Fashion Family card: The tarot reader. In the huge family of fashion, you
must have your personal trainer for many different reasons as you need
your personal cosmic confident (as Karl, Paco Rabanne, Marc, Louis)
Madame lovely Pamita is a purple fairy from Highland Park. At the corner
of 52nd / N.Figueroa is her shop selling magical products, her candles,
oils, books and comics. After passed that stage initiator and full of fun, you
keep your walk.
Madame Pamita makes you into her universe at the back of the store near
the garden. In the Salon, he would often wait to find yourself a moment
with the cards.
Madame Pamita remembers her first time in DTLA. She has lived in LA all
her life - so her first venue in DTLA would have been an underground rave
in a warehouse somewhere in downtown in the 1980s. We used to have to
call a phone number to find out what the secret location was.
For her, Downtown LA embodies an energetic aesthetic of creation. Peo-
ple seem more focused on producing and creating and pushing creative
boundaries - it was not a “safe” area, she said, and the artists also don’t
play it safe either.
She played old time jazz music at an underground party called the Be-
jeezus Ball - a combination of New Orleans crawfish boil, tea house, and
fortune telling parlour. And she got to open for a great brass band called
Vaud and the Villains.
It was like Bourbon Street has been transported to Syrup Loft - a place in
the middle of the garment district. Broadway is for sure her favorite street.
She loves the old movie theatres and love that some have been saved and
have been brought back to their former glory. “The Angels Flight is my
hidden treasure - it’s such an important part of LA history and so important
that this tiny piece of our history is preserved. It’s silly and useless, but art is
useless too and infinitely important.”
If DTLA were a movie, it would be something like Bladerunner - DTLA is
becoming more and more like Bladerunner every year. More of a cultural
mash-up and more weirdly authoritarian. She is looking forward to getting
around in flying vehicles, though. If it were a book, it would be a hard-
boiled detective novel from the 1940s. As a perfume, it would be some-
thing very sharp and metallic with a hint of the scent of fall leaves.
A rhythm, a sound, music, a famous record, it would be the rhythm of drum-
sticks on an overturned plastic pail. She mentioned that one of the great
tragedies of LA is that we have destroyed so many historic buildings. There
are so many lost mysteries and beautiful places that no longer exist. She
would love to have a time machine so that she could see these beautiful
old places only one time.
Madame Pamita’s 3 or more favorites addresses in DTLA she wants to share
are Demitasse Cafe in Little Tokyo (it’s where she met her boyfriend on our
first date), Phillipe’s French Dip and Fugetsu-Do Bakery in Little Tokyo (a
beautiful old mochi bakery - they make edible jewels).