We revisit The Grove shopping complex in Los Angeles. There we find this example of retro-faux Hollywood art-deco architecture mixed with contemporary, urban shopping-center chic: the The Grove movie theater. We’ve got really mixed feelings about this sort of thing, but to its credit the facade is an attempt to incorporate historic LA arhictectural cues. This multiplex is across the (fake) street from the Apple Computer Store, so you can check your email and surf the Net for free before seeing a movie or after your movie ends. And, of course, you can look at Apple iPods, G5s, digital cameras, iMacs, etc. In fact, we noticed a lot of theater-goers flooding into the Apple Store after a movie let out, so there’s an interesting economic and geographic symbiosis going on here.

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In the previous post, we mentioned the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Many of the stores here are the same big branded chains you can find in any shopping mall in the US, or for that matter in any major industrialized city around the developed world–Starbucks, Banana Republic, Barnes & Noble, etc. One shop we’re surpised to see here, however, is the Von Dutch clothing/lifestyle store pictured here. Von Dutch is a name that has been around for decades, but as a name purely resurrected as licensed fashion label for t-shirts, etc., its life has been very short and very recent. Von Dutch can be partially credited for the trucker hat trend of the past three years (a trend which seems to be finally, gradually fading out). Von Dutch didn’t start the trucker hat trend, but some style-conscious marketing genius quickly cottoned on to it early and commercially exploited it under the Von Dutch label. In doing so helped push the trucker hat fashion past the tipping point and into big-grid Mall-of-America mass popularity.

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Almost every major city of the developed world seems to now have an Apple Store. Tokyo? Got one. New York? Of course. Paris, Yup. Los Angeles? No. “No?” you say. “What?” you ask, “LA doesn’t have an Apple Store?” OK, let’s clarify: LA doesn’t have “an” Apple Store; it has TWO Apple Stores, which makes the City of Angels one of the best places on the planet to hunt down an iPod, iMac or iWhatever directly from the source. Here is a shot of the Apple emporium at The Grove, the hugely popular outdoor shopping mall that looks like Disneyland’s Main Street, but planted in Hollywood’s Fairfax district. The second LA Apple shop is in Santa Monica, at another outdoor shopping mall called Third Street Promenade, which is a comfortable place to surf the Internet for free, or test drive digital cameras and contemplate that Mac iPod or iWhatever you want so badly.

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The first of a series of graphica images from the City of Angels this past week show the logo painted on the wall of the dining patio at Pink’s hotodog stand. This famous LA weiner shack near the corner of LA Brea and Melrose avenues in Hollywood was opened 66 years ago. It’s still popular with local celebs despite the tourists who make the pilgrimage here for La La Land’s best frankfurters.

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In this shot, a shopper in a hoodie checks out the freshest kicks at the A Bathing Ape store, Busy Work Shop, in SoHo, New York City.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Here’s another interior view from the front of the A Bathing Ape store, Busy Work Shop, in SoHo, New York City. Caught in the snap are a couple of A Bathing Ape staff and a customer.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Taking photos inside the new A Bathing Ape store, aka Busy Work Shop, in New York City is forbidden, as in most retail spaces. So without a telephoto lens, the best snap of the shop’s interior was straight through the front. Here we see the interior design and some of the choice, limited edition merch along the wall beyond the sneaker conveyor in the display window. In the back of the store stands a stern-looking staff member, who seemed to be staring at us with disapproval as we took the photo from the street. The employee, a young Japanese woman, is probably a really nice, amiable person and a hard, loyal worker, too.

Ivan Corsa Photo

The the signage at the new A Bathing Ape store consists of the brand name, logo and shop name etched in a large plate glass window. The Ape logo is directly inspired by the Planet of Apes iconography. Nigo, the Japanese designer and founder of the A Bathing Ape brand, is an serious “otaku” Planet of the Apes fan and is said to have the fifth-largest collection of POA memorabilia in the world.

Ivan Corsa Photo

This is a shot of the storefront for the new A Bathing Ape store in NYC. The store is called “Busy Work Shop,” and occupies two floors in a newly renovated space in SoHo.

Ivan Corsa Photo

In late December, with little discernible fanfare, the first ever official North American outpost of the exclusive, quasi-underground Japanese clothing label A Bathing Ape (also known as BAPE) hung out its shingle on a cobblestone street in SoHo, NYC. Here is a shot of the main store window display, which features a moving “kaiten” of limited edition Bathing Ape sneakers. (A “kaiten” refers to a kind of rotating conveyor belt or carousel used to ferry small seafood dishes around some large sushi bars in Japan.)

Ivan Corsa Photo