LAVA Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon January 2014

Richard Schave

0 2.3k

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

Darrell Rooney on Harlow In Hollywood

Harlow. The name resonates. Blonde Bombshell. Platinum Blonde. The labels applied by press agents during Jean Harlow’s seven-year career still carry a charge seventy years later. Harlow created the mold: the first blonde sex symbol who captured the attention of a nation, then touched their hearts with her genuine warmth and candor. At a time when Harlow’s star shone its brightest, Los Angeles and the movies gave birth to a district that exists as much in the mind as on the map. Harlow historian Darrell Rooney, co-author of Harlow In Hollywood (Angel City Press), discusses and presents images on the behind the scenes life of Jean Harlow and the city that helped mold her.

Presentation Two

Marc Chevalier on James Oviatt and the Making of Modern Los Angeles History

Join Marc Chevalier, LAVA’s Visionary of the Year for 2014, as he traces the life of the iconic Angeleno, James Oviatt, the man behind the eponymous building and clothing store. The unfolding of this narrative doubles as Marc’s personal narrative of research, through false leads, dead ends, misinterpretations and out of the blue miracles, until by uncovering the untold story of James Oviatt, Marc Chevalier discovers his own voice, that of a major historian of lost Los Angeles.

Why look to James Oviatt, seller of upscale fashion, early proponent of the Art Deco, Machiavellian schemer and dreamer? 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. His influence is still felt on the city he left behind, and in the worlds of fashion, design, marketing and architecture.

Youtube Channel link for January 2014 LAVA Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon December 2013

Richard Schave

0 2.8k

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

You are encouraged to arrive early if you wish to order food and beverages from the counter downstairs, and bring your meal upstairs. There will only be one presentation at this Salon. There will be a short break of 10-15 minutes about 40 minutes into the program.

Salon Presentation – Ordo Templi Orientis

Presenters’ Statement: Ordo Templi Orientis is an international initiatory order dedicated to promulgating the Law of Thelema. We can summarize The Law of Thelema in the deceptively simple sentence “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” While the roots of O.T.O. lie in Freemasonry, it separated from that tradition a century ago under the leadership of noted magician Aleister Crowley. O.T.O. has a rich history in Los Angeles stretching back to the 1930s, when Wilfred Smith and Jack Parsons led Agape Lodge in Pasadena, the only fully operational O.T.O. body in the world at the time of Crowley’s death in 1947.

The central ritual of Ordo Templi Orientis is the Gnostic Mass, also called Liber XV; a eucharistic ceremony written by Aleister Crowley in 1913. The most important purpose of the Mass is to lead all participants to an awareness of their divinity, an idea expressed in the declaration made by each member of the congregation after consuming the eucharist: “There is no part of me that is not of the gods.” To this end, the Gnostic Mass incorporates dramatic ritual elements taken from Thelemic symbolism, as well as that of sources as disparate as alchemy, the Chaldean Oracles, and Qabalah. It is a beautiful and inspiring celebration of the energies of Life and Joy, of ecstatic union on all planes, and of the great Mystery of generation.

Star Sapphire Lodge, the O.T.O. body serving Los Angeles, invites you to join us in a celebration of the Gnostic Mass. We will also offer a brief talk on the nature of O.T.O. and the Gnostic Mass. Experience the deity within you; “Every man and every woman is a star!”

Youtube Channel link for LAVA Sunday Salon Landing Page

LAVA Sunday Salon, Les Noces du Figaro Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon November 2013

Richard Schave

0 2.5k

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

Presentation One

Backstage at the Follies: A talk by Pepper Aarvold

Pepper Aarvold says: “I grew up backstage of a burlesque theater from the tender age of four through my teens. I’ll tell you what it was like being the grand daughter of burlesque veterans Lillian Hunt and Leon DeVoe. Gramps was a straight man and Granny went from chorus line choreographer to a successful agent for strippers having ‘discovered’ Tempest Storm among others who were ‘graduates’ of her famous school for strippers which was conducted in the rehearsal hall at the Follies. From the orchestra pit to the wings where I often caught strippers’ costumes as they were ‘shed,’ I’ll provide a perspective most little girls never have the good fortune to experience.

And if asked, I can teach you a few classic moves…”

Presentation Two

Finding Ann Dvorak

When Christina Rice checked out a VHS copy of Three on a Match from her local library in 1995, she just expected to enjoy Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart in a snappy 1932 pre-Code film. Instead, she was blindsided by the raw performance of the little-known Ann Dvorak. This encounter would ultimately shape the course of Rice’s adult life, culminating in the publication of the biography Ann Dvorak: Hollywood’s Forgotten Rebel from University Press of Kentucky (2013).

Join author and librarian Christina Rice as she discusses her 15-year quest to uncover the life and career of Ann Dvorak, an actress who was positioned to be one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, but instead countered the powerful studio system -– and suffered the consequences.

The Salon will be followed by a free tour of South Broadway–The Flaneur & The City: Broadway on My Mind walking tour #5.

Youtube Channel link for November 2013 LAVA Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon, Les Noces du Figaro Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon October 2013

Richard Schave

0 2.2k

STREET CLOSURE ALERT: The Rock n’ Roll Half Marathon is scheduled from 7am-1pm in downtown Los Angeles on the day of the Salon. Please read on for routing suggestions to avoid delays and frustration. Here is a map of the road closures for the marathon, and a listing of street opening times in the marathon’s wake. Thoughts on best routes follow: Avoid coming south or east from the freeway exits in the Civic Center (101/110). If coming from Hollywood south on the 101, take Mission and head south to 4th Street and then take that west to Broadway. If coming from West LA, take the 10-East to Mateo and then take 7th street west to Broadway. Surfaces streets all along Flower from Olympic to 3rd and then 3rd across downtown east to the river will be closed, so the above suggestions for the freeways are best. Or one could just take the light rail and walk over from Pershing Square.

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

Presentation One

Behind the Burly Q – Leslie Zemeckis

Join Leslie Zemeckis as she talks about her new book, Behind the Burly Q. Based on her hit documentary, Zemeckis has culled from over a 100 hours of interviews with musicians, strippers, comedians and novelty acts going beyond the g-strings and the tassels. Yes, the mob had a hand in clubs. Stage Door Johnnies sent jewels. Some of the biggest names walked across the burly stages; Abbott and Costello, Gypsy Rose Lee, Bert Lahr, Sophie Tucker and on and on. But there were hundreds of men and women who worked week after week, year after year. Who were they? Where did they come from? And what became of them when burlesque died? Behind the Burly Q takes you on the road with Alan Alda whose father Robert was a “tit” singer. With an emphasis on the star strippers like Lili St. Cyr, Blaze Starr, Tempest Storm, and Dixie Evans, the Marilyn Monroe of Burlesque, women who enjoyed the heights of stardom despite a grueling schedule of 6 shows a day –- and if you worked the carnival circuit, 30 shows a day!

Presentation Two

“Bible Women” and Urban Gospel Welfare Work in Los Angeles, 1890-1925 – Prof. Paul Rood

Prof. Paul Rood of Biola University will introduce us to some of the colorful “Bible Women” of early Los Angeles. These “Bible Women” were an eclectic group of ladies who lived and served in some of the toughest and neediest neighborhoods of Los Angeles, providing a blend of Gospel witness and humanitarian welfare assistance. Christian businessmen such as Lyman Stewart, Samuel Merrill and Frederick Rindge supported and advocated for the “Bible Women” as the strongest and most effective force for good in late Victorian and early progressive era Los Angeles.

Paul Rood is a historian and lecturer in politics and economics at Biola University. He is writing a biography of oil pioneer and evangelical Christian philanthropist Lyman Stewart.

The Salon will be followed by a free tour of South Broadway–The Flaneur & The City: Broadway on My Mind walking tour #4.

Youtube Channel link for October 2013 LAVA Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon, Les Noces du Figaro Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon September 2013

Richard Schave

0 2.3k

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

Presentation One

Aggie Underwood: Crime Reporter. The wicked in Los Angeles have had few peers, and their stories have been so outlandish that they demanded to be told by people who were up to the task. One of the reporters who proved time and again that she was the match for any wayward youth, homicidal wife, husband, or monstrous child killer was Agness “Aggie” Underwood. Over nearly two decades as a reporter, Aggie acquired a reputation as a woman whose gut feelings were as reliable as those of any cop; and as a journalist who would go to great lengths to scoop her competition. Join writer and social historian Joan Renner as she explores the life and work of Agness “Aggie” Underwood.

Read Joan’s tribute to Aggie in July’s Los Angeles Magazine blog.

Presentation Two

Heavenly Bodies, the Skeletons in the Roman Catacombs. Dr. Paul Koudounaris (author of the goth cult classic Empire of Death, the first study of bone-decorated religious sanctuaries) presents a talk with slide show on his soon-to-be-released volume, Heavenly Bodies, the story of skeletons discovered in the Roman Catacombs in the late sixteenth century. Largely anonymous, they were nevertheless held to be the remains of Early Christian martyrs, and treated as sacred. Sent to Catholic churches and religious houses in German-speaking Europe to replace holy relics that had been destroyed in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, the skeletons were carefully reassembled and richly adorned in jewels and precious costumes by teams of nuns. Intended as flamboyant devotional items, they also turned out to be the finest works of art ever created in human bone. Once part of the spiritual life of many people, as time passed the faith in these sumptuously decorated skeletons wavered, and they were cast out during the Enlightenment as remnants of a superstitious and embarrassing Catholic past. Largely forgotten in the annals of religious history, Dr. Koudounaris gained unprecedented access to religious institutions where the surviving decorated skeletons are held. His photographs are the first that were ever taken of many of them, and the images which will accompany his lecture are bizarre, moving, and beautiful.

The Salon will be followed by a free tour of South Broadway–The Flaneur & The City: Broadway on My Mind walking tour #3.

Youtube Channel link for September 2013 LAVA Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon, Les Noces du Figaro Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon August 2013

Richard Schave

0 2.2k

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.

Presentation One

Paul Nugent will give a brief history of The Aetherius Society, the spiritual organization which was brought to Los Angeles by Yoga Master and extraterrestrial contactee Dr. George King in 1959, as part of his mission to help humanity raise itself from universal suffering and ignorance. Dr. King’s initial communication with the Cosmic Master Aetherius occurred in 1954, spurring Dr. King on to found the Society in England the following year. He ran it until his death in 1997; Paul Nugent was a personal assistant to Dr. King and is a current Director of the organization’s American headquarters. Part of the work of The Aetherius Society is predicated on Prayer, and the mental direction of positive energy towards the world’s trouble spots in a manifestation of the concept that consciousness can impact objective reality. The presentation will provide an overview of the fascinating spiritual history of this Hollywood ashram and its ongoing role in the development of new religious thought and action.

Presentation Two

Carlton Davis was the curator and creator of the seminal 1980s micro gallery The Art Dock, located on a loading dock of the endangered 1888 Pickle Works Building, and is author of The Art Dockuments: Tales of the Art Dock: The Drive-by Gallery. Carlton will discuss the 35-year arc (which perhaps is still in midflight?) of the neighborhood’s rise as a working artist’s district, from the illegal warehouse dwellers in the Pickle Works and other derelict structures to the passage of the “Artist In Residence” ordinance to its current incarnation as a hotbed of new residential construction, and all the associated growing pains. What’s next for the Arts District? Carlton will share his thoughts on important people, places and issues to watch.

The salon will end and be followed immediately by a free walking tour of South Broadway.

Youtube Channel link for August 2013 LAVA Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon, Les Noces du Figaro Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon July 2013

Richard Schave

0 2.1k

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.

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, via 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’s 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.

The salon will end and be followed immediately by a free walking tour of South Broadway.

Youtube Channel link for July 2013 LAVA Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon, Les Noces du Figaro Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon June 2013

Richard Schave

0 2.5k

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.

Les Noces du Figaro will have valet parking available.

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.

Youtube Channel link for June 2013 LAVA Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon, Les Noces du Figaro Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon May 2013

Richard Schave

0 2.2k

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.

Youtube Channel link for May 2013 LAVA Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon, Les Noces du Figaro Sunday Salon

LAVA Sunday Salon April 2013

Richard Schave

0 1.7k

On the last Sunday of each month, LAVAÂ 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.

Youtube Channel link LAVA Sunday Salons

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