Archive for September 7th, 2008

Players, Imperial Gardens Location Sadly, Goes to Dodd Mitchell

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

Defunct Miyagi Restaurant

8225 Sunset Boulevard
West Hollywood

In the 1940’s this historic building was the famous club called the Players owned by writer/director Preston Sturges , then in the 1970’s it became the Imperial Gardens where I first met Hoki Tokuda while she performed playing piano and singing in the downstairs bar, she later married well known author, Henry Miller. It then morphed into the Roxbury and finally Miyaki. It has now fallen into the grasp of designer, Dodd Mitchell as his personal project to turn Miyagi into a venture called Ming & Mi. This is really sad, and a great pity that he now has the opportunity to destroy, once again, another establishment with a history and inflict his atrociously bad taste upon it. What is the point. The establishment usually fails after he finishes his redesign.

Update: Trader Vic’s – Los Angeles

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

It appears as if the replacement of the shut Beverly Hills Trader Vic’s will be in downtown at L.A. Live it has been rumored. This Traders will be managed by the Valencia Group, and this may be a good thing as all the relatives and original owners are no longer actively involved in the original corporation. I know a lot of people living in Beverly Hills that will rarely, after taking an initial look, ever drive to downtown L.A., even though most of them have chauffeur driven cars, it is simply too far unless they are going there in the evening for another purpose. Since Trader Vic’s main customer base for the past 50 years have been mainly from the westside of the city; does this make any good business sense or are they trying to develop a new market?