From a long-standing diner with decades of history to a newly opened yoga studio, cherished storefronts that once served as community cornerstones have been reduced to ashes.
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| A charred business sign along a road in Topanga Beach, Calif., after a wildfire swept through the area last week. |
Paul Rosenbluh was in Vancouver, Washington, wrapping up the purchase of a new restaurant when he received devastating news: his beloved eatery in Altadena, California, had been destroyed by fire.
Rosenbluh and his wife, Monique King, had owned Fox’s Restaurant—a cherished diner in the Los Angeles-area community—since 2017. The diner, a local landmark since 1955, had been reduced to ashes by the Eaton Fire. Rosenbluh first saw the damage through a Facebook video sent to him during his trip. “I don’t want to say [we’re] exchanging one restaurant for another, but that’s kind of how it’s going to transpire,” he reflected during the 14-hour drive back to Altadena. “We literally just closed escrow on Tuesday when all this started happening.”
Fox’s had always been a bustling hub, located in a diverse neighborhood filled with long-time residents. “We had tons of regulars,” Rosenbluh said, recalling the close connections they had built with their customers. Now, many of those customers had lost their homes to the flames.
“They came into the restaurant. [I] talked to them back in the alley. We knew these people,” he said. “Now, their homes are just gone.”
Rosenbluh and King are now working to integrate Fox’s 15 employees into their other restaurants in the Eagle Rock area—Cindy’s and Little Beast—while remaining on edge as the wildfires continue to spread. Although Fox’s was insured, Rosenbluh expressed little hope for rebuilding. “If all the infrastructure is gone, you can’t rebuild a building if there’s no power, gas, water—or customers,” he explained.
Meanwhile, others affected by the fires, like Candace Frazee, co-founder of the Bunny Museum, remain determined to persevere.
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