The long abandoned Golden Gate Theater in East Los Angeles, a few months before its conversion into a CVS. The amazing clam shell in the lobby has apparently been put into storage. I’m guessing the mattresses and other junk have been cleared out as well. As we explored the theater late one night, we were startled to hear a woman shout at us in Spanish from one of the opera boxes. It turned out she was pregnant and living inside the box, and our presence was severely freaking her out. I should add that entering the space involved some moves that wouldn’t necessarily be advisable when carrying a child, which made her presence all the more baffling – but she wasn’t in the mood to chat. I wonder where she ended up and if she still returns to her opera box above the new drugstore now and then, perhaps flinging plastic razors at the shoppers below.
“Are you sure you don’t want to take my picture too?” said the owner of the electronics store when I asked for permission to photograph his storage room. Most people wouldn’t be too thrilled about strangers wandering between their stacks of merchandise, taking photos. But perhaps the employees here are used to sight-seers, since no one paid the least attention when he pointed the way to the back of the building. A generous man, even if he didn’t let me take his portrait after all.
Hardly a stage of decay, this theater has been kept in excellent shape since its closure. Opened in 1910, it was California’s longest running theater until it folded in the 1990s. Like several other original Broadway theaters in Los Angeles, it’s hanging on as a warehouse space. This site has a few dramatic night-time postcards and other information on the former Cameo Theater, also known as Clune’s Broadway.
