Gentle reader,
If you never went to the Pacific Dining Car, this is going to be hard to believe. But trust us when we say: once we had something truly magical, until stubbornness and selfishness and lack of accountability took it away.
Imagine an egalitarian Musso and Frank, where someone could dine like a millionaire for under 30 bucks. Oh, you could drop several hundred dollars on a meal at PDC, but you didn’t have to. If you were on a budget or didn’t care for big slabs of meat on your plate, you could ask for the breakfast menu at any hour of their 24 hour service and enjoy the most elevated egg or pancake feasts, laid out on bright linen tablecloths by lovely servers who treated everybody like family and like royalty.
The Dining Car was really Kim’s place. As a poor museum worker and fanzine editrix, this was where she’d take visiting creative pals to give them a taste of old Los Angeles culture without stressing their equally moth-filled wallets.
It was never lost on us that this was Raymond Chandler’s old neighborhood, where he finally took the leap from frustrated oilman to mystery writer. Or that Jimmy Webb had courted his muse Susie Horton close by, or that Bobby Kennedy died across the street at Good Samaritan.
The Dining Car was an enormous place, and like Clifton’s Cafeteria (also of blessed memory) nobody ever got the hint that their table was needed and they ought to move along. So a meal would stretch into hours, with fresh orange juice or an extra basket of bread or a shift to the bar, snug in the elegant old world atmosphere of silly paintings, vintage photos, gleaming wood and shining metal fixtures.
The best seat in the house was just past the door, in the original 1921 custom built faux train car that had first been put to culinary service in 1921 at 7th and Westlake, off what was then Westlake Park. You could see everyone passing through the narrow space, and keep an eye on the bustling kitchen within.
It was fun to try to imagine what it might have been like when the car was a wee lunch counter operated by Fred and Grace Cook on the sleepy edge of the business district, and to think of all the peckish Angelenos who had stepped inside this cozy space to fill their bellies over a century.
But James Ellroy liked the deep, dark recesses in the brocaded back of the house, where he could hunch over a steak and hold court. It was there at Ellroy’s table in 2007 that he anointed our budding true crime and L.A. history tour company with the gracious offer to host a special tour about his life, his work, and the unsolved murder of his mother.
We were already on the map, but this kindness gilded its edges. And writing a tour for a host as demanding as Ellroy, and squiring fans as intense as his fans, gave us a crash course in professional hospitality that has colored all our public work since then. You haven’t put on a show until your star suddenly demands a quadruple espresso in deepest San Gabriel, and you’ve found a way to scratch his itch!
So when we’d visit the Dining Car in years after, we’d always nod respectfully toward Ellroy’s booth, grateful that his creative energies and ours had briefly flown in sync.
But something dark was bubbling in the heart of this precious legacy business, a poison that would kill not only the business, but destroy the beautiful building, too.
And that happened early this morning.
Like everyone else with a public facing business in Los Angeles, the Dining Car closed in March 2020. They claimed $625,715 in PPP pandemic loan relief to support 76 jobs, but oddly, only $203,398 was ultimately forgiven.
That wasn’t the only peculiarity. In September 2020, when we were all stir crazy and pivoting to video or takeout, the Dining Car went bust. A pair of auctions, of the Santa Monica branch, then the Westlake O.G., sounded alarm bells. All the familiar decor was on the chopping block, including the beloved twin plastic steers on the pole out front.
It didn’t take a detective to smell a rat. Cook’s grandson Wes Idol III spun a tale of closing temporarily while hawking frozen steaks online—but what was the Dining Car without all its stuff?
After the auction, somebody broke through the roof of the vacant building and made a mess of it. Then came the Historic Cultural Monument nomination and a lot of drama—drama that we were alone in chronicling for a spell, because we read every document that comes out of City Hall and attended all virtual hearings about historic places.
And in one of these hearings in May 2023, the Dining Car officially went off the rails.
As a landmark nomination submitted by an Orange County attorney teetered between recognizing the entire restaurant or paring it back to the original, portable faux train car and attached kitchen, supposed investors fritzed out as they realized there was a huge divide between the interests of the actual property and building owner (Ms. Toby Idol, widow of Wesley Idol II) and those of the person who held the rights to the restaurant’s name, website and recipes (Wes Idol III, Wesley’s son and Toby’s estranged stepson).
And bizarrely, councilmember Gil Cedillo, who was hiding out and cashing paychecks in the aftermath of his role in the racist L.A. Fed recording scandal, emerged from his hole to champion the interests of Wes Idol III, an act raising suspicions of political pay-for-play.
Even if Pacific Dining Car was granted this civic honor, re-opening the restaurant for business was going to take a lot of finesse and even more money.
And in the end, there was not enough of either. The landmark designation only recognized the portable elements (audio of the 4/7/2022 CHC hearing is here). The fixtures and sign were MIA. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. The Dining Car never reopened, and over several years the oldest, “protected” part of the structure became the back wall of a growing tent encampment that just a week ago we felt compelled to check in on.
The video we shot felt urgent at the time, but frankly, we’re tired. And we didn’t really want to articulate the fear of fire that seemed so palpable. So we missed the chance to play Cassandra, and are posting our red alert too late to make any difference.
But what is the point of reporting dangerous conditions that could lead to a fire that destroys a “protected” landmark like the Pacific Dining Car? This neighborhood, in Eunisses Hernandez’ Council District 1, is perhaps the filthiest and most neglected in the entire city, comparable only to deepest Skid Row. People living in tent shelter struggle to find safe housing, despite how the city puffs itself up.
Code violation reports to LADBS are regularly and wrongly closed out by inspectors for no stated reason. Hernandez and her senior staff are actively hostile to preservation in Westlake. And we’ve got so many open tickets where historic places are in immediate danger of demolition or have just been knocked down, that’s where we’ve spent our time.
Forgive us, Pacific Dining Car. You deserved better from all of us.
But let this be a warning to every second wife and angry middle-aged kid, every nth generation proprietor eager to cash out and ditch Los Angeles for more conservative pastures: legacy Los Angeles businesses are not merely real estate, they are a part of our soul. If you can’t or won’t keep your family’s commercial heritage alive, then sell it to someone who will. Like some of your longtime employees or managers, who know the business better than you ever could.
Letting a Los Angeles treasure rot as a tangible symbol of their interpersonal beef, as the Idols did with the Pacific Dining Car, with the aid of many others inside and outside of Los Angeles City Hall, is a stain on the legacy of a place that means more than they can ever imagine.
We wouldn’t want that karma for anything.
Maybe there’s enough left of the landmark to salvage. If there is, put it on a truck and move it somewhere safe. No vacant landmark is safe in Westlake. Sell the land, if you can. Leave us with our memories, which are sweet in spite of this shameful end.
We wrote the paragraph above before receiving an alarming message from Marlena Bond, the interim Program Director at KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.
She had heard about the fire on the news and went over to the Dining Car in late afternoon, when she took these photographs. There was no other media present, nor anyone taking responsibility for the securing the damaged structure.
Marlena observes, There was more than one burned tent surrounded by bulky items and trash that looked long established, and a new tent with an occupant that looked like they just arrived.
It’s unfortunate that the city doesn’t protect the buildings it has celebrated with historic status just months prior. The building has as of today been left as is, with openings easily accessible throughout including the basement. No one has boarded up the building. Where are the owners?
P.S. Where are the dignitaries and city leaders that once celebrated this 100 year old establishment? Maybe they’re all dead and rolling in their graves.
And that’s the pathetic state of things on the evening after the Pacific Dining Car burned up. Who can possibly be shocked if arsonists come back and finish the job tonight?
The Pacific Dining Car is dead, now a part of history and patronized only by the ghosts. We will love and miss it forever, and will never forgive those who let it and all of us down.
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Read on for Pacific Dining Car Status Updates:
8/4/2024 - A day and a half after the fire, we found it wide open for more vandalism, and hatched a scheme to include this scorched exemplar of L.A.’s failed stewardship in the 2028 Olympics opening ceremonies.
8/5/2024 - LADBS issues the first code violation since the fire, for BUILDING OR WALL THAT COULD FALL DOWN, with an order to comply and obtain permits to repair the structure. Also on 8/5, Wes Idol III, owner of the shuttered since 2020 Pacific Dining Car steakhouse, tells SFGate he still plans to reopen after the fire. But he does not own the building nor the land, his stepmother does. We all want to believe, but this is a time for honesty, not fluff. (See also comments on Reddit and YouTube that appear to be from Wes Idol or an associate.)
8/7/2024 - Four days after the fire, the structure is still unsecured. In our latest newsletter, we’re calling on concerned citizens to ask the city’s Office of Historic Resources to ensure it is boarded up and protected from any further demolition by neglect. Contact: Ken Bernstein (213) 847-3652 ken.bernstein@lacity.org
8/8/2024 - As complaints pour in from the public, LADBS issues the second code violation since the fire, for ABANDONED OR VACANT BUILDING LEFT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, “The building or premises is Substandard due to inadequate sanitation caused by general dilapidation or improper maintenance.”
We receive an email response from Ken Bernstein in Office of Historic Resources:
Thanks, Kim and Richard, for your message and post on the Pacific Dining Car. All of us in the Office of Historic Resources share your reaction to last weekend’s fire and your concern about the continued state of this cherished Historic-Cultural Monument, including the need to ensure that it is fully secured.
Unfortunately, LA City Planning and the Office of Historic Resources do not have code enforcement authority within City government, nor do we have direct authority to order a City crew to secure the property. We are working closely with the LA Department of Building and Safety (LADBS), which does have code enforcement authority, to issue an order to the property owner to immediately board, fence, and secure the Historic-Cultural Monument. Lambert Giessinger in our office reached out earlier this week to the code enforcement inspector who had responded to previous complaints about the property, and we are hoping to connect with him later today.
We have additionally contacted the staff of Council District One (Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s Office) to request their assistance in the code enforcement follow-up on the Pacific Dining Car. We are also reminding all City code enforcement authorities that provisions of the building code allow City staff to take necessary steps to secure designated Historic-Cultural Monuments, if a property owner ultimately fails to comply with a City order to secure the property.
Please let us know if you have further updates, or if you have any success reaching the property owner or her representative. - Ken
8/13/2024 - LADBS issues the third code violation since the fire, again for ABANDONED OR VACANT BUILDING LEFT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
8/15/2024 - Tom Carroll from the Los Angeles Times asks us to stop by the site and see if the owner had complied with the order to comply from LADBS. Yes! The restaurant is now boarded up and secure, as seen in the video above. Thank you, all who called or emailed! Our photos of the current state of the building appear in Tom’s LATimes.404 video in which we’re interviewed about demolition by neglect and the frustrations of trying to protect a derelict landmark before a fire breaks out.
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UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS
• Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (Sun. 8/4) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels To Towers To The Dutch Chocolate Shop (Sat. 8/17) • Broadway: Downtown Los Angeles’ Beautiful, Magical Mess (Sun. 8/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (Sat. 8/31)• Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract (Sat. 9/7) • Highland Park Arroyo (Sat. 9/21) • The Real Black Dahlia (Sat. 9/29) • The Run: Gay Downtown L.A. History (Sun. 10/13) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (Sun. 10/27) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (Sun. 11/3)
The Pacific Dining Car, a long goodbye (1921-2020-2024, R.I.P.)