An Interview with Sid Cahuenga
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LC: It really does sound like you had fun with the course, and perhaps it’s the oddest history lesson. There is a quote on this image which says "it all started with a dinosaur", can you explain that?

SC: As you know, the store has always carried some very obscure and hard-to-find items. Well, these come to me via encounters with many collectors and enthusiasts, who like me, find that the odder something is, the better. I’ve always enjoyed a challenge, and when something catches my eye, I usually like to find out as much about it as possible. It was during one of these encounters that I found the starting point to this project - a half broken plaster head of a dinosaur. It had flecks of yellow paint with some green around the eyes. I was transfixed by it, as it sat in a glass cabinet in this guy’s front room. I asked as many questions as I could think of whilst looking at it, yet all he could muster up in the way of an answer, was a crumpled black and white photograph. It showed the complete top section of the dinosaur, and I wondered if maybe it had been part of an amusement park, but he said he didn’t think so. He saw it as a piece of Crazy Californian architecture, but had never really taken the time to find out anything about it. Well, I was hooked... and all the research I did lead to this place.

Click here for a larger version of this picture

Click here for a larger version of this picture

LC: What of the dinosaur? What did you find out?

SC: Actually, nothing. It is quite frustrating, I have found no new information about him at all - I call it him, because we gave it a name - Sonny, so it wasn’t always referred to as that darn yellow dino! Sonny’s in the museum, and we designed a copy of him for our roadside entrance sign, taking what we could from the photograph and creating the rest. And we’ve also designed him for use as a photo opportunity.

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LC: Is there any story to the Museum’s building design?

SC: The building should be quite familiar to people, especially those with an interest in Californian history. It is based on the world’s first motel, the Milestone Motel Inn, which opened in 1925 at San Luis Obispo. The building is still there, but hasn’t been open for some time now.

LC: Why did you choose this building?

SC: It came down to choosing something that was very relevant to road culture, and the motel is a major player. This particular motel, apart from the prestige of being the world’s first is also classed in the style of California Crazy, because it appropriated part of its design from an already existing, famous piece of Californian architecture - the bell tower from the Santa Barbara Mission.

LC: Did you consider using the real building?

SC: It was looked at, but there were many elements to that building which would have to be destroyed to accommodate the design. Our building is much shorter in length for a start. The original has a rich and important history, and too much history gets destroyed too easily these days. If I can raise the capital, I would like to purchase the building and restore it to its original style.