Diners are a quintessential staple of any notable American food scene. Whether it be the IHOP that grandparents take their grandchildren to for special Sunday breakfasts or the late-night safe haven for theater kids that is a local Denny’s, these pancake houses have touched the lives of many. Nowhere is that more obvious than with Norms. After the iconic La Cienega storefront faced closure at the hands of Post Malone’s favorite chicken shack, Raising Cane’s, the restaurant was saved by its loyal and loving community of over 70 years.
Norms is near and dear to the hearts of Angelenos, and the diner’s running history of family traditions, great deals and pop culture relevance make it easy to see why.
Like most Los Angeles food legends, Norm Roybark, the founder of Norms, is the son of immigrant parents. While attending Los Angeles High School, Roybark got his start in the restaurant business waiting tables before he and his brother eventually became used car salesmen to better support their family. His hard work paid off, as Roybark not only proved to be a successful salesman, but even became the owner of two dealerships.
Around the turn of the 1950s, a fundamental shift was occurring in LA as the rise of burger joints such as Queens Burgers in West Hollywood, The Apple Pan in Culver City and Original Tommy’s on Beverly and Rampart began to pepper the local foodscape like sesame seeds on a bun. Catching the trend, Roybark bought the building adjacent to his Sunset and Vine dealership and opened the first Norms in 1949, making it one of the first restaurants in Southern California to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Norms was an immediate hit and wildly successful, partly thanks to its emphasis on quality food at reasonable prices. From the restaurant’s inception, Roybark insisted that all the meals be made fresh in-house daily. There was even a butcher on site. While this emphasis on stellar meals, great deals such as the $1.49 sirloin and friendly service made the restaurant slow to expand, it was well worth the wait. Two more locations opened by the late 1950s, the now iconic La Cienega location came up in 1957 and another opened in Huntington Park in 1959.
With his restaurant slowly but surely expanding – like molasses on flapjacks – Roybark needed new ways to entice customers to dine at his restaurant. Thankfully, his background in selling cars gave him the brilliant idea to have his diner resemble an automobile showroom during the ever-growing car culture scene in LA. To make this vision a reality, Roybark brought on architects Louis Armet and Eldon Davis to design the 1957 expansion.
Armet and Davis are famous for Googie-style architecture, a staple of postwar era building construction. This Space Age aesthetic straight out of “The Jetsons” with saturated colors, upswept roofs and geometric shapes filled the diner, but its sign is still its most recognizable feature. Influenced by flashy Las Vegas marquees and originally scribbled on a napkin by Davis, “N-O-R-M-S” was spelled out on tooth-shaped diamond pendants in blinding neon to grab the attention of hungry passersby.
Fun fact: The pendants that adorn the Norms sign were made to resemble the ones flown over Roybark’s dealerships.
This attention to aesthetic detail paid off, as the La Cienega location is not only the franchise’s busiest, but also a pop culture icon. Edward Ruscha’s “Norms, La Cienega on Fire” now hangs in the Getty Museum, and the building itself was named a Historical-Cultural Monument in the city of LA in 2015. Additionally, this storefront was visited by Jerry Seinfeld, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner in season one of “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” in the episode “I Want Sandwiches, I Want Chicken.”
The Huntington Park location, while not as famous, did come with an L-shaped counter from which customers could watch as eggs were scrambled, hotcakes – not pancakes – were flipped and hash browns were crisped on the griddle.
Business continued to boom during the 1960s, and franchises started popping up all around the LA area with new locations in Inglewood, Santa Monica and even Westwood on Pico Boulevard. Even though hotcakes were selling like hotcakes, the roadside architecture that made Norms famous was taking a back seat. Due to this shift away into a new wave of naturalistic materials and recessed lighting, David Jacobson was brought on to design the Pico location. Known for his meek office and commercial buildings, David designed the new location with the inclusion of smaller windows, textured blocks and bizarre, to say the least, latticework roofing.
The shifting aesthetic preferences were not the only development to hurt Norms’ notable look, however. In the 1970s, as the energy crisis caused by the Arab oil embargo of 1973 seized the Western world, Norms’ famous sign fell out of the limelight. The neon tubes that electrified the night sky were greatly affected by moisture, leading to costly repairs every time it rained – an odd but not too uncommon phenomenon in the city of sunny skies. As a result, the blinding white pennants went dark, with only the letters “N-O-R-M-S” left on, illuminated in bright orange. Then, as the 1980s came to a close, Santa Monica cited Norms for a code violation and ordered them to remove the sign from the Lincoln Boulevard shop by 1999.
After decades of bad aesthetic shifts, the chain went back to its roots for the construction of its Whittier location, which opened in 1991. The building was modeled after the La Cienega landmark, even bringing in Armet and Davis’ firm to do the job. This newfound embrace of the company’s roots led it to ignore the Santa Monica code violation, as the sign was still aglow into the 2000s. Luckily, the city changed its mind after the council deemed it “of meritorious distinction.” Additionally, technological advancements allowed for more cost-friendly neon lights, resulting in a brilliantly colorful display as signs turned on all around LA, from the Beverly Center to Westwood to Bellflower.
Although the new millennium started off sweeter than syrup, events soon took a turn for the worse. Norms in Santa Monica was closed in 2013, and the La Cienega diner narrowly escaped closure in 2015. The company was eventually sold, with Jim Balis as the new owner. Even though Balis, after improving the bottom line at chains such as Dunkin’ Donuts and Fatz, was devoted to the legacy of Norms, the franchise still faced another closure on Pico in 2016.
Fun fact: The exterior of the Pico location was used in the film “Woman in Gold,” starring Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren the year prior to its shutting down.
Then in 2021, Raising Cane’s purchased the La Cienega landmark with the intention of transforming it into another one of its ever-expanding franchises. The sign would even be converted to read out “C-A-N-E-S” in the restaurant’s legendary lettering. However, due to the building’s designation as a Historical-Cultural Monument, Raising Cane’s had to make a petition to the LA Cultural Heritage Commission to modify the building. After a meeting was scheduled for Dec. 5, 2024, the development faced huge backlash from the community. Kim Cooper, known for Esotouric’s Secret LA, encouraged Angelenos to attend the meeting and voice their concerns about the closure. These cries of protest were thankfully heard by Raising Cane’s, and they abandoned their plans – the way they abandoned seasoning their chicken.
Although the future of Norms on La Cienega and other locations remains uncertain in the growing age of convenience over quality in the wider food scene, the community’s ability to protect this beloved institution shows that there will always be a place for the “Norms” of the world in the hearts and stomachs of Angelenos.
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Featured Image Photographed by Finn Martin/BruinLife
