Farmacia Y Botanica
Liz and I were strolling around downtown Los Angeles on New Years Day taking photos of various architecture when we ran upon Farmacia Y Botanica in the Million Dollar Theater building at 307 S. Broadway. I have always been familiar with that beautifully ornate building and its neighbor across the street, the Bradbury Building. The Million Dollar Theater was built in 1918 by Sid Grauman and was one of the first movie palaces built in the United States. However, I never bothered to look at what it had to offer at street level. Liz specializes at finding details, and I'm more into the grand scheme of things so that's why she wanted to see what was in this curious storefront. It is in fact a pharmacy but it's so much more that that. I've never seen a larger and more varied collection of religious and pagan artifacts - everything from Christian, pagan, Satanic, and even voodoo merchandise including candles, statues, powders, dolls, incense, oils, and other unidentifiable stuff. The staff was very nice and noticed that I had a camera bag so they told me it was okay to take photos even though I didn't even express to them that I was interested.
Click on the above photo to see the entire set of photos.