Here we have Bob’s Big Boy drive-in restaurant in Burbank in 1940. Bob’s is still there but it doesn’t look like this, and it certainly doesn’t have wait staff running around in cowboy boots. Oh boy, the feet of those poor girls must have been killing them at the end of a shift. Look at the signage behind them: “THIN PAN CAKES” – I’ve never noticed that we used to spell “pancakes” as two separate words.
This would be the actual downtown Burbank location which is long gone and was on San Fernando Boulevard. The surviving one is on Riverside and was always known as Bob’s-Toluca (or Toluca Lake) as it was near the exit of the Burbank limits approaching its’ neighbor. With the first one (Bob’s #7) gone, the last one left has become known as Bob’s Burbank. The one in this photo is detectable be the central wide doorway between sets of windows which align with the long counter inside (facing towards the back kitchen). Thus one was never really a large building like the later expansions and was on a corner at the north end of the block. The only way to expand the size would be to eliminate the car service parking areas. This land was valuable city real estate and encroachment was inevitable. Pacific Electric tracks were located behind here running in line with the Boulevard alignment.
Sorry, interruptions…meant to say Big Boy Unit #2 for Burbank. La Crescenta was #3. Glendale downtown Coffee Shop #4. Eagle Rock #5. Toluca #6. Van Nuys Blvd. #7. (This is by specific locations, not actual buildings on those sites which is a far more complicated order.)
Here we have Bob’s Big Boy drive-in restaurant in Burbank in 1940. Bob’s is still there but it doesn’t look like this, and it certainly doesn’t have wait staff running around in cowboy boots. Oh boy, the feet of those poor girls must have been killing them at the end of a shift. Look at the signage behind them: “THIN PAN CAKES” – I’ve never noticed that we used to spell “pancakes” as two separate words.
This would be the actual downtown Burbank location which is long gone and was on San Fernando Boulevard. The surviving one is on Riverside and was always known as Bob’s-Toluca (or Toluca Lake) as it was near the exit of the Burbank limits approaching its’ neighbor. With the first one (Bob’s #7) gone, the last one left has become known as Bob’s Burbank. The one in this photo is detectable be the central wide doorway between sets of windows which align with the long counter inside (facing towards the back kitchen). Thus one was never really a large building like the later expansions and was on a corner at the north end of the block. The only way to expand the size would be to eliminate the car service parking areas. This land was valuable city real estate and encroachment was inevitable. Pacific Electric tracks were located behind here running in line with the Boulevard alignment.
Sorry, interruptions…meant to say Big Boy Unit #2 for Burbank. La Crescenta was #3. Glendale downtown Coffee Shop #4. Eagle Rock #5. Toluca #6. Van Nuys Blvd. #7. (This is by specific locations, not actual buildings on those sites which is a far more complicated order.)