DO you know someone who should be crowned Britain’s best dad?
To celebrate Father’s Day on June 15, we are launching a search for the bravest, kindest or most devoted dad out there.
Perhaps you know a real-life superhero who is always helping others, or maybe a superstar who has raised a fortune for charity.
The one lucky winner will be showered with nearly £7,000 worth of fantastic prizes, including four tickets worth £1,000 in total to the star-studded Butlin’s Big Weekender music festival this summer, where the headline acts include Chesney Hawkes, Blue and Billy Ocean.
Safari tent
On top of that, Britain’s top pop will be spoiled rotten with a £500 relaxing trip to Celtic Manor hotel in Newport — with dinner, bed and breakfast for two and a round of golf all thrown in for good measure.
We are also giving away a £700 stay in a luxury safari Tent at Lovat Parks in Cornwall or the New Forest.
Also up for grabs are four tickets to the spooktacular Shocktober Fest, Europe’s largest Scream Park held in Sussex this Halloween — worth £150 each.
And there is a family set of four Micro Scooters to be won, worth £1,000, along with a £1,200 home technology upgrade from Netgear, £400 of fabulous Rock Face men’s grooming products, a £149.99 top-of-the-range Instant Pot Grind and Brew coffee machine, family-sized multi-cooker worth £250, a brand new Char-Broil gas barbecue worth £665 and the Vax SpotWash Home pet and car cleaning kit, worth £220.
To win the lot, tell us why your dad, or someone you love just like a father, deserves all these prizes!
How to enter
Email s[email protected] with “Dad Idol” in the subject line telling us why you believe he is a super dad.
Include your name, address and contact number together with a photo.
A former senior member of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ staff has struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors, admitting he called in a fake bomb threat to City Hall late last year that was blamed on anti-Israel sentiment, federal prosecutors announced on Thursday.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, Brian Williams, a longtime law enforcement oversight official who served as Bass’ deputy mayor of public safety, agreed to plead guilty to a single count of threats regarding fire and explosives, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. He is expected to make his initial court appearance in the next few weeks.
“In an era of heated political rhetoric that has sometimes escalated into violence, we cannot allow public officials to make bomb threats,” U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said in a news release announcing the deal. “My office will continue its efforts to keep the public safe, including from those who violate their duty to uphold the law.”
In a statement to The Times, Williams’ lawyer Dmitry Gorin said his client “has demonstrated his unreserved and full acceptance of responsibility for his actions.”
“This aberrational incident was the product of personal issues which Mr. Williams is addressing appropriately, and is not representative of his character or dedication to the city of Los Angeles,” Gorin said.
Williams was participating in a virtual meeting at City Hall on Oct. 3, 2024, when he used the Google Voice application on his personal phone to place a call to his city-issued cell phone, according to the plea agreement.
Williams admitted he left the meeting and called Scott Harrelson, a top aide to the LAPD chief. According to the plea, Williams falsely stated that he had just received a call on his city-issued cell phone from an unknown male caller who made a bomb threat against City Hall.
At no time did Williams intend to carry out the threat, according to the plea agreement.
About 10 minutes after calling the LAPD, according to the plea, Williams texted Bass and several other senior mayoral officials a message that read: “Bomb threat: I received phone call on my city cell at 10:48 am this morning. The male caller stated that ‘he was tired of the city support of Israel, and he has decided to place a bomb in City Hall. It might be in the rotunda.’ I immediately contacted the chief of staff of LAPD, they are going to send a number of officers over to do a search of the building and to determine if anyone else received a threat.”
Soon after, LAPD officers searched the building and did not locate any suspicious packages or devices, according to the agreement. Williams told the officers that a man called and said: “I’m tired of the city support of Israel, I have decided to place a bomb in City Hall. It might be in the Rotunda.”
Williams showed the officers the record of an incoming call, which appeared as a blocked number on his city-issued phone. According to the plea deal, that call was the one Williams had placed from Google Voice.
Williams followed up with the mayor and other high-ranking officials some time later with several other texts, saying that there was no need to evacuate City Hall.
“I’m meeting with the threat management officers within the next 10 minutes. In light of the Jewish holidays, we are taking this thread, a little more seriously. I will keep you posted,” the text read, according to federal authorities.
Federal authorities revealed they were looking into Williams last December, when FBI agents raided his home in Pasadena. It sent shock waves through City Hall and the Police Department, where many expressed incredulity at the prospect of a respected government official faking a bomb threat.
Before the case was turned over to the FBI, detectives from the LAPD’s Major Crimes Division conducted surveillance that led them to conclude that Williams was responsible for the bomb threat, sources previously told The Times.
Williams, who was the deputy mayor overseeing the police and fire departments, was on leave because of the criminal investigation in January when Pacific Palisades was engulfed in flames, killing 12 people and destroying more than 6,000 structures.
“Like many, we were shocked when these allegations were first made and we are saddened by this conclusion,” said Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Bass.
Bass named a former FBI official to replace Williams in early April. The official, Robert Clark, led anti-gang efforts in Los Angeles during his time with the Bureau before retiring in 2016 and serving as a law enforcement consultant and director of public safety for the city of Columbus, Ohio, among other roles.
Williams has held a variety of government positions spanning more than three decades. He had spent nearly two years as a deputy mayor in Bass’ office, working on issues such as police hiring, public safety spending and the search for a new police chief.
Previously, Williams was a deputy mayor in the administration of Mayor James K. Hahn, who held office from 2001 to 2005. Before that, he spent several years as an assistant city attorney in Los Angeles.
From 2016 to 2023, Williams was the executive director of the Sheriff’s Civilian Oversight Commission, according to his LinkedIn page.
Working in Bass’ office, Williams oversaw the Police Department, the Fire Department, Port Police, Airport Police and the city’s emergency management agency, according to his hiring announcement. He was also a member of the mayor’s inner circle, playing a key role in the monthslong search for a new police chief that ended with the hiring of Jim McDonnell.
When Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman was sworn in last year, Williams was the city official chosen to address the audience on behalf of the mayor. He was also a fixture at police graduations, news conferences, community meetings and other events across the city, often wearing a well-pressed suit and a bowtie.
Williams’ attorney Gorin called his client “a career public servant who has worked closely with law enforcement, community groups, public safety and prosecuting agencies throughout his many years in local government and has devoted his life to the service of others.”
Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said in a statement that Williams “not only betrayed the residents of Los Angeles, but responding officers, and the integrity of the office itself, by fabricating a bomb threat.”
“Government officials are held to a heightened standard as we rely on them to safeguard the city,” the statement read. “I’m relieved that Mr. Williams has taken responsibility for his inexplicable actions.”
California invented the motel. More specifically: As automobile ownership skyrocketed in the 1920s and entrepreneurs rushed to open tourist camps and motor courts to house traveling families, a Pasadena architect named Arthur Heineman came up with the word motel — motor plus hotel, right? — and put up a mission-style lodging in San Luis Obispo, midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He did this in late 1925.
From these facts, The Times hatched a project to help California travelers plan their next road trip and recognize the motel centennial as an anniversary that resounds throughout pop culture.
After driving 2,500 miles and checking out dozens of places, I’ve come up with 34 lodgings to recommend at various price points. (These days, many prefer to call themselves inns or boutique hotels. Still, if their guest room doors open to the great outdoors and there’s a highway handy, I count them as part of the extended motel family.)
We’re also hoping to help all readers appreciate the up-and-down story of motels — how they soared in the midcentury years, then seeped into pop culture as hotbeds of sex and crime, slumped in the late 20th century and lately have entered a new era.
Today many are going luxurious or doubling down on nostalgia. Some are charging $1,000 a night. Others are sticking to their frugal roots and charging $100 a night. Several have been repurposed by government agencies to house people at risk of homelessness. And some don’t even take overnight guests anymore — they make their way by housing retail and restaurants and supplying all-American scenery for selfies and videos.
In Paso Robles, the River Lodge’s MOTEL sign rises high above the 101 like a rocket about to be launched from wine country.
In Palm Springs, the Trixie Motel has added new oomph to the phrase “over the top.”
In San Bernardino, the Wigwam Motel and its concrete teepees endure, now owned by a family with roots in India and the Inland Empire.
In San Francisco’s Castro District, a new generation runs Beck’s Motor Lodge for an audience the founders never imagined.
In Malibu, the Surfrider staff is standing by to lend you a surfboard or a Mini Cooper to cruise along PCH.
For travelers and admirers of midcentury design, the most welcome news may be that just about every week, another revived California roadside lodging reopens, many of them sporting the bold, space-age shapes and signage that midcentury design geeks know as Googie.
We’re also hoping these stories will help with your next road trip:
Happy traveling.
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The week’s biggest stories
Lyle Menendez, right, and brother Erik listen to a charge of murder conspiracy against them with Leslie Abramson, far left, attorney for Erik, Dec. 29, 1992, in Los Angeles.
(Chris Martinez / Associated Press)
Menendez brothers move closer to freedom
When a Los Angeles County judge resentenced Erik and Lyle on Tuesday, he offered the brothers a path to freedom for the first time since they were given life in prison for killing their parents with shotguns in 1989.
The brothers may be another step closer to freedom after Gov. Gavin Newsom withdrew his request for clemency investigations into their case, turning a hearing scheduled in June before the parole board into an opportunity for them to be granted early release.
L.A. council backs $30 minimum wage for hotels
Smokey Robinson under criminal investigation
More big stories
This week’s must reads
More must reads
For your weekend
The new “World of Color Happiness!” begins with a charming pre-show featuring the Muppets.
(Sean Teegarden / Disneyland Resort)
Going out
Staying in
Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team
Listen. That’s the low hum of the highway you hear behind me, offset by the rumble of the ice machine down the breezeway. We gather today to celebrate the motel, a uniquely American creature, conceived in California through the unholy embrace of the automobile and the hotel.
Since that beginning in 1925, motels have multiplied like bunnies. They have been implicated in countless crimes and liaisons. They have been elevated by some savvy architects, undercut by assorted chain operations and frequently left for dead by the side of the road.
The motel turns 100. Explore the state’s best roadside havens — and the coolest stops along the way.
Yet certain survivors have done some dramatic social climbing, especially lately. Plenty of motels have moved from budget to boutique, often renaming themselves as inns, lodges or hotels and capitalizing on their vintage looks. Like turntables, typewriters, tiki bars and film cameras, these midcentury motels are back, seducing millennials, Gen Z and baby boomers like the character Johnny Rose on the beloved TV series “Schitt’s Creek.”
“I always saw motels as a last resort, a dreaded pit stop,” said Rose, played by Eugene Levy, pitching Wall Street investors. “But I was wrong. Motels have the potential of offering a window into the unique charm of small-town life.”
He vows “to revitalize the classic roadside motel for a new generation.”
Out here in the real world, it’s happening.
Nowadays you can spend $1,000 a night in a born-again California motel. You can order “eight-minute eggs” with your Champagne brunch (Le Petit Pali, Carmel), browse in a curated bodega (Hotel Wren, Twentynine Palms), nosh on caviar (Skyview Los Alamos), borrow a small car (Surfrider Hotel, Malibu), or ease the planet’s miseries by reaching for tree-free toilet paper (Pearl Hotel, San Diego).
The cursive yellow sign at the Pearl reverberates with ’50s vibes.
(Megan Morello / For The Times)
Yet if you’re nervous about money in these nerve-racking times, you can still find a mom-and-pop operation with high standards, a long family history and — sometimes — rates that dip under $100. You can even find one of those that features concrete teepees (San Bernardino’s Wigwam Motel, run by a family with roots in India).
In other words, it’s a wide, wide motel world out there, too broad to fit into one road trip. And so, in honor of the motel centennial, I took a road trip. Well, a few road trips.
All told, I covered about 2,500 miles, all within California, stalking properties born between 1925 and 1970, avoiding the big chains, sleeping in a new room every night. The way I defined a motel? If a lodging’s guest rooms open directly to the outdoors and there’s a parking lot handy, industry experts say, it probably was born as a motel or motor lodge. Especially if it’s a low-rise building with fewer than 60 rooms, brick walls and a VACANCY sign visible from the street. But owners can call their lodgings what they like — or turn them to other uses.
On the way, I found a few landmark motels that don’t take overnight guests at all. I also learned how the state’s Project Homekey — conceived to house people at risk of homelessness — bankrolled the purchase and conversion of more than 30 Southern California motels and hotels from 2020 to 2024, with mixed results.
Now, buckle up and let’s roll the montage of old postcards, weathered neon signs and swooping Googie rooflines, then zoom to the spot where motel history began.
The Mo-Tel is born
The first stop, I knew, needed to be a scruffy lot alongside U.S. 101 at the eastern edge of San Luis Obispo.
This is where a car-loving Pasadena architect named Arthur Heineman opened his first roadside lodging in December 1925, less than a year before Route 66 connected Chicago to Los Angeles. Having seen the first vacation camps and motor courts spring up across the country, Heineman hatched the idea of building one midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
After a few false starts, he called his place the Milestone Mo-Tel, combining motor and hotel. Later it became the Motel Inn. Heineman gave the buildings Mission Revival features and planned to build 18 statewide, his own mission system.
That never happened. But Heineman’s lodging endured for decades and the word motel caught on. As the automobile transformed American life and roadside commercial culture lit up like a new neon light, that word spread.
But we’re not lingering at the Motel Inn. It shut down in 1991 and much of the old complex has been leveled. Despite a proposal for a new hotel that got local planning commission approval in 2023, the site remained idle as of March 7. An uninspiring sign still stands, along with a Mission-style office building, bell tower and a single wall from the old restaurant. For someone who prizes roadside Americana, this is the visual version of the sad trombone sound.
Fortunately, the Madonna Inn — the visual version of an accordion orchestra — is just three miles away. Under a big pink sign.
When one California castle is not enough
At he Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, Alex Madonna drew on his Swiss background and gave the inn a mountain-chalet look.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Nowadays the Madonna Inn is a vast enterprise with restaurants, bakery, bar, stables next door and 110 guest rooms — each different, each with its own postcard in the inn’s three gift shops. It’s so ornate, so frothy with kitsch, you have to smile. But when Alex and Phyllis Madonna opened in late 1958, the inn was a 12-room experiment.
The timing must have seemed right. Motels had been multiplying nationwide for more than 30 years, often adding swimming pools to lure more families or adopting elaborate themes to stand apart.
On Columbus Avenue in San Francisco, a circular Villa Roma motor hotel rose up (until it was leveled in the ’80s). Farther north in Crescent City, a man named Tom Wyllie built the 36-room Curly Redwood Lodge out of a single redwood tree in 1957. You can still sleep there, often for less than $80.
But here’s what gave the Madonnas a crucial boost on their motel in San Luis Obispo: Earlier that year, the state of California had opened the ornately furnished Hearst Castle in nearby San Simeon as a tourist attraction. Once the Madonna Inn opened that December, a traveler from L.A. could sleep at one lavishly decorated only-in-California castle on the way to another. Legions still do.
Scenes from the Madonna Inn. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
(Nic Coury / For The Times)
“It is the grandest motel of them all,” roadside design expert John Margolies once wrote, “and it is the definitive expression of an individually owned and operated hostelry — light-years removed from the almost scientific sameness of the large franchised chains.”
Boom, bust and boom again in San Francisco
From San Luis Obispo I drove on to San Francisco, ignoring Union Square, North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf, heading for the straight part of Lombard Street. That’s the part that carries U.S. 101 traffic through the Marina district on its way to the Golden Gate Bridge, and it’s full of old motels. In their vintage signs and often-weary façades, you can see proof of the industry’s boom and the decline that followed.
How ubiquitous did motels get? By 1964 there were 61,000 motels across the U.S. It’s hard to imagine there were ever so many, until you peek at @deadmotelsUSA or @merchmotel on Instagram or you’ve come across Heather M. David’s splendid 2017 coffee table book, “Motel California.”
Alas, by 1964, they were already beginning to get less interesting. Once the first generation of mom-and-pop motels prospered, the first chain operations arose and followed, targeting travelers who wanted no surprises. Two of the biggest chains, in fact, were born in Southern California — Motel 6 in Santa Barbara and Travelodge in San Diego.
As the national freeway system grew through the 1960s and ’70s, more chain operations positioned themselves to collect freeway drivers. Along the now-much-quieter highway, the old mom-and-pop operations died off or were gobbled up and “reflagged” by the chains.
By 1980, the freeway system and the chain hotels were thriving. Motels, not so much.
But in 1987 — in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, of all places — a 26-year-old Stanford MBA named Chip Conley tried something that changed the motel narrative. He bought a bedraggled old place called the Caravan Lodge and dubbed it the Phoenix, with Miss Pearl’s Jam House as its on-site restaurant and bar. Then he positioned the property as a hotelier’s version of Rolling Stone magazine, all wrapped around a playfully painted pool. And he offered free massages and bus parking to touring musicians’ road managers.
The Phoenix Hotel is part of the hipster-friendly Bunkhouse hotel group. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
And lo, the bands came, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sinead O’Connor, M.C. Hammer, k.d. lang, Laurie Anderson, Etta James, David Bowie, Bo Diddley and Deborah Harry. As the Phoenix flourished, Conley revived dozens more motels and small hotels, conceived a brand called Joie de Vivre, then sold it to Marriott.
The Phoenix has less momentum now. Its restaurant opens only for special events and the Tenderloin’s crime and blight persist. If I were in the city with children, I’d sooner stay near Lombard Street at the Motel Capri or Hotel Del Sol (which charges a staggering $45 for parking but has a pool).
Then again, a new owner took over the Phoenix last August — Michel Suas, a celebrated Bay Area pastry chef. If any Phoenix can rise from the ashes twice, it’s this one.
Rethinking rooms for a new generation
Meanwhile, up and down California, there’s a new generation of motel entrepreneurs and designers following Conley’s lead, rethinking what it means to be a motel. Though the nationwide number of motels dwindled to an estimated 16,000 by 2012, reclamation projects have been multiplying.
Kenny Osehan’s Ojai-based Shelter Social Club manages six reclaimed California motels in Ojai, Santa Barbara, Los Alamos and Solvang.
The Beverly Hills-based Kirkwood Collection includes 11 redone California motels and hotels.
The Southern California-based brand Casetta has opened four redone Southern California motels and hotels, with two more opening soon in Los Angeles and Taos, N.M.
The San Luis Obispo-based Nomada Hotel Group has relaunched five motels and hotels along the Central Coast.
None of those companies existed before 2012. All are still growing and trading on the idea that a lodging with 30 rooms feels friendlier than one with 300.
Drive south from San Francisco with a motel geek — which you’re now doing, by the way — and the born-again motel variations roll past like Kodachrome images in a slide show.
At the Glen Oaks Resort Adobe Motor Lodge in Big Sur, the rooms huddle at the edge of a thick forest. You turn an old-school metal key in your door and find a room full of stylishly recycled furnishings — woodsy but luxe, with yoga mats leaning in a corner.
A vintage-style key at Glen Oaks Motor Lodge in Big Sur.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
At the Cambria Beach Lodge, where once you might have found a bedside Gideon Bible or a Magic Fingers vibrating mattress, now you borrow a bike to ride by Moonstone Beach or bathe with some of the motel’s goat’s milk soap.
Rolling through Paso Robles, you confront a generational motel choice. You can seek reassurance at the Melody Ranch Motel with its tidy, basic rooms, Gideon Bibles, second-generation family management and rates around $100 a night. Or you can head to Farmhouse Paso Robles or the River Lodge, both of which have been updated dramatically by the Nomada Group.
“It’s not that we set out to refurbish motels, necessarily,” Nomada partner and creative director Kimberly Walker told me. “One thing we are passionate about is giving old buildings a new chapter. We can’t ever see ourselves buying a piece of land and starting from scratch.”
Clockwise, from above: In April 2024, River Lodge reopened as a retro-chic boutique lodging.(Jacob Tovar / For The Times)Melody Ranch Motel has a prime spot on Spring Street, the main artery of Paso Robles.(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)A cocktail at the River Lodge.(Jacob Tovar / For The Times)
With the best old motels, “There was just so much personality and thought put into what these buildings look like that they’re able to be reconceptualized again,” Walker said. “You can always find one thing to start your design journey with, and then build off of that.”
Two of the biggest challenges, Walker said, are parking and bathrooms. At the River Lodge, Skyview Los Alamos and Hotel Ynez in Solvang, Walker’s team moved the parking area farther from rooms, making more space for greenery and patios. In small bathrooms, the team has deployed fancy tiles, lots of light and glass partitions instead of shower curtains.
Especially at Skyview, the combination of Modernist and farmhouse design elements yields entertaining results. Agrigoogie, anyone?
And then there’s the question of those cool old signs that say motel.
“When we first bought Skyview, and I hate that I did this, but I was like, ‘Maybe we should change the sign from “motel” to “hotel,”‘” Walker confessed. “I’m so glad that I didn’t follow through with that, because the motel sign is the beacon. Guests love taking their pictures with the sign.”
In Cayucos, design veterans and hospitality newbies Ryan and Marisa Fortini faced a similar question when they bought and renovated an old motor inn on the main drag. They chose to lean even harder into the m-word and called their project the Pacific Motel. It opened in 2022.
And now the Fortinis are doing it again. In 2023 they bought the nearby Cayucos Motel. So far, that still-open property remains as beach-rustic-plain as the Pacific Motel is beach-rustic-chic. But more changes are coming and Ryan Fortini shared with me a new word that may help describe them.
The Pacific Motel in Cayucos. (Jacob Tovar / For The Times)
(Jacob Tovar / For The Times)
Motel variations: Hot springs, beachfront perches and iconic signage
The farther south you go, whether on the coast or in the desert, the wider the variety seems to get.
At the Surfrider Malibu, guests ordinarily have exclusive access to a roof-deck restaurant, several loaner surfboards and a pair of Mini Coopers — but some amenities are on hold as the hotel accommodates many guests displaced by the Palisades fire in January.
In the boulder-strewn hills between San Diego and Calexico, the revivers of the once-moribund Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel have rebuilt that resort (which opened in 2023) with geothermally heated pools and a global desert theme.
On a pier in San Diego’s Pacific Beach, there’s been no dramatic rebirth — because none was necessary. The tidy cottages of the Crystal Pier Hotel, run by the same family since 1961, still look much as they did in the 1930s, tide lapping below, reservations required months ahead. (And you have to make them by phone or in person.)
“The motel thing is coming back,” said general manager Julie Neal, sounding surprised. “It’s actually kind of cool now.”
Out in the desert, where Midcentury Modern design has never gone out of style, there were revived motels left and right.
The most subdued of those was one of the most tempting: Hotel Wren in Twentynine Palms, which only opened in March, a 12-room, high-end retreat with muted colors, enormous rooms, custom furniture and poolside mountain views.
The least subdued? That would be the former Ruby Montana’s Coral Sands Inn, in Palm Springs.
My family and I booked most of the place with friends several years ago, and I was struck then by how entertaining it was to sleep, read and play in a seven-room motel that had been painted pink and filled with thrift-shop tchotchkes and vintage furnishings.
Well, Ruby’s gone now, and the Trixie Motel (its name since 2022) is proof that even if one hotelier goes wild, there’s still room for the next one to go wilder. Especially if that next owner is a drag queen.
The motel is still pink, but now staffers wear pink outfits, every room has its own custom thematic wallpaper (Atomic Bombshell, Pink Flamingo, Yeehaw Cowgirl). Barbie dolls cavort in the office and trendy persons fill the motel’s Barbara bar. Next to all this, the Madonna Inn looks like just another Ramada.
Drag queen Trixie Mattel, David Silver and Team Trixie (including interior designer Dani Dazey) bought the motel, renovated and reopened it in 2022. It’s now pinker than ever.
(David Fotus / For The Times)
(David Fotus / For The Times)
The road ahead runs through the middle of nowhere
Because the point of a motel is to help you toward someplace else, there’s no perfect way to end a motel journey. But Amboy works.
It’s a 20th century ghost town along Route 66, about 45 miles northeast of Twentynine Palms. Roy’s Motel & Cafe stands there like a forgotten stage set, topped by an iconic 1959 sign whose promises are all false.
Roy has been gone for decades. With potable water in short supply, neither the cafe nor the motel nor its six roadside cottages have been open since the 1980s. But Roy’s has gas, snacks and souvenirs, which is enough to attract film crews, selfie snappers and legions of drivers (especially desert-smitten Europeans) on their way between Las Vegas and Joshua Tree.
With Route 66 turning 100 in 2026, Roy’s owner Kyle Okura and manager Ken Large are doing their best to somehow get the six roadside cottages up and renting before that year is over. (Who can resist a centennial?)
It’s too soon to tell if that rebirth will happen. Still, the road warriors come, including off-duty trucker Chris Birdsall, 51, of Omaha, who turned up shortly before sunset one recent day.
“I want to see the sign lit up,” he said.
Soon after, Roy’s assistant manager Nicole Rachel called Birdsall into the old motel office, showed him the three switches that control the 50-foot sign and invited him to do the honors.
Birdsall did his bit, then grinned like a kid as the motel sign blinked to life in red, blue and yellow like a neon mirage or a road-tripper’s dream.
Rachel often invites visitors to throw the switches, she told me. But even if you don’t get that privilege, I can’t think of a better place to stand on the blacktop and imagine what might be down the road.
She was just seven years old when they were displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria. Elizabeth Bitrus and her family fled to Taraba State, where they lived in an internally displaced persons (IDP) Camp. That was the first time Elizabeth had to adjust to a home that was not her home.
Three years later, she and her aunt boarded a bus bound for Edo State, South South Nigeria, where her aunt resides.
No one told Elizabeth Bitrus exactly where she was headed, but she knew it meant a fresh start, a chance to return to school, and she could hardly contain her excitement. She had dropped out after displacement upended her life. Elizabeth was only ten. Her aunt had told her stories of what it was like living there and how children attend a free school, with provisions for food, books, and even toiletries.
They eventually arrived at Uhogua, a rural community in Edo State. Their destination was the Home for the Needy Camp, a sprawling compound dotted with blocks of buildings roofed with rusted zinc sheets. When they arrived, her aunt dropped her off at the camp and said she was leaving. Her house was a few minutes away, but students lived in a boarding school arrangement.
Founded in 1992 by Solomon Folorunsho, a Nigerian pastor, the camp provides free accommodation, feeding, and education for displaced people. It currently houses over 4000 people.
“I thought I would be living with my aunt while attending the school,” Elizabeth recalls with a chuckle. “I started crying profusely. I immediately started to miss my mum and told my aunt to take me back home.”
The memory is still fresh in her mind. She can laugh about it now in hindsight, but at the time, it was terrifying. She didn’t know anyone. How would she fit in?
“I didn’t find it very hard to fit in, thankfully. There was a group of girls who were eager to make friends with me, the new girl. When I kept crying, saying I wanted to leave, they advised me to be patient and stay to study,” Elizabeth said.
Slowly, she grew accustomed to the routine of the camp.
“Soon enough, I started to enjoy being in the camp, so much that I didn’t even care about going back home anymore,” she recounted.
‘Home for the needy’
Over three decades ago, Solomon started caring for children in Edo who were abandoned by their parents and those out of school.
“I rented an apartment and put them in a private school. These children became wonderful. I saw how they were competing [with other students], which encouraged me. That is how I started,” he said.
The capacity grew from a one-bedroom apartment to a three-bedroom apartment, then a seven-bedroom apartment. But with more children came greater responsibilities and shrinking resources. Solomon could not manage alone anymore. He began seeking donations from individuals and organisations, and when the children’s school fees became exorbitant, he started a school, employed teachers and got volunteers to run it.
When the Boko Haram insurgency began, “friends from the north were calling me. This was around 2012. I thought about what we could do for the children, and gradually some families started coming here,” Solomon tells HumAngle. Elizabeth was one of them.
They live in large tents, each housing up to 50 students. They sleep on mats and attend prayers every morning, before heading to classes in modern brick-walled classrooms. Oddly, however, only the teenage girls were required to cook. They did so in groups, taking turns according to a schedule. Then they shared the food with everyone, both the girls and the boys.
After dinner, they’d form study groups. Some would do their assignments, others would study for tests. If one didn’t have a torch to read with, they’d go under the tall solar-powered streetlights in the camp’s compound.
The longing for home
Elizabeth often thought about her mom and three siblings in the early days.
She never once spoke to her mother for seven years at the camp. She discovered that she had cousins in the camp, and one day, as they chatted with their mom over the phone, Elizabeth heard her mother’s voice. She spoke with her briefly, and a sudden longing for home started to sweep over her.
“I missed them so much. I knew I needed to go back and see my family,” she recounts.
It had taken a long time to properly reestablish contact with her mom after that brief call on her aunt’s phone in 2021. Her mom didn’t have a phone, so they didn’t speak again until three years later, in 2024.
Elizabeth stands between two tents in the Kuchingoro IDP Camp, Abuja. Photo: Sabiqah/HumAngle.
Living conditions in the camp were deteriorating: there was hunger, the toilets were full, and some were breaking down. More and more, Elizabeth craved her mother’s embrace. Over the call, she told her mother she wanted to return home, and her mother sent money for transport.
She was excited and nervous the day she was finally leaving Edo for Abuja, North-central Nigeria. It had been nearly a decade since she’d left her family in Taraba, and so much had changed. She is now 18 years old. Her family moved. She wondered how much taller her siblings had grown, whether her mother had aged at all.
“When I saw her waiting for me at the car park after we arrived, I ran into her arms and started sobbing, and sobbing. I couldn’t control it,” Elizabeth recounts with a smile.
When HumAngle met her at Kuchingoro IDP Camp, an informal settlement in Abuja, where she lives with her mum, Elizabeth was sitting under the shade of a tree. She had just returned from work as a domestic help in a house close to the camp. Across the street, the grand terrace buildings of the estate where Elizabeth sweeps and mops floors stand in sharp contrast to her lowly tent, made out of rusted zinc roof sheets and rags.
Elizabeth’s tent and the tree where she sits at the Kunchingoro Camp. Photo: Sabiqah Bello/HumAngle
Since she came here, she has not enrolled in school because her mother cannot afford it, and her father is absent. The last time Elizabeth saw him was when they were in Taraba in 2015. He had visited briefly, then left for Lagos. No one has heard from him since.
Elizabeth’s mom, Abigail Bitrus, told HumAngle that her husband had always worked in Lagos and only visited occasionally, even when they lived in Borno. But he has not been in contact with the family since his last visit a decade ago.
“Some of his relatives say he’s alive and well, others say they haven’t heard from him in years. But he and I didn’t fight or anything, and I just wish he’d at least call us,” Abigail explained, tears welling up in her eyes.
Abigail is 38 years old. She moved to Abuja near her parents, who live in Nasarawa, a neighbouring state. She has lived in the camp for four years, but now faces the threat of eviction. After settling on privately owned property, she and many others were uprooted from their tents, forced to move to a smaller space on another piece of private land.
Of hope and struggles
Elizabeth wishes to go back to the camp in Benin City. Although it is not her ideal place to live, she gets to study at least. Education is crucial to her, and she has lofty dreams, but is not allowed to return to the camp.
“I’m now in SS2. I want to graduate and go to university to study medicine. I want to graduate as the best student and get a scholarship to study abroad, like one of my seniors, who is now in the United States,” Elizabeth said.
Solomon told HumAngle that over 300 students have proceeded to university after graduating from the camp. They studied courses ranging from engineering to medicine and nursing. One student emerged as the best graduating student in his class at Edo State University and later secured a scholarship to the University of Illinois, Chicago.
He said the decision to stop students like Elizabeth from returning to the camp after leaving depends on each family’s situation and financial need.
“If you have a home and can afford transport to Abuja or Maiduguri, then you can stay at home, because we want to help those in need… if your father or mother has a house, at least let us give that chance to someone else,” Solomon explains.
Solomon tells HumAngle that donations and aid were consistent in the early days. However, that is no longer the case. Solomon has been appealing to individuals, organisations, and the government to bring more support, but the response has been slow. Globally, humanitarian aid has shrunk.
The cost of paying teachers became unsustainable, forcing the employed staff to leave. The camp now relies on volunteers and former students to keep the school running. Even feeding the children has become a struggle.
“Food is at a critical level right now,” he says. “We’re struggling to feed the children just once a day. Some of those in university aren’t allowed to write exams because they haven’t paid the fees. We really need support at this time.”
Solomon says he usually pays to harvest from farms in neighbouring villages when food runs out. But it is not nearly enough to meet nutritional needs or satisfy the children.
Displacement doesn’t just uproot homes—it disrupts education. Over 4.6 million children have been affected by the conflict in northeast Nigeria, according to UNICEF, and 56 per cent of displaced children in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe are still out of school. Initiatives like Home for the Needy attempt to fill that gap, but without sustained support, many children like Elizabeth risk being left behind.
They are left waiting, left in search of home, education, and the hope for a better future.
Elizabeth still dreams of becoming a doctor. She believes her story doesn’t end in her mother’s arms in Abuja, nor does it find resolution in the dusty tents of Edo. She is a brilliant dreamer and believes in the possibility of more.
