Today, we are happy to announce the winner of our Ugliest Building in Los Angeles contest award. After a months long period of nominations, deliberations, rankings, tallying, verification, picture taking, cropping, outreach and promotion, we are happy to announce that the winner of the Ugliest Building in Los Angeles is..... .... ...... ..... HOLLYWOOD & HIGHLAND. But more importantly, the winner of the free dinner for four at Shakey's is localite Meredith Hammon of Los Angeles. Excellent eye-for-ugly, Meredith!
And now we come to the important part of the contest - why is Hollywood & Highland the ugliest building in Los Angeles? That's an excellent question. It's not based purely on aesthetics, that we can all agree. There are other factors - the pedestrian unfriendliness of the Highland side of the structure. The confusing and somewhat nauseating escalators. The portions of the mall that remain empty of shops and tourists despite being at one of the most visited intersections in the City. The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency. The mish-mash of architectural styles. The Egyptian reliefs and elephants. And then there are the tourists. Oy! Never has a greater display of mid-westerners, comprised of fat women wearing capri pants and their skinny husbands been gathered into one locale than at Hollywood & Highland.
The H&H complex was picked by three of our four judges as one of their top five ugliest buildings in Los Angeles. Who were the runner-ups? We're glad you asked. At Number 2 was the LA Times building and at Number 3 was 5800 Wilshire. All are fine examples of ugly, but none could compare to H&H.
[The Orange Drive side of H&H, where store's go to die. At least the windows aren't boarded up, yet.]
[Tourists!]
Judge's comments on H&H: "Ugly as excess?it’s bad acting."
Judge's comments on H&H: "Hollywood and Highland personifies everything that we love and hate about Los Angeles: Tackiness. Egregious excess. Hubris. Tourism. Crassness. Vegas-sized lunacy. Japanese pastries. Inappropriate at all levels, but that's also why we can't get enough of it. Los Angeles to a 'T'."
[It's like a horrible, bad dream, but it's real. And it's ours.]