These are the latest blog updates. Click on the title to read the full article.
More regular updates can be found on the Bluesky/a> and the Message Board.
Who wants to be a Guinea pig?
I’m testing a new way of generating the location lists on the site using Google Sheets. The biggest benefits are that this approach should be more tablet- and mobile-friendly, and also will make it easier for me to have the most updated data I have on the site without having to do manual updates. It will also allow users to download the spreadsheets or add them to your own Google Drive.
I’m also in the process of updating the rest of the location lists so they generate automatic links to a current site view in Google Maps.
I started with San Francisco as a test. Let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks!
Thanksgiving
Lest we make the mistake of thinking that the controversy over Thanksgiving opening hours is a new one, may I offer the following ads from the 26 November 1964 Greensboro Record. Apparently the issue was far from settled even fifty years ago. Anyway, happy Thanksgiving to the Americans who are celebrating it this week.
On the road
Groceteria is on a road trip through southern Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Washington DC. And I’m live tweeting pictures from the road as I run across interesting stores. Follow me on Twitter if you want to see them pretty much as I do. Or wait for the full photo library to be posted a little while after I get home.
@GroceteriaWeb on Twitter
Need that extra Groceteria fix? Follow @GroceteriaWeb on Twitter. Come along on road trips and see random articles and items of interest. Interact.
It will be fun.
Come on. You know you want to. If you’re scared, you can slwasy follow the feed in the right column on the front page of the site as well. But that won’t be as much fun…
Happy birthday to me
More precisely, happy birthday to Groceteria.com, which was born fifteen years ago today as a post on another site. It was part of some of the earliest research that eventually became Groceteria.com. The post noted that this storefront on Irving Street in San Francisco was originally one of the earlier Safeway stores in the city and also mentioned that there had been Piggly Wiggly stores in San Francisco. Further, it suggested that there would be more to come on this subject.
Back in 1999, there was very little information online about the history of supermarkets in the US and Canada. To say that interest has grown would be an understatement. I like to think this site had some part in all that. Things have been a little less active here the past few years due to work pressures and a lot of family issues for me, but I’ve been working on things a lot more lately, adding features and content, and I hope there will be ever more new stuff in the coming months.
Thanks for stopping by.
Google Street View links
Quick update just to let you know that I’m in the process of adding Google Street View links to all the address spreadsheets. This is an automated process so not all of them are going to work perfectly, but it should still be a nice addition to the site.
I hope to finish up this weekend. You can see a few completed lists here, here, and here.
A&P, Commerce Place, Greensboro NC (again)
I’ve written about this store and how important it was to me before.
Most of you probably do not know that in my other life, I am an academic librarian whose job primarily involves supervising the digitization and online presentation of archival material. The job and the hobby intersect from time to time and this is one of those cases. These photos are part of a huge grant-funded project we recently unveiled on the history of Greensboro from Reconstruction to World War II. They’re great (and a rare find) because they show the pristine interior of this store at its grand opening. They come from the papers of Jim Sifford, who was apparently an A&P regional manager in the area. I’ll add more later.
Another great photo surfaced as well, but you’ve seen that one before.
Updates
Yes, I know it’s been a year. And yes, I know that I haven’t been answering email and that there have been problems with the Message Board. I have had personal issues and other things that have kept me extremely busy and I apologize.
But here are lots of new updates:
- Washington DC: New address spreadsheet.
- Asheville NC: Updated address spreadsheet.
- Fayetteville NC: Updated address spreadsheet.
- Gastonia NC: Updated address spreadsheet.
- Tri-Cities TN/VA: New section.
- Abilene TX: New address spreadsheet.
- Flagstaff AZ: New address spreadsheet.
More new stuff
Photo galleries added for Norfolk/Tidewater, Myrtle Beach, and Montréal, and updates to Toronto.
It lives!
My sincerest apologies for the long disappearance. Several major work and family emergencies have pretty much taken over my life for the past few months and the site has been a pretty low priority. But I’m starting to see some daylight now and I have a bit of new content to add. For now, it’s just two new location lists: one for Myrtle Beach SC and one for the Norfolk/Tidewater Area of Virginia. I hope to add some photos for both of these this weekend. And I hope to do a lot more than that over the next few weeks.