Sign at Holladay’s Cotton Bottom Inn has been restored — and has working lights for the first time in decades
The iconic Cotton Bottom sign was lit up again on Monday, July 6, 2020. Brimley Neon has finished its restoration of original sign. Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune
From The Salt Lake Tribune: After decades without working lights — the iconic rabbit sign at the Cotton Bottom Inn now has neon illumination.
“It’s the first time in about 60 years,” surmised Dave Brimley, owner of Brimley Neon, which recently restored the vintage sign.
On Monday, the company returned the blue and yellow piece to its home at about 6200 S. Holladay Boulevard in Holladay.
Brimley said there were no photos to show the exact color of the two original neon tubes. From the paint around the rabbit, though, he could tell that one light had to be sky blue.
Electrifying news about the future of the road trip
Carhenge, located in western Nebraska, is a roadside attraction that duplicates Stonehenge, except it is made from classic American cars. Larry Edsall photo
From the ClassicCars.com Journal: I arrived at an interesting intersection a few days ago.
It began with the arrival of a news release from Electrify America, announcing the completion of its first cross-country route served by its network of fast-charging devices for electric vehicles. In fact, the company noted, by the end of this summer, it will offer two cross-country routes for travel by EV.
Electrify America, which is based in Reston, Virginia, said the completed route — using interstates 15 and 70 — goes from Los Angeles, through California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland before arriving at Washington, D.C. Along this route, charging stations are, on average, only 70 miles from each other.
Good-bye, range anxiety!
Legendary SoCal Diner Chain Norms Announces New, Smaller Side Project
Norm’s on La Cienega. Wonho Frank Lee
From Eater-Los Angeles: Historic Los Angeles diner icon Norms is switching things up, announcing a new side-project restaurant called Norms Junior. The new-look cafe spaces will be mostly smaller in stature and will focus on a variety of Norms favorites as well as updated diner items, all with a more casual service model and and laid-back appeal. The first Norms Junior surprise opens today in West Covina.
Whereas Norms is mostly known for its iconic Googie architectuere — particularly at the historically protected La Cienega location — and around-the-clock service for things like patty melts and pancakes, the new Norms Junior will offer updated menu items like breakfast sandwiches, combo meals, and burgers and mozzarella sticks and the like for lunch and dinner.
Monuments and statues are falling. But what comes next?
An abandoned gas station in Tierra Amarilla, N.M., is shown with graffiti honoring the 1967 courthouse raid in the town by armed Mexican-American land-grant activists.
From the Star Tribune: TIERRA AMARILLA, N.M. — The dusty town of Tierra Amarilla perches in the shadows of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Here, five decades ago, this poor northern New Mexico community saw one of the most violent clashes in civil rights history when armed Mexican American ranchers raided a courthouse in a dispute over land grants. It shocked the nation and helped trigger the Chicano Movement.
Today, there’s almost nothing in town to honor this historic moment, except for graffiti art on an abandoned gas station and a sentence on a marker. There’s also almost no public art about the event anywhere.
Show & Tell With the Genius Behind America’s Best Roadside Attraction
From Atlas Obscura: Meet Erika Nelson, the artist behind—deep breath—the World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things. In this episode of Show & Tell, she takes us through her own unique collection, which helped inspire what is arguably America’s best roadside attraction. From the Thing (no, really!) to a cow hairball, check out what inspires Nelson’s unusual take on the world.