Sunday morning. Breakfast required. Not an easy task, it seems. We tried Pann’s in Inglewood, which had an hour-plus wait. We tried Johnie’s at Wilshire and Fairfax (across from the old May Co. where Jan Brady bought the silver platter), but it was closed for good. We finally landed at a thoroughly generic IHOP in Hollywood.
Now fed, we tooled through Hollywood again, stopping by Amoeba so Mark could return something and I could take more pictures.
Afterward, we took a quick drive through the Hollywood Hills, visited the last Mayfair Market in existance on the planet, and headed for the sight (site?) I’d been craving all weekend. It was an unassuming little house on an unassuming little street in North Hollywood. It told the story of a lovely lady…
Yeah, you know the house…
We covered a lot of ground on this particular Sunday, most of it by freeway. Mark was itching to see “the stack”, and once we arrived, I knew why. It was quite amazing. It’s kind of nice to spend time in a city which is proud of its freeways rather than ashamed of them…
We also popped by LAX to see the Exposition Building, and to a Fry’s because, well, that’s what we do on the weekends, even in LA.
Being a freak for old shopping centers, I wanted to see the remains of the Braodway-Crenshaw center, an early example of an extremely well-designed center dating from about 1950. The two anchors were still standing, with the Broadway store having been turned into a Wal-Mart and the May Co. now a Robinsons-May. I was amazed to see it was still rather thriving, albeit in the midst of a suburb which was not exactly as middle-class as it had been fifty years ago.
Actually, the whole of Crenshaw Boulevard is an interesting cruise for those of us interested in old commercial architecture.
For the evening, we headed to Orange County, planning to eat in a restuarant at Knott’s Berry Farm which Mark remembered from his youth. Alas, it was not quite the same restaurant anymore, so we looked in vain for any interesting Googie architecture left in Anaheim, bought matching Snoopy mugs with our names on them, and went on our way.
We took a long surface route back home, stopping for dinner at a small Mexican place in La Habra, and looking for more neon. About half way home, I realized we were very close to the oldest operating McDonald’s in America, so we had to stop by there too. Afterward, it was back to the Motel 6 for our last night in the king-size bed.
