‘Go Get Your Kicks’: The Europeans Obsessed With a U.S. Highway
To commemorate Route 66’s centennial, a 23-foot pushpin was installed at the halfway point of the Oklahoma stretch. Nick Oxford for The New York Times
From The New York Times: Wolfgang Werz took a drag on his cigarette and a sip from his coffee cup, looked at his watch and blew his whistle. It was 8 a.m. in the parking lot of the Best Western in suburban St. Louis, time for Mr. Werz to rally his troops — a dozen German and Swiss tourists — so they could jump on their Harley-Davidson motorcycles and head out on Route 66.
Mr. Werz, who is 67, rattled off the day’s stops on their roughly 200-mile stretch through Missouri: the Wagon Wheel Motel in Cuba; the rocking chair in Fanning; the Devil’s Elbow Bridge; the Redmon’s Candy shop in Phillipsburg; and, by about 5 p.m., Springfield, the birthplace of the highway known as the “The Main Street of America.”
Then Mr. Werz, a wiry, weather-beaten former ski instructor from Tübingen, Germany, looked at the group of middle-aged bikers in leather jackets and boots and gave them their marching orders on day three of their two-week, 2,500-mile sojourn from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif.: “Let’s go get your kicks.”
A New Orleans museum dedicated to Southern food and drink has closed for good
Popeyes founder Al Copeland is remembered in a special exhibit at the Southern Food & Beverage Museum in New Orleans. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
From nola.com: The Southern Food & Beverage Museum on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard in Central City has permanently closed its doors, two years after celebrating its 20th anniversary.
A spokesperson for the board of directors of the National Food & Beverage Foundation, which oversees the facility, said Wednesday that the nonprofit institution was unable to overcome financial obstacles created by the pandemic and hurricanes earlier this decade.
Three more vintage signs go up at Frontier Auto Museum
Brandon Swan works on the top piece of a sign for the old Thunderbird Lodge Saturday afternoon next to the Frontier Auto Museum. News Record Photo/Jonathan Gallardo
From Gillette News Record: On Saturday afternoon, three large signs went up next to the Frontier Auto Museum.
Jeff Wandler, museum owner, and Ryan Swanson, museum manager, had the help of a couple of other people to put up signs from Cheyenne’s Wyoming Motel, Laramie’s Thunderbird Lodge and Gillette’s very own L&H Industrial in the lot directly across the street from the Frontier Auto Museum.
It’s part of a multi-year project to turn that area into a vintage sign park and Airbnb. Swanson said the project is one to two years behind schedule, but it’s exciting to see the signs finally go up.
Neon finally repaired on University Heights’ iconic sign
From cbs8: SAN DIEGO — The iconic University Heights sign, which has illuminated Park Boulevard for nearly 30 years, has been in need of repairs. But on Wednesday, some big progress is being made.
Over the last couple of years, the sign’s transformers and neon have been failing.
Marc Johnson, the President of the University Heights Community Association, told CBS 8 they needed approximately $24,000 to replace the neon.
Lost Ontario amusement park was once an essential stop en route to Niagara
Hamilton Public Library, Local History & Archives
From BlogTO: Decades before the Burlington Bay Skyway carried drivers over the waterfront, those heading from Toronto to Niagara Falls had to follow a much different route, one that passed directly by a now-forgotten Ontario amusement park.
For 75 years, the Canal Amusement Park was a local fixture on a narrow stretch of waterfront separating the Hamilton Harbour from Lake Ontario, referred to as the Burlington Beach Strip.
The waterfront attraction opened in 1903 on the Hamilton side of the shipping canal, and over the years, grew from a quaint park to a massive entertainment centre, complete with a Ferris wheel, carousel, roller coaster, bumper cars, and other classic carnival rides.
Before McDonald’s and Starbucks, Americans packed these once-beloved lunch counters
The rise of suburban office parks, car culture and fast-food restaurants helped erode the luncheonette’s place in everyday American life. (Browning/The New York Historical/Getty Images)
From Fox News: Long before fast-food counters and coffee shops became fixtures of American life, luncheonettes gave generations of Americans an inexpensive place to grab a meal and helped change where women could eat, work and socialize in public.
The casual restaurants serving simple, inexpensive meals, typically at a lunch counter, began emerging in the late 19th century. They boomed during the 1910s and 1920s and remained popular through the mid-20th century.
Woolworth’s, S.H. Kress, S.S. Kresge, Walgreens and Liggett’s were among the best-known names associated with lunch counters and luncheonettes at five-and-dime stores, drugstores and other retail establishments.