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I was driving around with my dad and we found ourselves downtown and he asked me if I wanted to get a photo of Fort Worth Champion Spring Service's sign. I said, "Hell, yeah," and he proceeded to pull right up on the curb.
I got out and snapped this photo. It's an old as hell neon sign. The place has been there since 1928. Their sign features a leaf spring and a shock absorber.
I think it may well be out of business because it was closed, locked up and there wasn't a car in either of its two lots, one on each side of the building.
And it's website address comes up with one of those obnoxious pages you get when a website is long gone, the one with advertising replacing the original website.
Once this restaurant's namesake, Vivian Courtney (click on her name to view a video tribute to her and photos of the inside of her restaurant), died in 2004 it was closed. The main building, which was as unique as the sign, was leveled (wished I'd taken a shot of it before it was bulldozed) but the place's unique sign remains to this day.
In fact, if you want the sign you can have it. John T. Roberts posted this @ Fort Worth Architecture, "If anyone is interested, the old neon Vivian Courtney's Restaurant sign is available to anyone who wishes to take it away. It is a two-sided exposed neon sign with the letter 'V' on top. It sits at the corner of Jacksboro Highway and Roberts Cut-Off Road @ 5915 Jacksboro Highway. I tried to find a home for it with two organizations but they did not have a place to put it. Now I'm offering it to anyone who thinks they can remove it and preserve it. The sign is about 28 feet tall and about 12 feet wide at the widest point."
Me and my friends ate their several times. It was a cool a place, with photos and posters from Old Hollywood --- we're talkin' John Wayne, Elvis Presley, Gone With The Wind, etc. --- hanging on the walls and in each booth there were equipped with miniture jukeboxes that really worked. You put in a quarter and got to choose three songs.
It had a buffet at lunch or you could order off the menu. The eats were simple good ol' white trash cuisine dishes.
A beautiful place that is now in the dustbin of history. Too bad. To me, the old stuff is, and still will be, the best stuff.
Yeah, as I get older I cherish the good ol' days more.
Yes, I'm sentimental but that comes with age and there's nothing wrong with getting older because you get smarter and realize that the modern stuff is just stuff that's not worth a damn (iPods & cell phones, for example) in my opinion.
When me and two ladies from work went to Thrift Town, on Jacksboro Highway in far west Fort Worth, Texas, I decided to take pictures of the surrounding area while they shopped. In the same shopping strip as the thrift store was an Arby's with one of its original huge neon signs, which looks like a tall ass cowboy hat. I wanted to document this bad ass sign so I took this picture of it. I love the colors, maroon, yellow and white. And look at the words "HURRY IN" followed by a notice that the place is "OPEN LATE". So why be in such a hurry if it's open late?
My second ex-wife told me she once worked at an Arby's in Erie, PA, her hometown, and said that the 'roast beef' was actually a HUMONGOUS and heavy piece of frozen meat formed into a round ball that they cut up in the back. So just think of that when you bite into one of their roast beef sandwiches. I know they're good but that shit arrives totally frozen and in a huge ball-like mass.
Yeah, I want to "hurry in" and eat that shit. NOT.
Anyways, here's an interesting tidbit I found on Wikipedia.org about Arby's:
"In the mid to late 19th century, a saloon was founded in West Texas by a retired Civil War Captain, Daniel J. Arby. The saloon gained much renown throughout the pan-handle for it's fine southern food and large gaming hall. After five years of outstanding popularity among Texans, Arby decided to expand his saloon to neighboring towns where the menu expanded and included his famed roast beef sandwich and family recipe barbecue sauce. After generations of the Arby family passed down the recipes and the saloon chain gained popularity in the early 20th century, the saloon was updated to restaurant status and included nightly entertainment (everything from magicians to minstrel shows). In the 1930s the family lost almost everything as the United States fell deeper into the Great Depression and was forced to sell their beloved restaurant chain. The Arby's name changed hands over the next 30 years, being owned at one point by the great Howard Hughes, until it was finally bought by brothers Forrest and Leroy Raffel in Ohio, who were determined to own a fast food franchise based on a food other than hamburgers. The brothers were insistant on changing the name to the preferred name of "Big Tex," but that name was already being used by an Akron businessman. They eventually decided on the Arby's moniker, based on R.B., the initials of the Raffel brothers [1] and also because they realized they could accomplish this without changing the original name, thus Arby's, LLC was born. (By coincidence, R.B. can also be short for roast beef, the company's main product, a point which was used when the backronym "America's Roast Beef, Yes Sir" was used as an advertising campaign in the 1980s.) They maintained the cowboy hat logo in reverence of the humble beginnings of the fast-food chain."
UPDATE: This sign is gone. So is the Arby's restaurant. It's boarded up. This is why I take photos around town of stuff like this knowing at some time or another it will be gone to make way for something new, er, worse. It's important to document with your camera your surroundings because one day a picture you took something of will no longer exist.
This neon sign, which is pretty f-ing cool lookin', is for The Ranch country radio station that resides inside The Jett Building in downtown Fort Worth's ritzy tourist trap, Sundance Square.
I'm not a fan of modern day country (it's just rock 'n roll with a twang) but I am a fan of cool signs and this sign qualifies as cool.
From the dressed up cowboy roping the word "ranch" to the Texas state flag design below that to the rustic old fence that the word "ranch" is branded on.
All around cool and colorful.
If you enjoy country music check out The Ranch.
This is Fred Texas Cafe's neon sign. It's located above the bar and visible as soon as you enter the best burger/ice cold beer dive in the city of Fort Worth.
It's Fred Burger w/cheese was voted tops by readers of Cowtown's only independent weekly rag, the FW WEEKLY, in its 2007 Best Of Awards.
It's atmosphere is unique, as you go inside to find yourself walking back into a simpler time, an almost diner-like feel, with booths and stools at the bar.
The high class go there to feel like low class and the low class go there to feel right at home. The mixture of the customers can't be found anywhere else. The wait staff is always hustling and you can actually see the cooks fixing your food. It's an active place, people munching down on their juicy homecooked meals, people laughing, having a good time, drinking beer from huge schooners that are ice cold.
Just a fun place to be.
M.L. Leddy's is world famous for producing hand made high quality western wear, including boots, belts, buckles, saddles, chaps, etc. Basically, if you want to become a cowboy go to Leddy's and you can get yourself set up right.
While perusing through their store in Fort Worth's historic Stock Yards, I picked up a pair of ostrich skin boots and looked at the price tag: $2,075!
"Wooooo!" I thought. "Hot damn tamales!"
I put them suckers back down and real nicely too 'cause I didn't want to damage merchandise that cost that much.
They also had a pair of jeans on sale for 75% off and they still cost --- get ready for this --- $375!!
So what I did get, and it was free, by God, was this photograph of their bad ass boot-shaped neon sign.
As I drove up and down East Belknap one morning looking for cool photos with my buddy, Motel Todd, I stopped at Jack Starr Liquors in order to capture this georgeous neon sign.
It just don't get no better than this, pardner.
This IS art, period.
Hell, yeah.
I ate at Pappas Burger (located in Fort Worth at Interstate 30 and Forest Park Boulevard) with my youngest nephew and my dad and step-mother, and, before going inside and enjoying a tasty Hickory Cheddar Bacon Burger, I stood in the parking lot and took this shot of the place's old school neon sign.
Whoever designed it --- look close, it's a hamburger --- did a fantastic job.
It's rare that a new restaurant/business spends the money to have a nice neon sign designed and made instead of settling for a cheap p.o.s. manufactured sign that doesn't stand out amongst all the other 21st century cookie-cutter business signs.
Heck, I wouldn't call'em signs. I'd call'em eye pollution.
Plus, less neon signs means less neons signs to take pictures of!
LONG LIVE NEON!
As long as I've been alive (since 1960) Joe Daiches Credit Jewelers has had a storefront in downtown Fort Worth, one block north of the Tarrant County Courthouse.
Also, for about the same amount of years the sons of the owner, Alvin and Larry, made these god-awful, clumsy 30-second commercials on local t.v. that were hilarious because they tried to be funny but the fun part of the spots were them, they're stiffness, comfortableness, etc. They were a couple of dorks who meant well but should've hired one of those loud car salesmen instead. At the 1:36 mark of this video you can watch one of their commercials. It's from the '70s.
Now, there's no telling how old its neon sign is but I found on a genealogy site the man who owned the company who produced it. You can see at the very bottom of the sign (click on the sign to see the full version of it) the words "Melton Neon." Well, from that genealogy site this is what it says about Mr. Melton, "Julian Chappell Melton was born on 6 Sep 1898 in Lima, Beaverhead Co., Montana. He died on 31 Aug 1984 in Fort Worth, Texas. He was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery. Lived 86 years. Julian had golden hair and bright blue eyes and was very handsome. He was an fighter pilot ace in the first World War. After a plane crash he went to the hospital at Berrings Field, Texas. He recovered completely. He owned the Melton Neon Sign Company on East Lancaster in Fort Worth, Texas. He was also an artist."
Of course, the man's company no longer exists but, obviously, his firm did good work.
I got up off my lazy ass one Friday morning and went hunting...hunting photos, that is, along Fort Worth's seedy ol' Highway 80, which was renamed Camp Bowie West by the powers that be to rid it of a bad rep even though the joints along the highway still have bad reps, and found the El Dorado Motel --- a motel with a perfect look and location for some teenage horror psycho killer slasher flick.
I hadn't been down Highway 80, the part of it on the west side of Loop 820, in quite some time and was surprised to see that the motel was still there and still open for business. As I pulled into a business strip to park and get out and walk over and take this photo I thought to myself, "DAMN! That old ass place is still there? I got to go get a photo of that place before it's torn down."
Sometimes getting off your lazy ass and going outside into the bad, bad world pays off. It did for me the day I rediscovered this classic motel.
TEXAS TIRE CITY (pulled in here once to get a flat tire plugged. Great service despite the scumbag look)
SINGLETON'S BATTERIES (a dumpy place on Jacksboro Highway that gives off the aura of 'WTF?')
HENDERSON STREET BAZAAR (Fort Worth's best & most visited weekend flea market)
MICHAEL JORDAN MOTORS (obviously no relation to the NBA Hall Of Fame superstar)
FORT WORTH GOLD & SILVER EXCHANGE
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