Mascot of the Month for March: The Capital Records Building

My last two mascots were beautiful LA Buildings that are, alas, no more.
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The Day After Tomorrow wasn't so nice to the tower.

But have hope dear ones, the Capital Records building - well that is still around and humming.  It is arguably one of the 2 most iconic buildings in Los Angeles.  It is retro-space age hip.  And when the world is getting destroyed city by city, it is normally the Capital Records Building that goes up with Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building.
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There was a lot of talk of tearing it down a few decades ago to make room for a better, newer tower.  And because kids today didn't understand the iconography.   The Capital Records Building is designed like a stack of 45's on a turntable.
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Nowadays, even if people know what a turntable is, they often don't get it.  You see vinyl (they don't call them records anymore) are only 33s.  And the new turntables are designed for audiophiles.  They aren't designed to drop a stack of records to play one after another, like an iPod without shuffle.

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But the Capital Records building was designed to look like a stack of 45s.  Even to the Needle sticking out of the top.  For you kids, you could put this big bulky plastic thing over the needle that created a bigger center hole for a 45.  You then turned the record player ("turntable" was what you parents called it) to 45 rpm to play your cool records.  And when one was done, the next would drop automatically on the stack.  The outside edges and inside labels were always higher than the grooves, so that the record did't scratch.

That record player is older than me, but you get the idea. 

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Reading wikipedia (and hoping it is right), it says that the 150 feet height was the limit in the city until a couple of years after it was built.  Which makes sense.  Shortly after it was built, Capital signed the Beatles and made a zillion dollars and the building was the destination of many a recording artist.
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Eddie and I used to live above it in the hills, and you could tell it was Christmas because they strung lights to turn the needle into a Christmas tree.  As opposed to New York where you can tell it's Christmas because  the weather makes your nuts go hide inside your body until March.
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It makes me smile.

The street is Vine and the light a block down is Hollywood Blvd.