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. Continue reading The District.
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