Fatburger and I got started the same year ('52) and in the same city. One of us became a TV and comic book writer; the other became a chain of (currently) around 50 fast food outlets in California, Arizona, Nevada and Washington. The first was down on Western Avenue but for most folks, the "real" Fatburger was a tiny shack erected on a small island where La Cienega Boulevard crosses San Vicente. It marked one end of a stretch of La Cienega known as Restaurant Row — theoretically, an assemblage of the best places to dine in Los Angeles. That was truly not the case. Apart from Lawry's and — before it burned down — Ollie Hammond's Steak House, the line-up along the street was one failed enterprise after another. So many went down (or up) in flames that Restaurant Row came to lose its meaning. There are still tiny signs up that denote it but I'll bet if you said to most folks who've moved to L.A. in the last twenty years, "Let's go to Restaurant Row," they'd say, "Where's that?"
Before the boulevard lost its status, it used to amuse me that the steadiest, most popular enterprise of Restaurant Row was not some plush gourmet dining room but the run-down, falling-apart, frequented-by-junkies Fatburger shack. It was open 24 hours and I'd sometimes find myself there at 4 AM, always having to wait in line to wolf down a juicy, hard-to-handle burger. Sometimes, I'd get there at Onion Time. Once or twice a day, the newest employee would get stuck chopping up onions and, if the wind was whipping west-to-east through the shed and you approached the ordering window on the east side, it was like a faceful of tear gas.
But you know what? A Fatburger was still worth the risk.
Today, I've cut my beef consumption down to around the volume of one cocktail frank per week. An investment group fronted by Earvin "Magic" Johnson has acquired the whole Fatburger chain, with plans to make it as ubiquitous as McDonald's. And the outlet at La Cienega and San Vicente has been shut down tighter than the latest Ellen DeGeneres sitcom. I find it sad, in a way. I wasn't going to that or any other Fatburger any longer…but, like the playground of your childhood, it was somehow comforting to see it there.