THE STORIES OF L.A. ALL DAY. ALL IN ONE PLACE.
Saturday, October 28, 2023
10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Doheny Memorial Library
USC University Park Campus
All Day. All in one Place.
Experience the diversity of stories that make Southern California such a place of discovery. At the Los Angeles Archives Bazaar, presented by L.A. as Subject and the USC Libraries, anyone with an interest in the region’s history will find something of value. A broad array of institutions and archives will have experts on hand to show off their collections and answer questions.
Download the Archives Bazaar 2023 Save-the-Date postcard.
STREET CLOSURE NOTICE for 10/28: the Jefferson Blvd. eastbound lanes will be COMPLETELY CLOSED to all vehicle traffic between McClintock Avenue and Royal Street between the hours of 8:00am-6:00pm. This may interfere with your way to the Doheny Library so make sure to map out your alternative routes. If approaching the campus from Hoover St., turn left on 32nd St., take it to Figueroa St., then turn right and take it to USC McCarthy Way. Figueroa St. is also accessible via Exposition Boulevard on the south side of campus.
2023 Archives Bazaar Programming
FIRST FLOOR: FACULTY HALL
10:00–10:50 a.m. Mapping L.A. through Community Cookbooks
In this program, artist and archivist Suzanne Zoe Joskow discusses her ongoing project The Community Cookbook Archive. Comprised of more than four hundred cookbooks spanning three centuries, the Archive is an evolving, food-based map of L.A. stories. Joskow gives an overview of local community cookbooks and their role as primary source documents that capture important and often overlooked Southern California histories. Intrinsically tied to place, community cookbooks date back to the city’s earliest years of book printing and connect to sites across L.A. County—from a bridge group in Inglewood, to a church in Little Tokyo, to Exposition Park and USC’s own campus, to name just a few. Attendees will receive their own special recipe card.
11:00–11:50 a.m. Meet Me at Third and Fairfax: A Brief Culinary History of Farmers Market
Join Brett Arena, archivist of the A. F. Gilmore Company, as he chronicles the past nine decades of the historic Original Farmers Market, which opened in the summer of 1934 at the corner of Third Street and Fairfax, an area then known as Gilmore Ranch. What began with a dozen farmers and six vendors selling produce from trucks parked on the street corner has evolved into a landmark food emporium visited by three million people a year, with more than one hundred vendors and family-owned businesses specializing in a vast array of goods, from artisan breads, cheeses, and meats, to candies, coffee, and hot sauces.
12:00 noon–1:00 p.m. Lunch Break
1:00–1:50 p.m. L.A. Neighborhood Restaurants Grounded in Community and Tradition
The L.A. restaurant food scene thrives on diversity, with close to 25,000 restaurants in L.A. County representing cultures and cuisines from all over the world. Mallory Furnier, Special Collections and Archives Librarian and curator of “Eating the Archives,” moderates a discussion with the owners and chefs of three landmark Southern California neighborhood restaurants, including: Judy Hayashi, daughter of Yayoi Watanabe, owner of Otomisan. Founded in 1956, it’s the only remaining Japanese restaurant in Boyle Heights and the oldest continuously operated Japanese restaurant in the county; Paulina Lopez, co-owner of the James Beard Award-winning restaurant Guelaguetza as well as I Love Micheladas; Chef Keith Corbin, the two-time James Beard Award-nominated executive chef and co-owner of Alta Adams, and LA Times bestselling author of California Soul: An American Epic of Cooking and Survival.
2:00–3:00 p.m. Your Kitchen Is a Battleground: A Conversation with Harry Gamboa, Jr.
Cooking and feeding people is not a mundane act. It is a daily activity that reveals zones of conflict and negotiation, acts of memory and representation. In the early 1970s, the Chicano Moratorium and other protests against the Vietnam War were underway, and a number of revolutionary social movements were simmering. Harry Gamboa, Jr., along with four other Chicano artists, formed ASCO, an East Los Angeles-based art collective whose name played off the Spanish word for disgust or revulsion and who aimed to tear down traditional notions of what was culturally acceptable. In 1974, ASCO took to the streets of East L.A. and staged the controversial performance The First Supper (after a riot). Writer and educator Fanny Daubigny engages in a conversation with artist Harry Gamboa, Jr., whose radical vision has transformed the artistic landscape of Los Angeles.
SECOND FLOOR: FRIENDS LECTURE HALL
10:00–10:50 a.m. A Bibliographic Banquet: How to Prevent your Collections from Becoming a Food Supply for Creepy Crawlies
Join the Los Angeles Preservation Network (LAPNet) in a look at how your archive is just a giant pantry of delicious treats for insects—and learn the basics of Integrated Pest Management. Cynthia Kapteyn, Book and Paper Conservator/Digitization Coordinator at the Huntington Library along with USC Libraries Rare Books Librarian Derek Christian Quezada Meneses discuss the surprisingly large number of items that offer bugs a substantial meal (everything from wood and paper to tortillas and seaweed), the types of pests that come to snack in library and museum collections, signs of an infestation, and steps you can take to mitigate the risk and prevent further damage.
11:00–11:50 a.m. How L.A. Invented the Backyard Barbecue
The word “barbecue” derives from the Spanish barbacoa (which itself comes from an indigenous Caribbean word). For centuries it has been identified with the slow cooking of meat, often by letting a fire in a pit burn down, then placing the meat on the embers, and sealing it up for some hours until the meat is tender. These elaborate barbecues were wildly popular—at times drawing thousands of diners. However, in the 1930s, it became fashionable to grill steaks in one’s own backyard and by the end of the decade the earth-pit barbecue had largely died out. Just in time for lunch, Charles Perry, President of the Culinary Historians of Southern California, dives into the history of backyard barbecue in L.A.
12:00 noon–1:00 p.m. Lunch Break
1:00–3:00 p.m. Basement Tapes Day
Basement Tapes Day provides the public with access to vintage audio playback devices so they can listen to home recordings on open-reel tapes, cassettes, and microcassettes that have been sitting in their attics or basements for years. The annual event is staffed by volunteers from Los Angeles’s audio preservation community, which include archivists, engineers, collectors, restoration experts, conservators, and graduate students from UCLA’s Media Archival Studies program. Attendees can hear and publicly share their tapes, while learning about the history of recorded sound, common deterioration issues with magnetic audio formats, and best practices for the storage and care for their collections. Bring your tapes to the Archives Bazaar to have them inspected and played back at the event. This year, we especially encourage attendees to bring recordings related to food!
2023 Archives Bazaar Exhibitors:
Angelus Matchcover Club
BISON ARCHIVES-MARC WANAMAKER
Boyle Heights Community Partners
California Puerto Rican Archive
California State Archives a Division of the California Secretary of States Office
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
California State University, Fullerton - The Lawrence de Graaf Center for Oral and Public History (COPH)
California State University, Northridge, Special Collections and Archives
Caltech Archives and Special Collections
Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG)
The Ebell of Los Angeles
Forest Lawn Museum
Friends of Greystone
Friends of Rockhaven / Rockhaven Sanitarium Historic District
Genealogical Society of Hispanic America-So. Cal.
Getty Research Institute
Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles Heritage Committee
Glendale Coin Club and American Numismatic Association
Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley
HMCT/ArtCenter College of Design
Hollywood Heritage
Holocaust Museum LA
Home Movie Day Los Angeles
Jeffrey Stanton - History Book Publisher
The Kappe Library, Southern California Institute of Architecture
LA County Library Cultural Resource Centers
LA River X / El Río de Los Ángeles X
LA Westerners Corral
LACMA Balch Art Research Library
Lauren Bon and the Metabolic Studio
Little Tokyo Historical Society
Long Beach Heritage Museum
Los Angeles Archivists Collective
Los Angeles City Archives - Office of the City Clerk
Los Angeles City Historical Society
Los Angeles High School Alumni Association
Los Angeles Public Library
Los Angeles Union Station Historical Society
Margaret Herrick Library
Marina del Rey Historical Society
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California Library & Archives
The Museum of the San Fernando Valley
NEDCC “Ready – Or Not” Cultural Heritage Emergency Preparedness Project
Occidental College Special Collections and College Archives
ONE Archives at the USC Libraries
Orange County Archives
Orange County Historical Society
Palos Verdes Library District Local History Center
Pepperdine University Special Collections and Archives
San Fernando Valley Historical Society
Santa Monica Public Library
Self Help Graphics & Art
South Pasadena Public Library
Southern California Genealogical Society and Research Library
Special Collections & Archives California State University, Los Angeles
Special Collections & Archives, The Claremont Colleges
Tom & Ethel Bradley Center
UCLA Library Special Collections
UCLA/Library Special Collections/Punk Archive
USC Digital Library
USC Digital Repository
USC Special Collections
Visual Communications
Voces del Teatro Oral History Archive
Workman & Temple Family Homestead Museum
Writers Guild Foundation
Zoellner Quartet Archive