Alice’s Restaurant: An American Thanksgiving Tradition | Hacker News Reader

Alice’s Restaurant: An American Thanksgiving Tradition

nysmusic.com

57 pointshprotagonist38 comments

Here is the original song. Hearing a young Arlo Guthrie making all these jokes to an audience who hasn't heard them a million times is the best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JCcM

But later he added a part to the end - here's a link to the new part https://youtu.be/TuSBv5xim-o?t=1020 And if you've heard the original before, I do recommending skipping back to the beginning and listening to this one at least once, because hearing an old Arlo tell the story to an audience who has memorized every word and is still engaged and listening intently is also pretty special.

Oh, that's great. Even just the intro; his comedic timing is perfect.

Here's the original incident[1], as reported in the November 29th, 1965 edition of the Berkshire Eagle.

No mention is made in the article of the 27 8x10 color glossy pictures, with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one, as entered into evidence by Stockbridge Police Chief Willian J. Obanhein.

I believe Arlo's telling of this story has earned him a place of notoriety and firmly took him out of the shadows of his father, noted ballad singer Woody Guthrie. We listened to this quite a few times in my youth, from a neighbor's record.

[1] https://www.newspapers.com/clip/39766863/alices-restaurant/

It's nice that Arlo and Officer Obie ended up becoming friends and Obanhein embraced ways to make positives from the event, song, and eventual movie, in which he played himself.

Obie is also the police officer depicted in the Norman Rockwell painting "The Runaway", noted in this ... Alice's Restaurant story:

<https://www.bytesdaily.com.au/2013/06/alices-restaurant-part...>

A much higher-resolution image:

<https://image.invaluable.com/housePhotos/ROGALLERY/64/675364...>

Alas, according to Wikipedia, that story is slightly too good to be true. Obie did pose for Rockwell, but was not the officer from "The Runaway", who was instead Massachusetts state trooper Richard Clemens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Obanhein

TIL. Thanks for the correction.

Went to an Arlo Guthrie performance about a decade ago. It was interesting how he removed some of the more non-PC lyrics by breaking out of the song from time to time to engage the audience in the performance and then would pick back up on the other side of what he wanted to exclude. It worked much more naturally than changing the lyric or adding some sort of disclaimer.

A few years ago I would amuse myself by queuing this song up whenever I was at a bar that had a Touch Tunes jukebox. Inevitably nobody would notice or care. Nice song, though.

I've always been tempted to follow John Mulaney and go with "what's new pussycat", but i've never quite had the gall...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv1l1eUhN-E

That's a tradition?

For the Xmas season, listen to Stan Freburg's "Green Christmas". Banned from radio play at one time due to advertiser objections.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5IXlfJSEi4

Funnily enough, a young no-name DJ named "george carlin" was very nearly fired once for playing it perhaps one too many times...

hello to all my neighbors who might also live nearby Alice's up on Skyline :)

Wrong Alice.

While true, the Wikipedia article[0] has this to say:

“Alice's Restaurant of Sky Londa, California, founded in the 1960s, was originally founded by Alice Taylor with no direct connection to Alice Brock. Subsequent owners of the restaurant kept the original name as a homage to the song, eventually adding a "Group W bench," because the name had made the restaurant a tourist attraction that was "good for business."”

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Restaurant

For non-Americans who might take this article at face value: As an American this has never been a tradition in my family or any I've known, and it's not a Thanksgiving staple on any radio station I've listened to. (America's huge and diverse, so YMMV of course.)

The comment I was looking for, as a European. Thank you!

Your mileage does vary lol. WERS out of Boston played it once today and said it will be on again at 5 PM.

It was a WBCN noon tradition back when WBCN was alive.

FWIW this seems to be a NY focused publication and my understanding is that the tradition started on WNEW. I grew up listening to it, but I have no idea how far it’s spread outside of the NYC metro area.

Seattle here, it’s a yearly tradition :)

Midwest here, hear it every year, usually on the radio, but you know, sometimes gotta fall back to queuing up a recording.

Also midwest here, and never heard of it or the person who performed it.

Listening to Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving is a tradition I grew up with in Northern California.

Do you also drive to Alice's Restaurant up on Skyline at LA Honda road?

Amusingly, that's a different restaurant than the one in the song; in fact, that restaurant is named after the song.

Plus, you _can’t_ get anything you want at the Alice’s Restaurant on La Honda road. I was so disappointed.

you certainly can’t get Alice.

In the song, it’s a restaurant owned by Alice but not called Alice’s Restaurant

I think it's a northeast thing. But not everyone in the northeast knows it, either. You're more likely to know it if you have to drive for at least an hour for Thanksgiving dinner and you like to browse radio stations.

Thank you for that. Also as an American, I too have never heard of this. When I saw the words Alice and restaurant, I thought back to the TV sitcom called Alice from the 1970's-1980's who worked at Mel's Diner.

As far as American Thanksgiving staples I'm aware of, it's:

* Macy's Thanksgiving Parade

* (American) Football

* Turkey dinner

* Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (+ maybe Garfield)

Dr. Demento played it every year near thanksgiving, which was syndicated nationwide but very niche.

FWIW I've heard this song exactly once, driving into Dallas around 22 years ago on the classic rock station to go watch an NFL game. I was amazed by how long it went on.

The only reason I remember it is the same riff is used in The Doors (who I really got into around the same time) song "WASP".

That's interesting - I thought it was ubiquitous. Everybody I know acknowledges the tradition. Just another highly regional thing, I guess.

Same, I've never even heard of this person or this "tradition". Not something anyone I know listens to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlo_Guthrie

Woody's son, but he's eclipsed his father in some ways.

It's very big in the tri-state area around NY. At a recent friends-giving I brought it up and everyone except one person who grew up in the midwest didn't know what this was.

It mainly became a tradition in those pop radio markets which were already well-established during the Vietnam war, and where there was wide sentiment against the idea of being drafted into the military to fight for someone else's country. A lot of young people (now boomers) would have rather been doing something worthwhile for America itself instead.

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