Big Boy returns in all its Googie glory

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Anybody here remember Hobo Joe's? Humpty Dumpty's? Sambo's?

After lapsing into decline, the roadside restaurants are making a return.

By Jia-Rui Chong, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

There's the massive doughnut that crowns Randy's Donuts in Inglewood.

There's the old Tail O' the Pup hot dog stand built in the shape of a hot dog.

But when it comes to classic Los Angeles roadside attractions, few can top the smiling boy in the red checkered overalls hoisting a towering burger above his shoulder.

Aficionados of Bob's Big Boy hamburger chain have been mourning the beloved outpost on Wilshire Boulevard near La Brea Avenue. The Big Boy on Wilshire closed at the end of July and is now more than 80% demolished, said Chris Nichols, chairman emeritus of the Modern Committee of the Los Angeles Conservancy and author of a book on Wayne McAllister, who designed many well-known Big Boy coffee shops.

But a new Bob's Big Boy is taking hold.

The new Big Boy in Downey is being built on the site of Johnie's Broiler, which in its heyday was the largest carhop drive-in ever built in California. The new owner plans to restore the original 1958 plans, cleaning up the mess from the partial demolition of the coffee shop in January 2007.

The Downey location could open as a Big Boy early next year.

"It's a big deal," Nichols said. The builders of the new location are seeking inspiration in the landmark Toluca Lake Bob's, which is marked by colorful neon lighting and vintage mid-century modern architecture. Bob's is expected to hire carhops.

"I am really looking forward to the one in Downey," he said.

The Big Boy empire began with a modest counter and 10 stools in Glendale. When Bob Wian opened the tin-roofed restaurant, barely bigger than a shack, with the $350 he got from selling his convertible in 1936, little did he know Bob's Big Boy coffee shops would multiply across the country and become a cultural icon.

Bob's Big Boy came to symbolize the "Southern California leisure lifestyle," Nichols said. "It meant cheap, plentiful, abundant land, food and buildings."

Within a year of opening the restaurant -- known then as Bob's Pantry -- a group of customers from an orchestra asked Wian to dream up something different, according to the website of Big Boys Restaurants International.

Wian cut a burger bun into three slices and added two hamburger patties, making the first double-decker hamburger.

Soon, the website said, a chubby boy came into the store and inspired a name for his sandwich and the restaurant. "I was so amused by the youngster -- jolly, healthy-looking and obviously a lover of good things to eat, I called him Big Boy," Wian said.

Bob's Big Boy restaurants, especially the ones with drive-ins, became a teen scene.

"They would go there and hang out and meet friends and it was colorful and fun and exciting and cheap," Nichols said.

At its peak in the 1960s, the company had 750 restaurants across the country, many of them designed by well-regarded architects, Nichols said.

The fiberglass statues of Big Boy in checkered overalls were so popular that teenagers often stole them and took them for joy rides.

"We were as popular as Elvis," Chris Hansen, a former vice president with the company, recalled in a recent memoir.

"It seemed like everybody in town stopped at Bob's [on Friday nights]. They were attracted by the good food, gorgeous waitresses and the action."

The popularity of Big Boys started to flag in the 1980s, probably because new owners of the chain were paring it down and the next generation of young people had moved on to flashier things, Nichols said.

But Big Boys are beginning a new expansion with about 40 to 50 scheduled to open in the next few years, Nichols said. "People kind of see it in more of its original light, as a fun place," he said.

He credits the Toluca Lake Bob's, which is hopping with diners seeking the feel of the 1950s, with helping this regeneration.

"They get to see it in its buffed-and-polished state instead of its last-legs state, which it was in for a while," Nichols said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bi...story?track=rss

[KiKi 0]

OMG.... I worked at Bob's Big Boy for 4 years when I was in college.

NOTHING beats a Big Boy combo with a cherry coke.....such nostalgia! I wish they'd make a full comeback..... I miss Big Boy

[*JG* 2]

We have a giant Big Boy at a restaurant somewhere N. of St. Louis. I've seen it recently. Can't remember which restaurant it is now.

I used to love going there as a kid. Usually when we travelled.

[SMOKE 1,426]

that brings back memories. use to eat at Big Boy's & Sambo's a lot when i was a lil kid.

[dumaguete 0]

The original Sambos in Santa Barabara is still there!

http://www.sambosrestaurant.com/indexsam2.htm

[Mononoke28 135]

I thought he took off with Dr. Evil year ago.

Diana

[Ban Hammer 13,352]

i remember sambo's.

[Jasman0717 9]

i remember sambo's.

Dumaguete is right, there is one right on the ocean drive in Santa Barbara. We had a consortium meeting there and went to Sambos for breakfast. It brought back memories!

[almaty 19]

i remember big boy and sambos.....

[alienlovechild 75]

Younger folks don't believe there was a chain restaurant named Sambo's. The backlash because of the name led to the Cracker Barrel chain.

Sambo's revival running into hot water

January 28, 1998

Web posted at: 9:16 p.m. EDT (2116 GMT)

From Correspondent Greg LaMotte

SANTA BARBARA, California (CNN) -- Once upon a time there was a man named Sam Battistone. Sam had a friend named Newell Bohnett, whom everyone called Bo.

In 1957, the two men decided to open a restaurant. They figured they'd serve sizzling hotcakes, offer coffee for 10 cents a cup and give their customers service with a smile.

They called the restaurant Sambo's.

Fast-forward 41 years. Sam Battistone's grandson, Chad Stevens, has plans to rebuild the restaurant chain -- which once numbered 1,200 units coast-to-coast -- to its former glory.

There's just one problem: the name.

Sambo's was an amalgam of Sam and Bo, and as part of their marketing strategy the founders used a logo based on a children's story called "Little Black Sambo."

The book was written in 1899 by Helen Bannerman, a Scottish woman, and takes place in India. It is about a little boy who goes into the jungle and loses his clothing to bullying tigers. But the tigers chase each other around a tree and eventually melt into butter, which Sambo puts on his pancakes and eats.

The marketing strategy was obvious: Sam and Bo open Sambo's, and pancakes were one of the restaurant's specialties.

Original Sambo looked African

Sambo as depicted in the book

The original Sambo's restaurant used as its logo a depiction of an Indian boy, but in the book -- and in the minds of many who read it -- Sambo looked more African than Indian.

Eventually the chain failed and the reason given was that it expanded too fast. But Stevens nurtures visions of putting his grandfather's empire back together.

Only one of the original restaurants survived, the first one in Santa Barbara.

"This store hasn't changed at all," says Stevens. "We've done a little bit of facelift on it but, for the most part, the kitchen's the same."

Sambo as depicted by the restaurant

Stevens not only wants to rebuild the Sambo's empire, he also wants to keep the name. And the name, which took on negative connotations in the 1930s and 1940s, is generating opposition.

"The cultural understanding of 'Little Black Sambo' is a negative," says Professor Frank Gilliam of UCLA. "It's meant to suggest that people of African descent are childlike, that they're irresponsible, that they're not fully developed human beings."

Carol Codrington of Loyola Law School said the character was used to stereotype African Americans as shiftless and lazy.

Book reissued under new title

Stevens protests that the restaurant is based on a family name, not racism.

"I have a hard time," he says, "and maybe being white or Anglo-Saxon, maybe I'm not seeing something. Maybe I'm blind to something. I'm sorry about that. Just read the story, and you tell me."

While it is no doubt still possible to find copies of Bannerman's original story, which has charmed generations, publishers decided to avoid the negative connotations by reissuing the book with a new title: "The Story of Little Babaji."

The boy, his mother and father are given authentic Indian names -- Babaji, Mamaji, Dadaji -- and the illustrations are emphatically Indian.

Stevens says this is the 1990s. He just wants to sell good food and coffee, and he hopes that when it comes to Sambo's, this won't be the end.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9801/28/sambo.revival/

[peejay 327]

It's been a while since I saw Big Boy. In Texas the restaurant chain was called Kips...home of the Big Boy. Different name...same goofy Big Boy statue in front.

[bgreed 0]

In the south east they're called Shoneys

[Marilyn. 340]

lol.. i remember once on a family vacation we stopped at Big Boy's and one of my brothers' who was like 5 or 6 at the time saw this kind of portly waiter and asked him," are you big boy?" ...