“It’s like an archive of safe spaces,” Lerew says of the collection. Todd Lerew, program manager at the Library Foundation, the private nonprofit that oversaw “21 Collections,” curated the exhibition. Elegantly arranged in concentric circles, the matchbooks hail from such evocatively named establishments as the Sewers of Paris, Basic Plumbing, the Meat Rack, the Big Banana, the Fallen Angel and Dude City. gay bars and sex clubs, most of them now closed. In the midst of the exhibition “21 Collections,” which fills the Getty Gallery with doll hats, bird eggs and Tom Hanks’ stockpile of vintage typewriters, sits a round, glass-topped case containing 200 alphabetized matchbooks from L.A.
A time capsule of L.A.’s bar history is now on display at downtown’s Central Library.