Cape Kennedy Retail

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 ...

Downtown Melbourne is a downtown with many arcades. Not the video game kind of arcades (though that would be nice!), but the old school shopping arcades, small buildings that are basically a "hallway" connecting several small shops on the inside. Melbourne has no less than 5, that's right, five! arcades. That's a lot for a not very big downtown! Let's start with the Melbourne Arcade (909 E New Haven Ave) It's the nicest and most ornate of the arcades in Melbourne, and the most well preserved. It's got it's own little plaque up there! It features a rather ornate (by arcade standards) interior on the first floor, with all the ceiling detail. Arcades would often have a sort of open center on the second floor, but this one has a solid ceiling. This vintage coke machine occupies a corner in the stairwell, though I didn't take the time to test it. The second floor is much more understated, and is entirely office spaces, as one would expect. There's t...

Estate Sale #1: Christmas Poisoning  So think back to your childhood. I'm sure you had that one family friend, or maybe even your own family, that was a bit too into Christmas. Well whoever owned this house beats them ten fold. Now here's the thing. This isn't even like a third of it. Christmas as far as the eye could see. At every turn. Village buildings, plushies, decorations. Of course, none I wanted... or at least for a decent price. I enjoy Christmas village stuff, but the actual buildings were $20 or $30, which was a bit rich for me. And of course, there were some non-Christmas finds as well! I enjoyed the graphics on this (CB?) radio box. Airbrushed-style graphics, woodgrain, silver facing... ah, good aesthetic. Our first retail-related find is this Optimus-brand cassette recorder. Optimus was a house brand of Radioshack, and was at least originally for "higher end" stuff, as far as I can tell, with Realistic for the more budget goods. Though by this point,...

 Welcome to our first post! I have a lot of different little "series" planned, and this is one of them. Melbourne Square Mall is my local mall, decently thriving, and I've grown into a habit of trying to keep up on the closures and openings of stores there. Archives can be found at my  Flickr  , but future posts will go here so I can give more context. These photos come from a quiet Tuesday when I stopped in Mr & Mrs Crab has been in the works for a little while, taking over the fairly long vacant space last occupied by TooJay's Deli. Mr & Mrs Crab is a local chain, which has really sprung up in the past few years. Frankly I'm a little concerned with how long they'll last, since their expansion doesn't seem very selective. This space, which I believe was last "BeMe Natural", is now God's Love Apparel. I'd love to know what this storefront was originally. Go Green CBD has opened in the former Gamestop, and Wooden Spoon is coming to...