Little Tokyo building with a past for sale: $1

The unreinforced brick building that houses Señor Fish at 1st Street and Alameda has to be moved or torn down. The corner will be majorly disrupted by construction of the Regional Connector underground light-rail line that will tie together the Expo, Blue, and Gold lines (and turn the new above-ground Little Tokyo station on the opposite corner into an subterranean stop.) Metro will let you have the building for $1, once they acquire it from the current owner, and might even help with some of the expenses of moving it.

According to Blogdowntown, the building has been in the same family since the 1880s. More recently, meaning the 1980s, the building housed the legendary punk rock hangout the Atomic Cafe, as well as the adjacent Downtown L.A. Cafe that may have been affiliated with some of the people (if I remember my Downtown lore correctly) who went on to open the late, lamented Cocola (which became the Boyd Street Grill in '91 after a certain bottling monolith objected to the name, and later 410 Boyd.) The Los Angeles Conservancy is interested in finding a way to preserve the building. Hat tip to Curbed LA.

Photo: metrolaunch on Flickr