The Grocery Palace interior was about the same as I had left it too, starting with the inexplicably green vestibule. The local flair photos are a nice touch, though I wish they had real captions to tell you what they actually are. It's interesting to see the old Albertsons flyer display filled with energy drinks instead!
It is good to see some Portland-area retail on here! It feels like it has been a while since we've seen that region. Ok, I know this is from the Vancouver side of things and, even then, Battle Ground isn't all that close to Vancouver! I know we discussed this store last year before I went to Portland/Vancouver and I know you suggested that I visit this store, but it really was way too far in the middle of nowhere to justify a visit just to go to an Albertsons! I know AFB might faint to hear me say that, but at least as of last year, I had a pretty well intact Grocery Palace Krogertsons just down the way from me in addition to the Grocery Palace #1 Food Town not being far off as well.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of the Krogertsons, the green here isn't wildly different from the Artisan blue that my Krogertsons has on this type of wall. That said, this wall is different than my Krogertsons as you can probably tell from the photos over at HHR. While this is a true vestibule, the Krogertsons, and I'm almost positive the Albertsons before it, did not have a set of doors on this wall. It is open to the store itself. I'm not sure why there is a difference!
That Albertsons signage is a blast from the past! I often wondered why Albertsons used two different logos at that time. The classy Albertsons signage we see here clashed a bit with everything else whimsical that Grocery Palace had going on, but I guess that just adds to the Grocery Palace lore!
This is entirely unrelated, though I guess it is related to Portland-area retail. I found something neat today! It is a video at The Portal to Texas History website showing a Dallas-area news clip from the grand opening of the Wilsonville, OR Incredible Universe! What a scene this was and it reminds me of the packed parking lot I had to deal with when the Houston Incredible Universe opened (though we didn't have a traffic jam caused by Incredible Universe at least when I went, though the I-610 West Loop is/was almost always jammed anyway even without anything special going on)! In case you're wondering why they'd have a clip from Wilsonville in the Dallas news, Tandy/Radio Shack was based in Ft. Worth, TX and so that story certainly would have been of interest to the Dallas-area crowd. Link: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2279565/m1/
Yeah, this store was quite a bit out of the way for my Portland trip too (in fact, it's the main reason I drove to Portland instead of taking the train or bus), but it was well worth it! Back then, I also had the P01/P04 Target in Kelso that was kinda-sorta in the same direction that I also really wanted to visit.
DeleteMost of the Grocery Palace stores I've visited haven't had a full vestibule with a second set of doors, just a partial wall. Maybe it was something specific to stores in colder climates -- almost all of the Washington ones I've visited have had the full vestibule. I think this design looks a little bit better at least, making it a little less obvious that there are two hallways right next to one another!
Grocery Palace definitely had a whimsical, cartoonish theme going on, but there was also a lot of classiness to the background elements, like the romanesque rectangular paneling on the walls. The script font also matches the trellis-style department signs and the frozen/dairy signage, so I don't think it's that out of place. That's one of the interesting things about Grocery Palace for me -- it doesn't fit neatly into any sort of categorization!
I really wish I had gone to that Incredible Universe when it was still in operation as Fry's on my 2019 trip. I don't think much of the special stuff from Incredible Universe was still around, but it would have still been cool. Oh well, everyone has things they regret not seeing, and that's towards the top of my list.