Central Avenue, a piece of American and Albuquerque history, was known simply as Route 66.
When Eric Szeman and Diane Avila, along with their son Andrew Szeman, established the Route 66 Malt Shop 15 years ago in Old Town, their goal was to give patrons a taste of that Route 66 of yesteryear.
Now situated in Nob Hill just east of Carlisle Boulevard, Eric Szeman said the 1950s-themed shop has been their way of sharing a time when America was the leader of the world in every respect.
“Kids I know are looking back,” Eric said. “Music was hip, cars were hip, everything was hip. So in a way I feel sorry for kids today because they don’t have that. We’re trying to give them a little bit of that.”
Although the shop itself is authentically 50s, Andrew said his family’s appreciation for history extends far beyond a single decade. With a musical taste that spans the 1920s through the 1960s, Andrew said their ambition is to transform the shop into a hub of the oldest school of entertainment.
“We’ve tried to make our restaurant to where it’s not just a 50s diner, it’s a 20s to the 50s-60s diner,” he said. “We’d like to find investors and people to help turn it into a jazz nightclub, maybe a speakeasy where it’s just real low-key, real cool, need a password to get in, where you just hear the best jazz and blues and burlesque shows and the whole deal.”
The change in location is essential to their success, Eric said, explaining that Nob Hill is a neighborhood that needs the kind of joint they have in mind.
“Nob Hill is trying to get itself ‘proclaimed’ an entertainment district, but there’s not a whole lot of entertainment,” he said.
“I mean, there’s a couple places in Nob Hill that have live music. There’s not a dance floor in Nob Hill. We want to be one of the reasons people would call Nob Hill an entertainment district.”
In the meantime, Eric said he has been establishing a network of classic car enthusiasts and owners in New Mexico. His ambition since the shop opened has been to organize classic cars shows, eventually gathering as many as 2,000 classic cars to show between Carlisle and Washington, making the Route 66 Malt Shop the home of the hot rod.
“The organizational foundation is already there,” he said. “I personally know two world-class hot rod owners who live in Albuquerque. I mean they have cars on the cover of hot rod magazines, so they have connections.… There’s more hot rodders and classic beach cars that are driven on a daily basis in this town than anywhere else in the country.”
Andrew said they are looking into having a car show for the Nob Hill Summerfest and another crawl in September.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
“I figure the more we do, the more people will show up and it’ll be more of a regular thing and people will be more like, ‘Oh, cool, car show, let’s go check it out, let’s go have a nice, cold bottled Coke,’” he said. “Talk shop, talk cars, and it’ll be like the 50s.”
Route 66 Malt Shop
3800 Central Ave S.E.
For more information on future events, contact (505) 242-7866 or visit
http://www.route66maltshop.com/
to buy tickets
