Raunch Meets Exhibitionism, but It’s Just Good, Clean Fun

The easiest way to describe the Soap Plant, a cornerstone of Melrose Avenue, is to say that it is a store that is pink and green and blue and orange and red and purple and yellow, has skulls all over it and sells soap.

It’s a garish, vivacious paint job that turns an otherwise nondescript building into a giant sign for an emporium of bathroom products, kinky boots and cards, Mexican folklore and clothes. It’s to architecture what the Red Hot Chili Peppers are to rock ‘n’ roll: It defines that particular part of L.A. culture that fuses raunch, exhibitionism, multiculturalism, art and commerce--all set to a frenetic beat.

It all started, says owner-designer Billy Shire, in 1984, when the two-story building on the corner of Melrose and Martel had to be made earthquake proof. The process left Shire with bare stucco walls dotted with metal tie rods.

Rather than covering that intervention up with some polite coats of paint, Shire saw it as a blank slate onto which he, working with scenic artist Robert Newman, could superimpose the love he shares with his brother, artist and furniture designer Peter Shire, for vibrant colors and neo-Moderne forms.

The tie rods became the centers of zigzag cartouches, while a newsstand on the Martel side was topped by glittering boards. The Shires’ father built the counter inside, and every display case was given a different color.

The Melrose phenomenon was then just taking off from its base of used furniture and punk clothing stores, so the eclectic mix of earthy fragrances, comic books, neo-religious artifacts and just plain oddities was perfectly embodied (and advertised) by the collage outside.

Over time, the Soap Plant begot Wacko (now several doors down, at the back of an alley painted with a kind of LSD vision of creation), Zulu (a clothing store) and the La Luz de Jesus Gallery, which shares the upstairs with Shire’s office.

With the gallery, the sensibility of the corner shifted. The store’s entry is a mouth into hell, complete with flames rising up to a purplish sky and a garland of skulls. Images of death, evil and danger began to crop up through the cheerful colors of the original store.

By now, much of the store evokes the Mexican festival of the Day of the Dead more than the Cinco de Mayo. Not that it matters to the casual passerby, of course. To most of the happy shoppers on Melrose it is just a New Wave version of the Beverly Center, a colorful marker, a commercial candle that lights the heart of this particular fragment of the L.A. strip.

This avant-garde-themed area has in recent years been invaded by the Gap, Benetton and a tide of fancy restaurants, so clientele has changed considerably. Interestingly, that just seems to have made the Soap Plant and its architecture more successful. To those higher up on the economic ladder, the colors and skulls signify thrills and chills without commitment. As thin as a coat of paint and as effective as MTV, the Soap Plant promises a flavorful reduction of L.A.’s culture of kink, and then sells it to you cheap.