Basements and Chocolate

Downtown Los Angeles is a cultural oddity within the larger anomaly known as America. As the comedian Eddie Izzard once pointed out, Americans tear down their history, and this is probably a bit appropriate; it's really a young country in the grand scheme of things and had a good lead on the rest of the world for being able to embrace the new. A further gag comes to mind with Steve Martin in L.A. Story giving an architectural tour to a British visitor and pointing out the history of the city through its houses: "Some of these homes are twenty years old."

And yet I think there's currently a big retracing of this sentiment that you can really find tangible evidence of where I live. A glance out at the downtown skyline from where I live frames the modern highrises as a backdrop against which you'll see the grand old hotels from the turn of the century, and the warrens before them from somewhere in between.

On 6th Street, between Spring and Broadway I think, there's a line of bodegas selling cheap and bootleg audio equipment, little walk-in closet-sized shops that sell junk food, and any number of people hawking goods of dubious nature and use in any language that happens to not be English. And right in the middle of this block, there was a walled-off grotto that was recently unearthed and brought back to its former glory. When you pass by, you might get whiplash from stopping and staring in disbelief. It's exactly one hundred years old as of this writing and is nothing but one big piece of Dutch tile art. It's known as The Chocolate Shop and it's very, very gorgeous and out of place in the rat den that surrounds it.

It's being polished up for use as a restaurant, you can only get in on Saturdays after making an appointment with the Los Angeles Conservancy down the street, and I was strictly forbidden from photographing it.

Don't worry, that didn't stop me. I snapped a few surreptitious pictures, but there was a bigger payoff down the road.

The next day I went to the wholesale district on a tip from a friend about some underground crawlspaces that went beneath Main Street, at one point with light filtering down through a street grate. Something he had discovered as a child in the 80s. So I went by expecting to set up an appointment in a week or two, but the owner himself came down to let me in. And brother, the place hadn't seen the good graces of man in a while.

Yeah, hope you're not claustrophobic. It's tight down there. 

What creepy basement is complete without an abandoned shower?

 

See if that tells you how long the place has been abandoned. The owner regaled me with stories of Prohibition-era shootouts in the upstairs area of the same location.

So the owner is this 90-year-old Isreali man who is still really spry and active, and he takes to my enthusiasm for the basement, offering to show me something else he owns. A building, he says, with old tile art.

"The Dutch Chocolate Shop!?" I ask, and he confirms it. I've just stumbled dick-first onto the guy who can okay one of the ultimate downtown photo fests. Camera ready, let's go!

So here it is; this out of time place, this other Netherlands, this... just this.

 

It's a gorgeous world out there. Have you taken a bite lately?