"like a serial killer had drawn a bunch of shit in fat-point magic marker"

Here's a nice little piece on LA's Oki-Dog takeout stand, which played a surprisingly crucial role in the development of late 70's West Coast punk:

"Oki-Dog stood out from the other food spots, though, partly because diners ate outdoors. 'At the beginning it was just this little lone stand,' [Pleasant] Gehman said. 'If it had been cleaned up a little bit, it almost would have looked like something that came out of American Graffiti. It had that slightly Atomic Age look to it.' Gehman recalled its front windows were covered with signs advertising many of the dishes. The elements had warped the signs so thoroughly that the photos of the food looked like inedible blobs: the fact that Oki-Dog’s workers doctored the images on the signs to look more like the items on the menu didn’t make them any more discernible, nor did the oddly misspelled words they’d written. 'Whoever did it didn’t really know how to draw,' Gehman said. 'Stuff that was supposed to be, like, French fries or a burrito, and it just looked like, like a serial killer had drawn a bunch of shit in fat-point magic marker on top of it.'"

The best book on LA punk is the one edited by X's John Doe -- Under The Big Black Sun (my review here).

And I love that the current link to Oki-Dog's website takes you to a Viagra wholesaler.