Travel back to the heyday of the American drive-in restaurant --complete with swinging ponytails, shiny new automobiles, and the aroma of French fries drifting through unrolled car windows. Beginning with the original Texas Pig Stand of 1921, this evocative compendium cruises through 40 years of drive in culture, tracing the history of roadside restaurant architecture and the people who created it. Engagingly illustrated with historical photographs and a rich assortment of related ?ephemera, from menus to matchbox covers, Car Hops and Curb Service chronicles a unique chapter of popular culture for anyone who sipped a malt, hung a tray, or cruised a drive in parking lot -- or wished they had.

Car Hops and Curb Service: A History of American Drive-In Restaurants 1920-1960

Arts & Photography

Heimann, Jim

Photography & Video

Chronicle Books+

Our special today is a tasty treat called May I Take Your Order? Brimming with classic restaurant menus from the roaring '20s through the fabulous '50s, May I Take Your Order? is the first book to feature this hot new collectible and design resource with hundreds of color reproductions. Author Jim Heimann showcases 250 original menus from all kinds of restaurants, including roadside diners à la Route 66, theme restaurants (travel, Western-style, celebrity eateries), five-star restaurants, nightclubs, bars, and cafés. With menus and vintage photographs from some of the greatest dining establishments of the era, this survey of a popular artform offers an uncommon perspective on design in the early half of the century -- as well as a glimpse of prices and culinary preferences of yesteryear. From the elegance of Art Nouveau to playful Art Deco designs to the ultra-modernism of the late Ô50s, this is an exciting new y'nd for artists, designers, and restaurateurs looking for ideas and inspiration.

May I Take Your Order?: American Menu Design 1920-1960

Graphic Design

Chronicle Books LLC.

New in town, huh? Look around, kid—palm trees, movie stars, glittering promises of fame and fortune....Now look closer, and you'll see the real action in the City of Angels: goons and thugs, backroom dice clubs, motel room cheesecake shots, crusading cops, and a few unlucky saps who didn't make it out alive. Sins of the City is a daring photographic compendium of vintage vice in Los Angeles from the '20s to the '50s, the true-life pictures of a milieu immortalized in the hard-bitten novels of Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley, and James Ellroy, and such films as Criss Cross, Double Indemnity, Chinatown, and LA Confidential. Pore over 200 shots of the people, places, and events that only tabloids such as Hush-Hush, Confidential, and Whisper dared publish. Witness the LAPD bust a floating casino, see a dapper Bugsy Siegel "before" (living) and "after" (deeply deceased), and marvel at the criminal excess of marijuana-stuffed suitcases. Author Jim Heimann has scoured archives and newspaper morgues for prime examples of Southland's inglorious past, presenting a compelling history of its notorious corruption. Sure, it's a tough city, but thankfully someone was there to record it all.

Sins of the City: The Real Los Angeles Noir

History

Americas

In 1980, Los Angeles historian Jim Heimann wrote a book about the oddball roadside architecture that has dotted the American landscape since the advent of the auto. Published by Chronicle Books as California Crazy, it stayed in print for nearly 20 years. Finally, here is the greatly expanded new edition of that sought-after classic. California Crazy and Beyond is packed with madcap restaurants, motels, service stations, and many other businesses shaped like hot dogs, animals, airplanes, pianos, and other architectural anomalies. Over the years, Heimann's continued research has uncovered a multitude of new pictures and forgotten buildings. With over 380 photographs and an illuminating text that tracks the subject well beyond the bounds of the West Coast, California Crazy and Beyond is an authoritative document of a style born in America and spread to all corners of the world.

California Crazy and Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture

Shows gas stations, cafes, businesses, and roadside stands in California designed to look like giant animals, machinery, and objects, as well as foreign architecture

California Crazy: Roadside Vernacular Architecture

Georges, Rip

More than one hundred postcards from the twenties, thirties and forties show views of Hollywood, film studios, favorite nightspots and the homes of the stars

Hooray for Hollywood

Travel

Describes the Hollywood bars, restaurants, and nightclubs frequented by celebrities and movie stars from the 1920s to the 1940s

Out With the Stars: Hollywood Nightlife in the Golden Era

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Abbeville Promotional

Briefly describes the history of matchbooks, shows examples of covers featuring advertising, patriotism, movie stars, animals, hotels, restaurants, and sports, and discusses collecting

Close Cover Before Striking: The Golden Age of Matchbook Art (Recollectibles)

Steele, H. Thomas

Dyer, Rod

History & Criticism

Abbeville Pr

3-8228-1159-9$39.99 / Taschen America LLC

All American Ads of the 60's

Taschen

What began as a simple idea--giving away free brouchures with illustrations and recipes to advertise food and food brands--became so popular by the mid-20th century that recipe brochures, replete with colorful images of ornate dishes, were fixtures in every housewife's kitchen across America. This book brings together the best--and most unbelievably kitschy--images from a broad selection of such brochures.

Kitchen Kitsch: Vintage Food Graphics

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Cooking Methods

Taschen America, LLC

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Books by Heimann, Jim