L.A.’s Most Powerful Publicist Might Be This Drive-Thru Restaurant

JAMEL JOHNSON MUST have been feeling pretty confident when he proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Anna Soffer, a few weeks back. Even before she said yes, he’d arranged to make the news official on a sign overlooking the busy intersection of Riverside and Fletcher Drives. “Anna and Jamel are getting married,” read the black plastic letters on the freestanding marquee above Rick’s Drive In & Out. 

 “When Jamel put our engagement announcement on the sign, it was like he was sharing our joy with the entire city,” said Soffer, a 6th grade English and L.A. history  teacher at Thomas Starr King Middle School in Silver Lake.  “Everyone who was driving past Rick's, whether they're looking at it actively, or it's in their peripheral, it kind of feels like they are part of our love story, part of our engagement story.” 

There’s nothing fancy about the two-tiered sign, with its faded, 1950s-style drive-in logo at the top and its movie theater-style marquee below it. But the sign’s lack of pretension, combined with its rotating display of personal notes, is precisely what has turned it into a beloved community message board for a growing subset of Angelenos. 

In a city saturated with commercial billboards, and at a time when online advertising is omnipresent, the Rick’s sign stands out as charmingly earnest. And though the sign is analog, photos of it frequently circulate on social media and in text messages, sending its reach deep into the digital realm. It might just be L.A.’s greatest conversation-starter and our most hyper-local flex. It’s also the closest thing we have to a free publicist.