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The Mayan, a popular music venue and nightclub in downtown L.A., announced Monday morning that it will be closing under its current management after a 35-year run.
“It is with heavy yet grateful hearts that we announce The Mayan will be closing its doors at the end of September, after 35 unforgettable years,” read a statement from the venue’s Instagram page. “To our loyal patrons, community and friends: thank you for your unwavering support, your trust and the countless memories we’ve created together. You made every night truly special.”
The announcement also called on longtime and potentially new patrons to celebrate the club’s final months in fashion, with weekly Saturday dance nights through Sept. 13.
Known for embracing camp, silliness and an element of awe, the indie lucha libre company Lucha VaVoom rings in two-plus decades of high-flying fun with a pair of Valentine’s Day shows.
It is currently unknown what, if anything, the historic venue will be used for after the Mayan shutters.
In a statement to The Times, the Mayan’s president, Sammy Chao, expressed gratitude to the community for a successful 35-year run, but noted that the years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic had been particularly difficult for the business.
“[T]he past five years have delivered an unrelenting barrage of adversity: the ongoing fallout of the pandemic, rising operational costs and staggering inflation, industry-wide strikes, dramatically shifting consumer habits, catastrophic fires, political unrest, and public policies at the city, state, and federal levels that have increasingly burdened small businesses and the workers who keep this city alive,” Chao’s message read. “We’ve done everything possible to stay afloat, adapt and serve, but the path forward has been eroded beyond recognition. We have given this business everything we have — and more — and come this far, so the decision to close is not so much one of defeat, but of necessity and truth.”
The Mayan Theater — located at 1038 S. Hill St., next door to the Belasco — first opened Aug. 15, 1927, with a performance of George Gershwin’s Broadway musical “Oh Kay.” As its name alludes to, the theater is one of the best known examples of the Mayan Revival architectural movement that took place in the U.S. during the 1920s and 1930s, which drew inspiration from pre-Columbian Mesoamerican structures.
As The Times reported in 1989, the giant bas-relief figures on the venue’s exterior are of the Maya god Huitzilopochtli seated on a symbolic earth monster. The three-tiered chandelier in the theater — rigged for red, blue and amber lights — is a replica of the Aztec calendar stone found near Mexico City. The design of tapered pillars was inspired by the Palace of the Governors at Uxmal, a Maya ruin on Yucatán Peninsula dating from AD 800.
On Aug. 15, 1927, the Mayan Theatre--with scowling Pre-Columbian gods staring down at first nighters--opened with the Broadway production of George Gershwin’s “Oh Kay.”
Mexican anthropologist and sculptor Francisco Cornejo assisted the architects to craft a building that was based on authentic designs of pre-Columbian American societies.
During the Great Depression, the theater was rented out to the Works Projects Administration, which operated it as an Actors Workshop theater. In 1944, Black producer, director and entrepreneur Leon Norman Hefflin Sr., staged a production of the popular and well-reviewed musical “Sweet ‘N Hot,” which starred Black film and stage icon Dorothy Dandridge.
The Fouce family gained ownership of the theater in 1947 and shifted the venue’s programming toward Spanish-language film screenings and performers. By the early 1970s, Peruvian-born filmmaker and actor Carlos Tobalina gained ownership of the theater and changed the programming to focus on pornographic and X-rated films.
The Exotikon Super Shock Show on Thursday will feature a performance by world-class magician Rob Zabrecky, spooky-themed live music by Ghouly Gal and Jimmy Psycho and the Infernal Order of the Black Flame, burlesque dancers and more.
In 1990, the Mayan was brought under new management and inhabited its current form as a nightclub and music venue. The city has since declared the building as an official L.A. Historic-Cultural Monument.
The Mayan has been used as a shooting location for many film productions, including the 1992 box-office smash “The Bodyguard,” starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston; the 1998 skit-to-feature film “A Night at the Roxbury;” the 1979 Ramones-led musical comedy “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School;” and, most recently, the Netflix wrestling-themed series “GLOW.”
In recent years, the Mayan has played host to the cheeky lucha libre and burlesque show called Lucha VaVoom de La Liz and has held concerts by acts such as Jack White, M.I.A. and Prophets of Rage.
