Love's BBQ Restaurants
by Mark Evanier
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DATE 9/3/1999
Comics Buyer's Guide
Back in the seventies, one could travel this great land of ours and find numerous outlets of the Love's Barbecue Restaurant chain.
Franchised barbecue (or BBQ, as we purists spell it) shouldn't be any good. Your finest spareribs are cooked by some old, grizzled Gabby Hayes look-alike who's rustled up hundreds of pounds per week since he was twelve and his pappy taught him the hallowed family secret of stoking the fire, marinating the meat and mixing the sauce. But for a chain, Love's ribs weren't bad, and their beans compared favorably with any beans anywhere.
This is the old Love's chain of which I write. The company has changed owners a few times in the last two decades, each new proprietor downsizing considerably. The quality of what they serve has also been in decline to the point where I've given up on them. What has been done to the beans alone is the greatest desecration since Laszlo Toth tried playing croquet with the Pieta.
At the moment, there are but thirteen Love's — twelve in Southern California and one in Jakarta, Indonesia. That's right: There's one in Jakarta, Indonesia and, yes, I know it sounds like an old Johnny Carson joke —
"My business manager has arranged some great investments for me. I have all my money in a Big Man's shop in Tokyo, a tuxedo store in Tijuana, and a Love's Barbecue Restaurant in Jakarta, Indonesia."
Those harboring doubts should visit www.lovesbbq.com and see for themselves. That's where I found out about it. I hardly ever get to Indonesia these days…
Around 1970 when Love's restaurants were widespread and good, I became not just a frequent patron but a spy, as well. It started when I had a slightly-less-than-wonderful meal at a Love's then on Hollywood Boulevard and I dashed off a letter to their corporate offices. Within the week, the Vice-President-in-charge-of-slaw — or something like that — sent back a grateful response, along with a certificate good for two meals at the Love's of my choice. "Your letter was very helpful," he wrote. "If you find any deficiencies at any of our other establishments, please do not hesitate to let me know."
I received this invitation with the same intense responsibility of 007 being told by M that it was up to him to stop the nuclear blackmail of the United Nations and the probable annihilation of one or more continents. From that day forward, wherever I went, I would attempt to locate a Love's and dine therein. Friends with whom I drove any distance learned to just accept that we'd inevitably be having lunch and/or dinner at one.
Upon returning home, I would diligently type up a report for Mr. Love — that was not his name but it should have been — and critique the service, the ambience, the cuisine, the cleanliness, the parking and, of course, the beans. Mr. Love would instantly respond with pledges to correct all reported flaws, plus coupons for more Love's dinners. The coupons explained why my friends didn't mind being dragged to one Love's after another. My friends would eat at Jeffrey Dahmer's house if it were free.
Our only Love's-less outings came with our annual sojourns to the San Diego Comic Convention. For many of its early years, it was held at the El Cortez — a hotel where every room looked like it had just been vacated by Old Dirty Bastard. I have attended cons for thirty years in Sheratons, Hiltons, Hyatts, Marriotts, Radissons, Ramadas, Embassy Suites and even a Days Inn or two. It always seemed beneath a hotel's dignity to have people traipsing about in Vampirella costumes (the men, especially) or hawking copies of Wolverine Shreds His Sister. The El Cortez was the one place that comic fans could convene and feel like they were classing-up the place.
That was the big advantage of the El Cortez. Its only real downside was that there was no place to eat. ("Not so," some of you who recall those cons may cry. "There was a Denny's restaurant just two blocks away."
— to which I would reply, "Yes, but there was no place to eat.")
At mealtime, your options were to trudge down to the Denny's or go hungry. This is like having to choose between sucking on the exhaust pipe of a John Deere tractor or not breathing at all.
My friend Rob Solomon and I would eagerly look forward each year to the San Diego Con. We'd joyously anticipate the panels and the films and the masquerade and the art show and the parties. There were only three things we dreaded: breakfast, lunch and dinner. I sometimes contemplated brown-bagging it for the duration of the con.
Then, in 1973, the grand event was held at the Harbor Island Sheraton Inn. As we motored towards it, I happily reminded Rob, "You know what this means? No Denny's!"
"I'll believe it when I see a menu without pictures of the food on it," he cautiously announced. "I have an awful premonition that there will only be one restaurant on all of Harbor Island…and it'll be a Denny's." When we arrived at the hotel, we immediately did a fast sustenance reconnaissance. There was an eatery situated right next door and it was not, thank the lord, what Rob had feared.
It was — and my eyes are starting to tear up as I recall the moment of joyous discovery with the symphonic arrangement of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" swelling in the background — a Love's Barbecue Restaurant.
We quickly ate lunch there. We'd actually stopped for lunch a half-hour earlier but we had to make sure it wasn't a mirage. The food was fine — well up to Love's standards — and I scribbled a few notes for my obligatory report to Mr. Love.
I also observed but made no notes about the young lady who showed us to a table. She was stunningly beautiful…and she had the largest breasts I have ever seen on a human being who was not offering lap-dances.
Chest size is not something I ordinarily single-out as an identifying characteristic of any woman. I have acquaintances who wouldn't realize that a lady was wearing a gas mask as long as her bust measurement began with a four. This flaw, however, is absent from the short list of Faults I Do Not Have. (The other two are "Selling classified data to foreign powers" and "Undereating.")
Still, with this greeter-and-seater, they were there. Boy, were they there. To not notice them would be like not spotting Mothra in your linen closet.
I was hardly the only person who made this discovery. Few males attending the con did not espy the hostess or hear about her and rush to see for themselves. As this was back when the total feminine turnout at a San Diego Con consisted of June Foray and Mrs. Jack Kirby, we had almost the full attendance scurrying over to Love's all the time. Even avowed vegetarians were making the journey, just for the thrill of being seated. Some guys got themselves seated five or six times a day.
The proximity of a Love's and the that hostess were two reasons the con was a success. Among the more conventional were a number of fine guests — Neal Adams, Jack Kirby, Carmine Infantino, Gus Arriola, Milton Caniff, June Foray, A.E. Van Vogt and a few others. The con was abuzz with news that Star Trek, which had been off network TV for four years, would be resurrected the following month as an animated Saturday morn series. Fans — most of whom would coldcock you if you called them "Trekkies" — crammed into a film room about the size of a Whitman's Sampler to see a sneak preview.
It was only the opening titles, showing twinkling stars and a fast fly-by of the Enterprise — but Trek fans were enraptured. If I suddenly received fifty million bucks, the secret of Eternal Life, and a booty call from Rebecca Romijn, I don't think I would be quite that happy.
An enormously entertaining speech was delivered by Larry Vincent, an actor who was then hosting horror movies on L.A. TV under the name "Seymour." He did a very fine show, first on KHJ and then on KTLA, amusing Angelenos while exasperating film buffs, and I keep meaning to write a column about him. Bug me if you don't see it here before the year is out.
I appeared on a Writers' Panel. For the first dozen-or-so San Diego Cons, I answered the same questions on the same panel every year. In '73, Mike Friedrich and I talked about how there would soon be a new-found respect for the craft of scripting funnybooks and a greater diversity of material. I keep expecting this to happen, any day now…
Among all of this, the moment I recall most vividly occurred one afternoon in the dealer's room. A young man, maybe fifteen years of age, strolled up to a table of rare comics, scooped up about $500 worth and made a fervent dash for the exit. The fellow tending the display yelled, "Stop that kid! He's a rip-off artist!"
(A gracious touch, I thought. Wouldn't want to hurt the kid's feelings by calling him a thief or a robber, would we? "Rip-off Artist" allowed him to retain some dignity…made it sound like he had some useful, creative skill.)
The thief — er, the rip-off artist tore through the hall like Fran Tarkenton charging for the goalposts. Several con-goers, myself among them, tried to grab him but he bobbed and weaved and eluded our grasps. Nevertheless, when he reached the door, three guys were waiting and he was quickly taken into custody.
Ken Krueger, the con's treasurer (and a charter committee member and an important figure in comics 'n' science-fiction fandom) immediately took charge. Someone asked, "What should we do with him?" and Ken instantly replied, "Call the police."
That may seem like the most obvious answer in the world but at that moment, it hadn't occurred to anyone but Ken. It hadn't occurred to the rip-off artist/thief, either. He was incredulous that the San Diego Police Department might even be interested in a theft of comic books. He stammered, "Police?" as if he'd thought the worst that could happen to him was being drummed out of the Merry Marvel Marching Society.
The sudden intrusion of the Real World into our little Pretend Fandom World, I found fascinating. Had the kid attempted to pilfer $500 in cash or $500 worth of records or clothes or elbow macaroni, there would have been no question. That would have been stealing.
But filching a stack of Action Comics — even a stack of Action Comics for which someone would pay $500 in legal tender — somehow struck both the crook and a few of his captors as kind of a toy crime. It was as if your schoolyard playmate took your Fig Newtons. You wouldn't call the police over that. You'd look like a bad sport for even telling the teacher.
Ken was, however, one of the few adults on the premises — chronologically, if not emotionally. When an onlooker suggested that this could be handled, sans gendarmes, Ken said, "No. This is a crime and it has to be treated as a crime." The police came, they took the lad away and I never heard for sure what happened after that. The rumor was he got some sort of suspended sentence, but it really didn't matter, except probably to him.
What mattered back in the dealer's room that day was (a) stolen comics had been recovered and (b) the thief had been caught and handed over to the authorities. A dealer-friend of mine reacted like he'd just seen one of the great social injustices of the century suddenly righted.
"I can't believe it," he said around 37 times. "Every con where I sell stuff, someone rips off something. The security always stinks and even on those rare occasions when they catch the guy, no one ever does anything.
"I did one con where these two kids were working in teams, sneaking stuff out, hiding it outside, then coming back in to get more. Merchandise was disappearing all day but no one knew who was doing it. Finally, they got so brazen that they got caught…but the con didn't want to get mixed up in filing charges, risking lawsuits or something. They just told the kids, 'You're barred forever from our cons' and let them go. The thieves didn't even return most of the stuff they'd stolen.
"The con organizers act like you're just supposed to accept a certain amount of loss, like it's normal. At one con, I complained to the guy in charge and you know what his answer was? 'Raise your prices.' That was his solution — I should charge more for what I sell to make back the money I lose when I get ripped-off. Maybe if more conventions call the cops, it'll make a difference."
I don't know that it did or didn't…but I do know that, if you do it today at almost any convention, police will be called and you will be prosecuted. That was just the first time anyone heard of it happening.
I also know that a lot of sellers appreciated what Ken Krueger did that day. A couple of them were almost as happy as the Trek fanciers.
As soon as I got home, I immediately whipped out a lengthy letter to Mr. Love reviewing the Love's on Harbor Island. Since I'd had five or six meals there, I was able to appraise much of the menu.
I told him that the pork ribs were excellent but the beef ribs were dry and a bit on the stringy side. I informed him that the chicken had uncommonly crisp skin, which I liked, and that the fries were a tad greasy, which I also liked. I rated the various soups d'jour, ranging from tomato (C-) to clam chowder (B+) to chicken noodle (A-). Overall, I ranked this Love's highly but suggested that the establishment could use a better sign out front so that famished rib-lovers might locate it more easily.
A week later, he wrote back:
"Thank you for your latest letter. Your comments were most helpful, as I have not yet had the opportunity to visit and inspect that particular Love's. I have been meaning to, as I am informed that the hostess has an amazing pair of jugs."
Since this piece first appeared, the entire Love's BBQ chain and many of the people and institutions mentioned herein have gone bye-bye…but you can buy Love's sauce at the aforementioned website. It seems a little thinner to me but just as tasty. I do still miss the beans though. (I was going to add "…and that hostess" but I'm too classy for that. I hope.)