Conan O’Brien’s Miracle Mile Plaque Has Vanished — and We’re Joining the Search

Miracle Mile, We Have a Missing Plaque Situation on Cochran Avenue

Conan is hitting very close to our home headquarters. The former late-night host has sounded the alarm over a missing piece of very unofficial Miracle Mile history: a fan-made plaque marking the Cochran Avenue street where he lived in Los Angeles back in the 1980s.

And as lifelong Miracle Mile residents, this is now personal. We will search like we lost our house keys! Or just post on Nextdoor. Either way, somebody in this neighborhood knows something.

On Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Conan revisited what he called part of his own Los Angeles “origin story.” He lived in an apartment on the 300 block of Cochran Avenue near the La Brea Tar Pits from roughly 1986 to 1988, paying a jaw-dropping $380 a month after getting the place from actress Cynthia Stevenson.

The exact apartment building has never been publicly identified, but the plaque creator says Conan’s old place was somewhere on that 300 block of Cochran. So no, we are not knocking on random apartment doors. Yet.

His transportation at the time was equally glamorous: a 1973 Plymouth Valiant he said he bought from some surfers. Bachelor pad near the tar pits, temperamental old car — young Conan was apparently living the full Mid-Wilshire dream before the rest of us knew it was an origin story.

Years later, fan Tim Hammill decided the neighborhood deserved a monument. “Monument” may be doing some heavy lifting here: the plaque was essentially a printed image mounted on foam core and attached with zip ties to a Miracle Mile stop sign. But around here, history is history.

And now we know exactly where to start looking. The plaque was installed at the northeast corner of South Cochran Avenue and 4th Street in Miracle Mile — just off the 300 block where Conan once lived. Tim even archived the spot at approximately 34.0669447, -118.3470762. So if you saw a suspicious piece of foam core making a break for it around Cochran and 4th, please report to the neighborhood investigation desk immediately.

Then the Conan O’Brien Plaque Vanished

The disappearance resurfaced after writer Pablo Goldstein covered the mystery for LA Material. Conan treated the report with exactly the level of civic emergency you would expect, declaring the missing plaque a crisis and joking that ignoring one stolen foam-core monument could be the beginning of a slippery slope toward the theft of much more respectable plaques.

Gallery images: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend / YouTube.

The podcast crew also noted that neighborhood residents had apparently been discussing the disappearance through local group chats and apps — including WhatsApp and Nextdoor — which is exactly how every great Los Angeles mystery eventually gets solved, derailed or turned into a 97-comment argument about parking.

Conan even floated the idea of replacing the missing plaque with something more permanent. Bronze sounded noble right up until the estimated price entered the conversation, at which point the plan quickly became “something better than foam core.” He nevertheless offered to pay for the replacement himself, because apparently healing Cochran Avenue now falls under the Conan O’Brien infrastructure budget.

Best of all, Conan said he still drives by his old Cochran Avenue doorway from time to time to reminisce — and now plans to be “prowling the neighborhood.” His words, not ours. Miracle Mile residents, consider yourselves warned.

So if anyone around Cochran Avenue and 4th Street, Mid-Wilshire or Miracle Mile remembers seeing the plaque, knows where it went, rescued it from the wind, accidentally took it home, or currently has it hanging in a garage: this is your moment. We are local. We are nosy. And now we have a mission.

Conan O’Brien Investigates His Missing Miracle Mile Plaque

On Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Conan revisits his 1980s Cochran Avenue apartment, the fan-made plaque that later appeared at Cochran and 4th, and the neighborhood mystery surrounding its disappearance.

Source: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend / YouTube; Conan Plaque on Cochran Ave.; reporting discussed from LA Material. Lead image: INYIM Media rendering. Additional images: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend / YouTube.