this busy in a long time," said Marcus Kagler, the store's 28-year-old general manager. "People are here to say goodbye."

He said he had seen some parents dragging their children in to show them what a vinyl record looks like. "My children will think of an independent record store like I think of a drive-in," Kagler said.

Bob Marin, who has been a consultant to the store for decades, was answering the phone Sunday afternoon. "This is the last time I'm going to say Rhino Records in Westwood," he said.

Among his fondest memories, Marin said, was the day that an unknown musician named Kurt Cobain brought his band Nirvana to play in the store.

But Marin said what he will treasure the most are the relationships forged in the store.

"Through Rhino," he said, "I met my partner, as well as many longtime friends that I'll have for the rest of my life. It's truly the end of an era."

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

RIP - Rhino Rec. in Westwoods

AArtVark — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 10:16:29 GMT

http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-rhino06jan06,0,6135359.story?track=tothtml
MUSIC
Indie record stores doing slow fade out
Aron's Records and Rhino Westwood are just a few of the shops that find themselves going the way of the dodo in the digital age.
By Geoff Boucher
Times Staff Writer

January 6, 2006

It'd be harsh exaggeration to say independent record stores are going the way of typewriter repair shops, but in Southern California it's been painfully evident of late that grand, eccentric music merchants are wheezing badly in the modern marketplace.

Rhino Westwood, a Westside landmark for more than three decades, announced its closing on Thursday, news that follows the November shuttering of Aron's Records, the storied shop that sold music for 40 years (and practically invented the used-LP sales practice), first on Melrose Avenue and then Highland Avenue.

Rhino founder Richard Foos, speaking in dejected tones, said Thursday that it "had become very apparent that it was too difficult to go on." The store's lease expired and Foos opted to lock the doors. The store plans a Jan. 21 parking-lot sale that will be part wake, part fire sale.

"But we are hoping now for a white knight to show up and buy the inventory and the name and hopefully carry on the tradition," he said. "It was a very emotional decision but this is where it's at. Now in Westwood you have no free-standing record stores. You have one of the largest colleges in the country and no inde-pendent record store. That says a lot."

The causes of death for Rhino and Aron's are numerous and unsurprising. Album sales are in decline, music consumers continue to migrate to music downloading and CD-burning. The loss-leader approach to CD sales at giant chains such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy have smothered mom-and-pop outfits. And when prerecorded CDs are sold, more and more often it's through new-approach merchants that are as varied as Amazon.com and Starbucks. Closer to home and to the heart, a new competitor arose from within the indie ranks with the 2001 arrival in Hollywood of Amoeba Records, the Bay Area brand-name that opened a colossal indie store on Sunset Boulevard that siphons offbusiness from stores far and wide.

Amoeba has learned well from the history of indie-store successes; Rhino is a significant part of that history locally.

In 1973, Foos launched the Rhino brand-name after finding success reselling the rare LPs he had cherry-picked at weekend swap meets. The first Rhino shop brought in a clientele that included Harold Bronson. The two self-avowed music geekshit it off and Bronson became an employee and strong hand in shaping the oddball charm and pop-culture safari spirit of Rhino. In the back of the shop in 1978 they launched their record label, also called Rhino, which has become a potent force in audio and video reissues, novelty projects and the musically esoteric. In 1998, Foos and Bronson sold Rhino to the giant Warner Music Group in a multimillion-dollar deal that financially rewarded their longtime fandom handsomely.

While the label grew, its retail namesake contracted. Its retail space gave way to comic books and pop-culture trinkets and then later to a row of video games. Its music inventory in recent months was far less than its imposing collection in years past. That's a metaphor for music retail as a whole, which as seen its floor-space given over to video games and DVDs as the prerecorded music CD has lost favor with consumers.

Jim Donio, president of the National Assn. of Recording Merchandisers, the New Jersey-based trade group, said the closing of Aron's and Rhino comes clustered with the shutdown of Crow's Nest in Chicago, a past winner of the trade group's retailer-of-the-year award.

"There will be more casualties, I'm sure," Donio said. "There's a conspiracy of market factors right now. It's not just one thing ... there were only two albums in 2005 that sold more than 4 million copies and there needs to be many, many more than that. In 2004 there was a small but encouraging growth in music sales after three years of decline. Then in 2005 the numbers were down again."

Donio said the loss of singular shops such as Rhino are emotionally hard to take in an industry that puts a premium on free spirits and maverick successes.

"There's a real sense of community in these stores and discovery," Donio said. "Rhino was a great place. Aron's was a special place. It's sad to see them go away and it's not good for anyone."

The group that calls itself the Almighty Institute of Music Retail, based in Los Angeles, has in its database the names of close to 1,000 indie stores that have closed in the past three years. A decade ago, according to the group's stats, there were about 5,000 music shops flying independent flags; now there are about 2,800. The woes go well beyond small and locally owned stores — large chains such as Tower Records and Wherehouse Music, for instance, have seen their fortunes battered in recent years and have sought bankruptcy protection.

"There's no secret here that times have been tough, but every time you hear about another closing, it's still hard," Donio said. "You hate to read nothing but doom and gloom into it, but it is hard, isn't it?"

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 21 replies

R.I.P. Aron's Records in Hollywood

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 18:42:34 GMT

It has bins; don't call it a has-been
Haunt the aisles. Weigh your fate. Independent record stores still offer things the Internet can't.
By Robert Lloyd
Times Staff Writer

January 21, 2006

Some say that in the future — the near future — there will be no records, and so no record stores of any kind to sell them. All your music will arrive sucked through a cable or beamed from a satellite or by some means not yet imagined. (Pill form, possibly.) You will never need to leave the house. In fact, that pretty much has already happened.

So maybe, in the long view, it doesn't matter all that much that after more than 30 years Rhino Records — the Westside store, not the quirky label it spawned, which itself has been subsumed into a vast corporate sea — is going out of business, with a parking lot sale this weekend to cash out what's left of the inventory. Aron's Records, in Hollywood, also is set to shut its doors for good sometime next month, after even more years of operation.

Each was, in its day, an institution, the king of its territory, a mecca for music lovers who wouldn't be caught dead in a Tower Records or Virgin Megastore, or anywhere that charged retail. (Though the economy of scale would suggest otherwise, prices have always been lower in the indie stores than in the big chains.)

The trend is national, if not worldwide: There are, by one count, only around half as many independent record stores in the country today as there were 10 years ago. Whether it's the slump in album sales (down 7% last year, according to SoundScan), or an increase in the downloading of tracks (up 150%), or competition from online shopping, or the various technological and cultural shifts that have driven the youth of America to different distractions, it's a changing world, and one less inclined to support small businessmen selling music out of (mostly) small rooms.

Some Internet retailers, such as Miles of Music or Forced Exposure, which sell real CDs, or eMusic.com, which sells MP3s, are trying to function as virtual independent record stores. They cater to tastes outside the mainstream, posting lists of "employee favorites" and describing their offerings in knowledgeable, friendly, sometimes cheeky terms; even through the computer screen one senses their engagement. (And many real-world stores, of course, also have a Web presence.)

But Amazon.com, whose clear business plan is to one day sell everything to everybody, has also put significant energy into creating the illusion that its website is just a friendly corner store. It remembers your name if you've shopped there before, says hello when you click in, knows what music you like, and recommends some more.

I know that for some, and not only of the X, Y and Z generations, cyberspace is as authentic a marketplace as any other, but I am old-fashioned enough to want to get out of the house once in a while, into real three-dimensional spaces stocked with things you can see and smell and pick up and turn over to see what they look like on the other side.

Proust had his madeleine, but nothing unlocks the seven volumes of my memory so much as handling some LP I bought when I was 13 or 14 years old. There are those of us for whom music is a fetishistic activity, in the primary meaning of fetish: "an object that is believed to have magical or spiritual powers." Can one fetishize an MP3 file? I haven't been able to yet. (You can fetishize the player, as Apple accountants can attest, but that is a different thing.)

Records Ltd., a storefront operation on Victory Boulevard in Van Nuys, at the end of a 25-minute bike ride, was where I first bought records, and I remember not only the records I bought there but the act of buying them (after the long act of deciding what to buy). Record albums seemed to hold clues to the future, my future, and going to the record store was in some way a first step into a wider world. It was the first place I spent time around — not "with" exactly, but around — adults who, like the acts whose music I bought, were on my side of the generation gap. I knew they knew things I didn't know yet, but might soon.

Later there were Vinyl Fetish and Bomp and Moby Disc and Texas Records and Bebop and Aron's and Rhino and a place across the street from Hollywood High in a building that's no longer there where I stopped every day on the way home from my first real job. And as I had occasion to travel the country, there were Wax N Facts in Atlanta, Homer's in Omaha, Other Music in New York and Harvard Square, Waterloo in Austin, Reckless Records in San Francisco, Schoolkids in Chapel Hill, Sonic Boom in Seattle (two locations), Millennium Music in Portland, Ore. (ditto), Let It Be in Minneapolis, Third Street Jazz and AKA in Philadelphia, the Record Exchange in Princeton, and others, here or already gone, whose names I can't always recall but whose dimensions remain vivid in my mind.

It's not just record stores, of course, that are losing their independents. Their disappearance comes alongside the death of local television, locally programmed radio and independent bookstores, not to say independent pet stores, barber shops and burger joints.

Notwithstanding an anomaly such as Amoeba, the 800-pound gorilla of indies and a tourist attraction whose fame has spread wide, the independent record store is fundamentally a neighborhood institution, with a neighborhood clientele. They may only stand silently shoulder to shoulder thumbing the racks, but they nevertheless form a kind of club, a community of people who take their music more seriously (sometimes way, way more seriously) than most.

Anyway, it isn't over yet. We may be living in the twilight of the independent record retailer, but there are those who will not go gently into that twilight. There are sellers whose intent is (possibly to their disadvantage) more missionary than mercenary — whose staff have a record they want to play you, not merely sell you — and buyers who like a place that cares, and who need to look beyond the new big thing or even the next big thing.

You can still find me there among them, going through the bins, still trying to work out my future.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

RIP - Ambassador

AArtVark — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 02:34:40 GMT

Friend of mine too a couple of pics this morning and they were pulling down the last of the Ambassador... Not sure if they got it all today... But it won't be there next week.

The Jimson Weed Gazette
http://jimsonweed.blogspot.com/

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

L.G.T. Vegas

frankenspock — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 18:17:18 GMT

Anybody remember this place in the San Fernando Valley? I think it was on Sepulveda. The "L.G.T." stood for "Let's Go To" and the place was both a living tribute to the sort of overpuffed tackiness that only Vegas could provide in the 1960s, and an alternative for people who _wanted_ to go to Vegas but didn't want to make the drive across the desert. So why not go to Vegas _right here in the Valley_?

I can't find any sort of pictures of the place, or even people on the web who seem to remember it. I'm thinking it was not recalled fondly by the people who went there once upon a time. But I remember the place well, the big dumb Vegas style sign in the middle of a jungle of car dealerships. And I believe they built another car dealership on top of it after it was gone.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 5 replies

american distributors??

°º¤ø edi ø¤º° — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 21:26:54 GMT

okay, nobody is going to remember this, but i am trying to get memories out of the brains of anyone who does.

for a brief moment in time, anyone who was anyone in punk rock/art/scrounger/junkie/scammerdom, from paul mccarthy to black randy, on & on, worked, for the hungarian mafia, doing 'phone sales around the block from dar maghreb. the place was called "american distributors," my exhusband (he was 17) was going to be the floor boss but he quit (they were slow w/ the pay), i lasted one week, i was 15, we werent married yet, we were living w/ one set or another of our parents, my mother -wasnt- schizophrenic.

i can tell this story better. it involves the various raps of people pretending to be nazis forgotten by the war, living in trash cans, telephoning people, trying to sell toner, that sort of thing.

this is my favorite of all the tribes, at least in concept, & often in posts, b/c i live in many ways in defunct l.a., & certainly prefer it, as i so vastly prefer the soon to be defunct arons to amoeba, & the original rhino to amoeba, & the old (schizophrenic-guy) punkrocker record store in culver city (first on sepulveda, then on motor, probably nobody remembers that either) to amoeba, & almost any record store to amoeba-- not for their stock, but for their sociopathic mtv marketing. ah well.

i hope somebody remembers american distributors, for after barbara drucker jettisoned paul mccarthy from his teaching job at ucla, he has become hard to find, or i would ask him. ah well, redux.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

Marineland in R.P.V.

Rich — Wed, 04 May 2005 01:03:09 GMT

I used to hate Marineland. My sister worked there at the lollipop cart so I could get in free sometimes. Hanna Barbara didn't help it much at all. I did like the Baja Reef though because at least you could swim around with nurse sharks but it was just the same cheapened over the years by Hanna Barbara. It closed in 1985 and against the publics will, all the sea creatures were taken in the middle of the night by a parade of trucks to Sea World. Half of the sea creatures died which created a short lived scandal. For awhile the sea mammals hospital remained.
Know they are filming "Dick and Jane" in its huge parking lot.
The movie set is a bunch of generic town houses but in front only.
The sea cave is still down where its always been and you can go down to it until 4pm at which time they lock the gates to the huge parking lot.

Any one want to lament???

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 22 replies

LA Flood of 1938

Sharon — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 17:47:24 GMT

Did anyone happen to see that photo in the LA Times Sunday Magazine yesterday, of a flooded downtown LA? Apparently, rains were so hard at one point in the year 1938, that people had to take boats around downtown! It's an amazing picture, of a river of water flowing around those great and beautiful downtown buildings. Truly surreal!

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 4 replies

Oy! Another one bites the dust...

AArtVark — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 23:53:20 GMT

http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=15159
It’s the Swan Song for Hatikvah Music
by Kirk Silsbee
2005-12-23

On a recent afternoon, boxes were scattered around the floor of Hatikvah Music International on Fairfax Avenue. Stacks of CDs, piles of mailing envelopes and piles of boxes to be mailed threatened the barely discernible order of the store. Aside from owner Simon Rutberg and his visitor, the store was empty.

You’d never know that this is the world’s largest outlet for musical Judaica, because it looks like moving day. And come January, it will be moving day for real, when Rutberg is forced to give up the Fairfax Avenue store that has been a landmark for Jewish music lovers for decades.

Fairfax is changing, and to many long-time business owners and visitors, not for the better. Gentrification has been threatening the street for some time. Hatikvah isn’t the only store on the block to feel the heat, but fans are already concerned about the store’s demise.

“For me, that [Fairfax] strip of the Borscht Belt was always defined as much by Hatikvah as Canter’s or Diamond’s Bakery,” broadcaster Rene Engel (KCRW-FM, KUSC-FM, KCSN-FM) told The Journal. “It was the only music store my mother ever shopped at, and that was my link to the music she grew up with. It was also the only place to go for Israeli music. I can’t imagine Fairfax without Hatikvah.”

Neither can KCRW general manager Ruth Seymour, who builds her annual “Philosophers, Fiddlers and Fools” radio show around what Rutberg selects for her.

“I’m from New York,” she said, “the East Bronx, and I can tell you uncategorically that there’s nothing like Hatikvah [even] back there.”

Many viewed the store as a music archive.

“Universities came to me when they wanted rare field recordings,” Rutberg says. “Record companies like Columbia tell me that if I ever close, they’ll discontinue certain records because there will be no place to buy them.”

Rutberg finds a rare CD and holds it up for inspection: “Shba Hoth: Iraqui Jewish Songs from the 1920s.” Then there’s the album of Jewish music from the southern coast of India. “You can’t go anyplace else for this,” he says.

Although Rutberg will vacate the shop next month — with no current plans of how or where he will relocate — the store’s doors stand customarily open on this December afternoon, music wafting onto the sidewalk. Even louder are the persistent clacking noises from across the street: A group of boys practice skateboard maneuvers outside a store selling T-shirts that looks like a Melrose transplant — evidence of a transforming Fairfax.

Despite the racket, the compact, well-groomed Rutberg lowers his voice when asked about why he started Hatikvah back in 1987. He says he wanted to help save Yiddish, and specifically Yiddish music — part of a national trend that now includes institutions such as Yiddishkayt Los Angeles and the National Yiddish Book Center.

The long, narrow store — laid out like a shotgun shack — has a fascinating history. It opened in 1948 as Norty’s, Rutberg says. Some 50 yards from Fairfax High, it went on to sell music — both Jewish and pop — to generations of music-hungry kids, including Phil Spector and members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Jerry Leiber worked there as a teen, before he met Mike Stoller and they went on to write one of the largest and greatest catalogs of rock ‘n’ roll songs. When Herb Alpert played weddings and bar mitzvahs, he put his flyers there.

Steve Barri (nee Lipkin) also worked at Norty’s, and the store was his springboard to a job as an A & R man for Dunhill Records in 1963. Rutberg casually touches the counter as he notes, “Steve and Phil Spector wrote ‘Secret Agent Man’ right here.”

Rutberg discovered the place when his family moved to the area after emigrating from Poland in the 1950s. Norty’s became his neighborhood music store, and Rutberg even worked in the shop in the 1960s. Eventually he moved on to other pursuits — downtown retail clothing, a Westwood record store — before returning in 1987.

These days, some of the store’s biggest sellers are displayed near the cash register: “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish & When You’re in Love & The Whole World Is Jewish (Double Length)” and Mandy Patinkin’s “Mamaloshen.” Also on display are two CDs Rutberg released on his own Hatikvah Music label: “Leo Fuld Sings His Yiddish Hits” and Martha Schlamme’s “Yiddish Songs From My Father’s House.”

What’s this? “Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites”? A twinkle appears in Rutberg’s eye as he explains, “Continues to sell, year after year.”

On the wall behind the counter, a small shrine to Jackie Wilson? “Sure,” he affirms. “A great singer and a good friend of mine. You ever hear his record of ‘My Yiddishe Mama’?”

Just then a young blond woman walks into the store. Rutberg greets her, and they confer. While the proprietor disappears into the back of the building, she says she’s in the process of converting to Judaism.

“[My temple] told me that I should come here to get some music for my seder,” she says.

When Simon returns, he has found exactly what she needs.

Over the years, Rutberg has also served numerous celebrities, including Johnny Mathis, Steve Lawrence and Theodore Bikel. Folksy singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen once wanted some cantorial music. Bette Midler was looking for something by the Barry Sisters, citing Claire Barry as her prime influence.

“I picked up the phone,” recalls Rutberg with a sly grin, “dialed long distance and said, ‘Claire, there’s someone I want you to speak to.’”

Asked what will become of Hatikvah, Rutberg shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says.

In recent years, he has done much of his business online at www.hatikvahmusic.com, so possibly that will continue. But the landmark store loved by so many will be a blank storefront by next month.

Rutberg believes he did his part to save rare Jewish music. “But I couldn’t save myself,” he adds, ruefully.

For more information, call (323) 655-7083.

Simon Rutberg, owner of Hatikvah Music International will be interviewed on KCRW-FM’s “The Politics of Culture” on Monday, Dec. 26, at 7 p.m.

Kirk Silsbee has been writing about music in Los Angeles — mostly jazz- — for the last 30 years.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

Pup and Taco

Kim — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 07:27:16 GMT

I miss Pup and Taco. Three tacos or hot dogs for a buck. Crinkle cut fries as well.

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 6 replies

A Library's Overdue Return

AArtVark — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 05:23:34 GMT

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-santamonica16dec16,0,2330688.story?track=tothtml

A Library's Overdue Return
Forty years after being removed from Santa Monica's old library, a series of 1930s murals is on view again in the new one.
By Martha Groves
Times Staff Writer

December 16, 2005

The nation was mired in the Depression when a Los Angeles artist put brush to plywood in 1935 and created a series of fanciful murals for the Santa Monica Public Library.

Painted in rainbow hues, and strongly influenced by mythology, Asian themes and the Southern California landscape, Stanton Macdonald-Wright's panels depicted two streams of humankind's development — one technological, spotlighting achievements in science and engineering, and the other imaginative, underscoring religion, art and literature.

When the library moved in the mid-1960s and the old building was slated for demolition, the 39 panels appeared destined for the dustbin, until a few Santa Monicans pleaded successfully for their rescue. The murals were hastily pried off walls and shipped to a Smithsonian Institution warehouse in Washington, D.C. There, they languished unseen for four decades.

Now, the murals are back home.

Conservators in Culver City are painstakingly cleaning and repairing the panels and installing them one by one in the city's new and contemporary $57.7-million main public library, scheduled to open in January.

Admirers of Macdonald-Wright, a modernist pioneer who died in Pacific Palisades in 1973, hope that the remounting of his ambitious murals — titled "Technical and Imaginative Pursuits of Early Man" — will help resurrect his reputation while reminding those who see them of a once popular art form.

For many Santa Monicans, the murals' return represents a dream come true. "It places them back in the context from which they came," said Roger Genser, a former city arts commissioner who 20 years ago joined the fight to bring the murals back.

The murals are, indeed, back in the context from which they came, if that means a municipal library. But the milieu has radically changed. The new library, designed by the award-winning Santa Monica architecture firm of Moore Ruble Yudell, is distinctly different from the Spanish-style building that previously housed these New Deal artworks. Whereas Macdonald-Wright designed the murals to fit in spaces narrow and wide, and around windows, doorways and arches, they are now being mounted on expanses of neutrally painted walls that emphasize their odd shapes.

"In the original library, they were sequential around a symmetrical room," said Clay Holden, a project designer with Moore Ruble Yudell. "We weren't going to be able to replicate the entire sequence."

Instead, designers worked to keep individual scenes together but mixed them up around the building. As a result, the opportunity to track Macdonald-Wright's vision of man's sweeping progress from the Stone Age to the modern age is, unfortunately, lost. To compensate, the library plans to label the panels and to offer educational tours and brochures to explain the murals' original scope and Macdonald-Wright's importance.

"He was one of the earliest abstractionists in California and had an international reputation when he did the murals," said Ilene Susan Fort, a mural expert who is serving as a consultant on the project. "He helped establish the importance of mural painting in California. The murals were highly praised at the time and encouraged more federally sponsored projects throughout the state."

The series was the first federally sponsored mural project in Southern California. It arose under the Public Works of Art Project, a forerunner of the Works Progress Administration. Macdonald-Wright proposed the project and labored on it for 18 months, receiving no pay.

The panels contained 160 figures, including 46 portraits, covering about 2,000 square feet of wall. Macdonald-Wright painted a broad array of individuals, including Edgar Allan Poe, Lao Tzu (the great Taoist thinker), Buddha and Michael Faraday, the discoverer of electromagnetic induction. For fun, he included a portrait of his father, his friend Thomas Hart Benton and his chow chow dogs.

As the artist saw it, imagination and technical progress ultimately coalesced to create a new form of expression, the motion picture, and one of the final panels features Santa Monica-born starlet Gloria Stuart (who decades later would portray the elderly Rose in the 1997 film "Titanic") at the center of a busy stage set, with the Santa Monica Bay as a dazzling backdrop. Until recently, the moving-picture panel had been on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, but it is now being conserved for installation at the library.

Strictly speaking, Macdonald-Wright's prime had probably passed by the time he embarked on this project. Born in 1890, he moved with his family at age 10 to California, where his father became manager of the Hotel Arcadia, a fine seashore hotel in Santa Monica. As a young man, he pursued his career in Paris and co-founded an abstractionist movement called Synchromism, known for its bright color palette. By 1929, "he was a well-known cultural celebrity in the Southland," wrote Will South, a Macdonald-Wright expert. Macdonald-Wright took over the Art Students League and became a popular professor at UCLA.

In 2001, LACMA mounted a retrospective of his work called "Color, Myth and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism." In his review, Times art critic Christopher Knight wrote that "it simply isn't possible to understand 20th century art in L.A. without understanding Macdonald-Wright's work and career."

The murals posed an intriguing design problem for the new library's architects.

City Council members and other officials had alerted the designers early on that they wanted the murals to be displayed in the library, assuming the Smithsonian could be persuaded to return them. Still, design had proceeded for some time before the architects knew for certain that the murals would be available.

"I would stop short of saying we designed the entire second floor to fit the murals," said John Ruble, a founding partner in the architecture firm. "We certainly did not do that. But all of us seeing them installed are very happy. They add interest and for the most part enrich those upper-floor spaces."

Installation of the murals, many of them massive, has been a challenge for Duane Chartier and Susanne Friend, owners of ConservArt Associates, the conservators. To get the large pieces to the second floor, Chartier made a series of five ramps. He mounts the panels on rolling carts and then gets help from several assistants to roll them up the ramps. Once on the second floor, they must maneuver carefully around exit signs, seismic wire and lighting fixtures. They use a system of pulleys to raise the pieces to their locations high up on the walls.

In some locations, including the library's second-floor "computer commons," mural viewers will have plenty of room to step back to take in a series of panels dealing with Western and Eastern religious and intellectual thought (although low-hanging lights interfere with the sightlines). But a series of panels dealing with electricity is set in a tight corner where a bookcase is a mere 7 feet away.

It is unclear what Macdonald-Wright, a man with a big ego, would have thought of the new layout. An oral history taken in 1964, however, makes clear that he was proud of the careful measurements he made to make the panels work in the Depression-era library.

"When I got through … and they put them up, I only had a disparity of three-eighths of an inch on the largest wall," he said, "which I considered a marvelous job especially for me, because I am a first-class dope when it comes to anything pertaining to mathematics."

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Crime Bus

Margrrret — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 18:25:32 GMT

I see she's too humble to mention it, but Kim from the 1947 Project is organizing a bus tour of notorious L.A. crime sites for Jan. 15, the anniversary of the discovery of Elizabeth Short's better halves. The main bus is apparently already pre-booked up, so she is thinking of adding a second, on the 14th. (see http://1947project.blogspot.com/2005/12/come-ride-crime-bus.html)

Anyone interested, please barrage her with requests at amscray@gmail.com so she does add the other bus, 'cause I wanna go!

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 3 replies

L.A. retail fixture Aron's calling it quits

AArtVark — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 19:44:58 GMT

L.A. retail fixture Aron's calling it quits

By Todd Martens
Fri Dec 2, 8:01 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - After 40 years, a staple of the independent music community in Los Angeles is closing its doors. Retailer Aron's Records will phase out its current inventory during the next two to three months before relinquishing its lease, citing increased competition from local retailers and a loss of customers to the Web.

Aron's opened June 25, 1965, on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, a few blocks from its current location near the intersection of Highland Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. Owner Jessie Kempler says business took a turn for the worse when independent megastore Amoeba Records opened a few blocks away in 2001.

Soon after, a Best Buy and Target complex plopped down in Hollywood, and Aron's saw its new-release business further erode. Kempler says that even Aron's loyalists started to find a new outlet.

"One particular customer who used to spend between $2,000 and $3,000 per year with us just disappeared," Kempler says. "He wandered in one day, and I said, 'Where the hell have you been?' He said he hadn't bought a single CD in the last three years, and that everything he bought was digital. He's the guy who you think loves music and is here forever."

ONLINE PRESENCE

As more and more consumers turn to the Web for all their music needs, even a thriving independent store such as Amoeba is considering launching some sort of download store. Amoeba co-manager Karen Pearson says planning is still in the works to determine exactly what form the Web shop will take. Yet after years of believing that "the energy of the stores" would be nearly impossible to duplicate in a virtual world, she now acknowledges that retailers must change as delivery systems change.

For his part, Kempler says developing a stronger online presence would not have saved his store. Instead, he says, Aron's should have cut back on stocking new releases, as it became impossible to compete with the pricing of outlets like Best Buy and Target, a common indie retail complaint.

Kempler says the demise of Aron's will be drawn out over a few months, and he is targeting late January/early February as an official closing date.

He has yet to map out future plans. "Let me know if there's anyone out there who needs someone who knows how to sort used CDs faster than the speed of light," he says.

Since the store's closing was announced, Kempler says there has been an outpouring of good will, and a number of artists and labels have come forth to stage benefit shows.

"A benefit would work for a month, but I can't have a benefit every month," he says. "It's a nice idea and it might be a whole lot of fun, but it's not a way to run a business ... Any normal businessman probably would have shut down a couple years ago, but I'm tenacious."

Reuters/Billboard

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

Please vote for 1947project as Best Los Angeles Blog

editrix — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 22:37:02 GMT

Gentle reader,

As you may know, I maintain, with my demented little buddy Nathan, an historical true crime blog called 1947project. Each day we feature a forgotten Los Angeles crime from 1947, and quite often we visit the scene and share how it looks today.

Thanks in large part to the kind readers who nominated us last week, we are officially in the running for a Gridskipper Urb award as one of the Best Los Angeles Blogs. Yea! Only we are up against our pal Rodger at 8763 Wonderland. Boo!

In any case, we'd really appreciate it if you could click over and, if you like what we're doing at 1947project, cast a vote before December 26.

Our catagory, Best Los Angeles Blog, is near the bottom of the page, under Best New York Blog, here:

http://www.gridskipper.com/travel/gridskipper/the-urbs-2005-urban-blogging-awards-voting-begins-141053.php

1947project lives at http://1947project.blogspot.com

thanking you in advance for your vote, I am,
yr pal,
Kim
Editrix

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 1 reply

Please vote for 1947project as Best Los Angeles Blog

editrix — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 22:36:35 GMT

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 0 replies

Look back about 100 years

dianakaufmann — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 23:20:21 GMT

Los Angeles in postcards 1900 to 1920

http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor/socal1.html

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 3 replies

Save the Derby

dianakaufmann — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:13:59 GMT

There are plans to demolish The Derby on Los Feliz Boulevard and build condos. It's not too late to stop it. Cross-posted from another tribe...

http://sanfrancisco.tribe.net/thread/9dd72499-df19-468c-b218-2bd7902cae8b?tribeid=e4060328-e3f5-4aa2-bd9c-f636cffb7fef&newpostingid=e0dabbd3-5e6c-48b5-ab11-af6be536c954&r=10535#e0dabbd3-5e6c-48b5-ab11-af6be536c954

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 2 replies

Perino's Tribe

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 02:12:11 GMT

My partner and myself started a Perino's tribe with many of our home pictures because we were outraged how they tore it all down after promising the community that they would save the frist 50 feet of so.
SEE the tribe "PERINO'S"

posted in Defunct Los Angeles - 4 replies

Ambassador Hotel

AArtVark — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 00:01:46 GMT

Took a drive by there last week planning the route for a little hearse procession and the whole place is fenced off to the street. I thin one could still drive up the driveway a year or two ago... Get your last pictures and say your goodbyes 'cause she's probably gonna be coming down soon.

There was also a news item - I'll see if I can track it down - about some stuff being auctioned off... Adding machines, office stuff, etc.