BURBANK : Historical Society Honors Bob’s Owner

The Burbank Historical Society has honored the owner of a Bob’s Big Boy for his efforts to preserve the restaurant, bringing together two parties that were once on opposite sides in a fight to save the landmark.

“The irony of this award is not lost on me and my family,” said Philip MacDonald, standing in front of the classic Bob’s Big Boy statue. “We initially opposed the designation as a historic landmark.”

But now, after spending at least $50,000 to restore the oldest existing Bob’s Big Boy in the country to its original 1949 condition, MacDonald has joined the historical society and the Burbank Road Kings--a group of classic car enthusiasts--in their nostalgia.

“We found we did have a very exciting project here,” said MacDonald, who was given the society’s annual preservation award Thursday in an informal ceremony that was filled with 1950s nostalgia.

Two years ago, the state declared the site a point of historic interest--as an example of the Southern California car culture of the 1950s--and blocked MacDonald from converting the site to retail or office space.

Larry Frye and Richard Johnson were hanging out in the parking lot of Bob’s Big Boy on Thursday morning talking about the days when the restaurant had been the focus of their teen-age years in the 1950s. Cruising between this restaurant, the original Bob’s Big Boy in Glendale and another one on Van Nuys Boulevard had been the main activity during their Friday nights of drag racing and looking for girls.

“At that point, this was the only thing to do,” said Johnson, a member of the Burbank Road Kings who brought a 1929 Ford roadster to the gathering.

“We used to go out that alley, turn left on Pass (Avenue), stage, and go,” Johnson said in the lingo of drag racing.

The times were much less dangerous than they are for youths today.

“I’ve had fights right here in this parking lot,” Frye remembered, adding with a laugh that back then he probably had a fight in the parking lot of every Bob’s Big Boy in the area. But, he said, “If you had a fight, it was just a fistfight.”

Frye brought a 1937 Plymouth to the ceremonies. The Road Kings gather at the restaurant every Friday night, bringing about 150 classic automobiles, in a sign of support for the site’s historic status.

In honor of the history of the restaurant, MacDonald said he will be bringing back car-hop service--popular in the 1950s--by the end of the month.

The Big Boy statue out front is not the original, said restaurant manager Steve Funkhouser. The statue has been stolen about five or six times--usually as a fraternity or teen-agers’ prank, he said.

The current statue has been filled with sand and anchored to its base to make future thefts more difficult, Funkhouser said.

McDonald’s father, Scott, built the restaurant in a business partnership with Bob’s Big Boy founder Robert C. Wian. It was the sixth restaurant in the chain to be built.

MacDonald says he has fond memories of the restaurant and the area from when he was growing up, and can name some of the roads nearby where drag racing was popular in the 1960s--along Forest Lawn Drive and the Los Angeles River Channel. His nostalgia has been reawakened.

“It was down there all along, but some years have kind of layered over it,” MacDonald said.