Oregon’s National Neon Sign Museum celebrates that most luminescent of advertising gimmicks
Neon signage, post World War 2, relied more on symbols than words. Credit: KING TV
From KING5: THE DALLES, Ore. — Inside a huge and historic Elks Temple in The Dalles, Oregon, David Benko has established the National Neon Sign Museum, using his own collection of artifacts to tell the story.
“Who’s not drawn to light?” he asked. “I mean bugs are drawn to light. We’re all drawn to light.”
For more than 30 years, as the owner of Rocket City Neon Company in Camas, Washington, this Kirkland-raised artist has brought signs to light.
This isn’t the EPCOT you remember: Top Imagineer explains why the park ‘will never be completed’
Floor inlays at Connections Café & Eatery are inspired by Walt Disney’s original design plans for EPCOT. David Roark, The Walt Disney Company
From USAToday: EPCOT has changed. Future World is gone. New neighborhoods are taking shape. And it’s hard to envision what’s next with construction walls obscuring one of the largest transformations in the Florida park’s history. It’s a lot for longtime EPCOT fans to take in.
Scott Mallwitz, executive creative director of Walt Disney Imagineering, gets it.
“We’re EPCOT fans as well,” he said. “I was here a couple of weeks after opening, first year, and had the opportunity to visit, and I was just blown away. Many years later, to be able to come back and lead a team thinking about how to set the park up for the next 30 years is just incredible.”
Former Sunset Drive-In big screen in Ontario takes a final bow
The big screen at the former Sunset Drive-In is no more. Buckeye Barn Salvage dropped the screen Tuesday at the business outside Ontario. Jason Molyet/News Journal
From the Mansfield News Journal: SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP − The landmark former Sunset Drive-In Theatre, just outside Ontario, marked its final chapter Tuesday morning.
The big steel screen was dropped to make way for a retention pond and new barn for the Shelby-area barn salvage business that opened in the location in 2019.
“When we build the retention pond, we’ll take the clay out of the ground and use it for our building pad. So this has to go,” said Joe Lykins, the owner of Buckeye Barn Salvage, who bought the 13-acre property at 4018 Ohio 309 in 2019. He has been in the barn business for over 12 years.
Tom’s Starlight Still Shines After Making a Full 180 From Tom’s Diner
From left: A charcuterie platter and the Radio Freqs cocktail; Tom’s retro-chic lounge. Photos by Sarah Banks
From 5280: To fully appreciate what Tom’s Starlight is, you have to forget what Tom’s Diner was. At the new iteration of the Capitol Hill institution, you can’t expect a menu full of breakfast options, blue-plate specials, or Buffalo wings at 3 a.m. The new Tom’s only does brunch on the weekends, and it closes in reasonable fashion sometime between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m., depending on the night.
If you missed the will-they-or-won’t-they-demolish-it drama that ultimately turned Tom’s Diner into Tom’s Starlight, the quick version is this: In 2019, owner Tom Messina, who wanted to retire, tried to sell his East Colfax property to housing developers. But local architecture buffs weren’t excited about the potential razing of the Googie-style building, one of the city’s best examples of the Space Age-y design popular from the 1950s to the early 1970s. Community members, to Messina’s discontent, petitioned to add the 52-year-old structure to the National Register of Historic Places.
Lifelong Resident Seeks to Restore Little Falls Diner
Al Sullivan
From Tapinto: LITTLE FALLS, NJ – A former pastry chef and longtime resident of Little Falls has embarked on a mission to save The Little Falls Diner, an iconic 1940s era rail car style diner that has long stood on Paterson Street. And, she is hoping to get the community to help her rebuild it.
New Jersey is famous for its diners, at one point in the 1940s boasting 14 different manufacturers of the late night and early morning food havens in the state.
The Little Falls Diner was constructed in the mid-1940s by Master Diners of Pequannock and went through a series of owners – including the first woman mayor of Little Falls Margaret De Young — before a basement fire closed it. The diner has remained closed for nearly 30 years.
Chief Taghkanic’s Last Stand
From Randybyname: Word got out last week that the stellar and iconic neon sign atop the vestibule of the West Taghkanic Diner would soon go dark and come down. The news sparked some controversy as these developments usually do. However, for the first time that I can recall after following and reporting on the American roadside, the landscape wouldn’t lose the sign because of a name change or the owner’s inability to restore it from a damaged or decayed state. This time, the sign would surrender to politics.
According to an article in HudsonValley360.com, the owners posted a letter on the diner’s front door explaining their decision to end the use of the sign, and that “the decision is based on not using people as parodies.”