{"id":561,"date":"2011-10-25T22:39:52","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T05:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lomo.architectureburger.com\/?p=561"},"modified":"2013-10-25T07:49:34","modified_gmt":"2013-10-25T14:49:34","slug":"031-lomo-featured-project-rae%e2%80%99s-restaurant-santa-monica-2011-googie-coffee-shops-bicycle-ride-series-september-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lomo.architectureburger.com\/?p=561","title":{"rendered":"031. Lomo Featured Project: Rae\u2019s Restaurant, Santa Monica. 2011 Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series, September Ride."},"content":{"rendered":"

On the gloomy 24th day of September, four participants of the Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series earned their stripes and cruised over to Rae\u2019s Restaurant, at 2901 Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica. A humble but righteous little shop, Rae\u2019s was designed by A. L. Collins in the 1950s (1952 according to Googie Redux<\/em>; 1953 according to Santa Monica city records; \u201cSince 1958\u201d according to the menu \u2013 Rae is lying about her age).<\/p>\n

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The long fa\u00e7ade, facing the parking lot along Yorkshire Avenue, expresses a strong horizontality, conveying a design language more Streamline-Moderne than Googie. Rae\u2019s has the gestalt <\/em>of a diner and man, it looks old.<\/p>\n

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The front fa\u00e7ade on Pico conforms more closely to the orthodox of Googie. The neon \u201cRae\u2019s Restaurant<\/em>\u201d in jaunty script is set against a sign in the irregular rounded shape Morris Lapidus called a \u201cwoggle.\u201d Although from the exterior it appears arbitrary, the sloping parapet relates to an actual sloping roof structure appreciable from inside. The horizontal canopy, with rakishly raked edge, wraps around the corner of the building; an awning immediately below it creates a sense of wrongness much as one gets upon seeing a man wearing two baseball caps at the same time. The rock-covered accent wall, opaque and solid, expresses the service-oriented side of the building containing the kitchen, but the thinness of this veneer is paradoxically highlighted by the bright yellow paint on the side wall. Rae\u2019s is a jumbled composition.<\/p>\n

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Focusing on its signage, Alan Hess described Rae\u2019s in Googie Redux<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Biff\u2019s spawned many imitators, such as Rae\u2019s in West Los Angeles. Instead of steel I-beam doglegs, the angled walls are finished in stucco. The result is a more abstract composition that sets off Rae\u2019s free-form neon sign \u2013 a cloudlike shape of metal snagged on an arching metal trajectory (113).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hess discussed Rae\u2019s in the context of the masterful Biff\u2019s Coffee Shops, the prototype for which was designed in 1950 by Douglas Honnold. Biff\u2019s was a progenitor of the bent-and-angled forms later refined to perfection by Arm\u00e9t and Davis. In this context, Rae\u2019s appears as a kind of amateur or vernacular version of the style, more humble, expedient and Lomo than the refined designs of Honnold or Arm\u00e9t and Davis.<\/p>\n

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Inside, Rae\u2019s employs the now-familiar linear organization \u2013 open kitchen on one side served by a counter, with banquettes against the window, roofline sloping upward and outward. The roof\u2019s surface is interrupted by a soffit that brings in to the interior the floating horizontal plane of the exterior canopy. Posts and beams supporting this structure, here of wood rather than steel, seem relatively chunky. The sloped ceiling is kept clean with well coordinated triple-globe light fixtures. Front and center there is a man that looks like Donald Sutherland.<\/p>\n

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Bacon tidbit waffle! Savory sweet crunchy superior.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the gloomy 24th day of September, four participants of the Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series earned their stripes and cruised over to Rae\u2019s Restaurant, at 2901 Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica. A humble but righteous little shop, Rae\u2019s was designed by A. L. Collins in the 1950s (1952 according to Googie Redux; 1953 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6,5,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lomo.architectureburger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lomo.architectureburger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lomo.architectureburger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lomo.architectureburger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lomo.architectureburger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lomo.architectureburger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":958,"href":"https:\/\/lomo.architectureburger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions\/958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lomo.architectureburger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lomo.architectureburger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lomo.architectureburger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}