Kicks on 66: Los Güeros

If my wife and I can claim any single restaurant as "our place," this is it.  Like a number of restaurants we discovered when we were dating, we first went to Los Güeros having found a coupon for them in the Entertainment book, but we really got attached to Los Güeros during our premarital counseling in Arcadia, after which we would go just a little further down the street to enjoy dinner at Los Güeros each week.  A year or so later, when we moved to Monrovia, we were thrilled to discover that our new apartment was just around the corner from our favorite restaurant!

It's true enough that Mexican food places are fairly plentiful in Southern California, of varying degrees of quality.  Besides the fact that Los Güeros simply provides "good food," one thing that makes them really stand out is the guacamole cart.  The cart will come right up to your table, and you can tell the server exactly what ingredients you want to include in your guacamole (we add everything except the peppers, since my wife doesn't have a very high tolerance for spicy foods), and you can watch the guacamole prepared right there in front of you.  Guacamole doesn't come any fresher than that!

The prices are quite reasonable, but this is further enhanced if you bring a coupon, which generally isn't at all hard to do.  Besides the one you can get from the Entertainment book, similar "free entree" coupons are easily found in local publications, and the servers will occasionally provide some at the restaurant itself as an incentive to return (not that you're likely to need much arm-twisting!).  If you're going to bring a group, I recommend the coupons you can get at Restaurant.com, but the dinner coupon requires a minimum purchase of $40, so it's not really viable if there are only two of you (but if you reach that minimum, it's totally worth the effort!).

We usually go to the original Los Güeros location on Huntington (that's the Route 66 one), but the restauant has been so successful that they've opened up a second, larger, location on Myrtle in Old Town Monrovia.  Either site is worth checking out.

Kicks on 66: "Attend The Church of Your Choice"

A prominent sign on Route 66 in the nearby town of Azusa displays a message that is by no means unique to Azusa, but which might be seen in any of a number of cities not only in Southern California, but all over the country (indeed, some of my "Bible Belt" friends, who have formed their own opinions of what Southern California is like on the basis of what they see on television, might be surprised to learn just how common such a sight is around here!): "Attend The Church of Your Choice."  This particular sign then proceeds to to offer a dozen-and-a-half options representing a range of denominational options within the broad Christian tradition.

There's quite a bit about signs like this that I appreciate.  I appreciate the ecumenism that such a sign represents.  Rather than encouraging particular denominations (be they Roman Catholic, or Southern Baptist, or Presbyterian, or whatever) to see themselves as holding exclusive claims to "truth," this kind of sign encourages Christians to think of each other as part of a family of equals.  Likewise, I'm a fan of encouraging people to make their own "choices" about where to worship, and feel that this sign provides that kind of encouragement in a low-pressure, guilt-free way.

I do have a few concerns, however.  The first and most obvious one is the lack of non-Christian faiths represented on this kind of board.  Far from being encouraged to attend a Christian church (much less become a Christian), I imagine that a person of Jewish or Muslim background would look at this kind of sign as kind of Christian "imperialism," whereby Christians assume that they are the only people that matter.  My evangelical impulse is bothered by this potential problem, but I don't pretend to know how to fix it, nor would I suggest that including a more diverse set of worship gatherings would necessarily solve the problem.  Indeed, I'm sure it would just raise evangelical questions of its own.

The idea of "choice" in worship also raises a few questions for me.  There seems to be a hyper-individualism at work in American society (perhaps especially in Southern California!) that tells people "if you don't like your current church, just go to another one!"  I'm sure that I've been guilty of this, myself.  On the one hand, I don't think that a person should just go to the closest church to where they live (or even necessarily the closest church within that person's denomination), nor that a person should just "put up with" any amount of dysfunction within a congregation.  On the other hand, I think that it's important to recognize that any church, being a gathering of human beings, is going to reflect in some way or another the broken nature of humanity.  There is no such thing as a perfect church, and I can't help but wish that more people were committed to seeing their local congregations through periods of difficulty.  Or, to put it another way (and to paraphrase a former president's famous words), I wish more people would "ask not what their church can do for them, but ask what they can do for their church."

I do find myself wondering about what attendance is like at the churches mentioned on this sign.  Whatever its intentions originally were (and I suspect that this sign dates back quite a few decades!), do people attend these churches on the basis of having been made aware of them by their mention on the sign?  Does the sign encourage newcomers to attend, when they first arrive in town?  (And how many "newcomers" come to Azusa these days?)  When new members come to one of these churches, do they come from one of the other churches on the sign, or are they truly new to church attendance in the first place?   I fear that quite a bit of new church membership comes at the expense of church losses somewhere else, rather than representing any true growth.

None of this is to say that I don't think that this sign should be here.  I'm glad to see this kind of open expression of Christian involvement in a community.  But it's also a reminder of the fact that this world is not as it should be....

Kicks on 66: San Bernardino Wanderings

During Christmas vacation, I took advantage of one of my days off, during which I had to travel east anyway on an unrelated matter, to keep traveling east for a while, until I found myself in San Bernardino.  Specifically, I took the time to explore Route 66 in that area, with the help of my GPS, KITT.

I told KITT to take me to the "center of the road" in San Bernardino, but I'm wondering if I either did something wrong, or if the road has changed since the latest map was programmed in, because it clearly took me to the end of the road that it deposited me on.  I've never really been in San Bernardino before, and certainly would never have attempted the trip without the GPS in hand.  However, even at this "middle of nowhere" juncture, there were independent restaurants and establishments just around the corner.

Being at the end of the road, I at least had a clear path to follow to return to town, so I just followed the road for a while. Not too many buildings for quite a stretch, but I found myself in the main part of town soon enough.  One point of interest is the "Mitla Cafe," which I confess I'd never heard of before, but since it had a "Route 66" plaque on it, I figured I should snap a picture of it.

I've always known that Route 66 isn't exactly contiguous.  Indeed, parts of the road that used to be there years ago simply aren't any more.  Besides this being part the reason it was possible for me to be deposited at the end of the road earlier, I also discovered that just "staying on the road" while traveling through San Bernardino was no easy task.  In fact, to stay on "Route 66," I actually had to retrace my steps on three separate occasions as the "Route" took a turn when the road I was on didn't!  Still, with the help of KITT, I was always able to figure out where I needed to get to.

Toward the end of my journey, I found this unusual motel where all the rooms looked like "Wigwams" (to use the word they used.  I'd have called them "Teepees," myself.  If I'm reading Wikipedia correctly, my usage would be more correct, but who am I to tell the motel folks they got it wrong?).  The minute I saw these, I thought about the "Cozy Cone" in the Pixar movie Cars.  Wikipedia suggests that this resemblance is indeed intentional.

But that's hardly a surprise.  Indeed, Route 66 is a huge part of what made Cars the movie that it is, with it's small(er) town values and distinctive establishments, and I found myself thinking of that movie quite a bit while I was enjoying my afternoon drive.  I'll have to take the time out to head back to San Bernardino sooner rather than later.  But now that vacation time's over, that will probably prove difficult.  Fortunately for me, there is still quite a bit of Route 66 to explore closer to home!

Kicks on 66: The Monrovia McDonald's

Shortly after coming to live in Monrovia more than 5 years ago, my wife and I discovered that we lived less than a block off of the legendary Route 66, and close to a number of historic fixtures with interesting stories.  I can't make any promises, but I think it might be interesting to see about collecting a few of those stories from time to time.  Here's one, in any event....

Depending on which source one listens to, the first McDonald's is cited as being either in Des Plaines, IL or in San Bernadino, CA.  Both claims have some validity: The IL location is the one officially claimed by McDonald's Corporation, but it opened in 1955, whereas the CA restaurant has been there since 1940.  Why the confusion, especially with such a large difference in both time and location?  Well, the Des Plaines, IL address is the first restaurant opened by the company as run by Ray Kroc, who McDonald's considers its founder.  For some reason, the company barely gives lip service to the fact that Kroc bought the franchise rights from Dick and Mac McDonald, from whom the chain gets its name.  The San Bernadino location is the one that the actual McDonald brothers set up!  Yet, despite the fact that the San Bernadino McDonald's was also on Route 66 (maybe I'll get around to visiting the site someday, but the restaurant itself was demolished in 1976), that's not the one I want to talk about, here.

The McDonald's in Monrovia, CA (a mere block or two from where I live) doesn't really make any claims to being "the first," and yet in a real sense, has a claim to a legacy that predates both of the other two locations.  In 1937, the McDonald brothers opened up a restaurant they called "the Airdrome" at the corner of Huntington and Mayflower, which was--at the time--the northwest corner of the old Monrovia Airport (which closed in 1953.  A good thing for me, since my apartment sits on part of the grounds once occupied by that airport!).  They moved the restaurant to San Bernadino three years later, renamed it "McDonald's," and the rest is history.  This McDonald's sits on the location of the old Airdrome. 

Like I said, the Monrovia McDonald's doesn't loudly proclaim these ties.  However, there is a plaque on the wall with a picture of the Airdrome.  It's not really a "restaurant" in the sense we'd think of one today.  Basically, it was an open-air stand that sold shakes, orange juice, and yes, hamburgers.

Perhaps more important than that, the plaque also has this letter from Dick McDonald, dated in 1996 (Dick died in 1998), where he reminisces about how he and his brother got their start in Monrovia.  Honestly, even though the picture of the Airdrome says that the stand was located on Huntington Drive, it took some more digging to realize that the current McDonald's really is at the same location, rather than just being the closest McDonald's to the site (presumed by me to be somewhere down the road.  I mean, since this clearly isn't the same structure, I couldn't assume that the site was available when McDonald's Corporation finally got around to putting a restaurant there, right?  LATER NOTE: An e-mail received after this post went up suggests that this information is incorrect, and that this McDonald's isn't on the site of the Airdrome after all.  I can only say that this claim--for good or ill--is only as good as the sources which I used to write it up, and I'll fully admit that the evidence is spotty.  I invited that person to post a comment which could more positively source corrected information, but he has so far failed to do so.  I will say that I've since found indications that the airport was indeed a bit further to the east, which would indicate that the Airdrome most likely was, as well, but that information is still far from solid.).  McDonald's purists are quick to point out that the stand the McDonald brothers owned was never called "McDonald's" while in Monrovia, but even so, I think it's kind of neat that the legacy of this location has been claimed, even in this small way.

One quick note about the unusual logo on this particular McDonald's.  The arches overlap, rather than meet in the middle, and there's a line running through it.  What's up with that?  Apparently, most of the older McDonald's restaurants were distinguished by two huge arches on each end and a sloping roof.  Here's an image of the Des Plaines McDonald's.  This logo essentially captures the image of such a restaurant, when viewed from the side.  A few other McDonald's, especially ones with historic roots, share this logo, but it's definitely unusual.  It was apparently later refined to become the "golden arches" we all know today.

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