Devotees of Jayburgers Lament Loss of a Piece of L.A.’s History

This was personal.

Or so it seemed for the dozens of protesters and devotees who rallied around tiny Jay’s Jayburgers Saturday, a 44-year-old icon of Southern California’s roadside past scheduled to be demolished this week.

“You don’t find many little stands like this around Los Angeles anymore,” said architect Scott Fajack, a Jay’s double-burger-with-chili fan for 11 years. “It’s just a loss of another institution.”

Dora Rojas said her mother was crying back in the car and couldn’t bear to get out and watch. Rojas’ uncle had worked there for 25 years. It was like a relative’s dying.

The funky red-and-white burger booth along the sidewalk of Santa Monica Boulevard and Virgil Avenue was one of those microcosmic Los Angeles crossroads that took on special meaning to an eclectic mix of regulars.

By offering simple, good food and ambience, or perhaps by sheer staying power, it became a habitue of Los Feliz yuppies, Silver Lake long-timers and the neighborhood’s new immigrant families. The casual counter and pull-up stools, an arm’s length from cooks who knew many customers by name, also was a favorite of college students and weekend clubbers, whose parents were kids back when Lionel “Jay” Coffin first started in 1956.

It was new landlords and a big rent increase that did him in, the 82-year-old proprietor says.

Coffin decided to go out his way. He’ll level the stand, which he owns, rather than have it fall into the hands of the new property owners. As he sees it, his years there and the history of his place “doesn’t mean a fiddler’s damn” to the new folks who bought the ground.

They couldn’t be reached for comment, but even Coffin acknowledged that they were within their rights to hike the rent.

A onetime insurance salesman, Coffin started flipping burgers nearly 50 years ago at Tommy’s, the granddaddy of Los Angeles burger stands about a mile away.

He opened his own stand across from Los Angeles City College, and relocated a couple of blocks to Santa Monica and Virgil in 1968.

Jay stepped out from behind the grill years ago. But some of the cooks have stayed with him for decades--one of them for more than 30 years. The recipe--fresh ground beef, chili and garnish, seems simple enough. But loyalists like Fajack, who carried signs Saturday protesting Coffin’s treatment, insist that his is the best burger in town.

As a send-off Saturday, Coffin’s crew dished out hundreds of free burgers before locking up the stand a final time.

But the flame under the grill may not be out for long. Coffin says he will take a little time off, think about it. But he’s got his eye on a new place over in Silver Lake.

Some weren’t taking chances. The line of customers looking for what could be their last Jay’s burger fix stretched down the block. Some said it was more than food that kept them coming back. They wonder if a new place could ever be quite the same.

“It a combination of the atmosphere, the help and the burger,” said Richard Brooks, 59, a Los Feliz entertainment manager, who first ate at Jay’s 30 years ago as a city college student.

“I just hate to see it go.”