Motion Pictures Let's Get a Bite at Beany's

Jive-Bomber submitted a new blog post:

Let's Get a Bite at Beany's

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Still have the Judy drive in and Erma's here.

 

I guess the Hot Rods only came out at night or on weekends, and maybe high school lunch break.

 

Theirs more info. on place here. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/lost-drive-in-restaurants.577601/page-14

 

In Houston, all that glass the employee's are in would need to be bulletproof-correction, artillery proof.

 

Since the drive in restaurants are all gone, I've always wondered if I could bring in a mug of root beer through my chopped door window since the glass needs to be up a little to support the food tray.

 

Hello,

Nice old film digitized… As we old folks remember Beany and Cecil TV show as primitive as it was, the tie-in was a great business sense. Every kid watched Beany and Cecil. Although they were puppets, those were the hit TV shows of the early days of TV. Add in another form of puppet, Howdy Doody and those were the top two hits for the viewing TV public.

It made commercial sense to have a Beany’s Drive-In Restaurant. The Long Beach, California location was well known and popular. The famous Traffic Circle was around the next block, the Circle Drive-In Theater across the street and the Clock Hamburger place on the odd corner.

Starting around :58, the view is facing South towards Seal Beach and the coastline. It was shot from the Circle Drive-In corner. On the next big block South, the famous Hody’s Drive-In Restaurant was a hang out for a lot of teenagers. It was labeled “home court” for the Long Beach Wilson High School teens as the school is just around the corner. Teens from all high schools went to other drive-in restaurants as a part of the whole cruising tour on Friday or Saturday nights.

Hody’s had the advantage as their food was pretty good and the location was just a couple of miles north of the Westminster Blvd. open drag racing location. Usually dark, a perfect straight away of nearly 2.5 miles made for a start line/finish line not seen from either end cross streets. Back then, as it is, today, it was a long, relatively empty, highway from Orange County directly to Belmont Shore and downtown Long Beach.


When Beany’s opened up, our dad could not stop taking us there. He was a steak, fish, hamburger kind of guy and could not get enough of that end of the food chain. The famous Circle Drive-In Theater was just across the street. Sometimes, we would go to Beany’s to get our food and then go see a family movie at the Circle Drive In. It was much better than drive-in food. But, we were very little and young, then.

Jnaki

But not to knock preferences, but once other drive-in places started offering their best in hamburgers, for us, it was the food and ambience of teenage hang out places that topped going to Beany’s and the Clock. Oscars in Lakewood, Grissinger’s + Kens in Bixby Knolls, A&W near out high school and even in the Westside of Long Beach, the best hamburger was made at the Golden Star restaurant with a new technology called “Char-Broiled.”

At first, charcoal was used to bring out the flavor of the hamburger. But in the end, gas grill and drippings made the flavor outstanding in all items. That was the best hamburger in all of Long Beach from an always hungry teenager. The ambience of the Bixby Knolls drive-in places, Oscars, and Hody’s was a draw. Add in some hot rods, our friends, good food (+ gravy and French fries) and what teenager could not be happy?

The little kid atmosphere of Beany’s with the Helicopter Hat was cute when we were little kids, but as a teen, the better food and teenage happenings (hot rods/girls) outdrew Beany’s. That Traffic Circle Corner is no longer the same as it was back then, but time marches on.

As far as outstanding hamburgers? Golden Star was the top, with a small walk-in restaurant called Russell’s of Bixby Knolls, was a very close 2nd. As popular as some hamburger stands are today, there is no comparison to quality cooked and presented hamburgers from those teenage days. Everywhere we went on our teenage So Cal adventures, we always looked for the best hamburgers... still there was no comparison...

 

We still have an A&W drive-In here in Yale, Michigan.
The speakers work just about as good as the one Toad was using. LOL

When I was a little kid, our folks would take us to a Big Boy Drive-In in Rochester, Michigan. Big place, always busy. They finally closed it, I think, in the '80s.