Chuck-A-Burger cruises into the sunset
By Byron Kerman
Photograph by Whitney Curtis
When the wrecking ball crashed into the Arena (né The Checkerdome) in ’98, Blues fans on the other side of the chain-link fence huddled together and cried. When they tore down the trend-resistant Parkmoor restaurant to build yet another Walgreens in ’04, devotees of the Clayton landmark were just plain horrified. So when the Chuck-A-Burger on St. Charles Rock Road shuts its doors this December, 50 years worth of cruisers, carhops and hangers-on will surely weep over their pizza burgers.
Chuck-A-Burger: The very name is so clunky and absurd that you know there must be something wondrous happening within—and there is: the $2.25 hamburger, waitresses of a certain age who call you “Hon” and real Formica. But ever since 1957, the restaurant’s big draw has been cruisin’.
We didn’t always live in a Monster Garage/American Chopper world. Sixty years ago, car customizers were considered obsessives at best, hooligans at worst. Cruisin’, explains Chuck-A-Burger owner Ron Stille, mainstreamed the subculture of car guys and put their hobby front and center. “It became cool to own a hot rod,” he says. “Suddenly you weren’t considered a greaser, you were considered cool.” And cheeseburger oases like Chuck-A-Burger were where cool was alchemized into chrome, pistons, angora sweaters and the rock ’n’ roll music that parents couldn’t stand.
So just what is cruisin’? To cruise is to seek out, ogle or show off an automobile and/or date, while strutting, preening, rocking, revving, flirting and otherwise aiming for that elusive state of cool. Cruisin’, as sanctified by George Lucas’ American Graffiti, was what you did if you went to high school in the ’50s and ’60s, but Chuck-A-Burger kept the trend going through the ’70s and made it official by creating monthly Cruise Nights in 1982. Cruisin’ may have gone the way of the tail fin and the duck’s-ass haircut, but carhops, vintage hot rods, ’50s-tribute bands and rose-colored nostalgia have kept Chuck-A-Burger’s Cruise Nights hoppin’ for the last 25 years.
Until now, that is. What should be a golden anniversary for the fabled burger shack has become a swan song. It seems the Stille family has leased the site for all these years, and now the owner has decided to offer it for sale to major developers. There is no joy in St. John.
“It’s pretty emotional, actually,” says Stille, who started flipping burgers for his dad in 1978. “The publicity we’re getting on [closing] is bittersweet—it’s like a car wreck. People want to slow down and look. It’s quite sad.”
(People also want to slow down and look at the restaurant’s big sign, which is currently a ghost of its former self. A particularly violent storm blew it apart last year, says Stille; knowing he was shutting down, he never had it fixed. What used to trumpet “Chuck-A-Burger” now just cryptically says “A.”)
The St. Charles Rock Road location is the last of eight Chuck-A-Burgers that once dotted St. Louis County, but there is a lone survivor across the Missouri River. Two years ago, Stille opened a Chuck-A-Burger—Cruise Nights and all—in St. Charles. It’s all about retro good times—the carhops there wear bobby socks and saddle shoes, the walls are lined with Marilyn Monroe posters and ads for old cars—but it doesn’t have a long history of its own. By comparison, two generations of Normandy, Ritenour, Pattonville and Berkeley High students grew up canoodling at the St. John location.
Stille says he has plans for a big farewell blowout some time this month. He’ll probably drive his black 1957 Chevy to
the party, wade amid a hundred other classic cars and commune with his people to the sounds of ’50s rock ’n’ roll. It may be better to burn out than it is to rust, but it’s always hard to say goodbye to an old friend.
