Photos

Photo Gallery

Pizza with Brian Wilson

June 2004

Hawthorne, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, was the birthplace of The Beach Boys. The Wilson family lived at 3701 W 119th St.

When I visited, in June 2004, the house was demolished for a highway (the landmark had not yet been built there). But Brian Wilson's reputed favorite pizza parlor was still there. The owner told me that the young Beach Boys would sing there on Friday nights. So I got a pizza.

Also still standing was Fosters Freeze drive-in ice cream joint that served as the inspiration for "Fun, Fun, Fun." But even by 2004, Hawthorne had hit hard economic times, its 1950s middle class aspirations falling into disrepair.

Interestingly enough, Hawthorne is next to Compton, home of N.W.A. The City of Angels has been nothing if not a bedrock for the creation of mythologies.



07-Hawthorne



0407-17Hawthorne The Beach Boys song " Fun, Fun, Fun" had "successfully translated a portrait of southern California life, witnessed firsthand by Brian in the parking lot at Fosters Freeze on Hawthorne Boulevard in Hawthorne("Well, she got her daddy's car and she cruised to the hamburger stand now."), the local drive-in where Brian and the other Beach Boys ate many a cheeseburger. He saw a girl in her father's T-Bird and went home to write the song." -- Joel Selvin,"Hollywood Eden: Electric Guitars, Fast Cars, and the Myth of the California Paradise."



0407-180Hawthorne



0407-01Hawthorne



0407-02Hawthorne



0407-03Hawthorne



0407-04Hawthorne



0407-05Hawthorne



0407-06Hawthorne



0407-07Hawthorne



0407-08Hawthorne



0407-09Hawthorne



0407-10Hawthorne



0407-11Hawthorne



0407-12Hawthorne



0407-13Hawthorne



0407-14Hawthorne



0407-15Hawthorne



0407-16Hawthorne



0407-18Hawthorne



0407-20Hawthorne



0407-22Hawthorne



0407-23Hawthorne



0407-24Hawthorne



0407-25Hawthorne



0407-26Hawthorne



0407-27Hawthorne



0407-28Hawthorne





Back