From the voiceofsandiego.org:
Kennedy’s visit, on June 6, 1963, was a huge sensation. Schools let their students out to watch the president’s motorcade drive by on El Cajon Boulevard — he rode in an open “bubble car” — and thousands of fans and foes mobbed the sidewalks. Rudford’s is still there!
I noticed the cops nice harley
That’s funny–I just took a photo of that poster on the side of Rudford’s about a month ago!!! A great bit of history!!!
Back before America lost its innocence… sigh.
Great history for San Diego great restaurant
I don’t know what’s more awesome – the Lincoln Continental or the coolness of Rudford’s!
Hey, anon, I was going to ask you how you knew it was a Harley, then I reflected on the year. Only Harley would have been around in a streetable cop bike. Electra-Glide in Blue.
I like how Rudford’s advertises itself as “air conditioned”….everything is ‘air conditioned’ today….anyone know if that A/C sign is still up on Rudford’s?
Great photo! Before I moved back East I lived in North Park for 5 years and University Heights for 3 years. I was a regular at Rudford’s and I miss it. The owner owns a few diners in the area. The interior has changed a few times since 1963 and the “air conditioned” sign is not there anymore. It was always fun to watch the working girls walking up and down El Cajon Blvd. in the middle of the day. Some of them weren’t half bad 🙂
More innocent times:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Fm19PN8m8
I have two framed black & white photos in my hallway:
(1) My Dad with JFK (during a whistle stop campaign by train throughout CA while he was running for President in the summer of 1960).
(2) My Dad with Richard Nixon (during a whistle stop campaign by train throughout CA while he was running for the Governor of CA in 1962.
In the first picture, my Dad is respectfully shaking JFK’s hand. In the other, he is standing next to Nixon and looking at the former President with a huge grin on his face while Nixon-smiling–looks straight at the camera).
Both pictures have elicited a lot of comments through the years.
But I just always remember the story my Dad told me about what happened when JFK asked for a Heineken beer with lunch and that was the only beer that wasn’t in the train’s kitchen galley…
Another video fo the day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3_3TIcFciA
Thanks, Jim for the home video. Looks like North Park hasn’t changed much at all.
JTR – Talk about not changing….SD folks look at the 39 second mark of the video @#10 and the 101 KGB radio station car in the parade….KGB was rocking SD then, and still rocking it today. Probably playing the exact same music too (just call it classic rock now).