Randy's Donuts

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• "Kitsch architecture has a definite scale (large, or of exaggerated proportions), and colour sensibility (bright, bold) and an exuberant ambition that hits a nerve. Fortunately, that nerve often happens to be your funny bone." - Excerpt from "Quel Fromage! A survey of the kitsch architecture in Montreal" by Elsa Lam, Canadian Architect, October 2003
   
• "When there are no codes, the default setting in American architecture is kitsch." - Excerpt from a letter to the editor of Architecture Magazine, by Andres Duany, March 10, 1998
   
• Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture
  FROM THE PUBLISHER:
  A thoroughly revised and significantly expanded edition of the popular 1980s original, Googie Redux is the authoritative history of the mid-20th century icon that ignited an architectural revolution: the coffee shop. Emblematic of Southern California car culture, stylized eateries and other roadside buildings built from the 1930s to the 1950s were dismissed as lowbrow stylistic folly in their heyday. Yet, as Alan Hess points out, in many ways they were the realization of modern architecture's grand promises. They were populist, employed new materials, and captured their purpose, place, and culture as vividly as any great architectural style. The influential original edition helped to spark a robust preservation movement and kick-started the reappreciation of mid-century architecture and design. This latest edition features extensive up-to-date research and dozens of rarely seen and newly found photographs. Googie Redux is the definitive document of a style born in California that has spread to all corners of the world.
   
• Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture
  FROM THE CRITICS:
  Publisher's Weekly
  The rhythmic and kinetic Googie style, a name prompted by John Lautner's 1949 design for Googie's restaurant in Los Angeles, evolved from the '30s Streamline Moderne. With wit and verve, Hess traces the history of Googie, showing how Lautner, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, adapted Wright's concepts to the roadside environment. There were many other influences and parallels, from plastic and Formica to the tailfin to the set design for MGM's Forbidden Planet (1956), and Hess examines them all in this extensively researched and highly entertaining study, concluding with a ``Guided Tour of Googie''a list of existing coffee shops, car washes, motels, drive-in churches and hamburger stands that have thus far escaped the wreckers.
  
 
• Southern Californialand: Mid-Century Culture in Kodachrome
  FROM THE PUBLISHER
  For everyone who ever said L.A. has no history, here comes Charles Phoenix and Southern Californialand: Mid-Century Culture in Kodachrome. Phoenix presents the colorful region as the locals saw it through the lens of their cameras in the 1940s. '50s and '60s -- more than 170 spectacular images printed from the best of Phoenix's collection of other people's old slides. Southern Californialand shows the lifestyle and landscape from Santa Barbara to San Diego, from the desert to the sea. With all the charm of a young and energetic Garrison Keillor, Phoenix shares these one-of-a-kind slides and the stories that go with them. He takes us into the living rooms and backyards of real people, travels with them uptown and downtown, visiting the famous attractions along the way. This homage to his homeland is a dazzling follow-up to his bestselling book, Southern California in the 50s. His live "God Bless Americana" retro slide shows play to standing-room-only audiences on both coasts. Filled with futurism, escapism, the unconventional and the hauntingly normal, Southern Californialand is as startling, beautiful, poignant and witty as the world it reveals. If you love Southern California -- and even if you don't -- you'll want Southern Californialand on your coffee table tonight.
   
• Southern California in the '50s: Sun, Fun and Fantasy
  FROM THE PUBLISHER
  Southern California in the '50s: Sun, Fun and Fantasy— a treasury of retro car culture, space age style, suburbia, Hollywood, mountain, desert and seaside resorts, and America's favorite amusement parks. In the 1950s, Southern California was the place to be. The mood was up, prosperity ruled, and the standard of living was high. It was the land of plenty for a new generation of movers and shakers who reinvented the way America would live. Filled with colorful memorabilia, never-before-published vintage photos, and carefully researched historical text, this coffee table book covers the phenomenon of the space-age promised land—L.A. and beyond—and the society that created a cultural explosion. See and read about how Southern Calfornians lived, where they worked, how they played and the way they got around. In these pages readers wll cruise in hot rods to the drive-in theater, learn how McDonald's inspired a fast-food revolution, and see the suburban spread of stylish tract homes, supermarkets, coffee shops, bowling alleys and shopping centers. Anyone who loves pop culture will relish every color-filled page of Southern Caifornia in the '50s.
   
• Florida Kitsch
  FROM THE PUBLISHER:
  Florida is the land of pink flamingos, bathing beauties, palm trees, coconuts, and beaches. It is a tourist mecca and a treasure trove of souvenirs. This book is a salute to the popular Florida tourist culture of the 1940s through the 1970s, when mostly northern tourists embraced the Florida sun and beaches with open arms, discovering along with Florida's natural beauty, a lot of kooky kitsch. Kitsch is colorful, funky, fun, and collectible. This book, with its 250 photos, remembers the nostalgic, whimsical objects often bought on impulse, brought home as gifts or mementos, and then relegated to shelves, attics, and bathrooms to sit for years, undusted, as visible reminders of happy trips. Whether a native of Florida, a seasonal visitor, or one in need of a getaway, this book is sure to evoke a bit of Florida sunshine for all.