Giant Hot Dog Is Taste of L.A.’s Colorful Past

Even after almost a quarter-century in the cramped kitchen, Dennis Blake gets a thrill every time some star steps to the counter of his 17-foot, stucco-and-sheet-metal hot dog.

Snapshots of the clientele fill much of a wall at the Tail o’ the Pup, a West Hollywood landmark that has survived--despite a scare or two--for 55 years. The photos feature Barbra Streisand, Ryan O’Neal, George Benson and Denzel Washington.

Pamela Anderson autographed hers. Magic Johnson comes by despite a menu that offers a “Boston Celtic dog,” with baked beans, mustard and onions. There is no Laker dog.

“I don’t think he cares,” said Blake, 49, who operates the outlandish-looking eatery with his father, Eddie. “When you ask, ‘Who’s been here?’ they’ve all been here at one time or another. Jay Leno’s been a regular. The other day Neil Diamond sent me tickets to his concert.”

Eddie Blake, 77, bought the stand in 1978 and says he still hasn’t made enough to retire. But he is proud of preserving one of Los Angeles’ funkier icons, a task that seemed unlikely in the mid-1980s, when the original site--at La Cienega Boulevard and Beverly Place--was cleared for a luxury hotel.

Blake moved the hot dog, giant bun and all, into storage at a wrecking yard in Alhambra. It sat for half a year before he found the current location on San Vicente Boulevard near Beverly, land owned by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

“We did not want the building destroyed,” Blake said. “We got lucky. The hot dog is all in one piece.”

The hot dog is one of the last and most visible examples of so-called vernacular or programmatic architecture--names coined many years ago to characterize buildings shaped like things for the sake of hawking products or services.

From the Roaring ‘20s through the end of World War II, Los Angeles fashioned much of its wacky image with designs that sprang up across the city: ice cream stands shaped like giant cones and igloos, bakeries topped by windmills, diners crafted to look like toads, dogs, gape-mouth pigs and pumpkins. There were giant coffee pots, flower pots, oil cans, parasols, airplanes, even a towering, rotating woman’s leg.

“The automobile was really the impetus behind these buildings,” said author Jim Heimann, who has collected an impressive array of photographs in his book “California Crazy & Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture.” The buildings were, in essence, signs; they could draw the eye of a motorist whizzing by at the ungodly speed of 35 mph.

Los Angeles was not the only town to become infatuated with the grotesque creations, but it became an informal hub.

“In Southern California,” Heimann said, “there was really no architectural hierarchy to condemn these things. No one was saying, ‘No, no, you can’t do that. That’s a terrible, ugly building.’ ”

The Brown Derby restaurant, built on Wilshire Boulevard in 1926, represented the apex of the style, according to Heimann. Topped by its neon-lit slogan, “Eat in the hat,” the derby-shaped cafe, with its derby-shaped light fixtures hanging over round tables and booths, drew the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Jean Harlow and W.C. Fields.

Rival establishments took the trend to even greater extremes. An entrepreneur named Arthur Whizin opened a string of 23 Chili Bowl diners shaped like--what else?--chili bowls. They were white, pot-like buildings no bigger than a char-broiler stand, rimmed with hooded exterior lights and narrow windows. Jack Benny and Bing Crosby frequented one on Vine Street in Hollywood, cracking jokes about it on the radio, Heimann said.

A rabbit farm south of downtown Los Angeles built an office in the shape of a big white rabbit. A fake tepee housed the TeePee Barbecue in Long Beach. A place called The Mountains, in Montebello, took the form of a serrated ridge.

“The media at the time--the newspapers and magazines--clearly played up that this was . . . Los Angeles,” Heimann said. “You could get a soda between the legs of a giant frog. You could buy a house by walking into a Sphinx. There was a Sphinx Realty office on Fairfax.”

The era, colorful as it was, did not last long. For one thing, many buildings were cheaply put together: two-by-fours, tar paper, chicken wire and stucco. After building codes became stricter, in the 1950s and 1960s, they began to come down.

Rising property values caused many to be razed for more profitable developments. The architecture was never particularly prized or defended, Heimann said. “It was considered . . . hideous junk architecture . . . eyesores that were certainly disposable.”

Preservationists did rally to save the Brown Derby, but it was incorporated into a mini-mall that rendered it all but unrecognizable. Other survivors include a giant tamale near Montebello, the drive-through Donut Hole in La Puente, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, a few Chili Bowls used for nonchili purposes . . . and the Tail o’ the Pup.

“For this one to still be a hot dog stand--a very successful one in a prominent location--is amazing and wonderful,” said Peter Moruzzi, a former board member of the Los Angeles Conservancy. “Every time I go there, I hear comments from people saying, ‘Isn’t this great it’s still around?’ ”

The Pup, opened amid fanfare in 1946, has been seen in 100 films and TV shows, according to the owners. Woody Allen employed a passing shot of it to illustrate a tawdry, snowless Los Angeles during the holidays in his Oscar-winning “Annie Hall.”

A striped metal awning hangs from the top of the oversized bun. A wood deck is dotted with tables.

“It sort of makes you want to eat a hot dog,” patron Elmer McElhiney said of the design. He and his brother Ervin, who moved to Los Angeles in 1942, lament the loss of such structures, just as they miss the era of drive-in theaters.

“It’s sad,” said Ervin.

Some are less enamored. Dr. Anh Nguyen, a plastic-surgery resident who arrived from Hawaii a year ago, admits that it took a while to get used to the big dog and its painted squiggle of mustard. “But if you drive by enough,” he said, “it becomes familiar and sort of endearing.”

G.J. Morgan, a sales manager at a technology firm in Santa Monica, labels it one of a kind.

And he’s glad.

“One’s enough,” Morgan said, grinning. “I think it’s tacky. It would be a little bit ridiculous to see a chain of this. But in terms of local flavor--and mom-and-pop-type owners--I think it’s fine.”