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This one’s an interesting specimen. It obviously dates from the late 1950s or early 1960s, and was given some sort of “superstore” retrofit in the 1970s. But the original sign stayed, and then the whole building was eventually painted a nice, bland beige. The interior is the slightly cheesy teal “millenium” package that every Kroger in West Virginia seems to have. I think the layout has been altered from the original as well.

It amazes me how many of these smaller and older stores are still operating in parts of West Virginia and Ohio. I’m travelling I-77, I-79, and US 19 a lot these days, since I’m sort of living in Pittsburgh part time now, and I’m seeing a lot of these as I try to vary my commutes between Winston-Salem and da ‘Burgh. I may be posting a few more examples this week.

The very first seed of Groceteria.com was planted ten years ago this weekend, when I posted on one of my other sites about old Safeway locations in San Francisco. In observation of this milestone (and because it’s just time), I’m rolling out the newest incarnation of the site today.

Groceteria is now a database-driven site, using WordPress and several other tools, and this should help me to get the content flowing more quickly in coming months. My apologies for the slow pace while I’ve been working on this upgrade. And be forewarned that I’m still working on it, so things may be a little messy for a while.

Here are some new features:

  • You can now subscribe to the “blog” (I hate that word) and get the latest site updates. You can also add comments.
  • The image galleries will be connected with my Flickr account. I’m still working on this, but it will ultimately allow quicker updates, and you’ll also be able to subscribe to my feed there.
  • I may also add a page made up of other interesting photo and blog feeds. Let me know if you’re interested in having yours added.

I’ve been running most of my other sites in a PHP environment for a long time, but converting this monster has been frightening me for a good year or more. Please let me know what you think and also if you find something that isn’t working.

Now that the structure is more or less done, the content should follow pretty quickly.