We sort of figured it out pretty quickly that we could post the sign with the phone number. “Googie” was the nickname of Lillian K. Burton’s family. So the reason why we are protesting is to get their attention so then they’ll do something to fix our future. In 1954, author Steve Hayes became manager of Googie's Coffee Shop, located in Hollywood next to the landmark Schwab's Drugstore. So the reason why we are protesting is to get their attention so then they’ll do something to fix our future. we maybe knew about it first, and Johnie's restaurant was put up for sale -- not the restaurant itself but the property. They cleaned toilets and stocked shelves, and along the way the family purchased several properties in the city. and Crescent Heights Boulevard in Los Angeles. Never mind the redlining that kept people of color out of middle class suburbs; just ignore that toxic smog building up on the horizon. Z: The first time I came in here it had obviously been closed for a long time and I thought — this is kind of old and a little bit, you know, dumpy. A post shared by phil donohue (@phdonohue) on Aug 13, 2017 at 12:35pm PDT. And I know that they can't get to his house without passing my house. The way that naturalists and geologists think about the epic slowness of the natural world. One of legendary Googie architects Armet and Davis’s first designs, this former Kerry’s Coffee Shop was completed in 1953. On a sunny weekday morning Howard invited me over to his house to talk about the strange origin story of Bernie’s Coffee shop. It feels like some sort of revolution happened, but it didn’t go well, and everyone fled leaving everything behind. Jeremy politely explained that it wasn’t a restaurant anymore. © 2021 KCRW All Rights Reserved. And even if you don’t have one of those fancy rocket jobs, you can still experience this exciting future simply by visiting a Googie Coffee shop. Buy a googie coffee mug today, and it ships within 24 hours and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Today Lautner is revered for his Atomic Age houses, like the Chemosphere and the Garcia house both of which look stylistically like other Googie buildings. They were purposefully designed to be big and bright and dramatic so they would be seen from a car cruising through the city. Architect John Lautner designed the Hollywood coffee shop … DAVID: Since then the people who use the restaurant as a gathering place has expanded beyond just Bernie Sanders supporters. The windows and walls are covered with posters and signs, the remains of protests and street marches. DAVID: This is Howard Gold. Maybe they will save us all. DAVID: I’ve never heard anyone rave about the food there. Googie is the architectural equivalent of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of obscenity—you may not know how to define it, but you know it when you see it. 0877013349. DAVID: The first thing you see when you walk through the front door of the building is a giant black coffin standing upright. I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to have a store where everything was good quality, and everything was 99 cents?”, GOLD: I guess because we were there, we lived in the area when certain things became available in the market. It was picking up on the optimism, and the faith in the future, and the modern technology that was just being developed then. DAVID: This is Howard Gold. DAVID: The thing about Googies is that that futuristic element is often mashed together with the prehistoric, like two buildings that crashed into each other while traveling through time. They’d been talking to each other online for a while but this was the first time they had met in person. GOLD: So I told them about it, and I didn't hear anything for like a month or two, and then somebody finally called me back... And I guess the rest is history. But that’s also the story of America: a nation of over 4 million miles of roads. So obviously they couldn't have stayed in business if they had no fans. GOLD: I noticed somebody on Twitter who said. And I was just sort of thinking — hey you know maybe we can do a little protest as the motorcade goes by my house. He said quote: “Whenever I’d put wine or cheese on sale for $1.02 or 98 cents, it never sold. When you turn and look out the giant plate glass windows, you see the building across the street. GOLD: I think they would be ok with it. And much of what critics said about Lautner and Googie architecture was similar to the things LA detractors say about this place: that it's all glitz and no substance. He voted for Bernie Sanders because he sees him as the most honest candidate. You would never have expected that he was methodically building a billion dollar empire that would become a whole new genre of American capitalism. GOLD: I noticed somebody on Twitter who said — hey, boycott CNN protests going on right now. The Los Angeles Conservancy calls it an “exuberant” and “stunning” example of Googie design and midcentury bowling alleys. Bold angles, colorful signs, plate glass, sweeping cantilevered roofs and pop-culture imagery captured the attention of drivers on adjacent streets. Johnson designed the sanctuary so that while standing at the elevated pulpit, Schuller could turn to a wall that slid away revealing a vast parking lot below, where hundreds of worshippers sat in their cars receiving the word of God through tinny speakers. They were making posters for an upcoming protest. DAVID: Alan Hess is an architect and the author of 20 books about modern architecture, including one about Googies. Googie would seem far from outlandish today as those once controversial design elements have become commonplace in both commercial and residential architecture. It was a great location right on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax — one of LA’s busiest intersections. Anything you see that is not "Sold Out" is available from our current inventory for immediate shipping or made-to-order. The author met and mingled with the likes of Clark Gable, Natalie Wood, James Dean, Errol Flynn, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe and worked for the Fred Otash Detective Agency. A post shared by Miguel Valles (@mv_imgs) on Jun 22, 2019 at 11:14am PDT. 9780877013341. eBay Product ID (ePID) 932419. And there is a huge protest... there's a couple of thousand people there protesting CNN. But at that time, nuclear energy was going to promise cheap energy for everyone. It makes everything else in the space worth it. Each week at this time, we join Robert Schuller in an hour of inspiration….”. hey you know maybe we can do a little protest as the motorcade goes by my house. Lautner was an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright and spent six years living at Taliesin, Wright’s architecture fellowship. You can still book a room at Pasadena’s Safari Inn, one of the few intact vestiges of California’s Golden Age of Motels. Bowling alleys looked like Tomorrowland. I knew that George Clooney was going to have an event for Hillary Clinton in a couple weeks at his house, and he lives up the street. A post shared by Steve Tanner (@stvnptrk66) on May 26, 2019 at 6:52pm PDT. That coffee shop was called Googies. The Norms on La Cienega? and 15 oz.) In an interview with the LA Times he talked about the moment inspiration struck him while working at his dad's liquor store in Grand Central Market. The kids barely seemed to notice the visitors. ACTIVIST: At first I thought I was kind of alone because I was looking at all these climate strikes in Europe, and I was thinking — why aren’t people doing this here? this is kind of old and a little bit, you know, dumpy. It makes everything else in the space worth it. When I put a 99 cent sign on anything, it was gone in no time. Oddly enough, Googie was used as a deragatory term almost from the start — born in Southern California and named for a West Hollywood coffee shop designed in 1949 by John Lautner, a … The woman, in a short red leather skirt, chunky high heeled boots, and a tube top nestled herself between the legs of the guy and they posed seductively under a watercolor painting of Bernie Sanders and a Black Lives Matter poster. In 2017, after 61 years in business, Covina Bowl closed its doors. When we became a public company we gave every single full-time employee stock options, and we had a pretty high percentage of full time employees. And one day Howard was having a conversation with his brother who said to him — you know we’ve got the Johnie's Coffee Shop property just sitting there empty... Maybe the Bernie people would want to use it? Howard is the son of Dave Gold, the founder of the 99 Cents Only Store. And even if you couldn't make the drive down to Orange County you could just beam the gospel directly into your TV in the Hour of Power, one of the first Televangelist programs. As popular as Googie buildings were with the customers who went inside them, the architectural critics in Lautner’s time did not appreciate them. ETHAN: Scientists have shown that climate change can cause our generation’s future to be terrible. DAVID: That McDonalds, one of the first, is still standing in Downey California, which was one of the epicenters of the new and amazing future that was being invented and built in Southern California in the 1950s. He grew up a few blocks away from Johnie's Coffee Shop. Googie Landmark Johnie's Coffee Shop Lives on in the Movies New, 3 comments The blue and white building on Wilshire is still famous on the silver screen. GOLD: And I was driving my car near Mulholland and I heard the song. One of the defining characteristics about Googie architecture is that it’s commercial in more than one sense of the word. With their dynamic roofs and neon signs, these diners, motels, and car washes showcase the best of Googie style. I also couldn't help but feel sad with that overwhelming sense of doom that creeps up whenever I think about climate change, and about these kids, marching into battle with their paper swords. Googie-style car wash. the 1950s cash register and milkshake machine still sitting there gathering dust on the counter. Hong preferred vibrant reds, whites, and yellows, and just before Pann’s opened in 1956, she could not come to terms with white tiles on the wall behind the counter. The word Googie comes from Googies, a Los Angeles coffee shop also designed by Lautner. (The city landmarked the gas station in 2018. ISBN-13. Thinking about how I was standing inside a building dreamed up by 1950’s futurists — a building owned by the inheritors of a 99 Cent Store empire, currently occupied by teenagers who are trying to save the planet from the mess that was created by cars, and cheap plastic like you find at a 99 Cents Store. HESS: Googie architecture is part of the upwelling of good modern design after World War II. It feels like some sort of revolution happened, but it didn’t go well, and everyone fled leaving everything behind — the 1950s cash register and milkshake machine still sitting there gathering dust on the counter. One of the women had an expensive looking camera around her neck, and asked if they could do a photo shoot inside the diner. Back then you could take a short drive from your fantastic job at the rocket factory to the McDonald's down the street for a cheap hamburger, and on Sunday you could even worship the lord in your car at the Crystal Cathedral — a drive-in church in Orange county that was one of the first megachurches. It is a part of Southern California’s identity as a car culture,” said Hess, who wrote a book on the style. Googie’s Coffee Shop in 1986 at Sunset Blvd and Crescent Heights 8100, West Hollywood Before its destruction !! Howard is the son of Dave Gold, the founder of the 99 Cents Only Store. Also opened in 1961, LAX’s space-age Theme Building went through a $4 million renovation—including lights designed by Walt Disney Imagineering—in 1997, right before a restaurant called Encounter took over the space. One of them was holding up a sign that derisively referred to CNN as the Clinton News Network, and at that moment Howard got an idea. HESS: Googie architecture was a place where George Jetson and Fred Flinsotne could sit down for a cup of coffee. Life is grand, God is great... We are making rockets to the moon, people! DAVID: Howard says his parents tried to instill in him and his siblings a sense of social justice. It was actually Rosemary Clooney’s version of “We're in the Money”. DAVID: The architect who designed the very first Googie was John Lautner. And one day Howard was having a conversation with his brother who said to him. I realized it was a magic number. These, however, remain—for now, anyhow. And I was just sort of thinking. Today, these are Googie architecture staples, and standout images that themselves have become immortalized as art,” writes Farley Elliott at Eater LA. The rooms have been modernized and are somewhat bland, but the fantastic neon sign from the 1950s and safari-themed metal sculptures still remain. GOLD: As a kid I was always politically active, not on my own, my parents dragged me to anti Vietnam War protests and I got involved in little things here and there. Publication Year. This new venue had all the elements that would later become the standard for coffee shops and drive-ins around the country. They are made from stone embedded in concrete. Standing there inside this post-apocalyptic coffee shop, and staring out at these space age buildings, you think about the concept of deep time. a youth climate strike. The restaurant closed for business in 2000 and is now used exclusively for shooting. It was “suburban,” “merely” commercial, “only” advertising, “just” a coffee shop, not “real” architecture. Architects Louis Armét and Eldon Davis of Armét & Davis designed the building, contributing to their reputation as the premier designers of Space Age or Googie coffee shops—including the landmark Pann's coffee shop in Ladera … Long before Dollar Trees and Family Dollars became staples of the American landscape there was the 99 Cents Only Store which was founded in 1982 by Dave Gold. But you come in, and then instead of the architecture being magical and blowing you away, it’s that whatever you are there for… the strength of the movement that blows you away. One Saturday afternoon at Bernie’s Coffee Shop, a bunch of kids were gathered there. He, along with the architectural old guard, disliked the aesthetic, which they found gauche. The Googie style fell out of favor in the 1970s and 1980s, when many of the coffee shops, gas stations, motels and shopping centers that exemplified the … DAVID: Howard does not consider himself a socialist. HESS: There was a bias, this was at a time when the architecture profession was primarily white and well to do, and clients were well to do, and there was a certain standard of respectability in architecture profession... and anything that had to do with commerce commercialism, selling things, billboards, advertising selling products, was considered not terribly respectable for a real architect. The Googie World Expo is a two-day celebration of exuberant and futuristic mid-century modern architecture and design. The origin of the name Googie dates to 1949, when architect John Lautner designed the Googies Coffee Shop in Hollywood, which had distinct architectural characteristics. It combined both that sense of the future and amazing cantilevers in swooping forms of modern engineering, but also with a sense of earthiness, and stone, and natural materials, which its roots go back to Frank Lloyd Wright. The people that operated Johnie's still had a lease. “Welcome to an Hour of Power. With it’s waves of red and silver metal, it feels like it is from a different century... which it is. Long before Dollar Trees and Family Dollars became staples of the American landscape there was the 99 Cents Only Store which was founded in 1982 by Dave Gold. Across from that is an even more futuristic looking structure that resembles a smaller, more fuel-efficient version of the Death Star from Star Wars if it had landed at one of LA's busiest intersections. Googie:Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture is a nostalgic trip back to the Fifties and a look forward at the architectural future. They were making posters for an upcoming protest — a youth climate strike. Built in 1937 and closed in 2005 to make way for a low-income housing development, Algemac’s classic facade remains—its interior now serves as a community center for said development. When I put a 99 cent sign on anything, it was gone in no time. 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