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