Hollywood’s home to roast beef and curly fries yee-d its last haw when its local owners closed the Sunset Boulevard Arby’s in June. Best known for its giant, cowboy hat-shaped sign, the fast food joint was a local landmark and played a central role in the lives of its owners for 55 years.
The Arby’s on Sunset Blvd. is seen in the mid-1970s. Photo by Mike Leviton.
Husband-and-wife Mike and Marilyn Leviton moved their family from Chicago to Los Angeles to open the city’s first Arby’s in 1969.
“[Our business partner] was going to move out to Los Angeles to open a new territory for a new franchise called Arby’s Roast Beef,” Marilyn Leviton tells KCRW. “It was a little scary, but we had been wanting to move out to Los Angeles for quite a while.”
The Levitons marketed their restaurant as the only fast food on Sunset Blvd. with an unobstructed view of the Hollywood sign. The view now? Expensive condos.
LA historian Hadley Meares says that back in the day, Sunset was the place to be.
“Just a mile or so down from the Arby’s was a huge youth revolution going on,” she says. “All the big clubs were on Sunset Boulevard — The Whisky a Go Go, Pandora’s Box. You had all these amazing bands playing, like The Doors, and you had nightclubs everywhere.”
Unlike the grab-and-go model of fast food today, fast food restaurants at the time were more of a social hub.
“It was a place to hang out,” says Meares. “You could have a milkshake, you could have fries, drink whatever beer you brought, and you could have fun.”
The Levitons went off the Arby’s corporate menu. They served fresh -squeezed orange juice. Ribs. Beer. Even beef sliced off a shawarma-style spit.
For the four Leviton children, growing up meant working at the Arby’s counter. Daughter Judy Leviton-Sibelman recalls, “I would go home each day with little dried drops of pink, white, and brown from making the milkshakes.”
L to R: Three of the four Leviton children — Judy, 11, Bob, 13, Ruth, 9 — appear in uniforms on Arby’s opening day, January 1969. Photo by Mike Leviton.
“It’s literally like all I’ve ever known,” says daughter Debby Husch, née Leviton. “They opened the store the year before I was born. I have memories of Saturday mornings, getting in the car with my dad and sometimes my BFF, and going down there and hanging out at the store.”
Mike Leviton died in 2013. After his passing, Leviton’s son-in-law Gary Husch took over as manager.
But recently, the restaurant has been losing money. The family says they decided to close after a decline in business, tens of thousands of dollars needed for repairs, and an expired lease.
In an era of $20 salad bowls and smoothies, a roast beef sandwich doesn’t match the regional appetite anymore.
Now 91, Marilyn Leviton spends her days in an assisted living home in Northridge. She’s come to terms with the closing.
“Everything comes to an end,” says Leviton.
Judy Leviton-Sibelman says the loss is greater than just the family business.
“It feels like cutting the last physical tie with my dad because I really associate [the Arby’s] with dad,” she says. “So that’s hard. … It’s sad.”
Gary Husch says their family didn’t realize just how much the store meant to Angelenos until they announced its closing.
“It was an incredible amount [of people],” says Husch. “It was just one after another of people pulling into the parking lot and talking to me … ‘why, what’s happening?’ and ‘oh my god!’”
To Husch’s surprise, people weren’t just asking for photos of the cowboy hat sign – they were asking for pictures with him as well.
Social media flooded with petitions to save the sign, and heartfelt goodbyes from customers. Debby Husch says she read posts calling Arby’s “a spiritual center of LA,” a classic “first date spot,” and even where someone lost their virginity.
“Please tell me not the walk-in fridge,” she jokes.
Edward Valibus, a former West Hollywood resident, says he even named his newborn baby after the Hollywood Arby’s … kind of.
“My son was born in the Kaiser Sunset hospital,” says Valibus. “So we had to do that very first, nerve-wracking drive home, like they just hand you a baby that's brand new and like, ‘Okay, go home.’ We had to do this very careful drive down Sunset. Of course we drive by the Arby’s and see the hat and this clicked: Oh, we named our son Rockford Blair. And then his initials are RB. And there’s Arby’s. We’re gonna say he’s named after Arby’s!”
Beyond babies and first dates, the Hollywood Arby’s was a frequent filming location. The Zach Galifianakis show, Baskets, filmed there. Snoop Dogg once worked the counters. Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee had the real Arby’s staff on camera.
“Seinfeld and Seth Rogen came. And they got in line just like everybody else,” says Husch. “I took their order, and Seinfeld got to the front of the line. He said, ‘Can you say it?’
“And I said, ‘We have the meats!’”
Now, that stretch of Sunset is more corporate.
The Arby’s building will soon become a drive-thru location for Prince Street Pizza.
However, Angelenos need not worry about the cowboy hat. The investment firm that owns the land says that Sunset’s favorite cowboy hat won’t be going anywhere … for now.