sambo's

retro thing recently posted a link to a website featuring interior and exterior photos of the old sambo's restaurants from the 60's and 70's. as a kid i remember going to the one in our town often. my parents and their friends loved the food and us kids dug the kitschy decor. we idled away many sunday nights there, and then one day they all just disappeared.
it wasn't until years later that i began to understand this was partially due to the "sambo" story and it's racial undertones. the characters inside the restaurant were based on the story "little black sambo" an old east indian tale by helen bannerman. "in the tale, an indian boy named sambo prevails over a group of hungry tigers. the little boy has to give his colourful new clothes, shoes, and umbrella to four tigers so they will not eat him. sambo recovers the clothes when the jealous, conceited tigers chase each other around a tree until they are reduced to a pool of delicious melted butter. the story was a children's favourite for half a century, but then became controversial due to the use of the word 'sambo', a racial slur in some countries and the illustrations, which are reminiscent of 'darky iconography' " - (from wikipedia)
the funny thing is, in the restaurants there were these wonderful graphics from the story arranged in sequence like a comic book. though in the restaurant version, instead of the tigers turning to butter, little sambo invites them all out to a sambo's restaurant for pancakes in exchange for his clothes back. also the little sambo in the restaurant iconography looks pretty white.

anyway, by the early 80's sambo's was all but done. their last (and first) location remains open in santa barbara should you want to bookmark it for a future road trip. ironically many of the old locations were bought up by denny's who would get into their own racial problems years later.
but sambo's will always remind me of simpler times as a kid before i even grasped the concepts that would ultimately put them out of business.