What do a X Rated theater, a parking lot and an old gas station have in common?

[MrMoparCHP]

That is the question.
The other day in looking for a picture I ran into an envelope with these five pictures in it, no description. Normally if I was to look at a picture I'd remember when I took it, where I took it, why I took it and what I had for lunch. With these nothing, I wasn't even sure I took them, I knew they were not a found roll of film as my Barracuda is in some of them (not sure those are the same roll as the exposure/processing is different). I did find the negatives for the theater and gas station, they were on a roll that I knew I took and were together, did not find the negatives for the others.

First up was the theater, I started with it as I felt the "World Premiere" film might give me a date, 1987. I then ran the Google image search on it and got nothing, made a couple adjustments and got images of the theatre but no information as to where. I made another adjustment and then I got a reference to its location. Through this I had tried scouting out a few areas that I thought it might be, I was within a mile but it is gone now. Even knowing where it was it still didn't tell me why I took the pictures

From 2014, it was there as late as 2017

2022

Now as to the why, so I took the address 5959 Hollywood nothing else and put it into Google and searched, lots of reference to the theater, so on to the image search of the address. Again not much, so filter it to Black and White and I scroll down and there it is...

Not sure if this was the picture that inspired me to go chase this down but I know for sure that it was some picture in a magazine.

Now on to the gas station. First I had to locate it, initially searching for the phone number came up empty and I drew lines through LA at that address (a good part of LA does not have a south 3300 block, 3299 goes to 3400). Then in talking with a friend I do the search on my phone and a location with both the phone and address show up. This time I went right to the address search and found some old picture of a hot rod.

Again not sure if these were the pictures I saw.

From 2022

Alan

 

[MrMoparCHP]

Lastly the parking lot, now I know basically why but still no clue where. Google image search was totally useless on this one. Trying to use my phone and zoom in on the buildings to see if I could read anything that could be of use (not as sharp as these scans, that I just did at work).
I was able to come up with Tires Batterys on the left building but not the name above that, no help. So back to the market and not sure why I didn't get it the first time but this time I made out Chapala, in Google Map I zoomed out to show the whole greater Los Angeles area and searched for Chapala Market and there were multiple, the first two were duds and then a hit on the third in Compton. Now keep in mind I was from this area, I was born a few miles away, this Barracuda was purchased in Compton by my grandparents, so this might have been related to an old family photo.

The market was a dead end so the focus turns to the parking lot.

Today there is a building there, from about 1970 to 1990 it was a parking lot prior to that there were buildings.

1972

1962

So this time I searched for the intersection Willowbrook and El Segundo Compton and got nothing, took out the Compton and got a hit.
The first photo I found was of a car in front of a garage on El Segundo Boulevard but nothing tying it to the parking lot location.

So now I started searching for more about the Chrisman & Sons Garage that gave me another picture of three men standing in front of what appears to be a curved front building, back to the 62 aerial, curved front.

Still wanting something more definitive I kept searching till I found this one showing the market across the street.

I still do not recall driving into this part of LA and getting out of the car. But this showed that I was into the Then and Now way back, (age 24). I have boxes of my dads old magazines from the 50s and 60s so I may need to see if I can find the one(s) with the original pictures.


Alan