LAX, 1964
A ’64 Ford yellow cab, couple of cross walkers, lot full of cars, and cocktail pick-starburst-octopus-skinless umbrella-like parking lot light fixture are picture perfect accessories to one of the most stylish structures on the planet, The Theme Building.
Those graceful, sweeping arches hoisting that see-thru soup bowl-shaped restaurant skewered by a silo elevator tower and circling wall of concrete lace is architectural nirvana.
The Theme Building was built as the centerpiece and crowing touch of the 1961 jet-age expansion of Los Angeles International Airport. It is to Los Angeles what the pyramids are to Cairo, the Eiffel Tower to Paris, and leaning tower to Pisa. No other building remotely resembles it. It is truly one-of-a-kind.
I keep thinking one of these days our beloved Theme Building will be painted yellow and morph into a McDonalds. They will call it McDonald’s McTheme Building. This gives golden arches a whole new meaning. And there is plenty of room for a drive thru!
Here’s to our beloved McTheme Building (?) and YOU!!!
Charles Phoenix
April 19, 2012
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One of the cross walkers is Don Draper. I just know it is.
What is the make and model of the ‘pearl’ finish car just the other side of the VW? Tiny rear window for a car its size.
Cool! I’ve got a shot of the Theme Building with a yellow ’60 Rambler American coupe in Yellow Cab Supervisor markings – don’t have it on Photobucket yet but I do have this shot from May ’65 of Mrs. Barbara Sauseng and (I think) her mother, Mrs. Kalbfleisch at LAX. Barbara cuts a nice figure in her cool blue dress, accented by her always-chic Pan Am flight bag and June Cleaver pearls. Mom is a bit more low-key in gray and shades, with her upside-down bouquet of roses. A sharp silver ’64 Riviera idles in the parking zone behind them.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y164/ChrisBrame/laxmay65.jpg
They also have some of the biggest Lava lamps I have ever seen inside the restaurant.