Welcome to the Tesla diner. Would you like a hat with that?

Times

2 days ago

Long ago in Los Angeles, the booming city was dotted with weird and wonderful buildings designed to be irresistible to hungry motorists.
It was the burgeoning age of the automobile in southern California, and eclectic structures shaped like hot dogs and doughnuts used neon signs to beckon hungry drivers in for a quick meal. Now a new era of spectacular drive-in diners has arrived — or at least one of them has.
Elon Musk unveiled the new Tesla Diner in Hollywood last week, promising that if the 'retro-futuristic' restaurant was successful he would establish them in cities around the world. 'An island of good food, good vibes and entertainment,' is how the world's richest man described his latest venture.
The diner opened on Monday, marking Tesla's first foray into the restaurant business.
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Customers lined up around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard to sample what the diner has to offer. The crowds were still there when I visited on Thursday afternoon, enduring an almost two-hour wait in the sun, and entertained by The Jetsons playing on a big screen. A worker said the 24-hour diner had been packed until 2am.
Inside, the diner delivers on Musk's futuristic promise. A circular entrance resembles a spaceship corridor, and a sweeping counter allows diners to sit with a view of the kitchen staff busy making food.
The ambient lighting has an Art Deco design. Food is ordered on touch screens and comes in mini Tesla-shaped boxes, resembling the vehicles that the company is traditionally associated with selling.
A hot dog costs $13, fries $4 and a few rashers of 'epic' bacon $12. The Tesla hamburger costs $13.50.
If a high-end drive-in can succeed anywhere, it is surely here. Not everyone was a fan, however. A driver speeding past repeatedly yelled, 'f*** Tesla'.
The culture that produced Los Angeles drive-in diners goes back a century, according to Kim Cooper, a preservationist who runs the Esotouric tour guide company with her husband, Richard Schave.
In the 1920s, the growing city was filled with empty lots. Programmatic architecture, or buildings that look like things, became popular.
Business owners realised that if their restaurant was shaped like a burger or a tamale (a traditional snack popular in Mexico and Central America), it had a better chance of attracting passing trade, Cooper said. Being home to Hollywood helped.
'It came out of the motion picture industry. Studio carpenters knew how to make these wacky, prop-type buildings that would last a little while,' Cooper said. 'They weren't meant to be permanent.'
By the 1940s, Los Angeles was a 24-hour city, busy building material for the war. Factory workers coming off shift at all hours needed places to go for food or to see a movie.
By the time the 1960s had arrived, drive-ins were places to hang out. 'People drove from place to place to show off their cars. There was a lot of peacocking,' Cooper said, adding that the Beach Boys were born of this cruising culture.
As well as the music of Brian Wilson, Los Angeles can thank Hollywood for exporting the seductive image of the diner around the world. Films including Grease and Pulp Fiction have prominently featured drive-ins and diners.
Eventually, the quirky buildings thrown up by Hollywood craftsmen as a side job began to show their age.
As the 1980s rolled around, they became run down and some were demolished, the land they occupied now eyed up by property developers. The drive-through replaced the drive-in because it was quicker and more convenient, both key advantages in a faster-paced world. Some treasures survive, however.
Norms, a 24-hour coffee shop on La Cienega Boulevard, opened in 1957 and remains a classic example of Googie architecture — a style influenced by the atomic age:
The Bob's Big Boy restaurant in Burbank, meanwhile, was built in 1949. The towering red neon sign is a local landmark:
'The ones that have survived are very precious because they are high-concept architecture,' Cooper said. 'They're really cathedrals — they're pop cathedrals.'
Adam Chandler, the author of Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom, said drive-ins were popular across the country, but especially in Los Angeles. 'They had a magic in California, in part because the weather is so conducive to drive-ins year-round,' he said.
Route 66 ends in Los Angeles, Chandler notes, and California was the ultimate prize for America's sweep westwards. 'The idea of mobility is really wrapped up in this image of California,' he added.
This nostalgia could mean success for Tesla's diner. 'It points to a time when things seemed a lot simpler,' Chandler said. 'You'd socialise by being out in the world, driving, it was a statement of independence. In lots of ways, people are thirsty for the analogue world where you drive out and see people and engage with people.
'It's much different now in the digital space. People connect and don't necessarily have the same kinds of relationships that they did in chance encounters when you'd go to popular spots and run into people.'
That is why 'the emergence of more third places is a good thing,' Chandler said, referring to spaces that are not the home or workplace.
If the Tesla Diner's early success does not lead to a fresh wave of similar restaurants, the allure of the LA drive-in will still endure, he thinks. 'You can put the top down because our weather is fantastic,' Cooper said. 'You can go from place to place at night, listen to music and yell at the car next to you and have an adventure that you can't have anywhere else.
'And you feel like an Angeleno. I think everybody wants that.'