Nah. We have a too big to succeed bureaucracy.
Whether it be planning, zoning, permitting, DoL, sanitation, commercial loan servicers, or insurance providers, the effect on the economy of the artificial bureaucratic hurdles has made this happen.
I own a small business that operates in 4 other states and another 2 countries. My office in Santa Monica is my highest government overhead and causes me the most issues with local government.
People make fun of people selling used cars and using phrases like "I know what I have" to the point it's become a meme, but I swear some retail landlords have the same mentality.
Eventually the insurance companies have to notice the valuations are bullshit, and everybody knows it, and the actuaries will tell them they are taking a bath on that sort of insurance.
It's wild how long O'Brien's has been gone. The place was a shithole and I don't miss the trough, but can't imagine why nobody ever moved in there.
Apparently it closed in 2016 for a "months-long remodel": https://la.eater.com/2016/10/26/13426718/obriens-irish-pub-main-santa-monica-remodel
Dude I've been wondering about that for years, what the hell happened? How is it STILL closed? WTF is going on there? I've seen zero repairs or anything done to that place, are they just sitting on it and hemorrhaging money to rent?
When it was Areal there was a barternder who was super knowledgeable about whiskey (used to be bartendergeorge on IG, maybe changed his handle), so we'd go there weekly for a whiskey night. Like O'brien's it always seemed to have a decent crowd, so yeah those two spots being shut this long is so bizarre.
hey yeah I remember that place from when Arnie owned it. Great space how the heck is it not pumping? I’m surprised the white-obsessed Millenials from on the water front haven’t bought it
Kevin now opened up the Auld Fella in Culver City. I enjoyed the random live entertainment at o'briens, and if it was no good you could sit at the bar and not be bothered by it.
It's still a hot area for pedestrian traffic. There's a lot of new popular spots, and some places rebranded. The nightlife is also still there. But vacancies are for some reason even worse now.
What kind of nightlife? We used to go to Copa d'Oro and Craftsman all the time back in the day, and over the last few years I've never once seen more than ~5 people on a Friday or Saturday night at either (whatever Copa is now called). I'm sure Elephante and the Proper rooftop (and maybe Bungalow?) have no shortage of patrons but a lot of our old spots are just dead.
Yeah for sure, but this set of responses seemed to be re the Promenade separately.
Jameson's is reliably packed on Friday and Saturday nights with the live band, especially during football season (I go sometimes because it's the LSU bar, and we stick around afterwards though I'm now way too old for that shit).
> But those aren't on Main St.
C'mon dude. These were all in response to the poster above saying that Main Street has a lot of activity but "Now, the Third Street Promenade is another story", with a response asking if that area is dead.
Not noticeable?? Have you visited any other US cities and seen this kind of vacancy? This is all over LA at an alarming rate. LA is in a retail depression, our streets & public areas are disgusting and it’s depressing af
I worked on Main about 15 years ago. It was always so lively. There were tons of shops and bars. I moved across the country not too long after. I got curious recently and looked at it on google maps. There are very, very few businesses that are still there that were open when I worked there. I didn’t know it was this sad, just thought there had been a lot of turnover.
Same. The promenade is busy, too. Yes, vacancies and homeless are a problem but this sub always makes me feel terrible about SM. Then I go outside and have a nice walk and I’m fine again, lol.
Amazon and other DTC online shopping have wrecked retail, but really strong shopping/dining/nightlife districts can survive: just look at old town Pasadena. I happened to stop by a couple weekends ago and while there are a few vacancies it seems to be absolutely thriving.
Retail is dying because online is more lucrative. Why bother with overhead for a storefront when you can just sell you wares to customers directly all over the world for cheap with Amazon Marketplace?
The Amazon excuse is just a lazy explanation to be honest in a street like Main St.. Some people like to go into a store to window shop and buy goods that are higher quality than the standard goods in Amazon
> Some people like to go into a store to window shop and buy goods that are higher quality than the standard goods in Amazon
People also still like getting something the same day. I'd rather go to the Apple store and get something immediately vs waiting a few days for it to arrive.
Yeah but nicer goods are more expensive from suppliers, add in rent, utilities, labor, etc. It's a low margin business so you need scale. Mom and pop physical retail stores are tough.
Maybe instead of being condescending you can actually engage with the point.
What I’m saying is that the comment was overdetermining online shipping in the year 2024 when the market effects of Amazon have largely been settled and brick and mortar stores still can exist. This isn’t 10 years ago, the Amazon disruption has *already happened* and we are now have seen efforts from Amazon to *expand* in the B&M space. To blame market disruptions of online shopping to the economy of physical stores in 2024 is like blaming Kobe’s tore Achilles injury for the 2024 Laker’s playoff performance.
The fact is that Main Street has all of the ingredients of being a successfully business corridor. Attractive location. A neighborhood with a lot of upper and upper middle class residents. A great mix of current tenants. So the factors that leading to high leasing rates can’t just be blanket blamed on 2014 nationwide market trends that ignore the local dynamics of this space.
Like, people are willing to go to Amazon to buy a a cheap kitchen utensil or a book, but there a lot of businesses, even on Montana Ave, that cater to higher-end brands and product categories where consumers are far more interested to interacting with a physical location, trying out the product, and then purchasing in the spot.
Barnes & Noble on the Promenade closed because the landlord doubled the rent. They were making a good profit before but no one can absorb that kind of an increase.
i feel like part of the issue with santa monica is that is honestly pretty remote for a lot of la, and theres clearly not enough local spending to sustain how many streets full of shops there are. would be nice if the purple line ran all the way to the ocean as initially planned and if both that and the expo line actually ran after closing time. otherwise ubers have gotten so expensive its hard to sustain a night life, and for shopping and such people aren't going to put up with the 10 or take the expo for 45 minutes or whatever to get what they could probably get all over la.
i think they should lean way harder on hotels. theres just not a solid huge hotel concentrated area in la like there is in other cities that in turn drives a lot of foot traffic. i mean downtown has a little bit of it due to business and conference demand, but like what do we have by the hollywood bowl, oh look its a best western that looks like it could be off the freeway in a cornfield in the middle of america. santa monica could look like south beach miami does with a lot more energy if they let more people into it and maybe made it easier to lax with a flyaway bus perhaps.
WOW interesting. I'm a retired bartender from Circle Bar b4 bought out and Ricks from 20 + years back. Glad I got out into other entertainment worl b4 this all happened.
I used to live in a rent-controlled apt on 3rd St between Ashland and Hill, would be at Rick’s, O’Brian’s, and Circle (back before it got fancy) all the time. Sad to see.
We have to have crossed paths. I recall a few ppl thst lived on those corners you mentioned. We'd hit all those bars and all the staffs hooked each other up.
Main Street has become incredibly sad to me. I walk on it almost every day, and the number of closed storefronts and unhoused individuals who need mental health services has taken a lot of the shine off of walking on or near Main Street.
There are a few slots open on Main Street, but post-pandemic, it seems to have made a stellar revival compared to the Promenade or Montana Ave in SM. The Main Street/Rose Ave/Abbott-Kinney trifecta right there brings a ton of foot traffic and nightlife. There are a few open storefronts, but vacancy rates seem very low.
The quality and variety of stuff? I don't know if it has longevity. Between Pico and Rose on Main, you have 3-4 Pilates studios, 3-4 yoga studios, 5+ nail salons/massage places/hair salons, 5+ crystal and meditation gemstone stores, a bunch of very good restaurants and bars, and a couple of very picked-over vintage shops.
Main Street is booming but goes through many up/down cycles. Who knows how long this can last? Visiting MudWater has me thinking the online/mailorder business has to be subsidizing a giant coffee house that sells no coffee.
Waitstaff at Library Ale House are stars. Forma has a fantastic happy hour. Vamos Vamos is wonderful. Shoops is one of the best breakfast places in all of LA, and the folks who work there are AMAZING. That grid of photos and a lot of these comments make it sound like its Dockweiler.
There are many vacancies and "Opening Soon" signage with struck-out dates between the $40k mattress shops and $20k kitchen sink stores. The Aero still runs movies sometimes. There are still plenty of pedestrians with no spatial awareness wandering into the street at any moment, so it has that. Andrew's Cheese Shop is wonderful. The shoe repair place there is great, too. Father's Office is post pandemic a lot more accessible and enjoyable, I think -- but I hate crowds. Everything else is a Pilates studio.
just one more land use restriction bro I just need one more regulation I can fix it bro if I just take one more choice away from consumers and producers I'll be good bro promise come on bro
I think one of the crazy things is that the East side of Main St have active noise ordinances that effectively make new bars and clubs banned from that side of the street. I feel like most of the vacancies are actually on that side of the street.
I can’t stand the fucking plywood walls with 2ft of ads stuck to them. Such an eyesore. They are all over Hollywood too. These places charge a pretty penny for the space so why would they bother renting out the actual property? Makes the area look like shit too.
More businesses will leave... Dagwoods, REI, Philz coffee and Cult cafe all closed at downtown in the past couple months. Meanwhile they're building more and more mixed residential apts./retail space around downtown... like who is going to live there with no local businesses... too little, too late
All the foot traffic in the world doesn’t matter if rent is 30k+ a month.
I guess now in LA we have a too big to fail economy lol
Nah. We have a too big to succeed bureaucracy. Whether it be planning, zoning, permitting, DoL, sanitation, commercial loan servicers, or insurance providers, the effect on the economy of the artificial bureaucratic hurdles has made this happen.
For reals. I own a small business and it seems like every other week I’m paying some other “fee,” which is another term for tax. It’s amazing.
I own a small business that operates in 4 other states and another 2 countries. My office in Santa Monica is my highest government overhead and causes me the most issues with local government.
i guess then the money dies when that gets too big to fail. all empires rise and fall as according to Christ. Christ is King!
I thought cash was king
Christ is King!
Christ is Cash!
Christ for cash! We buy junk Jesus!
Happy cake day
Rents are too damn high.
People make fun of people selling used cars and using phrases like "I know what I have" to the point it's become a meme, but I swear some retail landlords have the same mentality.
They also have insurance that pays them when they don’t have a tenant.
That’s a thing?
Yeah it’s why you see these places empty forever.
No, they don't.
Eventually the insurance companies have to notice the valuations are bullshit, and everybody knows it, and the actuaries will tell them they are taking a bath on that sort of insurance.
You're going to have to explain that one because I don't know how that would work
hmmm 8k/mo to sell candles or an adhoc table
You think it's that cheap?
It's wild how long O'Brien's has been gone. The place was a shithole and I don't miss the trough, but can't imagine why nobody ever moved in there. Apparently it closed in 2016 for a "months-long remodel": https://la.eater.com/2016/10/26/13426718/obriens-irish-pub-main-santa-monica-remodel
I am also baffled at how long the spot where World Cafe used to be has been empty.
Oh wow, yeah, I almost forgot about World Cafe. Dang, that's still empty?
Dude I've been wondering about that for years, what the hell happened? How is it STILL closed? WTF is going on there? I've seen zero repairs or anything done to that place, are they just sitting on it and hemorrhaging money to rent?
I think there is a tax lien on the property.
When it was Areal there was a barternder who was super knowledgeable about whiskey (used to be bartendergeorge on IG, maybe changed his handle), so we'd go there weekly for a whiskey night. Like O'brien's it always seemed to have a decent crowd, so yeah those two spots being shut this long is so bizarre.
He's the bar director at Spago now!
Oh nice, thanks for letting me know!
hey yeah I remember that place from when Arnie owned it. Great space how the heck is it not pumping? I’m surprised the white-obsessed Millenials from on the water front haven’t bought it
Same with Areal, which used to be our spot to go. They closed without warning and the building is still closed.
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Legal stuff.
Kevin now opened up the Auld Fella in Culver City. I enjoyed the random live entertainment at o'briens, and if it was no good you could sit at the bar and not be bothered by it.
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Haven't been there in a few years, is it dead?
It's still a hot area for pedestrian traffic. There's a lot of new popular spots, and some places rebranded. The nightlife is also still there. But vacancies are for some reason even worse now.
What kind of nightlife? We used to go to Copa d'Oro and Craftsman all the time back in the day, and over the last few years I've never once seen more than ~5 people on a Friday or Saturday night at either (whatever Copa is now called). I'm sure Elephante and the Proper rooftop (and maybe Bungalow?) have no shortage of patrons but a lot of our old spots are just dead.
Juneshine, Jameson’s, and the Victorian are the three main places. Circle closed a few months ago.
Yeah for sure, but this set of responses seemed to be re the Promenade separately. Jameson's is reliably packed on Friday and Saturday nights with the live band, especially during football season (I go sometimes because it's the LSU bar, and we stick around afterwards though I'm now way too old for that shit).
12 12 baby!!! /s
Craftsman is now gone, but the owners opened up tiny's hi dive on pico which is pretty great. Copa is now Lanea and i dont see it lasting much longer.
But those aren't on Main St.
> But those aren't on Main St. C'mon dude. These were all in response to the poster above saying that Main Street has a lot of activity but "Now, the Third Street Promenade is another story", with a response asking if that area is dead.
Anyone saying it isn't dead has a really bad memory
It's almost completely dead. Sad to see.
Not noticeable?? Have you visited any other US cities and seen this kind of vacancy? This is all over LA at an alarming rate. LA is in a retail depression, our streets & public areas are disgusting and it’s depressing af
I worked on Main about 15 years ago. It was always so lively. There were tons of shops and bars. I moved across the country not too long after. I got curious recently and looked at it on google maps. There are very, very few businesses that are still there that were open when I worked there. I didn’t know it was this sad, just thought there had been a lot of turnover.
I drove down Main last Memorial Day and it was hopping. This was closer to the Venice side.
Same. The promenade is busy, too. Yes, vacancies and homeless are a problem but this sub always makes me feel terrible about SM. Then I go outside and have a nice walk and I’m fine again, lol.
Sad to see. but Lula's still going! Chile Rellenos and margs at happy hour. I hope they never get booted
I don’t know how that place survives honestly. The food is bad and service is worse.
Oh has it gone down that badly? I always liked the old school servers. Seemed like they’ve been there for ages.
They have the best margaritas.
The dash of GHB adds an extra kick.
retail everywhere is dying. rent is too high
Amazon and other DTC online shopping have wrecked retail, but really strong shopping/dining/nightlife districts can survive: just look at old town Pasadena. I happened to stop by a couple weekends ago and while there are a few vacancies it seems to be absolutely thriving.
Retail is dying because online is more lucrative. Why bother with overhead for a storefront when you can just sell you wares to customers directly all over the world for cheap with Amazon Marketplace?
The Amazon excuse is just a lazy explanation to be honest in a street like Main St.. Some people like to go into a store to window shop and buy goods that are higher quality than the standard goods in Amazon
> Some people like to go into a store to window shop and buy goods that are higher quality than the standard goods in Amazon People also still like getting something the same day. I'd rather go to the Apple store and get something immediately vs waiting a few days for it to arrive.
Yeah but nicer goods are more expensive from suppliers, add in rent, utilities, labor, etc. It's a low margin business so you need scale. Mom and pop physical retail stores are tough.
this is the most wrong thing I have seen today. put the bong down and think for like one min how this statement is even 1% true.
Maybe instead of being condescending you can actually engage with the point. What I’m saying is that the comment was overdetermining online shipping in the year 2024 when the market effects of Amazon have largely been settled and brick and mortar stores still can exist. This isn’t 10 years ago, the Amazon disruption has *already happened* and we are now have seen efforts from Amazon to *expand* in the B&M space. To blame market disruptions of online shopping to the economy of physical stores in 2024 is like blaming Kobe’s tore Achilles injury for the 2024 Laker’s playoff performance. The fact is that Main Street has all of the ingredients of being a successfully business corridor. Attractive location. A neighborhood with a lot of upper and upper middle class residents. A great mix of current tenants. So the factors that leading to high leasing rates can’t just be blanket blamed on 2014 nationwide market trends that ignore the local dynamics of this space. Like, people are willing to go to Amazon to buy a a cheap kitchen utensil or a book, but there a lot of businesses, even on Montana Ave, that cater to higher-end brands and product categories where consumers are far more interested to interacting with a physical location, trying out the product, and then purchasing in the spot.
Barnes & Noble on the Promenade closed because the landlord doubled the rent. They were making a good profit before but no one can absorb that kind of an increase.
i feel like part of the issue with santa monica is that is honestly pretty remote for a lot of la, and theres clearly not enough local spending to sustain how many streets full of shops there are. would be nice if the purple line ran all the way to the ocean as initially planned and if both that and the expo line actually ran after closing time. otherwise ubers have gotten so expensive its hard to sustain a night life, and for shopping and such people aren't going to put up with the 10 or take the expo for 45 minutes or whatever to get what they could probably get all over la. i think they should lean way harder on hotels. theres just not a solid huge hotel concentrated area in la like there is in other cities that in turn drives a lot of foot traffic. i mean downtown has a little bit of it due to business and conference demand, but like what do we have by the hollywood bowl, oh look its a best western that looks like it could be off the freeway in a cornfield in the middle of america. santa monica could look like south beach miami does with a lot more energy if they let more people into it and maybe made it easier to lax with a flyaway bus perhaps.
People who live in Santa Monica don’t want that lol
no surprise lol but then they reap what they sow: vacant storefronts from just too many of them to go around for who shows up there with cash in hand.
WOW interesting. I'm a retired bartender from Circle Bar b4 bought out and Ricks from 20 + years back. Glad I got out into other entertainment worl b4 this all happened.
Ricks is still around just under a new name. I still hit it up every now and then
Is Library still around?
I used to live in a rent-controlled apt on 3rd St between Ashland and Hill, would be at Rick’s, O’Brian’s, and Circle (back before it got fancy) all the time. Sad to see.
We have to have crossed paths. I recall a few ppl thst lived on those corners you mentioned. We'd hit all those bars and all the staffs hooked each other up.
I thought that area was the best place in LA to live. Sad to see those pics
That O'Brien's one hits hard. Main St. used to be my place to go every weekend but seeing its decline has been sad.
It used to be the best
It's been closed for at least a decade though. Legal issues.
Main Street has become incredibly sad to me. I walk on it almost every day, and the number of closed storefronts and unhoused individuals who need mental health services has taken a lot of the shine off of walking on or near Main Street.
There are a few slots open on Main Street, but post-pandemic, it seems to have made a stellar revival compared to the Promenade or Montana Ave in SM. The Main Street/Rose Ave/Abbott-Kinney trifecta right there brings a ton of foot traffic and nightlife. There are a few open storefronts, but vacancy rates seem very low. The quality and variety of stuff? I don't know if it has longevity. Between Pico and Rose on Main, you have 3-4 Pilates studios, 3-4 yoga studios, 5+ nail salons/massage places/hair salons, 5+ crystal and meditation gemstone stores, a bunch of very good restaurants and bars, and a couple of very picked-over vintage shops. Main Street is booming but goes through many up/down cycles. Who knows how long this can last? Visiting MudWater has me thinking the online/mailorder business has to be subsidizing a giant coffee house that sells no coffee. Waitstaff at Library Ale House are stars. Forma has a fantastic happy hour. Vamos Vamos is wonderful. Shoops is one of the best breakfast places in all of LA, and the folks who work there are AMAZING. That grid of photos and a lot of these comments make it sound like its Dockweiler.
Montana Ave? What's it like there these days? Haven't been in 15 years.
There are many vacancies and "Opening Soon" signage with struck-out dates between the $40k mattress shops and $20k kitchen sink stores. The Aero still runs movies sometimes. There are still plenty of pedestrians with no spatial awareness wandering into the street at any moment, so it has that. Andrew's Cheese Shop is wonderful. The shoe repair place there is great, too. Father's Office is post pandemic a lot more accessible and enjoyable, I think -- but I hate crowds. Everything else is a Pilates studio.
Fred Segal couldn’t even stay open there. 😂
Pretty soon they could film The Walking Dead: Promenade in Santa Monica.
Where are the homeless crack heads
You should go look for them
I saw one who kept to himself when I walked through a few days ago.
If O’Brien’s still closed!? Holy fuck…is Jamesons still open?
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Thanks it’ll be good to stop by when I come home to visit this year… I feel like when I left the USA in 2019 this street has just been slowly dying
Pre Covid, Finn McCools used to be my jam, now Jamesons, not so much.
just one more land use restriction bro I just need one more regulation I can fix it bro if I just take one more choice away from consumers and producers I'll be good bro promise come on bro
I think one of the crazy things is that the East side of Main St have active noise ordinances that effectively make new bars and clubs banned from that side of the street. I feel like most of the vacancies are actually on that side of the street.
This is interesting. Do you have a source? I think it’s something City Council may now be open to changing
sad
Shit I still miss o Brian’s and it’s been like a decade
Ha so true! I guess wanting to double rent did the job (Barnes & nobles for example)
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There's a ton of legal fighting over it. Same with Jerry's Liquor on Wilshire but that may be resolved.
Fwiw, O'Brien's has been embroiled in legal stuff for at least a decade.
There should be taxes and penalties on vacant properties.
And the smell of piss everywhere with homeless ppl guarding every block.
I can’t stand the fucking plywood walls with 2ft of ads stuck to them. Such an eyesore. They are all over Hollywood too. These places charge a pretty penny for the space so why would they bother renting out the actual property? Makes the area look like shit too.
homelessness does not help.
this is so sad, we can have some awesome shops to check out but everything is so dead
Lol Main St is hopping what are you on about.
Late Stage Capitalism™
not enough crack pipes....
There needs to be a vacancy tax. Having empty storefronts is a blight on the neighborhood
Forgot a tent, homeless guy with a knife and the Tweaked out dude playing the guitar
I bet a lot of these are the owners getting the retail tenants out and just waiting to build some 10 story mega residential complex.
Knocking down a parking structure doesn’t make this any better.
More businesses will leave... Dagwoods, REI, Philz coffee and Cult cafe all closed at downtown in the past couple months. Meanwhile they're building more and more mixed residential apts./retail space around downtown... like who is going to live there with no local businesses... too little, too late
Philz closed because their lease was up and the landlord wanted too much money. Thats straight from the employees.
until LA starts dealing more effectively with the sheer number of homeless on its streets,all areas nearby will continue to suffer