[Music playing]
Charles: I am drawn to the mid-century American culture because it embraces classic and ketch at the same time.
John: Los Angeles was the appropriate place to reinvent oneself. Nowhere is that more true in a way and the way in which people adapted to the car culture of Southern California.
Charles: The custom car culture was the, I am on guard of the car culture.
Billy: After World War II, we have a lot of kids around and they get this old cast off cars and hot ride them off. George Perez, you know because his contemporaries, they create a copy and they wanted to cars that look like they were custom made cars and something California. But it was right, it was invented here in Southern California and it is like what can we do that is crazier?
Charles: California crazy architecture, you find them a lot around the country, but it was really rampant here with the big donuts and the gas station that look like airplanes.
I think LA became the place of crazy architecture of the movie industry. Creative people were here.
John: So, here we are at Astro’s Coffee Shop in Silverlake that is built in 1958 and designed by the great googy coffee architect. I am to point some little things about googy architectures, some of the points of style here. Here at Astro’s you can see this incredible classic Armand Davis style upswept roof line and floats out of the street, a giant iconic form that can be seen from way down the street to attract passing motorists. They are to bring people in day and night and the building works both day and night as a beacon for hungry travelers. They are quite essentially Los Angeles buildings and as you can see, they also remind people of the Jettsons, of course. In fact, some people could say this is Jettsons’ architecture.
Billy: Los Angeles is the epicenter of catch. You think of catch a lot of time as being kind of corny and campy.
This is a colorful and cartoon mind, I love that and you can laugh at them, have fun because it is hilarious. It was the golden era of our culture, I think, our American culture.
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