RoadsideOnline

by Michael Risinit

BREWSTER — The owner of Bob’s Diner on the village’s Main Street will again host a free feast on Thanksgiving.

"My original thought is that it was for people who don’t have anywhere to go or for people who can’t afford it," owner Thomas Sprague said. "But it’s absolutely open to anybody."

Sprague supplies and cooks the turkeys. Also on the menu are mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and dessert. Donations of money and side dishes are welcome, he said.

In addition to filling stomachs and providing camaraderie , he said, the event is a chance to remind others to give of their time or money during the holiday season.

This will be the third Thanksgiving that he opens the 54-year-old Brewster diner to anyone who wants to celebrate. The gathering starts at 3 p.m. and runs until about 8 p.m. He said he served 76 diners last year.

"It’s usually a really good meal," Sprague said.

Original story here.

Eighty percent of everything that has ever been built in America has been built in the last fifty years, and most of it is depressing, brutal, ugly, and spiritually degrading---the jive-plastic commuter tract home wastelands, the Potemkin village shopping plazas with their vast parking lagoons, the lego-block hotel complexes, the "gourmet-mansardic" junk-food joints, the Orwellian office "parks" featuring buildings sheathed in the same reflective glass as the sunglasses worn by chain-gang guards, the particle-board garden apartments rising up in every meadow and cornfield, the freeway loops around every big and little city with their clusters of discount merchandise marts, the whole destructive, wasteful, toxic, agoraphobia-inducing spectacle and politicians proudly call "growth."

James Howard Kunstler

There is a new shopping center in town. Its location was never really controversial—the developer chose a wooded, rocky spot just off one of our main roads, and I did notice that a well-regarded local ecologist told the local paper “there really is no unusual or special plant, animal, or habitat in that spot.” Its mix of stores, still evidently a work in progress (there are quite a few empty storefronts remaining), caused some concern, as our already struggling Main Street didn’t want or need competition. Not to worry, folks, thus far all the tenants of the new mini-mall are big corporations with headquarters out of town. Whether the development would get a tax break, how much, and for how long was hotly argued, but the mayor and those in her corner prevailed because the local economy so badly needs a bigger base. One item seems never to have been debated: the design. The developer and his design team pledged to be “sensitive,” which meant not only that the storefronts would have a somewhat-New-England-ish look, but that there would be hills and dales and green swathes. I notice even vintage-looking streetlamps were installed here and there.

“Gloucester Crossing,” as it was dubbed, is now open for business.

We're happy to announce any good news related to the revival of our historic downtowns. If you have similar news to share, please send it along.

By Sharon Hernandez

Muncie is one of 21 cities to be recognized this year as an Indiana Main Street community.

Being a Main Street community means Muncie will receive economic help for the restoration of historical areas of the city and the opportunity to network with other communities in the program.

The recognition ceremony will be at 2 p.m. Friday at the Indiana Statehouse. Recognition and awards will be given by Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman.

Some representatives of the community will be at the event, including members of Heart of the City, Cornerstone Center for the Arts, Minnetrista Cultural Center and Ball State University’s Muncie Urban Revival Association.

Indiana Main Street program manager Shae Kmicikewycz said the participation of Muncie in the program will help the city with technical assistance, and possibly in the future, with grants.

“I think it’s wonderful for the community,” she said. “Although Muncie is quite ahead of the game.”

Read more here.

Aside from the good news written here, there's the "Oh oh" factor to consider. What will the currently pristine Colonial Diner look like after the owners triple its size?

The Colonial Diner in Bergen County, New Jersey. Possible Lou-Roc candidate?

As South Bergen weathers the effects of the nation’s longest, deepest recession since the 1930s, at least one type of business seems to be thriving. Diners, a South Bergen staple since at least the 1950s, are not only weathering the economic storm, they’re thriving in it.

As media reports note the reluctance to go out to eat on the part of the American people, two South Bergen diners are undergoing renovations and the rest are doing at least as well as they had been prior to the recession and, in some cases, even better.

Both the Schuyler and Colonial diners originated in Kearny and were moved to Lyndhurst by truck between the 1940s and 1950s and, still thriving, have begun renovations this year.

The Schuyler Diner on Schuyler Avenue, after having been closed for about two years, is undergoing renovations and, essentially, unveiling a brand new diner. Developer Nat Greco, a North Arlington native, is redeveloping the property while business owner Peter Phaff will take over operations once it reopens.

Greco believes people who are reluctant to go out to eat are avoiding fancy restaurants and eating out economically. "Obviously, it’s like anything else. McDonald’s is doing terrific," said Greco. "The families still like to take people out."

Read the rest of the story by clicking here.

Ollie's Trolley gets honorable mention after our whirlwind visit to Washington D.C.

When my former employers at Ball Publishing owned Roadside back in 2000, someone pitched an idea to interview then-candidate Goerge W. Bush on what he liked to eat while on the road. When I finished with my yawn, I instead suggested that we do a quick tour of D.C. and recommend some great "Roadside-Approved" places that maybe the next president might want to check out when he moved into his new digs on Pennsylvania Avenue. After eight years of Bill Clinton's fetish for Big Macs, we hoped that the new president might throw some business at the little guy in town.

I never got the chance to do that more thorough exploration, but last weekend, I did manage a whirlwind tour of a few places that definitely deserve the Roadside-Approved appelation. At the moment, the city does have one operating diner, the now-venerable American City Diner, a 1989 Kullman that's more or less turned into something of a joke of a diner thanks to a dining area cluttered with vending machines and dust-grabbing ephemera.