It’s another 7 a.m. Wednesday in LA. In the southernmost point of Griffith Park, eggs sizzle and tradition endures. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Los Angeles Breakfast Club (LABC) — an avid equestrian-turned-morning bird social group, according to Club Historian Rachel Skytt.
Skytt said LABC members gather every Wednesday in Griffith Park’s Friendship Auditorium for hearty and heartfelt meetings. After a buffet-style breakfast, Skytt said club members — referred to as “hams” during meetings — sing customary ditties, “eggcersize” with calisthenics, listen to guest speakers and pick up where last week’s conversations left off.
“We’re just here to be goofy and have friendship,” Skytt said.
Board member and head of the LABC’s PR and marketing Brianne Richard said newcomers say there’s a special sauce — perhaps partly “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” and partly David Lynch — to the club that leaves them wanting more. And so, Richard said, they return for seconds, thirds, years and decades. Like many fellow hams, Richard said once she cleared the 7 a.m. hurdle, she was hooked.
“I’m really not a morning person, but the club turned me into enough of a morning person that I am there every Wednesday,” Richard said.
According to Skytt, current hams join a star-studded legacy of early risers. Skytt said some past LABC members include: Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan, Amelia Earhart, William Randolph Hearst, Babe Ruth and Knute Rockne. Although stuffed with celebrities, Skytt said the club has always been open to everyone — even con artist Death Valley Scotty.
“It’s kind of mindblowing who Breakfast Club was celebrating: you have the president and then an eccentric character-man who wants to build a castle in the desert,” Skytt said.
During the 1920s LA boosterism period — an era of city-wide marketing to attract prospective residents — Skytt said the LABC distinguished LA and made the city a multinational attraction.
“People from around the nation — and even around the world — would go to Breakfast Club,” Skytt said.
Once a staple of LA culture, with connections to the Warner Brothers, promotion of the first feature-length talkie — “The Jazz Singer” — and tie-ins to the LA Dodgers, Skytt said the LABC has since disappeared from the public eye.
“The club was so important and vital in the [19]20s and ’30s, and then it just got forgotten about,” Skytt said.
According to Richard, the LABC reached its lowest point in 2014, when only 33 members remained. Since then, Richard said former LABC president Lily Holleman spearheaded a larger online presence for the club, and membership has grown.
“Lily Holleman is the one largely credited with saving the club from falling into obscurity,” Richard said. “She got the club onto social media, made sure the website was up to date and invited everyone she knew.”
Head of the LABC Board of Directors Jason Berk said the club has seen a 640 percent membership increase since 2015. Berk said the 233 tickets to events often sell out. According to Berk, the Board of Directors receives three to seven new member applications each month that sample from all generations.
“Every time we get new member applications, there are Millennials, Gen X, Boomers. There’s that in-between Generation Jones age,” Berk said. “I think that speaks to the club’s ability to reach those people and make everybody feel comfortable.”
According to Richard, the multigenerational component of the LABC offers a perspective on life she hadn’t experienced since moving to LA, away from family.
“Just to be in the orbit of people that are much older than me is something that I didn’t have before,” Richard said.
Richard said one of her favorite club members is Joe, whom she described as an older widower who works the LABC check-in.
“He’s just the sweetest, kindest man,” Richard said. “He always just has kind words to say. He came to my birthday party.”
Richard said, similarly to the people, many club traditions are silly in nature. According to Richard, member initiations require sitting blindfolded on a sawhorse named Ham and pledging allegiance — one hand placed on a plate of fried eggs — to the democracy of ham and eggs. Richard said at the LABC, play is not only accepted; it’s expected.
“That’s who we are: Breakfast Club,” Richard said. “Horses and eggs and ham, it all just comes together.”
According to Berk, the LABC hosted its centennial celebration Nov. 8. According to Berk, this celebration honored 100 years of friendship and 60 years at Friendship Auditorium — a building the club constructed, donated, and dedicated to the city of LA.
Berk said he wants revisiting the club to be like revisiting an old classroom — decoration and furniture may change, but the spirit of the room remains. He said he hopes the club stays the same.
“After all of the regular faces I see are not there anymore, I almost want to be able to go: Okay, so that’s their Patti, and those are probably the new Terenzios and those are the snowbirds that everybody adores who come for four months in the winter and then go back to Chicago,” Berk said.
After his first LABC meeting, Berk said he and his brother hiked through Griffith Park. On the trail, Berk said he knew the club would be central to his future.
“I immediately had a sense that this is going to be a thing going forward,” Berk said. “The club is one of the best things I’ve ever done — not just in my life — but with my life.”
Contact Zoë Beauchamp at beauchamp@oxy.edu
*A correction was made Nov. 24 at 3:37 p.m. to reflect the correct lowest membership number of the LABC, in 2014.
