just a tide over

With my time for neon photo tours at a minimum these days I have to find stuff when I find it. A missing link and a plain old OPEN sign. Why the simple OPEN sign? Becuse of it's simplicity. It takes us back to a time before signage became standardized and OPEN signs didn't always have a blue oval surrounding the text. It's not an old sign, but has a "rustic" look. You can find this sign an an identical one at a Chinese restaurant on SR 161, near Karl Road. The Sawmill Florist sign is great, and in an area sadly deprived of neon between Dublin and Powell along Sawmill Road north of I-270. The OPEN picture was taken the late afternoon of Sun. 9/26 and the Sawmill Florist was taken the morning of Mon. 9/27.

Sawmill Plaza (Post #101 of this project)

Yep, my last post on this photoblog a couple weeks ago was my 100th post since starting this blog nearly three years ago! That wasn't my 100th photo tour necessarily, but still 100 posts, is a milestone. I can't believe I have maintained this for nearly three years now, through all the moves and changes in my personal life. Hopefully with the arrival soon of our son, things will calm down and I can find some time for neoning. Of course spare time will be hard to come by, but I will take busy and calm over busy and chaotic any day. So this little shoot isn't much, just a few cute pieces I found tucked in a little corner off Sawmill Road at the Sawmill Plaza, between SR 161 and I-270. I can never seem to get to this area at night and I believe they shut the signs off (grrrr!) anyway, so it was mostly cloudy when I shot these in a tucked away area of the three dimensional strip center. All of these pics were taken at Barclay Tobacco and The Cleaner (drycleaner, obviously) the morning of Weds. 9/22.







The tobacco store and "Capone" sign remind me that Halloween will soon be approaching. Last year I was a twenties era gangster for a party I went to. Maybe again this year? And I can get my stogie for the occasion from Barclay's!

The Wild southwest

Little pockets of development and of course commercial neon signage exist where one is not likely to find it. The far southwest side of the Columbus city limits and Franklin County is probably one of the least developed areas of the city. While the east and north sides are heavily developed like any major city, there are parts of the southwest side which have a very suburban, even almost rural character. I've always found this area pretty fascinating. One of the few areas where one side of the street is gritty, densely populated and very urban, while the other side has old barns and fields. And pretty far out west, an intersection has a shopping center with an authentic Mexican restaurant on one corner, billboard ads for cut rate car insurance, and a sizeable cornfield on the other corner. L:ooking west the sky is dark and full of stars. To the east is lights galore. It's as if a surveyor simply said "stop, stop right here, this is where civilization ends". Weird, and kinda cool at the same time. Anyway enjoy some of the neon signs of the far SW side. Also included is a sign I have long wanted to photograph, both day and night. Once a gem of neon dating to the 1960s, the property changed hands and the new owners (Walgreens...zzzz.) decided to keep the old sign and retrofit it for their purposes. Kudos to Walgreens for saving the neon, but it still doesn't make up for kicking Kahiki out some 10+ years ago (which also featured it's own ubercool neon sign). All pics were taken the night of Tuesday, 9/7 except the daytime Walgreen's pics, which were taken the morning of Thurs. 9/8.









Flyers Pizza. Very good pizza. I usually get it from the one further north in Hilliard next to Sloopys (check out my tour of the area from late November of last year..little did I know that a few months after taking that set I would frequent that area!). The flyer guy does something cool, which I will later show. The "free" sign is a computer store adjacent to Flyer's.

Galloway Square, at the corner of Hall and Galloway. Diagonally across the street from this strip center is a cornfield!!


Now what we've all been waiting for: The former Frisch's Big Boy sign. The restaurant closed a few years back, and Walgreen's purchased and redeveloped the property. I guess they wanted to do away with the vintage neon sign but after consideration from the community and local government, they decided it could fit into their scheme. And honestly, they did a great job of keeping and refurbishing the sign.
A few night shots of the sign. The upper part, with the cursive "Walgreens" script is in neon, while an LED ascpect is on the bottom half advertising specials and whatnot.


A couple shots of the shot in daylight.

Here is a link to what the sign looked like in it's Frisch's days. Frisch's