032605-lucky

It’s officially all over for the Alma Plaza Lucky now, I suppose. It was scheduled to close on Thursday, and I made it by for a few final photos last Sunday. I’m definitely sorry to see this one go.

I’ve been busily organizing all my assorted newspaper and magazine articles into a Filemaker database lately, which means I haven’t really been working on the site very much. But it should make later updates (and the long-pondered book) much easier.

In addition, I’ve been trying to get all the Northern California photos I can before leaving the Golden State forever at the beginning of June. Suggestions are welcome, as are pointers to things I should see on the road back east. Our stops are tentatively planned for Palm Springs, Phoenix, Austin, Houston, and New Orleans. We may also take breaks in El Paso, Atlanta, and/or Jacksonville before arriving in Groceteria’s new home of Charlotte NC.

022705-pav

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to whether or not this Pavilions unit in Seal Beach might have originally been a Safeway-Super S combo? It has a matching Sav-on drug store next door and the whole thing really looks like it was originally meant as one integrated building. Either way, I’m pretty sure the Pavilions was originally a Safeway store.

022705-abs

Via a link in the message board, I found yet another useful searchable image archive, this one from Seattle. The cool Albertsons photo above came from it.

022705-gu

Also found a set of really nice images from a 1952 Grand Union in Patterson NJ at some Library of Congress site for which I’ve misplaced the URL.

For those of you who are address and date nuts, you may be excited to see that I added this list of all 1973 locations to the Alpha Beta section today. It’s interesting stuff and I did a little limited cross-checking o see how many stores in Southern California were still operating as Ralphs locations, and how many in Northern California had lasted long enough to become Albertsons branches.