Sorry, I just thought this was a really cool picture when I saw it hanging in my favorite diner this morning…
Sorry for the lack of updates recently. It will probably continue over the next month or so, as I’m well into my cross-country move. We’re leaving San Francisco for good on Friday and will arrive in Charlotte NC about two weeks later, stopping along the way in Fresno, LA, Phoenix, Austin, and New Orleans, among other places…
Hope to have some nice pictures when we land…
I’m happy to say that a reader has confirmed that this Pavilions was originally a Safeway-Super S combo, as I’d guessed. He also adds that his “childhood recollection, however, was that they didn’t use the Super-S name in Southern California but called them ‘Safeway Variety Centers’ instead.” Anyone care to confirm?
This reader also noted that the building is in danger of being demolished when the store is replaced with a new building at the other end of the current parking lot…
With that mystery solved, does anyone have a clue what the heck this thing might have been? It looks like maybe some chain discount store prototype, but it could have been a supermarket as well, I guess. This particular example stands on Mooney Boulevard in Visalia CA.
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.
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.
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.
