Shop enough yard sales and garage sales and school sales and bits 'n bobs sales and you're bound to find a really nifty lamp and a painting or two that you really love.
Shop a famous hotel's liquidation sale, though, and you just might come across the lamp that stood in the room where you honeymooned, or a painting or two that hung in a bar you happily frequented with the old gang from work.
Hotel stuff going up for sale is a far rarer event than the common yard sale, and the nostalgia that sale attendees can feel as they view the pieces is apt to run deeper. That nostalgia is about to visit those SoCalers who adore the historic when the historic Hotel Figueroa downtown inn stages a lots-of-things-must-go event for the rest of December, starting on Thursday, the 3rd.
Catch your breath, for a moment, dear Figueroa fans; the LA Live neighbor, which was built in the mid-twenties as a residence for women, is not making any intimate acquaintanceships with any wrecking balls. Rather, the Moroccan-themed hotel is undergoing a full-scale renovation over the coming months (it shuttered in November to prepare).
"We are working to enhance guest experience and restore the hotel back to its original Spanish-Colonial beauty from the 1920's, while maintaining the unique soul and charm that makes us special," says a message on the Hotel Figueroa site. They're comforting words, especially for those who were concerned that the property's idiosyncratic, era-gone-by look would vanish during the renovation.
It's a look that's bound to change during the $30-million refresh, of course, with the addition of fresh restaurants and bars and new features. But a thoughtful return, or at least heartfelt homage, to a earlier aesthetic is a positive tack.
However, International Content Liquidators will handle the large-scale liquidation, which will cover a huge swath of goods (think art, lighting, pool furniture, and such).
Could you outfit your whole home in things that used to be in a well-known hotel? Might "hotel-style" be one of the catchy trends of 2016? And is there magic in wondering how many people, over the years, turned off the lamp that now sits in your den?
Older hotels are fabled, and for good reason: Stories aplenty happen there each day. Hotel Figueroa has been one of the stalwarts in the Southern California story-making department, weathering ups and downs and the flowering of new businesses and residences around South Park.
Surely a Figueroa doorknob or drawer pull carries with it some of that cachet?
If you want to stay up on all the renovations and updates at the 12-story structure, sign up at the Hotel Figueroa site. "It's Not Goodbye... It's See You Later!" reads an announcement on the site. "Later" will come in 2016, so stay tuned, downtown devotees.
Source: nbclosangeles.com
Photo: lydex.ru