Zippy’s Darkroom

[Zippy, August 17, 2018. Click for a larger view.]

It’s real, and I found it by searching for vintage camera shop. Here’s a page with a color photograph. And here’s a photograph in living black and white:


[“The Dark Room, 5370 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, CA.” Photograph by Marvin Rand. 1972–1977. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Click for a larger view.]

Bill Griffith has drawn The Darkroom in a more recent incarnation as La Boca del Conga. That restaurant disappeared before Google Maps, which does preserve El Toro Cantina, which itself for a time preserved La Boca’s awning. (See the second panel.) Today 5370 is the home of Spare Tire Kitchen & Tavern. The background in the first panel checks out: that tower is real, and dammit, I’ve been to the Staples (not pictured) right across the street from it. And missed The Darkroom. (Not next time!) The signage in the second panel — THERAPY, DRUGS — is, I think, Griffith’s commentary on the function of nostalgia.

 
[El Toro Cantina, 2009. Spare Tire Kitchen & Tavern, 2016. From Google Maps.]

You can read Zippy every day at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)