Moby Los Angeles Architecture Blog

one of the absolute best things about hollywood is the ubiquity of run-down old motels and hotels.
well, from my perspective, that is.
maybe some people think that the old run down motels and hotels are eyesores, and are representative or indicative of the seediness and faded glamor of l.a.
but i love them (largely because i see the seediness and faded glamor of l.a as being good, if sad, things).
why?
for about 18,000 reasons, but the top few reasons are:

-aesthetically the old motels are amazing. more often than not they represent some sort of mid-century attempt at space-age ornamentation, even if 99.9% of the time the space age ornamentation is faded and aged and has succumbed to the entropic onslaught of sun and smog and neglect. but the onslaught of entropy actually makes the ornamentation look cooler and more interesting. like wabi-sabi. which is a concept i hope more of us gaijin learn about.

-they’re still there. manhattan lost it’s flea-bag motels a long time ago, as the price of real estate has made it untenable for people to maintain crummy old motels on a lot that could otherwise house a miu-miu store. l.a is, in many places, kind of a dump, and as a result it still has the cheap real-estate needed for 50 year old run down motels. which i love.

-they’re cheap, and anyone can stay there. as a result they house some of the oddest of the oddballs who keep l.a interesting. the ukranian screen writer, the crack addicted spiderman, the ingenue from south dakota, the faded hair metal bassist, the brits on a 5 days bender, etc etc. anyone can stay in these dumpy motels. i’d write ‘dystopian egalitarianism’ but then i’d seem even more pretentious than i already do. but i wrote it. so i’ll write it again. dystopian egalitarianism. cos that’s what it is. the rung at the bottom, within anyone’s reach. the beginning of a climb up or the last step on a slide down. or just a place to give up.

over time i want to take more and more pictures of these amazing run down hollywood motels. i love them. someday they might disappear.
i hope not, but nothing lasts in l.a, and it’s amazing that they’ve been around for as long as they have.
i love them.

-moby