Additions since the last post:
And updates:
A reminder: These are announced as they happen on Twitter and in the Message Board.
Oakland Tribune, 1 November 1938
Longtime readers may recall that Groceteria.com was born in San Francisco, where I lived from 1992 to 2005. In fact, the San Francisco location list was the first one on the site, followed by Sacramento and Stockton, so I guess Northern California will always seem like a homebase for the site. San Jose, Santa Rosa, and parts of San Mateo, Alameda, and Solano Counties are more recent additions.
One part of the Bay Area has always been conspicuously absent is Oakland and Berkeley. It’s not for lack of effort or interest on my part. In fact, I started an East Bay list more than twenty years ago. But there was a problem. As you know if you’ve read my methodology, my primary source is city directories — not the telephone directories but the Polk (and affiliates) directories. In Oakland, however, there were no city directories published between 1943 and 1967 nor after 1969. This seemed an almost insurmountable problem. I consulted telephone directories, but they tend to be incomplete and almost useless in large urban areas. For example. Safeway did not list any of its store locations in the telephone book; they simply listed one central phone number. I was able to get some names and locations from the phone books, but my estimate was that this would produce a list that was maybe 30-40% complete.
A while back, I finally sprung for the “top level” subscription to Newspapers.com (cheaper than Netflix and far more entertaining) and that’s how I was actually able to finish Oakland after twenty years. It was incredibly labor-intensive and I probably would not be as successful using this approach for an area where I’m not as familiar with the chains and the cities. I scoured ads for the chains, articles about openings and shopping centers, and other sources, and I have finally come up with what I think is a pretty good list of locations in Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, and Piedmont. Is it perfect? Probably not. Are there omissions? Probably so. Is it the absolute best I think I can do right now? Absolutely. I’m hoping it’s about 90-95% accurate according to my standards. I’m quite proud of it. And it was fun doing Bay Area research again.
I also used this as an excuse to update some of the other Bay Area lists as well.
And as always, if you followed @GroceteriaWeb on Twitter, you’d already know about these. You’d also see lots of photos when I’m on the road.
New location lists:
Updates to existing lists:
Just a quick update to mention that I have greatly expanded the Boston listings, taking them back to 1925, and adding Cambridge. I also was recently in Boston taking pictures and generally roaming about the city. I’ll get more of these photos added later, but you may have already seen a good chunk of them if you follow me on Twitter, which you should.
I’m also actively tagging photos with the goal of getting a huge proportion of my collection online within the next year. More on that later.
…additions, that is:
Once again, if you followed me on Twitter, you’d hear about these as they happen. You’d also see lots of pictures when I travel. And your life would be complete, guaranteed.
New pages:
Updates:
As those of you who follow me on Twitter are already well aware, I’m currently in Chicago. Since Canada was off the table this year, I reworked my October vacation in a very socially distant sort of way. As it happens, this is not really all that different from the way I usually travel. But some specifics, in case you were wondering:
Again, I’m not a terribly social person when I travel in general, so most of this is not a stretch for me, aside from the obvious transit and restaurant issues. That said, this seems like a good time to talk about how I travel in general:
(BTW, the photo above was taken in Macy’s Marshall Field. Crowd were most decidedly not an issue there, which says a lot.)
Even though it has been a bit difficult to make myself sit at my computer all evening after sitting at it all day (work from home continues for me), I have made some additions. You’d know about these already if you followed the Message Board and/or Twitter:
Stay safe. And wear your mask, dammit!
You might think staying at home 24-7 would mean that I would be doing lots of updates on the site. Sadly, it’s not really working out that way. After working from home all day ay my day job, the prospect of sitting at the same desk all night is not all that enticing. Nevertheless, I am working on a Houston location list that may be up later this week.
Other updates since the last time I mentioned them here:
Stay healthy. Stay safe. Stay home.
I think the map has filled in quite nicely since I recommitted to the site about four years ago.
The most recent additions (that you can get as they happen via Twitter):
More to come!
