The old Guilford Dairy in Greensboro is now home to a skateboard shop. This stone carving over the entry is so cool. I never noticed it before. 
Need a car? Love mannequins in bikinis? Speak Spanish? Here's your car lot!
This is the Church's Chicken in Greensboro that I frequent. Can't beat the 2 piece leg and thigh special for 99 cents on Tuesdays.
This is one big-ass Foot Locker. Nice design, circa 1998. Hanes Mall, in Winston-Salem
Before they went tye-dye with it, Spencer Gifts used to have this very '70s logo. I guess someone in marketing decided the tacky merchandise and the classy logo didn't match up. too bad. It's the best part of this store. Except for the Afro wigs, of course.
You don't see these signs much anymore. Knollwood Street in Winston Salem
We have one of those Arby's signs in Kent, OH (where I went to school) on our "main drag" so that all the people coming to visit immediately got a big old glimpse of our gaudy flashing Arby's sign. I always used to comment that it looked more like Kent-Vegas than Kent State with that casino-esque flash of trash on the side of the road.
ReplyDeleteHas the franchise of Arby's forgotten about these poor joints, leaving them in signage purgatory? They still exist, and they are in desperate need of help!!!
The Arby's sign on Jefferson Ave in Newport News, VA went dark (and taken down) earlier this year. The place went out of business, there's still an old one on Mercury Blvd in Hampton, VA though.
ReplyDeleteSo, that logo you have in the pic was the 70's logo?
And yay for skateboarding shops, we need more of them.
I really dig the old Arby's signs, but man, do they need some TLC. The picture I shot was of the "good" side of the sign. The other side had half its bulbs out and part of the neon was on the fritz.
ReplyDeleteThey need to make an effort to preserve some of their old restaurants, kinda like McDonald's does. It's a inmportant part of roadside history, and besides, who wants to eat at a tacky run-down fast food place?
Carrie: I think Arby's provides pretty poor service to their franchisees. I've never been to two of their stores that are exactly alike, and most are in pretty bad shape. Combine corporate negligance with a quirky menu, and you've got trouble.
Most times the only ones I see that do good business are the old ones. Many of the new ones go belly up faster than your typical Subway. And that's saying something :-)
Anita: I'm suprised the one in Hampton is still around. that area's been bleeding stores for a while. If I was guessing, I would have thought that would have been the one that went out of business before Newport News. Must be that crappy franchise support rearing its ugly head.
Yeah, that's the '70s Spoencer Gifts logo. The neon "gifts" part was an '80s flourish. I'm suprised that store still has the old logo. Most of the ones I've seen lately (other than Valley View) have updated to the new "tye-dye" garbage. Ugh.
There are at least two skateboard shops in Greensboro. That one, 915, has a skatepark attached to it. The other, BoardParadise, is a lot bigger and also carries snowboards, surfboards and a lot of skate fashion lines, along with those Nixon watches we were talking about before.