Musician Dave Alvin knows Downey. He grew up there as it transitioned from an agricultural town of orange and avocado groves to an aerospace industry hub and mid-century bedroom community. He moved to Silver Lake in the 1990s, then recently journeyed back to drive KCRW staffers in his black Lexus and show us what was left of the town he loved.
His Americana band, The Blasters, formed in 1979 and took the SoCal music scene by storm. He left them in 1986 for a solo career, but rejoined with his former bandmates in Downey for one night a few years back to raise money to save Harvey’s Broiler, a beloved former carhop restaurant that was supposed to be torn down.
Harvey’s was known for “Googie architecture at its finest,” and seeing that potentially destroyed was too much for Alvin. Their effort succeeded, and the building that was home to Harvey’s became a Bob’s Big Boy instead of “modern boxes … cheap, meaningless architecture.”
Dave Alvin stands in front of the old Harvey’s Broiler, now Bob’s Big Boy, that he and The Blasters helped save. Photo by Giuliana Mayo/KCRW.
Alvin looks back on his childhood and says the town was full of residents from different backgrounds. “When I was a kid … we had Irish, we had Italian. I'm Slavic. You had a mix like that, and you had Hispanic [people]. But over the course of the decades, it's become primarily Hispanic, but also a lot of Armenian [people] … and it's fascinating.”
However, at one point as a kid, Alvin “wanted to get the hell out” of Downey. Still, he acknowledges, “But I also loved it. So I've got mixed feelings about the town. It’s my hometown. I was happy to leave, and I'm happy to come back.”
He says the history of Downey includes the “rancho and Native American days, agricultural days, through up to the aerospace days in the manufacturing … and then the birth of the bedroom community.” And all of that was connected to the space program and the mid-century modern movement.
He continues, “Now, what it’s developing into is a microcosm of America in that it's becoming less and less local businesses. Everything's becoming corporate businesses.”