Arches may fall, but nostalgia lives on

Even nostalgia is breaking down. Visitors to LAX, the Los Angeles International Airport , have developed a habit of looking back fondly at the 1960s and in particular the airport’s truly 1960s space-age, everything-is-modern-style restaurant, the Encounter. The Encounter is located in the midst of the slightly bizarre lunar-landing structure that is a landmark of LAX. This ‘Galaxy Quest’ structure, dubbed the Theme Building, is a 1961 structure to which the Los Angeles city fathers and mothers gave landmark status in 1992. The restaurant itself is a blend of Star Trek-kitsch and George Jetson cartoonish excess. Its interior has kept that look and a quick visit to its website will show you as much. (If you do click on the link to go there, be prepared for some very loud, very bad 1960s-style music.) But even nostalgia shows its age, and the restaurant was closed between March and the middle of November after a 1,000-pound chunk of stucco came tumbling down from one of the arches. After a lot of repairs, Encounter’s reopening is still only partial and the Theme Building is still engulfed in a $10-million repair project. Some of the eatery's views will be obstructed by scaffolding that will be in place until the fall of 2008.