Keeping up with Broadway

You'll find plenty of write-ups cheering the "natural progression" of Starbucks opening on Spring Street and 6th in Downtown Los Angeles. I get that Starbucks has its fans, but it just seems weird to drop a few dollars on Starbucks coffee on Spring Street when there are about five other coffee options within a block.

I've said so before, but I'm fascinated by the long-time businesses that try to stay relevant while Downtown residential and retail demographics change. That includes Stereoline, the guitar shop where I picked up a bass for EzraPounded a couple years ago. They were bumped out by Starbucks and landed a block away in a cramped space on Broadway. Not only did they lose their prime corner location, they ended their run a couple months ago when the driver of a van crashed into one of the Stereoline storefront windows.

What's a business to do when the customer base is moving to other neighborhoods? Some move to keep up with the clientele, while others drift from location to location and try out gimmicks and goofy signs.

On the 500 block of Broadway, Sassy Perfume is putting up new wall signs tonight. Check out that hot pink.

Detiling

I'm fallen way behind, so here's a little catch-up. I hope you had a chance to say goodbye to the old checkered tile inside the Arcade Building. Out with the old, in with the new. The new tile is already filthy, so you can hardly tell the difference.

At one point Royal Clayton's Pub was supposed to take over a space now leased by an electronics business, but as far as I can tell the electronics businesses are still there, still handing out BARGAINS!

7/21/12

7/21/12

7/27/12

Grand misspelling?

Like most of Los Angeles, we're desperate for more parkland in Downtown. July 28 is the date Grand Park will officially open and connect the Music Center to City Hall, but as a first class urban snoop, I firmly intend to sneak in at least a few weeks in advance.

A few welcome signs with multilingual text have already been installed. Call me cynical, but I have a suspicion that before long someone will spot an off-kilter translation in there.

"I'm a jelly donut."

Spring Trek

Star Trek sequel filmed all over Downtown Los Angeles this weekend, including Spring Street. We were just walking to a cafe for breakfast when we saw one of the actors sporting the familiar insignia.

Marathon sweep

From the Department of Somebody Gots to Do It, these guys are the behind the scenes heroes of the Los Angeles Marathon. I hope they remember to hydrate.

Flatiron Los Angeles

Sure, Manhattan has the Flatiron Building everyone's familiar with, and other cities claim their own flatiron-shaped buildings, like the one built in 1897 in Atlanta and Columbus Tower in San Francisco.

Keeping a lower profile are a couple flatiron buildings in Los Angeles...

This one is the Raphael Junction Block Building on Spring Street in Chinatown..

And here's a flatty on the corner of Main and 3rd...

CicLAvia

Stonewall Jackson

I thought the shouting had to do with the USA vs. Ghana World Cup game this afternoon, but it was actually Michael Jackson fans yelling, "Justice for Michael!" as they marched the streets of Downtown Los Angeles.

Street Artists Collide in Alley

Very exciting things are bubbling in Downtown. Lots of street artists from all over the world are decorating our neighborhood. Banksy for one. Vhils, an artist from Portugal, tops everyone. He created a mural of an old man by peeling away old paint from a parking lot-facing building on the 600 block of Spring Street. Opposite his mural is Jr's (from France) giant-size pix of a (possibly) Asian woman tugging at her eye.

Down but not out

I like the evolving window art at the Down and Out bar in Downtown Los Angeles. The current piece is by Nick Knudson, who started off with this...

...and here's how it looks now...check out Rickey the Pirate...

Shine those signs

My talents are far from extraordinary, but I can spot a new wall sign from a mile away...

This is a test

I'm old enough to remember the Cold War. Although I'm too young to have lived through drop-and-cover nuclear attack drills at school...we only practiced for earthquakes...I do remember the occasional test blare of civil defense sirens.

Those things could wail. If anyone reading this is familiar with San Jose, I went to Sylvandale Jr. High, and the nearest siren tower was near the corner of Capitol and Senter...about a half-mile away. No ducking or covering followed...only teachers pointing out the obvious. "There they go again!"

I'm certain most cities have yanked out their sirens, but they're still hanging on in Los Angeles. In fact, one still lingers in front of City Hall. Why haven't they been removed? Indifference? Cheaper to just keep them rusting? Saving them for the next menace?

Taco Truck Invasion

Forget the art on Art Walk night, fusion taco trucks abound.

Trees may be extinct like the elephants

I only remember two homes from my childhood in San Jose...faint memories of living in the Evergreen neighborhood, and then years and years of memories in the "Ramblewood" part of town. My parents moved the family into the sparkling new Morrison Homes tract in 1975, and there they stayed until they retired several years back. (The building permit shows a $28,000 valuation, which is about $113,000 in adjusted 2010 dollars and about a quarter of today's house value...I'm sure the nearby San Jose Dump didn't inflate the price at all.)

When I was about six years old my dad came home with a couple redwood tree saplings, and he planted them in the back yard. By the time I was in high school those trees were well over 60 feet high, and I often wonder how they're doing these days.

So now I'm in Downtown Los Angeles, and in a dense, urban setting, every tree counts. I appreciate it when the City of Los Angeles plants more trees in public areas (like in the sidewalk tree well in front of the Los Angeles Theatre Center...photo below), and I appreciate folks who plant trees on private property. It pains me to see mature trees cut like the tree hacked up on Monday.

Bank left

I was surprised to see carved wood and granite details today as I walked past SB Lofts. Not sure if it's only temporary, but E-ROAD, an electric bike company, is leasing the corner suite, and the room was lit up.

The SB Lofts building at 6th and Spring in Downtown Los Angeles has a long history. It was built in 1913 in the old "Wall Street of the West" area along South Spring Street, which thrived for years until the banks upped and left for sleek new highrises in the '60s and '70s.

The bank that occupied the building changed hands through the years, ending with Lloyd's Bank in the '70s. Lloyd's began moving its corporate headquarters to the General Petroleum Building at 612 S Flower (converted to the Pegasus Apartments in 2003) in 1977 and eventually was swallowed up by United California Bank (itself acquired later by Bank of the West).

Developer Barry Shy bought the property and converted it into loft apartments a few years back. While his conversion of the old Bank of America building down the road on Spring Street to SB Spring kept that bank lobby and vault intact, not much of the historic interior of his SB Lofts project survived. I really don't know how much was changed in the hands of Shy...for all I know previous owners are partly responsible for cutting it up...but I'll give my thanks for at least keeping this tiny slice (100 square feet?) of the past preserved.

Don't look down

I have a love-hate relationship with heights. I love climbing up rooftops and scrambling up hillsides for the spectacular views, but I do get wobbly up there. When I was a kid I even got "stuck" a couple times...on a craggy rock off the coast of Bodega Bay, on a locomotive mothballed at a city park somewhere. No problem going up...it's the going down that's painful.

A few days ago EzraPounded and I took a look at Spring Street's 25-story SB Tower loft building, which will be ready for move-ins in March. This is the former United California Bank (long ago relocated off Spring Street and folded into Bank of the West) in Downtown Los Angeles, constructed in 1961 after the city blew up the 13-story height restriction. It's not close to being the tallest tower in town, but it soars above the surrounding buildings, so I had to check the view.

We stepped onto one of the little balconies on the 19th floor, and we couldn't believe what happened. The door was missing a handle on the outside, so we were stuck! Luckily I had a floor plan flyer with the leasing agent's phone number, but it took a couple calls to get her attention. Dude, I didn't like that.

Haywired

I've been driving around for at least a week with a burned out tail light, so I shouldn't be one to talk...but...I always wonder why some businesses will go weeks or months before fixing their sign lighting problems.

I do like the Hayward's new turn as the 'Hot Ayward.' Funny.

Oh, and the Cecil Hotel went from 'Ho Cecil' to the less snappy 'Ho Cec.'

Sylvanjail bears

I attended San Jose's Sylvandale Junior High in the '80s, when the school district installed a ten-foot high chain link fence topped with barbed wire around the perimeter. Sylvanjail was born.

Even then I didn't like feeling like a prisoner, and I'm still not a fan of gates, walls, window bars, private streets, vacated alleys, and security check points.

I prefer hearing about walls being dismantled, fences reduced in height, bridges constructed, bus stops added, rail lines planned, and hiking and biking trails extended and connected.

The photo shows the Hayward Hotel at Spring and 6th in Downtown Los Angeles. A gate on the Spring Street side has been removed...that's what I'm talking about.

Sunday papers don't got no eyes

This sad LA Weekly newsrack had been yanked...most likely for being an oddball color...and was sitting on a scrap heap behind the Historic Downtown Los Angeles BID HQ on Spring Street. A Newsrack Ordinance has been on the Los Angeles books for several years, and one of the regs stipulates a single color...Ivy Green...for all racks.

When I moved back to Los Angeles after five years in Santa Ana, I suspended my Los Angeles Times subscription, and I intended to try exclusively reading the online version. I gave it a month, but I had to resume delivery to my new place.

Say all you want about the death of print media, but there's really no substitute for flipping the freshly printed news sheets, folding the paper under your arms, or getting lost in column inches continued from the front page. And I was having a hard time lining the birdcage with LA Weekly tabloid-style pages.

My only complaint is that the delivery person drops off the morning stack at the front security desk in my Downtown building. When I lived in a multi-story college dormitory in the '90s, the delivery folks had no trouble walking upstairs. What happened?

Which way LA?

Someone needs to reverse-install this pair of pedestrian wayfinding signs at 8th and Spring Street in Downtown Los Angeles. The sign that should be facing east is facing west, and vice versa. I feel bad for the innocents looking for Broadway theaters or flower bargains who end up walking the opposite way from their destinations. Good luck to them. How long have the signs been incorrectly up like this?

When I was in kindergarten I went to school once with the left shoe on the right foot, right shoe on the left foot. Damn. As you see, I've never forgotten, but at least it never happened again.