Photo Essay: A Promise Kept—Woolworth's Is Serving Lunch Again (And More) in Bakersfield, California

Back in 2019, when I first dined at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Bakersfield...

 

...the adjacent Five & Dime Antique Mall was still open and chock full of vintage wares, from furniture to clothing. 

Photo Essay: An Anti-Frieze Art Gallery Takeover of the 99 Cent Store

The chain of 99 Cents Only Stores went belly-up in 2024, filing bankruptcy and closing and selling off all of its stores. 

But the famed location in the Miracle Mile community of Los Angeles has been reactivated—as a pop-up gallery lasting just one week. 

Photo Essay: The Peabody, A Grand Hotel of Marching Ducks and Memphis Royalty

When we were planning our Memphis trip months ahead of when we'd actually travel for my birthday, our hotel options always boiled down to one clear choice: The Peabody. 

 

I'd heard of it from a friend who'd stayed there several years ago for a work conference, and who'd been delighted by the daily duck parade. That was enough to seal the deal for me. 

 

But then I also realized that it also fit the theme of my destination birthday celebration—that is, Elvis, whose manager Colonel Parker closed a record deal for the rising star with RCA Victor right there in the lobby in 1955. (The budding performer had previously visited the Peabody to attend his senior prom there.)

Photo Essay: The Memphis of Elvis, Beyond Graceland

The easy explanation for my recent Memphis trip was that I was celebrating my 50th birthday at Graceland. 

But the truth is, I went to Memphis for Elvis. All of Elvis. 

After all, most casual Elvis fans seem to segregate his career into two eras—young Elvis (à la Jailhouse Rock) and Vegas Elvis—and typically prefer the "earlier" one versus the "late" one. But my favorite Elvis era is a middle era: the '68 Comeback Special, when he was coming out of his Paramount movie career and getting back into performing live, right before he started his Las Vegas residency in 1969. 

And I have much affection for the cape-wearing, lei-laden, karate-chopping Elvis of Aloha from Hawaii, That's the Way It Is, and his final album (a live-and-studio combo) Moody Blue. 

I'd already chased all those Elvises around two states—like at the Honeymoon Hideaway and other sites around Palm Springs, and at the former International Hotel on the Vegas Strip. But now, it was time for me to finally experience what remains of The King in his longtime hometown of Memphis, Tennessee.

And that's more than just Graceland (pictured above, of which at least one photo essay is forthcoming.)

Photo Essay: Silver City, A Ghost Town Made of Pieces of Other Ghost Towns

When I first moved to California, some places just seemed so far away. It was impossible for me to wrap my head around making a day trip to Joshua Tree or Palm Springs—a three-hour drive each way. But over the past 14 years, my home state has continued to feel smaller and smaller, easier and easier to tackle. 

In April 2014, I made a detour from the Eastern Sierra to try to see Silver City Ghost Town in Bodfish, California, located in the Kern River Valley of the Southern Sierra. I'd gotten there too late in the day to catch it before it closed or to even photograph it in daylight. And it just seemed so out-of-the-way that it took me 11 years to try again. 

 

This time, I planned my trip a little better and got an earlier start, as I headed home from the early-morning Burro Run I'd attended in Indian Wells Canyon. 

Photo Essay: Before the Guggenheim, There Was Frank Lloyd Wright's Anderton Court Shops in Beverly Hills

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright notoriously didn't see eye to eye with some of his clients, especially his female clients—perhaps most famously Aline Barnsdall, whose Hollyhock House is now a globally-renowned FLW design (and a UNESCO World Heritage Site).

 

Lesser known is the spat he had with Nina Anderton, a Bel Air socialite and philanthropist who commissioned him to build a shopping complex on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills—which was to be the architect's only commercial structure in Southern California, and his last design in all of LA.

Photo Essay: A Driving Discovery of Modernism in Downtown Palm Springs' Commercial District

This is the first year that I won't be at Modernism Week in Palm Springs since I first went in 2017. I even went in 2021 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But I had a friend visiting the low desert the week before Modernism Week this year—and since I couldn't afford two trips in February, I chose my friend.  

But fortunately he was very interested in the Midcentury Modern architecture of Palm Springs—so we enthusiastically signed up for a self-guided driving tour offered by Modern Tours Palm Springs, which allowed us to explore various Palm Springs neighborhoods at our own pace.

Photo Essay: The Architectural Jewels of South Coast Plaza, A Mid-Century Modern Mall With a Bright Future

If you were to drive by South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, California—or even wheel around its parking lot, looking for a nearby restaurant, as I have—you might think that it's just another mall. 

But this shopping center is a little different. 

Not only is it the largest indoor shopping mall on the West Coast, but it was also one of our first. And it's one of the most successful malls in a country where most shoppers seem to be staying home to make their purchases online.

Photo Essay: St. Vincent Court, The Historic Los Angeles Alley Where Coffee and Kebabs Converge

Between the St. Vincent Jewelry Center on the corner of 7th and Hill and the Burlington (Coat Factory) department store at 7th and Broadway, there's a breezeway that leads to an alley, traversed by two multistory air bridges.

 Photo: Google Streetview circa February 2022 

This is St. Vincent Court. 

 

 

Photo Essay: Inside the Apple Takeover of the Tower Theatre on Broadway in DTLA

Back in 2012, I had what I thought at the time was a "last chance" to get inside the Tower Theatre on Broadway in Downtown LA before it got renovated for some other purpose.

circa 2018

Photo Essay: Meow Wolf's Omega Mart in Las Vegas Claws at Modern Consumerism

One of the new arrivals to Vegas since my last visit in 2019 was Area 15...

 

...with its outdoor event space and sculpture garden and multiple immersive, interactive attractions indoors.

 

Its centerpiece is the Las Vegas installment of Meow Wolf—an expansion of the Santa Fe immersive art collective founded by Emily Montoya and Benji Geary.

Photo Essay: Farewell to Oceanic Arts, The Emporium of Exotica That's Closing After 65 Years

The first time I visited Oceanic Arts in Whittier, California, I wasn't in the market to buy any tropical or Polynesian decor. But since it's the world's leading supplier of it—and the longest continually operating manufacturer of such products—it felt like a pilgrimage I needed to make. 

Photo Essay: How Macy's Lake Avenue Preserves the History of Bullock's Pasadena, 'The Store of Tomorrow'

Most people wouldn't give a Macy's department store a second glance—but I'm not most people. 

Besides, even  though it happened long before I arrived in California, I know how Macy's took over some of the historic Robinson's department stores (like in Woodland Hills and Newport Beach).

I can only assume there are more historic treasures hiding behind a Macy's logo elsewhere in SoCal.

Which brings me to the Macy's on Lake Avenue in Pasadena, California.

Every time I'd drive past it, I'd marvel at what I assumed—but didn't really know—to be a landmark shopping destination. It dominates Lake Avenue, with its wide, low profile—and its Streamline Moderne elements on the north wing catching the eyes of passerby drivers like me.

I'd always wondered what it was like inside, but I'd always be on my way to something else—and wouldn't make time to stop and go in. 

That changed when Pasadena Heritage recently offered a tour of Macy's Lake Avenue—which turns out to be the former Pasadena location of Bullock's department store. 

Photo: "Dick" Whittington Photography Collection, USC Digital Library

 

Photo Essay: A Hot Time at the Date Orchard, Where Sex and God Collide

When I first started spending time in the Palm Springs area in 2009, I took a tour of Oasis Date Gardens—and I thought that was enough. 

I didn't realize how absolutely baffling and curious the nearby Shields Date Garden was. 

Photo Essay: Caddy Cars, Grocery Getters, and Marketeers at A Museum of Vintage Golf Carts

I'm almost always up for visiting any kind of car museum—and in Palm Springs last week, that meant making a stop to the National Museum of Golf Cars. 

 

Photo Essay: America's Last Woolworth's Luncheonette Has Closed (But It's Supposed to Reopen Sometime Later) (Updated)

[Last updated 1/31/22 9:33 AM PT—The Woolworth Diner's last operating day was Sunday, January 30, 2022.]

I have some vague memory of going to a Woolworth's as a child—though perhaps only for shopping, and not for lunching. 

Indeed, there was a Woolworth's store and lunch counter on Salina Street in Downtown Syracuse that closed in 1979 (when I was 4 years old)—and the building still stands, having housed a Rite Aid pharmacy on its street level until 2018. 

But I feel a certain nostalgia for it regardless. I often feel the loss of things I don't really remember experiencing myself. 

circa 2022

So, after having visited the former Woolworth's building and restaurant in Oxnard in 2015, I didn't even think about grabbing lunch anywhere but the extant Woolworth's lunch counter when I was in Bakersfield for just a few hours in 2019. 

I'd Like to Thank the Academy For Finally Opening Its Long-Awaited Museum on L.A.'s Miracle Mile

The long-anticipated Academy Museum—in the works at least since 2012—opened to the public on my birthday this year, after about a decade of waiting. Not having any other plans, I figured that was a good way to spend the day.

   

What's the Fate of L.A.'s First Major Flower Market, Now Located in the Biggest Floral District in the U.S.?

Just over two blocks away from Downtown Los Angeles' Santee Alley in the Fashion District is a wholesale flower market known as the Southern California Flower Market—which takes up nearly 4 acres between Wall Street and Maple Avenue and East 7th and 8th Streets. 

As of October 2019, the plan was to rebuild a good chunk of it as part of a mixed-use complex right in the middle of the Los Angeles Flower District—the largest and most successful wholesale floral district in the country.

What's the plan for the independent wholesaler and retailers that are housed there—not only florists, but also floral suppliers, floral related retail shops, and small flower malls?

No one has made any public promises. 

But since 2020 happened, the developer has been silent about its plans for the historic market. 

Photo Essay: A Pit Stop at Bravo Farms, Midway Between Bakersfield and Fresno

About 30 miles south of Fresno, California along historic Highway 99 is Bravo Farms in the tiny Central Valley town of Traver.

 

Pandemic Amusements: Downtown Disney & California Adventure's Buena Vista Street

It had been two years since I'd been to Downtown Disney in Anaheim, California. And almost a year since it closed for the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.