Drawn Together

When Laguna Beach’s once-large contingent of magazine and newspaper cartoonists began getting together regularly back in the 1950s, they had one prerequisite: The noontime break from their drawing boards had to be in whatever bar was closest to the post office where they dropped off their morning output.

At first it was the bar of the White House restaurant on Coast Highway. And when the post office moved to Forest Avenue in the mid-’70s, the cartoonists followed and settled into the bar of the Ivy House restaurant a few doors away.

But that was then.

When a current crop of syndicated newspaper cartoonists decided to start getting together occasionally for a few hours of camaraderie, they had an altogether different priority: Forget being close to a post office. They just wanted to make sure wherever they met was near a freeway exit.

They chose the Claim Jumper Restaurant overlooking the San Diego Freeway in Laguna Hills.

“We wanted to pick a place that was easy to find--cartoonists are pretty dumb,” joked Kevin Fagan, who pens “Drabble.”

Unlike the old guys who gathered in Laguna Beach--Virgil Partch, Frank and Phil Interlandi, John Dempsey, Dick Oldden and several other cartoonists whose work appeared regularly in the New Yorker, Playboy and elsewhere--the new guys don’t live in the same small town.

Fagan lives in Mission Viejo. Jeff Keane, who assists his father, Bil, on the classic “Family Circus,” lives in Laguna Niguel. Mark O’Hare (“Citizen Dog”) lives in Aliso Viejo. And Greg Evans (“Luann”) and Vic Lee (“I Need Help”) live in northern San Diego County.

In fact, to accommodate Evans and Lee, the cartoonists now alternate between the Laguna Hills Claim Jumper and the also-freeway-exit-friendly Claim Jumper in Carlsbad.

Like the old guys in Laguna Beach who viewed their midday ritual as their only chance for “socializing at the water cooler,” the new guys view their lunch sessions as a welcome break from the self-imposed isolation of their profession.

O’Hare, for one, jumped at the chance. “I was just home talking to the plants anyway,” he said.

They’ve been meeting about every six weeks for more than a year now.

“As cartoonists, you don’t get to see anybody else,” said Keane, 38, who was seated in a corner booth with Fagan and O’Hare as they waited for Lee and Evans to arrive for their first gathering of the new year.

“You’re working at home alone all the time,” said Keane, “so it’s one opportunity to sit around and talk about cartooning and just be a little bit more social than the hermits that we usually are.”

The Laguna Beach cartoonists’ midday ritual began after Phil Interlandi moved out to the seaside art colony from Chicago in 1952. Magazine cartoonist Ed Nofziger was already living there. Interlandi’s twin, Frank, came out in 1953. Over the years, Laguna’s cartoonist contingent grew to include Don Tobin, Roger Armstrong, Dempsey, Oldden and Partch.

The lively, sometimes boisterous group was known for trading quips, pulling pranks and just plain having a good time.

Management of the Ivy House came to jokingly call them and their non-cartoonist drinking buddies the Street Gang.

So Fagan and company, who range in age from 28 to 49, are carrying on a colorful tradition in their own style.

Whereas the Street Gang bellied up to a leather-padded bar, the Claim Jumper bunch is more likely to belly up to the salad bar.

Unlike their forerunners who were partial to beer, wine and cocktails, these guys order soft drinks and tea.

Which led to this exchange while Fagan, Keane and O’Hare waited for the arrival of Lee and Evans:

Waitress: How about something to drink while you wait?

(Keane orders a Coke; O’Hare orders the same.)

Fagan: I’ll have a 7-Up.

Keane (looking at Fagan): This is the first time you’ve had 7-Up.

Fagan: I’m born to be wild.

Evans (who just arrives and promptly orders a root beer): Yeah, we’re the Age of Denial here--all healthy.

The artists usually bring along samples of their work.

“It’s always so much fun for cartoonists to see how other cartoonists work--to see what kind of paper they use and pens and things like that,” said Fagan.

Which brings up another distinction between the old group and the new.

The Street Gang seldom discussed business. The Claim Jumper bunch makes a point of talking shop: The merits of using a computer to add color to their Sunday cartoons. E-mail from fans who check out their syndicate’s Web site. How their syndicates are treating them. Or cartoon book deals--and how, as Lee put it, a book is a great “tool” for selling “product” to editors.

Deadpanned Fagan above the swirl of shop talk: “This is kind of it--two hours of this.”

*

The Street Gang was such a fixture at the Ivy House that they were not only known by the bartender, waitresses and manager, but by the other customers.

The Claim Jumper bunch, in contrast, eats and sips their drinks in virtual anonymity.

However, there was one time they were all treated like celebrities.

That’s the time last summer when Jeff Keane’s father, Bil, who was visiting from his home in Arizona, joined them for lunch.

A waitress recognized the elder Keane, who has been drawing “Family Circus” for 36 years. Of course, she had help recognizing him: He was wearing a sweater with a patch embroidered with the faces of his cartoon characters.

The waitress asked Keane for an autograph, and when she found out that the rest of the men at the table were also cartoonists, a stream of waiters and waitresses came by to ask for autographs and sketches.

“Then,” recalled Fagan, “they brought us a great big giant dessert as a way of saying thanks.”

*

Fagan, whose “Drabble” debuted in 1979 when he was 22, is something of a link between the two cartoonist groups.

His late mother, Billie, was a waitress at the Ivy House. When she told Virgil Partch that her son was about to have his own strip syndicated, the old veteran invited the young man down to the Ivy House one afternoon. Partch spent a couple of hours chatting with Fagan and giving him drawing pointers.

However, Fagan never became a Street Gang regular. He didn’t live close enough. Besides, as Fagan said, he doesn’t really drink.

He missed out on some good times.

Phil Interlandi, now 72 and still drawing cartoons for Playboy, remembers the old days at the Ivy House as “mostly good laughing and exchanging knowledge, playing with words and fooling around.”

“Like, one day the bartender came in with an eye patch on. I dropped into the local drugstore and came back with eye patches. We all put them on. The bartender turned around and almost fell apart” laughing.

Another time, Interlandi recalled, “the bartender came in. There was no business, and he was putting a ball around the restaurant and back into the bar. He said, ‘Maybe we ought to do something with that: We’ll putt balls down to the Marine Room [a bar down the street] and use tennis balls.’ ”

The result became known as the Ivy House Open, an annual tournament that was the highlight of the cartoonists’ social season.

The tournament usually generated several dozen entrants--each wearing a zany costume and accompanied by a caddy. Using tennis balls, they teed off from the back door of the Ivy House. The course ran down Forest Avenue and into the front door of the Marine Room where a garbage can on its side served as the hole.

One year an entrant rode a burro and played with a polo mallet. It cost $5 to enter, but there were never any losers. As cartoonist Dick Oldden once said, “We take all the money to the Marine Room, throw it on the bar and drink it up.”

The Ivy House Open came to an end sometime in the ‘80s. “It got too big,” said Interlandi. “We were getting a little edgy with the police and cars because people were following us around.”

The era of the Street Gang itself drew to a close in 1984 after Virgil Partch and his wife, Helen, died in a freeway crash near Newhall. The weekly lunches and midweek bar stops were never the same.

“He was kind of the leader in a way,” said Interlandi. “We all had the greatest respect for him. He would do a [cartoon] drawing about one of the guys or the bartender. He was the only guy I knew who could do a drawing right on the spot.”

The Ivy House is now called Cedar Creek, and Laguna Beach’s cartoonist contingent has dwindled. “My brother and I are about the only two left,” said Interlandi. He still drops his cartoons off at the post office and still stops in at Cedar Creek. His brother comes in once in a while but is no longer a regular.

So the Street Gang may be no more, but there is the Claim Jumper bunch over in Laguna Hills.

Still, it’s a different time, a different place.

Fagan and company begin their lunches around 11:30 and go until 1:30 or 2--about the time the Street Gang would be ordering another round of drinks.

But Lee and Evans have to head back down the freeway, and Fagan and Keane have to leave to pick up their kids from school.

Besides, joked Fagan, “we’re usually sick of each other after a couple of hours.”