Post #445714 by bigbrotiki on Wed, Apr 8, 2009 12:04 PM

Guys. It is admittedly hard to follow my train of thought sometimes, but:

I know all that, I established it on page two of this thread:

On 2009-03-31 20:13, bigbrotiki wrote:

There was an actual Bagdad Cafe that existed in the '60s when U.S. Route 66 ran through the town; it (and the town) have since vanished.
The film was shot at what was then the Sidewinder Cafe in Newberry Springs, California, 50 miles west of the original site of Bagdad on old U.S. 66. Since then, the café has become something of a tourist destination, and has changed its name to the Bagdad Café.

To clarify how I was lead astray:

The PLANE spells Lake Loreen and Newberry Springs...

....practically in one breath, so I logically assumed the two were CLOSE TOGETHER.

This building (whatever its name!)...

is IN Newberry Springs. I looks decidedly 60s Polynesian, no?

So when Icebear quoted the Desert Magazine April 1966 article (on page 1 of this thread!) with:
" And for the gourmet, there is a little Polynesian restaurant where food rivals that of Bali Hai, on San Diego’s Shelter Island, which inspired this place"
....I thought that THAT might have been the building --which then at some point later became the Sidewinder. NOT!

I simply should have followed Icebear's link to the Desert Magazine Travelogue on page 1 (as we all :wink: ), and I would have noticed that the Sidewinder name is mentioned in the same article than that quote, so there's NO WAY the two could have been the same place! :roll:

THEN I would have also seen the MAP that shows the distance between Newberry Springs and Lake Loreen:

..and I would have had a visual of the separateness of the two places. I know Ben mentioned that, but that was just a drive-by survey then, right? Now I understand that the town of Newberry Springs has probably nothing to do with the Desert Polynesia at Lake Loreen/Lake Kalikoa. Somebody just wrote that on the plane to mislead me. :D