It’s just a beat-up old parking sign. But to Temecula resident Bob Veilleux, the rusting, weathered scrap of metal is a reminder of a time and a place where scruffy surfers could rub elbows with Hollywood celebrities to ride out the big waves at the end of the Malibu Pier: Alice’s Restaurant.
“You never knew, it’s the truth,” Veilleux recalled. “You never knew who you’d run into at Alice’s Restaurant. It was good memories.”
Veilleux, who frequented Alice’s during its heyday in the ’80s and ’90s, has decided to part with a piece of memorabilia he gleaned from its unfortunate demise.
The iconic restaurant, favored by celebrities and surfers and named after the Arlo Guthrie song “Alice’s Restaurant,” closed in 1995 in a dispute with the state department of parks and recreation over years of unpaid rent.
“I used to hang out there,” Veilleux said. “The [state] was closing down over tax reasons. The bartender there, his name was Ron, we were talking about them closing the place down. I said I’d love to have a memento.”
Then Veilleux noticed a parking sign. It read, “Alices Restaurant Parking Only.”
“He said ‘Bob, if you want it, take it, after they officially close it, it’s yours.’ The [state] came in, the powers that be, they closed the restaurant down. So I took it for sentimental values.”
Now he’s decided to sell the sign, figuring that others would have an attachment to the old place.
Nearly 20 years since it closed, many who crossed paths with the restaurant share the sentiments. Gabrielle Yuro, whose father Bob owned Alice’s, worked there from age 13 to 22. The key, she said, was that many waiters and bartenders worked at the restaurant for 15 or 20 years, which was rare.
“For most people there’s never been a place like it since,” Yuro said. “Most people I run into in Malibu say, ‘Can’t you open Alice’s again?’ Believe me, I’d like to. It’s a very sentimental place to many people in Malibu and our family.”
Veilleux recalled long, lazy sun-drenched days on Surfrider Beach, capped off by visits to Alice’s and the Malibu Inn. At the time, beers at the Inn were 89 cents, he said, and the barrels of peanuts were free.
At Alice’s, the well-lubricated wait staff were known to launch themselves off the pier in full wait dress, according to a 1994 Los Angeles Times article. Veilleux remembers a scene of pure romance.
“It was a lot of fun. The place was so nice, you’d bring a ladyfriend, sit at the bar,” he remembers. “Cruise on to the ocean side of the pier. Get a table, get your food and a cocktail and watch the waves break, it was really romantic actually.”
Bob Yuro, who co-owned the restaurant from 1972 to 1995, said the restaurant “became home for a lot of people.”
“Young Malibu people worked there,” Yuro recalled. “One of the people who worked there went on to write a film, ‘Romancing the Stone,’ with Michael Douglas. She used to sit there scribbling at the bar. A lot of those things happened.”
“I always looked at [the restaurant] like they were a show, an off-Broadway show. Every day you’re putting on a show, you’re creating a show,” Yuro said. “It became so popular, it’s only an 85 square-foot restaurant. Weekend nights, we’d have reservations, and when people would arrive, even with reservations, they’d have to wait an hour, hour-and-half for a table. And that became alright. They’d walk up and down the pier. Wouldn’t it be great to be waiting in Malibu.
“Don’t you wish you were there then?”