Adaptive reuse: fotomat kiosks, '70s icons, given new life in a variety of ways. (Up Front).

IF you smoke, nothing beats the convenience of Ary Alogian's drive-through cigarette kiosk.

Tucked in a corner of a Yoshinoya Beef Bowl parking lot at the perpetually congested Glendale intersection of San Fernando Road and Los Feliz Boulevard, Alogian caters to a steady stream of motorists who merely need to lean out a window to get their nicotine fix. Some complete their transactions at the former Fotomat booth and get back into traffic without so much as missing a light.

Once as ubiquitous in Los Angeles as Starbucks are now, those yellow and blue, pagoda-roofed Fotomat kiosks have found new life over the past decade in the hands of entrepreneurs who have converted them into everything from cappuccino stands and flower shops to key stores and tobacco shacks.

Founded in San Diego in 1968 by businessman Preston Fleet, there were more than 4,000 Fotomat kiosks nationwide in 1980, with a large proportion in Southern California. Only a fraction remain, although nobody seems to know exactly how many.

Though the brand has all but disappeared, it nevertheless wormed its way into the popular vernacular. Fotomat references still pop up on "Saturday Night Live," "The Simpsons" and "That '70s Show," where the character "Fez" gets a job at one of the film booths only to be fired for being too efficient.

The nostalgia is lost on Alogian, an Armenian immigrant whose Fotomat operation is one of six Tobacco Zone shops scattered around the San Fernando Valley. Still, he likes the 10 by 6-foot booth's busy corner and its cheap overhead, which helped him get his business off the ground seven years ago.

"Everybody starts slow and you go through hard times, but right now we are making a living;' said Alogian, who can wedge two people into his crammed booth, allowing him to serve drivers pulling up in both directions. "This has been good a location."

At Robertson Boulevard and Cashio Street in West Los Angeles, a former Fotomat still wears the paintjob of the Coffee Brake, a coffee stand whose owner called it quits months ago. Despite the closure, Michael Behzad, of Canon Business Properties Inc., a Beverly Hills property management company, said he has fielded lots of calls about the booth, which he expects to rent for $700 to $750 per month.

"You don't see people opening up photo stores anymore (in Fotomats), it doesn't make any sense," Behzad said. "Most are used for cigarettes or coffee."

By the early 1980s, Fotomats were closing in large numbers due to the proliferation of overnight drugstore photo services and one-hour developers. St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Fotomat Corp. was sold in the early 1980s to Konischiroku Photo Industry Ltd., of Japan, which sold it to another Japanese company, Konica Photo Imaging, in 1986.

Soon after, Konica began selling off its remaining kiosks, said John Phillips, the company's senior vice president of marketing.

"They had such a unique look and feel they have stood the test of time," he said. "As a business proposition, it's nonexistent, but as a memory, an icon, it's definitely left its mark."

Konica has tried to revive the Fotomat name on a limited scale by attaching the brand to freestanding digital kiosks, which allow customers to make prints or save images on discs.

"What goes around comes around," Phillips said. "As digital imaging evolves, the question is where can an iconic brand like Fotomat fit in?"

Wherever that may be, it won't be with new kiosks. The market has changed too much. But that doesn't mean kiosk operators like Alogian can't benefit from the Fotomat name. Besides tobacco and lighters, Alogian sells candy, gum and sodas out of his booth and one other item: film. Every once in a while someone will drive up looking for film or developing services, unaware that the actual Fotomat is long gone.