As a Host Committee member, I am thrilled to invite you to the New York Sign Museum’s first-ever benefit at their East New York studio! Together, we are bringing together New York’s biggest champions of design and history this June.

The NYSM is opening our doors to celebrate the signage and design objects of New York and announce a new education-centered mission.

On the evening of June 10, the NYSM will be a rare look behind the curtain of the archive. They are having private tours featuring never-before-seen pieces from the collection, a silent auction, and active restoration demos. There will be live sign-painting demonstrations throughout the evening and it’s going to be a great party!

Proceeds and ticket sales go directly toward growth across three fronts: preservation, education, and community. They are working to secure a permanent space where the entire collection can finally be open to the public; this is a key fundraising moment and we would love to see you there!

You can RSVP here. And if you can’t join, you can make a tax-deductible donation to support their mission here.

Thanks for your support!

Rolando

P.S.

Enjoy an Emmy-winning piece I had the pleasure to help produce on Noble Signs and the New York Sign Museum back in 2022 HERE. And here’s a more recent piece by my colleague Joelle Garguilo on the New York Sign Museum, embedded below.

The Retrologist is featured in this terrific video by Sam Reid, above.

It all began in June 2020, when I stumbled upon my very first Pizza Hut Classic “in the wild,” in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania. Earlier, I’d heard there was one more, in Warren, Ohio, but I figured that store was a novelty. But here was another one, and after exploring the restaurant as best as I could (these were the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, and its dining room was shuttered), I posted the photos as quickly as I could to Instagram — my excitement was impossible to contain — and I set to doing research.

Over time, I learned of more than a dozen locations, all vintage Pizza Huts fitted with design signatures of the chain’s 1970s-1990s heyday, from the faux Tiffany lamps reading “Pizza Hut” to the channeled red leather booths. They were, in short, “retro renovated” back to an earlier stage in their design existence.

I kept posting examples of Pizza Hut Classics to Instagram to increasing degrees of social virality, but it wasn't until October 2022, right after I’d launched this Substack, that I got the idea to build a running list of PH Classics. It’s astonishing I had to do this, because you would have figured Pizza Hut would have been promoting these redesigns heavily and the growing list of locations would have been continuously updated on their website or social platforms.

But The Hut has been mum on these, and I could get no hard information. Instead, glimmers of news about the program — often contradictory — would emerge through the grapevine or from franchisees, who themselves may not have known the full scope of the program.

Meanwhile, my Pizza Hut Classics list became the go-to resource for this incredibly popular throwback restaurant campaign, so much so that I often joked that I should be on Pizza Hut’s payroll. (Trust me, I’m not!)

Back in March, the New York Times finally weighed in, and I was so impressed with the lovely piece by Steven Kurutz and the stunning photographs taken by Noah Kalina. To think, I almost missed Steven’s DM on Instagram, but thank goodness we connected, and he allowed my journey of Pizza Hut discovery to animate the piece, starting with my name as the first two words of the article, as he recounted my first visit to the Tunkhannock restaurant.

Kurutz turned up some interesting news,

• There are 140 Pizza Hut Classics, so I have much updating to do on my list. There are a total of 6,200 Pizza Huts, so just a little over 2 percent of them are Classics. The fact that most of them are in rural communities underscores how hard it is to find them.

• The program appears still to be on, with the latest Pizza Hut Classic in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

• Even some parts of Pizza Hut leadership lacked a firm grasp of the program, with a senior marketing executive being unfamiliar with how or when the initiative began. That explains a lot of why this program still has an air of mystery about it.

Please give the Times piece a read. And to those who followed me as a result of it, I am most grateful for the support. Please make sure you’re also plugged into what I'm doing on Instagram, and get your hands on my book, “The Great American Retro Road Trip,” which has a section on Pizza Hut Classics!

Retrologist Roadside Roundup

• So sad: One of my favorite ice-cream stands in New England, and happily featured in my book, has closed. Dairy Witch — in Salem, naturally — will not reopen this summer after 74 years in business.

• After a renovation, the iconic Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington, D.C., has reopened, with a special tribute to founder Virginia Ali. (Ben’s is featured in my book, in the Mid-Atlantic chapter.)

• The last Boston Market (formerly Boston Chicken) in Massachusetts has closed. The chain’s decline has been sad to see, and now no stores remain in its home state. (Hardly any are left. Period.)

• The neon sign for the former Fabulous 7 Motel in El Cajon, California, has been relit.

• And in more great neon news, an iconic sign in Kingman, Arizona, for the Hotel Beale shines anew for the first time in decades.

• The future of the building in Albany, New York, where a giant Nipper, the RCA mascot, sits, is imperiled. Whither Nipper? (The story of Nipper is in my book.)

• Parting is such sweet sorrow: Always sad to see a location of See’s Candies close. This one was in Los Gatos, California.

  

• A historic advertising mural uncovered in Clayton, Missouri, will be saved. The mural features old ads for Borden’s unsweetened evaporated milk and Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum. (I wrote about this discovery two years ago.)

• El Faro, a 65-year-old San Francisco taqueria, is for sale as its owners reel from a big rent hike. The family-owned business is known for its Super Burrito.

• If you were looking for an Arby’s in Puerto Rico, you’re out of luck. You won’t find “The Meats” there as the chain is exiting the market.

• A celebration of the “dying breed” that is the old-school Nordstrom cafe.

• Fire destroyed the old Hot Tamale stand at South of the Border in Dillon, South Carolina. It was called Burrito Loco in its final iteration. (South of the Border is featured in my book!) It still had a fantastic vintage look, below, until recently.

• The historic giant Dixie Cup has been removed from the long-shuttered factory in Wilson, Pennsylvania. The complex is a landmark along with the Dixie Cup, and it will be restored and returned to display nearby. The building itself will be converted into apartments. The factory dates to 1921, and Dixie left the building in the early 1980s.

  

  Per Lehigh Valley Live:

The original cup will be redesigned before resting in the park. Bartee said Bruce Rosenbaum from the Netflix series “Amazing Interiors” is doing the design.

Inside the cup there will be an AI robot named Trixie. People will be able to go inside the cup and ask the robot questions about Dixie. The interior will also feature lighting and historic images from the Dixie Cup manufacturing era.

A larger, fiberglass replica is planned be installed atop the building so it remains visible from the highway.

• The space that held the beloved Ritz Diner on Manhattan’s Upper East Side is now for lease. Take a look inside:

• Muffler Men are enjoying a comeback across the country, and I couldn’t be happier. Westchester County in New York now has a SECOND one - this fellow who showed up in Peekskill back in March. It was made specifically for the owner of Dependable Tree Service by Mark Cline, who restores and manufactures the fiberglass goliaths. The Peekskill Giant Man joins a longtime giant at the BP station in Elmsford, below, who is also featured in my book. Look for him in the Northeast chapter.

• Red Lobster’s CEO is banking on nostalgia as he takes on the troubled chain. Deploying a nostalgia-centered plan that also freshens the brand and emphasizes food quality might be what the doctor ordered, but the prescription must be applied with great care. The article is paywalled, but here’s a taste of his strategy. All I hear in my head is the soothing tones of the 1980s jingle, “Red Lobster for the seafood lover in you.” I’m not a seafood lover, and man, that campaign makes me want to be one!

• New Substack alert: From the keeper of the RetailAfterLife Instagram account comes a new Substack, which began with a meditation on the “Burdines Palms.” Ah, Burdines, that much-missed Florida department store. I developed an affection for it during my childhood visits to Miami. It was sadly subsumed by Macy’s in 2006 amid Federated’s great culling of its regional brands to serve under R.H. Macy’s tattoo — uhhh red star.

  Jaime from Burdines

  I Didn’t Notice The Burdines Palms

  Read more

  3 months ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · Jaime from Burdines

• A historic and delightfully weathered New Jersey road sign in Pennsville, stolen to great public consternation in January 2025, has been found by police and will be returned to its original home. I hope it will be a little harder to steal this time!

  The Retrologist by Rolando Pujol is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber

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I love it when legacy chains embrace their heritage, and I’m shining the Retrologist spotlight happily on our friends at Carvel.

The beloved ice-cream chain is marking the 75th anniversary of the introduction of its iconic Flying Saucer ice-cream sandwiches by “crash landing” giant inflatable versions of the treat onto the roofs of three of its legacy stores.

Carvel is in my book!

• Carvel Coney Island: 2744 Coney Island Ave, Brooklyn, New York

• Carvel Massapequa: 998 Hicksville Road, Massapequa, New York

• Carvel West Palm Beach: 5901 S Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach, Florida

I love how they embraced classic stores for this out-of-this-world activation.

The Flying Saucer was introduced in 1951 and its popularity endures, with two million sold in 2025, Carvel said.

On Friday, March 20, Carvel will sell Flying Saucers for 75 cents a pop at participating locations.

“From Tom Carvel’s first roadside stand in 1934 to the creation of the Flying Saucer during the 1950s UFO craze, our brand has always embraced a spirit of imagination and fun,” Carvel spokeswoman Marissa Sharpless told Long Island’s Newsday. “ This crash landing is our way of celebrating that legacy and the joy of play that has always been at the heart of Carvel.”

Read about the history of Carvel:

Earlier this week, I brought you the news that Chez Napoléon is closing after 65 years. The French classic is one of the last restaurants in Hell’s Kitchen with ties to the post-World War II surge in French bistros in this neighborhood, catering to the French-flagged ocean liners docking on the Hudson River nearby, tourists, locals, and even Madison Square Garden crowds when the arena stood at West 50th Street and Eighth Avenue. (A comment in my earlier post revealed that CBS News journalists made a point of dining here, too, back in the day. I tell you, if the walls of this place could talk …)

I certainly hope these pictures whet your appetite to visit before their last day, Jan. 31. The ambiance inside is irreplaceable, something that took 65 years to develop. And the food was a complete and utter delight, with items on the menu that you just can’t get anywhere else these days. My thanks to the Bruno family for 44 years of sensitive stewardship. (They took over in 1982, just 22 years into what would be the restaurant’s 65-year history.)

It pains me to think this place will soon be gone.

Read more

One of the few remaining historic Mission-style buildings still operating as a Taco Bell has closed, depriving the chain of another link to the architectural style that defined its earliest decades.

The Taco Bell at 3501 Mt. Diablo Blvd. in Lafayette, California, closed on Tuesday, Jan. 13. The Bay Area restaurant appears to have opened in 1968, six years after Glen Bell, the “Bell” in Taco Bell, opened the very first one in Downey, California. The Lafayette store opened during a period of rapid expansion for the chain.

The closing of the Lafayette restaurant leaves only one more Taco Bell in the Bay Area operating in its original Mission building, the franchise at 700 Military West in Benicia. That store dates to the mid-1980s, when modified Mission-style restaurants were still being built.

My friend Michael J. Berne, the president of MJB Consulting, a bicoastal retail planning and real estate consultancy based in Berkeley, kindly took these photos for me on Wednesday.

The closure of the Lafayette store comes less than a year after another Mission-style Taco Bell, this one in Scottsdale, Arizona, closed.

Remarkably, the Lafayette store’s patio still bears the scar of a removed firepit, an original decorative feature of Taco Bells. See the photo below.

Finding a Taco Bell franchise still in its original building is very hard now, with only six such stores believed to exist.

The oldest operating Taco Bell in its original structure is the store at 821 N. Milpas St. in Santa Barbara, California. This store opened in 1966 and retains its original design but did not achieve landmark status last year because the building had been expanded. This required adding a fourth arched window and compromised the classic look.

After the Santa Barbara location, we have the following old-school Taco Bell franchises still operating out of their original structures:

• 5980 Hollister Ave., Goleta, California (1966) [MAP] (This is one town over from Santa Barbara.)

  

• 3125 E. Broadway, Long Beach, California (Jan. 14, 1967) [MAP]

• 405 E. Platte Ave., Colorado Springs, Colorado (1979, according to subreddit FormerTacoBells) [MAP]

• 2902 N. Main St., Durango, Colorado (1982, according to subreddit FormerTacoBells) [MAP]

• 700 Military West, Benicia, California (1984/1985, per subreddit) [MAP] (This one has a mansard roof but mission detailing, too.)

Note: Until recently, there was a mission-style Taco Bell in Honolulu, Hawaii, that opened in April 1976 and was the first in the state. A recent renovation knocks it off the list, but elements of the original survive, as you can see in this Reddit post. [MAP]

This information is based on the subreddit FormerTacoBells, which lists the vintage stores still in service.

KTVU Fox 2 cited my work on Taco Bell in their article on the closure of the Lafayette Taco Bell. The article also linked to a Lafayette Historical Society item celebrating the quirky history of this Taco Bell.

John Kennett shared the story of a famous heist (or heists) of the bell at the Lafayette store. Local high school students (surprise!) were believed to be the culprits.

Wrote Kennett:

As the story goes, they managed to loosen the bolts—but the bell was heavier than expected. One version claims it crashed to the ground with a terrible clang. Another says they got it into the truck but panicked when a cop drove by and abandoned it in the bushes.

One way or another—and there are plenty of stories—the bell disappeared shortly after, and the legend was born.

But the pranksters weren’t done. A new bell got hoisted a few more times before Taco Bell finally bricked up the niche just to keep it from happening again. For a while, spares were kept in the back—three or four extras, depending on who you ask. But when those started vanishing before they were even mounted, well… the era of real bells quietly came to an end.

Today, the original bell is long gone, replaced by a plastic, illuminated version. Sleek. Safe. Unstealable. But ask anyone who grew up in Lafayette back then, and they’ll tell you: once upon a time, a few daring Dons pulled off the Great Taco Bell Bell Heist.

The Santa Barbara Taco Bell is the last location to feature an actual (replacement) bell, and the Goleta store has a stylized bell silhouette.

The Santa Barbara franchise is about to celebrate its 60th anniversary. It opened in grand style in a pachanga spread over two days in 1966, Friday, Jan. 28, and Saturday, Jan. 29. Adding to the merriment was the music of a mariachi band and the balloon-inflating antics of a clown called Jingles. Customers went home with free beach hats, and you didn’t need to know the address to find the Taco Bell —all you had to do was look for the searchlight, according to an advertisement published in the Santa Barbara News-Press on opening day.

Another classic 1966 Taco Bell, which opened shortly after the Santa Barbara store, closed last April. This Taco Bell was at 7847 E. McDowell Road in Scottsdale, Arizona. That franchise did not go out of business but moved to a new building down the road.

Many vintage Taco Bells carry on, repurposed for new uses. Below is a very fine example in Ventura, California.

An excellent resource for the status of vintage Taco Bells (and so much more roadside Americana) can be found at Debra Jane Seltzer’s roadarch.com. Here is her Taco Bell resource page.

To learn more about the evolution of Taco Bell’s design, check out my Retrologist entry here, with photos from my travels over the years.

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When it comes to classic French restaurants in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, long a cradle of this culinary tradition, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

Of course, there has been a lot of “taketh” over the past few decades, as the once-plentiful French places closed one by one.

More recently, the “giveth” part came in 2024, when Le Tout Va Bien, a late 1940s stalwart, reopened under new ownership after a four-year pandemic-era closure.

Now, the “taketh” part is upon us again, and it’s a doozy: Chez Napoléon, which has been in business since 1960 and run by the Bruno family for much of that time, announced it will close on Saturday, Jan. 31. It’s a sad end to a restaurant that triumphantly returned after an extended closure over a gas line problem a few years ago.

Both of these old-school restaurants are among the last neighborhood throwbacks to another era in New York dining, a time when French cuisine was synonymous with fine dining and fancy dining rooms. But neither of these restaurants is particularly fancy, snooty, or haute. They are intimate, cozy, comfortable bistros — an oasis against the rapidly changing world swirling just outside.

Specifically, they are directly linked to an era when French restaurants abounded in this neighborhood, when it was an outpost of Paris, trading the Seine for the Hudson. The restaurants thrived in this area, the lore goes, to serve the French ocean liners that disembarked at the nearby piers, flooding the West Side with tourists looking for a taste of home.

According to the restaurant’s official history, Chez Napoléon opened in September 1960, with “Mr. Despaux” at the helm. His alleged Napoléonesqe short temper provided the name.

The space is unique, a combination of two former businesses on the site — a shuttered tailor shop and a French restaurant, La Gerb D’Or. This explains the twin dining rooms at Chez Napoléon.

The loss of Chez Napoléon does not shock me. This is hardly a scientific assessment, but every time I’ve passed of late, the place had seemed empty. It’s both reassuring and frustrating that, now that its closure is at hand, those dining rooms will be bustling up to the last hour.

If only we could apply that collective zeal to supporting these restaurant relics when they are not already in hospice. It must be something inherent in human nature — we just take things for granted, even those things we know are precious and vulnerable.

I’ll have more on the fate of Chez Napoléon in a future dispatch, as I’ll be dining there with friends later this week. Yep, I’ll be among those saying farewell, and I’ll readily admit it has been much too long since I had dined there. Count me among those who took this gem for granted.

My memories of French cuisine in this neighborhood date back to the late and much-lamented Rene Pujol (no relation), which opened the year I was born and closed in February 2008, felled in part by a Broadway strike.

When I was a kid growing up in Westchester County’s Sleepy Hollow country, I was a habitue of Books & Things, a cute and much-missed bookstore on Broadway in Tarrytown. Whenever I’d order a book there (they rarely had what my curious young mind wanted to read), the proprietor would call me Rene. I’d gently correct him, and he’d then excuse himself by saying he patronized a French restaurant in Manhattan called Rene Pujol.

When I was in my 20s and unsteadily launched into adulting, I finally did go to Rene Pujol a few times, and the waiters eventually paid heed to my surname — but no discounts were ever offered, as I had long fantasized.

C'est la vie.

City Sidewalks: Barbetta’s warm glow

A few blocks from Chez Napoléon is the wonderful Barbetta, a Theater District standby serving Northern Italian food since 1906. As one of our oldest restaurants, it should come as no surprise that it has one of our oldest signs, circa 1931, the letters crafted out of backlit opal glass, the only sign of its kind extant in New York City. Learn more about opal glass signage — and where you can find it — at roadarch.com.

Had this sign been constructed just a few years later, it likely would have been neon, which replaced opal glass as the go-to technology for grand illuminated signage.

Note the interesting sign, below, for the San Carlos Apts in Tucson, Arizona. It has an echo of Barbetta’s, and note how the word APTS is still in opal glass, while SAN and CARLOS are set in neon.

Retrologist Roundside Roundup

Sign News …

• The beloved “Shopping Cart Lady” has returned to the Playmakers parking lot at 2299 W. Grand River Ave. in Okemos, Michigan, but with an LED facelift. (H/T Debra Jane Seltzer.)

• That was fast. Weeks after Anheuser-Busch announced the beer giant was closing its Newark, New Jersey, plant, the 35,000-pound neon eagle sign that was an icon for decades has flown the coop for Bud’s hometown of St. Louis. The sign was installed in 2001, a replica of one that dated to 1951. The 450 employees are being offered roles at other Anheuser-Busch facilities across the United States. While there are other small breweries left in Newark, once known for beermaking, the loss of the AB plant marks a true end of an era. "Newark was the seventh in the nation when it came to state production of beer, 2.5 million barrels of beer a year," NJIT history professor Neil Maher told ABC7. "It was one of the major industries of this city."

• The shuttered Alioto’s, a mainstay of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf for a century, is being demolished, and the iconic fish-shaped turquoise neon sign has been taken down. The property will be cleared for a public plaza, and one can only hope the sign will come back into view.

• Blowing my stack — but not in anger! The Uncle Bill’s Pancake House neon sign returns to the St. Louis, Missouri, restaurant with chasing illumination and a fresh new stack of pancakes! (The earlier iteration of the sign had a cocktail glass.) That’s a win for the pancake house, which had closed in 2024 and is being brought back to life by Garcia Properties.

• This is one of those bedeviling head scratchers. The original “Dancing Kids” Tower Records neon sign in Sacramento was mysteriously taken down a couple of years ago, reportedly after part of it fell off. It stood above the site of an old drug store, now the Tower Cafe, where Russ Solomon first sold records, and the vaunted Tower Records music chain was born. The sign was placed in the offices of the Tower District, a local business group that’s in the same complex as the cafe. The story is complicated, and I suggested you read the Sacramento Bee piece. But real quick: The sign has been restored for over $50,000, but supposedly cannot be put back up. But a non-identical $90,000 replica that has been constructed CAN be. A feverish (and legal) debate now surrounds the decision of what sign will see the light of day in that prominent perch — the original or replica. (I mean, I say figure out how to display the old one again and keep the new one in the office. Just saying …)

Comings …

• The beloved Rosie’s Diner, once in Little Ferry, New Jersey, and home of the famous Bounty paper-towel commercials with Nancy “Rosie” Walker, is on the move again. After its time in the Garden State ended in 1990, the diner was moved by an artist to Algoma Township in western Michigan, and is now in new hands and is about to move again, this time in Alabama. It had been sitting shuttered since 2011. What a relief that it now has a future again, with plans to reopen within the year, restored to its 1946 look when it was known as the Silver Dollar Diner. It acquired the Rosie’s name after the smash success of the Bounty commercials, which aired in the 1970s and 1980s. They are the reason I still buy Bounty. (Oh, and Bounty really is the best … I was not paid to say that!)

• Coney Island’s historic Totonno’s Pizzeria is on the market! This is the opportunity of a lifetime for the right person. The third-generation family members want to sell after over 100 years of ownership, but they want to make sure the buyers keep Tononno’s the same as it ever was.

• This could just as well go under “goings.” Bethel, Connecticut’s beloved Sycamore Drive-in has closed — but now could reopen. Let’s hope so. A pioneering drive-in, it opened back in 1948 and has changed ownership numerous times. And over in Southern California, the historic Original Saugus Cafe announced it was closing, then reopening, and now it may reopen, but with a different name? The cafe opened 139 years ago and was Los Angeles County’s oldest continually operated restaurant.

• A year after unexpectedly closing, Manhattan’s Absolute Bagels is back in business with almost the same name. The old space was shuttered amid gut-churning Department of Health violations, but the new restaurant has no connection to the old operators; some familiar faces are still working at the shop, though.

… And Goings

• Detroit’s oldest family business, Dittrich Furs, has closed after over 132 years. Back in the day, their commercials were iconic, leading to parodies, below. It had been in the same family since day one, and at its current location since 1965.

• The Haygood Skating Center in Virginia Beach is closing after 52 years.

• I wanted to pay tribute to Mitchell’s, a wonderful old-school soul-food place in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. I so loved passing its gorgeous weathered sign when I lived in the neighborhood. I’m sad their story is now at an end. It closed last year but I only learned of its demise recently. Sigh …

• I love a good Spaghetti Warehouse — Syracuse has lost theirs after over 40 years. In a transition that speaks to the times, a podcast studio will replace it. The good news is that the kitschy furniture will stay — and I’m sure you can bring in some spaghetti takeout to complete the look.

• Schaller’s Drive-in in Irondequoit, New York, is for sale. The Ridge Road location dates to 1959. A location in Brighton closed in 2024.

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One of the best Philly cheesesteak sandwiches I’ve ever enjoyed is not in Philadelphia proper, but just outside, in the Main Line town of Bala Cynwyd.

Mama’s Pizzeria has been around since 1958, and despite the name, the thing to get here is the cheesesteak sandwich. I’ve visited twice, most recently in April 2021. (We walked off the big meal with a hike through nearby West Laurel Hill Cemetery and stumbled upon Dave Garroway’s grave.)

Sadly, Mama’s Pizzeria is now going to the mom-and-pop graveyard in the sky. CBS Philadelphia reports that Saturday, Nov. 29, is the last day in business. The owner was planning to retire next year, but health problems accelerated those plans, and now fans of Mama’s are making their final runs here before this is all just a memory.

I always marvel when I see a business go under that is clearly so cherished and, at least ostensibly, doing so well. I wish there were agencies or organizations dedicated to helping such businesses manage ownership transitions and other challenges that often undo cherished community institutions. Perhaps the ideal next owner of this place is waiting out there, but has no idea Mama’s is about to close. A match made in heaven that will never come to pass.

Fabulous Black Friday deal on my book, ‘The Great American Retro Road Trip’

Black Friday and the holiday shopping season are upon us, which means it’s a great time to pick up a copy of my first book, “The Great American Retro Road Trip.”

In fact, Amazon is incentivizing you to pick up multiple copies you could give away as gifts! Amazon is offering a great deal — for a limited time the book is going for $19, a nice shave off the $35 cover price! This is as good a time as any to get your hands on several copies. I’ve heard from multiple people who buy several copies for people in their lives they know would appreciate the book. This is a great time to knock off a bunch of names from that shopping list — and give Santa a hand. (He’s even in the book a few times!)

Get the book!

I’m grateful to all of you who’ve purchased a copy, and hope those who haven’t will take advantage of this opportunity to do so!

So what’s in the book? The short answer is so many things I love about America, 320 pages of it! I tackled the country coast to coast, dividing the chapters by region, and, within those chapters, I have shared stories and photos about roadside quirks, restaurants, bars, motels, candy stores, ice-cream stands, fast-food chains and more. Plus, the book is teeming with sidebars (I call them “Pullovers!” because that’s what you’ll want to do when you see them) with tasty nuggets of cultural context. It’s all tied together by the storytelling you’ve come to expect from me, along with hundreds of photos.

Is this a coffee table book? You could certainly put it on your coffee table and I promise it’ll look great there. But the book is meant to be leafed through, bookmarked, dog-eared and carried around.

These places I’m sharing are manifestations of American ingenuity, creativity, and community. They are part of our communal story, and I see these nostalgic holdouts as sacred places, worthy of adoration, each fascinating subjects of pilgrimage.

Signposts Up Ahead!

• Randy’s Donuts, an icon of Southern California, is reportedly set to open in a Greenwich Village storefront in December.

• The architect Robert A.M. Stern has died at age 86. Above, his postmodern flair is asserted with grace at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I shot this in January 2010, not realizing at the time it was a Stern design.

• Cupid’s Hot Dogs, the charming Southern California, has reopened its Florida location!

• A purloined privilege sign for Jax Beer has the owners of Fleur de Lis Pizza in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, asking for help getting the sign back and offering the THIEF $1,500 if they do the right thing. The restaurant also has great neon on its facade.

• LAist profiles the Diner Preservation Society — I’d love to tag along on one of their visits!

• Preservation Massachusetts has placed Buddy’s Diner of Somerville on the 2025 Massachusetts Most Endangered Historic Resources List.

• A historic inn in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley will reopen under new ownership.

• A Westchester County, New York, classic, now called the Kittle House Inn, has reopened under new ownership and with renovations. For years, the Chappaqua restaurant was known as Crabtree’s Kittle House, named after its former owner.

• “The Sistine Chapel of New Deal art” could be imperiled now that a federal building in Washington, D.C., is for sale.

• Too late for this one: Farewell to a Brutalist beauty (or scourge?) at the University of Houston.

• A historic New Jersey theater with a fabulous neon marquee has reopened seven months after a roof collapse could have spelled curtains for the Cranford institution.

• The Twin Donuts sign in Allston, Massachusetts (featured in my book) has been restored by Neon Williams! The shop closed earlier this year, and there was, for a time, concern about the fate of the sign.

• A second location opens for Nasto’s, an iconic ice cream shop in Newark, since 1939.

• San Francisco’s Tenderloin Museum seeks donations amid its ambitious expansion plans.

• Las Palmas, for 45 years a Cuban dining institution in Miami, has closed.

• Now a boutique motel, the La Vista, a 1956 motel in Denver, has reopened, and the occasion was marked with a neon relighting ceremony.

  

• Long Island’s iconic and shuttered Dairy Barn drive-thru convenience stores are reemerging as The Barn — check out the latest in Patchogue.

• The owner of Cool Scoops in North Wildwood is retiring and the store is for sale.

• Meanwhile, San Francisco’s Vogue Theater in Presidio Heights just had its neon restored and will hold a relighting ceremony Dec. 3.

• JP Morgan is on a skyscraper-building kick. After the insertion of 270 Park Avenue into the Gotham skyline, replacing the more modest and elegant former Union Carbide building, the bank has again commissioned Foster + Partners for another biggie, this one in London.

• A Westchester County, New York, classic, now called the Kittle House Inn, has opened under new ownership and a renovation. For years, the Chappaqua restaurant was known as the Crabtree’s Kittle House, reflecting the name of the former owner.

• Savannah’s historic Cotton Exchange building hits the market for the first time in over a century.

• And finally, we end on good news. Could Sizzler be staging a comeback? The retro store redesigns are amazing, a sign of how to reinvigorate a nostalgic brand by leaning into legacy, not wholesale reinvention.

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There she is, Miss America.

Until Monday, Nov. 3, that is, when the Miss America Diner in Jersey City will close.

If you’re looking to snag a red leather booth to disappear into or a counter stool to swivel on, come armed with a well-charged smartphone or the latest issue of the New Yorker (finally, a chance to finish it), as the lines have reportedly been long since news broke of the diner’s imminent demise.

(By the way, isn’t it always that way when a beloved place is closing? Regardless of its business model, a stalwart store suddenly becomes the bee’s knees when the death sentence is handed down. Food for thought.)

“It is with extreme sadness that we announce that the Miss America Diner will be closing its doors on Monday, November 3, 2025,” the operators of the Miss America Diner announced on Facebook, without giving a cause for the closure. “We will be open this Saturday and Sunday business as usual. We wish to thank our hardworking staff for their dedication and especially to our loyal customers.”

New Jersey is home to more than 500 diners, but the list of closures keeps growing. Of those that survive, NJ.com reports that only 16 are open 24 hours a day, meaning a once-common pleasure — wrestling with an unwieldy, laminated diner menu at the wee hours to conjure up seemingly anything that can be cooked to order in the world — has become unsettlingly elusive.

The Miss America Diner first appears in newspaper records under that name in June 1941, though the more common year listed for the West Side Avenue eatery's opening is 1942. 1940 is also bandied about. The story goes that Joe Cherico first named it after himself and then sold it to Frederick “Fritz” Welte, who had emigrated from Germany and blessed it with the star-spangled moniker in a grateful nod to the country that had taken him in. Welte retired in 1978 and died two years later.

This is Jerry O’Mahony- built diner, and the maker’s mark is right over the door – I got a kick out of pointing it out to a curious cashier when I was paying my bill. She’d never noticed it.

Right across the front door, and its handle, graced with a period typeface, is the elegant Art Deco Telechron wall clock, lording over the well-worn swing doors leading to the kitchen. Manufactured in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the Miss America never strayed far from her birthplace, unlike so many of her peripatetic kin.

I first visited the Miss America Diner in August, and found the food to be just what I had hoped – satisfying in that way a good Jersey diner ought to be. Something compelled me to overshoot the place with my camera – I had a gut feeling it might not be long for this world.

So here we are, and it is closing — gut feeling validated — but we also have encouraging news that another Jersey City staple will take it over: the Italian delicatessen Salumeria Ercolano. With that headline comes hope that the architectural qualities we so treasure about the Miss America Diner won’t be compromised, at least not too severely. That’s right, a sleek tower of condos for this sizable plot of earth is not on the drawing board, a rare act of civility and restraint of avarice that deserves applause.

A good example of what could happen here exists in East Elmhurst in nearby Queens, New York, where an outlet of the Jackson Hole burger chain peacefully coexists with the original signage and decor of the Air Line Diner.

In a way, we’ve been here before. The Miss America has changed hands many times, and its DNA has always survived changes in the owner’s name on the deed. Perhaps it will again.

Thanks for your service, Miss America. I salute you.

RELATED: One woman’s quest to save a Jersey Diner.

Kowloon is so wonderful, I featured it in my book (grab your copy here!) and talk it up with enthusiasm whenever I’m asked to name my favorite vintage stops in New England.

Fresh off celebrating Kowloon’s 75th anniversary, the owners unveiled architectural renderings earlier this month for the redeveloped property, and I was troubled by how much of a departure the plans are from the beloved original building.

As long suspected, the massive Polynesian-themed complex with its bold A-frame facade and its dizzyingly evocative warren of dining rooms and cocktail lounges will be demolished. In exchange, we’ll see go up the complex shown below, a mixed-use development that surely will be a nice, lovely place to work, live, and shop. But it should go without saying that this plan is not even remotely the kind of successor the original Kowloon deserves, a true icon of American architectural quirk.

Below is one of two buildings that would rise on the 7-acre property — see the new Kowloon tucked in on the right.

And this is just a taste of what we’d be losing:

I respect the desire and obvious rights of the owner — the Wong family — to do as they see fit with their land, and it’s a comfort that they are not closing Kowloon for good. But replacing an icon like Kowloon requires a deft hand and vivid imagination, all while building something that meets the family’s interests. In other words, this is a very difficult thing to pull off, and it has not been pulled off here.

Of course, nobody expects an icon to replace another icon, but it’s reasonable to expect a replacement that makes a grand gesture, a bold tip of the hat, to what has been lost. I’m not seeing that here.

Look, the only thing that’s going to make most people happy (myself included) is to keep Kowloon as is, and no matter what you do with it, even if it were a modest alteration rather than this annihilation, not everyone is going to be satisfied.

But, unquestionably, I’d like to think a great deal more could still be done with these designs to avoid building another example of today’s sleepily sterile, if servicable, commercial architecture. This complex could be built in Saugus, Massachusetts, or anywhere else in America, for that matter. Kowloon is the exact opposite of this kind of architecture, which is why this plan hurts so much. Kowloon for so many IS Saugus.

Don’t let me make the argument alone. I’ll enlist Murray Whyte of the Boston Globe to frame the significance of what is happening:

Let’s start with the obvious: If the Kowloon Restaurant, an unabashed icon of mid-20th century anti-architecture, is to be cratered — and it will be, with proposed plans just revealed — building almost 200 apartments in its place is a good thing. Greater Boston desperately needs housing, and fast. And Route 1, a plain of parking lots littered with rundown, low-slung, mostly commercial buildings, is a problem in need of solving.

But does it have to be like this? Last week, architects for the Wong family, who owns the Kowloon, made the redevelopment plan public: In place of its landmark A-frame and hip-roof style building, a pair of boxy six-story apartment blocks would rise.

The contrast is jarring.

Indeed, it is, but this is a familiar story playing out across the country. There isn't much of that old-time kitschy charm left along Route 1, for which this stretch of the greater Boston area was once fabled. My book mentions some of the other survivors, including the Orange Dinosaur (a leftover of a vanished mini golf course) and the Leaning Tower of Pizza at Prince Pizzeria. We also still have the massive sign, shaped like a cactus, for the defunct Hilltop Steak House, repurposed to promote a strip mall.

My disappointment is about more than just old-time charm and nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake or a curmudgeonly resistance to change or “progress.” Places like Kowloon lend character and, most importantly, a sense of place to their communities. They enrich our lives in ways that the replacements, no matter how well-intentioned, never do.

It is truly the “last of the Mohicans,” as Cheryl Damore of Saugus told CBS Boston. Cheryl praised the Wong family for all they have done for Saugus — the restaurant was long run by Madeline and Bill Wong, who made it the institution it is today, carried on by their children. This Wicked Local piece explains why this move is a sensible one for the Wong family.

Owner Stan Wong told CBS Boston: “Growing up and seeing this place as it is today and knowing that in the near future it will no longer be here is bittersweet.”

But landmarks, whether they are officially designated or not, matter. They have a way of becoming bigger than all of us, including the owners. That’s usually not enough to save them, mind you, but it’s a fact, a painful one, that we need to address here.

There is nothing wrong, again, with a mixed-use development or an iconic property being reimagined, and this design is surely one practical way to maximize the site’s economic potential. Still, I so wish the solution had something in it to stir the soul, like Kowloon has been doing all these years, something that honors in a grand way what is being destroyed.

What are your thoughts?

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RELATED: In case you missed it, see the wonderful profile of The Retrologist and my book that Christopher Muther wrote for The Boston Globe’s travel section back in July.

The long-lost Carvel mascot

If money were no object, I’d be hustling to scoop up this vintage Carvel sign, below. It features a rare sight — an early Carvel ice cream cone character — and the early name “Carvel Dari-Freeze,” which was used well into the 1960s, according to a quick scan of newspaper articles.

Here’s the listing, which is asking $3,000 for the sign. Even with a massive price chop, this beauty is too rich for my blood. (Heck, I’m not sure where I’d put it.)

The sign dates to about 1950, and signs like it may have been used for a time at Carvel locations as the chain expanded. This notion is not pure speculation. This EXACT SIGN appears in a Carvel newspaper ad published on Aug. 12, 1950, announcing the opening of a Carvel in Newport News, Virginia. The ad tells readers to look for this sign “wherever you go,” so there must have been quite a number at some point, or at least plans for distribution of them.

The Carvel building itself was the signature pitched-roof, wall-of-glass box - an ad for it is below — with the classic Carvel script already in use. It was next to Bill’s Bar-B-Que, which closed in 1999. As an aside, behold how beautiful Bill’s looked in its heyday.

I’m not sure if this 1950 cone character had a name, but by the next year, Carvel had enlisted the services of a different mascot named Freezy, below. He’s a human, not a creature with soft serve for brains and a waffle cone for a torso, though he has a predilection for small hats and big bow ties.

The book Images of America: Carvel Ice Cream has an intriguing tidbit about Freezy. The book states that Freezy at one point was a clown and appeared in person on a short-lived children’s program on WPIX-TV in 1951, “Junior Charades,” and was the first clown to serve in fast-food promotion. (Sorry, Ronald and Willard Scott.)

The book offers a picture as evidence, which I also dug up here in this December 1951 issue of the Brooklyn Eagle and show below. As you can see, the real-life Freezy is quite similar to the sketch show above.

But Freezy changed later in the decade, below, once again resembling the initial soft-serve mascot. Freezy seems to have hung on for a few more years, but never made it to icon status.

I may well have to do some research among the Tom Carvel papers at the Smithsonian to learn more about Freezy. As the former digital director and archivist of WPIX, I had never heard of Freezy’s role on Channel 11, though Carvel ads were a staple of the station for decades. Watch a bunch I digitized here.)

The ice cream cakes like Cookie Puss and Fudgie the Whale are the true mascots of Carvel, and they were decades away from emerging. And heck, Carvel did not need a mascot when they had Tom Carvel himself, the founder and owner, who was the chain’s pitchman from 1955 to 1989.

His commercials, on radio and television, were part of the background noise of the second half of the 20th century for anybody living in a Carvel market, particularly in the New York City area, where Carvel was founded and based.

See what I’m talking about, below, in this piece that aired in 1981 on WABC-TV’s Eyewitness News and was published by me from the station archives. You may recognize another icon of New York, if you are of a certain age, Roger Grimsby, introducing the report.

Supermarket Sweep: Retro Doritos and Peppy the Wise Owl

I always love it when retro Taco Flavor Doritos bags make an appearance at the supermarket. The chips always hit better when they come in this vintage-style packaging. I spotted this one at a New York City area supermarket recently.

Like McDonald’s bringing back the McRib from time to time, I love it when Doritos trots out this classic design, though it seems to be consistently available these days if you know where to look for it.

Below, admire another retro-packaging Doritos variant I ran across at a gas station in Montreal back in 2021. These were Doritos flavored with ketchup, and I did let curiosity get the better of me and try them. Not too shabby!

Meanwhile, the supermarket shelves displayed another surprise: The return of the Wise Potato Chips mascot!

Bags have long shown an owl’s eye, and Wise, founded in 1921 in Pennsylvania and distributed mainly on the East Coast, had long used an owl for its mascot. But a friendlier-looking owl character named Peppy was roled out in 1956 — and is now back, below, with a 2025 makeover.

Below is on old-school Wise owl (not necessarily Peppy) atop a distribution facility in New Hyde Park, New York. Wise liked to point out in ads in the 1940s and 1950s that its chips would “pep up” meals, and I assume the linkage led to the nickname in 1956.

And, below, a version of Peppy at the same location:

By March 1956, “Peppy the Owl” was turning up by name as the face of a new campaign undertaken by Wise to promote its chips. Billboards, Sunday ad supplements, radio ads and signs featuring Peppy and the words “ look who-o-o has new look!” were part of the campaign.

To wit, this ad that appeared in the Boston Globe in March 1956. The ad notes the iconic turquoise and golden look for the bags was introduced at this time.

By the early 1980s, Peppy made a marketing comeback, below. (This same inflatable owl is up for auction on eBay.)

And the 1950s Peppy briefly made a comeback earlier this decade on bags before the newly designed Peppy rolled out in 2025.

Food Chain magazine spoke to Milton Mattus, Wise’s chief executive officer, who shared some of the Peppy history I detailed above and said:

Now, we are bringing him back with a more playful personality, reminiscent of an all-American high schooler, making him relatable to kids and families. We have already received very positive feedback from both retailers and consumers, as Peppy is part of our heritage. For a long time, our logo featured only Peppy’s eye, which older generations recognized, but younger audiences simply saw it as just an owl. With Peppy’s return, newer generations can now connect with the character more personally. Our main focus is to provide high-quality products, and we hope that with Peppy’s help, we can encourage more trials of our products and foster a deeper love for the brand among consumers,” he enthuses.

Dateline America: Roadside Headlines

• Devastating: A fire destroyed part of the collection of the Ignite Sign Art Museum sign in Tucson, Arizona. Owner Jude Cook estimated “about 500 pieces had been destroyed, including small replicas of neon signs throughout the city, soda and beer signs and dozens of advertising clocks,” reports the Tucson Sentinel.

• Atlanta’s beloved “Piano in the Sky” along I-85 is coming down later this month after 41 years now that Cooper Piano in Brookhaven is moving. A few years ago, I passed the piano, which towers 55 feet in the sky, and I wish I’d taken a moment to get a photo. Roadarch.com reports the sign will not go up at the store’s new home, alas. Regrets, I’ve had a few … [AJC/paywall]

• Buc-ee’s keeps chomping into new territory in the Midwest and plans to open a massive 73,000-square-foot store in Wisconsin, along 1-94 south of Milwaukee. This puts it within 100 miles of Chicago. [WMAQ]

• Dubbed the Castle of Tomorrow, a new prototype White Castle that’s big on tech has opened in Columbus, Ohio. What do you think? [Restaurant Dive]

• Johnny Johnson, the owner of Camp Washington Chili in Cincinnati, has died at age 90. His uncle opened the business in 1940, and Johnson took full control of it in 1977. My picture of Camp Washington Chili is on Page 143 of my book. [WLWT]

• Voodoo Doughnut, incubated in Portland, Oregon, is coming to Manhattan. Voodoo has been expanding around the country, with a shop also coming to Miami. [Eater New York]

• The city of Lebanon, Missouri, is assuming control of the iconic sign for the Munger Moss Motel. The motel’s longtime owner died two years ago ago, and the future of the building itself is unknown. I had the pleasure of stopping there for some pictures in 2013 on my Route 66 road trip from Chicago to Santa Monica. The Munger Moss appears on Page 235 of my book. [KY3]

• The gorgeous neon sign for the shuttered Clairmount Laundry Cleaners in Berkley, Michigan, has landed on Facebook Marketplace. They are asking $13,000.

• Calling all Mr. Peanut fans! A terrific auction of collectibles featuring the Planters mascot is up for auction. Details here.

• Sam’s Bar and Restaurant in East Hampton is an old-school haunt, classy but not Hamptons fancy, and a mainstay since 1947. The grandson of the restaurant’s founders sold the building that houses it. The sale could imperil the restaurant when its lease expires in two years, but the new landlord has a reputation for being civic-minded. [East Hampton Star]

• “There was a hole in the downtown. We want this back, we need this back, and it’s come back and we’re so happy that that’s happened:” Joy in Florence, Alabama, as the beloved Shoals Community Theatre sign is restored and returned to its longtime home. [WHNT]

• Chris’ Famous Hotdogs in Montgomery, Alabama, has been sold for the first time in its 108-year history. [AL.com]

• Boston’s iconic Citgo sign is moving, but fear not. It’s moving only a little. [Hoodline]

• Jumboland, a Branchville, New Jersey, diner that opened in 1955, is up for sale. [NJ.com]

• Spurlock’s Malt Shop in Anna, Texas, a fixture since 1951, is closing because the landlord sold the building. The last day will be Nov. 1. [Culture Map Dallas]

• IKEA is pushing into Manhattan, with plans afoot for two stores, including one in SoHo. Nearby in SoHo, REI, the outdoor retailer with a 14-year presence in the Puck Building (and a most reliable public restroom) is closing next year.

  

  The Retrologist by Rolando Pujol is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

That said, one of my great passions is my Substack newsletter, for which over 6,600 people have signed up since I launched it three years ago this month. (Where does the time go?) Thank you for being here and for your support of my work. From today onward, you can expect to see much more content from me, with regular updates on news from the American roadside, special coverage and profiles, and a few surprises along the way. This roadside Americana beat, as it were, is busier than ever, and I intend to bring you more of that news as it happens, along with exclusive content for patrons. (Thank you!)

Well, enough throat clearing — let’s get on with it. I’m often told my newsletter traffics in a lot of sad news, so I’m happy to defy that trend with my first item, about a beloved restaurant in Corona, California, that suddenly has a bright future.

The site of the Silver Dollar Pancake House has long been a dining mainstay on East Sixth Street, with an eatery on the site dating back to as early as 1922. In 1936, a restaurant called the Copper Kettle was on the site. It had other names and concepts before settling on the Silver Dollar Pancake House name in 1962. (According to research linked to above, the sign dates to 1965.)

Last September, the longtime owner, Charmayne Killingsworth, died at the age of 94, and her four children placed the business on the market. They received offers, including an eye-popping one from a coffee company, to redevelop the land. It doesn’t take much imagination to conclude the restaurant would have been demolished or irrevocably changed.

The children decided to sell to Mark and Paula Fogel, locals who intend to polish the Silver Dollar back to its shiniest midcentury gleam. The family was paid somewhere between $800,000 and $900,000, sacrificing bigger bucks for the biggest payout of all: “We took less money to do the right thing,” son Kevin Killingsworth told the Press-Enterprise. “Everybody agreed that was what my mom, Charmayne, would have wanted.”

The new owners, along with devoted restaurant operator Robert Hernandez, who has worked here since 1976, will keep the pancake house the same as it ever was. The Fogels already invested over $100,000 in property improvements and hope to restore the neon sign, both the free-standing one and a roofline sign. Preservationists have been helping get the word out, too. Just shy of $1,000 has been raised to fix the sign, which long ago lost its neon tubing, and they are hoping to raise $30,000 — a restoration will surely cost more.

Be sure to check out the article to see this photo of the beautiful U-shaped counter and longtime proprietor Hernandez.

How lucky we are that the Silver Dollar Pancake House has a bright and shiny future here in Riverside County. If the sale had been solely about extracting the maximum number of silver dollars from the site, the outcome would have been most unhappy.

Have you ever been here? My first and, to date, only visit, in October 2021, was marred by bad timing — the place was closed and the sun was in the wrong position for the kind of photos I had wished to take. I can’t wait to step inside next time and enjoy one of 18 varieties of pancakes under the freshly restored neon sign.

Retrologist Roadside Roundup

Sherman’s Sports and Army Store is closing after 103 years in business. (103!!!) The mom and pop in Hendersonville, North Carolina, has been in the Sherman family from the first day — and soon the last.

“After 103 years, Sherman’s Sports & Army is saying goodbye as the family owners retire. Everything is 25% off, so grab something special and take a moment to thank this downtown icon for over a century of memories,” according to the municipal Facebook page.

Starbucks is closing hundreds of stores and laying off many corporate staff as part of a reorganization its new CEO is billing as a return to its roots as a “third place”- a welcoming environment where customers can sit for a spell inside an inviting coffeehouse. Fair enough — Starbucks had strayed from its roots, and this seems like a necessary pivot.

But in these closures, we are losing some stores that had been good stewards of historic buildings. Among the Starbucks that will be closing is the “Steaming Tea Kettle” location in Boston. The copper kettle has been attached to the building since the 1960s, when it was relocated during the construction of the Government Center in the former Scollay Square, but dates back to 1873, serving as a promotional device for the Oriental Tea Company. Surely, the kettle is safe, but we now wait to see who its next custodian will be.

Check out this cool report from 1977 from the WCVB-TV archive, featuring the retirement of a waitress from the pre-Starbucks coffee shop, then called The Steaming Kettle.

Starbucks deserves credit for using historic buildings to host its stores, and here are some other examples of adaptive reuse by the company.

Roadside America in Shartlesville, Pennsylvania, was an extraordinary place, featuring a massive miniature village and an O-gauge model railroad that captured the nuances of small-town life. Construction began in 1935, the product of the fertile mind and gifted hands of Laurence Gieringer, who died in 1963 but not before Roadside America became a beloved piece of Roadside Americana.

I must have driven past Roadside America, in its longtime and final home since 1953, dozens of times over the years, but stopped here only once. (When you spotted it on I-78, it was difficult to turn around and get to, alas.)

I explored the gift shop, but never took the time to check out the big attraction itself, all 8,000 square feet of it, featuring 10,000 small trees, 4,000 tiny people, and so much more in mind-numbing number and detail.

Sadly, Roadside America closed in 2020, a Covid casualty that had already been ailing. Now, memorabilia and rare ephemera from the lost attraction are up for auction, with bidding on the first lots starting to close on Monday, with the first batch of 150 now live and open for bidding.

It’s unfortunate that the collection could not stay together, or that Roadside America could not have been saved, but at least these precious heirlooms now stand a chance to end up in appreciative hands, their legacy scattered across the land.

The Lake Effect Diner in Buffalo, New York, is for sale. I swung by for some photos of it back in 2019. A restoration of the signage was a bit heavy-handed, stripping the neon, though I was too nice to point that out when I wrote this about the diner back in 2019:

‪For many years, the words “lake effect” signaled one thing in Buffalo — snow, and lots of it, coming off Lake Erie. But these days, a 1952 Mountain View Diner has changed all that. Oh, the snow still comes, make no mistake about that. But the words now also call to mind a great retro-dining success story — the Lake Effect Diner. The diner was built in Singac, New Jersey and originally installed in Wayne, Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Called the Main Line Grille, it closed in the 1970s and did service as a succession of Chinese restaurants over the years. New owners couldn’t work with the rail-car diner, but rather than trash it to clear off their valuable land, they reached out to preservationists to get the diner sold. It ended up in the hands of the Curtain family, who moved it to Buffalo, a big haul followed by a big restoration and a new life as the Lake Effect Diner starting in 2002. The food here isn’t your typical diner fare — it’s high quality and locally sourced, and has become even more coveted by tourists after a visit from Guy Fieri.

I stopped by on a stifling summer day — lake effect humidity, I suppose. The chrome gleamed gorgeously under the August sun. Just three months later, lake effect snow blanketed the Lake Effect Diner. A record storm, they’re saying it was. That would have made for a pretty picture, don’t you think?

The Federal Theatre in Denver has reopened after decades, and the restoration of the marquee is breathtaking. Congrats to Morry’s Neon Signs and everybody involved in making this happen. It will serve as a live-entertainment venue.

Reports Westword:

Like many of the city’s classic old movie houses, the Federal closed in the 1970s. “It was sort of largely nothing for fifty years,” [owner Scott] Happel says. “A church utilized it as a space for the last ten or twenty years, but it’s not clear how much they used it. The church left in January 2023, and the landlords gave us a call.”

Wow.

Barnum Duckpin Bowling in Stratford, Connecticut, closed in 2013 after a 75-year run. The blade sign was placed in storage and was donated this year to the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, where it has been restored.

(Duckpin bowling uses smaller, no-hole balls and tinier, lighter pins, making it harder to get a strike, so bowlers get three rolls per frame.). Another New England classic has also landed at the ASM.

The historic Arby’s sign in Hollywood, California, has been removed, more than a year after the location closed. I’m not sure where it went, but there have been reports that we haven’t seen the last of it.

While these were manufactured in the hundreds between 1964 and 1975 or so, the Arby’s signs are becoming scarce, as they keep falling every few months, it seems, despite the nostalgic curiosity about them.

The town of Unger, West Virginia, is home to a collection of fiberglass giants set on a single property. American Giants reports they will be moved to Minnesota over the next couple of years, but it’s not too late to see them in their longtime home.

Atlas Obscura has more on the Farnham Colossi.

Mixue is billed as the world’s largest fast-food chain, as measured by the number of stores, with over 45,000. They’ve opened their first store in NYC, in TriBeCa, which I plan to check out this week.

From Delish:

If the name’s new to you, that tracks; abroad, Mixue’s already everywhere from China to Thailand and Vietnam. The playbook is simple and wildly effective: soft-serve cones, fruit teas, classic milk tea, and chewy add-ins, all priced to fit your budget. It’s the sort of menu that overly floods social feeds and happily empties wallets. Now it’s test-driving that budget-friendly formula in a city where spending money on overpriced food and drink is very much a personality trait.

In other news …

• Preserving one ghost sign leads to the discovery of another one in Bakersfield, California.

• The owner of San Francisco’s House of Prime Rib has died at 86.

• The Olympia Diner’s date with destruction may still be in the offing, as the owner is considering offers to buy the property in Newington, Connecticut, after a deal to develop the site fell through and gave the beauty you see below a reprieve. (As you can see, it pays to go on a rainy night when business is slow and the pavement sparkles like this. Magic.)

• My ABC7 colleague Joelle Garguilo visits Long Island’s St. James General Store, the longest-running in the nation.

• A 90-year-old diner operator is bringing back 24-hour service on Staten Island.

• A not-so-encouraging update on the fate of San Francisco’s oceanside Cliff House, shuttered since 2020.

• “Law & Order”-themed Dun Dun Diner, a pop-up restaurant at 1 Rockefeller Center, will celebrate the show’s 25th season. Operating over three days this upcoming weekend, the diner already has sold-out reservations. Instead of Dun Dun, let’s call it Womp Womp.

• Utz Potato Chips is sprucing up its Pennsylvania headquarters.

• The neon sign for the shuttered Old Canteen in Providence, Rhode Island, has a new home.

Take a virtual tour of American neon with me!

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Neon Speaks festival at the Verdi Club in San Francisco earlier this month. In case you missed it, I will be giving my presentation again virtually on Wednesday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m. PDT. The presentation is told through the prism of signs I featured in my book, “The Great American Retro Road Trip.”

Register here to watch!

In case you missed it …

Check out my report for ABC Localish to learn about the work Dana Schaeffer is doing to save New Jersey diners, including the long-shuttered Little Falls Diner, which is behind us.

Recommended follow: The Society for Commercial Archaeology’s Substack

I am a proud member of the Society for Commercial Archeology, which programs monthly Zooms on topics you’ll surely find interesting, supports research, organizes group trips, and advocates for the preservation and celebration of our roadside heritage.

I am now also a proud columnist for the society, and my reports on signage and other matters will now regularly appear in the SCA’s newsletter and journal.

Aside from joining the SCA, I’d love it if you could follow their new Substack, which I highly recommend.

Join me on the Great American Retro Road Trip!

If you haven’t bought my book yet, now is a great time! Plan a fall getaway, a winter excursion, or polish off your holiday gift list with my book. (Hint hint!)

Order it here, and DM me if you’d like to buy an autographed copy!

Thanks as always for the support.

New York has changed an awful lot since 1975, when the Robert Redford spy classic “Three Days of the Condor” hit theaters. It’s one of my favorite films, in part because it captures so much of Gotham from that era, so much that is gone, everything from the original World Trade Center to classic storefronts on the Upper West Side.

But one place, one sweet place, is still with us, very much like it was in the movie 50 years ago: The Lexington Candy Shop on the Upper East Side.

A pivotal scene was filmed outside, where we see the raffishly stylish Redford darting in amid a downpour, and then standing at the counter, where he picks up lunch for his colleagues. (I won’t say more about the plot in case you’ve not seen this film – I can’t recommend it enough.)

Learn more about the shop in my book!

A few years ago, I interviewed the shop’s longtime owner, John Philis, at the exact counter where Redford stood. And Philis was there that day, and is himself immortalized in the film!

He yells “chicken plate” as Redford places his order. You have to listen closely for it, but you can hear Philis shout out those two words amid the clatter and Christmas music playing in the scene, and he can be spotted in the background.

Watch my ABC Localish piece, above.

Philis still dresses like the countermen of 1975 – the white jacket neatly pressed, the very picture of luncheonette professionalism.

As a way to honor the memory of Redford, who died today at 89, check out “Three Days of the Condor” and stop by the candy shop.

Be sure to check out Redford’s photo at the counter, and revel in the miraculous existence of this New York gem.

The shop, below, posted this tribute to its most famous guest:

“We’re thinking of Robert Redford today with heavy hearts.”

Need another reason to visit? The candy shop is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year! Here’s to the next hundred!

Following an epic backlash and the vaporization of millions in stock-market value, Cracker Barrel just announced that Uncle Herschel is coming out of his brief and tumultuous retirement. The Southern comfort food chain has reversed course and is restoring the logo that was dropped in favor of a simplified design that did not feature Uncle Herschel and his cracker barrel.

I saw this decision to drop Uncle Herschel not in the context of the “woke wars” of our time but as another example of misguided corporate thinking. In an era when nostalgia reigns and authenticity is revered, Cracker Barrel still retained both, with its homey dining rooms, cluttered shops, and old-timey logo, largely unchanged since 1977.

Like a lot of other chains, Cracker Barrel decided to modernize, and paid a price unlike any other has to date.

Per the company:

“We thank our guests for sharing your voices and love for Cracker Barrel. We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our 'Old Timer' will remain. At Cracker Barrel, it's always been - and always will be - about serving up delicious food, warm welcomes, and the kind of country hospitality that feels like family. As a proud American institution, our 70,000 hardworking employees look forward to welcoming you to our table soon."

On Monday, Cracker Barrel addressed the logo change and seemed to be sticking to its decision. The company reversed course Tuesday evening, hours after President Donald Trump weighed in to defend the old logo.

"Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate Poll), and manage the company better than ever before," Trump posted in part on social media.

I wonder whether they’ll back away from plans to modernize their dining rooms, too. Probably.

Perhaps if Cracker Barrel leadership had read my Pizza Hut Classic post, they would have known not to mess with the good thing they had.

What do you think about the Cracker Barrel logo saga?

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For a fanboy like me, the McDonaldland campaign is all such a thrill and a welcome surprise. I’ve spent years stopping at McDonald’s restaurants, looking for increasingly elusive traces of Grimace, the Hamburglar, and of course, Ronald McDonald himself, and so the swirl of products and marketing around the McDonaldland Meal is checking all the boxes for nostalgic souls — and sparking a case of the feels.

The first step in the rollout of the campaign hit on Tuesday, with the drop of the McDonaldland Meal. On Thursday, the Pacsun McDonaldland partnership was kicked off in New York City, and I swung by the flagship Pacsun store on Broadway in SoHo to check out the launch event.

There is a ton of delightful merch for sale at the store, as well as Instagram-friendly product displays. The event featured a McDonaldland photo booth, claw machine, and a DJ spinning tunes. For the peckish, there was a booth with free fries, and a truck parked outside keeping the savory supply hot and fresh.

According to Pacsun, the collaboration includes:

For women, sweat sets with zip-ups, hoodies, pants, and mini shorts, paired with baby tees and playful accessories like barrettes, claw clips, scrunchies, and totes. Articles highlight colorful, intricate graphics inspired by distinctive characters, like Grimace and the Hamburglar, and imaginative landscapes from the original 1970s fantastical world shown in ads and films.

The men’s assortment includes oversized graphic tees, heavyweight hoodies, structured denim jackets and shorts, and corduroy hats, each designed to evoke vintage travel merchandise and landmark souvenirs from the fictional lands like Fry Friends Field, Apple Pie Orchards, and Mt. McDonaldland. Design elements reference classic postcard graphics and fictional team logos, turning each piece into a wearable keepsake from a world reimagined.

Beyond apparel, the drop will feature unexpected accessories for all including snapback and bucket hats, high socks, license plate frames, floor rugs, a knitted blanket, doormat, and more all in theme with McDonaldland motifs and characters.

Learn more here.

Now, enjoy some of my snaps from Thursday’s event:

The year 1971 suddenly came to mind. That’s the year the film “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” came out, and that January, Americans received another kind of “Golden Ticket,” this one from the “Golden Arches.” That’s when we were first invited to take a trip to the trippy place that was the mysterious world of McDonaldland, a child’s paradise with Apple Pie Trees, a milkshake-oozing volcano, a lake teeming with Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, a flower-power-era landscape of fabulous flora, and an idyllic McDonald’s mansard restaurant, then an architectural novelty.

All around, mischievous mascots delighted us with their misadventures in the ads — Grimace, once sprouting four arms and labeled as “Evil,” hunting for milkshakes; the Hamburglar coveting thy neighbor’s hamburgers; the Fry Goblins (aka Fry Guys, Kids, Friends) stealing French fries; and of course, Ronald McDonald himself trying to impose order while keeping things fun. (He had a little help, too, in the law-and-order department from Officer Big Mac and Mayor McCheese.)

(Even before McDonaldland, Ronald had been around, first appearing in the Washington, D.C. market in 1963, and played by future “Today” show weatherman Willard Scott, who was then working as Bozo the Clown on the NBC station there.)

The McDonaldland characters jumped from television screens into restaurants, McDonaldland Parks and PlayPlaces, toy and video-store shelves, and, most importantly, the hearts of late Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials.

The old-school McDonaldland aspect faded — we said goodbye to Mayor McCheese, the Professor and Officer Big Mac — and the core characters that survived, like Grimace, the Hamburglar, and the 1980 addition Birdie, carried on in commercials that were delightful sketches. (Mac Tonight, introduced nationally in 1987, is not part of McDonaldland. He’s too cool for that, anyway, with his suave piano-lounge ways.)

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And then, all the mascots went away, not at all once, more in the way that once deep friendships fade until you realize they are no more. Even Ronald was barely seen anymore. By the late aughts, the characters were vestigial, lingering here and there in restaurants that had yet to be remodeled and increasingly the subjects of nostalgia by those who began to wonder whether they had dreamed the whole thing.

Well, McDonaldland was no dream, but an iconic piece of marketing and Americana, and McDonald’s, after years of taking small bites from its McDonaldland heritage, has gone all in, to the delight of McFans like me.

And you realize, like those faded friendships, that if they had any meaning at all, you can pick up right where you left off.

McDonaldland is back to promote the McDonaldland Meal. And yes, at long last, the gang was all going to be here, reunited for the first time in decades.

Well, back to that invite I received. I RSVPed while trying to restrain my glee — and failing, as you can see from the photos of me, below.

McDonaldland, in my case, was the McDonald’s in Times Square, where the second floor was cleverly converted into a celebration of vintage McDonald’s for a press event. On hand was Ronald McDonald himself, holding down the fort by a McDonald's ball pit, seeming to surreally levitate over Times Square from its corner perch. There was a step-and-repeat with a map of McDonaldland (see high-res map below) and Grimace standing by, and Birdie was greeting us at the door. The Hamburglar was lurking about, too, though I never heard him say “robble robble.”

The campaign officially begins on Tuesday, Aug. 12. As with the Grimace’s Birthday campaign of 2023, it will feature at its core a new, limited-time shake: the Mt. McDonaldland Shake, a pink-and-blue concoction reflecting the pink clouds and blue lava that emerged from the volcanic Mt. McDonaldland, located on Grimace Island, in the original McDonaldland commercials. This is a meal, after all, so you have your choice of the Quarter Pounder with Cheese or a 10-piece Chicken McNuggets, and of course, French fries. (Just keep an “eye on your fries,” because those Goblins might be around!) But the best part is the collectibles, a tin themed with one of six McDonaldland characters, along with stickers and other goodies.

There are also partnerships with PacSun, for McDonaldland apparel, and Away Luggage, where they will be offering complimentary McDonaldland charms with purchases starting Aug. 18.

McDonald’s embraced McDonaldland because they were listening to us. A rep told me:

"McDonaldland and its characters are not only legendary, but deeply nostalgic - this is why they are so enduring, so we created the meal in response to fans' eagerness to be immersed in the world and to see the characters reunite," a representative for McDonald's said in an email interview.

They continued:

"We brought back the beloved McDonaldland crew in response to strong fan interest. For years, fans have been sharing their favorite McDonaldland memories in social and diving deep into character lore. This campaign offers consumers a nostalgic opportunity to reconnect with the characters they grew up with, or discover them for the first time.”

Here are highlights of my trip to McDonaldland on Thursday!

Mayor McCheese greets you by the door …

Along with Birdie, whose first job as an “early bird” was to promote McDonald’s breakfast items in the 1980s …

And then, I had my first encounter with the Hamburglar. The Hamburger prop is from the first McDonaldland commercial in 1971, I was told …

And there was Grimace. I first noticed him stopping to admire the flowers, a nice nod to the pastoral fantasy land that is McDonaldland …

And being his delightful self …

And letting me enjoy a fan-boy moment with him …

And admiring a collection of McDonald’s memorabilia, on loan from the company’s archives …

The items on display included an original Hamburglar hat ..

And the McDonald’s board game! (I’m going to have to find one on eBay.)

The event featured a clever nod to the PlayPlace ball pits of yore …

In a throwback to the days when Ronald would make appearances at McDonald’s restaurants on weekends, the man himself was on hand to act as an emcee for the event. That’s Rolando and Ronald, below …

The Hamburglar tried to snatch my QPC. But I caught him in the nick of time, and he gamely posed for this photo with me …

The tins you’ll be receiving with your McDonaldland Meals starting Aug. 12 (I’ll have an unboxing in a future post!) …

And the cool nostalgic packaging for the meals, along with the Mt. McDonaldland Shake, which I began to consume before I stopped to take the picture. (If you liked the Grimace Shake, you’ll LOVE this one.) …

And one more close-up of the vintage Hamburger Patch prop …

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of McDonaldland. I’ll have an unboxing post of the swag, along with a video, in the next few days!

BTW, have you checked out the new McDonaldland commercial?

It’s a fantastic riff on the 1971 original, right down to the Bubblegum-style music that was popular at the time:

From the indispensable Filming in McDonaldland page:

GET YOURSELF READY FOR A TRIP THROUGH McDONALDLAND’. The first commercial was called "McDONALDLAND" and appeared on TV in January of 1971. (Filmed in November 1970). The original words for "Get Yourself..." were written by Keith Reinhard, Fred Braidman and Rudy Dochermann, all creatives at Needham, Harper & Steers ad agency. The McDonaldland music was composed by Don Piestrup. The McDonaldland singer was Sonny Curtis (Sonny also composed and sang The Mary Tyler Moore theme song “Love is All Around”.) **

Fun fact: In the first ad, Mayor McCheese is referred to as Big Cheese!

Get yourself ready for a trip through McDonaldland!

McDonald’s announced this morning that it is reviving classic McDonaldland characters starting Aug. 12 as part of a new promotion centered around a meal and a specialty shake. This is the first time in more than 20 years that McDonald’s has brought back the range of characters, which were first introduced in 1971 and were a beloved part of the company’s marketing through the early 21st century.

“In the whimsical world of McDonaldland lives a colorful cast of characters who are legendary, timeless and cherished by McDonald’s fans across generations. Now, for the first time in more than 20 years, Ronald McDonald, Grimace, Birdie, Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese and the Fry Friends are officially taking the trip out of the group chat,” McDonald’s said in a news release.

This is the boldest embrace yet by McDonald’s of its McDonaldland heritage, which has long fueled nostalgia around the brand. In 2022, we saw some of the characters return as Adult Happy Meal toys — each with an extra set of eyes — as part of a collaboration with the Cactus Plant Flea Market streetwear brand. (See my unboxing here.) The next year, McDonald’s had one of its most significant viral moments with the Grimace Shake, a marketing move that I declared brilliant in a Substack post back in 2023.

I wrote then:

It’s an interesting, smart tactic, and I’m curious to see how McDonald’s continues to play with its rich legacy.

Well, we have our answer today. Now, Grimace is being joined by his other pals in McDonaldland. The campaign draws on the look and feel of the 1971 debut of the McDonaldland campaign, when we first met characters like Grimace, Mayor McCheese and the Apple Tree in trippy commercials that remain popular to this day on YouTube.

The characters became distinctive parts of the McDonald’s story over the next few decades, and a quintessential part of the American childhood. Countless birthday parties, for instance, were celebrated with the characters at hand in PlayPlaces, which were called initially McDonaldland, FYI. Nostalgia for them has remained high, even as the characters vanished from marketing and from statuary and iconography in stores.

Well, welcome back, friends!

The new campaign celebrates the McDonaldland Meal, which will be in stores Aug. 12.

According to the news release:

The meal features a new, limited-edition Mt. McDonaldland Shake – an ode to one of its major landmarks – that offers a secret concoction as enchanting as the world itself. It's up to you to discover the surprise flavor. It also comes with your choice of a Quarter Pounder® with Cheese or 10-piece Chicken McNuggets®, World Famous Fries®, and even a first-of-its-kind collectible souvenir that’s sure to unlock core memories.

The release, more of which is below, includes a fun “itinerary” that awaits you:

• Stop #1: Refresh Yourself at Mt. McDonaldland

Experience the volcano first-hand with our limited-edition shake, inspired by the vibrant blue “lava” and pink clouds of Mt. McDonaldland.

• Stop #2: Swing by the Souvenir Shop and Meet the Locals

Every McDonaldland Meal comes with one of six exclusive collectible tins featuring postcards, stickers and more, each inspired by the different characters. Get your hands on the full collection, because no trip is complete without a souvenir!

• Stop #3: Discover the Rich History

McDonaldland first opened its doors in 1971, introducing fans to the beloved characters and their home filled with Apple Pie Trees and Hamburger Patches. For over 20 years, McDonaldland was featured in everything from games to movies, and the characters developed a devoted fan following. Now the gang is back together, and fans can rediscover the epic world and its characters or experience it for the first time – all through the meal.

• Stop #4: Show Your McDonaldland Pride

Grab limited-edition merch from our collaborations with PacSun on Aug. 12, featuring sweat sets and graphic tees as colorful as McDonaldland itself, and Away, including complimentary luggage tags and bag charms with any purchase at Away retail locations from Aug. 18 onward, while supplies last. Now you can carry a piece of McDonaldland magic wherever you go.

***

I’ll have more on the campaign and the history of McDonaldland in the coming days.

UPDATE: Since the publication of this newsletter, Cole’s French Dip has announced they will stay in business through mid-September, Eater reports, bolstered by the dramatic outpouring of support from patrons eager to tear into their signature French dips one last time. Once can hope even better news will follow in due course. Stay hungry — for French dips and a happy outcome.

Original post below:

***

Every so often, a closure comes along that wanders into the turf of the unthinkable. The recent news from Downtown Los Angeles that Cole’s French Dip was closing for good on Aug. 2 after 117 years was a gut punch.

The loss of Cole’s is unthinkable because of its unparalleled status in the firmament of Los Angeles restaurants. There is not a person alive today who knows a world before Cole’s. Opened in 1908 by Harry Cole, the restaurant enjoyed a 117-year run — making it LA’s oldest — that will end on Saturday.

Cole’s status is unassailable because of its place in culinary history. It has long claimed, along with Philippe the Original near LA’s Chinatown, to be the creator of the French Dip sandwich. The two restaurants have engaged in what the Los Angeles Conservancy calls a “friendly rivalry” over the dueling boasts that are an enduring part of LA foodie lore.

Cole’s has early 20th-century design chops, sharpened in a 2008 renovation by the current owners that played to those roots. It sits on the first floor of the former Pacific Electric Building, which was once the terminal of the long-defunct Pacific Electric Railway Co., and the restaurant’s former tabletops (no longer in use, sadly) were said to be made from the wooden doors of those cherished streetcars known as the Red Cars. The restaurant’s old name was a nod to Pacific Electric, Cole’s PE Buffet.

Cole’s attracted luminaries of all measure and variety — plaques over the urinals remind us, for instance, that the poet and writer “Charles Bukowski Pissed Here.”

Cedd Moses (and his company Pouring with Heart) owns Cole’s, and explained in a statement why they were closing. He cited a litany of maladies, from the lingering debility of COVID-19, the lasting economic sting of the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes, inflation, crime … need I go on?

Moses also offered a Cassandra-like warning that the cancer that claimed Cole’s is one to which other legacy restaurants are not immune.

There were rumblings before Moses officially confirmed the closure that Cole’s was going to be sold instead. That was not to be. I just can’t imagine Cole’s being stripped to the studs. Could somebody with deep pockets, deeper imagination and the deepest patience step in and avert this disaster at the last moment? (If you are that person, or know of such a benefactor, call Derrick Moore at 213-613-3334 or email him at derrick.moore@cbre.com.)

It boggles the mind that we are here, and Cole’s will soon not be. I agreed with Esotouric’s Secret Los Angeles’ take on the existential crises faced by these beloved legacy businesses. Their closures redound to the detriment of the city and its residents, who must now live in a community whose historic layers have been stripped of one very vital one.

Per Esotouric:

Here’s the thing, though: Cole’s P.E. Buffet / French Dip doesn’t belong to Cedd Moses and Pouring With Heart. It never did. Cedd is just the latest steward in a 117 year old golden thread of Angeleno entrepreneurs, and if he’s done with Cole’s, he ought to know it’s time to hand the place off to someone who loves it, too.

I couldn’t agree more with that sentiment.

I’ve long thought that when a business reaches a certain age and has made a significant contribution to a community’s culture and identity, it becomes bigger than itself, or whoever happens to be the owner.

And should the owner decide to close and not sell it to others who will carry on as good custodians, or simply can’t, as appears to be the case here, then a community-facilitated system should exist to either step in and support the owner or arrange a sale to a new owner committed to preserving the business.

Establishments like Cole’s are a kind of accidental public utility. We expect them to be there, just like the light turns on when you flip the wall switch and the water runs when you twist the faucet handle. But they are not utilities, and collectively, we must do more to support them.

City leadership and the private sector, or perhaps a combination of both, should consider the preservation of iconic businesses as an essential part of good governance or corporate citizenship. Imagine if a landmarked building came not only with regulatory strings but with serious financial ones, though those would not be strings but lifelines?

What if a philanthropist were to establish a national trust to support these places in perpetuity? Goodness knows, we live in a moment when so much wealth is concentrated in so few hands. There must be numerous ways to create a resilient safety net for our legacy businesses, as well as our beloved mom-and-pop establishments.

Patrons are now turning out in such numbers at Cole’s that they have to stop accepting food orders for periods to let the kitchen catch up, KCRW reports. We see this far too often when an iconic establishment announces its demise. Suddenly, there are crowds. Glowing press. Influencers swarming about. Of course, it’s too little too late.

That’s why I appreciate groups like the Diner Preservation Society, as quoted in the KCRW piece, which are continuously focused on preserving legacy businesses, especially when they are quietly operating and often overlooked, free from the headlines and crowds they attract only when they announce their impending demise.

"It's really cool being part of a group that's trying to combat the sterilization of L.A.," says Marina Aligh, who discovered the group on Instagram and has been attending meet-ups ever since. "We've lost so many very cool historic spots this year and, you know, the best way that we can kind of prevent that is with our dollars."

I’m often told this newsletter has too much bad news. Sadly, it’s mostly unavoidable. But thankfully, there’s not always bad news to report.

I shared the news on my Instagram last month that Cheese N Stuff, a Phoenix delicatessen with a rockin’ globe neon sign, would stay in business. The shop closed in April when the owners, Stan Zawatski, and his daughter, Crystal Zawatski, whose family had been running it since 1972, decided to hang up their white aprons.

Per the Phoenix New Times:

But now, the local institution is set to reopen — with a refresh, not a rebrand — thanks to some longtime customers.

“We’re just a group of friends that grew up around here,” says Julie Palmer, who, along with her husband, Tom Palmer, is one of the new owners. “We all went to Brophy or Xavier, and Cheese 'n Stuff was a huge part of our school days, our parents’ routines, even our grandparents."

When the Palmers heard the restaurant, which opened in 1949, was closing, Tom immediately called Crystal and said, "We’re buying it.”

With other friends who are partnering with them, the new owners are looking to revive the historic landmark and have the neon sign restored by Christie Signs, run by the son of the man who helped install the sign originally.

Can you handle another serving of good news? I bet you can! Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington, D.C., is briefly closing for repairs and upgrades, which are expected to take four months. I can’t think of D.C. without Ben’s, and its half-smokes and shakes. That’s good eating in a place replete with history. If you MUST have Ben’s now, there is a pop-up location at 1208 U St., which is right across the street from the restaurant itself.

Cole’s and Ben’s Chili Bowl are both featured in my book, which I hope you can check out if you haven’t already had a chance to do so.

I’ve had the good fortune of receiving kind press for the book, which is gratifying, a feeling you especially understand if you’ve written a book. Here on Substack, I was delighted recently to chat with Amy Cavanaugh of “American Weekender,” who runs a great newsletter I suspect you’ll like if you find yourself enjoying this one.

Please check out my interview with Amy below:

American Weekender

Known Traveler: Rolando Pujol, The Retrologist

Welcome to the weekend…

Read more

10 months ago · 13 likes · 3 comments · Amy Cavanaugh

And here’s even more good news! I’m so proud of my friends at Noble Signs, whose work in running the New York Sign Museum (and creating modern signs with museum-worthy vintage flair at the sign shop) received a glowing — pun very intended — review in the New York Times.

I’m proud to say that a sign at the museum, Barney’s Shoes, is one I helped save, and it is a joy to know it sits in the company of so many others. Read my piece on the Barney’s saga here.

I am long overdue in updating you on the progress at the sign museum, and I hope to share more later this summer after I visit again.

Please enjoy the Emmy-winning profile I helped produce on Noble Signs for Localish/WABC-TV back in 2022. This piece focuses less on the museum and more on the fascinating work of the sign shop.

From the piece:

Radio City Music Hall. Katz's Delicatessen. Nathan's in Coney Island.

If you close your eyes and picture New York City's most beloved locations, that picture will invariably feature iconic signage, often glowing with neon.

But somewhere along the line, a lot of New York signage grew dull and predictable. The creative spark was gone, replaced with functional if bland creations, often just a vinyl awning.

"The city we grew up in was full of really amazing signs," says David Barnett, co-founder of Noble Signs in Brooklyn, "and by the time we got out of college, the city was headed in a very different direction."

Barnett, who was paying the bills as a graphic designer post-college, and his friend Mac Pohanka, who worked in fabrication, both lamented the loss of the storefront heritage that gave New York City so much of its character. They took their nostalgia for the way things were as, well, a sign.

Speaking of signs, let’s get to our news roundup. It’s been a while since my last post, so there’s a lot to catch up on!

Retrologist Roadside Roundup

• While traveling to research my book last year, one of my big disappointments was missing the Ernest Tubb Record Store sign in Nashville. The sign was undergoing restoration, and it was not at its usual perch on Broadway. I’m happy to report it has been restored, and here’s a look at how it turned out. The record store, which was opened by country star Ernest Tubb in 1947 and closed in 2022, is set to reopen soon, with the Tubb family involved in the business.

  

• Go on a delicious tour of New Jersey’s historic pizza restaurants, in order of when they opened. Included are two of my favorites: Pizza Land, from 1965, below, and Luigi’s, from 1948, above, both photographed by me.

• Recently, on my Instagram, I took you on a tour of the Birthplace of Pepsi, in New Bern, North Carolina. Now, the North Carolina History Center in the town where Pepsi was founded has a new exhibit of Pepsi signage and memorabilia. New Bern is an excellent place to visit, and before you leave town, you should pay your respects to the founder, Caleb Bradham, at his grave, which is marked with the Pepsi-Cola logo, as mentioned in my book.

• Armand Vaillancourt’s Brutalist sculpture, Vaillancourt Fountain, in San Francisco’s Embarcadero Plaza, is facing demolition. And this time, the long-troubled 1971 sculpture, in a plaza designed by the masterful landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, appears doomed, the main concern being rehabilitation and maintenance costs. DOCOMOMO, says, in part: “Sadly, public spaces such as this one continue to be endangered, threatened by years of deferred maintenance and a lack of understanding of twentieth century design and landscapes.” That’s quite the truth bomb.

• The historic La Serre restaurant, a stage for political power brokers in Albany, New York, is poised to reopen as a member-only club.

• The site of the first supermarket in Westminster, Colorado, will be revitalized as a taphouse. If only they’d recreate the neon for the Rodeo Supermarket.

• The Daily Meal has listed its picks for best hole-in-the-wall restaurants in every state, a fun undertaking that captivates the completist in me.

• P&F Giordano Fruit & Produce, a mainstay of South Philadelphia’s Italian Market for a century, has closed. It will carry on as a wholesale business.

• The former Land Park Lanes building in Sacramento received historic designation. It was recently shuttered by fire. The building was built by Japanese American developer Gonzo Sakai, and played a vital role in serving the Japanese-American community.

• Riverhead, New York’s iconic Star Confectionery will close next month. It opened in 1917 and has been in the same family since 1921. (I hope to get out to “Papa Nick’s” for a report soon.)

• Not roadside Americana, but Veeraswamy, the UK’s oldest Indian restaurant, since 1926, could close amid a lease dispute with the Crown Estate, controlled by King Charles.

• A new business, Small Cheval, has taken over Chicago’s The Freeze, which closed in 2023, which itself operated out of the old Tastee-Freez. The vintage signage will happily be preserved.

• The Food Network names Elmo’s Diner in Durham, above, as the best diner in North Carolina. See the full list here for every state, which includes one of the last stand-alone diners in Manhattan, Square Diner, in TriBeCa, below.

  

• Paterson, New Jersey has allowed a new restaurant to open in the space of the old Libby’s Lunch, a historic and shuttered hot-dog hut, near the Great Falls, without state approvals concerning the use of a historic space.

• A block of Figueroa and the Highland Theater is being transformed into a 1970s streetscape for a follow-up to the 2019 film “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.” See Instagram post, below.

• The city of Auburn, New York, is seeking a buyer for the historic Schine’s Theater, where I stopped by in 2019.

• Montclair, New Jersey’s historic Bellevue Theatre is poised to reopen this fall. The theater has been closed since 2017.

• Jack in the Box is making inroads again in Chicagoland, decades after retreating.

• The history of the “Welcome to North Bend neon sign on the South Oregon Coast. The sign, rebuilt twice in its history, was repaired last month, and is still shining bright.

• The glorious Fifth Avenue Floral Co. in Columbus, Ohio, is no more. It will forever shine in the pages of my book. The sign was saved, but we are likely never to see it again.

• The Frontier Auto Museum in Gillette, Wyoming, is already a go-to stop for classic cars and Americana. Starting next year, its garden of neon signs will be buzzing, with campers who wish to sleep under stars and be warmed by the neon glow.

• Here’s a handy new roundup of Old Florida restaurants. I’ve shot one, the Reececliff Family Diner in Lakeland, but I didn't have the chance to break bread there.

• Here’s a guide to five charming Victorian towns in Northern California. Included are favorites, including Ferndale and Eureka, which I visited back in 2003. (Which is to say, much too long ago!)

• I worked for several years not far from Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, and remember how lovely autumn can be in the so-called Switzerland of America. World Atlas makes a case to go out of your way to visit this quirky beauty, any time of year. (But … maybe go on the peak-foliage weekend fall.)

• AFOLs, or Adult Fans of Lego, Jeff Esler (and a gifted artist, too!) is re-creating some of Minnesota’s favorite roadside landmarks in Lego form.

• The Hurricane Helene-ravaged fancy McDonald’s in Biltmore Village in Asheville, North Carolina, has been demolished. It will be replaced, along with the beloved piano, which was also deemed unsalvageable.

• Danville, Illinois, gave the world many celebrities, including Dick and Jerry Van Dyke and Bobby Short. A town with that many luminaries should have a movie theater to match. The restored Fischer Theatre in town is looking for donations to keep it shining, and will screen films in a festival celebrating yet another native son — the late actor Gene Hackman.

WHO WANTS TO BUY A DINER? (And not just ANY diner!)

The streamlined Modern Diner in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is for sale for the first time in 40 years. Nick Demou has decided to sell the diner, which he rescued and bought with his father, Arthur, in the mid-1980s, restored, and moved here. This Sterling Streamliner is a favorite of road-eats fans. Looking for a big life change? Ring Brian LaFauci of Won Strategy at 401-533-3991.

Who wants another diner? Philadelphia’s Mayfair Diner has hit the market. The diner opened in 1932, although it has undergone substantial changes since then.

Can we talk?

I’m proud to announce that I’ll be presenting virtually before the Society for Commercial Archaeology next month, on Wednesday, Aug. 13, at 8:00 p.m., to discuss my book. The chat is free! All you have to do is sign up at the Evite here.

A very happy 55th birthday to the Roll N Roaster in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, a delightful time capsule of family-owned, 1970s-style family restaurant.

Walking in feels like a warm hug, with soothing earth tones, wooden-beam decor and ornate amber chandeliers in the main dining room, along with side sunrooms from an expansion that capitalize on the cozy friendly vibe. The Roll N Roaster is architectural sunshine, the canary yellow laminate booths a vibe onto themselves. The place is the same as it ever was, thank goodness, and the menu is “simply delicious” as the old slogan goes, preserved in neon on the facade.

They marked their 55th anniverary on Tuesday with a bash — free anniversary pens and buy one (or two), get one (or two) free roast-beef sandwiches that had drawn a staggering 6,000 orders by late evening.

Indeed, this icon on Emmons Avenue was jumping in a way I’d never seen it. I had the pleasure of being there for the occasion, breaking bread with Jack Giambanco, the creator of Major Miniatures, and Matthew Selsky from mattyeaats during a memorable (and muggy) summer evening reveling in the wonders of this place. It was a night celebrating nostalgia, one I’m already nostalgic for.

It was also an impromptu signing with my friends of my book “The Great American Retro Road Trip.” I also picked up a true treasure for my collection of Americana — a model of Roll N Roaster’s sign, created by Jack. Scroll through his gallery for examples of the storefront wonders he brilliantly turns into model form — and, in many cases, brings back to life, as close as we’ll ever be to seeing them again, long after they have left our streets.

But no worries about the Roll N Roaster’s fate. It is alive and well, founded by Buddy Lamonica in 1970 and a cherished part of the Brooklyn food scene. It’s good comfort food — the roast beef sliced thin on fresh baked rolls. Consider getting it with “cheez” sauce — as they say, “You can have cheez on anything you pleez” — and enjoy a side of cottage fries — aka OG Fries — which vanished to great customer chagrin for a time because of large-potato shortages.

Roll N Roaster is family, tied deeply into 55 years of memories, fueled in part by a memorable old commercial, the “Not So Fast” jingle belted out by energetic employees. See the circa 1980 ad below, which was running as late as the aughts but runs forever in our hearts, and well, on YouTube:

Delightfully old school and always charming, the Roll N Roaster, now owned by longtime employee Eric Rodriguez, is a treasure and I fully expect there will be crowds for all their future celebrations, right on up to their 100th in 2070. Hopefully that ‘70s — as in 1970s — vibe will still be around.

The McDonald’s in Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania, has become a pilgrimage site for fans of McDonaldland due to its talking Apple Tree statue, which sits in its own glass-enclosed room across from a Ronald McDonald statue, perched on a stand high on a corner wall.

Well, Officer Big Mac clearly had the day off, because on Sunday, a group of people was caught on video walking away with Ronald McDonald. And as you can see from these photos released by the Nesquehoning Police Department, the Hambuglar was not involved – or at least, he sent human operatives.

Per the police department:

“A few unidentified suspects waltzed into McDonald’s and walked out with RONALD McDONALD himself.

We’re not clowning around. This was a full-blown McNapping.

Ronald was last seen smiling, as usual, unaware of the betrayal. Witnesses say he didn’t even put up a fight.

To the suspects:

We get it — times are tough, and therapy is expensive. But kidnapping a plastic icon of joy? That’s a McFelony.

To the public:

If you see Ronald out in the wild — maybe at a party, passenger seat of a car, or sitting awkwardly in someone’s yard — please call us at 570-669-9111.”

It’s easy, and almost unavoidable, to make some light of the ridiculousness of what happened. But, needless to say, this is not OK. These statues are a treasure, and what few restaurants still showcase them should be commended for keeping this fiberglass nostalgia alive. They shouldn’t have to worry about having these fast-food relics purloined. The owner, reports WNEP-TV, has a sentimental attachment to the statue and wants it back.

The restaurant’s general manager, Eve Snyder, was furious when she learned of the theft, telling WNEP-TV that the incident happened during a busy time in the kitchen on Sunday afternoon.

This McDonald's is in my book!

“I was very angry. I woke up to a text with a picture of the wall, and it said, 'Where is Ronald? Where is he?' So then when I checked the footage, you could see them in here horse around a bit, and then it was busy and they just scooped out the side doors."

Let’s hope Ronald is returned home soon.

H/T McDonaldland collector and Retrologist friend Tom Oszman for the news tip.

I remember a time when Manhattan’s Meatpacking District wasn’t a trendy nightlife or shopping destination, but an edgy workaday neighborhood with dozens of butchery operations that gave the area its name – and pungent scent.

The neighborhood has been gentrified, of course, and today, a small but resilient presence of meatpackers remains, toiling in the shadow of the High Line and the Standard Hotel, operating under the protection of the city-sanctioned Gansevoort Market Co-op.

Since 1949, Hector’s Cafe has been a part of this neighborhood, outlasting notable nightspots like Hogs and Heifers and Florent, which drew more headlines but came and went. Hector’s never left until it had no choice.

Now, the final days of actual meatpacking are nearing for the neighborhood, and closer at hand is the final day for Hector’s itself, which is set to shut for good on July 18, well before the end of its lease in 2033.

The news of the cafe’s closure surfaced on social media a few days ago, and I called Saturday morning to confirm. Nick, one of the owners, informed me that the closure is related to a deal the co-op struck with the city, which made news late last year. The remaining butchers would retire or move. In its place would potentially go expansions of the Whitney Museum of American Art as well as the High Line, a housing development, and other changes.

Here’s some video of the store shot Saturday by Eyewitness News, including the farewell sign in the window.

The city calls the new development Gansevoort Square.

“This vision will build upon the success of the Meatpacking District and reimagine the site as a one-of-a-kind destination for New Yorkers, with mixed-income housing, new open space, and the opportunity to expand the Whitney Museum of American Art and the High Line operations facility—some of the city’s most iconic cultural institutions,” the city announced last October.

In January, the city put out a request for proposals for developers to reimagine the property:

The Request for Proposals (RFP) outlines a vision for up to 600 units of mixed-income housing — with a goal of 50 percent of total units being permanently affordable — and ground-floor retail space, both which will be located on the residential site of Gansevoort Square.

Last fall, New York Post reporter Steve Cuozzo offered context on the potential deal. The meatpackers, rather than being forced out, reportedly saw Gansevoort Square as the knock of opportunity.

Gansevoort Market president John Jobbagy said “technological advances” had made the market’s processing facilities obsolete.

“This opportunity [to leave] has come along at the right time,” Jobbagy added.

But what happens next was unclear. A source said the meat companies weren’t obligated to move out “until a project for the site is secured.”

And although the city has prioritized housing, an insider said the agreement gives the Whitney “right of first offer” over the entire site.

So, where exactly do things stand with the development? Expect more news to emerge in the coming days, as word spreads of Hector’s impending closure. I’ll keep you posted here.

In the meantime, get thee to Hector’s before the last day, and enjoy an experience you’ll never be able to have again — a bite inside a working piece of Meatpacking District history.

Fire guts art deco 7 Up warehouse in Bakersfield, California

I swear I try not to make this newsletter all about bad news, but it’s a newsletter, and, alas, the news is often bad.

Just weeks after the soda distribution operation relocated from its historic 1930s art deco building, taking the once-revolving 7 Up neon sign with it, the historic plant on East 18th Street in Bakersfield went up in flames on June 30.

The video below is cued to footage of the sign’s removal recently.

A series of fires has plagued Bakersfield in recent years, damaging historic structures and alarming preservationists. The city’s architectural legacy takes a hit with every one of these blazes.

The loss of the 7 Up facility, a former bottling plant, is so unsettling to me, as I had just visited last July. It was my second time visiting the art deco beauty, and it was always a highlight of my visits to Bakersfield.

No more.

As for the status of the sign, I’m not sure yet where it is (if you know, drop me a line), but I’m relieved it wasn’t left behind, as it might have been destroyed in the blaze. The sign is gorgeous, with the seven little neon bubbles adding whimsy, one of the soda’s vintage logos.

7 Up’s presence in this region is unmistakable, with other historic signs in Bakersfield’s Tower District and in Merced.

@merchmotel7-UP Bottling Plant, Bakersfield #architecture #bakersfield #7up

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Jim-Denny’s comeback comes to an end

The revival of Sacramento’s beloved Jim-Denny’s restaurant has come to an end. N’Gina Guyton, the owner, announced the closure last week after being served an eviction notice earlier this year. She told the Sacramento News and Review that she had a verbal deal with the landlord to buy the place and defer rent in the meantime, or at least have a right of first refusal in a sale of the property.

She says the landlord would never name a price, making it hard for her to rally investors to facilitate a deal. And then, in April, she said, the landlord decided to evict her. With only a verbal agreement to fall back on, her case did not stand up in court, she said.

Last week, customers came to say farewell — again — to Jim-Denny’s. It last closed, under different ownership, in February 2020.

As for Guyton, she said she would revive South, an earlier restaurant she operated in Sacramento.

Whither the building and its gorgeous neon sign? Jim-Denny’s is landmarked, which confers protection, but we’ll have to see what happens next, as Guyton said the landlord is selling the building and an adjacent property.

Jim-Denny’s has been through a lot since opening 1934 — let’s hope it makes it to its 100th birthday and well beyond.

Retrologist Roadside Bites

• A storied Nashville Music Row studio where Johnny Cash recorded is on the market for $4.65 million.

• The longtime home of Tucson’s El Güero Canero, a restaurant known for its Sonoran-style hot dogs, is closing to relocate to a larger location, opening later this month.

• Just what is a Sonoran dog? Ana Frias explains:

  Sonoran Hot Dogs are taken to a higher level! With a soft bun, hot dog wrapped in bacon and topped with sautéd onions, chopped tomatoes plus your favorite condiments. Once you have one of these, you’ll never go back to standard hot dogs!

  

• More updates from Bakersfield, and this report is welcome news. The renovation of the old Woolworth’s and its luncheonette is nearing completion and is set to reopen this summer.

• Granary Row, a historic shopping center at the site of a grain mill in Gaithersburg, Maryland, has been sold.

• Here’s a delightful sampling of art deco buildings around the world as the style celebrates its centennial.

• This is a compelling argument to visit Oregon’s oldest resort, Hot Lake Springs. (It’s got a killer neon sign — that’s usually sufficient inducement for me.)

• Albuquerque’s historic Frontier Restaurant gets a shoutout in this Wall Street Journal celebration of the New Mexico city. If the WSJ paywall gets in your way, learn more about Frontier here.

• Enjoy this sweet and richly detailed celebration of the Rock Springs Cafe in Black Canyon City, Arizona — a desert delight for dessert, particularly pies. Pies so good, news of an earthquake prompted a story reassuring readers the pies, while shaken, were not slaughtered.

• The 90th anniversary of North Carolina’s first ABC liquor store just passed. The excellent North Carolina Rabbit Hole Substack asks why the state is still selling booze from state-controlled stores.

• Hong Kong’s iconic neon lights are endangered, and a new show is a bold light of hope in the spreading darkness: Artist Jerry Loo and his grandfather, neon craftsman Wong Kin-wah (黃健華) aka Master Wong, have put together an exhibition, Neon Heroes: Illuminated Dreams, at PMQ in Hong Kong. Master Wong has been making neon signs since 1954 — if you’ve explored the lights of Nathan Road and other parts of town, chances are your eyes have reflected his handiwork. Reports Honeycombers:

My grandfather is my hero. And that’s what inspired me to do a hero-themed exhibition,” explains Loo as he leads a tour of his latest showcase at PMQ. Neon Heroes: Illuminated Dreams is a collaborative project not only between Master Wong and Loo, but also of craftspeople and artists, tradition and contemporaneity.

Here’s a guide to finding some of Hong Kong’s best neon signs.

• The St. Cloud Times has a lovely profile of Little Falls, Minnesota. A highlight: The Falls Theatre, which I’d love to give a home on my SD card sometime soon.

• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a paywalled write-up on Nu-Way Weiners in Macon, Georgia, which I unsuccessfully tried to photograph on a frigid December night many years ago. I’ll be back one day. Read more about Nu-Way here.

• A new art exhibit from Taiwanese-Canadian artist Liang Wang takes inspiration in part from the neon signs of Vancouver’s Chinatown.

• A visit from a celebrity chef can really shake up a local restaurant, and the Gordon Ramsay effect is reverberating through the Four Star Diner in Cortland, Ohio.

• SWEPCO, the power utility in Shreveport, Louisiana, has restored the large sign atop its Arsenal Hill plant. The sign was fitted with LED lights, replacing neon. The plant started generating power in 1926.

Dear friends,

This is one of those pinch-me moments, the realization of a dream. I walked by the Strand Book Store the other night off Union Square in Manhattan and saw an ad for my book signing in the window!

And tonight, Wednesday, July 2, is the night!

I invite you to join me and my WABC-TV colleague Joelle Garguilo, who has graciously agreed to moderate, for a conversation about my book, “The Great American Retro Road Trip.”

I’ll be sharing stories, photos and, of course, signing books. If you’re in the area and can stop by, it would be great to meet you!

Get Tickets Here!