Seen in several movies including The Big Lebowski starring Jeff Bridges and John Goodman, Johnie’s Coffee Shop sits at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, California.

Currently closed, it remains a prime example of Googie architecture popular in the 50s and 60s and evoking the Space Age. It looks a bit like a spaceship ready to take off.

Built in 1955 by Louis Armet and Eldon Davis, Johnie’s began as Romeo’s Times Square. Its creators also designed the landmark Pann’s coffee shop in Ladera Heights and several Bob’s Big Boy restaurants.

‘The building embodies all of the changes in L.A.: becoming suburban, auto-oriented, also becoming a city of the future,’ commented Alan Hess in his book Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture.

In the 60s it became Ram’s and then Johnie’s thereafter.

The Gold family, owners of 99 Cent Stores, purchased Johnie’s in 1994 and it closed in 2000.

Perhaps best-known for being featured in the 1988 cult film Miracle Mile, when a customer learns that a nuclear war is about to begin, Johnie’s also appeared in a 1999 Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers music video Swingin’, American History X starring Edward Norton and Gone in Sixty Seconds starring Nicholas Cage.

Johnie’s was declared a historical landmark by the Los Angeles City Council in 2016.

In 2016, it was temporarily named Bernie’s Coffee Shop in honor of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. You can still see Bernie posters in the window.

There are hopes that this dynamic part of LA’s history will be redeveloped in the future and brought back to its former glory.