One of my favorite places on this planet is the tourist attraction in Los Angeles known as Farmers Market. My parents took me there when I was a toddler. In fact, I have a fuzzy but certain memory of being taken along to a baseball game at Gilmore Field, right next door to the Market, when the Hollywood Stars played there. This was before L.A. had a major league team, though come to think of it, there have been many years since the Dodgers moved here when that still seemed to be the case. In any event, the Stars played their last game there in '57 when I was five and I remember being to at least one of them.
Everything in that area then was Gilmore: Gilmore Bank, Gilmore Field, Gilmore Stadium, Gilmore gas station, etc. The Gilmore Bank is still there, though in another building. In the photo above, if you look at the far right, you can see the screen of the now-extinct Gilmore Drive-In where around 1959, I squirmed through a double-feature of Onionhead and Once Upon a Horse. Onionhead was the movie that convinced Andy Griffith to get into television and Once Upon a Horse was the movie that proved Rowan and Martin were not the new Martin and Lewis. Then as now, the Gilmore Company owned and operated the wonderful amalgam of merchants, grocers and eateries that is Farmers Market.
I remember the way Farmers Market looked when I was a kid. Parts of it have been torn down since then but the portions that remain don't look all that much different. Or to put it another way, those sections have probably changed less than almost any other well-travelled part of Los Angeles. I wrote a few other thoughts about it in this post last September…and I even wrote them sitting at a table at Farmers Market.
If any of my friends are as fascinated by the place as I am, they might want to check out the new Farmers Market website. It's just been remodelled and there's a very nice History section with photos aplenty. And now that I've gotten to thinking about it, I have a yearning to dine there. (It wasn't the main reason I picked out the home I now live in, which is within walking distance, but it was a contributing factor.) I think I'll post a link to an article and a link to a video and then take a hike over there for supper. See ya later.