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This store opened circa 2017 as an early Albertsons-to-Safeway conversion, replacing an older Safeway across the street (which in turn replaced this old Marina store). Well, I say "older", but the James Village strip mall has been here since the 60s, making it significantly older than the former Safeway; this store has clearly been expanded over the years, though, and I guess the combined company liked it better for one reason or another. The cool double rotating sign out front is probably original to James Village, and it's somehow still working 60-ish years later! There are a few other working rotating signs around here (though I can't remember the last time I saw one in person), but I bet this is the only one for a major chain grocery store! Heck, I wonder if Safeway/Albertsons has any other vintage rotating signs like this (that are actually functional) chain-wide.
I'm sure people with real video editing skills could make a nearly perfect looping GIF out of this, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out considering my lack of skills. It may take a while to load correctly, though -- even with the quality turned way down, apparently GIFs make very large files.
That's pretty neat! Rotating signs were commonplace here, but are pretty rare now. The only one I can think of now around here is the Carpet Giant carpet showroom in East Downtown, Houston. Rotating signs are more popular in Portland, OR, but still, I can't imagine Safeway having one even there! It has been a long, long time since I've seen a rotating Safeway sign. It is too bad Hobby Lobby is on the other side of the sign and not Half Price Books!
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