Edgemere Diner in Shrewsbury sold at auction; will find new home in New York’s Catskills
A potential bidder looks over the Edgemere Diner with a flashlight before Thursday’s auction in Shrewsbury. Christine Peterson/Telegram & Gazette
From The Worcester Telegram & Gazette: SHREWSBURY — After successfully bidding $45,000, a New York man is the new owner of the former Edgemere Diner car.
Separate auctions for both the art deco-style Fodero diner and its sign were held Thursday at the current site of the shuttered restaurant on Hartford Turnpike, but the diner won’t be there much longer.
Michael Cioffi said he plans to move the diner from Route 20 – which was a stipulation of the sale – to New York’s Catskills, where he already owns and operates the Phoenicia Diner, a diner car he bought during “a midlife crisis that didn’t involve a Harley-Davidson.”
Little Italy’s oldest Italian shop has survived for over a century — until now
E. Rossi and Co. has been a staple of New York’s Little Italy for more than a century. Stefano Giovannini
From The New York Post: E. Rossi and Co.’s Little Italy storefront, on the corner of Grand and Mulberry, appears to be just a typical gift shop, crammed with religious articles, music and kitchen equipment. (Otherwise known as the Italian essentials.) But the tourists who amble by — tipsy on Campari and full from pasta — might want to give it a second look.
It’s actually the oldest Italian gift shop in Little Italy, and perhaps in the United States.
“My grandfather Ernesto Rossi came here in 1900 and opened up for business 10 years later,” Ernest “Ernie” Rossi, Ernesto’s grandson and the shop’s owner, told The Post. The shop has been a cornerstone in the community, alongside the cannoli and espresso, for well over a century, employing a number of new immigrants to New York (including this writer’s grandmother, Olga).
Thomasville hotel once featured in ‘Green Book’ makes Georgia Trust Places in Peril list
The Imperial Hotel, featured in The Green Book, was placed on the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s annual “Places in Peril” list. File photo/Thomasville Times-Enterprise
From GPB News: Thomasville’s Imperial Hotel was one of 10 locations featured on this year’s Places in Peril list announced annually by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.
The Imperial Hotel was built in 1949 and operated as an exclusive rest place for African American travelers. It was also one out of 10 hotels listed in an African American Tourist Guide known as the Green Book.
After the hotel closed in 1969, the property continued to run as offices and shortly as headquarters for a chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People until it became abandoned in 2001.
In 2018, Jack Hadley, founder of the Black History Museum, bought the Imperial Hotel with funding gifted by Thomasville Landmarks and has since begun efforts to preserve the historical property for the Thomasville community.
Historic Hoboken diesel locomotive retires to Boonton
Hoboken Shore Railroad locomotives Nos. 701 and 700 are posed together for a publicity photo. Tri-State Railway Historical Society, Inc.
From The Daily Record: Hoboken Manufacturers Railroad No. 700 rolled into service in October 1947 and rumbled for decades along the twisting 1.5-mile Hudson waterfront route before the line closed in 1976.
The 44-ton diesel-electric locomotive, constructed in 1947 at General Electric’s factory in Erie, Pennsylvania, passed through a variety of owners over the following decades before its historic significance was recognized.
Regional Rail acquired it in 2011 and recently passed it to Operation Toy Train of New York and the Tri-State Railway Historical Society to pass it into preservation.
Its next and final destination: the Tri-State’s railroad collection at the United Railroad Historical Society of New Jersey’s restoration and storage facility in Boonton.
6 retro diners around Metro Vancouver that will take you back in time
@hilltopdinercafe/Instagram
From DailyHive: Whether you prefer a juicy burger with a side of crispy fries for lunch, or a classic eggs benny with crunchy waffles for breakfast, there’s something to be said about eating in the comfort of an old-school diner.
Diners transport us back to simpler times, when life was all about eating a good meal surrounded by good people.
Thankfully, there are a number of retro diners around Metro Vancouver that not only offer up amazing North American-style dishes, but also some awesome throwback vibes.
Here are six retro diners around Metro Vancouver that you must try at least once.
How the Valley Relics Museum is illuminating the area’s history, one neon sign at a time
Time Out/Michael Juliano
From Timeout: “This is like my childhood in a nutshell,” Valley Relics Museum founder Tommy Gelinas says as we survey a display of Southern California fast food curios. Between a wooden Taco Bell sign and an oil painting of Colonel Sanders, there’s a Jack in the Box clown head that you used to be able to yell your drive-through order into—at least until “the clowns might’ve freaked out one too many kids so in the late ’70s, early ’80s they started blowing up Jack [in TV commercials].”
If there’s a 20th-century local pop culture curiosity that’s vanished from L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, there’s a good chance some remaining shred of it has found a second life at this Lake Balboa museum. Gelinas has been rescuing, collecting and preserving Valley-related ephemera for over two decades. In 2013, he first put his accumulation of mementos on display at the Valley Relics Museum’s first brick-and-mortar location in Chatsworth. As his collection of 20-foot-tall signs grew, he moved the museum in 2018 to its current home, a pair of spacious hangars at the Van Nuys Airport stuffed with cars, bikes, neon, arcade cabinets and celebrity memorabilia.