Pali High Class of ’80 Classmates Reconnect, Create Nostalgic Palisades Calendar

Former longtime Palisadians and Palisades Charter High School classmates David Doherty and Lisa Sutton have recently completed their third original calendar entitled “Places in Pacific Palisades,” complete with original paintings and text based on nostalgia and memorabilia from Pacific Palisades history.

“The first two collections focused on things we personally experienced that aren’t there anymore. Our latest effort ‘Places in Pacific Palisades’ has history and images of a wider range including the former Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café building on PCH as it looked in 1935 up to Village Books on Swarthmore in a view from the early 2000s,” Doherty told the Palisadian-Post.

“We also included Palisades Barber Shop in a salute to the only business in town that has not closed or changed owners in over 70 years,” he said.

Doherty and Sutton met in eleventh grade at Pali High in January 1979 and were friends through graduation in 1980. They recently reconnected in 2012—more than 30 years later—via email and Facebook.

“We had been good friends in our senior year and have a lot of the same touchstones and similar experiences, which I think is true for our entire generation of Palisades kids,” Sutton said.

“David and I started reminiscing about all our favorite places and experiences. We started swapping photos back and forth, and at some point David came up with the idea of doing a calendar and started doing the paintings,” she added.

After the pair determined which places they were most interested in “seeing again,” they buried themselves in extensive photo research.

Sutton wrote the captions for each month based on the buildings’ histories and some personal memories that made the places special.

“In a lot of cases, we had to rely on our memories, combining our recollections of certain places,” Sutton said.

In creating the unique and Palisades-centric calendars, Doherty creates the paintings and Sutton handles the text. All of the paintings are 15-by-20 inches acrylic and watercolor pencil on illustration board, Doherty told the Post.

The duo’s first calendar project— titled “A Town Called Pacific Palisades”—began in 2012.

“Within a short time we were working on the first 12 of what would eventually become 36 memorable spots that we both recalled for one reason or another,” Doherty said.

Sutton said she and Doherty are both extremely nostalgic about the Palisades, having both grown up here.

“The Mid-Century years were a truly uncomplicated time to live in the Palisades—it was still primarily a middle-class area. What made the town so unique was that it was a completely self-contained, kid-friendly suburb,” Sutton said.

“As a kid, the Village was a magical place where there was something for everyone. There was a park, a library, a movie theater and a bunch of great shops that catered to kids,” Sutton said.

In particular, Sutton mentioned the Toy Shack and The Hobby Shop, as well as a few restaurants that didn’t require parental supervision: The Hot Dog Show and Hacienda Galvan.

In addition, the beach was within walking distance and there was the Bay Theatre that showed two movies for one dollar, according to the Palisades native.

“It was teen and pre-teen heaven,” Sutton said.

While Sutton and Doherty may have had an easy time of deciding which Palisades locations to spotlight in their calendars, finding color photos of the places and digging up information on them proved to be a bit more challenging at times.

“It is surprising how little photographic documentation there is currently available of many of these buildings,” Doherty said.

“Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café is one of those places we’ve all driven by hundreds of times, but how many of us knows anything about it? There was a lot of information about it, but not a whole lot of color photos from the day,” Sutton told the Post.

In some cases, there was little to no information.

Take the Toy Shack, for example.

Sutton called it a great hangout for kids in the ’70s. She recalled that the guys who ran it were into magic and would put on magic shows for the kids.

“What I remember most about them was the way they would wrap presents for you with fancy ribbons and taped on penny-toys like the ‘Magic Fortune Telling Fish.’ You always knew when someone gave you a present from the Toy Shack, and everyone who ever got a present from them would remember that cellophane fish,” she said.

Sutton and Doherty searched tirelessly for photos of the Toy Shack, but couldn’t find anything. Doherty even started on the painting, but he felt something wasn’t quite right about it.

Then he happened upon an old movie that had a scene shot in the Palisades with the Toy Shack visible in the distance. Finally, Doherty had something to go on.

To enhance each image in the calendar, the pair used pieces of vintage memorabilia—a matchbook Sutton had saved from House of Lee (the Chinese restaurant that is now Pearl Dragon) and a picture of Doherty’s old bank passbook from the former Security Pacific Bank.

The calendar creators consider their work a nod to a bygone era and to some of the former business owners who brought the town to life.

For example, Doherty recalled Katie O’Laughlin and her fight to keep Village Books open as the newer convenience of online purchasing emerged. He remembered actor Tom Hanks appearing at the store in an effort to save it.

The stories behind the facades are inspirational, he said.

To see the calendar and images, visit http://www.cafepress.com/pacificpalisades.