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  #56281  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2021, 4:46 PM
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This isn't as exciting as Live Nude Girls but it's a mystery location nonetheless.


eBay

The restaurant next door on the right is. . .um . . .Gaiety(?)


.

Last edited by ethereal_reality; Jan 18, 2021 at 4:57 PM.
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  #56282  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2021, 5:07 PM
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mystery Thrifty (original slide)


eBay

I wonder why the elderly man is posing and waving at this particular corner.

.

Last edited by ethereal_reality; Jan 18, 2021 at 5:19 PM.
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  #56283  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2021, 6:05 PM
Martin Pal Martin Pal is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality View Post
.

this isn't as exciting as live nude girls but it's a mystery location nonetheless.


ebay

the restaurant next door on the right is. . .um . . .gaiety(?)


.
_________________________________________________________________
E_R, Dot Records was next door to Wallich's Music City (left)...and, the Gaiety, which I've not heard of before, was previously the Vine Street Coffee Dan's location.
(Interesting that of the myriad of photos on NLA of Sunset & Vine that we've never come across the Gaiety before.)

Martino's Time Machine


By 1966 at least, the Gaiety was gone, NBC as well, as seen in this previously posted photo on NLA:


_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

I got the following from a website that had posted some oral histories of musicians and the like about Hollywood in the 1960's. This one from Don Randi, a songwriter and member of the group The Wrecking Crew, talks about a lot of the eateries frequented back then. No details, but Gaiety is mentioned and a lot of others name dropped. HOW MANY HAVE WE NOT HEARD OF?

https://cavehollywood.com/two-part-documentary-series-on EPIX/May2002

“We loved Musso & Frank’s Grill on Hollywood Boulevard and Johnny’s Steak House. That was my savior. I didn’t have a fuckin dime and I could go and have a three dollar meal in there with a Bone-In Ribeye, you know. We went to Aldo’s, great hamburgers. Sonny and Cher dug that place. Canter’s Delicatessen, once in a while, a coffee shop called Huff’s [Does he mean Hoff's?], Taco Rama, and Pink’s Hot Dogs on La Brea Ave. Another stop was The Dog House on Hollywood Blvd. where you sat on stools on the street and can’t forget The Brown Derby.

“Chris Darrow reminded me of The Burrito King on Sunset Boulevard at Alvarado. The Flying Saucer had the best French Dip sandwiches in town near Wilshire. There was Young China, two doors down from radio station KFWB for fantastic Chinese on Hollywood Blvd. with the best Won Ton soup. The Italian restaurant Miceli’s was on Las Palmas.

“Dennis Wilson loved Ah Fong’s restaurant, delicious Chinese-American food. Gene Norman owned the Marquis restaurant on Sunset Strip, along with his Crescendo and Interlude clubs. I liked the Villa Capri. Mickey Cohen was there on a regular basis. I saw him at Sherry’s as well. There was Hal’s Nest, and The Speak, where all drinks were 39 cents. Phil Spector and I went to The Cock’n Bull. The trout was incredible.

“The record company promo men all went to an Italian spot named Martoni’s. Label owners like Verve Records’ Norman Granz enjoyed the Pacific Dining Car. Barney Kessel and his wife B.J. Baker requested their New York steaks cooked medium at Diamond Jim’s in Hollywood.

“Neil Young, Jack Nitzsche and I would go out to places like the Gaiety Delicatessen. Once in a while Harry Nilsson would come to our table. He was still working at the Crocker Citizen bank as a teller or had a job there. At the time he might have made a record. We all went to the Hollywood Ranch Market. Are you kidding? The tater tots and the chicken gizzards! Even in the late fifties they had a donut machine there! (laughs). I saw Lucille Ball one late night in a full fur mink coat. She gave me the biggest smile. Jack, Neil, Denny Bruce and I also liked to eat at the House of Pancakes on La Cienega. They just closed Hamburger Hamlet! What the fuck is going on? [Text Quotes Copyright 2020 Harvey Kubernik]

Last edited by Martin Pal; Jan 18, 2021 at 7:26 PM.
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  #56284  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2021, 7:11 PM
Snix Snix is offline
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Another one of those "Twin Castle" burger joints is still standing at 4874 Santa Monica Blvd. and is currently an outpost of Raffallo's Pizza. This one was built in 1966.

GSV

Quote:
Originally Posted by riichkay View Post

Getty/Ed Ruscha


7505 Melrose Ave., 1974....this is the building that for decades housed the Johnny Rockets retro-diner....in '74 it was a burger joint called Twin Castle.







In the "elbow" of this little center was a topless/bottomless bar that I knew as the Kit Kat Club....



In about 1977 I was working at 3rd and La Cienega, occasionally a buddy at the office and myself would drive over to this place for lunch....not much larger than a walk-in closet, a dark, dank, divey room, reeking of last night's cigarettes and desperation....to my eyes, the dancers (not really dancing as we know it, just a sort of disinterested shuffle) all appeared to be hard-core junkies....a reprehensible establishment, with no redeeming social value whatsoever....in other words, the place was perfect.   



By the mid-70's Eddie Nash, he of the Wonderland Ave./John Holmes carnage, controlled over 35 liquor licenses in Hollywood and environs, among these was a place called the Kit Kat Club...but that club was at 6550 Santa Monica Blvd., a couple of blocks west of Cahuenga (the building is gone now, the property is part of a Honda dealership)....









A 1970 permit for 6550 Santa Monica Blvd. listing the owner as Eddie Nash, using his birth name....  





A 1975 signage permit for the place on Melrose....




So there were two Kit Kat Clubs in business by '75....I think the likelihood is that Nash also owned the Melrose location.   


The laundromat and bar units are now combined into one restaurant space, and the parking has been removed....Johnny Rockets vacated in late 2015... 

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  #56285  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2021, 7:20 PM
Snix Snix is offline
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Underneath the "Dot Records" facade would have been this glorious bit of Late Moderne.

Martin Turnbull
https://martinturnbull.com/2014/12/1...ca-late-1940s/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Pal View Post
E_R, Dot Records was next door to Wallich's Music City (left)...and, the Gaiety, which I've not heard of before, was previously the Vine Street Coffee Dan's location.
(Interesting that of the myriad of photos on NLA of Sunset & Vine that we've never come across the Gaiety before.)

Martino's Time Machine


By 1966 at least, the Gaiety was gone, NBC as well, as seen in this previously posted photo on NLA:

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  #56286  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2021, 9:36 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality View Post

mystery Thrifty (original slide)


eBay

I wonder why the elderly man is posing and waving at this particular corner.
This is the corner of N Western Avenue looking east on Santa Monica Boulevard. The branch of Sheri's Restaurant on the left was at 5465 Santa Monica Boulevard, and behind that are the Flomar Apartments at 5425 Santa Monica Boulevard. The latter is still standing.
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  #56287  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2021, 9:58 PM
Martin Pal Martin Pal is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Pal View Post
HOW MANY HAVE WE NOT HEARD OF?
[...]
“The record company promo men all went to an Italian spot named Martoni’s.
_________________________________________________________________
After reading about Martoni's online a bit today, I wonder why I haven't heard of this place before.

Maybe because the building is quite non-descript. The address was 1523 Cahuenga Blvd. (A couple websites say 1538, but the matchbook covers I looked up say 1523.) It opened in 1960 and closed due to the 1994 earthquake, it is said. So it was around 34 years, quite a long run as restaurants go. This is the only photo I've found of it.


LARadio

Here's what the restaurant sign would've looked like:...and a postcard of the interior:

On "Yahoo! Answers" someone asked the question, "Does anyone remember Martoni's in Hollywood?" The replies are provocative. Here are two of them:

Vince DeMattia writes: I was a new reporter for Daily Variety. I started in early fall of 1965. Not too long after being there, Joe Price who was the Music/Recording reporter for Daily Variety, told me he wanted to take me somewhere for a special experience. He picked me at my apartment and we went back to Daily Variety to park the car and walked across the street to Martoni's... a place I had not yet visited even though it was that close to the Variety office. We walked in and made an immediate right turn to go up stairs to the "Up-A-Stairs Lounge (that's actually what the sign above the entrance to the stairway read. When we got up stairs, there was about 12-15 people. Among them Joe Smith from Warner records, Frank Sinatra and Bill Cosby. As you might imagine, I was stunned. It turns out that Bill Cosby recorded for Frank Sinatra's then new record company, Reprise and Frank was there to present Bill Cosby with Three Gold Albums. That was my first introduction to Martoni's and the level of famous persons one might run into there. One time I went in and sat at the bar and gabbed with Mama Cass Elliot and another time sat at one of the "2-tops " at the end of the wall you walked around to get to the back section. Sammy Davis, Jr and a lady sat next to me in the other 2-top. Yeah... it was quite a place!

Gene Grossman writes: I was the first entertainer hired to work there, and played piano right next to the kitchen door. As for the restaurant's ownership, you be the judge: in the kitchen there was a State document posted stating that the liquor license was in the name of the "Ring-a-Ding-Ding" corporation, and in the office hung a life-sized portrait of Frank Sinatra.

Sam Giancana was seen there.

On a Vintage Los Angeles Facebook page, Barbra Kaye writes: Was sitting at the bar the night Sonny and Cher were asked to leave because their dress was so outlandish... I believe they wrote a hit song about the incident! In another search I found someone wrote: Supposedly Sonny Bono wrote "Laugh at Me" after being kicked out of Martoni’s for his wild attire.

And Ryan writes: Went there a few times (early 90's). Met CHEAP TRICK (they bought me drinks...lol)! And Kevin DuBrow of Quiet Riot there. Ended up at his house with a couple other friends. Crazy.

With all this notoriety and celebrity status, and in Hollywood frequently enough, how is this place something unfamiliar to me?

On this site: L.A. Radio People, Don Elliott wrote a section (scroll about halfway down the page, the picture of the restaurant in my post is in the section) titled "Martoni's Was the Place to Be in the 60s and 70s" and he has a sort of Top Ten list: Recalling back-in-the-dj-day Hollywood. Best shows in town. (ALL AT MARTONI’S).

A few of them are:

--Frank Sinatra “Up-a Stairs"
--Lenny’s “back room show"
--Anything Sal said behind the bar
--Pretending to talk trash into hidden FBI microphones in the lamps.

Now that last part about the hidden microphones is interesting because there's a website -- Advanced Electronic Security Company, where they have a section titled: Technical Surveillance Counter Measures, Bug Sweeping, Detection of Telephone Taps, Wiretaps, Covert Hidden Video Cameras Detection, Detecting Hidden Room Bugs, Electronic Harassment Information & Detection and a link to "Advanced Electronic Security Historical Photos" where Martoni's is featured: "Every private eye has a restaurant that is their hangout at night. For me it was Martoni, which was on Cahuenga in the heart of Hollywood, CA."
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  #56288  
Old Posted Jan 19, 2021, 7:41 AM
BDiH BDiH is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Pal View Post
E_R, Dot Records was next door to Wallich's Music City (left)...and, the Gaiety, which I've not heard of before, was previously the Vine Street Coffee Dan's location.
(Interesting that of the myriad of photos on NLA of Sunset & Vine that we've never come across the Gaiety before.)

Martino's Time Machine
I took this photo of Wallich's in 1965. I made the mistake of posting it online years ago, losing control of ownership. However, I still have the negative (and many more) but I have no intention of making the same mistake again.
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  #56289  
Old Posted Jan 19, 2021, 5:21 PM
HenryHuntington HenryHuntington is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire View Post
Any railroad foamers know if the Kirker-Bender fire escape was ever installed in the Huntington/PERy building at 6th & Main?



LAT Feb 21, 1904





An installation at the University of Montevallo in Alabama (I grew up in the South and have never heard of it or anyone ever going there).
______________________

Alas, no. As-built plans for the P.E. Building from the Arcives at the Southern California Railway Museum don't show this arrangement. Although, as one of my archivist colleagues pointed out, it would've made fire drills a lot more fun!

Last edited by HenryHuntington; Jan 19, 2021 at 5:23 PM. Reason: Fix typo
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  #56290  
Old Posted Jan 19, 2021, 11:44 PM
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. . .
. . .once more.


EBAY


Quote:
Originally Posted by HossC View Post
This is the corner of N Western Avenue looking east on Santa Monica Boulevard. The branch of Sheri's Restaurant on the left was at 5465 Santa Monica Boulevard, and behind that are the Flomar Apartments at 5425 Santa Monica Boulevard. The latter is still standing.
Thanks for figuring out the mystery street corner, Hoss. . . .I appreciate.

The same view, today.








And here's the Flomar /visible in the vintage ebay snapshot as well as the current street view.


LOOPNET

Built in 1925....30 apartment units and 4 commercial spaces.



.
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  #56291  
Old Posted Jan 20, 2021, 12:01 AM
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Here are two, count'em two, mystery locations for Monday night. ....(both currently on eBay)


#1


eBay

Seward Film Vaults. . .Hollywood








#2


eBay

National Screen Service. . .Hollywood



.
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  #56292  
Old Posted Jan 20, 2021, 12:36 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality View Post
.
Here are two, count'em two, mystery locations for Monday night. ....(both currently on eBay)


#1


eBay

Seward Film Vaults. . .Hollywood

[...]

.
e_r, 'tis 1010 Seward St. (Seward is in Hollywood, parallel to and halfway between Vine and Highland).


gsv
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  #56293  
Old Posted Jan 20, 2021, 12:47 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality View Post
.

[...]


eBay

National Screen Service. . .Hollywood



.
. . . and 7026 Santa Monica Blvd.


gsv

Edit Add:

The building housed the Electrical Research Products Co. (later ERPI, which is to say Electrical Research Products Incorporated) in 1933, "motion picture sound recording and reproducing equipment" (quoth that year's Manufacturing Directory of Los Angeles County and District).

Last edited by odinthor; Jan 21, 2021 at 12:21 AM.
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  #56294  
Old Posted Jan 20, 2021, 8:28 PM
CityBoyDoug CityBoyDoug is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality View Post
. . .
. . .once more.


The same view, today.











.
Cool photo of LA. Thanks for posting ER. Its chock full of the mood and flavor of LA.
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  #56295  
Old Posted Jan 20, 2021, 10:57 PM
Martin Pal Martin Pal is offline
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I happened to see this photo taken in the 1980's showing the streamlined detail over the entrance of the Wilshire May Company that I thought might be of interest:

laconservancy


Plus an interior shot:

laconservancy

About a week ago, AMPAS posted this photo of their museum with the recently installed "Academy Museum" letters put up.

AMPAS

The scheduled date of AMPAS's museum opening has been pushed back a couple times because of the pandemic situation. It was recently rescheduled again for September 30th of this year.
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  #56296  
Old Posted Jan 21, 2021, 5:35 PM
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mystery location. (this one is going to be a difficult to solve). .*reaches for whip*. .


A young man, "Buss", poses for a photograph in 1929 Los Angeles.



eBay



The reverse.










Let's take a closer look.



And as you can see there are signs along the embankment on the opposite side of the street. (as well as a 'No Parking' to the right of his left shoulder)

Is this an entrance to a bridge or, perhaps a ramp of some sort?




Go at it sleuths!
.
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  #56297  
Old Posted Jan 21, 2021, 6:41 PM
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mystery ice?


This transparency was on eBay a few days ago. (it must have sold because I can't find it again)








..Are those icicles? (I know they're not but they sure look like icicles)

This is a rare view of the wooden scaffolding installed during the dismantling of the building next door to protect the car from falling debris.
(sorry about the long awkward sentence)

.

Last edited by ethereal_reality; Jan 21, 2021 at 8:03 PM.
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  #56298  
Old Posted Jan 21, 2021, 8:24 PM
Martin Pal Martin Pal is offline
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For those interested:

L.A. County Library Virtual Program | Thursday, January 28, 5 pm
Take a Tour Through Late Victorian Era Los Angeles
Join us on this photographic tour of LA, as seen through images from the collection of the
Homestead Museum, led by its director, Paul Spitzzeri. For adults. Free. Register here.
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  #56299  
Old Posted Jan 21, 2021, 9:08 PM
Lwize Lwize is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Pal View Post
For those interested:

L.A. County Library Virtual Program | Thursday, January 28, 5 pm
Take a Tour Through Late Victorian Era Los Angeles
Join us on this photographic tour of LA, as seen through images from the collection of the
Homestead Museum, led by its director, Paul Spitzzeri. For adults. Free. Register here.
The library wants to use either Adobe Flash and Windows Media Player, both of which are defunct.
Has anyone tried an LA County Library Webex event with a player from the 21st Century?
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  #56300  
Old Posted Jan 22, 2021, 2:45 AM
RudyJK RudyJK is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality View Post
.

mystery location. (this one is going to be a difficult to solve). .*reaches for whip*. .


A young man, "Buss", poses for a photograph in 1929 Los Angeles.



eBay



The reverse.










Let's take a closer look.



And as you can see there are signs along the embankment on the opposite side of the street. (as well as a 'No Parking' to the right of his left shoulder)

Is this an entrance to a bridge or, perhaps a ramp of some sort?




Go at it sleuths!
.
A MOST handsome young man! But what a lot of trash at his feet.

I guess we think that things were clean and nice so many years ago. But the scourge of man made pollution rears up in these old photos to prove us wrong.
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