Around the back

As is to be expected, the back of the store has hardly changed at all over the years and provides a very good look at the faux-Marina roofline of the store. That funny little panel at the top of the arch is the remnant of an Albertsons sign that Saar's never bothered to replace with one of their own.

Remember way back at the start of the series when I mentioned that this was the 100th Albertsons built? Well, Albertsons sure made a big deal about this, buying a whole section in the Seattle Times dedicated to advertising their new store. (And who said content advertising was a new concept?) Sadly, the pictures (including several of the interior) aren't particularly high quality any longer due to the process of printing, microfilming, and scanning, but it's still pretty interesting to see. And the rest of the section is pretty interesting as well, with a bunch of ads from the era (only a couple of which would be considered offensive today, not too bad for something from 1963 😉) and detailed descriptions of all the things that 1960s grocery store advertisers apparently found new and exciting.

After this, we'll be jumping forward in time quite a bit, since Albertsons decor packages through the late 2000s - including some of the most interesting of them all - are sadly pretty much extinct in this area (blame Haggen!). So the next few stores we'll be looking at are much more modern than what we've been seeing lately...