Cafe Frankenstein
coffee house in Laguna Beach, California, US
The Café Frankenstein was a coffee house in Laguna Beach, California, United States.
From 1958 to 1962, the Café Frankenstein was seen as sort of a "den of iniquity" amongst the semi-conservative Orange County, California art community of Laguna Beach. Located at 860 South Pacific Coast Highway, Cafe Frankenstein boasted a steady diet of beats, surfers, folkies, teens and all manner of weirdos, and was suspected of harboring drugs and other debauchery. For two years straight, a pair of undercover cops were regulars at the Frankenstein, looking for a bust. But according to the last owner, Michael Schley, they instead became avid supporters.
Artists Burt Shonberg, Doug Myres (the Gateway Singers) and writer George Clayton Johnson (Twilight Zone, Logan's Run) were the proprietors. Shonberg provided a Frankenstein stained-glass window and cubist mural art for the club. Shonberg also painted murals for Hollywood's Purple Onion, Cosmo Alley, the Bastille, the Seven Chef's and Pandora's Box, as well as advertising art for Fairfax Avenue's Sandalsville, Don Brown's local surf movie events and a coterie of album covers (including Arthur Lee & Love's 1969 LP Out Here).
The Frankenstein had a bookstore inside, specializing in banned books. There was a sandal shop in the back, as well.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cafe Frankenstein” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.