- Share via
• Finding motel-themed merchandise a bit lacking, he decided to design his own, creating the brand Merch Motel.
• Msrlyan has made such a name for himself among vintage aficionados that he’s become a nationally recognized expert on both midcentury design and retro motels.
It’s a Saturday afternoon in Pasadena, and Barkev Msrlyan is talking about how much he likes toilets.
Not just any toilets, though. Vintage ones, like the pink, green and purple commodes they sell at Pasadena Architectural Salvage, where Msrlyan has set up in a corner amid the retailer’s reclaimed materials to peddle air fresheners, stickers and pins he’s made featuring those exact toilets. It’s part of a collaboration between his brand, Merch Motel, and the store, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
The motel turns 100. Explore the state’s best roadside havens — and the coolest stops along the way.
The toilet pins were the hot item that day, Msrlyan said, though he also was selling quite a few Los Angeles hats and Altadena keychains. People loved the vintage look of the pink toilets, which hark back to a time when bathrooms — whole houses, really — weren’t quite so bland and boring.
“Our cities have lost so much color, and I think that’s affected people,” Msrlyan said. “Everything we’re getting now is just gray, gray, gray.”
It’s certainly affected Msrlyan, who for the past few years has made a full-time living celebrating Los Angeles’ kitschy past. The Pasadena native grew up admiring his city’s architectural history and in particular its many Route 66 motels, but when he went to look for motel-themed merch online, he found the selection a little lacking. After designing toys and merchandise for Hasbro and Disney, Msrlyan decided to merge his manufacturing knowledge and his personal interest, designing motel-themed stickers and buttons to sell to like-minded vintage aficionados.
He named the brand Merch Motel because he found the phrase descriptive and liked its alliteration. Now, seven years later, the business has expanded far beyond its original roadside-related boundaries, extending to collaborative product lines with established brands like the Academy Museum, Bob Baker Marionette Theater and Canter’s Deli.
Msrlyan uses his brand’s Instagram not only to hawk his latest wares but also to share pictures of his favorite vintage attractions, like Pomona’s Mr. Milk Bottle roadside sign or the Brolly Hut, a charmingly and somewhat confoundingly umbrella-themed fast-food joint in Inglewood. It’s earned him a robust following of almost 90,000 retro lovers based in L.A. and all over the country.
“Since COVID, I think, there’s been this huge resurgence in appreciation for vintage design,” Msrlyan said. “So much of it has disappeared that what’s left feels so special and important that if there’s any kind of alteration done to it, you see a big public backlash, like, ‘Please don’t touch this. It’s all we have left.’ People are realizing that these places are essential pieces of Americana.”
From Brynn Jones Saban of Aralda Vintage to Clémence Pariente of Le Boudoir, L.A.’s vintage sellers share their most cherished pieces.
Even when Msrlyan was little, he had an appreciation for classic architecture. In part, he credits his interest in historic buildings to his years attending Altadena’s Sahag-Mesrob Armenian Christian School, which was destroyed by the Eaton fire. The school, which occupied a massive home that patent medicine entrepreneur and Civil War surgeon Col. George G. Green built for his daughter in 1912, was full of intact original details, like decorative tiles in the faculty bathroom, bronze sconces in the hallways and an old intercom system.
Other buildings in the area fascinated Msrlyan as well, like Connal’s, a walk-up fast-food joint that’s been around for more than 60 years, and the In-N-Out on Colorado Boulevard, which has the distinction of being the oldest operating outlet of the chain. “That building is so cute and charming, with an animated neon sign on top,” Msrlyan said. “When I’d compare something like that to something not as pretty, like a modern fast-food spot, I started to really understand what I did and didn’t like.”
As Msrlyan grew up and the buildings and objects he’d once loved began to disappear, he said he felt an almost instinctual urge to try to preserve what was, if only for himself. As soon as he got a smartphone, he started taking pictures of everything that sparked his interest, from neon signs to run-down motels. “I saw a doorknob I liked somewhere, and when I went back, it was gone. I thought, ‘I wish I had a picture of that, just so I could have appreciated it more,’” Msrlyan explained. “So I started taking those pictures, and then at some point I thought, ‘I’m going to make my obsession everyone’s obsession, just so I can show people how wonderful these places are.’”
He’d take friends and family to his favorite spots, talking their ears off about original details or architectural integrity. Often, they were places others may have driven past hundreds of times without giving much thought to their origins or design, like the Saga Motor Hotel on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, which Msrlyan says has a beautiful original mosaic mural just outside its lobby, or the Macy’s on Lake Avenue, which is absolutely packed with cool midcentury features. He says he’s traversed about 80% of Route 66 at this point, often just taking off down the mother road with no clear goal other than the desire to see where he lands and take in everything he views along the way.
On these road trips, Msrlyan never books a motel in advance, instead choosing to drive until fatigue sets in; then he’ll end up finding somewhere intriguing to stay. That practice has yielded some fun experiences, like the nights he spent at the World Famous Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nev., or the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Ariz. “People might call some of those types of motels ‘run-down,’ but those are the coolest ones because they still have all their original design features,” Msrlyan said.
With its colorful charm, Abraham and Cecilia Beltran’s Long Beach apartment is a welcoming hub for their family.
“Old motels are fun, and I love, love, love old motel neon signs [from the midcentury period],” he adds, citing “living” examples like the Saga or decommissioned signs like those in the collection at Glendale’s Museum of Neon Art. “They’re often hand-crafted, and each one is unique to the property. It would be sort of a competition among motels to see who’d have the biggest, most extravagant sign to entice drivers to pull over. There was no internet. The neon sign was all those places had to get you in the door.”
Msrlyan has made such a name for himself among vintage aficionados that he’s become a nationally recognized expert on both midcentury design and retro motels. He occasionally gives walking tours around L.A., advertising them on his Instagram account, and operates pop-up shops at museums and local businesses like Pasadena Architectural Salvage.
Earlier this year, he was invited to give a presentation on “Marvelous Motels” at Palm Springs’ Modernism Week; he took the opportunity to showcase some of his local favorites, like the Saga, and better-known motels turned hotels, like the Madonna Inn. Some of the establishments are still around, but others, Msrlyan said, are long gone.
“It’s crazy to me how many communities still don’t realize what they have,” he said with a sigh. “But then, something you’ve seen your entire life will just disappear, like you drive by and it’s gone. Luckily, I think more and more people are starting to say, ‘We’ve had enough of these beautiful places disappearing,’ especially now that the fires took out thousands of irreplaceable buildings. We’ve got to learn to appreciate and acknowledge what we still have, rather than holding on to the anger and frustration about what we’ve lost.”
Sign up for The Wild
We’ll help you find the best places to hike, bike and run, as well as the perfect silent spots for meditation and yoga.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
