Tearing Down the Tower

memories of Tower Records...

[Every so often I look through past essays — like this one, from the Los Angeles Times —  to see how it holds up. To see how wrong I was, or, in this case, to remember what a city like LA chooses to preserved and what it chooses to tear down. Spoiler Alert: they never followed-through on the plans to demolish the old Tower Records on Sunset. It’s still an ugly stucco box, like the rest of Los Angeles….]

When they tore down the old Bob Burns Restaurant, on Wilshire and Ocean, I said nothing, for I never really went to Bob Burns.

            When they tore down the El Patio Burrito Burger in West LA, I said nothing, for I mostly went to La Salsa.  Also: they replaced it with a UPS Store, which I find a convenient resource for packing and sending parcels.

            When they tore down the Nicodell Restaurant on Melrose to make a larger parking lot for Paramount Studios, I said nothing, for I worked at Paramount Studios at the time, and wanted a parking space closer to my office.

            And when they came for the Tower Records on Sunset, I said nothing.  For I use iTunes.

You heard me right: they’re tearing down the Tower Records on Sunset. 

What are you going to do about it?

Bright yellow stucco box, mile-high “Tower Records” in red paint along the side, surly fireplug of a guy standing by the door, making sure you don’t “inadvertently” dash across the street to Book Soup after parking in the Tower lot – it all comes back, doesn’t it? – this is the spot that has been the beating heart of Los Angeles rock-and-roll since 1971.

1971! That’s, like, ancient history.  And that’s what they’re trying to do: they’re trying to destroy our ancient history.

I remember way back in the early nineties, when I first had a little spending money in my pocket, on Sunday nights having a Chinese Chicken Salad at Chin Chin, then heading over to Tower, buying fistfuls of CDs – Spin Doctors!  Alice in Chains! Counting Crows! The Nirvana album with the naked baby on the cover! – and sitting in the parking lot like a junkie, ripping open the jewel boxes and loading them by the half-dozen into my Jeep Wrangler’s CD changer, and taking the long way home to the beach.

And now it’s going to be, what? Some kind of retail/office/residence development?  The Homes of Tower Pointe? Paseo Tower?  The Tower Tower?

It’s going to be a gym, apparently.  With some high-end retail and some offices, according to the developers who own the place.  They’re going to pave paradise and put up a Pinkberry, probably.  That’s what it’s come to, here in Southland: working, shopping, and physical fitness – forget history, forget preserving the old ways.  Out with the old, in with the YogaWorks.

There are people right now, apparently, trying to preserve the old Tower Records.  People who are charmed by its squat and windowless pizzazz.  People who, like me, remember those chipped concrete steps, the intoxicating smell of shrink wrap and drunkenness (with a waft of cheap weed thrown in) that clouded around you went you walked in the door.  We remember, and we want to preserve.

Just the building, though.  Tower Records the company went bankrupt last year, a victim of the internet thing that the kids are so into.  Downloading this and that with abandon, they’ve forgotten the old, simpler joys of yesteryear, when we all used to slice the tender skin just beneath the thumbnail, trying to open the soundtrack to the hit film, “Singles.”

There’s no way, of course, to bring back the splendid frustration of trying to open a brand-new CD – the plastic wrapping, the thick adhesive-tape label, the metallic band-aid sealing it all shut – and there’s no way to recreate the hipster sneer behind the counter when you trundled up with your purchases – Hey!  The Ani diFranco is for my girlfriend, okay? ­­– but surely there’s a way to preserve the featureless, drab box that contained those experiences?

Yes, yes, of course Los Angeles is dotted with thousands – maybe tens of thousands – of depressing stucco sheds, and I know that we can’t possibly preserve them all, but this is the one where I bought Mariah Carey’s first album (on a whim, okay?) and where I saw my very first celebrity (consumer reporter David Horowitz.  I think.) And now they’re going to tear it down?  Tear down my memories? 

When they came for the Pioneer Chicken on Barrington, I said nothing, for I preferred KooKooRoo.  When they came for the old Chasen’s, I said nothing, for I thought, “Bristol Farms? I’ll give it a try.”  And when they came for whatever was where the Sunset 5 is now, I said nothing, for I couldn’t really picture what was there, and in any case, I liked the idea of a Burke-Williams on that side of town.

And now they’re coming for the Tower Records on Sunset.  And there’s nothing we can do about it.

But to the developers of the high end retail/office/gym complex that will eventually occupy that magical corner, I offer a warning: some day, they’ll come for you.  And there will be no one left to speak up.  We’ll all be at Pinkberry.