History Bob's Big Boy Broiler Opens In Downey!

Is Wednesday the "nite" to cruise on over...? I've been itchin' to roll on over and enjoy a Malt in the roadster.


Keven

 

I'd eat in mine if I could drag it on out .Oh that's right I have to leave a spot for car hop customers , c'mon on out if ya get a chance.

 

whats the best time to go on Wed night. Will HAMBers still be there after 7pm?

 

They should be, we normally have ben getting a good crowd, It the HAMB's Place.

 

Okay on my way....

 

can someone local send me a pm please, coming to la end of feb and need info.

 

huh hes drunker than me

 

Good scene, it's nice to chill

 

Info on what????

 

Truck, come Wednesday nights. See cool cars and a bunch of wore out looking hot rodders. The food is excellent. Need more info than that? Just ask...

 

Check out The District Weekly article that discusses the Broiler, George's (Grisinger's), and the closure of Mel's-Seal Beach (The Parasol):

http://thedistrictweekly.com/2009/print/features/in-the-kitchen-with-diner/

It was a perfect Kodachrome moment: the reopening Oct. 19 of Johnie’s Broiler, Downey’s Googie-est diner: a glass-walled, horseshoe-boothed, cottage-cheese-ceilinged spaceship that had boomeranged off the corner of Firestone Blvd. and Old River School Rd. for 49 years.


Illegally demolished in January 2007, then proudly rebuilt from the original 1958 blueprints as a Bob’s Big Boy franchise, the rebirth of what is now the Bob’s Big Boy Broiler already seems—four weeks in—to have been a success from day one. Because it has been.


Opening-day traffic clenched into a familiar knot once an acre of parking places evaporated, and drivers must have cursed—or marveled, for that’s just how packed it had been during the eatery’s 1960s glory days, when, as Harvey’s Broiler, the site became such a hangout for local cruisers that Tom Wolfe wrote “The Hair Boys” about how ’50s hot-rodding had transmogrified into a wire-wheeled, lace-painted, Aqua Netted stew.


The Broiler’s current menu remains basic, though tremendously improved: it’s a Big Boy whose whole-grain pancakes, Buffalo-style chicken and salmon filets are the only concessions to modernity. But hungry diners wanting to freeze their small intestines off with the Downey mayor’s favorite, a chocolate malted, faced a two-hour wait that first day. Some of the starving surely left—but no one who stayed seemed to complain about it.


“People were just . . . Gosh, we had a guy, him and his wife came in, and it was their 50th wedding anniversary,” remembers the restaurant’s new owner, Jim Louder, who also holds a successful Bob’s franchise in Torrance. “Unfortunately, he fell on his way into the restaurant. Banged up the side of his face bad enough that I really wanted him to call 9-1-1. But he didn’t want to go; he wanted to stay and eat. And they stayed and ate and were okay. It was just that kind of thing.”


It was still the most successful opening week of a Bob’s Big Boy, ever—a magical, $100,000 seven days, which seemed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that historic businesses in genuine 1950s-era structures can be self-supporting—even if, as here, those buildings must be painstakingly recreated from the ground up.
Or not.


A few miles away, in Rossmoor, no one was smiling. The very next day, Oct. 20, was the last day for another business housed in an expensively renovated mid-century building: the Mel’s Drive-In franchise which had leased the rotund former Parasol restaurant location.


The press release went out at 10 a.m., saying the dream was over—that Mel’s was leaving—and the doors would close immediately.


How do you explain that? As the 1960s turn 50 and Mad Men, a cable series about cutthroat Kennedy-era New York ad execs, is television’s most highly-regarded dramatic series, and as our cultural appetite for nostalgia now extends as far north as the 1990s, how does one restaurant serving good old American food fail—and another succeed? The answer is both simple and complicated—largely because it concerns the restaurant business.


However the greasy steam and recurrent flames of a short-order grill may temporarily obscure it, the truth is that owning and operating a “store” (what restaurateurs call a restaurant) is a very, very tough gig. In the case of the Shops at Rossmoor—the name for the shopping center which includes the Parasol—reviving a restaurant that was the last of its kind became even tougher once they changed its direction.


When the Parasol opened in 1967, it was part of a chain whose ribbed tops and circular designs made them literally look like ladies’ umbrellas. It’s a little hard to believe today that there were once 10 Parasols (thousands of their 55-cent “dreemburgers” served, one imagines)—but there were.


The signature motif continued inside, with seating in the round, a circular counter and parasol-shaped chandeliers, which lit the place while simultaneously not making you feel like you were eating inside an umbrella stand.


This was—is—programmatic architecture, wherein things look like the things they look like (like Los Angeles’ 1938 Tail of the Pup restaurant, shaped like a hot dog; and Long Beach’s percolator-esque 1932 Koffee Pot cafe at 957 E. Fourth St.)
And its design worked admirably until 2004—eased in the digestion by a comfy menu that included fried Monte Cristo sandwiches and meatloaf. But that was the year when demolition began being talked about. Original owner Roy Hall’s lease was due to expire, but he confided to the Orange County Register’s Jennifer Kane that he thought things looked fine just the way they were.


“I’ve thought many times of making changes, but I just couldn’t see it,” Hall told the Register in May 2004. “After a while, you just say: It’s working the way it is. Don’t touch it.” But touching things—or, in the case of the Parasol, spending an estimated $1.5 million to remodel them—is the American way. Plans to fold the umbrella went ahead despite a petition and much outcry from the Friends of the Parasol, and their friends. And when a reprieve finally came, it still spelled r-e-m-o-d-e-l.
“[. . .] At least one threatened landmark in town might be sticking around,” the Register’s Blythe Bernhard wrote Feb. 2, 2005. “Plans to demolish the 37-year-old Parasol restaurant have been scrapped. The landlord, Century National Properties, hired an architect this week to draw up plans for a new shopping center that includes the umbrella-shaped diner.


“‘The goodwill we get from keeping it is going to be more beneficial,’ spokesman Lee Jackrel said.” Or, at least that was the idea.


“Everything has its cycle, and they had kind of reached the end of theirs. It happens in life and in business,” says Jim Lynch, who is general manager of the Shops at Rossmoor. He praises the Mel’s people, saying, “If you had been in the restaurant, they had a lot of historical stuff—references to the American Graffiti era that they had associated themselves with, and they tied all that in really nicely.”
But American Graffiti is a 1973 movie that only reveals our appetite for nostalgia (and featured the original Mel’s Drive-In, before it was torn down). The Parasol was—or had been—the real thing.


Still, the Rossmoor Mel’s, 12241 Seal Beach Blvd., opened promisingly almost exactly two years ago, Lynch says after consulting some paperwork. (It did so, however, minus its original parasol chandeliers, which weren’t reused and went to a movie-prop house in the San Fernando Valley.)


“It was open almost exactly two years,” Lynch says, providing the re-opening date: Oct. 18, 2007. “It just proved to be a struggle here.” Why? Rent American Graffiti and you’ll see that most of it takes place at night, when the folks who remember Monte Cristo sandwiches and meatloaf are sound asleep. And in Rossmoor, the sidewalks still roll up a little bit once the streetlights come on.


“Pretty close,” says Lynch, who, ironically enough, grew up in Downey. “It’s a real kind of a quiet kind of place. We have a lot of great things that are interesting here in Rossmoor. It’s a great little community, but it’s a family community.


“It was, you know, kind of one of those things where . . . [Mel’s] felt like their concept just was better suited to a more urban location. They depend on a lot of late-night traffic and those types of things. And they tried to step out a little bit. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for them.”


The Shops at Rossmoor is, Lynch says, actively seeking a new restaurant to fill the now ex-Parasol/ex-Mel’s location (which is still listed as “Open” on the Mel’s Web site) and hopes to re-open it next year.


Original buildings designed in the extroverted, abstract, asymmetrical style of architecture that reached its zenith in the 1950s have come to be known as “Googie,” a term which dates to the 1950s itself but was famously revived by architect Alan Hess, who used it to name his 1985 book on ’50s coffee-shop architecture.


Specifically, it pays homage to architect John Lautner’s 1949 design for Googie, a real coffee shop at Sunset Blvd. and Crescent Heights Blvd. in Los Angeles—but in practice the word has been used as a catch-all to describe a variety of ’50s architectural styles.


So it is with George’s ’50s Diner, one of Long Beach’s Googie-est remaining buildings, now that the futuristic 1956 diner Dimy’s (1640 E. Pacific Coast Hwy.) and the Polynesian-style 1958 Java Lanes bowling alley (3800 E. Pacific Coast Hwy.) are no longer with us.


George’s, 4390 Atlantic Ave., isn’t really Googie at all—but it’s a landmark design, coming from the late, noted architect Wayne McAllister, who is perhaps most famous for designing the original Sands casino in Las Vegas. A 1950s-era photograph of members of the Rat Pack in front of the bold, structural checkerboard Sands sign, squinting in the desert sun, remains one of Vegas’ classic images.


For what was probably his only Long Beach outing, McAllister penned a small diner in an updated 1930s Streamline Moderne style. A squarish oval from the air (thank you, Google maps!), it reads ovoid from the ground, with a wide, flat stucco eyebrow of a roof that shades the requisite wall of glass windows—all of it watched by a large rectangular pylon sign.


“The abstract geometry is hung around a giant plate-glass window that frames diners and creates visual excitement from the street,” Los Angeles magazine Associate Editor and Los Angeles Conservancy mid-century guru Chris Nichols wrote in his 2007 book The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister.


Opened in 1953 as Grisinger’s Drive-In by brothers Ed and Wes Grisinger, it “shows the effective Late Moderne vocabulary McAllister developed for roadside architecture,” Hess writes in his 2004 Googie Redux, an update of his 1985 book.
Designated a historic landmark by the city of Long Beach five years ago, the Diner has never closed. Under different signage and a modified interior, it is now on its third set of owners, this one including one of its former cooks, George Alvarez—who says he knows exactly what he has and aims to someday restore it.


“I really liked it myself right from the beginning. It was a neat little coffee shop,” says Alvarez, who has been associated with the place since 1974, when it was known as Terry’s Coffee Shop and he went to work for the Terry, its second owner.
“Most of the people they just see the dollar signs. We’re always scared of old buildings. I’m from the old school—I like the old buildings,” says Alvarez, who bought the diner from Terry in 1993 or 1994 (he’s not sure).


“I think I could do this in any building, but this in particular building, it is a lot easier because the architecture is very unique,” Alvarez says. “It’s really an original, authentic diner. It’s really from the ’50s, and I think it makes a little bit of difference. You have adults, teenagers come in—they really appreciate that.”
And city officials—who so often earn our wrath for allowing Dimy’s to depart or for turning Java Lanes into a number of condominiums—seem to agree.


“We’re reminded constantly by pictures and by the many historic groups in town of the many entities that have gone by the wayside,” says Long Beach City Manager Pat West. “We didn’t cause them to go down, but maybe we could have [done something to keep them].”


This is a thought I first hear from Gil Livas, the city of Downey’s deputy city manager for community development, who was instrumental in brokering the deal to resurrect the ruins of Johnie’s Broiler.


“There’s a tremendous focus on buildings that have seen their great days go by. Once they’re shuttered, there’s a great deal of activity to try to save a building,” Livas says. “It seems to me that a similar degree of effort should go into trying to help these businesses survive—writing a plan, what would help this—providing assistance to owners before they get into trouble.”


West agrees. “That is so true. It’d be so much more wonderful to have something, to help somebody stay open,” he says—then adding that he drove by George’s the other day and thinks it could use a new coat of paint.


“We definitely will be talking to [Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association head] Blair Cohn and to the owner and fortunately, they qualify for redevelopment money,” the city manager says.


Why have George’s and Bob’s survived and Mel’s closed? It wasn’t for their one-syllable names—nor, ultimately, for their architecture. It’s the food, too. And their hours of operation: George’s has never lacked for diners, but Mel’s seems to have somehow lost touch with its local stomachs—possibly because they went to bed at a decent hour?


“Ultimately, what’s going to save a place is not only that it’s a neat place to go to, but that the service they provide—the food they provide—has got to be good,” says Livas, who met with current Downey Bob’s owner Jim Louder and convinced him that the place could be reborn. “You’ve got to have the market incentive in order for it to work.”


The Bob’s Big Boy Broiler has all of that, in a neon-drenched, light-bulb-bedazzled package that is perhaps the region’s most sprawling, truest survivor of the age of cheap gasoline.


“Below this neon skyline, floor-to-ceiling plate glass (later reduced with a low foundation base) frames the living billboard of the long counter,” Alan Hess writes in his Googie Redux. “Customers and waitresses, bathed in a pool of colorful light beneath a lowered soffit, were on display.”


They are again, now that the original tuck-and-roll upholstered counter stools and booths have been restored—and that “low foundation base” is gone. In English, that was a cinderblock wall which screened the lower half of those famous windows—so guys in cars outside couldn’t use their headlights to look up girls’ skirts. Yeah, it was that kinda place.


Opened as Harvey’s Broiler by Harvey and Minnie Ortner on the site of a former chicken ranch and run briefly by the owners of Johnie’s Coffee Shop in Los Angeles, then taken over by longtime operator Christos Smyrniotis, the Broiler immediately became a regular stop on Los Angeles-area car customizers’ nightly wanderings.
“They cruise around in their cars in Harvey’s huge parking lot, boys and girls, showing each other the latest in fashions in cars, hairdos (male and female) and clothes in the Los Angeles Teenage [ . . . ] and Second-Generation Teenage [ . . . ] modes. Rank moderne! Teenage Paris! Harvey’s Drive-In!” writer Tom Wolfe exuded in his short story “The Hair Boys.”


The car scene boomed for more than a decade and never died out completely—and the numbers of people who remember those days are still legion.


“We’ve had people stop by and just start crying and say, ‘I thought this place was demolished,’” says Los Angeles Conservancy member Adriene Biondo, who started visiting the restaurant weekly from her home in Granada Hills until it closed in 2002 and was partially gutted to be used as a car lot. (There’s a plot twist for you.)


“I’m glad it reads [visually] like it was originally, for some of the old cruisers who were there during the Harvey’s days,” she says.


Two groups initially formed to watch over the diner, Biondo says: the Sons of Johnie’s (her group) and the Friends of Johnie’s Broiler, which is headed by Downey-ite Analisa Ridenour—and, notably, spearheaded a one-off 2002 fundraiser/reunion of famed Downey sons the Blasters on the Rio Hondo Country Club stage in Downey before a crowd of scenesters that included X singer Exene Cervenka and Billboard magazine’s Chris Morris.


Five years later came Demolition Day, shortly after New Year’s 2007, when the people leasing the restaurant from Smyrniotis decided to tear it down—without permits or even turning off the gas and electricity. That got everyone’s attention.
“That’s when everything came together,” says Kevin Preciado of Cyclone Racing Equipment, a longtime hot-rodder with an eye for historic preservation. “I made it a point to introduce myself to [Adriene] in person. When we did that, we started to plan cruises.”


Their cruises were successful in drawing attention to the cause, and the two Johnie’s advocacy groups merged into one, the Coalition to Save Harvey’s Broiler. When Louder, the Torrance Bob’s Big Boy owner, showed a hint of interest in the ruined restaurant, the Coalition and the city of Downey reached out to him. The question was: How to make it pay?


“The [food] sales wouldn’t support leasing the land for any period of time. That was one challenge,” says Livas. “The other challenge was: who was going to come in and deal with all the historical issues?”


“I was afraid I would end up getting sued by one of the historic preservation interests or a concerned citizen or something,” Louder says. “And just trying to satisfy everyone’s interests, historical and current building codes—those things were issues that we had to work through.”


A whopping $900,000 in city assistance—$500,000 to lease the angular “Broiler” sign, and another $400,000 in job creation funds—helped. So did a decision to let a nearby Nissan dealership park extra cars on one acre of the Broiler’s cavernous two-acre parcel. That whittled its land down to a manageable one acre.


But the real game-changing maneuver was a clever interior redesign that transformed unneeded kitchen space into a time-capsule lounge with white horseshoe booths, photo enlargements of vintage Harvey’s Broiler and Bob’s Big Boy photos—and a glittery light treatment above that looks positively cosmic.


“We call it the Starlight Polar Lounge,” Biondo says. To the owner, it must look like a safety net.


“You had a 7,500-square-foot building with 110 seats. The mathematics of a restaurant now are: you really try to maximize your seating area and you try to minimize your kitchen and prep areas. The seats are what generates you cash,” Louder says. So, he added a drive-through—at the back where you can’t see it—and 75 seats inside.


“We actually still have a bigger kitchen than you would expect to see at a Bob’s,” he says.


They also have custody of a living legend—featured in films including What’s Love Got to Do with It?, The Big Lebowski and Heat—and a million smaller local stories being fueled with every burger sold. Not surprisingly, the Mayor of Downey is a regular—stopping in after church with his daughter.


“I think for a local resident of the surrounding area, it’s part of our legacy. We used to hang out there in high school,” says Downey Mayor Mario Guerra, a graduate of nearby Huntington Park High School. “It was part of our culture, and I think it’s a feel-good place. It brings back some memories.”


More importantly, in its new lease on life, the Broiler is doing what every vintage diner tries: it’s making new memories.

 

Thanks Adriene,
...for all the hard work and hours you have put in on this effort, thank you so much.
When I was in the Marines in the early 70's I had friends in Southgate and we would cruise all the local spots. As with all young people, we took it all for granted and thought the status quo would last forever! Thanks to you and your associates, new generations will be able to appreciate the vibe we had then!
I'm coming to Hollywood next week for Turkey Day at my cousins and am going to try and drag some folks to Downey on cruise nite to ogle some SoCal rides!
Thanks again.
Eddy in Dallas

 

These photos are from Adriene..............

 

Adriene, thanks for posting the extensive article and history of the Broiler - that really puts it all in perspective and answers most questions.

 

Adriene,

Thanks for posting the article-very cool!

 

Ok Kevin, looks like we are coming down this weekend, we are working at the auto swap meet at Irwindale on Sunday, but we will be be in Downey on Saturday picking up a blower from Hampton, so we will get to come by the Broiler finally, we will be in Downey around noon, hope there will be some traffic at that time of day..I am jazzed

 

That was a great article, thanks for posting it up!!!

 

Aw well, we worked on this place so that we can all get together there and enjoy it for many years to come! I was there for the unofficial Wednesday night HAMB cruise and it was great to finally have a chance to just stand there in the parking lot chatting and appreciating it. I also like that there's always a pigeon in the old Open 24 Hours sign, keeping watch over The Broiler. When my back's better (and my Dad installs power steering in my Olds), look for me under the canopy.

 

you said a mouthful adriene.

i was standing out there with john and phil and the guy with the neat banger powered RPU. the air was crisp and the storefront was gleaming like the front window at macys during christmas. it was a beautiful thing.

 

I work in Downey and was sorta sad to see Johnnies go and didn't even know its been reborn. really gotta check it out. Thanks HAMBers!

 

Wow... just wow.

Those pictures are great!



Chilli Phil is damn sexy too.

 

Next time I am down, definitely going to try to go check it out. Looks awesome.

 

That's exactly how it felt, like looking at the showroom window at Macy's during Christmas! I remember how miserable I was the Christmas after Johnie's closed. I even made an ornament for our tree that said "It won't be Christmas without Johnie's Broiler." But THIS YEAR it'll be Christmas again!

 

Wow I'm glad the place is still rockin, I have spent many nights there when I was truckin back in forth. Breakfast lunch and dinner slept in the parkin lot Many times. Got to block the driveway off with my truck a couple times for the car show. Sure made being stuck outta town nice to hang out at the car show.

 

Hey Mitch I was thinking the same thing, I had my Chevy parked in front of the Broiler, I remember an article about Watson in R&C from along time ago and he talked about cruising in the Grape Vine, and his route he would take, and the Broiler was one of his spots, As a kid in Canada and building my 51, I thought wow who cool would it be to be able to cruise those spots!!! Wednesday when I left I took the long way home driving by those spots I read about, and following the route that Phil told me they would take. I was actually cruising in my 51 in Kustom Land!!! After eating at the Broiler and hanging with some buddys.

Thanks Adriene, Kevin and all involved for making something come true that as young kid building a Kustom 3500 miles away 20 years ago happen!!!

John

 

Thank you so much for the nice note, Eddy. Didn't we all figure it would last forever! Since you're coming this way, maybe I'll see you guys at the Broiler on cruise nite!

 

How cool. You were literally cruising Kustom Land! By rebuilding the Broiler, we have now ensured the survival of the Heart of Kustom Land. And little by little, we will rebuild ourselves a new cruise circuit.

 

preach it!

 

This right here makes my dream come true! I used to ride my Schwinn up to Johnnys and bug Popawolf,when he still had his Merc. I'd ask him all kinds of questions...I would tell him "I will have a Merc some day and come here and park". He would say "sure you will,kid". hahaha! I teared up sitting there in "MY Merc",drinking my shake and eating my fries. A memory nobody can ever take away!!!

 

I had a chance to go to Harvey's Broiler in '64 - the front row was for cars that knew they deserved to be in the front row - strictly VIP - and that was part of the appeal - the stars of the car show...

_________________
The plentitude of the past was not intended for us, but as fortunate inheritors, we can appropriate the often neglected legacies of that world.