In Memory

Gaston Pieter "Gus" DeRoos - Class Of 1960 VIEW PROFILE

Gaston Pieter Gus DeRoos

1942 - 1999


 

Oak Park Cemetery - Claremont, CA


 

Gay 90s was popular local hangout, By JOY JUEDES, Staff Writer March 27, 2010 (Redlands Daily Facts)

REDLANDS - Gay 90s was a mainstay for University of Redlands students and other locals for more than 30 years. 

Gus and Claudia De Roos bought the restaurant in 1973 and drew many local students with gourmet pizza, grinders, salads with made-from-scratch dressing and $3 pitchers of beer. 

The restaurant was on Colton Avenue near Alabama Street before the De Rooses moved it to where Jersey's Pizza is on Orange Street in the early 1990s. After that, it was in Mentone for about two years. 

Besides the food and college atmosphere, everyone loved the mural painted by Mimi Silvercrup. 

"It was gorgeous," said Claudia De Roos, who lives in Banning and graduated from Redlands High School in 1971. 

Gay 90s' biggest claim to fame was as the inspiration for the television show "Cheers," created by brothers Les and Glen Charles, who graduated from UR in 1971 and 1965. 

The brothers, who were regulars as students, came to the restaurant in a limousine after giving a commencement speech at UR in the mid 1990s, Claudia said. 

"The gentleman who was (character) Norm (Peterson) was a regular customer of ours," she said. 

Another regular, a woman named Rita who worked at TRW in San Bernardino, had a pizza named after her, Claudia De Roos said. 

Rita's Special was a spin on Gay 90s' signature pizza, also called Gay 90s. Gay 90s had pepperoni, sausage, cashews and onions. Rita's added mushrooms. 

Gay 90s was the first pizza place in Redlands to top pies with cashews, Claudia said. They also sold their dressing - the secret was concentrated lemonade, she said - and made their own sauce and dough. Claudia still makes hot grinders at home. 

"We did a lot of homecomings," she said. "One year we brought 400, 500 pizzas." 

The pizza had such a following the De Rooses made them so someone could ship them frozen to family. 

The restaurant had humble beginnings on Colton Avenue. The front was a chicken coop at one time, and the De Rooses used the two-story house in the back to make their dough, Claudia said. 

The bathrooms were always in back, Claudia said. After they were redone, "a lot of people will tell you they put chairs up on the outside of the building and looked into the bathroom," she said. 

When Gay 90s moved to Orange Street, patrons would go from there to the Pink Flamingo, especially on Wednesdays, which was $3 beer pitcher nights at Gay 90s, Claudia said. 

Many longtime Redlanders were regulars, she said. 

"It was definitely a UR hangout," she said. 

"My husband and I used to go to the Gay 90s in the '60s," wrote Evelyn Dowell of Redlands. 

Art Liebman of Redlands remembered it as the "roaring `20s pizza place which used to be across from Long's drug store on Colton." 

"My recollection is the night my last uncle won from the bartender a rather rare MN license plate by betting on a magic trick he knew," he wrote. "Legend had it that it was supposed to be like `Cheers' on TV and that some U of R grads made it that way. It was a great watering hole." 

Gus De Roos, a 1968 UR graduate who played football and was a member of the Pi Chi fraternity, died 10 years ago. The Gay 90s building on Colton was razed for commercial development in 2001, according to "With Unbounded Confidence: A History of the University of Redlands." 

More information on the Gay 90s will run next week. 

Daily Facts archives contributed to this report.



 
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04/16/16 05:47 PM #1    

Ronald Owen "Ron" Angle (1960)

Gus belongs in the deceased list. He left us over a decade ago. RIP.
 


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