Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Jay Ruby
- Abstract:
- Coffee House Positano was a Malibu café and performance space (1957-1963) operated by Mike Dutton and Lorees Yerby off the Pacific Coast Highway. The café was known as a center of Bohemian life in Southern California. Collection was assembled by Jay Ruby and contains photographs, original and photocopies/printed scans of Positano bulletins and announcements, correspondence of waitress Joan Laine, and various ephemera related to the Positano and Malibu bohemian community.
- Extent:
- 4.2 linear feet (1 half box, 1 oversize flat box, 1 painting, 1 table)
- Language:
- Materials are in English.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Jay Ruby Collection on Coffee House Positano (Collection 2214). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
Collection consists of materials compiled by Jay Ruby documenting the history of Coffee House Positano and its related community of artists and patrons. Included are photographs, original and photocopies/printed scans of Positano bulletins and announcements, art and performance ephemera, correspondence, artworks, and furniture.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Coffee House Positano was a Malibu café and performance space (1957-1963) operated by Mike Dutton and Lorees Yerby off the Pacific Coast Highway. The café was known as a center of Bohemian life in Southern California and was frequented by notable Los Angeles artists, writers, and entertainment industry types including Allen Ginsberg, Ray Bradbury, and Keith Finch. Jay Ruby was an undergraduate at UCLA and worked as a dishwasher at Positano while living on the property from 1957-1959, in addition to participating in the community. After the closing of the café, the property transformed into the Budwood artists colony until the 1993 Malibu fire consumed the property.
Ruby later became a professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Temple University, and has researched and wrote extensively on Positano. Joan Laine was a waitress at Coffee Shop Positano (1957-1959).
Source: https://www.malibutimes.com/malibu_life/article_3d0d3bdf-4267-50fb-a6c8-6d6fee3654e4.html
- Acquisition information:
- Gift of Jay Ruby, 2012. Gift of Joan Laine, 2014.
- Processing information:
-
Processed by Scott Reed in 2016 under the supervision of Courtney Dean in the Center for Primary Research and Training (CFPRT).
Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Problematic Content and Description in UCLA's library collections and archives.
- Arrangement:
-
This collection has been arranged in the following series:
- Series 1: Coffeehouse Positano and Malibu Bohemia, Approx. 1950-1969
- Series 2: Joan Laine materials, Approx. 1959-1963
- Series 3: Artworks and Furniture, Approx. 1959-1963
The materials have retained their original folder organization from Jay Ruby.
- Physical location:
- Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page. Chess table held in map room on B-level; painting held in Cashin storage area on B-level.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
- Terms of access:
-
Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Jay Ruby Collection on Coffee House Positano (Collection 2214). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
- Location of this collection:
-
A1713 Charles E. Young Research LibraryBox 951575Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
- Contact:
- (310) 825-4988