Talk:Garden of Allah Hotel

Alla / Allah

What is the basis for "originally known as the Garden of Alla"? I'm pretty certain the pun was there from the first. Is there any citation for this? - Jmabel | Talk 06:29, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Cut from article

"The destruction of the Garden of Allah is referred to in Joni Mitchell's song Big Yellow Taxi in the famous line, 'They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,' though in fact the building was not replaced by a parking lot." Not only was the building not replaced by a parking lot, but to the best of my knowledge, the teenaged Canadian Roberta Joan Anderson, later Joni Mitchell, had never been to L.A. while the Garden of Allah was still standing, so this seems like a bit of a stretch, and apparently the person who added it has no citation. If someone has something citable for this, then great, add it back. - Jmabel | Talk 17:34, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

The book by David Wallace, "Lost Hollywood" offers the Joni Mitchell connection in a chapter on the Garden of Allah. However, there is nothing in the song's lyrics that hint the line is about the notorious hotel —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.254.208.201 (talk • contribs) 15 December 2006.

This is not a comment about the veracity of the Joni Mitchell tale or whether it should have been cut from the article, of which I have no knowledge or opinion, but how is it discredited by the fact that Joni Mitchell had not been to LA while the building was still standing? She couldn't have heard about it or read about it? --Crankley (talk) 21:39, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

The Joni Mitchell question

Joni Mitchell was NOT writing about the Garden of Allah, according to this article in the Los ANgeles Times dated December 08, 1996 by Robert Hilburn, quoting Mitchell directly: "I wrote "Big Yellow Taxi" on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart . . . this blight on paradise. That's when I sat down and wrote the song. When it first came out, it was a regional hit in Hawaii because people there realized their paradise was being chewed up. It took 20 years for that song to sink in to people most other places in the country. That is a powerful little song because there have been cases in a couple of cities of parking lots being torn up and turned into parks because of it." --MrEguy | ♠♥♣♦ 09:10, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

As currently noted in the article, much of the site WAS devoted to a parking lot (the bank building covers only a minor fraction of the site), and it is possible for a work of art to have more than one source of inspiration. It might be enlightening to know if the hotel in Hawaii was pink and included a boutique and a "swinging hot spot", things which could be found in the immediate vicinity of the Garden of Allah site in the 1960s. Yes, Mitchell was a teenager in Canada when they paved that particular paradise, and I do not doubt a word of what she says in the quote, but by 1970 she must have known something of the Garden and its fate. During the late 1960s, her boyfriend was Graham Nash of the Buffalo Springfield, and that group's hit song "For What It's Worth" is about the 1966 riots centered on the Pandora's Box nightclub, which was right next to the site. During the time she was living nearby, the miniature model was on display outdoors, a few steps from the sidewalk[1], allowing any curious passerby to contrast the inviting little village with the bleak expanse of concrete and blacktop beyond in a single glance. It would be astonishing if that example, bearing a name synonymous with paradise, did not influence her imagery and word choices in "Big Yellow Taxi". 66.249.174.169 (talk) 04:00, 6 February 2017 (UTC)