User:Jengod/doh



The big donuts of Southern California in the United States are frequently photographed examples of vernacular roadside architecture. They are landmark oversize donuts designed to attract the attention of potential customers on nearby roadways to associated shops. In their heyday, the giant donuts were "the doughnut was one of many signs in Los Angeles that bordered on pop art, celebrating the effusiveness of life in the years after World War II. To many Americans, Southern California acquired the image of an orange juice stand shaped like an orange, or a hot dog stand shaped like a hot dog."

History
Randy's Donuts along the 405 freeway near LAX is the most famous of four surviving big donuts constructed by businessman Russell C. Wendell started the Big Donut chain in the 1940s. There were ultimately 10 stores with 22 ft-diameter giant donuts. Wendell sold out in the 1970s. One of the donuts has been converted into a bagel. Mrs. Chapman's Angel Food Donuts was a chain of 20 stores that constructed slightly smaller big donuts to advertise their stores.

The Donut Hole in La Puente, jokingly described as a "distant cousin" to the rooftop big donuts, is a drive-thru bakery; the gimmick being that drivers enter and exit through the holes in a pair of giant donuts to order and pick up their food. All of these shops and their associated giant donuts are considered representative of Southern California's mid-century "car-culture induced optimism and ambition, reflected in polychromatic, star-spangled coffee shops, gas stations, car washes, and other structures that once lured the gaze of passing motorists."

Giant donuts and similar oversize object-shaped signs and buildings are generally now prohibited under contemporary municipal construction codes.