Well, as you may remember, I mentioned the other day here that the chain of Love's Barbecue Restaurants seemed to be down to one in Chula Vista and one in Lakewood (both in California) and the one in Jakarta, Indonesia. I am now informed that the Lakewood one recently closed and I'm guessing that since half of Indonesia ain't there no more, that Love's is probably gone, as well.
The Chula Vista Love's is still open — or, at least it was as of an hour ago when I phoned to check. When I'm down in San Diego for this year's Comic-Con International, I may swing by for a meal. It's a little less than nine miles from the convention center, and this could be my last chance to taste Love's beans. That is, if the place is still there come July.
Meanwhile, another of my favorite restaurant chains is now completely extinct. The last outpost of Woody's Smorgasburger, which was down on Sepulveda just South of LAX, is currently being turned into an International House of Pancakes. In the sixties, there were a number of Woody's around Southern California, including a wonderful one in Westwood Village, a block or three from UCLA. I could often be found there between (and once in a while, even during) classes.
Woody's was the first chain I know of where you could get a hamburger and then carry it over to a little self-service counter stocked with ketchup, mustard, onions, pickles, salsa, barbecue sauce, etc., and do what you wanted to it. Today, there are chains aplenty like Fuddrucker's that offer this but at the time, it was something rather special.
Woody's burgers were pretty darn good, too…and they also had a "make your own sundae" bar: You could buy an empty dish at the counter, fill it full of soft-serve vanilla ice cream, then slather it in a diverse selection of syrups and sprinkles and crushed nuts and such. My old comic club buddies and I would practically have a contest to see how much sundae we could get in one dish, building structurally-unsafe vertical arrays, then having to walk them back to the table and eat them before they collapsed.
One of the guys once asked if he was allowed to put the toppings from the sundae bar on his burger and when they told him yes, he began speculating on what hot fudge or whipped cream would do to a hamburger, and whether the maraschino cherries would blend with the mustard or if he should leave the mustard off. Each visit to Woody's, he'd say, "Next time, I'm going to try it," but he never worked up the courage. Or wanted to spoil a good smorgasburger.