The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

As a teenager, Pee Wee's owner Chuck Egli (center) frequented the popular hangout in the '50s. Thirty years later, he bought it. He will bid farewell to longtime employees Ruthie Paulin (right) and Jim Paulin (no relation) when the restaurant closes at the end of the month.

Pee Wee's prepares to dish out its last slice

43-year-old pizzeria makes way for hotel

By Justin Berton

Waitress Ruthie Paulin spent a few hours the other day pulling down the hundreds--perhaps thousands--of pictures that clung to a wall inside Pee Wee's Pizza restaurant on El Camino Real.

Covering a bland mural, the pictures created their own lively mosaic of customers who have rolled through the tiny Sunnyvale pizza shop since 1955.

"They are all in boxes now," Paulin said of the photos that will be sorted through and put into albums after Sept. 26, when Pee Wee's closes down after 43 years in business.

For the past two years, the landlord has attempted to get approval to build a four-story hotel on the plot of land near Pastoria Avenue where Pee Wee's now stands. In January, when the landlord conceded to a three-story project, the Planning Commission finally handed him approval--and he handed Chuck Egli an eviction notice.

"I can't complain at all," said Egli, owner of Pee Wee's. "He has been a fair landlord. Hasn't raised the rent once since 1981."

As the stocky-framed Egli stood behind the bar in his white smock smeared in pizza sauce, he looked outside and nodded his head. "It's been a good run," he said.

Egli should know. He first came to Pee Wee's as a customer when he was a student at Mountain View High School in the '50s. He started working at the pizzeria in the '60s, and he bought the place in the '80s. Chuck Egli knows the people in those photographs, the ones that now sit idle in boxes.

He can recall when Pee Wee's was one of only three pizza places in the area. He remembers when the place was packed with teenagers in the late '50s, him being one of them. "Like I said," Egli happily reminded, "it was one of the only places around for miles." Those were the days when El Camino Real was only two lanes, parking was in front of the building and the strip joint, The Chicago Club, was right next door.

"You don't have to mention that," Egli jokingly shouted from the back while making a sandwich for a customer.

The customer, Louie Velasco, 52, said, "Oh man, I could remember when my parents would take me here as a kid."

Velasco and his future wife, Susan, shared a few teenage dates inside Pee Wee's during the '60s.

Upon hearing the story about the pictures from Paulin, Velasco stopped in mid-chew of his meat sandwich and looked twice at the wall without pictures.

"That's what looks different in here," Velasco said.

Somewhere along the line, the teenagers stopped coming to Pee Wee's, Egli said. His customers grew up with him, and Pee Wee's reputation as a hopping teenage hangout eventually came to a halt. "Now the kids go over there," Egli said as he pointed to the jukebox, "and they don't even know what the songs are."

For the past few decades, Pee Wee's has been a family and a restaurant--not just a family restaurant. Everybody knows Jimmy Paulin (no relation to Ruthie), the cook who starts at 5 p.m. but comes in at 3 p.m. to chat it up with regulars. And there's Dan, Egli's son, who has always filled in for his father on a moment's notice. There is also the couple from Stockton who drive down once a month for the thin-crust pizza, and the customers who often ask to freeze a few pizzas for plane trips back East. And then there are the countless regulars, Paulin said. "Ohh, too many to name," she added.

Pointing to both ends of the bar, Paulin said, "You can always tell who sits from there to there."

Egli said after the ovens shut down Saturday night, there's talk of a community potluck on the following Sunday. The following three days, souvenirs from Pee Wee's are up for sale, "for a price to get rid of," Egli said.

Egli, Ruthie and Jimmy all said they were not sure what they would do once Pee Wee's closed.

"Take a couple months for rest?" Egli pondered. "I really don't know."

And where will the regulars go? The ones that have made Pee Wee's a home away from home? The ones that once filled an entire wall of good times?

"They're gonna be lost," Egli said. "This is very unique place."

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, September 16, 1998.
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