Hope for Johnie’s Broiler
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
As I mentioned yesterday, I grew up in the small town of Downey, California, where a surprising lot of big things happened. When I was still in elementary school we had Rockwell [turned Boeing, now Downey Studios], the space shuttle building company that supported our schools, and in return us band geeks would go over to Rockwell every few months and perform (badly) during their lunch breaks and they’d feed us pizza. We got to walk through a life-sized model of the space shuttle and play with the giant booster rockets that always scared me, and it was awesome. My AP English teacher my senior year of high school claimed that because of Rockwell, Russia had 20 megatons of nuclear warheads aimed at Downey, but I still don’t know if I believe that.
Downey also had Johnie’s Broiler, a famous greasy spoon that you may not have been to yourself, but it’s a pretty safe bet you’ve seen it before. In the 90s, while I still lived in Downey, the diner was home to quite a few film crews, who used the location as a retro hometown diner. What’s Love Got To Do With It was filmed there, and I still remember when the X Files crew came to town to film an episode (it’s the Groundhog Day-type episode, I’m too lazy to look up the title right now), because the X Files was my favourite TV show EVER and I couldn’t believe that Mulder and Scully were hanging out about a mile away from my house.
Sadly, at the beginning of the year most of Johnie’s Broiler was illegally demolished by its greedy owner before the entire city intervened on the building’s behalf. Considered a landmark, every single Downey resident was appalled that this piece of history was going to be paved over for a used car lot, or whatever ugly, useless thing the owner was planning to put in. All that remains of the once famous diner is the iconic fat boy sign and a pile of splintered timber and rubble. I was in town over the holidays and drove past Johnie’s by accident, and it was so saddening to see that fenced off pile of debris just sitting there sadly. It may have looked unloved at the time, but people still care. Downey’s city council voted to let the moratorium on construction at the site expire, and vowed that they would work closely with the current owner and any future investors to carefully restore Johnie’s to its former glory. There’s hope for old Johnie’s yet! I can’t wait to see what it’ll look like when it’s redone, and I hope it looks as timeless and slightly seedy as it did when I went. (The food wasn’t all that great, but I’m a vegetarian and not much one for greasy spoons. Don’t believe a word I say.)
To read more about what’s in store for Johnie’s, check out the Press-Telegram (the newspaper I grew up reading), and Eric Pierce’s blog for more backstory on the Johnie’s brouhaha from the point of view of a Downey resident.
