The Last Time we had the NFL in L.A.

On Christmas Eve, 21 years ago, the NFL played their last games in Los Angeles. Both the Rams and Raiders played their last home games at the same time, at the Coliseum in L.A. and at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. Very few had expected that L.A. would lose both NFL teams the next season, and remain left out in the cold for more than 20 seasons.

For the first 12 years of my life, we had two NFL teams, the Raiders and the Rams. The Raiders had just moved to L.A. from Oakland for the 1982 season, after a winning a lawsuit against the NFL, while the Rams had been in L.A. since 1946 and had many great teams, including an NFL Championship in 1951, the Fearsome Foursome of the 1960’s, the dominant teams of the 1970’s and their first Super Bowl appearance (XIV) after the 1979 season, and the fun-to-watch teams of the 1980’s, led by Running Back Eric Dickerson and head coach John Robinson. The Raiders also won Super Bowl XVIII after the 1983 season, led by Marcus Allen who set Super Bowl records in that game, giving Los Angeles its only Vince Lombardi trophy. I started out rooting for the Rams when I was young, but later jumped ship around the time the Rams were tanking, and rooted for the Raiders until they moved back to Oakland in 1995. It has now been a generation since we had any NFL team.

Eric Dickerson playing for the Rams in the 1980’s.

A couple of factors caused both the Rams and Raiders to leaving the L.A. area. The Rams had been struggling for years with losing seasons and low attendance and was already planning to move to St. Louis for the 1995 season. Meanwhile, Raiders were trying to get a brand new stadium, with luxury boxes in Los Angeles. Additionally, NFL games were frequently blacked-out in Los Angeles, due to insufficient attendance.

Angel Stadium as a Football Stadium, 1994.

At the Rams last home game against Washington in 1994, the fans who came to game were hoping for a happy ending before moving to St. Louis, but only 25,000 showed up and there were many empty seats around Angel Stadium, which was also home of the Rams, in addition to the Angels from 1980 to 1994. The Rams lost a close one, 24-21 and ended the year with a dismal 4-12 record. Some fans did hope that the owner at the time, Georgia Frontiere would sell the team and stay in L.A. They formed the “Save the Rams” group, led by agent Leigh Steinberg to stop the Rams from leaving L.A. Steinberg tried to track Frontiere, but failed to contact her. The Rams did move to St. Louis for the 1995 NFL season, but Frontiere passed away in 2008 and could move back to L.A. in the near-future.

The Raiders entering the field for the last time at the L.A. Coliseum.

Meanwhile, 35 miles north of Anaheim, at the Coliseum, the Raiders were playing the Chiefs for a playoff spot in front of 65,000 fans. The Raiders lost 19-9 to the Chiefs, and fell short of making the playoffs at 9-7, but no one expected that Raiders would move back to Oakland until mid-1995. This would also be the very last NFL game played at the Coliseum, which was also home of the Rams from 1946 to 1979. As of 2015, the Raiders could be moving back to L.A. because they are having serious trouble trying to get a new stadium back in Oakland.

The L.A. Memorial Coliseum was home for both the Rams and Raiders.

Since the Rams and Raiders left town, we were hoping for the NFL to come back within a few years, but it hasn’t happened yet. First, Los Angeles would get an expansion team for the 1999 season but failed, due the lack of an agreement and bidding issues. For the next 16 years, the ideas of bringing the NFL back to L.A. came and went. Now in 2015, there are three teams interested in moving to L.A., with two proposed stadiums, in Inglewood and Carson, Calif. The three teams, are the Rams, Raiders, and Chargers and have all played in L.A. in the past. Rams are planning to play in a new stadium at the old Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood, while Raiders and Chargers have a new joint stadium in Carson. As we enter 2016, we now have a much better chance of bringing the NFL back to L.A. than before.

I am hoping that we will get at least one team in L.A. for the 2016 NFL season, then host a Super Bowl a few years later at the new stadium. However, I am not very sure which team will win the race to play in L.A. A decision of who moves to L.A. will be decided in the January 2016 NFL Owners Meeting in Houston.

If you want to know more about it, Wikipedia and SI.com have detailed articles about the history of Los Angeles and the NFL and the 1994 NFL season.

Update (2016): Shortly after the initial post, the Rams had announced that they will be returning to Los Angeles for the 2016 NFL season, with a brand new stadium in Inglewood to be ready for the 2019 season. The move was approved by the NFL by a 30-2 vote in January 2016. The NFL is finally back in L.A. after a 22-year absence.

The end of an era for the L.A. Rams. They would start over in St. Louis the next year.

Photo Credits: NFL, AP, Getty Images, L.A. Times, O.C. Register, USC, & V.J. Lovero.

Button Copy Freeway Signs

For most of my life, I have always seen button copy signs on every freeway in Southern California. This was because the state of California and Caltrans used only use button copy signs on the freeways for many decades. Sadly, many of those signs are now gone for two reasons: First, most of those signs date back between the late 1950’s to the early 1970’s, which meant that many of those signs are at least 40 years and that they are showing a lot of wear and tear and second, according to Wikipedia, no company has produced new button copy signs since the early 2000’s or so. This means that all the old button copy signs on L.A.-area freeways will eventually be replaced with newer reflective freeway signs that are already used in just about other state. In addition, the new signs will also include exit numbers, as required by federal law; California long had a waiver for this requirement, but that was stuck down in the courts in 2001.

This an example of an old button copy sign on a L.A.-area freeway

The old button copy signs meant a lot of memories to me. We often pass by those signs whenever we were going to just about anywhere. I also found that these signs have a historical story in them. Some of those signs have been changed numerous times. One example was that some old button copy signs have green plates to cover routes that no longer exists in the area, like U.S. 6, U.S. 395, CA-11(now CA/I-110) , or CA-7(now I-710). The 11 freeway became the 110 freeway in 1981 and the 7 freeway became the 710 freeway in 1984. In addition, most old freeway signs have the freeway name on it, but on newer signs, including later model button copy signs no longer mentions the freeway name and replaces it with the direction of the freeway (north, south, east, and west).

To put this into more detail, older button copy signs were initially made of steel, then switched to aluminum in 1985. The letters were made of porcelain and attached to the steel or aluminum body.  Also, the shade of green used on California freeway signs were darker than those of other states, as well as newer freeway signs in California. Another unique aspect was that button copy freeway signs were supposed to last longer that conventional freeway signs (40 years, compared to usual 15 years) and reflector dots were added lettering to the signs because the signs themselves were not reflective; later button copy signs had those built-in. Lastly, the old freeway signs cost more to make than regular freeway signs.

Some L.A. freeways now have these kinds of signs that are already used elsewhere

Today, many Southern California freeways still have button copy signs, but most are now showing its age, especially the older steel ones. Some signs have rust in it, while others appears to be very dirty and hard to read, because the glue used in the signs ages after many years. Newer button copy signs, on the other hand is showing some warping and color changing. On some stretches of freeway in Los Angeles, the button copy signs are practically all but gone because of widening projects and/or the age of the signs and the newer reflective signs with exit numbers are now in place.

I predict that sooner or later, button copy signs will be thing of the past on L.A. freeways, just like call boxes, as mentioned in an earlier post. It is already a thing of the past elsewhere.

This site has more pictures of old button copy signs – some still there, some gone.

Special Thanks to: Daniel Faigin, Mike Ballard, and aaroads.com.

My Twitter Page is Online!

Hey all visitors! I now have a Twitter page where you can tweet about my blog about lost L.A. history and so much more. Follow me at ironace210 on Twitter.

Happy Blogging!

The Old Sherman Oaks Galleria

Back in the 1980’s and 90’s, the primer spot to hang out in the San Fernando Valley was the Sherman Oaks Galleria. Located near the interchange of two of the world’s busiest freeways, the I-405 San Diego Freeway and the US-101 Ventura Freeway, on the corner of Sepulveda and Ventura Boulevards in Sherman Oaks, which is a part of the city of Los Angeles, the Sherman Oaks Galleria was a large and often busy mall during the first 19 years of operation (1980-1999).

The Galleria from 1980 to 1999.

It started out as a more typical large indoor mall, with three stories of stories, restaurants, a movie theater, which was owned by Pacific Theaters, and two anchor stores, Robinson’s and the May Company (both now part of Macy’s). This mall was also famous for creating the unique “Valley Girl” culture during the 1980’s, as mentioned in the 1982’s Frank Zappa’s song of the same name. Many teens from all over the valley used to hang out and shopped around the galleria, as well as to see a movie on the third floor of the mall. The Galleria was also used as a shooting location in many Hollywood films that were made in the 1980’s, including Fast Times at Ridgemeont High (1982), Commando (1985), and even a movie named “Valley Girl” (1983).

However, by the 1990’s, the Galleria would fall on really hard times. First, in 1993, Robinson’s and the May Company merged to form Robinson’s-May, leaving the Galleria with only one anchor store. Robinson’s-May would eventually become part of Macy’s by 2006. The next year (January 17, 1994), the Galleria suffered some damage from the magnitude 6.7 Northridge Earthquake and was closed for 11 days after the quake. By the late 1990’s, the Galleria had very little business as most of the stories were closed, due to lack of sales and interest. The Galleria management also evicted the anchor store, Robinson’s-May for lease violations. In 1999, the old Sherman Oaks Galleria was closed and torn down. It was a very sad day for shoppers who remembered the time that “Valley Girls” used to rule the Galleria and made it the cultural institution of the San Fernando Valley.

It would take three years for the Galleria to be completely re-built and in 2002, the Galleria re-opened, but as a very different and much smaller mall. It is also an outdoor mall, unlike the old Galleria; much of old Galleria was replaced with office spaces for a number of clients including Warner Bros. However, the movie theater is still there, now owned by Arclight Cinemas.

The Galleria Today

While the Sherman Oaks Galleria is still there today, the real experience of shopping at the Galleria is long gone and just a distant memory.

Special Thanks to Wikipedia for providing some insight about the Galleria’s past.

Fedco – SoCal’s Store for Everything

The L.A. Fedco store on La Cienega Blvd. in 1999, just before its closure.

When I was young, my family went shopping at a store that has just about everything. It was called Fedco and it existed from 1948 to 1999. Before there was Kmart, Target, Walmart or Costco, Fedco was SoCal’s one-stop shopping place.

For those of you that don’t know what Fedco is, the term Fedco means: Federal Employees Distribution Company. The chain was very unique because it was a non-profit organization, founded by 800 US Postal Workers who wanted to buy things directly from wholesalers. In addition, Fedco was an early hypermarket that sold just about everything, including groceries, electronics, clothes, household items, garden tools, sporting goods, just about anything you can think of…

It was also the first department store where all customers must sign up for membership in order to enter the store, much like the Costco chain of today. Originally, a Fedco lifetime membership costs less than $5. By 1998, just before the its closure, it was $10. At its peak, Fedco had about 4 million members and most of its stores would be often be jam packed with customers who wanted just about anything. There is YouTube video of Sara Brattman, who was shopping at the L.A. Fedco location in 1984 that shows how a Fedco store looks like.

Fedco had 9 stores in Southern California, 8 of them in the Los Angeles area, including the Pasadena, California location, where we regularly shopped, as well as the famous La Cienega location in Los Angeles, and one in San Diego. For most of its existence, all Fedco stores were closed on Wednesdays. There was also the Fedco Reporter, a catalog that featured monthly specials, as well as a few articles about California history. It was mailed to all Fedco members every month until the chain’s demise in 1999. Since my parents were Fedco members until the very end, we regularly received the Fedco Reporter for the specials.

Unfortunately, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, Fedco faced a lot of competition from all sorts of national chains, including Target, Walmart, Costco, Kmart, Best Buy, Macy’s, and of course, Costco. Fedco never expanded beyond the Los Angeles and San Diego areas and ultimately, it filed for bankruptcy in 1999. Most Fedco stores, including the Pasadena store were torn down and replaced by Target stores, while others were down and are now long forgotten. The Target location at the old Fedco store still exists today.

The Pasadena Fedco location today, now a Target.

I still fondly remembered that last time we went to Fedco back in the summer of ’99, just when the entire chain was going out of business. We bought whatever inventory they had left and treasured the last time we shopped there.

Additional credits to Wikipedia and Syd Ngoshi.

Pacific Ocean Park: L.A.’s Forgetten Theme Park

This is a circa 1959 post card of Pacific Ocean Park

Back in the 1950’s and 60’s, there was a seaside park in Santa Monica, California that tried to compete with rivals Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm and would have also competed against Six Flags Magic Mountain, which did not open until 1971. It was called Pacific Ocean Park and today, this park is very much forgotten by many.

Located in the Ocean Park neighborhood of Santa Monica, near the Pacific Ocean itself, Pacific Ocean Park or POP for short was a large theme park that had many ocean-themed attractions, including some that were similar to some of the attractions offered at rival Disneyland at the time. Some of the rides were even sponsored by corporations, just like Disneyland. Some of the notable attractions include: the Westinghouse Submarine Exhibit, the Union 76 Ocean Highway (similar to Autopia), Davy Jones Locker, The Flying Dutchman (similar to Pirates of the Caribbean), the Mahi-Mahi tower, the Sea Serpent, a large wooden rollercoaster, Mr. Dolphin, Mrs. Squid, Mr. Octopus, and Space Wheels, which was basically two Ferris wheels fused together.

POP was first opened in 1958, as a joint venture of CBS and Santa Anita, which also operates the Santa Anita racetrack in Arcadia, California. It had a promising start with about 20,000 visitors on opening day, then increased to 37,000 the next day, beating Disneyland for that day. By 1959, it had attracted 1.2 million visitors. Another notable thing about POP was its admission price. The all day adult admission for most attractions was just 90 cents (it would have probably cost a lot more today). Some rides required an additional fee.

A 1959 photo of the aerial skyway and the Sea Serpent rollercoaster at POP.

However, by the 1960’s, POP fell on hard times. CBS and Santa Anita had sold the park to John Morehead for $10 million. The new owner wanted POP to run as a small family park, instead of competing against Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm. Unfortunately, Morehead made some bad decisions that would led to the demise of POP. First, Morehead wanted a single price for all visitors coming to POP, which was $1.50 for adults and $1.00 for children. Second, the increased cost to operate the park, forced that park to skimp on maintenance. As a result, most rides tend to break down very often and the ocean currents only made it worse. Lastly, the neighborhood near POP deteriorated has beggars and the homeless rule the streets near the park. By 1965, attendance fell dramatically to only 600,000 visitors, then 400,000 the following year. In addition, the city decided to completely rebuild the Ocean Park neighborhood, making POP difficult for visitors to find.

By 1967, after only 9 years of operation, POP would close its doors for good and all of its assets were auctioned off in early 1968. The last decaying remnants of POP were destroyed in a series of fires in the early 1970’s. Today, the area where Pacific Ocean Park once stood is just another beach in the city of Santa Monica, with nothing to remind visitors that POP used to be there.

Click here for a map of Pacific Ocean Park.

Thanks to Jeffrey Stanton & Wikipedia for providing some of the information about Pacific Ocean Park.

The Disappearing Freeway Call Box

A call box on Interstate 215 in the Inland Empire. Photo credit: SANBAG.

For decades, whenever you drive the freeways in Southern California, you see these blue signs with yellow boxes below the sign, all over the places. These things were known as “Call Boxes“. Call Boxes were used to provide help for motorists who were stranded on the freeways. For most of my life, I have seen a lot of these kinds of boxes, at least until mobile phones overtook the land-line phones at the end of the 2000’s.

Until the end of the 1990’s, Call boxes were found every 1/4 miles on most Southern California freeways. However, between in recent years, most call boxes on Southern California freeways were removed for two reasons: One was, the increasing costs to maintain call boxes. California’s budget crisis of recent years, made keeping boxes like these a challenge because there was not enough money to go around. The other was the usage of these boxes fell by 80 percent between 2001 and 2011, according to a study by MTC (Metropolitan Transportation Commission) in Northern California, as more and more drivers use mobile phones for help instead of call boxes. According to the OCTA (Orange County Transportation Authority), only half of the 585 Call Boxes that were installed on Orange County freeways in the 1980’s are still in operation.

Each call box are marked by the route number of the freeway (such as the 5, 10, 101, 210, 405, etc.), followed by the post mile number. Freeway Call Boxes are placed on the right shoulder of the freeway by local governments, not Caltrans. This means, entities like the Los Angeles County MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority), the OCTA, or SANBAG (San Bernardino County Governments) are in charge of those little boxes, and therefore they are the ones that put up (or remove) the call boxes.

Today, when I drive on a Los Angeles-area freeway, I now only see a few call boxes when I am on the freeway; there is only one call box per mile. On some freeways, Call Boxes are all but gone. In the coming years, if current trends continue, more and more call boxes will be removed from the freeways. Eventually, call boxes on Southern California freeways will become just memory of my younger days.

The Brown Derby

For most of the 20th Century, one of the most unique restaurants in Los Angeles was the Brown Derby. From 1926 to the early 1990’s, the Brown Derby was very popular, not just for the food they serve, but also for its distinctive shape. The exterior of some Brown Derby restaurants looked like a brown Derby hat and this where the restaurant chain got its name.

The first Brown Derby restaurant was on 3427 Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles, but moved one block to 337 Wilshire in 1937, where it remained there until 1980, when it was torn down and replaced with a shopping mall, known as the Brown Derby Plaza, and eventually a Korean mini-mall, where it stands today.

The second Derby opened in the heart of Hollywood (Hollywood Blvd. and Vine St.), three years later in 1929. Although, it looked much more ordinary that the Wilshire location, the Hollywood Brown Derby was famous in its own right, thanks to the stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood who regularly ate there. Inside that restaurant, there were drawings of hundreds of Hollywood’s best actors and actresses of its day. It was also the place where the Cobb salad was born. It was named after the owner and founder, Robert Cobb and was designed for theater owner Sid Grauman, who had dental work done and can’t chew, Irving Thalberg, who had digestion problems, and his movie star wife, Norma Shearer, who was watching her weight. What makes the Cobb salad unique was that all the key ingredients were finely chopped to make digestion easier. The Hollywood Brown Derby would remain there until 1987, when it was largely destroyed by a fire. Today, it is a parking lot for visitors to Hollywood.

There were two additional and lesser-known Brown Derby locations, in Beverly Hills and Los Feliz. Those locations existed until 1983 and 1992, respectively. The Beverly Hills location is long gone, while the Los Feliz location, was converted into a night club, known as the Derby. Today, the Los Feliz location survives as a pub, known as the Mess Hall Kitchen.

The Brown Derby also survives today as a restaurant located inside Disney Parks, such as Disneyland, in Anaheim, Calif. and Disney World in Orlando, and in Ohio.

Photos from Wikipedia

Some material in this post were from the KCET program, “Things that aren’t here anymore” (1995).