William “Bill” Elwell, the owner of a humorous humor and occasionally Orner of a legendary hungry cabin in the San Fernando Valley, died at age 98, which caused an effusion of admiration and memories of fans of hamburgers and restorers who were inspired by him.
Elwell, who founded the hamburgers of Van Nuys Burger Stand Bill in 1965 and worked there continuously for 60 years, died on July 21. Throughout the decades it became a draw as much as hamburgers.
Elwell seasoned and drugged the meat empanadas in the original plate of his stand, which believed he goes back to the 1920s. Characterized as “rude“of maniac” and “grumpy“, He proudly directed the 10 by 20 feet position with strict rules (only effective, without substitutions), he could often find his clients.
“Is McDonald's today closed today?” He shouted regularly. “Why are all here? Go down the street!”
Another phrase of the firm is both at the top and bottom of the menu: “You cannot have it in your way, this is not Burger King.”
Allen Yelent, owner of the local Goldburger hamburger chain and the client of a bill from childhood, said Elwell embodied the best entrepreneurial spirit in the Valley.
“Bill's, for me, represents what I love about small businesses and what makes small businesses really beautiful in Los Angeles: the same person who cooks the hamburgers literally every day,” said Yelent. “Everyone can say that they obtained a Bill hamburger.”
Elwell working on the grill in Bill's Burgers in 2014.
(Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)
Inscurned between tire stores, lighting stores and factories, Elwell's Shack fed the Valley industrial workers as easily as food lovers who made a visit to a pilgrimage of Bill hamburgers. Yelent, a native and resident of San Fernando Valley, said that Elwell personified the “mentality of absolute workers, the ethics of the valley workers in which I grew up.”
William Clement Elwell was born in Ventura on November 23, 1926. He served in World War II and worked on a variety of trades, even as a taxi driver and a linen company. He bought the Van Nuys support for $ 2,500 in 1965, before the sidewalks of the block were paved and only a dirt road led to the building.
Elwell's hamburgers and Bill saw innumerable changes throughout the decades. At one point, the stand was called Bill & Hiroko's, called by Elwell and his then partner, Hiroko Wilcox, whom he had met while playing bowling. She worked with him with one of her five former wives, Sharon Elwell. Bill Elwell told Times in 2014 that one of his former joked: “We get along. It's he that we can't stand.”
According An obituary Written by his family, which was published in the Ventura County star, the hamburger icon is survived by his son, James Elwell, and his daughter, Charlene Morris, along with eight grandchildren, 12 great -grandchildren, three great -grandchildren and multiple nieces and nephews.
On Tuesday morning, the first full day business since Elwell's news spread widely on social networks, Henry McComas was the first client in the row. The filmmaker moved nearly six years ago and visits the restaurant at least once a week, he said, often on his walks through the neighborhood.
A double hamburger with cheese in Bill's hamburgers, shown in 2019.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
“The first time I met Bill, I was very busy with the grill, and so professional and so concentrated that you didn't know if you could talk to him,” said McComas. “He approached me and began a conversation, telling me how great his hamburgers were, but he took a raw empanada and part of the beef and ate it in front of me and said: 'This is how good the flesh is.'
“And I was hooked since then.”
On Sunday, when McComas learned of Elwell's death, he made a visiting point on Tuesday morning just when the restaurant opened, thanking staff for their continuation of the business. He wants Bill's hamburgers to continue in the coming years.
“Bill's legacy means a lot to the valley,” McCormas said. “It really is a basic element. I hope the family wants to continue the business they do, because we will be here for their hamburgers.”
The legendary man of hamburgers occasionally threatened to retire or sold the business, such as He told the Times He had considered in 2020 during the pandemic. But Elwell said he hoped that even if he did, Bill's hamburgers would continue without him. A staff member told The Times that they would like to continue the restaurant in honor of Elwell.
Yelent de Goldburger previously executed an Instagram account dedicated to publishing hamburgers he had enjoyed. The first photo was Bill's. Dady on August 12, 2014, he subtitled it: “Bill and Hiroko are inspirations.”
It is still an inspiration since Yelent grew its empire from an emerging window to multiple stands.
Elwell, then 93, takes a customer request at his hamburger post in 2020.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“They worked super hard,” he said about the duo. “They touched their product every day. They were always completely dedicated to what they were doing, and the city responded well. I want to even have a small fraction of the legacy that Bill created in Los Angeles,”
Yelent, who grew up in Chatsworth, found himself in Bill's hamburgers several times during childhood, especially during the years that his father operated a nearby TV repair workshop. In adulthood, he rediscovered him and discovered that Bill was even more inspiring than his first memories.
More recently, he found one of Elwell's grandchildren who worked in the hamburger post, taking orders in the window while Elwell still drove the flat grill.
The Hard Hand owners Max Miller and Danny Gordon also grew in the San Fernando Valley and frequented Bill's hamburgers. When they began their own hamburger business, they resorted to some of the restaurants that shaped not only their own tastes but the region that raised them. Bill, they said, represented “Frozed Valley places” and “a sample of what the San Fernando Valley was” before they were born.
“He was really one of the last to make food in his own way without complexes and keep his weapons when it comes to how it serves, how he directs his business and how he operates personally within space,” said Miller.
Miller, who attended high school in Van Nuys, often competed for one of the coveted counter with grilled counter.
A couple of customers leave with his request for Bill's hamburgers in 2020.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Both have tried to emulate Elwell's “silent show”, seen more frequently through him slapping the American cheese in the empanadas, as in a casual way but with precision a game letter from a deck of them.
“For me, it is a kind of version of the west coast of Di Fara Pizza in Brooklyn: the old man goes to his own pace, which really does not give you time,” said Gordon. “He was just doing his own, and you are there for that experience. It is a kind of restaurant that you no longer see many. It is definitely an annoyance to lose [Elwell]; It was a legend. “
Like Yelent, Colin Fahrner also directed a hamburger Instagram account before launching his own restaurant, but never published a photo of Bill's, probably, he said, because his visit was completely the account of social networks.
It was, Fahrner said, the type of hamburger operation that of the old school that inspired him to launch his restaurant, the yellow paper hamburger, although the perfectly reddooked hamburgers of Bill are wrapped in white.
“There are other places that do it, but I feel that it really attached to it in the long term,” he said about Elwell. “I think it is also a reminder: all these inherited places are closing. Do not wait to go to these places, because they can close any day or the owner may die, or whatever it may happen … now is the time. These places will not be here forever.”
