Alison Martino, Curator of Old Los Angeles

Why Martino’s Vintage L.A. Matters More Than Ever

Read this post on my blog.

Alison Martino (Source)

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I was born in Boyle Heights in 1967, when East Los Angeles was still a city of pocket-sized bungalows, backyard tamale steamers, and local movie houses that glowed like lanterns at dusk. This was before the open-air drug markets of the heroin epidemic took hold. But even then, urban renewal had already begun its slow, corrosive toll, and funding for parks, schools, and community programs was quietly vanishing. The neighborhood had not yet become a national symbol of gang violence or systemic neglect.

My earliest memories of L.A. are scratchy and sun-warmed, like the records my older sister played on a yellow suitcase turntable in the front yard. The hum of a box fan in a stucco house. The Felix Chevrolet sign winking at me from Figueroa. Abba-Zabas from the candy truck lady with bright orange hair and horn-rimmed glasses. These fragments echo through me still, soft as the static of my father’s AM radio.

Architecture of Early Childhood

For those of us who remember Southern California in the 1970s, vintage Los Angeles isn’t just nostalgia—it’s a haunting heartbeat. That’s why I felt an instant jolt the first time I encountered Alison Martino’s work preserving the architecture of my early childhood.

If you’re part of Generation X and grew up anywhere near Southern California, chances are Martino has jogged your memory, too. She’s the founder and curator of Vintage Los Angeles, an online archive that celebrates the restaurants, nightclubs, shopping centers, architecture, and eccentric signage that defined the city’s past. A merchant of memory and nostalgia, she’s become one of the region’s most visible and beloved preservationists.

Who is Alison Martino?

Born in 1970, Alison Martino is a Gen Xer to the bone. She grew up in the thick of Hollywood’s golden afterglow. Her father was Al Martino, the crooner who famously played Johnny Fontane in The Godfather, and her mother, Judi Stilwell, was a flight attendant and model. As a kid, Martino had a backstage pass to the city. Her early years were filled with music studios, vintage cars, and glamorous restaurants, many of which would later become the subject of her public memory work.

Vintage Los Angeles

In 2009, Martino published her first posts about old Los Angeles on the Blogger platform. Her early archives can still be found at martinostimemachine.blogspot.com. The following year she launched Vintage Los Angeles as a Facebook page.

At first, it was a simple passion project. She uploaded snapshots of old movie theaters, hotel postcards, and family photos. But it struck a nerve. Within months, tens of thousands of people were adding their own memories to the feed. It turned into a collective time capsule. A virtual gathering place. A digital street corner where old friends could meet up and talk about where Schwab’s Pharmacy used to be, or what it felt like to ride the Red Car to the beach.

Growing Up in L.A.

Martino has maintained her Blogger site for more than 15 years. Here is an excerpt from a wonderful post she wrote in 2017, Growing Up in Los Angeles During the 1970s and 80s.

When this photo of me standing in our driveway in BH was taken during the 1970s, we still had JJ Newberry, Food King and a local Home Silk Shop. Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly would say hello to random residents waiting in line at the post office. You'd pass by Edward G Robinson walking his dogs, and Doris Day riding her bike. Freight Trains were still plowing down Santa Monica Blvd with the smell of fresh Wonder Bread on board and Helms Bakery Trucks brought milk to our door steps. Robinson's, Bonwit Teller, The Broadway, Bullock's, and The May Co. were the high-end stores of the day, and Rodeo Drive was not yet a tourist trap. We instead had reasonably priced boutiques and 'mom and pop' shops where everyone knew your first name.

What makes her work so compelling is that she doesn’t approach it as a historian looking backward. She moves through time as a native who loves old L.A. and who continually, for years, has answered the call to preserve it.

Irony and Grit of Generation X

Martino understands how the layers of Los Angeles overlap like cellophane: thin, fragile, and just transparent enough to glimpse what used to be. There may be no one better, and still around, who can describe the vibe of old Chasen’s or the precise pink hue of a 1960s Beverly Hills home. She captures it all with the irony, sentimentality, and grit that define Generation X. (Fun fact: she went to Beverly Hills High School, a detail that took some digging to confirm.)

Over the years, Martino has worked as a television producer, documentarian, and writer. She’s produced for networks like E! and A&E, and co-produced the documentary Mansfield 66/67, about the life and mythology of Jayne Mansfield. She’s contributed to Los Angeles Magazine, curated public exhibits on Hollywood’s past, and frequently appears as an on-air personality covering local history with both charm and authority.

Best Work

Of everything Alison Martino has done including, but not limited to TV, writing, and production, it’s Vintage Los Angeles that feels like her purest and most enduring work. What began as a personal memory bank on a humble blogspot URL has grown into a vibrant archive, now spanning Instagram and Twitter and drawing nearly 700,000 followers. On the surface, it’s nostalgia, but in reality its grassroots advocacy for vanishing landmarks, and always, a love letter to the city.

One post in particular, from 2018, has stayed with me. It was about Las Vegas, but it could have just as easily been about L.A.:

Since there really isn’t anything historic to post from Las Vegas Blvd, I’m posting these marquess from the Las Vegas heyday. I haven’t been to Vegas in about 15 years. There was really no reason to come here after dad died because I grew up traveling with him every year when he appeared at all the legendary hotels. This was way before massive arenas replaced the *intimate* nightclubs. And we had to DRESS UP! Imagine that. I thought the Blvd was bad in 2003, but this town has been COMPLETELY ripped to shreds. Other than the El Cortez, and The Golden Steer, the Vegas I remember is a only a memory. These photos are of various casinos dad played before Steve Wynn desecrated the Blvd…

…Long gone are the days of seeing names like Shecky Greene or Joan Rivers blaring on all that glorious kitschy neon because show biz is dead. All that history has been replaced with corporate digital screens advertising Ross & Rite Aid. A few of the original signs exist over at the boneyard museum. We’re on my way there tonight, but I better bring a box of tissues. The end of Martin Scorsese’s movie CASINO sums it all up: “The town will never be the same. After the Teamsters got knocked out of the box, the corporations tore down practically every one of the old casinos. Today it looks like Disneyland. In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. Today, it’s like checkin’ into an airport.”

Animating the Past

I’ve been following Martino’s work sincer her Blogger days and love how she animates the past. Her work has always resonated with me. I was a kid in the shadow of the Capitol Records tower and the behemoth hospital where I was born. Also, Peniel Mission a homeless shelters in downtown L.A., which I visited on Sunday nights with my late father.

I remember the magic of the drive-thru Donut Hole and the Taco Bell lanterns on Beach Boulevard. The Big Slide on Topanga Canyon Boulevard and the orange vinyl booths at Sambo’s. Also, watching my older siblings search for soft corduroys at Funky’s. Through her work, I know the memories of my early childhood years are not my imagination. Afterall, I arrived on planet earth in Boyle Heights and was formed in the Valley, which I did not leave until I was nearly seven years old.

The Story that Belongs to Everyone

There’s something generously democratic about the way Martino documents Los Angeles. She doesn’t focus exclusively on the elite landmarks or celebrity haunts. For sure, she’s documented the Brown Derby and the Ambassador Hotel, but she also highlights places like the West L.A. drive-ins, strip mall diners, and the forgotten record stores of Pico-Union. Her lens is wide. She tells a story of Los Angeles that belongs to everyone, not just the superstars of Hollywood.

In interviews, Martino has said that she intentionally chose the name "Vintage Los Angeles" instead of "Vintage Hollywood" because she wanted to cover more than just the film industry. She wanted to include neighborhoods, communities, and cultures that shaped the real texture of the city. As someone born in Boyle Heights and who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, I feel that. We rarely saw ourselves in California’s glossy brochures or the tourist reels. But Martino’s Los Angeles includes the places where families worked and dreamed for generations.

Advising, Lobbying

Today, Martino reportedly lives in a Mid-Century home in Palm Springs. She’s surrounded by the kind of decor that would make a Mad Men set designer swoon. But her heart is still in L.A., and her work continues to grow. She’s appeared in documentaries, advised city planning committees, and lobbied for the preservation of vintage signage and historical buildings. She’s also become a go-to source for journalists, historians, and filmmakers trying to capture the real Los Angeles. That is, the one that smells like jasmine and car exhaust at dusk. I do miss it as I have for many years. Even though much of what I remember is gone, some things never fade.

Martino and the Wildfires

In recent years, Martino’s work has taken on greater urgency. When wildfires scorched the hillsides of Malibu and threatened historic properties, she documented the aftermath with tenderness and resolve. She wrote about the devastating loss of structures but memories, too.

This is what we sometimes refer to as “stuff.” The stuff of life, the significance of things, the traces of our lives, and of those that have gone before us. To think all your preserved memories can be extinguished overnight. I weep for all the family photos, scrapbooks, school yearbooks, and children’s artwork. We are all archivists of our own lives, and in those homes was a palpable diary of their entire history. It is things and mementos that you collected for decades. All irreplaceable.

Belonging

Through her camera lens and her words, she captured the emotional wreckage of vintage signs turned to ash, neighborhoods erased and stories singed at the edges. Whether she’s rallying to save a neon sign, pushing back on careless redevelopment, or comforting a city in mourning, Martino reminds us that preservation isn’t just about buildings, it’s about belonging. She writes:

An out of town developer is proposing to demolish the entire block between Larrabee and San Vicente destroying the city’s neighborhood and pushing small businesses out to build a luxury mega-project. The Viper Room, Sunbee Market, Gil Terner’s, for example will be demolished. Please voice your outrage…

Our Place in the Story

Finally, what I love most about Martino’s work is that it’s not about preserving the past for the sake of it. It’s about understanding what made us, and everything we’ve lost along the way. For Generation X, whose formative years were shaped by the analog-to-digital shift, that emotional archaeology matters.

We’re old enough now to know that cities change. It’s a bit devastating, don’t you think? Even in Oklahoma City where I have now lived for most of my life, so much of what I cherished has been wiped off the face of the earth. I remember a time, during my early years of blogging, when many a Boomer thought I was too young to write about the past.

Today, I see Martino’s work and the work of others like her as far more than saving neon signs and collecting matchbooks. They’ve saved us from losing part of our place in the story.