The Street Seen: Soul Kitchen / Olivia’s Place
2618 Main Street @ Ocean Park
From 1958 to 1973, soul food restaurant, Olivia’s Place, is on the west side of Main St just south of Ocean Park Blvd.
Olivia’s Place is gone. Long gone. It was located near the SWC of Ocean Park Blvd and Main St1 - now a City owned plaza (Heritage Square) between the Victorian and the California Heritage Museum (both moved there in 1977 from Ocean Ave in Santa Monica).
Over there was Olivia's Place, a rundown diner politely described as funky. The outside was old, faded pink, - inside was old, faded green. There was a tapestry of JFK over the cash register, a faded landscape on the wall, a shiny jukebox. Plastic booths, and a menu written in pencil. Jim ordered liver and onions. I ordered coffee. - Jim Morrison Teenset (1968).
The 1960s2 soul food restaurant is known for its easy-on-the-wallet comfort food - almost all the entrees were less than $1. Young, struggling art students from UCLA eat here. The establishment’s namesake, Olivia Jones Fair,3 offers discount cards to needy patrons and gives away meals to the less fortunate.
American filmmaker, Thom Andersen, best known for his experimental films, makes a short film about Olivia's Place. Andersen, who lives on Hollister and eats at Olivia's, made the film in 1966, for an experimental film course at UCLA. ("I got a B for the course because my project wasn't experimental enough.") In just a few long, static takes, the film records the dying days of a working-class Santa Monica coffee shop to the sounds of Big Jay McNeely’s “There is Something on Your Mind” from the jukebox.
Olivia’s Place is more well known for its association with Jim Morrison of The Doors and its inspiration for the song Soul Kitchen (“Let me sleep all night in your Soul Kitchen”), featured on The Doors' 1967 eponymous debut album.
Olivia’s. A small soul food restaurant at the corner of Ocean Park and Main. A roadside diner that belonged in Biloxi, Mississippi. The place was packed, as usual. The restaurant that Jim later memorialized as the ‘Soul Kitchen’ was full of UCLA film students. It looked like an Amtrak dining car got stuck at the beach. - “Riders on the Storm” Doors drummer John Densmore.
Bill Norton films a scene in Olivia’s Place for his cult classic 1971 film Cisco Pike.
Jim Morrison dies in 1971. The building is demolished in 1973.
Incorrectly located by some online references, Olivia’s Place is at 2618 Main on the west side of Main St, south of Ocean Park Blvd.
The Main and Ocean Park corner is occupied by the Bloom brothers - Saul’s service station at 2612 Main, and Sam’s auto repair at 2616 Main.
The building dates from 1931 and after Angelo’s (1931), sees a series of short-lived restaurants before Olivia moves in in 1958.
Olivia Jones Fair (1901 - 1996). Born in Louisiana. In 1950, she is married to Herbert Fair (1909 - 1969), living at 1943 17th St, and working as a waitress at the Veterans Administration. She divorces Herbert, and in 1962 is living at 905 7th Ave, Venice.