Los Angeles Visionaries Association

Join LAVA for our revived free monthly Sunday Salon series. We return to South Broadway, to the mezzanine of Les Noces du Figaro, which was recently opened by the family behind Figaro Bistro in Los Feliz. This handsome space was formerly Schaber’s Cafeteria (Charles F. Plummer, 1928), and the mezzanine features wonderful views of the Los Angeles Theatre.

On the last Sunday of each month , LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a loosely structured conversational Salon featuring short presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another. If you’re interested in joining LAVA as a creative contributor or an attendee, we recommend Salon attendance as an introduction to this growing community. We also recommend the eclairs.

Read about the original Sunday Salon at Clifton's Cafeteria here.

The Salon will be broken into two distinct presentations each lasting about 45 minutes. You are encouraged to arrive early if you wish to order food and beverages from the counter downstairs, and bring your meal upstairs. 

Presentation One:

Brent E. Walker, author of Mack Sennett's Fun Factory: A History and Filmography of His Studio and His Keystone and Mack Sennett Comedies, with Biographies of Players and Personnel, takes us on a journey through the life and career of movie comedy pioneer and Keystone Film Company founder Mack Sennett, through a lecture with slides and film clips. Sennett, mythologically famous for his Keystone Cops, pies in the face, the discovery of film giants Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson, also had a very important and direct influence on the growth and development of Los Angeles during the 1910s and 1920s. Brent presentation will bring a fascinating Angeleno, his city and time, to life.

Presentation Two:

Dydia DeLyser presents Take Nothing for Granted: The search for the first neon sign in America, and research in the era of the Internet (co-authored with Paul Greenstein). Internet and published sources alike all describe, as the first neon sign in America, a 1923 sign saying "Packard," erected for Earle C. Anthony, Inc., a prominent Packard dealer, on the corner of 7th and Flower Streets in downtown Los Angeles. But no one has ever provided a photograph of the sign in its original location, or referenced a primary source to support this claim. This presentation details Dydia and Paul's search for the sign, and shows how their painstaking archival research proved every other source wrong.

LAVA Visionary Adrienne Crew is a member of the board of the Mayme Clayton Museum and Library in Culver City, one of the largest archives of African-American books and ephemera in the country. Adrienne invites her fellow LAVA members to join her for an exclusive preview of MCLM's first sale of duplicate books and periodicals in its collection. Sorry, nothing pre-1948 will be on sale. However, there will be plenty of periodicals, lurid blaxploitation paperbacks and social studies texts on hand.

Come for a glass of wine, buy some books and check out our current exhibit, "Audio Assault: Sights and Sounds of the Black Power Movement 1965-1975," featuring rare album art, photographs and audio clips that commemorate the events, locations and artists from Southern California that shaped the movement.

Let Adrienne know if you plan to join us by 6/12. Email her at info@adriennecrew.com

Join LAVA for our revived free monthly Sunday Salon series. We return to South Broadway, to the mezzanine of Les Noces du Figaro, which was recently opened by the family behind Figaro Bistro in Los Feliz. This handsome space was formerly Schaber’s Cafeteria (Charles F. Plummer, 1928), and the mezzanine features wonderful views of the Los Angeles Theatre.

On the last Sunday of each month, LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a structured Salon featuring formal presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another. If you’re interested in joining LAVA as a creative contributor or an attendee, we recommend Salon attendance as an introduction to this growing community. We also recommend the eclairs.

Read about the original Sunday Salon at Clifton's Cafeteria here.

The Salon's theme will be Jazz Age Los Angeles, and the two talks (45 minutes each) will focus on that theme at the intersection of Crescent Heights and Sunset Blvd.

You are encouraged to arrive early if you wish to order food and beverages from the counter downstairs, and bring your meal upstairs. 

Please note that there will a morning and afternoon walking tour of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Hollywood on Saturday, June 29, and that our Salon presenters Martin Turnbull and Marc Chevalier will be making short appearances.

Presentation One: Martin Turnbull on The Garden of Allah

Martin Turnbull, author of The Garden Of Allah novels will be discussing life at that hotel and its infamous bungalow courtyard during the 1920s and 30s. Its bootleg liquor, fizzy flappers, all night parties defined the Jazz Age in Los Angeles. When Scott Fitzgerald when came to L.A. in the mid 1930s with his $1000/week contract at MGM, it was at the Garden of Allah he chose to land. it was also the home-away-from-home for Algonquin Round Table refugees Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott, Donald Ogden Stewart and Marc Connelly, so Fitzgerald must have feel at home. As did anyone answering Hollywood’s siren call lucky enough to get a room there. Martin’s talk will be punctuated by readings from his first novel in the series, The Garden On Sunset.

Back Story on the Garden of Allah: Formerly the movie star mansion of luminous silent screen star, Alla Nazimova, the Garden of Allah opened its doors in 1927 at the height of the Jazz Age and in no time, word got out that Nazimova’s Garden could always provide hopeful Hollywood arrivals with a pillow, a pal and a party. Over those years, a virtual who’s who of Hollywood paraded through the place: Bogie and Bacall, Errol Flynn, David Niven, Harpo Marx, Tallulah Bankhead, Artie Shaw, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Dorothy Gish, Kay Thompson, Leopold Stokowski, Orson Welles, Ava Gardner, and Frank Sinatra.

Presentation Two: Marc Chevalier on the Crescent Heights Shopping Center & the ballyhoo spirit of the Jazz Age

For his talk, Marc Chevailer, the historian of the Oviatt Building, will focus on the Crescent Heights Shopping Center, just across the street from the Garden of Allah. First drawn to the building because of James Oviatt's proposed but never realized "satellite" shop for his famous haberdashery downtown, Marc soon become ensorcelled by this beautiful French Norman revival building. Built in 1925, this towered, marble-trimmed and mansard-roofed Norman ‘chateau’ housed Schwab’s Pharmacy and the Crescent Heights Market, which fed, drugged and boozed the Garden of Allah’s voracious guests. It was where Hollywood’s movielanders shopped, schmoozed, strove and scrounged for generations … where F. Scott Fitzgerald nearly died and Marilyn Monroe got her final prescription, and where Robert Mitchum, already a star, stocked grocery shelves just for fun. 

It was home to the Sunset Medical Center, the upscale Talmadge Jones flower shop (with its Rolls-Royce delivery trucks), a bakery, a dry cleaner, a beauty parlor, the infamous Crescent Heights Market (owned and managed by a cantankerous ex-speakeasy operator from New York, who randomly overcharged Hollywood's elite for its groceries), and a pharmacy that would be bought out by Schwab's in 1932. In 1949, Googie's would build its first coffee shop next to Schwab's.

While nothing remains of it today, “the chateau that housed Schwab’s” is ripe for rediscovery. Join Marc as he presents us a rich palimpsest of Hollywood from its halcyon era as he peels back the layers of the Crescent Heights Shopping Center, a compound which was drastically remodeled in the 1960s, and demolished in 1988.

Marc Chevalier stumbled across “the chateau that held Schwab’s” while doing research for his upcoming biography of James Oviatt, the man behind L.A.’s Oviatt Building. In 2008, in partnership with filmmaker Seth Shulman, he researched/wrote/produced a feature-length documentary on the Oviatt Building’s history. An English teacher by profession, Chevalier calls Los Angeles history his passion/addiction, and credits Kim Cooper and Richard Schave for feeding it regularly.

Adrienne Crew will host a short walking tour of F. Scott Fitzgerald's (West) Hollywood and the places that were significant to him at the end of the writer's life. The tour will begin at the corner of Sunset Blvd & Crescent Heights (exact details furnished upon registration) and conclude at Greenblatt's Deli, where Sheilah Graham purchased the Hershey bar which was the last thing Fitzgerald ate.

A partial list of both extant and demolished locations along the route are:

• The Garden of Allah apartments
• Schwab's Drug store
• The apartment of Sheilah Graham

Special guest speakers Martin Turnbull & Marc Chevalier, presenters the next day at the June LAVA Sunday Salon, will be on hand during the first 30 minutes(s) of each tour to enhance our understanding of several of the locations covered on the tour.

Comfortable walking shoes and sunscreen are advised.

$15 per person. Pre-payment and reservation required. Tour location shall be sent after confirmed reservation. Contact Adrienne Crew atat info@adriennecrew.com for information about reservations and payments. Paypal and checks accepted.

Plan on arriving 15 minutes prior to tour start time for check-in.

Adrienne Crew will host a short walking tour of F. Scott Fitzgerald's (West) Hollywood and the places that were significant to him at the end of the writer's life. The tour will begin at the corner of Sunset Blvd & Crescent Heights (exact details furnished upon registration) and conclude at Greenblatt's Deli, where Sheilah Graham purchased the Hershey bar which was the last thing Fitzgerald ate.

A partial list of both extant and demolished locations along the route are:

• The Garden of Allah apartments
• Schwab's Drug store
• The apartment of Sheilah Graham

Special guest speakers Martin Turnbull & Marc Chevalier, presenters the next day at the June LAVA Sunday Salon, will be on hand during the first 30 minutes(s) of each tour to enhance our understanding of several of the locations covered on the tour.

Comfortable walking shoes and sunscreen are advised.

$15 per person. Pre-payment and reservation required. Tour location shall be sent after confirmed reservation. Contact Adrienne Crew atat info@adriennecrew.com for information about reservations and payments. Paypal and checks accepted.

Plan on arriving 15 minutes prior to tour start time for check-in.

Join LAVA for our revived free monthly Sunday Salon series. We return to South Broadway, to the mezzanine of Les Noces du Figaro, which was recently opened by the family behind Figaro Bistro in Los Feliz. This handsome space was formerly Schaber’s Cafeteria (Charles F. Plummer, 1928), and the mezzanine features wonderful views of the Los Angeles Theatre.

On the last Sunday of each month, LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a structured Salon featuring formal presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another. If you’re interested in joining LAVA as a creative contributor or an attendee, we recommend Salon attendance as an introduction to this growing community. We also recommend the eclairs.

Read about the original Sunday Salon at Clifton's Cafeteria here.

The Salon will be broken into two distinct presentations each lasting about 45 minutes. You are encouraged to arrive early if you wish to order food and beverages from the counter downstairs, and bring your meal upstairs. 

Presentation One: 29 Palms by J. Scott Smith

The presentation will consist of two distinct elements: 1) a projected 35-minute presentation during which photographer J. Scott Smith describes the origins and creative process behind his 29 Palms project. After the talk, join Scott for a pop-up gallery show featuring one or two full-scale finished works (3’ x 5’) along with a few smaller sized pieces (18.5” x 30”) on display in the mezzanine.

Artist’s Statement:

29 Palms is a mirage of sorts, a photographic re-imagining of the original oasis of twenty-nine native palms around which the desert city of the same name developed. Washingtonia filifera, the Golden State’s only indigenous palm, is featured in this collection alongside a remarkable variety of geographic transplants that flourish in Southern California’s benign climate. Captured with a large format view camera on 8 × 10” film and rendered in high-resolution 38 × 60” chromogenic prints, the 29 Palms series is both a typological study of individual palm trunks and a shimmering reflection of the region’s ethnically diverse human population.

I became aware of the extraordinary beauty of palm trunks when my beloved dog began to slow in his old age. Walking through a Santa Monica park lined with palms, I confronted their trunks at close range while Buck lingered and sniffed around the bases. Their intricate patterns evoked abstract landscapes and I resolved to create formal portraits by visually severing the columnar trunks from crown and base. I developed a fascination with the history of Southern California’s iconic palms and sought out both typical and unique specimens in public and private spaces.

J. Scott Smith’s Website

Presentation Two: Old Bunker Hill - One Family's Perspective by Gordon Pattison

Have you ever wondered what Old Bunker Hill was really like? Have you ever wished you could have been there to see it?

Well, our speaker, Gordon Pattison, can tell you and show you because he and his family lived there. The Pattison family owned the Castle and Salt Box, among others of the old Victorian buildings that were once there. Gordon will tell the story of Bunker Hill from a personal perspective, through recollections inspired from historical photographs of Bunker Hill as well as family photos taken there in the 1930s and 1940s.

Old Bunker Hill isn’t gone. It floats ethereally in memory above Hope, Grand, Olive and Hill Street. And after this Sunday Salon, it will live in your imagination, too.

UPDATE:  The back gate to the cemetery will be open, this means you can park off of Mission on Encinita or Claudia Ave. Last year the parking on Valley Blvd was taken up quite early on.

The Ukulady will be in attendance at the event, in full pioneer garb and singing pioneer songs. The set will begin about noon.

To sign up for this free event: First register as a user on this site, and then return to this page. Refresh the page and the signup tab will appear just to the left, above this paragraph. Click "signup" and reserve your spot. No plus-ones; each guest must register individually.

Join us for a Memorial Day celebration at Savannah Memorial Park. Established circa 1851 and recently made a California Historical Landmark (#1046), it is the oldest American cemetery in Southern California.

The City of Rosemead will host an official ceremony at 10:30am, complete with 21-gun salute and a bagpipe accompaniment. Around 12:15pm, following the city ceremony, LAVA members will gather at the main gate and at 12:30pm begin their tour of the cemetery.

Tours guides, all of whom have decades of involvement with the cemetery, will recount the trials and tribulations of the pioneer families who braved the Santa Fe Trail and the Mojave Desert to make their homes in the lowlands of the eastern San Gabriel Valley, before finding eternal rest in these hallowed grounds. You won’t want to miss this very special LAVA excursion which has become an annual tradition.

To purchase a ticket for this special event, click here. If you'd like to be contacted when another crime lab tour and lecture are scheduled, subscribe to LAVA's occasional Crime Lab Newsletter.

Join us in the Cal State Los Angeles teaching crime lab for an afternoon’s inquiry into two shocking and complicated crime scenes, presented by the criminalists and investigators who were on the scene.

Lecture One focuses on a 1995 double murder at Universal City Walk. Join us as Beverly Kerr, lead forensic investigator on the case, walks us through her investigation, from the initial rooftop crime scene to the side of the Hollywood Freeway miles away, where the incident continued. The presentation will focus on the forensic techniques used in analyzing the scenes, and the landmark use of DNA evidence presented in court during the trial.

About the case: On Mother’s Day, 1995, Paul Carasi had dinner with his mother Doris Carasi, his ex-girlfriend Sonia Salinas, and the ex-couple’s young son. On returning to the Universal City Walk parking structure, Paul Carasi claimed that the adults were attacked by unknown assailants. Both women were stabbed to death, but Paul Carasi suffered only minor wounds and was apparently knocked unconscious. Minutes later, Paul Carasi’s girlfriend Donna Kay called CHP from the side of the Hollywood Freeway. She claimed she had been stabbed by a robber on the road. Her wounds, too, were relatively minor. What was it about the DNA evidence in the parking lot and on the side of the Hollywood Freeway that revealed to investigators what had really happened at Universal City Walk, and made this case suitable for a death penalty charge? You’ll get the answers in today’s in-depth presentation.

In Lecture Two, Professor Don Johnson is back at front of the classroom after a year’s hiatus, presenting one of his classic crime scene walkthroughs. Join Professor Johnson as he shares his experiences as the on-scene investigator in a troubling and complicated homicide investigation. Illustrated with graphic photographs, Professor Johnson’s presentation takes you to the crime scene and puts you inside the head of first responders and investigators.

About the case: This incident involves a young woman who concealed her pregnancy from friends and family, delivered her baby at home, and disposed of the child. When the infant’s body was found in a neighboring yard, mauled by a dog, her secret was exposed. But did the mother kill her baby before abandoning it, was it born dead, or was it a victim of a dog attack? What was the significance of the strange tool discovered in the mother’s family bathroom? And how do forensic scientists prove parentage of a child whose father is unknown, and whose mother is only suspected? You’ll learn the answers to these and many other questions in this graphic and compelling homicide investigation.

On the last Sunday of each month , LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a loosely structured conversational Salon featuring short presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another.

Please note that there will be no LAVA Sunday Salon on April 28, 2013, due to the transportation and access conflicts created by the 24th Annual Fiesta Broadway. Past Salon experience has shown that it is not possible to hold our event while Fiesta Broadway is happening. The LAVA Sunday Salon will return on Sunday, May 26, 2013.

Join LAVA for our second free monthly Sunday Salon since November 2011. We return to South Broadway, to the mezzanine of Les Noces du Figaro, which was recently opened by the family behind Figaro Bistro in Los Feliz. This handsome space was formerly Schaber’s Cafeteria (Charles F. Plummer, 1928), and the mezzanine features wonderful views of the Los Angeles Theatre.

On the last Sunday of each month , LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a loosely structured conversational Salon featuring short presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another. If you’re interested in joining LAVA as a creative contributor or an attendee, we recommend Salon attendance as an introduction to this growing community. We also recommend the eclairs.

Read about the original Sunday Salon at Clifton's Cafeteria here.

The Salon will be broken into two distinct presentations each lasting about 45 minutes. You are encouraged to arrive early if you wish to order food and beverages from the counter downstairs, and bring your meal upstairs. 

Presentation One:

Oviatt Building scholar Marc Chevalier will give a lecture with accompanying slide show on the life and times of James Oviatt. Topics will include Oviatt's eponymous building, his contributions to the Art Deco in Los Angeles, his fashionable haberdashery Alexander & Oviatt, myths, legends and the even more fascinating reality. Oviatt’s arc is a microcosm of the upwardly mobile in Jazz Age Los Angeles, and his story touches almost every major aspect of culture and commerce in pre-war Los Angeles.  

Presentation Two:

Hillsman Wright of the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation will give an illustrated talk on the history of theaters on Broadway from the turn of the last century up to the present day. At the conclusion of the 45-minute talk, we will take a stroll around Broadway to look at some of the theaters we have just been discussing.