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Rapid Nostalgia
MFA Thesis
Rapid Nostalgia № 001: Highland Park
Exploring dated archives of Google Street View started as a deep dive into seeing how parts of my neighborhood at the time, the Arts District, used to look vs now. I was struck with how... rustic the captured footage was, despite only being a decade or so old. You can go back as far as 2007 in Los Angeles, when Google Street View wasn’t in every city and street. The idea of Rapid Nostalgia bloomed from this contrast of low quality captures and truly how quickly an area can be gentrified.
I started with Highland Park because I had recently been to the Highland Park Bowl, which was unearthed from beneath almost a century of paint and floorboards “to its former glory.” That sounded a little whitewashed, to me—so I looked into was there before. Turns out it was a music club, built right on top of the former bowling ally, called Mr. T’s Bowl.
Joseph "Mr. T" Teresa, an Italian immigrant by way of Louisiana, who owned a nearby liquor store, bought the property in 1966. It offered live big-band music and home-style buffets. Students from Occidental College and other Eastside campuses frequented the establishment.[2]
By the late 1980s, the bowling alley had become a retiree bar. In the 1990s, a party-seeking younger generation brought up on punk rock, hip-hop started to attend.[2] Teresa died in 2003 and his son ran the bar until 2014. He sold the business to 1933 Group, who restored and reopened the building in April 2016.[1]
These screenshots started my entire thesis.
Postcards
Let’s rexamine
110 N. Avenue 56
Highland Park, CA
90042
The Good Girl Dinette, who itself replaced the Highland Park Masonic Temple (or maybe just a business on the ground floor of it), has long left 110 N Ave 56. Since 2018, when this zine was printed, Burgerlords has graced the address, adapting to survive after 2020. Capturing Burgerlords in 2021 and 2022 with a patron wearing a mask while waiting with their coffee, and seeing the expansion of outside seating, as of November 2025 Burgerlords still stands. Long Live Burgerlords! (Though I’ll miss the vegan bahn mi and the insane garlic fries from Good Girl Dinette, personally.)
July 2017: Good Girl Dinette, which end its run in 2018.
Jan 2021: Feels a little desolate.
May 2022: String lights and outdoor seating should help!
June 2024: Burgerlords still going strong with some new branding and umbrellas.
Explore more projects from my MFA thesis, Rapid Nostalgia
❸ After graduating Otis College of Art and Design, Rapid Nostalgia lives on. This image is a design rendered to look like a risograph print, a series of postcards depicting the various cold war era emergency sirens that still stand around Los Angeles today.
❹ The first edition of How to Give Your Work Away for Free, by Matthew Manos, featured a book sleeve that folded out into a small poster.