King's Tropical Inn

Alert reader Mandy sent us a padded envelope trove of stuff last week. She must have broke the bank, because I happen to know that post cards with blank backs are more expensive than ones that are filled in. Apparently, someone back in History was only a post card buyer, but not a sender. And he or she probably ate at King's Tropical Inn. Based on this, we can guess that they also ordered the "Jumbo Squab Dinner", took it home and stuck it in an attic for seventy years or so.

Some things never change. On the front of the card, we meet John G. King, our host, and presumed owner of the restaurant, but the name of the place is spelled "Kings", as if it's just named after a few monarchs. Okay, fine. Moving on....

On the back, it's spelled with a possessive apostrophe, like Johnny King owns the place. So, what have we learned? Ignorance of your mother tongue is not a new invention. But hey! Walter Winchell! Who was he, anyway?

Walter Winchell (April 7, 1897 – February 20, 1972) was an American newspaper and radio gossip commentator, famous for attempting to destroy the careers of people both private and public whom he disliked.

Wow, he sounds like a great guy. Winchell looked like Steve Martin before everyone was doing it. So, was he a prescient Steve Martin impersonator, or was Steve Martin a Walter Winchell impersonator? Never made it without biting. Ask Mister Owl.

This post card is the fold-in-half kind with four pictures on it, so the story doesn't end once you flip it over.

The exterior of King's looked like some kind of casbah, but camel parking was surprisingly prohibited. So was painting lane stripes on the street. Crazy times.

Fake starry sky ceiling. Every table a booth. (Presumably) fake palm trees all over the place. I would totally eat here all the time. If there was a nightly floor show, I would frikkin live there.

So what's at the corner of Washington and Adams in L.A. now? Get ready to be typically disappointed, people!



Strip malls and a few vacant store fronts. I looove L.A. Someplace calls itself "We Are Famous". Maybe they're being edgefully ironic, but if you're actually famous, you don't need to tell everyone you're famous. It seems that this building has, over the intervening decades, found owners with ever more profound levels of confusion regarding the meaning of words.