This abandoned Six Flags is a haunting monument to Hurricane Katrina
These days, humans rarely walk the abandoned amusement park, photographed in June. The sounds you hear are of bees, crickets, bullfrogs and wild hogs. (Emily Kask/For The Washington Post)
From The Washington Post: On a sweltering afternoon in early June, in the swampy lake at the center of a Six Flags amusement park, a few feet from a gazebo where families once munched on beignets, an alligator’s head emerges from the water, breaking the reflection of a 110-foot-high roller coaster that hasn’t operated in 19 years.
The alligator watches us.
The eyes of more alligators slowly break the surface of the small lake.
The air buzzes with bees and crickets, the croaks of bullfrogs, the grunts of wild hogs. It is deafening.
A peek at the World’s Smallest Diner in Watkins Glen
From WETM: WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – If you’ve ever driven through Watkins Glen, you’ve probably seen the World’s Smallest Diner. But, what is it and how long has it been here?
83-year-old Gerry Collins has run the diner for the past ten years.
“Everybody’s gotta do what they enjoy. There’s no sense in just sitting around because you’re old,” said World’s Smallest Diner Owner Gerry Collins.
The diner is 32 square feet, smaller than most people’s closets. It’s only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Frozen-in-time 1950s Dairy Queen location in Ontario was the second-ever in Canada
Photo by Dave Bennison, Historical Niagara
From blogTo.com: People are obsessing over this utterly retro Dairy Queen location in an Ontario town that was the second-ever in Canada.
Founded more than 80 years ago in Jolliet, Illinois by Sherb Noble, Dairy Queen has solidified itself as North America’s quintessential ice cream chain — and one location in a small Ontario town provides a window into the early days of DQ’s expansion north of the border.
Located just off Highway 3 in Port Colborne, the DQ location on Main Street East is not just a perfect spot to grab a cold, sweet treat on a summer road trip — it was also the second-ever location to open in Canada, and has maintained the same retro aesthetic ever since it opened its doors in the early 1950’s.
Five Historic Greyhound Stations Live On With New Uses
The Bus Stop cafe in Dyersburg, Tennessee. Martha Lannom
From Preservation Magazine: These days, you might step into a Greyhound station without any intention of catching a bus. Most of Greyhound’s legacy properties, including its remaining historic depots, were sold in 2022, and in some cases bus stops have been moved to curbside. Many of the company’s historic stations had already been demolished over the years, but some have been resurrected through adaptive reuse. For example, well-known former Greyhound stations in Georgia and Indiana have been restaurants—The Grey in Savannah and BRU Burger Bar in Evansville—since the mid-2010s.
The Bus Stop cafe in the city of Dyersburg, Tennessee, is another addition to the former-Greyhound food scene. Greyhound bus service ceased at the modest Art Deco station in the 1980s, and multiple tenants cycled through it afterward. When Dyersburg advocates John and Martha Lannom bought the property in 2014, the striking little blue-and-white station was vacant, but they saw its potential as a downtown anchor. The Lannoms completely updated the dilapidated and already heavily altered interior, and they committed to preserving the 1930 facade. They kept the original door and window openings and marquees, and they cleaned and still maintain its original bands of blue-and-white-glazed brick, vertical sign, and other historic details. The Bus Stop is now a popular diner.
Float on: MacAlpine’s Diner signals sweet return with national grant
MacAlpine’s first opened in 1929 and has served generations of customers. MacAlpine’s Diner
From the Phoenix New Times: When you step into MacAlpine’s Diner & Soda Fountain, there is an old jukebox filled with vintage 45s from the 1950s and ‘60s that embodies the spirit of this almost century-old establishment: retro cool, thoughtfully curated and warmly nostalgic.
From the soda bar illuminated by the kitschy glow of the Coca-Cola marquee that advertises signature sandwiches and famous ice cream floats, to the carefully placed antiques and assorted collectibles from the golden age of Americana, everything is aimed at making you feel like the last true greaser.
Historic photos: Miss Worcester and other diners past and present
The former Alice and the Hat Diner in Worcester. Telegram & Gazette
From the Worcester Telegram & Gazette: A large collection of diner photos, past and present.