Cooper’s Do-Nuts — Addenda

Last June I posted We Need to Talk About Cooper Do-Nuts regarding John Rechy and the famed, alleged uprising.

Six months later theLAnd published this interview with Rechy wherein he states “There was no riot at Cooper’s.”

Which is an important statement. Remember, Rechy is the sole, lone source of the story. It’s his story: there’s no other evidence, so he alone dictates canon.

When I say it didn’t happen, much less at Cooper’s, so what, who am I but a lowly historian? But when the guy who actually came up with the story now says nothing happened at Cooper’s, that’s a major wrench in the cultural consciousness—when you consider the hundreds of descriptions of Cooper’s presently on the web. The t-shirts and patches. The enthusiastic artwork. Cooper’s Do-nuts even re-opened, in a fashion. Heck, people are getting Cooper’s tattoos.

So, where was this other, not-Cooper’s donut shop? According to the 1959 Yellow Pages the only other downtown donutery was Angel Food Donut at 423 South Hill, in the Subway Terminal Building. If we’re married to Main Street, Pat’s Donuts, at 654 South Main, opened in March 1959; too late if the riot happened in 1958 (Rechy told Los Angeles Magazine, and others, it had occurred in 1958) but in time for “spring of 1959” as Rechy originally told the story in 2005—though Rechy did insist his donut place was between Harold’s and the Waldorf, placing the action across the street and a block north from Pat’s.

On to other things: of the collection of Coopers around downtown, there were two a stone’s throw from Pershing Square, Rechy’s renowned haunt. One was just north of the park, on Hill above Fifth, which I covered extensively in the aforementioned post, and of which I provided a nifty color photo, about which I was pretty happy.

The other Cooper’s was down Olive, just south of the park, the other side of Sixth. And I struggled to find an image of that 628 South Olive Street location. For the darnedest time the only shot I had was this one:

Then, I recently picked up a new Clifton’s slide, and we have now been blessed with this:

And there you have it! As far as I’m aware, the first sighting of the Olive Street Cooper’s.

As long as I’ve got you here. I also searched for an image of the initial incarnation of Cooper’s Donuts at 215 South Main, when it was still in the Albert Cohn Bldg (Morgan & Walls, 1908), before that location went out of business in January 1958. All of a sudden, this site popped up: https://www.cooperdonuts.com/ And on said site is this shot:

That’s demo scaffolding in front; the building owner applied for a demolition permit in November 1957. It’s made a parking lot in mid-January 1958; in 1959 the Cooper folk take out a permit to build a little standalone on corner of the site:

Those, then, being some further tidbits about Cooper Do-nuts. Yes, I know, this is ostensibly a Bunker Hill site, and these nuggets of Old LA are perhaps merely tangential to the Hill—but I say we get a pass since there were two Cooper’s on Bunker Hill, and hey, it’s all grist for the mill (nudge nudge, if you want an image of the Cooper’s on Bunker Hill’s Third Street flats, go buy Bunker Noir).