I have absolutely no idea why the service meat section was empty and deserted at the time of my visit, since I was here around 5 in the afternoon, well within the hours that these departments are normally open. Maybe that was for the best, since it's almost enough to distract from the kerning disaster on the sign above! (Fun fact, this store is just a few blocks from where
this picture was taken.) Remix is well-known for terrible kerning in ex-Bountiful stores, but this store shows that original Bountiful can be just as bad! Looks like at least one of the "basket" bars on the left has gone missing too (side note: the Bountiful decor plans for this store refer to them as "canopies").
That sign looks fishy alright! Granted, as seen in The Year of Kroger, we have stores which are missing the baskets/canopies completely and which just leave behind the bars without any names on them! That's probably even worse than a kerning fail. That said, I don't think I've seen any missing bar elements at Krogers here where it wasn't intentional like at this other The Year of Kroger subject: https://houstonhistoricretail.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IMG_5869-jpeg.webp
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, that Krogway in that photo is probably going to close sometime in 2025. The shopping center operator has listed that spot as being available starting January 2026. Given that a replacement store is unlikely in that wealthy, built-out area, it is sad to see the probable loss of Kroger in that area. That is unless the merger goes through because that is one of Randall's strongest areas in Houston, oddly enough.
Huh, I guess the Seattle PD has not moved to black and white livery like so many other police departments? Houston PD switched from powder blue cars and uniforms, which they used for decades, to black and white ones (all black in the case of the uniforms). I heard this had something to do with recommendations from the federal government in order to make things look more standardized acorss the country, but I don't know.
I've seen all sorts of weird things with Bountiful installations at low-ceiling QFCs, including some where they didn't bother with the canopy beams at all and just used the hanging metal part, but I don't recall any others with this bad of a quality control fail! It seems to have been shortly after the Bountiful era that things started getting really bad with Kroger decor mistakes, with Banner being the worst off (probably because it's by far the most common modern-ish Kroger package around here).
DeleteInteresting -- I don't pay much attention to police car liveries, but I feel like the classic black-and-white design is pretty uncommon around here. The King County Sheriff has black-and-white cars, but Seattle recently changed from a light blue livery to the current dark blue (after experimenting with a few different versions, including some black-and-white ones, around the time the Crown Vic was discontinued, alongside experimenting with different models of car before settling on the Ford Explorer like pretty much everyone else), and the Washington State Patrol primarily uses all-white cars. I'm not sure about other jurisdictions, but I feel like all-white (sometimes with stripes) is probably the most common around here, unless a bunch of them have switched to black-and-white without me noticing.