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American Roadside News
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Doggie Diner’s famous sign |
 Ken Garcia | The Examiner | August 10, 2006
San Francisco
The town’s official pooch got a new leash on life this week, and I for one could not be happier.
The Doggie Diner head — the last of the original litter — was granted landmark status by the Board of Supervisors this week, a fitting act for a smiling snout that speaks volumes about San Francisco’s lengthy embrace of the sophisticated and the schlocky.
But it also means that I can finally sign off the campaign to save DD’s much-abused head on which I labored the better part of a year, hounding city officials and urging pseudo-animal rights activists to fight to give this dog one more day. Our fates have been forever joined — I crusaded so I would never have to write his obit and now, no doubt, he’ll figure prominently in mine.
And that’s fine, because it means the Doggie Diner story will live on for generations to come, and how a vestige of The City’s past has been saved instead of fading away in old photographs.
San Francisco has lost enough icons in the last half-century to make a preservationist weep, and if you ever got to read my e-mails you know that there are a lot of steamed buns out there that you won’t find near a hot dog cart.
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Turning out for the drive-in |
 By Meredith Goldstein | The Boston Globe | August 8, 2006
Milford, NH
The sun is setting on a Friday night, which means it's almost time for Will Ferrell and Johnny Depp to light up the big screens at the Milford Drive-In Theater. There's no modern-day surround sound or high-definition effects, but this place has something harder to come by: the feel of the 1950s.
"It's old school," says Allisen Lemay, of Bedford, N.H., who spent last Friday night picnicking with friends in front of the white screen set to show ``Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" and ``You, Me and Dupree." Across the lot, folks lined up in front of another screen to see the new ``Pirates of the Caribbean" and the animated flick ``Cars."
Every night is double-feature night at the Milford Drive-In, which is an hour from Boston, and just a few minutes from Nashua, N.H., and it's always $20 a carload. This means Lemay and her three friends only paid $5 each for a night of flicks.
``It's very cheap," says Lemay, who is sitting on a blanket on the ground next to a cooler of food from home.
There are about 400 drive-in movie theaters left in the country, according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association, compared to about 4,000 in 1958. The land many of them once sat on has been gobbled up by developers.
Massachusetts has four operating drive-ins, some of which have been operating since the 1950s; a few of the other New England theaters, such as this spot in Milford, are close enough to Boston to be a night trip.
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Talking Shops: Detroit Commercial Folk Art (Great Lake Books Series)
By Ron Dylewski | The American Roadside.com | August 7, 2005
I've been traveling to Detroit for many years now. Mostly on business, which meant I didn't have time to do much more than watch the city and suburbs fly by from a cab window. But I was always amazed at the diversity and sheer vivaciousness of the commercial signage along the strips that fan out from downtown. Apparently I wasn't alone.
In his recent book, "Talking Shops" author David Clements has managed to capture a broad and strangly beautiful cross-section of the Motor City's commercial art and signage. These are signs that shout, cajole, beg, plead, invite, wink and make you smile. They are folk art at its finest; the human and emotional counterpoint to the carefully parsed logo and image designs fussed over by art directors in big city firms for their nervous national clients.
As Clements points out, this portion of "the roadside" is often even more ethereal than the diners and drive-ins we all love and long for, for indeed "Mr. Foote's Hand Car Wash" might be painted over by "Leonard's House of Retreads" in short order.
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Pete's Drive-In feeds off fast lane |
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By Jessica Bock | St. Louis Post-Dispatch | August 3, 2006
Wentzville, MO
A car pulls in, and the old speaker crackles as a teenage girl places her order: a bacon double cheeseburger, fries and a Pepsi.
There's another crackling from the old box before the wait staff answers back from behind the old-fashioned counter. "Comin' right up," the employee says into the speaker.
Thousands and thousands of orders and 40 years ago this week, Pete Luetkenhaus bought a root beer stand that has since become a landmark at Pearce Boulevard and Highway 61 in Wentzville.
Farther west where Pearce Boulevard meets the parkway, the street is flooded with almost any fast food fare your stomach desires. Yet Pete's Drive-In has stayed afloat and intends to keep on going.
"A lot of our customers are repeat. That's how we survived with all the new restaurants in town," said Marsha Perotti, Luetkenhaus' daughter who helps him manage the restaurant. "It takes good customer service and a hometown feel."
Perotti may help run the restaurant famous for its country-style breakfasts and fried chicken, but her father hasn't quit. He'll turn 71 in September and can still be found at the place six days a week, chatting with customers.
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State theatre's new mission: the salvation of young souls |
 By Christina Hildreth | The South Bend Tribune | August 4, 2006
South Bend, Indiana
In her 86 years, the State Theatre has opened and closed six times, endured four renovations and operated under at least a half-dozen different owners.
She has hosted movies, vaudeville acts, concerts, and a Super Bowl party. The old marquee weathered the Great Depression, movie-goers' flight to suburbia and the 2005 demolition of her Mishawaka sister, the Tivoli.
At times, the State stirred talk of impropriety: she closed for a day in 1929 after the mayor of South Bend declared her burlesque shows to be too "vulgar and disgusting" for public consumption. The theater's showing of "The Exorcist" in 1974 prompted an outcry from Catholics. Reports of bar fights plagued the theater's nightclub shortly after the turn of the millennium.
But old age and a new owner are changing the theater's morals. She is being converted, shedding her liquor license, secular concerts and saucy attitude.
No longer will the theater's entertainment be solely for pleasure and profit. Now the building carries a mission: the salvation of young souls.
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