Moby Los Angeles Architecture Blog

ok, i’ll be honest, i don’t expect anyone to either like today’s pictures or understand why i’ve put them up here.
which is not to imply that the pictures are so sophisticated that only 3 semiotics professors in zurich could understand them.
no. i mean, if these are sophisticated pictures then they’re accidentally sophisticated.
they’re what they seem to be, pictures of an abandoned liquor store in the middle of hollywood.
i’ve always loved abandoned buildings. abandoned factories, abandoned apartment buildings, abandoned railway stations (this might be one of the reasons why i like detroit so much, as detroit is mecca for abandoned buildings).
i love them. generally more than their unabandoned counterparts.
so:
i drive by this abandoned liquor store every day.
and i wonder.
here’s what i wonder:

for how long has it been abandoned?
isn’t it odd to have an abandoned building sitting in the middle of a big city?
when it becomes unabandoned will it be used well or will it, as is often the case, be a step down from abandonment?

and yes, ‘unabandoned’ isn’t a real word.
some odd things about this odd abandoned liquor store.

there’s some interesting tyler the creator graffiti on the back wall.
the roof is succumbing to entropy faster than the rest of the building.
american apparel are getting years of free advertising, although i’m not sure it’s the sort of upscale demographic association they’d normally be interested in.
it’s a few hundred feet from the corner of sunset and gower, where the first hollywood film studios once stood.
i think that’s all i have.
oh, what do tourists think when they come to hollywood expecting cinematic glamour and instead are confronted with crumbling abandoned liquor stores?

i’m off to canada now. i’m working under the assumption that i won’t find derelict, abandoned, entropic liquor stores in toronto, but who knows.
i love canada, even if it’s missing the baffling squalor of the united states (well, specifically los angeles).

ok, have a nice weekend.

oh, and just to warm things up a bit i’m also including a picture of some trees in griffith park.

moby