An era is coming to an end in Chelmsford as the owners of Skip's restaurant close their doors after more than six decades.

The restaurant has been a family-owned fixture at 116 Chelmsford St. since Stephen Burliss and Fred Gefteas Sr. opened it in 1946. Burliss's and Gefteas's sons, George Burliss and Fred Gefteas Jr., said a difficult economy forced them to sell the property to a local developer.

"The economy is hurting us everywhere -- from paper goods to food goods, to insurance to the utilities. I mean, if I told my father now that we were paying between $7,000 and $9,000 a month for electricity, he'd say close the place," Fred Gefteas said.

Through the decades, the restaurant built a faithful customer base with its "American Yankee cuisine" -- traditional home-style cooking. Gefteas said the 2008 economy is very different than it was 62 years ago, when the diner first opened.

"We are not happy with, you know, leaving the place. I mean, I grew up here. I grew up in Chelmsford," Gefteas said. "I think they took me here before I went home after the hospital."

Peabody, MA
Chris Schulte savored every bite of his final "house omelette" oozing with cheese, kielbasa and caramelized onion — an unrivaled meal he has enjoyed at the Foster Street Diner three or four times a week for more than a decade.

The little diner locked its front door for the last time at noon yesterday, closing the chapter on generations of fresh home fries, griddle cakes, cups of coffee and sarcastic, affectionate banter.

"Honestly, I might die of starvation," said Schulte, who owns Atlas Landscaping around the corner from the diner. "I've tried everywhere else, and no one can make an omelette like this. Ever."

Peggy and Dan Davis of Lynn have run the diner the last 18 years. Dan cooked in the back yesterday morning while Peggy chatted with customers, served coffee, and braced to say goodbye to "their home" for the last two decades.

"It's been great," Peggy Davis said, "just the people we've met and the friends we've made."

The 1927 railway-car-turned-diner, adorned with a weathered red awning, has been tucked on the edge of Foster Street near downtown Peabody since 1939, Peggy said. The autobody shop next door purchased the land from the diner's landlord to pave it for a parking lot, said shop owner Brian Lightbown of Peabody."

New funhouse ride replaces Gold Rusher

The deer are gone and the ghosts are back at Kennywood. Can Potato Patch fries be far behind?

Saturday is opening day at the venerable amusement park in West Mifflin, evoking all sorts of 'Burgh-happy memories, as well as the anticipation of a new, high-tech ride, "Ghostwood Estate."

The new attraction, which replaces another "dark ride," the Gold Rusher, is a first for Kennywood. Guests not only get a tour through the haunted mansion of Lord Kenneth Ghostwood, they get to zap the free-loading ghosts who have declared squatters' rights.

Halloween Productions of St. Louis designed the new ride; it also converted Kennywood's Old Mill ride into Garfield's Nightmare a few seasons back.

"These cars don't need a track, there are wires in the floor and the sensors allow the cars to do a lot of tricks," said Richard Donders, an engineer with Dutch firm ETF, which designed and built the four-passenger vehicles.

Metal bar codes embedded in the concrete floor provide options for the ride operators. They can make the cars stop, spin, turn, or take another route if there's a fork in the road or a dead-end.

The cars equip each guest with a laser gun. Hit one of the 200 or so light-up targets and you get a "trick," as well as points.

By Troy Clarkson | The Falmouth Bulletin | April 28, 2008

With the curves and swerves served up to us during our journey here, much of our success, I have come to believe, is determined by how we approach each step, each twist in our path that causes us to stop and ponder.

With each of these trials, we have a choice: we can lament the roadblocks that have been placed before us — and spread the resulting bitterness — or we can be thankful for the experience, soak in what we have learned and move on, awaiting the next challenge with gratitude.

Having met Barbara Lind recently, I am sure she is choosing the latter path. It’s never easy to meet a challenge for which you are well prepared, never mind one for which you must rely on faith. Barbara Lind knows something about that as well.

As the owner of the former My Tin Man Diner, a Wizard of Oz-themed fixture near the Otis rotary in Bourne for decades, Barbara spent most of her life filling the bellies and hearing the tales of Cape Codders and visitors alike. Full of boundless energy, she exudes a positive vitality that you can feel in her hands and see on her kind face.

There was a time, though, in the not-so-distant past when Barbara’s zip and positive karma were gone, along with the hope and gratitude that fills her life today. Eight years ago, the Tin Man burned to the ground in a well-publicized fire. Countless mementos of that magical land of Oz which adorned every inch of the diner went up in flames along with all of Barbara’s dreams. She was crushed.

“Part of me died with the diner,” she said as I met her on a sun-soaked afternoon last week at the location of the new Tin Man Diner in North Falmouth.

Jackson, CA
When Mel and Faye Gillman's hamburger stand opened in 1956 it had six counter stools, a three-digit phone number and a seasonal highway visible through its windows that was closed in the winter. As the years rolled on, the business expanded into a cozy diner that became the face of Jackson's Highway 49 - a fact that was recently celebrated by the city with a plaque to Mel commemorating the original site of his landmark establishment.

Mel was first exposed to restaurants when his father came out west via working for Union Pacific and suddenly found himself out of a job. He opened a hamburger stand in Oakdale called Gillman's Frosty in the early 1950s which is still in the Gillman family today. After Mel got out of the Navy in 1955, he and Faye were driving through Jackson in a convertible Cadillac when Faye scoped out the traffic situation and decided the highway would be a perfect place for a hamburger stand. "I think they liked the idea of being independent business owners," said Bart Gillman, Mel and Faye's son and current owner of Mel's Diner. "Each of them is a people person and enjoyed being around the general public - they enjoyed serving people."

Over time Mel's Diner went through three separate expansions, all while the Gillmans became more involved in the Jackson community. Mel was a Jackson City Council member from 1958 to 1965 and served two terms as Jackson's mayor from 1963 to 1965. Mel was also known to sit down in his diner after the big lunch rush and play chess with his friends.

Courtesy RoadsideArchitecture.com

By Steve Doyle | Huntsville Times| April 23, 2008

Museum to get Speedee, Huntsville landmark

Speedee, the winking cartoon chef who helped lure generations of Huntsvillians to the McDonald's on South Memorial Parkway between Drake and Bob Wallace avenues, has sold his last burger.

On Tuesday, workers from Empire Crane & Rigging took down the weathered neon arch that had been Speedee's home since September 1963 Ѡtwo months before the assassination of President Kennedy. The vintage sign was removed as part of a complete makeover of the restaurant, the city's first McDonald's.

Don't cry for Speedee: He's being adopted by the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, which plans to clean up the rare, single golden arch sign and display it with about 500 other classic business marquees. Huntsville's Speedee and another in Muncie, Ind., were believed to be the last still peddling burgers for McDonald's.

The fast-food giant traded in Speedee for the more kid-friendly Ronald McDonald in 1966.

"There's an emotional tie to signs like this," Tod Swormstedt, the sign museum's founder, said Tuesday. "It kind of harkens back to days when times were simpler, life was slower-paced. We're glad to have it."

MInneapolis/St. Paul
The big screen at the Cottage View, one of the metro's two remaining drive-in theaters, will show movies this summer despite earlier predictions that it would go dark.

"We never looked very far into the future because we know the time is coming sooner or later," landowner Gerry Herringer said of the Cottage View, which opened in Cottage Grove in 1966. "We keep patching it up and we'll try to get another year out of it."

The Cottage View's fate was uncertain last fall when a developer told city officials he wanted to build a 500,000-square-foot shopping district that would include Herringer's land. However, the developer, PariPassu Cos. of Minneapolis, has yet to submit a formal proposal, said Howard Blin, Cottage Grove's community development director.

Meanwhile, the Vali-Hi Drive-In in Lake Elmo along Interstate 94 reopened for the season last weekend and appears under no threat of redevelopment, said Manager Joe Murr. "If it had been on the Woodbury side [of the interstate] it might be eaten up," he said.

Woodbury has extensive retail development along I-94, while most of the Lake Elmo side remains rural. Murr said the Vali-Hi land isn't for sale.

Pretty much all that's left of the former Johnie's Broiler in Downey, California is the former eatery's iconic sign.

But according to a release today from the Los Angeles Conservancy, plans are underway for an actual restaurant to once again rise up on the same spot that Johnie's was unceremoniously, and illegally, torn down in January of 2007, some fifty years after it was first built.

"Bob's Big Boy franchise owner Jim Louder has signed a long-term lease with the property's owner, Christos Smyrniotis. Louder plans to reconstruct the Googie icon, using as much remaining original material as possible, and operate the building as a Bob's Big Boy.

You can find the entire article here.

A great number of people were involved in the effort to bring back one of Southern California's most spectacular bits of Googie architecture, including members of the Coalition to Rebuild The Broiler.

Quite a few roadside enthusiasts have posted both before and after photos of Johnie's here.

From Newsday.com | April 22, 2008

A classic railcar-style diner that closed recently after losing its Manhattan home is being reborn in Brooklyn.

The Cheyenne Diner is relocating to the Red Hook neighborhood on the waterfront after a construction manager purchased it for $5,000.

The chrome-covered eatery near Penn Station closed earlier this month after 19 years in business to make way for a nine-story residential and commercial building.

Landlord George Papas says the buyer of the diner has enlisted a professional who restores diners for a living to move and refurbish it.

No opening date has been set.