{"id":306666,"date":"2026-05-08T22:05:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T22:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/306666\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T22:05:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T22:05:14","slug":"artist-gary-baseman-reactivates-johnies-coffee-shop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/306666\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Gary Baseman Reactivates Johnie’s Coffee Shop"},"content":{"rendered":"

The long-closed landmark at Wilshire and Fairfax will be open for the next five weeks<\/p>\n

Johnie\u2019s at Wilshire and Fairfax is one of L.A.\u2019s jazziest jet age masterpieces, but the onetime 24-hour coffee shop has been locked up since before Billie Eilish was born. Tonight, the doors swing open again as the space is temporarily reimagined as an art gallery for the work of Gary Baseman<\/a>, an artist who has exhibited around the world but grew up down the street. Baseman loves his neighborhood and jumped at the opportunity to exhibit his latest \u201caction paintings\u201d inside a building he has known his entire life.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Off the Menu at Johnie\u2019s Coffee Shop Credit: Artwork by Gary Baseman<\/p>\n

Baseman\u2019s work ranges from fine art oil paintings to vinyl figures to his own Disney TV show, Teacher\u2019s Pet<\/a>. In 2013, he recreated his childhood home inside the Skirball Museum <\/a>using his parents\u2019 actual furniture. He has always been inspired by the sights and sounds of Fairfax Avenue, where he spent many years visiting his mother working the bakery counter inside Canter\u2019s Deli. Today, that landmark has a booth dedicated to Baseman\u2019s art.<\/p>\n

Restaurants have always been a favorite place for Baseman to work, and he is never without a notebook to sketch in. For the past few years, he has been augmenting his observations of L.A. life atop artifacts from the places themselves. Drawing and painting diners and fanciful dinner scenes on menus, stationery and to-go boxes from landmarks like Musso and Frank and Chateau Marmont.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Johnie\u2019s Coffee ShopCredit: Photo by Jim Winstead\/Flickr<\/p>\n

In Baseman\u2019s world, cats eat sushi at Genghis Cohen and a drooling snowman can mingle amidst glamour girls in silk qipao dresses at Formosa Caf\u00e9. The Bob Baker Marionettes <\/a>seem to really enjoy hanging out at Joy, a Taiwanese place on their block in Highland Park. Baseman says the show is a \u201clove letter\u201d to his hometown and the iconic restaurants that have come to define it. He completes each artwork before the meal ends.<\/p>\n

His big, loud colorful style captures the fun and life of these famous places, through what he calls his \u201cdream reality\u201d lens, which lets mythical creatures mingle amidst diners. His scenes are often spiked with a pink elephant or flying dog that we\u2019re pretty sure were not with him when he visited. Gary\u2019s most faithful companion is Toby, a cartoon feline in a fez that the artist describes as everyone\u2019s \u201cbest friend\u201d and \u201ckeeper of secrets.\u201d Toby is an \u201call-knowing and compassionate cat with a great sense of curiosity and adventure.\u201d Would someone without a sense of adventure take the offer to turn a long-closed restaurant into an art gallery in a few weeks? \u201cI went to high school with Howie Gold, the son of the guy who started the 99 Cents stores and we started talking about their places that might be available,\u201d Baseman tells Los Angeles. \u201cI wanted a venue in the neighborhood where I was born and raised for my first solo show in a dozen years. This art has been really important to me, especially since the pandemic, to be social and also create something new and interesting capturing the moment. They were so generous to offer Johnie\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Gary Baseman at Johnie\u2019s Coffee ShopCredit: Photo by Tyler Curtis<\/p>\n

Scroll to continue reading<\/p>\n

Johnie\u2019s<\/a> is a googie-style architectural masterpiece of the highest order, designed by Armet & Davis, who also brought you Norms, Pann\u2019s and Mel\u2019s Drive-In in Santa Monica. The exaggerated butterfly roofline, the acres of glass and the screamingly loud signage are all hallmarks of the optimistic and enthusiastic googie style that touched down in Southern California after World War II. Places like Johnie\u2019s brought a high-style design experience to the humble act of buying a hamburger and brought a popular luxury to be experienced by anyone.<\/p>\n

The restaurant opened in 1955 as Romeo\u2019s Times Square and was declared a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2013. When Dave Gold was expanding his 99 Cents Only Stores empire in the 1990s, he picked up the corner real estate as overflow parking. \u201cThe reason we wanted it,\u201d Gold\u2019s son-in-law Eric Schiffer told the Los Angeles Times in 2003. \u201cis because it had no customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The long-shuttered space has been a popular filming location over the years, including turns in The Big Lebowski and Miracle Mile, but for the last decade, that parking lot has been used as a staging area for the construction of the Metro D Line<\/a>, which opens today. The Gold family allowed Community Solidarity Project<\/a>, a nonprofit mutual aid operation that went all in on supporting Bernie Sanders\u2019 presidential runs in 2016 and 2020, to use the building as a meeting space for years. The Gold family has recently cleaned up the building and relit its miles of neon, so the future is looking brighter. \u00a0\u201cI\u2019m so honored to show my work at Johnie\u2019s,\u201d Baseman says. \u201cI\u2019m so glad this googie building still exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to original artwork for sale, the show includes photo enlargements of Baseman\u2019s original notebooks and custom t-shirts, coffee mugs, art prints by Aardvark press and souvenirs. \u201cI won\u2019t be in there all the time,\u201d Baseman says. \u201cBut come in and you might find me drawing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pop-up exhibition Off The Menu: Dining and Drawing in L.A.<\/a> includes more than 40 original menu drawings and opens tonight with a public opening from 3-7 p.m. with food, ice cream and the Bob Baker Marionettes. There is a reception from 6-9 p.m. and will run from Wednesday through Sunday through June 14, from noon until 7 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The long-closed landmark at Wilshire and Fairfax will be open for the next five weeks Johnie\u2019s at Wilshire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[129003,129004,32785,129005,128267,20405,39354,129006,48,52,51,47,50,49,129007],"class_list":["post-306666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-armet-davis","tag-canters-deli","tag-chateau-marmont","tag-formosa-cafe","tag-gary-baseman","tag-genghis-cohen","tag-googie-architecture","tag-johnies-coffee-shop","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-musso-and-frank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}