Swifties keep showing up at this historic Los Angeles dive bar
A large neon sign hangs outside the Golden Gopher in Los Angeles on Sept. 4, 2025. Paula Mejia/SFGATE
From SFGate: On a busy stretch of Eighth Street in downtown Los Angeles, taco trucks circle a smattering of hotels and fast-casual chains like Sweetgreen and Shake Shack. Amid the cafes and takeout spots, an old-school liquor store — complete with a crackling neon sign out front — offers full bottles of amaro, nips of booze and cases of beer to go.
A bottle shop wedged into this slice of downtown LA, mere blocks from clubs and concert venues, isn’t out of the ordinary on its face. But this liquor store is different. It’s housed entirely inside a longtime dive bar called Golden Gopher.
For bars in California, a Type 48 liquor license — which allows the sale of alcoholic beverages (crucially, that includes beer, wine and spirits) to be consumed on-site, and without requiring food service — is coveted. But Golden Gopher has something that’s even more precious. The bar/store possesses something that’s virtually unheard of in California these days: a Type 21 license, a retail permit authorizing “the sale of beer, wine and distilled spirits for consumption off the premises where sold.”
After Its Sudden Closure, Landmark Los Angeles Diner the Original Pantry Cafe Will Reopen
AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
From Eater: Landmark Los Angeles restaurant the Original Pantry Cafe will reopen following its sudden closure in March 2025 after 101 years in business. The legendary diner, which operated seven days a week, 24 hours a day for most of its tenure, closed due to a dispute between unionized workers and its owner, the Richard J. Riordan family trust. Leo Pustilnikov, a real estate entrepreneur and the Original Pantry Cafe’s new owner, says he aims to reopen the restaurant on New Year’s Eve.
Unite Here 11, the union that represents the Pantry’s workers, announced the reopening in a press release on September 9, which detailed a press conference to follow on September 11. A handful of local publications erroneously reported that the Original Pantry Cafe would reopen on September 11. On the morning of the press conference, just before 9 a.m., a line stretched down James M. Wood Boulevard with onlookers who seemed to be waiting for the doors to open.
Group calls for conserving 13 sites with links to Latino history
The Silver Platter bar in Los Angeles. Google Maps
From NBC News: For decades, the Silver Platter bar has been a haven for Latino and LGBTQ people in the Los Angeles area, attracting a cross-border clientele looking for a place where they can fully be themselves. Now that haven is at imminent risk of demolition amid plans to develop the site.
“This bar is historic,” owner Margarita Xatruch said about the space, which was built in the 1920s and has been open as a bar since 1963, as well as the subject of a documentary. “Everyone knows it, everyone knows they can come here to celebrate. And it’s very important so that we can continue the Latin legacy we have here,” she added, sitting in one of the red vinyl chairs that decorate the space, which is also famous in the Westlake neighborhood for its neon sign.
Unburied Ghosts Still Haunt Plaza
Ghost Parking Lot, circa 1977. SITE
From the New Haven Independent: The ghost cars are history. But their ghosts remain.
Richard Drufva sensed the ghosts when he stood outside of ShopRite the other day in Hamden Plaza. Strictly speaking, the place is not gone. But the cars —the ghost cars— are.
“It’s funny having a memory of a place that you used to frequent,” he said, “and it’s just gone now.”
The Plaza is still alive and well, with only a few vacancies. DiMatteo’s Pizza is still there. It opened the same year Drufva graduated from Hamden High School a few hundred feet to the South — 1972. So is Pearle Vision, which opened the next year.
But gone is the day when Hamden Plaza was at the front of a wave of innovation — first in the retail world, and later in the art world. And with it went the most prominent symbol of that innovative spirit: James Wines’ Ghost Parking Lot, composed of 20 cars “parked” along the Dixwell Avenue side of the parking lot, sinking to various levels into the pavement under a black blanket of asphalt.
A San Francisco neon mystery is about to be unveiled for the first time
A mock-up of the Egyptian Theatre’s marquee is part of a collection of mock-ups of neon signs erected across the Bay Area by the company Wonderlite. The collection was recently donated to the Letterform Archive. Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
From SFGate: On a drizzly December evening, Randall Ann Homan and Al Barna walked through the doors of an unassuming building tucked away on a quiet street in San Rafael and found themselves transported to another world.
Greeting the co-founders of SF Neon was a life-sized sculpture of Humphrey Bogart in his white suit from “Casablanca,” his fiberglass visage reflecting off an array of retro pinball machines blinking and glowing from every corner. The private collection had been sourced over the years by their friend and fellow history fanatic, muralist Dan Fontes. But they weren’t necessarily there to see the games.
Rounding the corner, past old diner signs, jukeboxes and the unwavering gaze of more than a hundred vintage Raggedy Ann dolls, Homan and Barna followed Fontes to a box in the kitchen as his bulldog, Marilyn Monroe, trailed behind them. One by one, Fontes meticulously laid out a series of paintings on top of the narrow glass covering the playfield of a coin-operated machine.
I run a nearly 100-year-old New Jersey diner. I won’t serve avocados on my menu.
The booths, bar stools, countertop, and tile flooring in Summit Diner are all original to when it opened in 1939. Carla Mende/David Degner/Business Insider
From Business Insider: This story was adapted from Jim Greberis’ interview with Business Insider’s Abby Narishkin for the “Big Business” video series. Greberis runs and co-owns Summit Diner with his wife, Michele. Summit began serving customers in the late 1920s and moved to its current location in 1939. It’s one of New Jersey’s oldest diners. This essay has been edited for length and clarity.
My uncle and father-in-law bought Summit Diner in 1964, and I began working here in 1980, so I’ve been here for 45 years. I’ve had customers who have been coming here since they were five and are now grown adults. It’s a tight-knit community. We get everyone from bankers and construction workers to tourists and professional athletes coming in here.
What’s kept me in the diner business for so long is that this is what I know. I’ve been in it since I was 12. My dad owned a diner in Irvington and would drag me to it every weekend.
Neon Museum to re-light last remaining sign from Dunes Hotel and Casino
Exterior of the Dunes Hotel and Casino at night in Las Vegas, Nevada, June 5, 1958. Credit: Las Vegas News Bureau
From KSNV: LAS VEGAS — The Neon Museum in Las Vegas announced it will reilluminate the last remaining publicly displayed sign from the Dunes Hotel and Casino.
A public lighting is planned for Friday, Sept. 26, after a five-month restoration effort led by Hartlauer Signs.
The museum worked on restoring the sign after purchasing it in 2002, according to a news release.