I think there are few places in the world that have marked me the way Roy's Motel has. A cathedral in the desert, especially arriving along Amboy Road, so coming from Joshua Tree. I think it holds all the American imagery I had always been looking for. At the same time it stands for both the splendour and the decline of last century's American culture.
Some history: Roy's is in Amboy, in the middle of the Mojave desert, on old Route 66. Roy Crowl opened the gas station in 1938; his son-in-law Buster Burris added a garage, a cafe and the cabins, and by the fifties up to seventy people worked there. The fifteen metre neon sign and the reception building date to 1959, in Googie style. In 1972 Interstate 40 bypassed Amboy and the town emptied out almost overnight. In 2005 Albert Okura, founder of the Juan Pollo chain, bought the whole town for 425,000 dollars; the gas station and the gift shop reopened in 2008 and the sign was lit again in November 2019, after more than thirty years. Okura died in 2023, the family carried on, and the aim is to reopen the cafe and the cabins for the Route 66 centennial in 2026.
I went the first time with SP in January 2025, then with MM, TDN and DM in August 2025, and then with UC in November 2025.