Gentle reader,
Apologies for the ridiculously short notice.
If you loved Papa Cristo’s, the 77-year-old family owned Greek taverna and market that recently shut its doors forever after the landlord raised the rent and put the real estate on the market for 5 million bucks, or if you’re a small restaurant operator looking for a sweet deal on some high quality equipment, drop what you’re doing and register for the Papa Cristo’s auction right now!
Winners will be hammered down at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning, and you’ll have a couple of days to pick up your treasures at the restaurant. Olive trees! Cans of tomatoes! Stacks of dishes! Thrift store art! The painted ladies on the backdoor freezer! The original 1930s-era cash register! And hundreds of other things that helped make Papa Cristo’s one of the best managed, most welcoming and delicious places to dine in Los Angeles, or anywhere.
Let’s send all our love to Chrys Chrys on the occasion of his retirement, and best wishes to his gracious crew. Auctions stress you out? Then swing on by the Papa Cristo’s website and pick up a jar of Papa’s special spice mix to remember him by.
But wait—there’s more to be blue about! After Saturday’s Highland Park Arroyo walking tour, we checked our messages to find increasingly frantic ones from preservation pal Damian Sullivan. Something was very wrong at the oldest continuously operating McDonald’s in America, and we needed to meet in Downey to get to the bottom of it.
An unskilled work crew had been called out to deal with wind damage to the plastic section at the top of the original 1953 McDonald's sign at Lakewood and Florence in Downey, and for unknown reasons decided to cut into the metal bottom of the golden arch—with no permits! The city shut them down, but now the soaring neon and incandescent structure, a National Register landmark, is in a sad state of dereliction.
If you care about it, please call Downey City Hall at (562) 869-7331 and let them know you want them to compel the property owner to restore the sign to Section 106 standards that are appropriate for a National Register landmark. Downey doesn't have an historic preservation ordinance, so until they fix that lapse, community outrage is a powerful force for making things right.
That's what happened when the Bob's Big Boy drive-in (aka Harvey's Broiler) was demolished illegally—fans spoke up, and it was rebuilt to the original plans. That can happen here, too, but we’re going to have to make some noise.
Update 5/30/25: We asked to meet with Irma Huitron, Downey’s Director of Community Development at the sign, where neon experts Paul Greenstein and Dydia DeLyser provided her with a copy of their recent book Neon: A Light History and advised on best restoration practices for all the original elements of this unique example of roadside Americana, from the neon tubes (and the handpainted lettering under them that should replace the peeling vinyl), vintage 1-Shot enamel paint palette, corrugated backlit plastic and restoring the metal base sections that were cut. Work has been halted while a city consultant reviews the situation and provides recommendations for what should be done to bring the sign back into compliance. We’re grateful Downey is taking the time to listen to experts in the preservation community, and hopeful about the future of the sign. Watch this space and our social media channels for updates as we get them.
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles' past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city's soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/24) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/31) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/7) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (6/14) •Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury, Basements, Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/21) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (6/22) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (6/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (7/12) • The Real Black Dahlia (7/19) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (7/26) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (8/9) • Weird West Adams / Elmer McCurdy Museum (8/16) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (8/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (8/30) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (9/6) • Film Noir / Real Noir (9/20) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (9/27)
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