The Mint

Live music venues manage to keep their doors open for years on the Strip in Hollywood, but the clubs off the main drag in Los Angeles tend to come and go. A post office now stands on the site of the Parisian Room, the great old jazz nightspot that operated for years at La Brea and Washington. The Music Machine, a big room that hosted everything from blues bands to thrash metal during the ’80s at its Pico Boulevard location in West L.A., is an electrical supply wholesaler these days. Club 88, a classic ’80s punk rock dive on Pico near Barrington, is currently a restaurant, as is the nearby, fondly-remembered Alligator Lounge. Yet The Mint has endured. Located at 6010 W. Pico just east of Crescent Heights Boulevard, it is celebrating its 70th year in business in 2007. The Mint’s early endeavors in music are lost to history. We do know that it played host to live acts as long ago as the 1950s; a vendor who sold janitorial supplies to the club back in the ’80s said one of his relatives, the noted blues guitarist Pee Wee Crayton, performed there.