Googie Retro Signs on Route 66

While waiting for my photos to upload, I was doing some ego surfing and found a nice woman named Cordelia had blogged about reading about our Route 66 road trip – and she mentioned that she looked up the word “googie” because I used it several times to describe some of the old retro signs along Route 66. I had intended to include a link to a definition of the term, but didn’t due to the lack of internet; it sort of made it hard to surf around.
Cordelia got a great definition from answers.com:

“Googie” describes a futuristic, often outrageous, building style that evolved in the United States during the 1950s. Googie architecture was designed to attract customers. The name “Googie” comes from a famous coffee shop in Los Angeles. Like the shop, Googie buildings often have flashing lights, sharp angles, boomerang and flying saucer shapes, and lots of glass and steel. On the east coast, googie ideas were expressed in the zig zag rooflines of coffee shops.The Googie style is sometimes called called Coffee House Modern, Doo-Wop, Populuxe, and Space Age.
—The article is attributed to Jackie Craven.

Also, Wikipedia describes “googie” thusly:

Googie, also known as populuxe or doo-wop, is a subdivision of expressionist, or futurist architecture influenced by car culture and the Space Age and Atomic Age, originating from southern California in the late 1940s and continuing approximately into the mid-1960s. With upswept roofs and, often, curvaceous, geometric shapes, and bold use of glass, steel and neon, it decorated many a motel, coffee house and bowling alley in the 1950s and 1960s. It epitomizes the spirit a generation demanded, looking excitedly towards a bright, technological and futuristic age. Googie or Populuxe style of architecture was characterized by space-age designs that depict motion, such as boomerangs, flying saucers, atoms, and parabolas. Building such as this reflects American society’s emphasis on futuristic designs and fascination with space-age themes.

In looking through all my pictures thus far, I have dozens, perhaps even a hundred or so, cool retro signs and buildings from along Route 66, so I’m going to put together, when I get the chance, a flickr photo set of just those pictures. Aside from being really cool, It will help me with some design ideas I have for a project I’m going to work on next…
Cool Googie Signage
Cool Googie Signage
Cool Googie Signage

Continue ReadingGoogie Retro Signs on Route 66

Kingman, Arizona for the night

We decided to make an early night of it in Kingman, Arizona; staying at a Comfort Inn because they have a indoor hot tub and free wireless. Ah, sweet high-speed internet, how I love thee so. I thought I would never see you again. This way we’ll have some time to decompress and get an early start headed east in the morning. And upload some of the gazillion pictures I’ve taken, I hope. I’m realizing that I need to create separate sets of pictures for each day of the trip, but that’s not going to happen until I get home.
Geodome house next to I-40
Our friends Dan and Doug are having the billionth annual 70’s party back at home in Indianapolis; we’re keeping caught up with the festivities by twitter.
And if someone gets a chance, tell John Steele that Phoebe loves her new vacuum hose, and we are so grateful to him for being our personal Route 66 mechanic, along with Jerry. John Steele rules.
See all photos from Lompoc, California to Kingman, Arizona

Continue ReadingKingman, Arizona for the night

Route 66 Tour, Day 13 – In California

Yesterday was a pretty tough day driving. We had to travel from Williams, Arizona (about 1/3 of Arizona left to traverse) to Victorville, California (most of which is across desert). As we traveled through the day, the temperature kept climbing – I believe it topped out at 127 degrees at one point.

We stopped off in Seligman, Arizona and met Angel Delgadillo, one of the icons of Route 66. Angel has owned a Barbershop on Route 66 for decades, nearby is the Snowcap restaurant that his brother Juan owned. The town of Seligman is one of the first to start to preserve the history of Route 66, which is why in western Arizona, the Mother Road is meticulously taken care of and well marked.

We made a couple more stops at some old gas stations – one in Hackberry, which is basically a ghost town now except for a General Store, and one in “Cool Springs” that was anything but “cool” – this is where we really started noticing how seriously hot the weather was and the VWs were noting the exterior temperature of over 110 degrees. Cool Springs was an important stop for early Route 66 travelers before the next leg of their trip. For many years, it was a ruin, but has now been restored.

The Oatman Highway and Sitgreaves Pass through the Black Mountains from Kingman into California – what can I possibily say about it? Oh, a lot.

First read a bit about it:

There are two Route 66 alignments from Kingman southwest to the California border. The pre-1952 alignment along the Oatman Highway is by far the most beautiful, providing numerous photographic opportunities, legendary Route 66 icons, and a peek at the wild old west in historic Oatman, Arizona.

However, this old route travels through notorious Sitgreaves Pass, the most intimidating portion of Route 66, with its steep grades, narrow road, and sharp hairpin curves. In addition, the highway does not allow vehicles over 40 feet, so, if this is you, think about coming into Oatman from the south through Topock, an easier route.

This is the section of road featured in the Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz movie called “The Long, Long Trailer” – where they drive over it in an RV, ironically, that’s illegal to do.

Update: after googling, this isn’t road from the movie – someone told us that along the way, but it was actually another road in California.

I had no idea what we were going to drive through. Nine miles of winding road up the Black Mountains and back down, with sheer cliff drops on the right side of the road. Gorgeous, and very very difficult to get through, even at 15 miles an hour. The rest of the caravan was ecstatic to be on it; we were terrified. I’ll try to do a google map image of it from above if I can do it through my cell phone internet connection (still no wireless at the Motel 6, even near L.A.) ; it is pretty amazing. Here’s a pretty good image of part of it, from this link.

Sitgreaves Pass Google Images
Sitgreaves Pass Google Images
Sitgreaves Pass Google Images
Sitgreaves Pass Google Images
Sitgreaves Pass
Sitgreaves Pass

And something I will never, ever be doing again. Between the Grand Canyon and this, I believe I’m also finished with rollercoasters, too. What was I saying the other day – I grew up in Iowa, where it’s nice and flat, and you can’t fall off things?

At the bottom is the little town of Oatman, Arizona – a tourist spot that still resembles the Old West mining town that it once was. Back in 1939, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent one of their honeymoon nights in the 1902 historic Oatman Hotel. They are also famous for the burros that hang out in the streets (And follow you around, hoping you have carrots.)

After a few minutes shopping and recovering from the Sitgreaves Pass experience, we headed out towards Needles, California.

Just as we were getting into Needles, California, Earl’s car started to have serious problems. We pulled into a 76/Conoco station so the guys could try to figure out what was wrong, and the manager ran us off because he thought we were interferring with his business. So we moved to the snow cone shop across the street, and they were kinda crabby with us, too. Eventually some of us had to park our cars at the Jack-In-The-Box across the street and get in out of the heat.

After an hour and a half, the guys got the car fixed, and we got back on the road – we still had about 2 and a half hours of driving to get to Victorville, and we were a bit behind. The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful, but tiring. Once the sun went down it was a bit easier to travel, but the beginnings of L.A. traffic driving into Victorville – we’re really nervous about getting around today.

Continue ReadingRoute 66 Tour, Day 13 – In California