Vintage Fast Food of Babcock Street

Babcock St is one of the old retail corridors of Melbourne, and unfortunately one mostly abandoned. Even where retail persists, like at the intersection with Palm Bay Rd, it's morphed and scattered- Kmart turned to Uhaul, Winn-Dixie split into several tenants, etc. In general, the street is home to many retail relics from days gone by. And today, we get pretty retro.

421 S Babcock St - Blt 1978

Starting off with our most "modern" building, dating to 1978. It's a late example of the "Mission" style Taco Bell, with added round entrances and a partial solarium. It's been operating as a bar called On The Rocks for the past couple years, and has been a bar since 2007 at least. If I had to throw a guess at when this closed as Taco Bell, I'd say 1999, as that's when a newer store was built at 4855 Babcock St NE.

433 S Babcock St - Blt 1970

We now jump to my favorite, a sad looking and well disguised A-frame, a Der Weinerschnitzel to be exact!  I have a soft spot for A-frames, though unfortunately commercial ones tend to go uncared for, this one being an example.

This circa 1974 clipping shows the building in it's original state, and well... time has not been very kind.

Want to note; Love those little metal tables.

It's last show as Der Weinerschnitzel in 1975, and it's up for lease in 1980. By 1983, it's become it's next and seemingly final tenant- Wally's Pad and Oyster Bar. It held this tenant until at least 2004 and then....

well, that's all she wrote.

Yes, as far as I can tell from Streetview and newspapers, this place has been vacant for going on 17 years, with Streetview showing only a timeline of gradual decline. Being empty for nearly as long as I've been alive has done quite a toll, and the building in general is quite dumpy and unmaintained.

It is used for something though- random crap storage! I guess if the rent's cheap enough, anything's a storage unit.

We now move onto our final fast food building for today, a former Lums! Lums was an old chain, one of those that died early enough it kind of missed the internet era. Famous for their beer steamed hot dogs, they entwined themselves into Floridian myth with the introduction of the "Ollie Burger", the recipe bought for $1 million from Miami Beach restaurateur Ollie Gleichenhaus.

Unfortunately, the chain was sold in 1978 to a corporate holding company, already diminished to some 270 restaurants from a peak of 400. In 1982, they suffered a devastating bankruptcy, and the chain was, for the longest time, reduced to a single location in Bellevue, Nebraska that finally shut its doors in 2017.

This location would, in the mid 80s, briefly become a location for The Fresher Cooker, a small chain that apparently collapsed in an abrupt bankruptcy in 1985, leaving behind bounced paychecks and angry employees. After that, it was a Chinese/Korean buffet named Seoul Garden for the better part of a decade, and then became Peppe's Pizza & Pasta & Subs, which survived until as late as 2007. By 2011, it had become it's latest tenant, the Gourmet Cheesesteak and Pizza Co.

For our final photos, we'll stop by this battered and beaten gas station, which is older than it appears- 1965, according to the property appraiser. This station is first mentioned in newspapers however in the late 1970s, as Sid's Texaco. It remained a Texaco for many years, however by 2004 it had become Majestic, a locally-owned independent station, owned by Manuel and Patricia Florez.

Majestic however had closed by 2011, and the station laid vacant for a few years until it became "Family Foods" by 2015, a pure convenience store that dropped the gas pumps, and simply used the canopy for parking space. Family Foods pulled the plug by 2019, and left the station vacant and quickly decaying.

A quick peek at the interior however does show a pretty well preserved interior, albeit filled with extra air conditioners and junk. It certainly looks better than the other buildings we visited.

With that, until next time!