MEMORIES: WILSHIRE BOULEVARD AND THE PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY

Popping down memory lane, I draw your attention to Ted’s Rancho. As a young man in the early 60’s in Los Angeles, a place one went to on the odd occasion was Ted’s Rancho at 18002 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. It was just before you got to Malibu proper. At the end of Sunset Boulevard, where it meets the Pacific Coast Highway, one turned left and a few hundred yards along you came to Ted’s by the beach. There was a lounge area in the restaurant where you could sit in booths looking out over the Pacific and at night the waves came in below and the plankton created a phosphorescent glow lighting up the water as it crashed against the rocks and pulled back to the sea. Its own cascading light show. Those tables were usually full, but you did not go there just to watch the plankton. The lobster tails served on a plank, with mash potatoes round the rim with lots of butter and garlic was very welcome indeed. I cannot now recall it being as little as $3.75, but it wasn’t that far off back in the day. It might have been more like $5.00. The Rancho Special steak was pretty good too. Unfortunately, I now understand that where the Restaurant once stood, there is now an empty lot. It may have burnt down. This is very sad indeed, but things change. Further up the coast there is now a fine dining restaurant Mastro’s Ocean Club with Appetizers ranging from $20-$39, the cheapest steak is $50 and twin lobster tails will set you back $69. According to inflation calculators $1 in 1964 is about $8.43 in 2021 terms, so the price then would have been the equivalent of about $42. Nonetheless, it would be nice to know if anyone remembers the place, and whether my recollection is reasonably correct.

As to other changes, I seem to recall Truman’s Drive-In restaurant was on the corner of Wilshire and Westwood Boulevards, and I believe is now the Oppenheimer Tower. Across the street one block east on the corner of Wilshire and Glendon was Ships Coffee Shop, now the Centre West building. You could have a cheese burger, with onion rings and fries for less than $2.00 and a cup of coffee was 20c with free refills.

And of course, the very first drive-in restaurant I ever went to when I arrived back in Beverly Hills in 1956, was Delores. This is a picture from 1957.

This was followed by:

And this was before that happened: