Vintage neon signs

[Fading Fast]

⇧ The business lesson for successful popular music clubs / music-dance clubs / music-supper clubs / nightclubs is to bank your money when you're popular as that wheel almost always turns.

Years ago, I read a history of The Stork Club and its owner - Sherman Billingsley. He had a very successful formula for a night/supper club for about two decades - and the money poured in. Billingsley had (all from my memory and all in '60s dollars) millions - literally millions - saved up (some in accounts for his daughters) when the business turned south as rock and roll gained in popularity and the younger generation didn't want to go to "fancy" dinner clubs and dance to big band music.

But Billingsley couldn't let go despite advise from, well, everyone to just close up. He kept pouring his money into the club - literally using his savings (including the accounts he had set aside for his daughters) to keep the place going. He had bands playing to a nearly empty house night after night / waiters standing around / food being bought and thrown away / etc. The union situation hurt him too, as he had to keep too big a staff, etc., but that was not the cause - just an accelerant - his inability to stop was the big issue.

He finally stopped but with only a fraction of his wealth left and he, a broken man. But, then again, he had had a long running affair with Ethel Merman; to each his own - but that alone would have broken me.

Of course, there are always a few exceptions, but the safe rule is to bank your dough and get out when the music is still playing - there's nothing wrong or immoral with that / nothing says you have to ride the rocket on its return trip to earth.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm guessing there is nothing related to the space race (the branding tic of that moment) about this place nor to a palace (a branding tic from an earlier time), but it might have had some good skating.

 

[LizzieMaine]

⇧ The business lesson for successful popular music clubs / music-dance clubs / music-supper clubs / nightclubs is to bank your money when you're popular as that wheel almost always turns.

Years ago, I read a history of The Stork Club and its owner - Sherman Billingsley. He had a very successful formula for a night/supper club for about two decades - and the money poured in. Billingsley had (all from my memory and all in '60s dollars) millions - literally millions - saved up (some in accounts for his daughters) when the business turned south as rock and roll gained in popularity and the younger generation didn't want to go to "fancy" dinner clubs and dance to big band music.

But Billingsley couldn't let go despite advise from, well, everyone to just close up. He kept pouring his money into the club - literally using his savings (including the accounts he had set aside for his daughters) to keep the place going. He had bands playing to a nearly empty house night after night / waiters standing around / food being bought and thrown away / etc. The union situation hurt him too, as he had to keep too big a staff, etc., but that was not the cause - just an accelerant - his inability to stop was the big issue.

He finally stopped but with only a fraction of his wealth left and he, a broken man. But, then again, he had had a long running affair with Ethel Merman; to each his own - but that alone would have broken me.

Of course, there are always a few exceptions, but the safe rule is to bank your dough and get out when the music is still playing - there's nothing wrong or immoral with that / nothing says you have to ride the rocket on its return trip to earth.

Another thing that killed the Stork Club was Walter Winchell's declining influence as the 1950s wore on -- he'd been Billingsley's biggest booster in the 1930s and 40s, and the free advertising he gave the Stork in his column and on his broadcast couldn't have been purchased at any price -- a big segment of the club's clientele was made up of out-of-town Winchell fans who'd read about the place and would go there hoping to see Winchell in person holding court and accepting fealty from the passing celebrities. Even people who'd never been to New York in their lives and would never go there knew what the Stork Club was, and who Sherman Billingsley was -- the club itself had a celebrity status far beyond anything stemming from the actual establishment. When Winchell's audience fell off in the fifties, all that free publicity dried up as well.

 

[Fading Fast]

Another thing that killed the Stork Club was Walter Winchell's declining influence as the 1950s wore on -- he'd been Billingsley's biggest booster in the 1930s and 40s, and the free advertising he gave the Stork in his column and on his broadcast couldn't have been purchased at any price -- a big segment of the club's clientele was made up of out-of-town Winchell fans who'd read about the place and would go there hoping to see Winchell in person holding court and accepting fealty from the passing celebrities. Even people who'd never been to New York in their lives and would never go there knew what the Stork Club was, and who Sherman Billingsley was -- the club itself had a celebrity status far beyond anything stemming from the actual establishment. When Winchell's audience fell off in the fifties, all that free publicity dried up as well.

Great point - another part of "the wheel turning" so get out.

That place had its moment, for longer than a moment.

 

[2jakes]

Neon Drum Majorette from Campus Drive-In Theater, San Diego.

Betty’s Boot sign on Broadway, Nashville,TN.

Helen’s Children’s Wear, Hastings St. Canada.

Greyhound

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Noir.

Rob

 

[LizzieMaine]

Roseland was the most famous New York ballroom outside Harlem -- a dime-a-dance place that went upscale by having its hostesses charge 11 cents, but which also hosted all the most famous orchestras of the swing era. Although the venue followed a color-blind policy when booking talent, the dance floor was whites-only.

Next door, note the penny arcade -- a room full of pinball machines, claw machines, Love Testers, Gypsy Fortune-Tellers, Mutoscopes, and similar gimmicks. How they managed to evade Mayor LaGuardia's relentless campaign against pinball is a question left to historians of corruption in the NYPD. It's precisely this type of Broadway arcade that Fred Astaire capers thru in "The Bandwagon."

 

[2jakes]

Noir.

Rob

No kidding...practically everything shuts down in my neck of the woods!

 

[Fading Fast]

...It's precisely this type of Broadway arcade that Fred Astaire capers thru in "The Bandwagon."

But a cleaned-up "Hollywood" version I would think:

 

[1mach1]

Rt 5 in Ripley, NY

 

[Fading Fast]

 

[LizzieMaine]

Mayflower Donut/Doughnut Shops were the national leader in the coffee-and-sinker business until the rise of Dunkie's and Winchell's in the '60s, with franchised stores in most major cities in the East and Midwest. The chain was built around an automated donut-making machine, which in some of the shops was displayed in the front window of the store to the fascination of passers-by. Unlike their later competition, all of their shops were city oriented, and they never adapted to the rise of suburbia after the war, allowing their later competitors to co-opt the strip mall trade. The last Mayflower shop closed in 1970.

Ward Baking, the Brooklyn-based white-bread kings of the Northeast, had a partnership with Mayflower to sell their donuts in grocery stores, and every box carried the chain's official creed: "As You Ramble Through Life, Brother, Whatever Be Your Goal -- Keep Your Eye On The Donut -- And Not On The Hole!"

 

[2jakes]

Decades before the ongoing CVS – Walgreen’s Drugstore turf war, a town was happy to have a single drugstore – delirious if it had two.

San Antonio,TX

Grand Saline,TX

McLean, TX

Van Alstyne, TX

In the late 19th Century drugstores were proof that a town was “civilized.”
When a pharmacist opened shop, often it was the doctor himself who opened the drugstore.

Cisco,TX

Locals always knew where to find the drugstore.

Btw: Once you got past the “aroma” of medicine pills up front,
the soda fountain towards the rear, you could find the
best chocolate malts in town.

 

[Fading Fast]

Mayflower Donut/Doughnut Shops were the national leader in the coffee-and-sinker business until the rise of Dunkie's and Winchell's in the '60s, with franchised stores in most major cities in the East and Midwest. The chain was built around an automated donut-making machine, which in some of the shops was displayed in the front window of the store to the fascination of passers-by. Unlike their later competition, all of their shops were city oriented, and they never adapted to the rise of suburbia after the war, allowing their later competitors to co-opt the strip mall trade. The last Mayflower shop closed in 1970.

Ward Baking, the Brooklyn-based white-bread kings of the Northeast, had a partnership with Mayflower to sell their donuts in grocery stores, and every box carried the chain's official creed: "As You Ramble Through Life, Brother, Whatever Be Your Goal -- Keep Your Eye On The Donut -- And Not On The Hole!"

Who knew the doughnut business was brutally competitive - adapt or die. Krispy Kreme had to be rising around this time as well - no? I have a vague memory of reading that Krispy Kreme (originally, anyway) used to have its doughnut making machines visible to the public in its shops.

I can't say why, but Ward Baking sounds familiar. Maybe living in the NorthEast, I've seen their trucks or signs or something.

Those grocery store - doughnut shop partnerships don't work very well as doughnuts get stale quickly, so unless they are delivered fresh (at minimum) once a day and the stale boxes are promptly removed, you are quickly disappointed with a stale box and stop buying them. I've gone down this sad path with several grocery store - doughnut shop tie ups over many years.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Ward Baking was huge in the Northeast -- their flagship brand was "Tip-Top Bread," and they were also the bun-baker of choice for all the ballparks in the region serviced by Harry M. Stevens Co. They also had a family relationship with Continental Baking, producers of Wonder Bread and Hostess cakes, and General Baking Company, which produced Bond Bread -- for most of the 20th Century if you bought a loaf of major-brand white bread on the East Coast, the Wards were responsible for it. The operation began collapsing under its own weight in the 60s, and it was sold off piecemeal to various investment groups and conglomerates. For a while Continental Baking was an arm of ITT, which put the Happy Wonder Bakers under the control of the military-industrial complex, which I don't think is quite what the Ward Brothers had in mind.

The Wards also owned a baseball team in the short-lived Federal League, which with characteristic grace they named the Brooklyn Tip-Tops. They built a snazzy new concrete-and-steel ballpark in Park Slope which outlasted the league by ten years, and a fragment of its outfield wall is still standing along 1st and 3rd Streets as part of a Consolidated Edison storage depot.

 

[2jakes]

Nearby...Hotel Lawrence

“completely air-conditioned" & haunted!

Two reports of suicide also revolve around the hotel. A woman is said to have checked into the presidential suite during the 1940s, and jumped to her death that evening.
It’s also rumored that a congressman possibly ended his life at Hotel Lawrence Dallas as well.

Many skeptics have come to visit the hotel—but nothing ever happens during the day. Instead, the hotels hauntings come alive at night, and take many forms. Some refer it to being like a switch, the change feels so sudden.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Is that The Fonz I see there?

Rob

 

[2jakes]

Is that The Fonz I see there?

Rob

Rob...
There was a plethora of Fonz characters in my neck of the woods:

Got to see Chuck Beery & Buddy Holly @ Municipal Auditorium in '57.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Broadway, looking down W 49th. On your left, look up to the second and third floors and you'll see Capezio's Theatrical Footwear, the shop that outfitted every chorine on the Main Stem, and still does today. On your right, at Chin Lee's you can have any Chinese meal you want as long as it's chop suey or chow mein, but what do you want for 55 cents, all of Canton?

After you eat, walk up a block and you'll be standing in front of the Winter Garden. Forget about that, go upstairs to the Cafe Zanzibar. Ellington's playing. You won't want to miss it.

 

[2jakes]

1950s and '60s Toronto at night.

Toronto of the 1960s was a city full of neon, so even as there were fewer people and things to do, main streets like Yonge and Bloor were hubs of energy dotted with ostentatious signs that set the streetscape ablaze. It was entirely messy and just a little sleazy.