As is strangely common around here, this Albertsons is paired with a Rite Aid in a retail duplex. Most likely, this Rite Aid would have been built as a Pay N Save, and it seems like they liked building their stores connected to grocery stores like this one, and Albertsons stores in particular. You don't see a ton of stores like this around anymore, though, since Rite Aid replaced many of them with new stand-alone stores in the 2000s. I walked by to see if there was anything of interest in this store, but there wasn't; I believe it just had the boring Green Wellness decor.
Whoa, is that a first generation Hyundai Excel parked up front (the green car)? I would say that I had not seen one of those in ~20 years, but I actually saw one on the roads in a poorer part of Houston maybe a couple of years ago. But, yeah, those are pretty rare these days even though they were incredibly popular back in the late 1980s. They were popular with cheapskates, but they didn't have a good reputation for reliability. Those were the first Hyundais sold in the US. We once went to a Hyundai dealer in the very early 1990s to look at one and the salesman told us flat out not to buy one if we were interested in keeping the car for a while! Well, I suppose that Excel owner in Oregon disagrees. I've heard that Oregon is a real haven for older, obscure cars. It certainly seems to be true!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of obscure cars of the Northwest, the WA town of La Conner came up in a recent discussion I had elsewhere. It seems that in the very early 1980s, La Conner used Renault Le Cars as police cars. As you may remember, I had a relative who lived in Seattle many years ago who drove a Le Car. Here's an article about La Conner's Le Police Cars: https://bringatrailer.com/2016/10/27/please-dont-speed-1980-renault-le-car-police-replica/
I know you're not much into independent grocers, but the Pioneer Market in La Conner looks pretty neat: https://goo.gl/maps/uBUwEYC4CkiN1sus8
While looking around La Conner on Google Maps, I see that a couple of the closest Safeways nearby are in Mt. Vernon and in Oak Harbor across the Bay. These are pretty strange Safeways in some ways. Mt. Vernon has some older signage on the outside and Oak Harbor has a very tall open ceiling that leads to some interesting Lifestyle designs I have not seen before like those very high Customer Service banners. Have you ever visited these stores before?
Mt. Vernon: https://goo.gl/maps/SMzzvVgWmQzeZXmH8
Oak Harbor: https://goo.gl/maps/cxjUVcJN6B5Lq5An7
Oak Harbor high customer service banners: https://goo.gl/maps/ztpTsfYS3GQP3TF57
The Market at Anacortes also looks pretty neat. I like how they sell what appears to be bulk cleaners that people can pump into their own bottles. It's next to a Rite-Aid as well, but a freestanding one. I know you don't like independent grocers, but this one might be worth checking out if you get a chance: https://goo.gl/maps/JRzFWeo8M18gJMkX9
Interesting! As you well know, I don't know much of anything about cars, so I never would have guessed it was anything unusual. Police departments having Le Cars, though... that's certainly an odd choice!
DeleteThe Mount Vernon Safeway is actually one I visited many times growing up, though I don't have any pictures of it (it's out of reach for me to easily take the bus there!). I never thought anything of it then, though it is a bit unusual to see an open ceiling in a Safeway of that age. As for the signage, oddly enough, it wasn't until 2019-ish that Safeway started updating their stores around here to the 2006 logo en masse, as previously they had only replaced them during remodels (and once a store got some version of Lifestyle, it was very rare for it to get remodeled again).
That Oak Harbor store is highly unusual, and it's certainly on my list to visit if I ever get the change! It's (as far as I know) the very first Albertsons to get converted to a Safeway, done right at the time of the merger when the nearby Safeway went to Haggen. (That store is also notable as the only Haggen conversion store to still be a Haggen!) It's particularly surprising to see it with Lifestyle v2, since I believe they were already moving away from that at that point (new-build stores from that era had a v2/v3 hybrid), and later Albertsons conversions all used v3 as far as I know.
Those independent stores are interesting too, but like you said, not entirely my sort of thing. I feel like I might have visited the Anacortes one at some point growing up (or something that looks similar), since it looks fairly familiar for some reason.