ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MADELEINE BRAND, host:
And I'm Madeleine Brand in California.
Mr. CHARLES PHOENIX (Los Angeles Pop Culture Historian): Hi, I'm Charles Phoenix, a Los Angeles pop culture historian.
BRAND: And the first person in our new series we're calling California Characters. While we co-host the show from California, we're profiling people who, in some way, embody the Golden State and can give us some insight, some inside knowledge about what California is all about. It's a place that looms large not only in our economy, but in our collective imagination.
Charles Phoenix loves to imagine what L.A. used to be, and he takes us there. He gives tours of places locals often overlook. I met up with him on Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles, where the city began as a Mexican pueblo.
Mr. PHOENIX: You can get your maracas, your cowboy hat.
BRAND: My favorite - Mexican wrestling outfits for the kids, for the whole family, really. I like that chicken guy. Look at him.
Chicken guys aside, this place is full of the kitschy history that Charles Phoenix has spent his life documenting.
So Charles, when you say that you're a historian, not in the classical sense, i.e., you got your Ph.D. in American history at Harvard. You're really self-taught and it is your passion. Where did this come from?
Mr. PHOENIX: Well, that's a good question. I mean, basically, it all started -I was raised on a used car lot. I mean, well, we actually had a house, but my dad was a used car dealer. So I got tuned into vintage cars at an early age, and then I was so fascinated by them, always, that I kind of attached myself to what else came from the period of these vintage cars that I liked so much. And then I decided I want to really kind of go out in the world and see what's left of all this old stuff. And I started with my own, you know, community, which is Los Angeles.
BRAND: When people who aren't from here think of L.A., a lot of them have probably cliched images of Los Angeles, the never-ending sprawl, or the Hollywood sign, or the beach. If you could disabuse anyone of that image and tell them what L.A. really is, what would you say?
Mr. PHOENIX: I think a lot of the charm of Los Angeles, a lot of what I call authentic L.A., gets kind of swept under the rug these days, and they don't know to come to Olvera Street and have a taco or a taquito on the patio, or they don't know to go to Clifton's Cafeteria and see, you know, old-school L.A.
It is one of the last surviving cafeterias, large-scale cafeterias in the entire country. It's not the last one. It's done in a themed environment, which it's been since 1935. It's incredible. There's a waterfall in this restaurant from the 1930s.
BRAND: Now, when you say authentic Los Angeles, I'm interested in how you say what's authentic is a theme. So it's already kind of one step removed from reality in terms of it being a manufactured state, a manufactured environment. That's interesting to me. That's very Los Angeles.
Mr. PHOENIX: Well, it is. I mean, you know, Disneyland perfected, you know, themed environmental spaces. And I'm a child of Disneyland. I grew up in the '60s and '70s. And so the reality for me is I - wherever I travel in the world, I kind of accidentally sometimes go, wow, that reminds me of Disneyland, or, you know, driving up and down any street, I'll go, oh, that's kind of Adventureland. Oh, if it's Western, that's kind of Frontierland, or if it's futuristic or modern, I'm saying, oh, that's kind of Tomorrowland, you know?
I was in Paris going down the Seine River on one of their riverboat tours, and everything was all lit so beautifully and everything, and I said to my French friend, I said, this boat ride down the Seine River kind of reminds me of Disneyland.
I do not discriminate against the classic and the kitschy cultures. Like, themed environments would be kind of a kitschy culture, yet a museum or whatever would probably be - or a historic building, would be classic. I like to study both, and I like to pair them because one kind of complements the other, one kind of relieves the other.
BRAND: So you've got the Disney Concert Hall, which is considered high art, right up the hill from where we are now, Olvera Street, which is considered a kitschy, themed environment.
Mr. PHOENIX: You got it, and one goes hand in hand with the other. To me they blend like salt and pepper.
BRAND: What is your favorite treasure that you've discovered lately about Los Angeles? So you're saying that you keep discovering all these things about Los Angeles, you're constantly searching for Americana and undiscovered neighborhoods in Los Angeles. What's the most interesting find you've come across recently?
Mr. PHOENIX: Well, recently, since you ask, I was driving down Whittier Boulevard, which is an old, main thoroughfare from between downtown Los Angeles and the southeast suburbs of L.A., and I saw this building from the '20s that I'd only seen in a book before, and it's - well, it's shaped like a tamale. You've heard of, like, the famous Brown Derby and the big doughnut and all that. Well, here's a big, giant tamale that used to be - it's from the '20s - it used to be this tamale stand. Now, well, it's a Spanish-speaking income tax office.
But still, I want to encourage people to be tourists in their own town. But, you know, you've got to take a chance and go somewhere that you may not have been before or thought, well, I'm not interested in that. Get interested in it.
BRAND: Cultural historian Charles Phoenix sharing his interest in Los Angeles and its high and low culture. If you want to see him and Olvera Street, there's a video at our blog, The Two-Way, it's at npr.org.
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