They will never have the memory as a kid of sitting down at the counter, plopping down a QUARTER, and getting a nice banana split. Now laugh your ass off

The Seneca on Queen St. in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Then and now.

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I saw the Guitar Greats concert there back in the mid 80's. Dave Edmunds, Steve Cropper, Link Wray, Brian Setzer, Dickey Betts, Johnny Winter, Lita Ford, Tony Iommi, Neal Schon and David Gilmour

Anyone remember Horn & Hardart automated restaurants? They were big in Philly & I think New York.
All your food was vended & pretty darn good. I remember the machines taking nickels. Piece of pie was like .30

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I went there a few times. (To the flea market.)

I think I saw these in The Hustler.

I went in one during my first NYC visit in April, 1975

Chicago area people should like reviewing this site...

http://www.craigslostchicago.com/lost-eateries.php

Joe (joemagiera at ameritech dot net)
[email protected]

Not defunct yet. Still kickin.

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No, but carpal tunnel is.

Even though I neglected to put the or fella at the end of that statement I was hoping it would come across that way. In case it did not:

"Texting Thumb" is Serious! Didn't you know?

Only drive-in still kicking right outside Scranton

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Here's another one that is long gone, so many fun times spent at this place. Local one here in OC was off the 405 freeway at Magnolia.

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Tesson Park in St. Louis. About 2 blocks from my home. Go-Karts, miniature golf and in the yellow shack on the left, a Slick Chick and a Rack-A-Ball that I probably bought 50 times over.
That's me on the right sitting on the stool with blue shirt and white jeans. The late, great Dick Otto, the owner of the place is on the left with the white t-shirt.
Opened in 1961 and closed about 1985. I worked there for many summers (closed during the winter) and my two younger brothers worked there after me.
I made $1.00 an hour and worked 6 days a week from 12 noon til 12 midnight. Then spent the day there on my day off. Never considered it a job. Had way too much fun and met a lot of "chicks".

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Now called the Village Theater in Plainfield you can own it with a apartment on the top for a measly $155,000. I remember going for a $1.00 and seeing all those great 1970 movies.

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Double Door Inn the best local blues/music club from 1973 till its closing in 2016 Clapton showed up and played a set after a concert at the local coliseum so many great times here.

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My family *loves* the drive-ins. There are still 10 or so within 30 minutes of me, which is pretty amazing when you consider that they have a very limited season here.

Want to see if there's a drive-in near you? Check out http://drive-ins.com/ - they have an interactive map you can search.

Restaurants from the 80s in Socal.

Charley Browns prime rib place. That was the place to go, for prime rib. Used to go all the time and they were always packed. Gone for a long time.

Red Onion. These were the places you wanted to go if you wanted to party in the 80s. I mean, these places were serious business, I'm talking a wall-to-wall meat market. We had an awesome time every time we want. That one that was in Newport Beach was an absolute madhouse on Saturday nights. I think it is now Joe's Crabshack.

Bobby McGee's. This was another major party place, happy hours were awesome.

Really miss the Theaters from the area I grew up in. They turned one into a parts store, another into loft living space, leveled one and recently converted the one that had the killer arcade into a PetCo. WTF! Progress my ass

I grew up right at the end of the "small theater" era - it was a big deal when they installed the huge 21-screen cineplex in our town (stadium seating! dolby!), but it was a bummer watching all the little local places slowly shutter. Gone were the rep screenings, gone were the amber chandeliers and earth-tone carpets, gone were the juddery prints. I definitely miss the vibe of those places, and it's sad that 35mm screenings are almost totally kaput, though Toronto has a few theaters that still do film screenings.

Way more missed is the drive-in, which was right in the middle of town next to the freeway, and it's funny to think about now that they would show some pretty gory stuff there - I remember being told not to look at the screen that was showing the remake of The Haunting. There was something very special about going to the drive-in on a hot summer night and everyone was lined up under this big dark blue sky that would be traced with really vivid colors from all the pollution (ah, central California) and getting snack food from the big, very truly 70s snack bar building that was all buttery tile up to the ceiling. It's a little crazy now to think that my parents would let me wander off to the snack bar or the playground by myself, since I was only five or six, but this was before the 24 hour news cycle. It was legit sad when it closed to make way for a Costco.

Also, not a theater, but my first pinball memory was a Funhouse in the bar area at a 50s-themed diner that my mom would hang out at with her work friends. It shuttered and became a Chinese restaurant, and who knows what happened to that Rudy.

Rifle Sport at 8th & Hennepin until 1970 then upstairs at 6th & Hennepin until 1981. Downtown Minneapolis.
My Father's arcade.

LTG : )

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Great photos! Please tell me the neon was saved.

Sadly no.

The parts that made the neon bullseyes blink in rotation were illegal by 1970, so it couldn't be moved. And you have a good 40 foot wide sign, where would you store it. And store it for what ?

Same with my two signs through the years. Wood one was too decrepit to save. And newer one got replaced with the wood shingles and all the signs on the building I'm in. Where would you put them ?

LTG : )

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Saw my first movie there as a youngster--E.T.

I have very fond memories of the Hoyts Cinemas in Brisbane. Originally the it was the Hoyts theatre built in 1929, but the old American Style Picture Palace was demolished and transformed into four cinemas in the late 70’s. I have fond memories of the cinemas.

Unfortunately, the cinemas fell into disrepair and the owners shut them down around 2008. There was a fight to keep the cinema building from being demolished, but the fight was lost and the cenima site demolished. To this day they thankfully kept the beautiful original foyer open due to a heritage listing, but the rest of the building is gone and remains an empty block to this day.

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Wait, what? Were they some kind of relay made from an alloy of mercury, gaseous lead, and liquid asbestos fused with aluminum wire?

I can't imagine what kind of electrical components would have been banned so soon. Lead was phased out in the later 70s, mercury switches were still made into the 80's, asbestos was another 70's kill, aluminum wire wasn't banned from building codes until after disastrous fires in the late 70s, and cloth sheathed wire could be replaced...

Very interested in how those worked. I miss the era of gigantic / animated neon...

It was a round contraption that had four poles sticking up from it. About the size of a two pound coffee can. It turned, while wipers hit the poles, sending current to the various round neon tubes. Making them appear to flash inwards. There were two of them, one for each bullseye. The sign was grandfathered in, could be repaired. Would have needed a lot of work to make it usable at another location. Wasn't anything toxic involved. Just the way it ran or was housed. A Minneapolis thing.

Me too.

LTG : )

I'm curious. Why is billiards spelled as billards in the b&w pic?

I forgot that and posted the wrong picture.

The new current sign, when I saw the artwork for the permit. I noticed they misspelled Billiards, leaving out the 2nd i. Thankfully it could be easily changed at that point. ( the sign company misspelled three of the signs on the building, thankfully all were caught before the permit process and sign making and hanging. Apparently they didn't proof read the order ).

I posted on Facebook about the snafu that could have happened, had it not been caught. So someone edited the first picture for me as a remembrance.

LTG : )

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Crab Cooker still there!

Rose and Crown.. I cannot even begin to tell how much time I spent at that place. Where I was employed at the time, that was the after work drinking place most weeknights.

Celebrity Lanes in Denver. This was like Disneyland opening at the time. We were so little and that Olympic-sized pool was so big.

2 arcades and 3 huge slot car tracks. 88 lanes of bowling. We rode our bikes down there almost every day. 7 miles one way.

Favorite pin to play: King of Diamonds. I remember racking up a bunch of games and selling them for a quarter.

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Are you confusing it with the Five Crowns in Corona Del Mar, still great Prime Rib.

Fortunately I did get to go to this Drive-In one time
after we moved to the area (about 15-20min drive away),
before it closed permanently last year.
Now we have to drive to Newberg OR to see a movie at a drive-in
an additional 45 min drive.

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Rose and Crown was in San Clemente in a location with bad parking and closed awhile ago. 5 Crowns is still around. I remember Red Onion in Newport would go off in the 80s. My friend has his drivers license revoked for 5 years back then. No problem. Buy a boat and cruise the coast up to places like the Red Onion. Pretty funny how he could skateboard down to Dana Point harbor and then then legally take off in his boat to go party.

I hate to think what you have to do to get your license suspended for five years.

Probably a few DUIs. That is what ended up shutting down those awesome Happy Hours of the 1980s, they were just everywhere and always packed. Unfortunately the result of that is tons of fairly drunk people hitting the road afterwards. As I recall here was a pretty big backlash against the entire happy hour concept and it was mostly shut down.

The times were fun while it lasted!

Cops red lighted him, he got away but didn't believe him later that night that his car was stolen. Here's a funny now defunct. A licensed court ordered 3 day Orange County driving school to reduce DUI to open container. I attended the last class before they closed this down in 1979. First day was driving a Datsun B210 thru a traffic simulator as fast as you can go. 2nd day the people with the three fastest times got drunk with the OC sherrifs "supervising" and while intoxicated tried the same exercise drunk now to prove our motor skills deteriorate after alcohol. Except a guy in our class kept going faster till they stopped him after he kept beating his previously high score after getting high. They then told us that some people like him have such a tolerance to booze, that his reactions are a little faster until he gets to his drunk point. Day 3 we went on a oil skid pad that the CHP used to train on. CAN YOU IMAGINE THIS IN THIS DAY AND AGE? I'm sure it was insurance reasons back then. I mean, what could go wrong with having the police get someone drunk and then tell them to go as fast as they can through a live traffic simulator even if it's only a Datsun B210.

Alcohol is a strange thing sometimes. I have observed people I know drink far far more than I could even possibly drink if I wanted to, and still continue to function in basically the same overall manner as when they started. Meanwhile I have several and start doing a litany of stupid things that surely will prevent me from ever running for public office. Either way, it’s best not to drink and drive, I’m all for that. Too many tragedies on the road, and unfortunately it continues around here day after day.

My mom got me a job at a Rods Liquor, now defunct. 35 liquor stores in 1970s and 80s. I was in charge of store from 2pm to 10 pm. I was 18 and told by my boss that you had to pay for what you drank while working. I asked him to repeat that, and he replied that he knows my family, was sorry they dropped me on my head, and that I had to pay for what I drank while I worked. I always thought he was out of his mind to allow 18 year old kids to drink alcohol while on the job. When I got pulled over on my DUI the cop asked, "where have you been". I said, "at work". He asked in a stern voice "where do you work". I replied, "at a liquor store". He apparently didn't think I was funny and told me to get in the back of his car without even a test.

Fred's Market is still there with Fred reportedly still alive. How about the now defunct best bumper sticker from south o.c. It's Party Time in Dana Point. Usually accompanied with a No Fat Chicks bumper sticker. I haven't seen the Party Time sticker in ages, but the liquor store is still there.

Concussion ? Blackout ?

I hope you are okay.

LTG : )