Roy's Motel and Cafe

Roy's Motel and Cafe has one of the most iconic neon signs on old route 66.

It sits in Amboy, a veritable ghost town, and in fact the motel at Roys is a ghost motel you are free to wander through.

The gas station is still in service though and has been since 1938.

Calling the adjacent store a “cafe” may be a slight stretch of the imagination, but if you need a coke and some beef jerky they can help.

Roy's amazing neon sign fell into disrepair in the 1980’s and has only recently been restored. The neon was switched on again in 2019.

You can see Roy's in movies “The Hitcher” and “Kalifornia”, and in music clips for Enrique Iglesias’s “Hero”, and Queens of the Stone Ages “The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret”

If you’ve seen the movie “Bagdad Cafe”, then you know the vibe of Roy's.

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Southern California #87 - last visited November 2021