The Atomic Cafe was a diner located at 422 East First Street in the

Little Tokyo Little Tokyo ( ja, リトル・トーキョー) also known as Little Tokyo Historic District, is an ethnically Japanese American district in downtown Los Angeles and the heart of the largest Japanese-American population in North America. It is t ...

district of Los Angeles, California.

History

The cafe opened in 1946, during the post-war Atomic Age marked with a pop culture obsession with all things atomic. It was owned and operated by the Matoba family and founded by Ito and Minoru Matoba. The cafe was notable as a popular gathering place for adherents of punk rock in Los Angeles from 1977 forward. This was mainly because the proprietor's daughter, "Atomic Nancy" Matoba, covered most of the interior walls and ceiling with posters and fliers for punk rock bands. Music promoter Paul Greenstein frequented the cafe and promoted it among the punk counterculture scene. In addition the jukebox was a combination of punk singles, new wave music, classic rock and roll, standards, and songs in Japanese. The cafe closed its doors on Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 1989. The building that housed the Atomic Cafe was demolished in January 2015 to create a new subway station as part of the

Regional Connector The Regional Connector Transit Project is a transit project currently constructing a light rail tunnel for the Los Angeles Metro Rail system in Downtown Los Angeles. It is designed to connect the A Line and E Line, which currently end at 7th S ...

Popular culture

The diner lends its name to, and footage of it appears in, the 1982 documentary The Atomic Cafe. Mentioned in the lyrics to "Adolescent" from the 1978 album ''Electrify Me'' by The Plugz. Mentioned in the lyrics to "Kabuki Girl" from the 1982 album ''Milo Goes to College'' by the Descendents. The Atomic Cafe appears briefly in the 1983 film, '' Blue Thunder'' and in the

Lionel Richie Lionel Brockman Richie Jr. (born June 20, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and television personality. He rose to fame in the 1970s as a songwriter and the co-lead singer of funk band the Commodores; writing and recordi ...

video "Running with the Night" of the same year. A cafe appearing in the 1985 film '' Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome'' was named "The Atomic Cafe." The cafe was featured in the 2021 Netflix animated series ''

City of Ghosts City of Ghosts may refer to: * City of Ghosts (2002 film), an American crime thriller film * City of Ghosts (2017 film), an Arabic-language American documentary film * City of Ghosts (TV series) ''City of Ghosts'' is a hybrid French-American an ...

''.

References

{{coord, 34.0489, -118.2384, type:landmark_region:US-CA, display=title 1946 establishments in California 1989 disestablishments in California Buildings and structures completed in 1946 Buildings and structures demolished in 2015 Demolished buildings and structures in Los Angeles Defunct restaurants in Los Angeles Little Tokyo, Los Angeles Restaurants disestablished in 1989 Restaurants established in 1946