Jeez, I leave you guys alone for two minutes...some of the best posts ever show up on this thread. I have many a comment about them but from the gate I feel like I should add something more substantial. That would be...matchbooks.
Always felt there was something inherently noirish about old matchbook covers. They're used, dirty throwaways but still darkly attractive and with lots of backstory. Even their original purpose was for something noirish (if you've got a matchbook from some cocktail lounge, I doubt you're using its contents to light campsite fires with the Boy Scouts). So without further ado:
2401 S Hoover is now a parking lot. 2111 W Pico is a strip of low commercial built in '94. Whenever I see crap built in the mid-90s I always wonder if the original building fell victim to the structure fires of April-May '92.
Now the site of a giant Baja Sharkeez. Don't ask.
2851 Crenshaw. Now the site of a 1985 mini-mall. World's ugliest Nix Check Cashing, and that's an accomplishment.
Club 14 at 1414 -- clever! I wonder if their signage was as grand as that. I'm guessing sure, it was. This 1938 structure still stands, its use somewhat...changed. Its signage sure has gone downhill:
222 at 222 -- sensing a theme. This was in the Hotel Lankershim at Bway and 7th.
http://historylosangeles.blogspot.co...-building.html http://www.you-are-here.com/broadway..._district.html
Now the site of the 41-story, 1985 SOM Ernst & Young Plaza.
Not sure if they mean the 1700 Whittier in Montebello or La Habra; they're both pretty close to Whittier. Either way, one's a gas station, the other a Rite Aid.
http://www.godickson.com/gca1.htm http://laist.com/2008/06/14/laistory_grand.php
Another survivor --
http://wildammo.com/wp-content/uploa..._o-675x362.jpg
Dig the original café neon.
And that theater is
http://cinematreasures.org/theater/2297/
3100 W Pico, a 1994 Shell station. 699 Vermont, now the site of Claud Beelman's 59-61 Pacific Indemnity
http://www.you-are-here.com/modern/indemnity.html
Part of this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jassy-50/2514835652/ complex. Built in 1939; sold to developers in 1959.
This is kind of a trompe l'oeil theme environment like the Paris Inn. Now the home of Club El Gaucho in the ol' Hotel Bristol.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/92136363@N00/3547937322/ though now it's been all fancified
http://www.flickr.com/photos/melaniecoffee/4659025160/
Now the site of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westlak..._Metro_station)
Now a big ol' mall.
And last but not least:
Which of course we all recognize as
jpg1.lapl.org/pics34/00036904.jpg
cinematreasures.org/theater/1988/