These two homey little buildings at 2067 and 2063 Stanley will be demolished soon for a high-rise building and gone will be the memories people had of their time therein.
Future building |
The building on the left (2067) never really found its niche while the one on the right (2063) was long known as Carmen's, a Hungarian Coffee shop-restaurant that opened under Johnny Vago around 1954 and eventually boasted 17 different types of coffee.
It featured Villalonga Murals that were paid for with $500 worth of food but were subsequently worth much more. (I don't know what or who Villalonga is so is please share if you do.)
It was sometimes called Georges, after the Hungarian that ran the place until at least the mid-70s when the upstairs had a lively cocktail scene after office hours, according to the newspapers of the time.
There were a lot of Hungarian coffee houses downtown around that time but they all disappeared together pretty suddenly and it'd be interesting to know why.
In more recent years the building became the Beer Museum and then something called Gulliver Steak House.
The other building, 2067, flew much lower under the radar. It housed Mfrs Merchandising Import Ltd. (1955), Star Hand Laundry (1967) Le Marignan French restaurant (1980) none of which will particularly be remembered in history until now.