That I spent a chunk of my Saturday night on the iPad using Google Street View to determine the location of the closest supermarket to Hyacinth Bucket’s house and then got really excited when I determined that it would have been this Morrisons that I believe was originally a Safeway?
It’s even on the way to Onslow and Daisy’s house.
Gemco “going out of business” commercial. Gemco was one of the casualties of Asher Edeleman’s unsuccessful 1986 takeover bid for Lucky Stores.
Farewell, Mister Whipple…
Courtesy of Mike, this photo of the spooky, abandoned A&P offices in Paterson NJ shows label scars from at least two different versions of the A&P logo.
From Robby Delius, an interesting TV news shot of an early 1980s Big Star in Durham NC highlights the chain’s Grand Union era makeover.
Still-open Save Mart store, Sonora CA. From Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974).
The lovely Southern California store pictured above is where the Boyle family, of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, shopped. This overhead shot was from 1972; I think it was taken from the third floor of a building across the street. I’m not sure of the exact location (the Boyles lived on Elm Street at the time) but I imagine it’s been torn down by now anyway.
Unless, of course, Jons took it over and simply replaced the “D” with a “J”, similar to what they’ve done with so many former Vons locations around Los Angeles.
After all these years, we finally know that Opus shops at Vons, thus placing Bloom County somewhere in Southern California. I’d always assumed it was in the midwest, but what do I know?
The Cala Foods location at California and Hyde in San Francisco, from the 1967 film Petulia.
This stunning bit of supermarket architecture and design has been featured on my front page before, but I thought a couple of vintage photos showing the original interior and unaltered facade might be nice too.
The store is still open, at least for now. It’s been remodeled and slightly enlarged, but both were done fairly well. Kroger is trying to sell off the entire chain, so I suppose you could describe this one as somewhat endangered.
I’ve uploaded a few old commercials to YouTube. Enjoy:
From a 1971 episode of “The Brady Bunch”. I’ve finally made a definitive ID of this store, which was the subject of a message board thread several months back…
It’s the Mayfair Market at Franklin and Bronson in Hollywood, just as I suspected. I’d guessed this before because of (1) the Victor’s Liquor van shown in one shot and (2) the fact that this store is very close to Paramount Studios where the show was filmed. It’s also interesting that this Mayfair Market is the last one of the chain still operating under the Mayfair name…
Tonight, I looked again after watching it on the just-released DVD set, and then I had the brilliant idea to look at the intersection on the Terraserver website, where a newer, higher resolution photo had been added since last check. And it was a perfect match to all the shots in the episode, including the strip mall across the street…
Mystery solved…
